(Gentleman Jack is a good friend who has been having a rough go of his job search and general direction in life. These are his, at times, brilliant, eccentric and esoteric musings. These are The Loxley Files. Hopefully you’ll learn something – or at least have a good laugh.)
Well, you haven’t heard from old Gentleman Jack in a little while. I’ve been busy lately. Yes too busy for you. So I should probably catch you up on what’s been occupying my time, old friend.
First and foremost, I’ve been studying for the GRE. It’s pretty lame, and often infuriating. As the Princeton Review will tell you, the only thing the GRE tests is your ability to take the GRE. If you’re a guy like me – and I am – this sort of jumping through hoops usually leads to a lot of door slamming and issuing threats to no one in particular. But of course yelling at the TV won’t get me in to grad school (at least as far as I know; I should see how Harvard weights yelling at appliances). So I work on it, sometimes I make great strides, sometimes it seems I’m moving backwards. Of course being a writer of the mercurial, scotch-soaked variety, it’s quite an emotional rollercoaster, which is not good for writing. At least not in an immediate sense. One day I’ll be able to look back on this and write some lengthy tome about adversity and futility and one man’s search for love; set, naturally, in post-WWI France. It will follow young American Rick Wordsmith, the deeply flawed protagonist and veteran of the Western Front, who together with Aussie ex-pat Wallaby Ford, will drink his way from Paris to pre-Facist Barcelona, where he will meet Ana Maria, the beautiful, illegitimate daughter of a Spanish nobleman and gypsy woman. The two will fall deeply in love… and I’m not sure where it will go from there, but Wordsmith will probably end up screwed over in the love department [Ed.'s note: And Wallaby, poor sweet Wallaby, almost certainly dies of syphilis].
By the way it’s quarter to 4 in the morning. I feel that is important by way of explanation. I slept till 1 PM and naturally am not quite ready for bed yet. I didn’t want to sleep that late. I even set my alarm. I remember it going off, I was aiming for snooze. Apparently I missed. Of course with the caliber I was using it didn’t make much difference where I thit it. Just kidding, I didn’t shoot my alarm clock. I don’t have that kind of money.
Even Gandolf the Gray had bills to pay
What else has been going on? Oh, a lot of intrigue with women. Most of it happened to me without much instigation, or even interest, on my part. Just people trying to make things more interesting, I guess. Sort of like reality TV: people creating and then putting up with fake problems to try to create some kind of meaningful situation. If they want to find meaning they should go on a bender in post-WWI France. Still you can’t let that kind of thing slow you down.
What else was I going to catch you up on? I chopped some onions yesterday and my hands still smell a little. Hoping that abates. I wrote a sketch that people liked, it’s been a while since that’s happened, so I enjoyed it. There was something else I was going to talk about. Oh yeah, the conclusion. I guess what I’ve learned from all this is persistence. If you get knocked down, you have to pick yourself back up and keep on lunging headfirst at that brick wall, eventually something’s gotta give. It’s like all that copy Walt Whitman wrote for Levi’s … or the wise words spoken by a young Adam Sandler: “you don’t look for an hour and call it quits. You get your ass out there, and you find that fucking dog!” And maybe, just maybe, that’s what the GREs are really all about.*
Until Next Time,
Gentleman Jack
*[author’s note: that is not what the GREs are really all about]
