Soft Liquid Joy

Next time i try to read Ulysses, i need to remember to keep a pencil and highlighter handy so as to take copious notes. i think thats where i went wrong, where i screwed up this post-college independence thing. I quit taking notes all the time and thus stopped thinking as much about books, about movies, about life. Thinking too much about what is noteworthy rather than just taking the damn notes. Don't stop but to clarify the vision in your mind's eye (or something to that effect, thanks Jack).
All this will happen when i magically get my shit together. As if "getting my shit together" is like getting a cheeseburger or wall-shelves or a raise. I'm starting to understand, or face up to the fact that i will never be one of those people who has their shit together, (at least not my perception of those people). i will never know what i'm doing, never know where everything goes and what to do with it or whom. I envision myself all slick and adult with a leather bag and lots of writing utensils (in this fantasy, i'm also tall, thin, and look completely different. oh, and feel comfortable enough to wear girly things without puking) and the leisure to waltz into a coffee shop and sit for hours reading some supersmart author and writing notes in the margins. Learning all sorts of things about writing style, writing movements and symbolism on my own because my education prepared me to do so. This magical, fantasy leisure time comes from having a magical, fantasy writing job where i have the freedom to write from anywhere and the knowledge and experience to use all those things i learn in my supersmart books by Joyce and Pynchon and hell, throw in some Spencer for nostalgia.
Maybe part of growing up is understanding that you will never be the fantasy, and being ok with that. I won't ever write like those guys. I will never be as calculating as Pynchon, as flowing as Joyce or as metaphoric as Spencer. I am ok with that. It's incongruous with my CAHSmic fantasy of myself, but i can't write like that.
I'll probably never own a slick leather bag like for scholars either. Not because i'm cheap, cuz yeah, i am, but because i like military bags and bags from gama-go and bags with other stuff on them more than i like those scholar-bags.
Nor will i ever magically get the confidence to wear girlier clothes. I'll always feel like it needs balancing, like yin/yang or something. I'll always feel like it's over-the-top, whatever it is.
In fact, that woman in the coffee shop reading Joyce is so deeply un-me that once i get down to it, i really don't want to be her much. She's way more mature than i want to be. She'd never fill a room with playpen balls for the hell of it. She'd accept her adulthood as a given, not rage against the dying of the light as i do (though she'd get the reference and lecture me about how it's about DEATH not growing up, to which i'd repond "so?" and go back to playing Fable). Maybe my fantasy is more about the feeling of comfort and accomplishment she has. The feeling of knowledge as a tangible thing, not a vague remembrance as it is now. Her ability to use her education, rather than allow it to get moldy under the desk. The magical job, the togetherness, the height, those are all extras. I guess i need to start trying to see me now in that coffee shop fantasy future.
Eww, sorry, i think this got really cheesy and now i'm talking such fuzzy topics as self-confidence. I promise, this started as a rant about active reading... i think... Eww, yeah, fuck this.

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