Subj:
Re: my life
Date: 2/19/2006 4:39:52 AM Eastern Standard Time
From:
scarlettglass@aol.com
To:
jjd39@yale.edu
Dear Reader?
Might you mean Dear Diary?
Because, aside from the impersonal "How are u doing?" at the top of the text, I don't think this is addressed to anyone at all. It is entirely its own. A string-theory of personal realizations about your personality, a synopsis of the thought-processes and self-effacements that lead to fruitless and minor changes in your life. It does not ask any questions, not of itself, and not of the reader (except for [remember?], which, by the way, I do, remember everything that you tell me, though I doubt the reverse is true.) It does not really merit response.
As a piece of fiction, it almost works as farce, when you lurch from first-person, stream-of-consciousness rant into a slackly organized third-person chronology, which, sparse and uneventful as it is, manages to include details such as "Jeremy decides to go off meal plan," and "Jeremy plans to write thesis" alongside "mom dies." (However, your switch back and forth from first to third person WITHIN the third-person chronology shows an instability which is genuinely creepy.)
If you sent this to me for criticism as a work of fiction, I think that, as I said, its strength lies in its farcical self-absorption as social commentary, but I find this sort of stuff to be passé -- ten, if not fifteen, years behind the times. The use of all lowercase letters as an attempt to show spontaneity, or lack of self-discipline, is trite and pretentious, especially as it begins after the greeting, salutation, and obligatory first line... As though you are trying to show your steep drop into madness parallels your drop into informality. The clichés like "meat and potatoes kinda guy" are a bit hyperbolic (as well as slightly ass-backwards) when used to describe an Ivy-league educated effete, especially in comparison to Berto, the immigrant artist... Shallow, broad, categorizing, like "his smart friends," really leave me quite sick to the stomach -- but I will admit this is due in part to my own personal bias of such judgment.
IF you sent this to me for advice, or sympathy, I simply cannot possibly understand why. We clearly have such disparate values-systems and perspectives on life that I cannot imagine you would want to take advice from me, though God knows, I've tried to give it. As a matter of fact, our values are so different that I do not even fathom your wanting my literary criticism. I, after all, am not one the aforementioned "smart friends."
Don't take this the wrong way. I'm just bein' square with ya, bro.
Love,
Sis
Subj: my life
Date: 2/18/2006 9:59:06 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: jjd39@yale.edu
To: scarlettglass@aol.com
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Well Dear Reader,
How are u doing?
i realized that i am slightly manic-depressive. and i think i realized that i don't know what i'll do here in new haven once berto is gone and another class has left. I realized also that one of the causes of all this mania-depression was trying to compete with berto. that's why i tried to get a job and i stopped being on meal plan...
of course, mom's death had something to do with depression and the worse grades and the reason not to be on meal plan... my mind changes all the time so nothing is really clear, though.
I originally didn't want to be at yale another year (remember?) and then when the reality hit me that berto could do the same work that i could do, it made me not want to care about grades anymore. That was easy, because I was busy, having already put myself in more difficult living conditions, and forcing myself not to be on meal plan and to cook everything from scratch.
So now that I tanked in my last semester, I honestly don't know if I want to be here next year.
to make matters worse after a week of feeling like my wet dream was academia and i felt like my mind was being opened in many directions, i suffered a crisis of confidence and then just botched the next week entirely.
now that theyre PO'd at me in the department i'm wondering whether i should just do something else like peace corps and call it quits, cause berto will been gone next year. and it will be another fall at yale.
Jeremy
so to recap:
• fall 2001 to summer 2003:
i was a meat and potatoes guy on meal plan who lived on campus who didn't think too creatively but got good grades and was going to write a thesis and was going to law school or something like it
• fall to spring 2002
i meet roberto and am realize im not comfortable with my sexuality
slight depression over sexual ambiguity and lack of excitement in youthful phase of life.
• summer to fall 2003:
mom dies
i go to prague ..........denial about relationship with berto somewhere around here intensifying through fall 2005
• spring 2004:
i come back to yale.
greg is in argentina.
jeremy decides to go off meal plan.
jeremy has a stressful semester because he is depressed because of his mom's death, and furthermore, he is off meal plan. but still jeremy pulls through and gets his As.
jeremy plans to write a thesis.
• summer 2004:
jeremy has no idea what he will be researching and does no research in prague.
jeremy decides that this sexuality issue has got to stop, he's been studying too hard, and so he takes time off.
• fall 2004 to spring 05:
jeremy gets even more depressed because he has taken time off and does not know to do with himself... and dreams of a thesis and academic glory/honors are done.
in spite, (and also prompted by lingering intellectual insecurities brought about by his smart friends, or--- trying to compete with roberto and thus working twenty hours a week on top of taking a normal course load, and still being delusional about his spanish ability and deriving self-esteem from doing well in a spanish class and thus wasting time on a class which he took pass-fail, jeremy does not do so well this semester, and ends his academic records with a hideous C and a B combo)... but he steels himself.
• summer 05:
prompted by lingering fears of being dumber than his friends brought about by his smart friends jeremy decides that he is beyond mere Yale University, and he is an intellectual worthy of the likes of Thomas Mann... then he goes to Czech Republic and realizes that aaahhhh things are more complicated in a new setting... in fact he is manic-depressive and has been trying to overshoot for too long.... he was really a meat-and-potatos guy all along.
Just give me one thing I can play for.
Disco boys on bicycles.
So what if too many times we have been here, both
Poetic Retrospective
The Weather votes for Kelly Clarkson.