Dawn to Decadence

I'm at this internet cafe, it's midnight, Saturday night. I walked here through throngs of party people, clubbers and bargoers and what not. Young people out in force tonight. A hot night, too. There was a little stand down on Pike street giving out promotional ice cream, of all things, for some web site. A good idea, I suppose. They picked a good night.

I had a topic for an essay that I was considering, but I meant to bring my Marcus Aurelius book of quotations - I was going to use that but forgot it. Some profound thing, I can't recall, but it sounded good. The kind of quote you see at the beginning of the chapter of a novel as a prelude the author uses to try to make what they are proceeding to say seem more profound. A useful tool, granted.

I remember I was fond of putting nice quotations at the beginning of research papers I wrote in high school and college. I recall I took one from Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Civilization (or whatever it is), for a report I did for my "Business and Professional Writing" class at Montgomery College. I remember the prof. well - John Matthews. He was a Yalie, I recall him saying. An extremely smart guy. He looked kind of like Greg Popovich.

Anyway, it was my end of term paper: it had to have a table of contents, an abstract, and had to be organized methodically. I was very proud of that paper, worked many hours on it - "White Nationalism in America: Ideology and Practice".

Yes. I still have it. My mom not long ago sent me a pile of my writings that were sitting in folders in my room. I was excited to get them - it brought back memories, as I can often remember the time period when I wrote each piece, what I was thinking, doing, etc. What was going on. Each piece is a piece of my life, fits into its own context. Indeed, one would be surprised how mood and feeling can affect how and what one writes. Even with dry, scientific-type writing, your mood is of great consequence. Because the words are inchoate until the very moment before they come out, what results is a consequence of the subtleties of the mind. And in turn, the mind depends on the mood, which depends on one's environment, etc., etc. That may seem obvious, but, for example, I am always surprised how many ways there are to say something, even a simple statement - a great many permutations and combinations.

Not that it's an unruly framework of - oh my god now i'm just writing rubbish, the barista girl who works here just walked by fiddling with the chairs and turning off the computers - she is an absolute doll (if she only knew what I was writing right now!) he he he. Yes, an absolute doll. She must know that she has interrupted my delicate prose!

But alas, this is precisely what i am talking about - the vicissitudes of the immediate environment have altered, indelibly, what I have typed on this page! That is great irony. I love it. Although in this case, it was an 180-degree shift to the non-sequitor - the sweet thing with her feminine powers hitting me as a wave...lord, god, oh yes, here we go...Jim Morrison is on the radio and he says, "She's a twentieth-century fox." Accurate, indeed, except for it being the 21st century...

- d.g.w. 7/12/07