Dans Paris

Eh, Bien. Let’s start this experiment and see where it takes me.

            Katie Wilson

What does she mean to me? Well, she’s the first girl I ever really had feelings for. American. Apple Pie, electric smile, and all. This is at 8AM with no amount of sleep so bear with me. Perhaps I should be a little bit more courteous and professional when critiquing my false loves but...I don’t believe I respect them enough for that.

            I met Katie Wilson the first day I ever went to private school. She’s from F¾¾, a rural part of where I’m from. She symbolizes Coca Cola bottles made of glass sold on shelves in little country shops that smell like Pine Sol and…oh what is that smell, super balls? Well, I’ll probably remember afterwards. Like pig carcasses? Closer but not there. Anyways, she used to have an angelic face(supposedly) and really brown hair. I mean hit a tree with a brick brown. God it was so goddamn Auburn you could…well lose yourself in it.

            Actually I remember it now, I used to pull hairs out of her hair when I sat behind her because I was hypnotized by how long and brown it was. Then again I was…seven? Well yeah I guess so. Anyways, I gave her one of my mothers necklaces a week after knowing her. She just kinda up and stole it from me. I left it in one of those fake mailboxes they have in elementary schools for Flat Stanley projects and such. It was a bulgy package in a standard envelope. It looked ridiculous. I remember the anticipation when she opened it and the look of the teachers when she did.

            And this I specifically remember. People started to ask…Who sent this? Who’s it from? And of course in normal first grade fashion they went around interrogating everyone. In my infinite wisdom and sense of dramatics I proudly declared…Me. I sent it. And (hopefully) I gave her a look that could kill stone. Whatever that means. French.

            She comes up every now and then, every time I try and every time I win (shut up Johnny Cash, see? Men always have to interfere with the women I know, its awful). But then again she was something. Her face and her hair still haunt me today sometimes. I see her downtown. Of course I move on. I would never think of approaching her. Though I should. Hey, I’m not perfect. I sound like a teenage girl. Yep, I knew this was a bad idea. Hopefully they will get better. There are a lot more (I hope) but this one is important so of course she’s the one I’ll screw up.

            Well Katie Wilson, there you go. That’s what you are to me, a ghost, a happy one but a ghost nonetheless. I remember you for your freckles with wild abandon on your face and your way too auburn hair. Chestnut more like it. Damn it! Melted down Hot Wheels? I really can’t figure out what those stores smell like! Well, here she is, restored to her semi-former glory. An old ship on old docks sitting in a wharf off of the Thames. Old Timbers. Yet, they are a part of me. That’s one.

What is this? A duck hunt?

The Great American Novel

Let's start this with getting one thing right. This single assortment of phrases and paragraphs is the single most important contribution to American Literature in the 20th Century. You don't have to completely agree with that statement just understand the impetus behind it.

Why don't we go through it all and I can show you why it's so important and why it will dictate the form in which this journal will be headed.

The Great Gatsby

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. An amazing start, talking about the vulnerability of youth and its incredible power in shaping who we will later become.

“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

The essence of this story, words from my Father. Note that this is the first and only reference to his parents and that it is a male relationship rather than one with his mother.

He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. Incredibly important dealing with the issues of emotion and weakness as perceived in relationships between men in America. Has to deal with the fact that many of us yearn for a deeper emotional connection with our fathers yet glean so little from them. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. States of mind, patterns of behavior, Nick Carraway is dealing with operating at a perceived higher emotional plain and how he has to wrestle with that inequality when dealing with most people. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. There we go, once more unto the breach, this is the penultimate statement of the most importance, stating that those of us who display non-normal characteristics are singled out as trustworthy or somehow better than most others. Most of the confidences were unsought — frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. There it is, the key to this whole discourse. The entire way you express yourself when taking other people into confidence is wrong and subjugated by your own beliefs and biases. People suppress themselves because they must operate under the idea that they still have a level of control no matter what. That is plain wrong and self-destructive. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth. That is why it is of so much worth, the fundamental decencies and the understanding of humanity and the way we treat others is wildly prevalent in others and sadly lacking in others. A simple sad fact about humanity.

The Presidents of the United States of America

I heard recently that if you want to run for President you should try writing your memoirs, and if you can't get past 200 pages you shouldn't run. I thought that was an intriguing thought, not in the vein of political aspirations just in the context and the breadth of what it truly means to be experienced in the ways of the world and inspire others. This is an account of my opinions, beliefs, and personal experiences on the subject of the greatest living form: Women.