The Clairvoyant Zoopraxiscope

One of the people I was having coffee with the other night, one of the two lost friends from high school, mentioned to me that I'd told him, "Whatever you do, don't go to ___________ Junior College." And then he reminded me that in fact he had gone to ____________ Junior College. The things we think we know. Or the things I thought I knew. That quality doesn't really go away, that knowingness, although life rises up continually to remind you that you know nothing, and the things you thought you knew, or held dear, are meaningless. Schooling, for instance. To have a career in the arts, your school makes no difference. All that matters is the will. I don't regard myself, at this point in my life, as "a poet who went to Columbia University." I see myself as someone who has written what he's written because he wanted to. Perhaps some of it was in reaction to my academic surroundings, but most of it wasn't. Who we are, and what we become, is ultimately traceable back to the innermost core of our selves, blah dee blah dee blah.