Twenty-one across is clearly SADDEN. What the hell could twenty-two down be? Is it Latin? Rob worked in the courthouse, I remember now. Maybe he'd know. Maybe I should save this puzzle until next Tuesday. It'll be a nice segue after we joke about Tomas.
Jeff may be right about my incentives. I am beginning to feel as though I am simply denying the future by refusing to step out of the past. I went to college without any real idea as to what I wanted to do. I figured something would work itself out. It would just click — I'd realize that there was some small, niche occupation for a person like myself that I had been ignorant of, I'd get the job, and then I'd work there for a time until whatever band I was in took off. That, or maybe I'd just stay in school even if it seems useless to dedicate one's life to writing esoteric treatises on novels or poems, to ignore the rawness of art, to end up contriving theses based on discourse in terms of sexuality or class in an era by which we are divorced by several generations. I never could stomach the idea of writing elegies for culture while ignoring the fact that I, as an academic, should be the one creating and propelling culture. Worse, I can't imagine spending my life putting words into the mouths of dead men. Then again, I haven't had much luck realizing that niche that I presumed would be there waiting for me. Even worse, I never found a band that was capable of writing music deserving of a serious record contract (I, of course, share this blame). In fact, I have learned that I am so much like every other kid who has moved to this city to make it. We're no different than the lottery junkies; we're just more self-righteous because we believe ourselves to be endowed with some type of unique, intellectual gift that will ultimately allow us to egress from the less-than-illustrious world of full-time employment. Some call us lazy, some quixotic, some delusional. Some people blame us for the end of the American Empire. Some say, correctly, that we don't value hard work, that we are so rigidly independent that we refuse to take on careers — we only take on jobs because our real ambitions are going to one day land us on the cover of Rolling Stone or People. Yes, it's all tentative. Corporations don't offer lifetime employment any longer, and we don't want it anymore. The Marxist clichés hide the fact that we could never survive in a socialist state because we pride ourselves as either artists who ought to be financed by the state or intellectuals who should be granted entry into the politburo. No, we are not Marxists because there is no such thing as post-industrial communism. It cannot exist, and we cannot imagine ourselves outside of the post-industrial paradigm. We, the so-called Creative Class, are nothing more than a byproduct of the vanity and self-absorption of the sixties, the petulant cynicism of the seventies, the greed and blind optimism of the eighties, and the corporate individualism of the nineties. We demand not only the right to be heard, but the right to have someone broadcast this message for us.
Okay, I need a break from the puzzle. I've been through the Brassai. I've read every article in the Onion. Twice. Let's see what this La Rochefoucauld fellow has to say. Maxim 391: “Fortune seems never so blind as to those on whom she has nothing to bestow.” Why the hell is Fortune personified as a woman? Honestly. Does it sound better in French? Everything does, doesn't it? It also looks more elegant, but seems contrived when English-speaking authors just kind of throw it out there. There are exceptions. “Coup de grâce” is far superior to “mercy kill,” but I personally like “savage capitalism” better than “capitalisme sauvage.” Latin is even better. Latin gives everything a kind of mystical authority. Regardless, the maxim is fitting, given the circumstances.
It's difficult to maintain the will to continue, especially since I've exhausted all of my money and betrayed my parents for the sake of a vain dream that's rooted in all of those generational attributes for which I have so much contempt. I don't even think about discovering Coprolalia any longer. Not really. I think of the bars that I will visit, that I may see something done by him. I think of the faces that blur into a mélange of colors and shapes that dissolve into moments of weak light — Monet-like — both harrowing and beautiful. These faces, these anonymous fragments of life, glow in the sallow hues of each pub's incandescent flambeaux. I am there with them: another face amidst another crowd of old white men attempting to deny the fourth dimension. I enter into the bathrooms, these rooms dedicated to the removal of waste, and study cryptograms that others regard without serious interest, that others see but don't comprehend or even remember. I feel as though I am beginning to fall in line with them, that I have lost the ability to appreciate what was once so unique and earnest. He, Coprolalia, Mordecai, has become Meal Ticket. He is just a means. Maybe he always was, even if I was at one point so adamant in my denial of this.
I don't think of how I will find him, of what happens if I do. I don't think about writing the manuscript. This is secondary — the words will just materialize on the page. I think of what happens after all of this: of life's clemency after the publication, of the dreadful future awaiting me if this never comes to pass. I can't imagine working at a coffee shop for the rest of my life. I can't imagine working in a kitchen, either. That was far worse than the coffee shop, where I was surrounded by guys who were in their thirties and forties who couldn’t accept their lot in life, yet seemed oddly accustomed to serving lattes to yuppies. The kitchen workers were more malevolent. Their only means of exhausting their resentment lay in farting on the crab bisque of a finicky customer or complaining about how worthless the husband or wife is. They would refer to different kids without names, just adjectives (“the good one” or “the independent one” or “the stupid one” or “the other one”). Most conversations revolved around television shows and the lives of celebrities. They were envious, sometimes bitter and spiteful. Those who were almost criminal in their jealousy would constantly discuss their plans once they struck it rich. And that was the most difficult to endure. That was when I felt as though I was hearing the Swan Song of the American Empire, the chorus a throng of peasant Mammonites. Yes, when they struck it rich — as if they could simply tap the earth with a pickax to unleash a geyser of riches. It is a familiar version of American Dream, the one in which becoming wealthy is accomplished by doing virtually nothing. They wanted to win the lottery. They wanted to become various types of personages (actors, singers, rock stars, rappers). They wanted to have a great idea (“A million-dollar idea”). They wanted to have a great idea! How does one have a great idea? One reads. One studies. One thinks. One does not pontificate to a room full of kitchen workers or fatten the wallet of a charlatan posing as a man of God (who would not only mock the austerity of Christ, but probably order Him crucified for assaulting several moneychangers). And yet these were considered credible paths to success. They did not read. They did not think. They did not invent. They did not write songs or lyrics or even learn to play instruments. Sometimes they didn't even make it to the store to “play their numbers.” It was this form of complacency — not entirely complacency, of course, but simply the lack of urgency, the lack of effort — coupled with their outrage over the fact that nothing good ever happens to them, that made me realize just how disgusting it is to see an adult expect to be catered to by fortune, chance, the entirety of the human race. This was the denial of reality for the sake of a potential world that exists virtually at the asymptote of probability. This was middle-age America living on minimum-wage.