Friday, March 11, 2005
I am crazy about the BBC show "Look Around You" but it's on at the worst time in the world: 10:40 on Thursday night. I really did try to stay up for it yesterday but fell dead asleep on the couch. I woke up at 1 am, which is right in the middle of the unfocused worry portion of my night. Usually I am up at about 3 having unfocused worries in a semiconscious state. But last night I had to get up from the couch, clear my dinner dishes, set up the coffemaker, go up three flights of stairs, and get ready for bed, all while in this state of unfocused worry. Everything I did seemed to have horrible consequences I could not begin to comprehend. Then I couldn't get to sleep so I played computer solitaire on N's old iPaq. Which was the exact worst thing to do, as it allowed my mind to race freely. I spent a little time working on the graduation address I will someday deliver to the students of my old high school, wherein I will share all the carefully worked-out theories that enabled me to get the hell out of Toledo. I was working through the definition of "adulthood" ("There's no principal of adults!") when my rational mind told me it was time to read a fucking book. I am reading "Low Life" by Luc Sante, which is more or less a rehashing of some other, older books such as Asbury's book about the gangs of New York, as well as "The Big Con," the greatest book ever written. In "Low Life" you get the feeling the writer is working a lot with secondary sources and simply presenting all the facts out of those sources. It's actually a lot like an article out of "Murder Can Be Fun." One of his other books is called "The Factory of Facts" and the phrase rings in my head as I read this book. It's fact after fact. I know the facts all came from places but I don't know whether I trust those places -- there are a few fun asides presented as fact that I believe are urban myth. But a book like this does fill the mind wonderfully.
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