The Importance of Finding A Waterloo Cafe

I've decided that today will be a day where I finally look into finding a cafe to frequent in Waterloo. The criteria for finding a cafe in Waterloo is simple, that it should provide cheaper services then Revel back home. I think that the one I am at curently, Cafe 1842, may be a good provider of this.

I don't really know why finding a cafe is important to me. I think it is part of my image as a writer, that I should hang out in cafes. I don't know if this is all writers, or just a certain kind of writer, but I feel that I am the kind of writer who should hang out in cafes. As such, there is a certain level of involvement in finding a cafe that one should frequent. I think Hemingway wrote a bit about that in "A Moveable Feast". I need to read that sometime.

The use of cafes is psychological though. I fear that it may have something to do with subliminal aspects of how a writer should act. I'm still consuming, I have bought a small hot chocolate, since my mother says that if I go into a cafe then I should buy something gull darn it. Well, I bought a hot chocolate, so that factor is taken care off. Still, is it a bad thing that I am consuming in the name that I look like a writer when I don't write enough? What is writing enough? Three pages of prose? One poem a day? I wrote a poem recently and while I'm here I'm going to type it up and send it around, see what everyone thinks. I'll probubly even manage something while I'm here. And mom, dad if your reading, don't worry. I do plan on doing stuff for English. I'm going to do a write up for Rebel Angels, and an outline for the Ginsberg essay.

Rethinking Mage Campaign (i.e. doing it in general)

I'm starting my Mage campaign and I'm starting to wonder if I should fold it know before it gets any worse. I don't know if I can fully run the game I want to run with the people I have available to me. I feel that if I were to properly do this, I would need to spend much longer thinking up what will happen in what building, what I want to use to represent what is going on and what it all means. I'm looking at running this game as a work of Art.

I can't do that with the people I'm using.

I honestly don't think that I'm on the same page with these guys. They don't act the way I think a Mage should act. Maybe I'm being to controlling, but the feel of the campaign is completely off. One of the guys is middle management and he's going to be staying middle management. I mean, what kind of sick bastard would continue to be middle management after having what amounted to a religious experience? I'm probubly going to fold in the entire idea of this campaign, wait until I can find someone who actually think the way I believe a mage should think, and then do this game. Screw middle-management types. No real supernatural being of any kind would work in middle management.

On My Growing Interest in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance

Reading Week has come to a close. By tomorrow I will be back in the arms of my Alma Matre. Things are quickly coming to a head, as I have an essay to write and a philosophy test in the near future. I've decided that I am not a philosopher, or at least that the Ancient Greeks are not my area of expertise. I find most of Plato's writing to be dull and that they carry on for more then is necessary. When I read The Republic, I get bored and loose track of the conversation and when I read the summary I disagree with various points. This will probably be the last philosophy course I take.

It's time to take my major soon. I'm not really sure what it is I should choose. I'm pretty sure that it's going to be a mix of English Literature and Religious Studies, but I've been thinking about looking into Medieval Studies. Specifically the bits right before or after the Renaissance. I don't know if I could take that more, but I think I'm more concerned with God then Man. Also, I'm getting a growing interest in the subject of the Middle Ages from all the books I'm reading. Stuff like A Confederacy of Dunces and The Rebel Angels, which deals a lot with Medieval Scholarship. I'd like to look deeply into the literature of this period, maybe even make it part of my thesis. Since I'm also interested in magic, as in the occult-hermetic practises, I'm probubly going to be looking in to see stuff about alchemy and kabbalah. Alchemy and Kabbalah are also appearing to be growing interests of mine, and I hope can learn something of them while I'm at University.

On Reading Howl for Carl Solomon

I'm reading Howl again. I'm only starting to realize what a great poem this is. I've read it so much this year I'm beginning to see what a huge poem it is. I've just finished reading it again, and it was like passing through somewhere I've been before and seeing things I didn't notice before and it's like "Oh, I don't remember you." Mind you, Howl is generally about madness and a soulless materialist society that leaves no room for dreamers such as Ginsberg so it's not exactly a friendly reunion, but the sheer immensity of Ginsberg's vision is intimidating.

The subject of my essay is going to be poetic speaker in Allen Ginsberg's poetry. This is interesting because the poetic speaker is, at least on the literary level, Allen Ginsberg. This appears to be something very common with the Beats, especially Kerouac. I just realized that I told you all about this. Oh well, that's about all that's happened in my life, at least dealing with my essay.

CONTINUATION

I just realized that I have more to talk about. While reading Howl again I realized, along with how immense Howl is, how little time we spent looking at it in class. I mean, it basically a class and a half and I didn't really wholley agree with my professor's interpretation, which was that Howl was something to do with the oppression of youth. Well, it is, but that's not how I would put it. Yes, this deals with the oppression of the young by the old, but there is also the aspect of a spiritual void. I need to check if Howl was written after Ginsberg's Blake vision, because Allen Ginsberg's status as a modern prophet is something I'd like to explore.

Reading the Hump Week Time It Is

I thought I had all my homework, then my Mom reminded me I have a major English essay that I should start on. So, at somepoint I'm going to settle down and bang out an outline. I'm really hoping I can do something on the poetic speaker in the poetry of Allen Ginsberg, since the poems of Ginsberg are a) an interest of mine and b) come from a very personal place in Ginsberg so it would be interesting to examine the nature of the poetic speaker in Howl and America, which are the Ginsberg poems that I read in this class, and also before this class. If I had the chance, I'd write a comparison with poetic speaker and narrator in Kerouac and Burroughs as well. I'm thinking that personal experience is a very important factor in the works of the Beats. This is pretty odvious with Kerouac and Ginsberg, as they're work is based on their lives. This is also applicable to Burroughs, but for the most part Burroughs uses more symbolic aspects then Kerouac and Ginsberg. Burroughs also wrote about personal experiences in some things in Interzone, like the time he cut of his little finger to impress a guy but in the story it was a girl.

Other then the fact I should have completed much more work then I have at the moment, things are going pretty well. I'm sleeping int till 11, I'm hanging out at my favorite cafe and it looks like poetry nights are starting up again here sometime. Things are pretty good. I'm also working on a short story, that I have a really good feeling about. I've looked into various publishing houses and plan on sending out Godot is Dead to somewhere soon. I'm also thinking about sending out my poetry to the New Quarterly. Things are looking well.

I'm also starting to wonder if Kerouac didn't have something when he was going on about spontaneous writing. Now, I'm not going to start applying this to my novels, but I think that maybe writing stream-of-conciousness poetry may be something to try out. I'll look into applying stream of conciousness poetry in my work and show you the results. As a beginning writer I should be experimenting with as many methods as possible.

Naos is a Jewitch!

You find the craziest things on Wikipedia. For instance, while fiddling around there I found out about jewitchery. It's Neo-paganism...for Jews! I know I havn't told you this, but I just want to say I love Jews. I love their religion, I love the sound of Hebrew, I love the fact that a Jew is similtaniously is a religious practise and an ethnicity which as a Mennonite I can relate too. If I had the balls, I'd become a Jews. Unfortunatly, I have tasted the sweet, sweet taste of bacon and I do not think I can give that up. But still, I have decided that Naos is going to be Jewish, hence the last name Ben-David.

Off course, Naos is not a conventional Jews. For one thing, he is also heavily tattooed so he can't be buried in a Jewish cemetary. Also, for awhile I decided that his mother was not a practising Jew, but a sort of neopagan. However, with the discovery of Jewitchery, I can reconcile Naos' Jewish identity with his pagan upbringing. Thank you Wikipedia for your help.

English Mid-Term

I'm tired. I want to go home. I want to sleep in a descent bed and not think about University for a week. It turns out I won't have to worry about it for a weekend however, and even then I still have to read the Republic. But the Republic is nothing I worry about, it's my English mid-term. I'm holding on to the end of the perverbial stick and all I want to do is to go to sleep for a few hours without the damn Ipod going of at 7:50 every day.

So in other news, I'm back to Aspie Diaries. I like that name better then Notes from the Bunker. This blog is going to be Aspie Diaries for years and years. When I have written the first four novels, then this will still be The Aspie Diaries.

And that's basically it. Aspie Diaries again, and tired and want to go home.

600!

Well, it's finally here. Post 600. It's been little over four years since I started this blog and my how far I've come. Here I am in University, a published short story that has meet with high praise (though only through people I know), and already I have a small circle of friends. Yep, things are looking good for Dylan.
Other then that, things are getting pretty heated. I have two tests this week, one in Religious Studies and one in English. The date of a Religious Studies test is as of yet unanoced because that's how my current RS teacher roles, but I'm pretty sure that today is the next test. After that I have a free week which will be spent mostly with reading Plato's "The Republic," which will be followed by a test on Tuesday about what we learned. I'm hoping to do much better on this test then the last Philosophy test I took. I got a 9.5 out of 21 on that one. Not pretty good, but I've been screwing around and winter isn't my good season. Mind you, I could just have been screwing around and overplaying this whole winter thing.
Other then that things are looking good. I have alot of confidence in the next tests. I'm feeling much more confident now that I've got a note taker in most classes. I have yet to get that done in Religious Studies mind you, but I think we're really close on that. Besides, Philosophy is the one I'm really worried about. It looks to be my hardest class this term, mostly because I'm not as interested in it as say Religions of the East, or 20th century English Literature 1945-present. I'm glad that I took the Philosophy and Religions of the East course mind you, because at the moment I'm seeing a few comparisons between Buddhism and Plato's The Republics, especially Plato's Metaphor of the Cave. I don't know if I'll take any more philosophy classes after this. Maybe the one on Existentalism and the one on Philosophy in literature, but other then that I'm going to stick with good old Religious Studies and Literature.

And to finish, please note the completely legitimate waking hour of 7:16 PM.

2, or Night Blogging Shouldn't Become to Much of A Problem

Sorry about the lack of postage recently, but I've been lazy. Anonymous, I read your comment and was touched. I hope your protests against the Chrurch of Scientology are going well.

Well, Thursdays as always are busy for me. Religious Studies, Philosophy, WoD and Social Activism. I'm really starting to loose interest in the WoD game. Mages are really annoying when you arn't playing one or another supernatural creature, especially when your character is your standard garden variety occultists, in which case they think your really pathetic. I wish we could go up against something like vampires, or werewolves for a change.

Also, I'm starting to think Hunter is my least favorite version of WoD rules. There's just something about being on the bottom end of the supernatural pecking order that dosn't help my enjoyment of fantasy. For awhile I've been thinking about setting up a Mage game, just because I've seen how the other people in my RPG group play Mage, and it just seems so, I don't know, not how I would do Mage. I think there is really room for really cool and weird stuff in Mage: The Awakening, like turn it into an Alejandro Jodorowsky movie. The thing is, I'm probubly going to be the only person that would get all the weird stuff. Consider the following...

NPC1: Welcome to the Consilium.

PC: Why is there a camel?

NPC1: Pardon?

PC: A camel, you have a camel beside reception.

NPC1: Yes. Yes, we do.

PC: Why is there a camel?

NPC1: (blank stare) Why shouldn't there be a camel? Are you feeling alright?

NPC2: It's alright, they've just awakened. They don't realize the Universe basically runs on symbolism.
NPC1: Oh, God. That's right. Takes me back to when I thought seeing a naked woman with a snake in each hand was impressive. My, how far we've
come.

So, yeah that would basically be my Mage campaign. Mind you, I'd work in a whole bunch of stuff about the Eternal Battle in the Supernal Realm and fighting the Seers of the Throne and stuff like that, but I'd do it in as esoteric a way as possible, because something in Mage: The Awakening tells me that that is the way Mage is supposed to be played.

In the University Department, I have a week to finish an essay on Arranged Marriage among Hindus in Canada. I've done little in the way of research, but I do have two sources, one of which is what appears to be a book bent on describing South-Asian Arranged Marriage in as complete a detail as humanly possible. I'm hoping my Mom and I can look over this tomorrow when I go home. By then I should have a thesis and the first paragraph done. It would also be nice if I could get the final paragraph done so I have some idea of where it will be going.

One of these days I also plan on sitting down and watching "El Topo" again. I can't remember when was the last time I saw it exactly, but I figure I should watch it again sometime. Probubly over Reading Week. It would be a personal thing, as this movie only really appeals to me. My sister Delila has some strange bias against Surrealism for some reason, she prefers Futurism which I find boring, mechanical and full of Facists. Surrealism has the potential to be more fun, even if Andre Breton was a bit of a dick.