Death Cannot Be Outstripped ... and Other Good News!

I. Death Cannot Be Outstripped ...

Yesterday marked the first First Day of Classes of which we haven't been a part. It's official: academia has moved on without us. Worse yet, the constituents of the incoming Class of 2012 were born in 1990. 1990! The biggest pop hit that year was Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U" -- a Prince cover, and it still sucks. (By contrast, the biggest hit of '86 was Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus." 'Nuff said...)

I think it's safe to say that we're about to miss our undergrad days that much more. It's one thing to have left college, but quite another to confront incontrovertible evidence that the university microcosm can and will continue turning without us. During graduation, I kept telling people that it was making me think of death. This is because I am, at heart, an astoundingly morbid person who thinks about death all the time and lives in abject fear of its finality. ("Death cannot be outstripped," sez Heidegger, among other things. Like, "No one can die your death for you," and, "The World worlds, and Beings are all thrown into dwelling in the worlding World.") Morbid or not, days like Wednesday confirm the validity of that death analogy. I wish I could say that today's W&M students are just trying to survive without our guiding lights, to fill the gaping chasm left by our absence. They might look content on the outside, but their insides are sweltering catacombs of grief and existential uncertainty.

But really, they're doing pretty alright without us, I guess, maybe.

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II. ... And Other Good News!

I have a job, and it begins on 15 September. The job is at a place called the *I*n*s*t*i*t*u*t*e* *f*o*r* *t*h*e* *F*u*t*u*r*e* *o*f* *t*h*e* *B*o*o*k*. (Suck on that, Google.) It's a think tank, the mission of which involves rather nifty stuff like shifting modes of discourse, humanism, technology, post-Gutenberg life, Marshall McLuhan, interconnectivity, the work and the network, etc. Funded by boatloads of grant money. Led by a charismatic tech-guru. More details as they arrive.

I have a lease, and it begins on 1 September. The apartment is in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Now, before you get on your high horse and accuse me of really, really wanting to be black and all that, consider this: it's very inexpensive. And it has great subway access. And it's -- I jest not -- an up-and-coming gay neighborhood. My reasoning? If the GLBTQ community thinks it's a good place to live, it must be. (They're a finicky people. High standards, Double-Income-No-Kids lifestyles, etc. etc.)

Neither of these advances would have been possible without the hospitality of certain fellow Post-Williamsburg bloggers, on whose strikingly refined leather couch I spent many a pleasant night.

Wish I could give this whole thing a more cohesive structure, but that's all I've got at the moment.

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III. The Last of the Summer Reading List

Paul Auster, Man in the Dark
Donald Barthelme, Forty Stories
Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories
Rivka Galchen, Atmospheric Disturbances
Douglas Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop
Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World