My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/9/20 "Leave Me Alone"

"I'm going to wake up now/I'm going to make my bed/I walk among the living/And talk to the dead/I remember what I learned/From the story that I read/Leave me alone/Leave me alone." Reflecting can be a paralyzing act, the work of looking backwards in hopes of finding meaning blinding you to the work of the moment or the possibilities of the future. In conversation a little ways back, I lamented that I no longer read fantasy, that I'd let my imagination atrophy, that if I'd kept that muscle active I could foresee what was coming. What's to come, the world after, the utopian vision is essential work now, or at least part of it. The fact that we have these visions available is due to the work that people were doing long before this moment seemed possible. I have to teach a book in my school that argues if you think things are bad, you're ignoring facts. But I give my students lessons that say you do not have to accept the miseries of the world. You can imagine something better. -6/9/20. "Leave Me Alone" from Indianapolis Saturday (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)