we'll build our walls aluminum

Okay, so I was going to do the National Book Week thing, because everyone in the world is posting quotes from textbooks, and my talking to the one person who didn't ended up spiraling into a discussion of having skulls on desks (note: if you think that having a skull on your desk will help you concentrate on your head and neck exam, YOU ARE WRONG. You will set it up and it will sit there and grin, not that it can have any other facial expressions, and you will sit there and grin and feel awesome, because you have a skull on your desk. I brought it home for the sole purpose of feeling like a Dark Ages monk right out of a woodcut; my guess is that Dark Ages monks never sat around gloating and grinning and grinning even more because the thing they were grinning at was grinning back). Anyway, I don't remember how that sentence started, the point is that I was going to do the National Book Week thing, only I wanted to do it when the closest book to touch wasn't The Count of Monte Cristo, because there's not-textbook, and there's disgustingly predictable.

So I did, and the fifth sentence on page 56 is

Dear Zooey,

I've just finished decoding a long letter that came from Mother this morning, all about you and General Eisenhower's smile and small boys in the Daily News who fall down elevator shafts and when am I going to have my phone in New York taken out and get one installed up here in the country, where I really need it.

and really, that's just about as disgustingly predictable as The Count of Monte Cristo, because if you are a sane functional human being the time for Salinger is when you are fourteen, thirteen, sixteen, whatever, NOT EIGHTEEN ALMOST NINETEEN AND THREE YEARS OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL, but I was never a sane functional human being, and when I need comfort reading there are two options to choose from. The first option is The Count of Monte Cristo or Green Field or choice fanfic, and this is the option that pulls yourself back up and out of your head just by being stories that are and not are about, which all the best stories are. (What the hell was that sentence.) The second option is Salinger, because I can say whatever I want about Salinger, at some point in time I have said (thought, written) what he says, never mind if that was when I was fourteen, thirteen, sixteen, drowning in angst.

F and Z is Salinger at his best because it had the guts to climb out of the existential angst, no easy answers, but it is still, you know, Salinger, I should know what he has to say by now. I should know that maybe there isn't a single thing people do for a living in the world that doesn't involve compromises and networking and getting something over someone else* and who you know as opposed to what you know, but whatever, you live in this world, you pay the price for a little control, and maybe if you do it long enough you will stop affixing value to doing everything your way and only your way and just get along with dealing. You can't be Zlatan Ibrahimovic- and you know what, not even Zlatan Ibrahimovic can be Zlatan Ibrahimovic, but you're smart enough to set things up so you can live with yourself, and not have to live with what you've set up. I should know that it is just ego, ego, ego, all the time, but the point is that you can put the ego to use. I should know that not having the courage to be an absolute nobody means to not even bother, just be the best not-nobody you can, and I should know that there are no moral justifications to being misanthropic, not even being self-aware about it.

*And maybe this is why you love cons and heists so much, everything's a con but at least con artists are honest about it, but whatever, we're all sensible people here, if with one notable exception, we know what sort of crap reasoning that is.

And going bohemian and crazy is conforming just as much as everyone else, only in a different way, but sometimes it is the only way for you to sit down and get your head straight, or at any rate straighter than it had been previously. Maybe one day I'll be stable and sane and not need Salinger, but today is not that day. Tomorrow doesn't seem to be a likely candidate, either.

we'll build our walls aluminum

Okay, so I was going to do the National Book Week thing, because everyone in the world is posting quotes from textbooks, and my talking to the one person who didn't ended up spiraling into a discussion of having skulls on desks (note: if you think that having a skull on your desk will help you concentrate on your head and neck exam, YOU ARE WRONG. You will set it up and it will sit there and grin, not that it can have any other facial expressions, and you will sit there and grin and feel awesome, because you have a skull on your desk. I brought it home for the sole purpose of feeling like a Dark Ages monk right out of a woodcut; my guess is that Dark Ages monks never sat around gloating and grinning and grinning even more because the thing they were grinning at was grinning back). Anyway, I don't remember how that sentence started, the point is that I was going to do the National Book Week thing, only I wanted to do it when the closest book to touch wasn't The Count of Monte Cristo, because there's not-textbook, and there's disgustingly predictable.

So I did, and the fifth sentence on page 56 is

Dear Zooey,

I've just finished decoding a long letter that came from Mother this morning, all about you and General Eisenhower's smile and small boys in the Daily News who fall down elevator shafts and when am I going to have my phone in New York taken out and get one installed up here in the country, where I really need it.

and really, that's just about as disgustingly predictable as The Count of Monte Cristo, because if you are a sane functional human being the time for Salinger is when you are fourteen, thirteen, sixteen, whatever, NOT EIGHTEEN ALMOST NINETEEN AND THREE YEARS OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL, but I was never a sane functional human being, and when I need comfort reading there are two options to choose from. The first option is The Count of Monte Cristo or Green Field or choice fanfic, and this is the option that pulls yourself back up and out of your head just by being stories that are and not are about, which all the best stories are. (What the hell was that sentence.) The second option is Salinger, because I can say whatever I want about Salinger, at some point in time I have said (thought, written) what he says, never mind if that was when I was fourteen, thirteen, sixteen, drowning in angst.

F and Z is Salinger at his best because it had the guts to climb out of the existential angst, no easy answers, but it is still, you know, Salinger, I should know what he has to say by now. I should know that maybe there isn't a single thing people do for a living in the world that doesn't involve compromises and networking and getting something over someone else* and who you know as opposed to what you know, but whatever, you live in this world, you pay the price for a little control, and maybe if you do it long enough you will stop affixing value to doing everything your way and only your way and just get along with dealing. You can't be Zlatan Ibrahimovic- and you know what, not even Zlatan Ibrahimovic can be Zlatan Ibrahimovic, but you're smart enough to set things up so you can live with yourself, and not have to live with what you've set up. I should know that it is just ego, ego, ego, all the time, but the point is that you can put the ego to use. I should know that not having the courage to be an absolute nobody means to not even bother, just be the best not-nobody you can, and I should know that there are no moral justifications to being misanthropic, not even being self-aware about it.

*And maybe this is why you love cons and heists so much, everything's a con but at least con artists are honest about it, but whatever, we're all sensible people here, if with one notable exception, we know what sort of crap reasoning that is.

And going bohemian and crazy is conforming just as much as everyone else, only in a different way, but sometimes it is the only way for you to sit down and get your head straight, or at any rate straighter than it had been previously. Maybe one day I'll be stable and sane and not need Salinger, but today is not that day. Tomorrow doesn't seem to be a likely candidate, either.