What is the connection between artistic expression and the joy of living? How can one best live a literary life? This book is a collection of small word-projects. Each examines a book, a moment, a story that helps to deepen the author's literary adv...
So much of life is imperfect and flawed...and yet there are moments.
It was a winter day in early January of 2022. I was walking along Nagasaki Bay to get to a little place called Douzaki.
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It was the kind of cold that makes me shiver to my Floridian bones. I was listening to music...perhaps it was a little Postmodern Jukebox, some selections from Mr. Suicide Sheep. Modern technology has made my musical tastes so much better. Loneliness is the 21st century version of leprosy...so declared the Economist. And yet, this 21st century disease seemed to inspire something inside me.
My walk along the Nagasaki coast made me think of other perfect moments. All these perfect moments make you realize: imperfection is everywhere.
It seems like without tenderness, there is something missing?
General Public released "Tenderness" in 1984. About a decade later, it would make its way into the movie Clueless. It was a 1995 comedy movie that I would have seen in either seventh or eighth grade. For some reason, this movie stirs deep emotions inside me. A longing for a time when girls were beautiful, the themes of movies were simple but littered with deeper meanings about the poison of consumer culture and the shallowness of Americans...We never stopped being stupid, simple, or shallow. All of these very human qualities have just evolved.
Also, apparently based on Jane Austen's "Emma," which you never read. Your reading seems haphazard...You are thus, literarily, "Clueless," living in Japan on precarious contracts...trying to avoid contact with the harsh reality of work life.
But what is it about in the end? Trying to string together enough of these perfect moments to make the bad bearable? Perhaps. Perhaps I just need to go walking along Nagasaki Bay every weekend until the nightmares of growing old, poorer, mentally unstable, and out of touch with the world and youth go away. But even when I walk along an imaginary bay of my favorite memories, when old girlfriends appear to me...when old friends reappear in their younger forms ready with wisdom, it seems to me that I will once again land in some dark forest of my imagination. And always, the evil Daniel is waiting there for me. He is richer, stronger, more effective...less internal, and well-read... but he is also the owner of a large empire. He taunts me, "What will you fight me with?" The only weapon I have is my ability to inspire legions of my friends.
I also have my music: Weezer, New Found Glory, and Reel Big Fish.
Why commit yourself to evil when you can party with all your friends? And then it occurs to me, when I'm in the dark forest with my darker half, that the point of all this is to bury these horrible memories as deep as I can and string together these amazing moments. If you have to settle for a shitty job situation, if you have to settle for some time without a girlfriend, if you have to settle for eternal obscurity as a writer, the point should be to make your way out of the dark forest. Carry that darker self with you on your shoulders if you have to. But if you are going to go through (your personal) hell, then the only way to do it is to go through it. And on that final stretch through the dark forest, when your knees begin to fail, and you can't take any more, your darker self, your friends, and yes, even your music, will carry you through to the very end.
March 14, 2023. Etch that day in your memory. You went to a nearly empty school. You puttered around. You fed the cats. You marveled at the view from your office. You realized there wasn't a damn thing wrong with your life or the world—at least not for the moment. You dreamed about your "Institute." All the while, you were in your Institute. A little university job in the Nagasaki countryside. That was what you always wanted, sans [omitted content!].
As I write this little essay on perfect moments, I am also simultaneously writing an essay, "On the Hardness of Life." It's a strange thing: "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times..." Life at the moment is almost perfect but also bittersweet. Perfect in its various details: the eccentric Brit who sits across from me; the view of Togitsu Bay; the novel that is almost ready to debut; the articles that populate academic journals... and so many more details. Imperfect and cruel in other details. [Details omitted]. I could leave this situation, but I would not find perfection. Perfect moments serve to highlight the imperfection of the world, the imperfection of my soul.
