Greetings from Cliffside Park, New Jersey Saturday, Jul 12 2008

Isn’t it a funky looking state? I’m about a mile from the Hudson. It takes about 30 minutes and 5 dollars to get to New York City. And once there… the possibilities are endless. Which is why I’m staying indoors for right now. I’m happy to be here, but there is nothing to do. Absolutely nothing. I need a job so badly. I have applied at NYPL for about 12 different page positions. I have applied at Columbia and NYU for library assistant/circulation positions. I have applied to NYU for a Consumer Health Intern position. And Staples, Target, Old Navy, Trader Joe’s, etc. Something is going to have to work out soon.

I have been reading William T. Vollmann’s Europe Central since I got here. I live in between 2 libraries. We had been walking 5 or 6 blocks to get to one and it turns out there is another in the other direction less than 2 blocks away. Anyway, Europe Central is a series of ‘parables’ about real people. The storylines are mostly fiction but it will be interesting to look these people up later and read more about them. But my views of them will be biased by fiction. But isn’t every historical figure biased by our fictional ideas of them? The book is great and I have some passages to share…

“Most literary critics agree that fiction cannot be reduced to mere falsehood. Well-crafted protagonists come to life, pornography causes orgasms, and the pretense that life is what we want it to be may conceivably bring about the desired condition. Hence religious parables, socialist realism, Nazi propaganda. And if this story likewise crawls with reactionary supernaturalism, that might be because the author longs to see letters scuttling across ceilings, cautiously beginning to reify themselves into angels. For if they could only do that, then why not us?”

And…

“When we first begin to awake from the stupor of youthful egotism, we try to negotiate with the world, trusting that with our health and strength we can do what we wish while carrying out the world’s demands. When will full communion with the world begin? We are ready. Is the world?”

And…

“He later told me: Since everything in that court followed a strict consequential logic, the final version of my film expressed the same unyielding logic of life.”

I want to try to compile a list of all the books that I have read, but do not own. Because one day I would like to own them all. I have 7 empty book shelves in my new apartment. I will also try to do some research on used books in New York. The library down the street has books for sale. I got 7 yesterday for 1 dollar.

Jeff Noon’s Vurt and The Savages Detectives are up next. Send me messages! I am isolated in this weird world. With no couch!

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Possession Tuesday, Apr 8 2008

I am not sure how I feel about the new set up here at wordpress, I think I might grow to like it. That’s really neither here nor there. (I love that saying in writing). I found this de Kooning painting on a website and also this quote:

There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts it size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter– the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these three trembling cities the greatest is the last– the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from Italy to set up a small grocery store in a slum, or a young girl arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company.

- E.B. White, “Here is New York”

Apparently this is a neat little essay written by E. B. White in a hotel room in New York City, and I want to get my hands on the whole thing. I could start a whole shelf devoted to these musings on my future home.

Something weird is going on when I don’t want to do anything but listen to Pandora and while away the minutes until I get to go home. I don’t want to read or think about my responsibilities right now. I think it’s called a mixture of Spring Fever (the trees have turned and I must be under them!) and Graduation-itis (a rare form of ‘I don’t give a shit-fever’ coupled with an amnesia like sensation of not knowing who you are or where you are or who those people are who are telling you to write them papers.) I’m not sure if I will survive. But The Mountain Goats guy is singing me through it.

I’m still reading, don’t worry, just not as much as usual. Trying to get through Auto da Fe by Elias Canetti. and Possession by A. S. Byatt. Both are excellent and pair together well. I’m pretty annoyed with Interlibrary loan for this major disruption in Proust reading, but there’s not much to be done about that. I am wanting a book from the Science library which is not on North Campus so I have no idea where it is or how to get there, how I’m going to find time to get there, etc. I’m also really excited about the next few months worth of new releases that I won’t be able to afford to buy myself and they are:

Chuck Palahniuk-Snuff

Louise Erdrich-The Plague of Doves

Maureen Freely-Enlightenment

Salman Rushdie-The Enchantress of Florence

David Sedaris-When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Haruki Murakami-What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

Just to name a few. Also going now to research Sanford Berman, a radical librarian.

Love, Jessica

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