saint-louise's Diaryland Diary
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When in doubt, go back to sleep.
I was thinking this morning.
I woke up thinking about Howard Devoto, which made my head turn as it usually does when I contemplate how much I have missed in the music world because everyone got together and decided to be interesting before I was born.
A moodiness that was sickeningly familiar, sulking for that kind of “coolness” that would outdo any of my peers. I was suddenly seventeen again, at 7:00 am, more than a decade later. And then I just got irritated, and turned to repeating the word “Diggle” over and over, chortling like a mad woman.
Oh, being seventeen had its perks, I admit.
Before it became a cliché (“I was Petrarchan before it was cool,” he would sneer), Dante once wrote of a lovelorn poet who was so overcome with passion for a woman that he couldn’t even be in her presence without falling to pieces. She had scorned him, and so he found his only comfort in writing words to praise her.
If you can’t have it, obsess about it. I sometimes feel that way about how my breasts looked when I was seventeen. Dante would have been so proud.
His “Divine Comedy” has sections chock full of people writhing in suffering for their sins, eating their own waste and cowering before demons in the toasty bowels of hell. This sort of thing no doubt scared the crap out of readers for years to come, inspiring them to repent for their naughty, naughty ways and give in to the healing power of the religion du jour.
At least, for a few days. Until the next buxom wench walked by with an ass that was far more inspiring. But in the meantime, they were heaven-bound for sure.
Nowadays, this appears to be accomplished not by tomes of literature available in abridged versions and Cliffs Notes, just in case you’re a Very Busy Person and you more quickly need your ass saved from hell, or from that maniacal literature teacher because she wants a ten-page paper tomorrow morning and you forgot about it until midnight the night before.
No. Nowadays we get our daily dose of the Fear of Gawd by a license plate holder that reads “Jesus es Dios!” on a car going 100+ mph that cuts you off on the freeway, taking your front bumper with it.
If I started screaming that at my Spanish-speaking cat, would she become born again?
This is how I was thinking this morning. And all of this before I even got out of bed. Which I did, eventually.
Very, very late.
11:27 a.m. - 2002-10-11
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