HOWL!

I read the Franny half of Franny and Zooey this morning. Nothing like J.D. Salinger when you're trapped in bed and need something good to read--so I picked it up. For the first time. I seem to pick up literary soul mates a dime a dozen--characters with whom I relate, decently, if not entirely--but Franny is one of them.

You wanna know what's on my mind? Read Franny. Cause she's got it; you know, it. That essence of something that's been on my frustrated, melancholy mind for the past two weeks (and maybe more). Eating away at me. Causing lament. Tears. Read it. Do it. You will see.

The descriptors of collegiates:

"The rest were standing around in hatless, smokey little groups of twos and threes and fours...talking in voices that, almost without exception, sounded collegiately dogmatic, as though each young man, in his strident,conversational turn, was clearing up, once and for all, some highly controversial issue, one that the outside, non-matriculating world had been bungling, provocatively or not, for centuries."

"A section man's a person that takes over a class when the professor isn't there or is busy having a nervous breakdown or is at the dentist or something. He's usually a graduate student or something. Anyway, if it's a course in Russian Literature, say, he comes in, in his little button-down-collar shirt and striped tie, and starts knocking Turgenev for about half an hour. Then, when he's finished, when he's completely ruined Turgenev for you, he starts talking about Stendhal or somebody he wrote his thesis for his M.A. on. Where I go, the English Department has about ten little section men running around ruining things for people, and they're all so brilliant they can hardly open their mouths--pardon the contradiction. I mean, if you get into an argument with them, all they do is get this terribly benign expression..."

"I know this much, is all," Franny said. "If you're a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean you're supposed to leave something beautiful after you get off the page and everything. The ones you're talking about don't leave a single, solitary thing beautiful. All that maybe the slightly better ones do is sort of get inside your head and leave something there, but just because they do, just because they know how to leave something, it doesn't have to be a poem, for heaven's sake. It may just be some kind of terribly fascinating, syntaxy droppings--excuse the expression. Like Manlius and Esposito and all those poor men."
Lane took time to light a cigarette for himself before he said anything. Then: "I thought you liked Manlius. As a matter of fact, about a month ago, if I remember correctly, you said he was darling, and that you--"
"I do like him. I'm just sick of liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect."

"...just so tiny and meaningless and--sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much as everybody else, only in a different way."

"I'm just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else's. I'm sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It's disgusting--it is, it is. I don't care what anybody says."

And here's why the Salinger means something to me:

I'm so sick of bats. I'm sick of *fwack* smacking *fwack* people around with my words in order to *fwack* prove something. I'm sick of that context! I'm sick of opening my mouth to defend myself, justify myself, run down some godless resume of 'why you should be my friend, or stop to consider anything I say,' before I can say anything. I'm sick of having to run others down in order to be able to run at all. I'm sick of proving. I'm sick of labels. I'm sick of classifications. I'm sick of nearly everything and I just want GOD.

I guess that's why I relate well to Franny. She passes out from all of these things pressing in on her and her desire to 'see God.' She wakes up and tries again.

And though I don't think you'll find me in a bathroom stall chanting the words "Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me," and thinking that in and of their repetition, I will be able to see God--I know that it's more than that--I AM sick of everything else and I just want to see God. I resound with that.

And it shouldn't be this way, you know? I don't want to chase people down. I don't want to judge. I don't want to typecast or pigeonhole. I'm sick of showing off for attention, I'm sick of name dropping, so I've STOPPED PLAYING when I think about it. I've made a conscious effort to just STOP.

But when you stop playing that game, when you stop it, (whatever this whole game of Survivor-laden battle-field Earth is) other people still play it on YOU. Defense mechanisms state that you flinch back with your bat again... BUT NO!!!!

I just want to be SEEN. I want to be sought out, and I don't want to have to hand out fliers to pump up my attributes and sell myself in order to garnish attention. I want someone to have a genuine interest in me as I do in them, and that will be enough. No more: "Do you like the same music as I do? If you do, you're cool." No more: "Have you read the same books as I have? Cause if you haven't, you're inferior." God knows I have no problem conversing or sharing--but uniting VALUE and WORTH and PLACEMENT and RANK to these things? Bull(youfinishitout).

It's so easy to play the game. It's SO easy to play the game. I have been and am guilty as anyone you please.

But there IS NO GAME. It's all crap. It's all nothingness. Sounding brass, clanging symbols. Filthy rags. An endless striving after the wind.

And it's nice to compare and share interests and figure out how well you fit with someone else--it's fine to be close to others or to feel understood--but in the heinous, haughty, arrogant way we can play it out?! At what cost are we deciding our in-crowd?!

And I'm not just railing on some sect: Not just jocks or freaks or geeks or the churchy-churched or richie riched or elitists or future farmers of america--I mean EVERYBODY who proports to state who's in and who's out.

I want to love people the way Christ loves other people, no strings attached.

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.