May 20, 2020
NOTE: I made two entries for August 4th. I believe the one previous to this entry was mislabeled.
Took me this long to specify the day of the week. Sure, the date contains this information, but why obscure it and require a calendar or Google search? Given the nature of a journal, does the day of the week convey more information? Piglia often includes only the day. He will do this for months in a row, and I lose track of where in time we are. It seems somehow more human and it took me nearly two volumes to understand.
But for Piglia, as for me, do the days of the week signify less? He has no job, no child, a partner who sets very few limits – what does it mean to him that a Monday has arrived or finally the weekend? Only something, because it affects those in his life, the city around him as workers gather in bars and cafes to celebrate a day off.
The day of the week is just one of many details I ignore (including the date, which is to say a gap between entries, a lacunae, that says something as well: sometimes many months occur between entries, often at the beginning of the year). I also ignore the series form he uses to characterize certain entries. Do I not have the capacity? Am I lazy? It relates to my, to an inclination, a childish thing, a compunction to get to the end, to read another book. Since the entries in the different series happen rarely, I would have to keep careful notes and refer back to them each time. (I do understand the X series relates to Lucas and his revolutionary friends; but, is the X series sometimes fictional? What does that mean in a book authored by a fictional person?). I want the book to entertain me and this means to not demand I think.
The notion of thinking as entertainment or thinking as relaxing.
A crossed out section follows and then a commentary on it:
I asked what alienated me from my culture: It’s not so much that I don’t work but that I have no money to spend for it can seem at times as if that is what defines my people – spending money. And not only one big purchase (we encourage those, of course, cars or boats for example), but many small, consistent buys: shirts, pants, necklaces, a new cover for an iPhone or why not the latest model? Blister packs of plastic figurines for our children, a new BBQ that gleams and reminds you of the dull, corroded one beneath the mossy canopy out back your house. Why not a set of pliers or electric weed wacker? A new cane or redder shade of lipstick? A re-useable coffee cup to replace the one you got for free at the forestry conference but which is too large and does not reflect your fashion. Our existence is streamlined to facilitate these purchases. Our cities, Alexa in our homes, our connected fridges we can program to automatically order food, our phones we can use to pay for things, and the architecture of our minds. Look at our entertainment populated with consumer goods, but also itself as a saleable item, not just the novel or movie, but all the toys etc. So what does it mean when you can’t participate in this system?
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Buying instead of boredom (the research that it takes; pouring out one’s intelligence like silicone across the mold of your object until you are left with a copy that is you).
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None of the items matter – it is the constant purchasing, the ability to purchase in order to think about what you will purchase.
An article in a Canadian literary journal on critic John Metcalf. For fifty years, this England-born Canadian has written and shaped the Canadian literary scene with a particular focus on the short story. I’d never heard of him. I’d never heard of most of the authors he recommended either. As is typical, the only Canadians I know have succeeded internationally (U.S.A.).
I grew up with the implicit understanding of Canada’s innate lameness.
