A professor was recently ridiculed for the creativity with which he draws up assignments. These assignments allegedly have no resemblance to the essays that are "normally" published in most of today's literary magazines. I turned this idea of mirroring published material over in my mind for probably a good three or four days. What can one gain from doing stuff that is like "all the stuff we see in the magazines." There are a lot of problems with this verbiage. Some people look at magazines with celebrities who have nice shoulder blades and say "holy jesus I wish I could look just like that!" Is there any difference when one says, "I want to write essays just like all the essay writers who write for all the magazines with all the essays in them!"
[...] No outside resources, no computers and thesauruses and no Microsoft word; I was once desirous of completing this assignment in one streaming thought, or perhaps without thought just to lay the fingers across the keyboard here and see what happens. It turned out that there were and are subjects that need be discussed, but when I saw the letter on my little list here the word “treacherous” immediately appeared in my mind. Reading over this stupid and relatively pointless introduction I wonder if it was not some devil that put it in my head to sabotage my stream of successful letters. [...]
[...] The point of Kaufmen is that he has answered my questions; or solved the riddle of how to reopen the world to all the lovers and let them finally have some fun. The problem with lovers is they get too sexy and forget how to have pure juvenile amoral fun. I think finally that this is what we are here for; amongst the culture and the multitude and all that garbage are all the bastards “messing everything and being so “irresponsible.” Responsibilities are never any fun so just forget em like my man Holden, get hammered at sixteen and hit on thirty year old women and smoke a bunch of cigarettes until you get lung cancer and some responsible bastard has to come get all lovely with ya and make sure you die in perfect comfort. [...]
[...] Let's read Poe then have a horror story contest, lets read Moby Dick then go out whale watching so that we can feel the words of the novel; association is what makes hits; art imitates life and all that jazz. Ars Longa Vita Brevis Est: art is long and life short, class shouldn't be a recital, time is running out let us at the art. Exemplar In this most callous of centuries I confronted a class desirous of celebrating eras past during which people were pure and lived for reasons generally free from self. [...]
[...] If one can not find the beauty and purpose of the satellite they and their essay will drop like a stupid bomb, it will become a bomb, it will be ridiculed; and the copier of topics and formats can be made to look very ridiculous. So, open mindedness may be the answer to all earthly contemplations regarding essays. Oblivion This may or may not be within the confines of the assignment. But the more I think on the ‘subject' of this assignment the more it feels like knowledge of overall purpose and a concise execution of tactics to reach a certain end is somehow very undesirable. [...]
[...] When the beach was mine it was just pond,' when my friends came to make cracks at me for writing it became dildo beach, it became a spot to do drugs and scare off the rest of the community. The children would have to find a new fishing hole. And I can't really say when all this tragedy began but I still can not help but to feel responsible. Sometimes I wonder a lot about like destiny and all that garbage but as my pond began to shift its nature I was forced to change with it. [...]
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