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Monday, January 28, 2008

A Return?

So I was really having trouble there for a while justifying why I was taking up your time and mine on what really seemed like, at the heart of it, a bunch of crap. Yes, this summer I got all post-ey because I literally had nothing to do for a month, and played Sims and surfed the internets for entire days, and in the course of all that digging around, sometimes stumbled across interesting things.
But that was really sort of pathetic, in a way, because it involved me not really thinking a whole lot except for "Man, that's neat" and going to my blog and typing up a little hyperlink so I could share it--almost as though stumbling across something is somehow in the same ballpark as creating something. And then school started, and I didn't have time anymore to convince myself it was not meaningless (that's litotes, not a double negative, by the way) because that takes time that I didn't have anymore to spend like that.
It's like what we're doing in AmLit right now: When real, important things (the Civil War) happened, nobody really gave a damn about all those writers (the Romantics) who were busy all having feelings and trying to intuit the essential nature of things. (For a great example of this, watch the first half of Gone with the Wind and compare the barbecue scene at Twin Oaks with the burned-out shell of Twin Oaks an hour or so later.) So when school started, there was like a micro-Realism/Naturalism movement going on at my house, except without the acres of dead bodies like in GWTW.
Anyways, I think I can deal with not "contributing to the blogosphere" or anything high-falootin' like that, but I also think I need to stop pretending that everything in my life needs to be authentic and original all the time. Sometimes recycling is OK.

6 comments:

Brannon said...

Nobody else uses an RSS feed reader. So I'm the only one who knows you posted. I never blogs anymore. Consider yourself special.

Brannon said...

I never post to the blogs - I should say. jeez this is tiring.

Erin said...

I thought I'd sort of sneak up on everyone.

k said...

Hey, you hatin' the Romantics? 'Cause I like the Romantics, except for Byron... dweeby little depressed elitist.

Erin said...

Fun stuff, and I have a soft spot for their rampant idealism, but it's hard not to read what comes next and agree that it was a pretty dumb idea that doesn't really match up with the way the world actually works.

Erin said...

I find it increasingly harder to be optimistic about the world since the 2000 election. (Then again, I'm approaching the end of my 20s, so that could have something to do with it, too.)