Infinite Sadness.....
Despite the horror of our last two weeks.....24-7 with Stanford kids mostly......no sleep, strange clients.....this morning dawned glorious.
It was 55 degrees Fahrenheit.....clear crystal golden sunshine......It was hard to stay focused on the drive over. We stopped at Turkey Flats for Grandpuppy to look for his deer friends. No one.
We stopped at Elephant Mountain lookout to look for his rabbit friends. No one.
At The Store it was the same clear crystal golden morning. All we had to do was unload the vans and get ready for dinner at Kim Weston's.
I had an inkling some lost souls would appear for our Lost Brunch....so I had that as back up.....
Our wild chickens were running wild all around. The new black chickens were all snuggled down in a Budweiser twelve-pack container, waiting for kitty food......while the rest of the cock-fighting reject crew gathered around the compost heap.....hoping that I would have the energy to tackle that job of chicken culinary delights.....
The phone rang......my youngest calling at an alarmingly early hour.
"Dad....I really need some advice......"
Oh, shit. Pregnant girlfriend? Call Sarah Palin. Fired from new job......need rent deposit? Suspicious welt on suspicious parts? I rallied my Dad muscles.....
"Sentanta Sports is another fifteen dollars a month.....but they show really good soccer. Do you think we should spend the money?"
Are you kidding? Setanta carries soccer, rugby AND Gaelic football.........
With a smile on my face I turned on the satellite......
MSNBC.....we will not watch CNN because of Glenn Beck and their awful slanted fucked politics....had a ticker tape....
"David Foster Wallace found hung by his wife in Claremont on Friday night......"
Aww, Jesus......
When I looked around the world for hope......and Spain has all the good food, and the Germans have the really good technology.....and the Indians have the good tech stuff that I can afford.....and everyone has better politicians than we do......
I took comfort in the fact that we had the world's best writer......David Foster Wallace.
I come from a long line of Cornell associated writers......
Nabokov was a Cornell guy....
A little later there was a bad chemical engineer who became a decent writer on the GI Bill......
Kurt Vonnegut.
A couple of years late was another crappy engineer who did well......Thomas Pynchon.
My friend Peyton was a groomsman at Thomas Pynchon's wedding....
Later came Richard Farina.....who married Mimi Baez in one of the great love stories of all time....and who died near the palm tree at The Bucket on my street, on his wife's 21st birthday, during his own book release party.......
Pauline, sister of Mimi and Joan Baez, and husband of Peyton.....Pauline and Richard wrote the greatest folk song of all time in "Pack Up Your Sorrows"
David Foster Wallace ties into all this by being born in Ithaca in 1962. His dad was Richard Farina's philosophy professor.....
David went on to clash swords with Thomas Pynchon as the greatest American writer of last century with his "Infinite Jest". The funniest essay I ever read was a travel article he wrote in "A Supposedly Fun Thing I Will Never Do Again".......and the funniest article about the porn industry ever written is in his last collection "Oblivion".
David Foster Wallace was so skilled, so smart, so connected....that I could always just pick up one of his books and be inspired within a paragraph.....
David Foster Wallace was also the premier teacher of new writers. He worked at Pomona.......and lived in the Jurassic Park hidden enclave that is the old world Claremont in LA County......Giant oaks, big lawns, sweet old buildings.
Arturo Perez Reverte? Kiss my ass. Ian McEwan......Bite me. We have David Foster Wallace.
David Foster Wallace....age 46, happily married.......lead strike-out artist on the American creative writing team, went into his closet on Friday night, strung himself up with some cheap Home Depot nylon line.......and died.
The light was still as clear, crystal and golden......Puppy's joy at fetching his soccer ball remained the same.
Steve and Nancy....and the nice new PG people came in for Brunch, not even noticing that we were closed......
It was a happy, glorious day in Cachagua......
The light that leaked out of the spectrum......the wonderfully ironic thoughts and vision that tinge all of our perspective.......had not even hit.
David Foster Wallace is dead.......
By his own hand.......
The best guy at seeing where we are, and how we handle it......decided not to handle it anymore.
It was a great day.....following for us probably the technically best day we ever had as chefs and food guys........
But David Foster Wallace is dead.......
At least two of us are going to bed in tears.......and holding each other......
Goddammit.
Pack Up Your Sorrows.....the song that Pauline wrote 40 years ago....It runs like this.....
"I wish that you could pack up your sorrows......
And give them all to me.....
You would lose them
I know how to use them....
Give them all to me........"
No use crying....
Walking by the wayside...
Naming the sorrows you've seen
Too many sad times,
Too many bad times,
And nobody knows what you mean......."
Yeah, well......I kind of did know what you meant....
When our best and brightest hangs himself in a closet.......
Infinite Sadness.....
It was 55 degrees Fahrenheit.....clear crystal golden sunshine......It was hard to stay focused on the drive over. We stopped at Turkey Flats for Grandpuppy to look for his deer friends. No one.
We stopped at Elephant Mountain lookout to look for his rabbit friends. No one.
At The Store it was the same clear crystal golden morning. All we had to do was unload the vans and get ready for dinner at Kim Weston's.
I had an inkling some lost souls would appear for our Lost Brunch....so I had that as back up.....
Our wild chickens were running wild all around. The new black chickens were all snuggled down in a Budweiser twelve-pack container, waiting for kitty food......while the rest of the cock-fighting reject crew gathered around the compost heap.....hoping that I would have the energy to tackle that job of chicken culinary delights.....
The phone rang......my youngest calling at an alarmingly early hour.
"Dad....I really need some advice......"
Oh, shit. Pregnant girlfriend? Call Sarah Palin. Fired from new job......need rent deposit? Suspicious welt on suspicious parts? I rallied my Dad muscles.....
"Sentanta Sports is another fifteen dollars a month.....but they show really good soccer. Do you think we should spend the money?"
Are you kidding? Setanta carries soccer, rugby AND Gaelic football.........
With a smile on my face I turned on the satellite......
MSNBC.....we will not watch CNN because of Glenn Beck and their awful slanted fucked politics....had a ticker tape....
"David Foster Wallace found hung by his wife in Claremont on Friday night......"
Aww, Jesus......
When I looked around the world for hope......and Spain has all the good food, and the Germans have the really good technology.....and the Indians have the good tech stuff that I can afford.....and everyone has better politicians than we do......
I took comfort in the fact that we had the world's best writer......David Foster Wallace.
I come from a long line of Cornell associated writers......
Nabokov was a Cornell guy....
A little later there was a bad chemical engineer who became a decent writer on the GI Bill......
Kurt Vonnegut.
A couple of years late was another crappy engineer who did well......Thomas Pynchon.
My friend Peyton was a groomsman at Thomas Pynchon's wedding....
Later came Richard Farina.....who married Mimi Baez in one of the great love stories of all time....and who died near the palm tree at The Bucket on my street, on his wife's 21st birthday, during his own book release party.......
Pauline, sister of Mimi and Joan Baez, and husband of Peyton.....Pauline and Richard wrote the greatest folk song of all time in "Pack Up Your Sorrows"
David Foster Wallace ties into all this by being born in Ithaca in 1962. His dad was Richard Farina's philosophy professor.....
David went on to clash swords with Thomas Pynchon as the greatest American writer of last century with his "Infinite Jest". The funniest essay I ever read was a travel article he wrote in "A Supposedly Fun Thing I Will Never Do Again".......and the funniest article about the porn industry ever written is in his last collection "Oblivion".
David Foster Wallace was so skilled, so smart, so connected....that I could always just pick up one of his books and be inspired within a paragraph.....
David Foster Wallace was also the premier teacher of new writers. He worked at Pomona.......and lived in the Jurassic Park hidden enclave that is the old world Claremont in LA County......Giant oaks, big lawns, sweet old buildings.
Arturo Perez Reverte? Kiss my ass. Ian McEwan......Bite me. We have David Foster Wallace.
David Foster Wallace....age 46, happily married.......lead strike-out artist on the American creative writing team, went into his closet on Friday night, strung himself up with some cheap Home Depot nylon line.......and died.
The light was still as clear, crystal and golden......Puppy's joy at fetching his soccer ball remained the same.
Steve and Nancy....and the nice new PG people came in for Brunch, not even noticing that we were closed......
It was a happy, glorious day in Cachagua......
The light that leaked out of the spectrum......the wonderfully ironic thoughts and vision that tinge all of our perspective.......had not even hit.
David Foster Wallace is dead.......
By his own hand.......
The best guy at seeing where we are, and how we handle it......decided not to handle it anymore.
It was a great day.....following for us probably the technically best day we ever had as chefs and food guys........
But David Foster Wallace is dead.......
At least two of us are going to bed in tears.......and holding each other......
Goddammit.
Pack Up Your Sorrows.....the song that Pauline wrote 40 years ago....It runs like this.....
"I wish that you could pack up your sorrows......
And give them all to me.....
You would lose them
I know how to use them....
Give them all to me........"
No use crying....
Walking by the wayside...
Naming the sorrows you've seen
Too many sad times,
Too many bad times,
And nobody knows what you mean......."
Yeah, well......I kind of did know what you meant....
When our best and brightest hangs himself in a closet.......
Infinite Sadness.....
posted by Txacoli at 11:46 PM
1 Comments:
fuck, I never read any of his stuff. I remember you always referring to him though and in college I had a friend that proudly rested his bong on "infinite sadness." With in a few months, I saw the spine slowly break from beginning to end and when I asked him what it was all about, he couldn't even begin to try, sober or stoned. The best book review I never heard. Sorry for your sadness, at least his writing is immortal.
C
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