dirty.

"That no single moment is in and of of itself unendurable."

-- David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

"To endure oneself may be the hardest task in the Universe."

--Frank Herbert, Dune

We are forced to acknowledge that, although it's difficult, it's possible; so we are robbed of the license to claim it undoable, deliberating only between Abiding (Wallace's term; "hunkering down" in "the space between heartbeats") and admitting/claiming that the struggle is more than we were prepared for, and we're through trying, thankyouverymuch, that's all, folks.

The surprise should never be that some people choose the latter; it should be that anyone chooses the former.

After approx. 4 months behind the pages, I finished Infinite Jest this afternoon, and now, I confess, I'm not sure what to do with myself. The thousand-plus-page book became less a book than a state of being; a long-term relationship with a view of the world that simultaneously thrilled and terrified me. Now that I've turned the last page, is that relationship over? Do I simply assess who I now am as a person, and move on from here? I feel like I've been fundamentally changed - like I am not occupying the same space I did four months ago. Am I the only one who has noticed?

The copy of Infinite Jest I finished belongs to the same person to whom I recently lent my copy of Dune. I don't have the faintest idea when I'll see this person again. This lack of knowing nibbles away a little piece of me, every minute I'm too slow to stop myself from remembering it.

You shouldn't hate something you don't know. You can't truly hate something you've never even had the guts to love.

It seems lately every time I open my mouth, pick up a pen, or touch a keyboard to write anything that doesn't include variable declarations, I am assailed by these same swords of guilt, of shame; don't air your dirty laundry in public, they've always said. As someone who thinks of their writing as readable, I think of my laundry as "well-worn," "artfully rended," "faded, in a trendy manner" rather than "dirty" per se. That's wrong, though. It's all just as dirty as the next guy's last day's leavings. I just don't see any reason not to throw it on this world's great towering laundry heap, the Concavity of our collective pain, great fans of prose blowing the stinking feelings northward, towards a captive audience that will maybe one day put a stop to it, once and for all.