Personal tachygraphy: First Page of the Diary of Samuel Pepys (Written in Cypher). [Squidoo]
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I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me
is a miracle.
– Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman
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The casual Internet reader happening upon My Adventures with la Belle Jeune Fille might not be criticized if perplexed. Likewise, the informed reader or acquaintance of the New York Flâneur might not be criticized for being taken aback. Please permit me, therefore, to explain a few things that may facilitate reading, and mitigate abashment.
My Adventures… was begun as an online diary in the spirit of Samuel Pepys and Anaïs Nin, diarists of the Paper Age. Samuel Pepys lived during a remarkable period in English history (of which there have been many) – the 17th Century. Pepys kept his diary from 1660-9, during which the second advent of the Bubonic Plague in England, the Great Fire, which destroyed about 80 percent of the structures in London, and the Dutch War. Had the result of the last been different, Americans might be speaking Dutch. Pepys’s methods were direct inspiration: his life charmed, his record-keeping discipline impressive. Pepys encrypted his diary to protect its contents, and further semi-encrypted the naughty bits. Unlike his “inconsequential” takedown critic Robert Lowell, who misquoted and blatantly misrepresented his words, Pepys will be read as long as civilization remembers:
Pepys was a religious stroller like Charles II,
old music, with no swerving for transcendence.
“Chance without merit brought me in, only work…”
– from “Samuel Pepys”
Here’s the entry of 1 November 1665, a candid self-assessment and reflection on luck and diligence in life:
Lay very long in bed, discoursing with Mr Hill of most things of a man’s life, and how little merit doth prevail in the world, but only favour – and that for myself, chance without merit brought me in, and that diligence only keeps me so, and will, living as I do among so many lazy people, that the diligent man becomes necessary, that they cannot do anything without him.
Anaïs Nin’s 20th Century diaries chronicled her life among intellectuals, including Henry Miller, author of the humorous, sometimes erotic Tropic of Cancer (the best lines on page 6 of the 1961 Grove Press edition:
You can stuff toads, bats, lizards up your rectum. You can shit arpeggios if you like, or string a zither across your navel. I am fucking you, Tania, so that you’ll stay fucked. And if you are afraid of being fucked publicly, I will fuck you privately.);
her erotica, including the collaborative, mercenary (as is/was, we find, much literature) Delta of Venus, is considered fine if intellectual/literary.
My Adventures… thus chronicles the New York Flâneur’s life in New York, an intentional “life of the mind.” After many years away from the cultural life, I have returned to it, inasmuch as I can so afford. New York, I say, is a cerebral candy store, a cornucopia of culture and culturati. I am fortunate to have the time to document my life, sex life and diet, the interesting people I meet and the knowledge and kindnesses they share with me.
The so-called “naughty bits”: My ditton is Memento vivere (”Remember to live”). And I strongly concur with Paul Éluard, who wrote the beautiful lines, “Life is so lovable,” with which introductory poem My Adventures… commences. The naughty bits in My Adventures… are presented in Google French, primarily to confound the search engines. They are translated on mouseover, no doubt causing a few first-(and possibly last-)time American readers to double take. Commencing Walden, Thoreau said,
“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived.”
It seems absurd to me to keep a diary that omits the living part, and so I have included it, in the most accurate and direct way I can – with nonchalant humor and the occasional poetic reference.
If a healthy life is in part defined to include an active sex life, it should also include a healthy imagination. Whether the activities reported in My Adventures… have actually occurred, and whether la Jeune Fille is real – or not (although Molluscum contagiosum might be considered adequate proof) – is left to the reader’s imagination. Here, Georges Bataille’s matter-of-fact Histoire de l’oeil is an important benchmark. And this observation by poet/activist Audre Lorde is also germane:
We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way….
– from Black Women Writers at Work, 1983
In any case, I hope you’ll find the New York Flâneur’s vigor and candor stimulating. One never knows: Perhaps, when analyzed, it will be shown that this subject matter was escapist, or deflectory.
Perhaps most important, My Adventures… is meant to be a creative work and not merely a mundane documentary. Unlike a blog, it is certainly not meant to be a platform for my opinions (although I do occasionally lapse and incidentally provide), a linklist, or literal daily “journal” of a life story read in absurd, reverse chronology. You’re best to begin at Snakes & Electricity, on Friday, 8 October Ga. 4.570002010 (you can learn about Gigaanna here: http://esequiturs.com/rede/es_fr_es2.php): http://www.davidstlascaux.com/archives/7606, and read forward.
As far as my objectives: These à la Pepys: to be read 350 years from now, and I hereby send my regards to the readers of 2356. I despair that any of the creative people I know in New York will have time to read My Adventures…, preoccupied as they rightly are with their own creative efforts. And I know from the stat logs that the Internet is a transactional environment in which people search a single item, and finding it, are gone. Too bad, since My Adventures… daily points readers to cultural treasures – brilliant new music, works of art and literature directly cited by current artistes with whom I’ve talked, not to mention the creative content at Interrupting Infinity. Perhaps time may vindicate, in which spirit I say quelqu’un doit le faire, or
Someone has to do this.
– D. St.-L, New York
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Begin reading My Adventures… here.
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Oh, and one more thing: Set your browser to View / Status Bar so you don’t need to click on the French translations. The short ones will appear at the bottom of your browser window.
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