Quote of the Day: Into each life some rain must fall.
Poem of the Day: Apologia por Vita Sua by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The poet in his lone yet genial hour
Gives to his eyes a magnifying power :
Or rather he emancipates his eyes
From the black shapeless accidents of size--
In unctuous cones of kindling coal,
Or smoke upwreathing from the pipe's trim bole,
His gifted ken can see
Phantoms of sublimity.

I feel like a failure. I keep thinking that I'm more or less over the divorce, save some residual anger and frustration, but an evening with six college friends who all have houses and marriages and babies, and all I can think about is how I have a failed marriage, failed finances, and a completely unimpressive job. It did get me to the gym for a couple of frustration- and self-loathing-fueled workouts, though the irony is of course that I want nothing to do with a woman to whom I appeal because of physical attractiveness. I guess it's more that I try. Hell, I don't shave, I cut my own hair, and I buy my clothes on the clearance rack, so I don't really think I can be categorized as superficial. That doesn't really matter to me anyway. What I really want is to know who I am. I used to be Kelly's husband. That was my identity. I know now what it means to really put yourself out there, so to speak. I based my existence on putting her first, and she disappears. It's not so simple as a feeling of rejection, or even of failure. It's a complete obliteration of the universe. Not an obliteration of existence, but of the world itself. It's like closing your eyes and opening them and finding yourself in a world you've never seen before, with totally new laws of physics and survival. Or like renting a video game and not getting the instruction manual. And not a simple video game, either. A real-time strategic war simulation, where the only way to learn is to jump in and play and start clicking on buttons, while you get attacked from all sides by enemy forces, all of whom know the rules, so your only option is to sit there and get pounded and hope to pick something up here and there. That's what it's like.

I have $600. At least after I get done paying my entire checking account to fix my car I will. That's it. I think that was how much Will Smith had in The Pursuit of Happyness before he ended up homeless. I'll get paid Thursday night, but for now, I have $600. If my car breaks again I can either afford to go to school or to fix my car. Meanwhile, my mother, who rolled about $30,000 of my student loans (that I didn't know I had) into revolving credit, says that she will use her bonus at work to remodel her backyard. Which she already remodeled. Instead of paying down her delinquent debt. Or, failing that, paying down the portion of my credit debt that she still pays because she made such a mess of it that I can't make all the payments on my own. I think I need to be reminded that there are worse things than being poor. And, for that matter, that I'm not poor. But it would be nice not to be tethered to debt.

O Melville Where Art Thou

I think I'm moving to Austin.

Now what to do about my job?

Ha! That's a totally (well, okay, not totally) new train of thought. Ha!

I'm also going to begin reading Moby Dick in a few minutes. I'm terribly excited. And I love that I'm a big enough nerd to be excited about reading Melville. A person who gets excited about reading Melville has no business living in New Braunfels, Texas. I should be living in a city where people know who F. Scott Fitzgerald is and the streets are paved with books. Or at least the Fitzgerald thing. And I'm still going to buy the three bottles of liquor. *crosses fingers* But it'll have to wait until after payday, because apparently blowing a head gasket is a little on the expensive side.

Quote of the Day: First God created idiots. That was for practice. Then he created school boards.
Poem of the Day: A Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?