Weird Stuff

Today was my 50th birthday. In the morning, when my Mom asked me: "how does it feel to be 50?" I said: "you know, about a day older than it felt yesterday, when I was 49 plus 364 days."

But later I started thinking about weird stuff: like: Who Am I? What is the meaning of Life? Which Communities am I part of?

I was born in the US in 1960, so I consider myself an American of the generation born in the 50s and 60s. Who are we? What have we accomplished? There's Madonna, who is impressive but has some weird ideas about religion and that kind of stuff. There's Obama, who is turning out to be a terrible disappointment. There was Michael Jackson -- very impressive but deeply troubled. There's Oprah -- I really like Oprah -- I think she's great, even if she did support Obama (actually, so did I). And there was at least one genius -- the writer David Foster Wallace.

Here are some of his ideas:

About why he wrote a “big book” (Infinite Jest: – more than 1000 pages)

“Feminists always say that white males write an enormous book because they want to impose their phallus on the consciousness of the world – if that was going on, it was going on at a level of awareness that I don't want to access.”

Wallace talks about “A Brass Ring” – something you pursue your whole life thinking it will make you happy, and then when you get it, you realize it doesn't make you happy. For him, it was fame as a writer. What happens after you achieve your Brass Ring and realize that the chase was pointless? that the Brass Ring doesn't make you happy? That question fascinates him.

On people he finds interesting:

“For me, it's old people, people who have been through some sort of mid-life crisis, and then when they come out of it, they tend to get weird. The motivation for getting out of bed has to change.”

On having been through terrible personal difficulties involving drugs and depression:

“not more so than most of the people my age . . . . but then again, most of the people my age I know are like me.”