A Writer of Sorts

Literary Excercise #26: Anticipation [Lately]

2011-07-13T07:33:00.000-07:00

A poem I wrote not too long ago. In separate news, I'm reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, which is quite the evocative novel. Likely another poem will be in the works.

Anticipation [Lately]

“Much to cast down, much to build, much to restore” ~ Choruses from “The Rock”

There’s much to, too much living,
to do and be, and to create,
to breathe it in,
in one evening
(scent of river dusk)
is more
(and mayflies meeting)
and less,
than we’d admit.

Adulterate,
authenticate,
get it in, get it
on, get on
with it, or over.

Accentuation of our annals,
in our locales, of our times,
exactly the moment,
before after, after before,
when the judgment can be done.

But by what?
If indeed we are to follow,
our shadows in the morning,
and our footfalls in the night.

What to make of this
information and confession?
Point and counterpoint,
undulation.

The odd Anglican with
his beakish nose and
misplaced hate of Jews
already,
has surveyed the symmetry,
and unbalanced,
an underwhelming question—
the way we seem.

Yet more than these
wounds and wanderings,
more than things I say
and then forget,
is what you meant to me—
which was nothing,
and thus everything.

I didn’t give one damn
(and wished to give you
all)
that was, and is, of me,
and is yet to come.

And yet,
bottles empty,
firelight flaring,
hand near hand,
I can pretend this evening,
with all its sights and sounds,
will lead me to your heart
(whose beat I am in step with).

Loving both the thought
and the desire,
overlooking your
well-keeping and well-being
(and well-loved by those
who love you).

Even now the flames
are writhing,
bellowed outwards on
these shoreside rocks,
and ready,
for the breaking.

Musical Exercise #1: Hesitation

2011-02-16T08:04:00.000-08:00

If I ever get around to ever getting around, I'm gonna rename this song "I'm With You," which I think makes more sense, and rewrite the verses. A friend gave them to me, and no offense to the friend, but it's not my lyrical style. Anyway, enjoy--for being recorded on Audacity with a cheap $5 mic, the quality is pretty good:

http://www.myspace.com/bloodplum/music/songs/Hesitation-21535167

Btw, I don't really play slide, so that was an accomplishment.

Literary Excercise #25: Say That's a Nice Frame!

2011-02-11T11:37:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm supposed to be searching for grad school scholarships right now, so I'll keep this brief.

Do you ever notice a thing of beauty, say an image of the earth, and think about the outside limits imposed upon you without your consent? You're looking at the winter night sky--you see Orion with his bold bow and hunter's belt--but you cannot simultaneously pivot and see Canis Major at the same time. Or, you're looking at the horizon--it's dusk--and the sun is shooting off gorgeous amber and scarlet flares--you can only see X degrees, and then, my friend, you are a subject to the curvature of the earth. You can't take it all in. Pick from your own experience--the one that drives the point home for me is walking into someone's house and they have one of those, you know, nondescript but pretty pictures--you know--it has flowers or birds or butterflies in it, or maybe a stream with ducks, or an eagle soaring, or some materials that got thrown into the microwave and came out "abstract." Whatever--you say, "Say, that's a nice picture! Where'd you get that frame?"

Or do you? It doesn't really matter, there's no profound teaching point to be made. We are all of us, different, every one. But yeah, I'm curious--do you ask about the frame?

How often do we go through life looking at beauty, or thinking about questions, without asking, who frames them?

I'll give you a couple options--I suppose you can ignore them if you want. Whoever or whatever frames our beauty or questions is what we should put our faith in. Reasonable enough for you? I mean, if something frames reality, who are we to question it?

Being an artist, for the longest time, I thought that answer was me. Haha, didn't all of you? You just know not of the monochromes I can paint in, or create with Merriam-Webster's Thesaurus easel. Ha, that should be enough to disclaim me for the present.

Who do you think does? I've heard an interesting song by "Of Montreal" called Gronlandic Edit with a line that goes, "physics makes us all its bitches." Do you believe that? I mean, aside from the absurd anthropomorphism, is it sound?

It's a good question huh? I find it to be a driving force in my life, that beauty-framer, that question-framer. Or extend it--that truth-framer, that justice-framer, that framer of peace.

I'm gonna give it to you straight, from my experience, and as my uncle says, this might get a bit hairy-chested. We'll see. Two options as far as I'm concerned: faith in God or faith in man. Actually, this is a different question. Because let's say God frames the beauty, the questions, the truth, the justice, the peace. We can still choose to place our faith in man. It's short-sighted, when you think about it, but it's easy to do. Of course, one could argue that it is the other way around. But the matter revolves around a) possible sources who frame us b) who we trust as if they frame us, even if they don't.

Third option? Is there a third (some will say there are many thirds, a circle of fifths with this one). We could trust in evil--doesn't evil--hurt, death, disease, war--frame enough of our life? Okay, so I'm gonna give evil another name--Satan.

Ha, that'll put some cream in your coffee huh? A bit of a mind trip, really.

Ok--so three questions, and more variables, faith in God, Man, or Satan, and either a God-framer, or Man-framer, or a Satan-framer. Or if you prefer, a Good-framer, an Organic, Existential-Framer, or an Evil-framer. Haha, did you know I'm gonna teach your kids someday? Gosh that sounds sadistic but isn't meant as such--but I do intend to be a professor. Did you notice I'm talking about agency? One of the deficiencies with scientists who think they're philosophers these days--they don't seem to get this idea. Motion is not the same as action. Motion is just movement according to physical laws. Action involves a choice, free will, a mind to choose what the brain does.

Here's the deal--I'm really talking about metaphysics--i.e. what is real, what is not, what is reality, and who says so? These are important questions no matter what you do. Did you know people will control you by these very things? I'll give you an example from my "right-leaning" background, so you can freely call it biased and the methodology skubullah.

In Marxism, the working class will awaken to a "class consciousness" that will allow them to see the inhuman and uncreative treatment they receive from the bourgeoisie, unbeknownst to them. As the theory goes, if you're a laborer, and you're happy, but you haven't awakened to your "class consciousness," you're not happy. You're a schmuck. You're a sucker. You think you know what to feel, how to respond emotionally to situations in your life, but your defunct, your "broken"--and you need to be fixed. You're really unhappy. And you didn't know it until now. But you are.

Now while in all fairness this can occur at times in our lives--we certainly are not free from the binders and fetters that fall upon us--the point is to see whose framing the question here. Obviously the issue is vocation and what gives man his value--among a host of other assumptions--but look--I just gave you an example of a framing issue that controls nations. Or what do you call the history of the 20th century?

Alright, enough for now I imagine. What a great adventure we live! I am excited to move closer to the framer of my life, my reality, and your lives, your realities. Aren't you when it comes down to it? I've said it before, I'll say it again, living life involves a few things about living yourself, your own unique identity, and if involves some cyberthinking--some blogging and community--well let it be so.

Haha, and let me pull a Charles Olson.

"Thus thou."

Literary Excercise #24: Winter, 1997

2011-02-11T11:22:00.000-08:00

Well I suppose I should have put this piece up a while ago, but the thought hadn't crossed my mind until now. So enjoy your piece of providence on 2/11/2011 ha. Please no copying to other sites--this bad baby is my intellectual copyright.

Winter, 1997:

Laying at your bed's cleft,
listening to your tales, I remember,
they were wondrous, every one,
with fairies golden-eyed, boyish and youthful,
and the meadow nymphs, delicate, graceful,
with the scent of violet streaming past their curls.

And your father, listening through the lintel,
chuckled, for tonight
you too held a flower that he had plucked,
and set gently on your pillow.

You twirled it slowly for dramatic effect,
and I wondered what visions I could have
if I gazed with the fire of twin suns,
or if it would be too holy and I unfaithful,
but you, seeing that I was worried,
brushed my face, bringing me back to the meadow.

“All endings are happy, even better in the summer!
Just think! Mud pies! Adventures!”
And then you were off again and I grinning,
“That time of year they're special,” you stated knowingly,
“With real balm from Gilead, daddy tells me,”
and you dabbed my nose and rubbed my palms together,
indicating the spots that would cure any passing trouble:
“What fun! And what warm weather!”

But from where I sat,
there was also the frost pressing
down against your window,
and beyond that the hard-packed snow,
where I would cross the tracks at nine, every night,
(though there was no expected time for me to leave)
and tuck myself in –
for a fitful sleep, my blankets a week
too long without wash
and too soon with wear,
and the stale air and the staring shadows –
of a wearied habit.

Yet mud flakes are fun to pick at
and stack (two by two's the going rate,
except when the wind bargains one for one),
but deep down, I had my theories
and doubts: that either you or I
would ever figure out the terms
that we would come to
live or die for, rout or ruin,
but then again, there was the winter,
and our 'good' behavior.

“It's the eve of Christmas,” you gushed,
and as your toes touched mine they teased awake
the long-forgotten animus of my soul,
but when you drew them back
I searched my depths and only matter, matter.

“Isn't it incredible? Imagine! Three weeks
of no school!” And there were three,
long, arduous, like the magi's path to the planet
that emanated light, yes, and words.

You sang your first Noels
and fell in the snow,
with the perfect posture of an irresponsible angel,
and I thickened the walls of my fortress
and planned my escape routes,
with a store of weapons but no room
for holiday lore.

When it was over and I no longer
could spend my afternoons in innocence
or with you, we left for school
and you embraced my tiny frame,
but the magic had grown frigid
with the year's passing
and I stiffened,
at your touch,
and such unsubstantiated adoration.

You do not question, how can you know?
You must have forgotten, hadn't you,
the lessons of the season:
you with your makeup kit
and I with my set of weights,
Aphrodite and Achilles ™,
but without the power to lure or change our fates.
Do you not wonder what it means to be
capable and culpable?

I listened to your tales,
and I remember:
a thousand Edens now buried
beneath the graveyards of our Babels,
and over the ruins,
blossoms bursting in the midday sun:
But where is your loving father?
And the logos of Bethlehem?

Literary Exercise # 23: Beseeched

2008-07-13T22:16:00.000-07:00

He is a man in search of beauty, only he is unaware that it is real.

His soul is his body. Shriveled. Wrinkled. Dry. Worn out from too many nights of going up on the town and never coming down. His heart is a black hole--indescribable--with pain and misery as the only indicators that it is still beating. His hopes are a blustering desert--water is so precious, with so few cactus's to store a remnant. His life is industrialized, a coal-blackened factory. Only so many working hours for output. Not much in the way of input. His existence is, to put it lightly, unwarranted. A syllogism with a missing premise. An enthymeme late to the party and locked out, left to wail against the wall.

His soul is a missing body--forensics have arrived, but their equipment is twenty years in the coming. His heart is a black hole closing rapidly, a thin nimble of light, the aperture of apathy. His hopes are blustering past the just deserts of a thief neither Arab nor Jew, but guilty of stealing both identities, and cross-breeding patent secrets to beget a hybrid of his own. His life is industry, factoring quotients and hoping duplicity is able to escape unscathed, without a remainder to square again. His existence, to put it in the light, is un-able to secure a warranty, the mortgage making his wife uneasy, uncertain if the things unsaid will leave her virgin oil heir-less, effete and unwicked.

He is that in want of beauty, knowing this from negation.

His joke is crumbling, a jester-act tumbling down the narrow heights of insanity, of necessity. A jewel-crusted monstrosity, a scepter leveraged and forced taut into moments of dark hilarity. A scarcity--a lack--a moment before the moment of turning back, a cardinal difficulty in his facts...a strange tranquility.

He is a man that wishes to be left alone, but really to be left a home.

Literary Exercise # 22: An Imitation of Christ

2008-07-07T23:03:00.000-07:00

Hey all. I figured after my last tripped-up venture into psychedelia, I'd return to some semblance of normalcy and deliver a decent poem for you to read. The title is good enough (or at least engaging enough) to merit the heading of this entry, or at least I think, which is why I abandoned my usual practice of coming up with a separate catchy headline. I hope you enjoy it. It's on the second draft, which is vastly improved from the first, and I think it has enough "staying power" to label itself as the final version without seeming too arrogant.

An Imitation of Christ

It is vanity to follow the desires of the flesh, and to long after that for which you must afterward suffer grievous punishment ~ Thomas a Kempis

The drooped, brooding host of this hotel doorstep,
I am,
a dark Judas,
sentiments lingering long enough
to finger sundry cigarettes bursting ash
dandelions out of habit and to divine
a nervous tic –
this must be,
the way to discuss a betrayal.

Burns self-inflicted
and only logical
chronicle my journey under
the only five stars of New York,
meanwhile battle reports stream in
of vice and virtue
and on a whim I clutch my cloth pack
close from passersby,
wresting control at my right hand and ascending,
an ancient elevator.

Fourteen floors. Steady beeps. Slow rise
until the familial sounds of strangers greets me
unfettered and I
pass them by,
heading for stronger spirits.

Life rasps, I return again
for the sixth night after the sixth wake
of starting upright against sheets drenched
with sweat and sorrow.

I’m thirsting for I know not what,
assuming the search as surreal
and throwing the thought lightly until
gaunt and goaded by my liver’s lust
my zeal turns feral and I scour my neighbor’s wells
to see if even one of them will not run dry.

The rigors of slaying the fattened calf
have proved too much,
I take the off the cuff approach
and bring the cutting edge
within inches of my throat before
clattering pretense on the barroom floor, splashing liquor
and waiting in patience to be threshed.

Literary Exercise # 21: Have To Blog

2008-04-17T00:27:00.000-07:00

Literally, literar-il-y, every day. Jot down your thoughts for 15 minutes. Make a habit of it--what good may come!

It's a strange thing to me when I hear other writers say, you have to write every day. First, that assumes that you have something to write about, and second, that you will be able to express it. Now, while I believe in a boundless source of creativity, I do not believe we always connect with it. And though it is possible (at least in theory, at least some of the time) to connect with it, we are not always able to communicate it. So we try. And write. Every damn day. Every damn blog update. Every damn key-stroke. And what do we produce? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the human race, at this point in time, is more auto-biographical and self-reflective than at any other time in history. Sure we have more people--higher literacy rates--relatively speaking--and we have the technology--mac books and pc's (shall I say it? for those who prefer carpal tunnel to hands cramps). And we have the encouragement--feel good about yourself--post your clumsy love poems or your daily sound bites--or feel bad--about yourself or others--others usually feeling the heat of it--as if we should have no scruples in dousing them in petrol, striking, throwing a match in their direction. Add a dash of irony. It feels great. It really does.

Well, I didn't intend for this blog to be one of those daily irritations, I intended to give reasons for a shift in our thinking. So forgive me if I've been banging on the door too loudly. I'm leaving now, and you can take these arguments in at your own discretion, only, be aware that it's cruel to leave an orphan out in the cold for too long.

And a note (if you take time to read notes) on the arguments--they will be a series of thoughts, of questions really, so treat them systematically, if you prefer, or, if I may abuse a word and then repent of it, treat them existentially, as if there were no such thing as systems--or if we make them into anti-systems. If you prefer. I'll tie everything up, or attempt to (notice your prickling at a hint of arrogance), and then you'll really be able to fault me if I left a corner sticking out or if my bows look crumpled or miserable as shit (I can't seem to do it justice). But this part is really for you.

I wonder:

I wonder if it's worth writing at all if all you can write about is yourself, or how the world affects you. Or if you jumble metaphors together so you can have, in effect, a sort of verbal masturbation.

I wonder--if--if the above is the only kind of writing you do, if you really have something to say, anything of value to anybody else, anything that speaks to the human condition.

I wonder if, instead of say, 15 minutes of writing, we should spend those minutes carefully, by thinking, and only laying them down on the counter, one by one, when we're really sure we have enough change to pay for what we wanted, or rather, what the reader wanted, something that takes them outside of themselves.

I wonder why everybody feels the need to write about themselves, or the need to drive a story without plot (externally), but plot internally.

I wonder why, if everyone has all these profound thoughts on human occurrences, why they don't voice them in real life, and instead save them to these pages--to be archived in a computer system rather than a person's memory.

I wonder if we're so scared of story--so scared of a larger narrative--that we can only write from the I, can only write from our subjective experience. Or if it's just that it's easier.

And I wonder, and here, I am not being pejorative, if the vast amount of this work will never be publishable, if it's really worth the effort, for ourselves or for anyone else.

And,

Maybe:

Maybe it's because we haven't taken time to look around us--outside of our feelings of "around us," and read other authors that speak magnificently--to the lot of us, and secondly, subordinately, to themselves.

And maybe it's because we really are stories, all characters in our own novels, and there really is a driving force outside of us. But if it's only inside of us, that maybe we should consider revision.

Or maybe it's because, with the last point taken into consideration, these I's really do have a place in human experience, really do have a right to assembly, really do have a right to be taken seriously.

Or maybe it's because we have nothing left, no one to turn to but ourselves, that we lapse into unhealthy cycles--like the thinker who keeps thinking but never learns what it's like to love, or why it's important.

And,

Of Course:

Or Perhaps:

Of course, I am in this camp, and guilty of all charges leveled against me, and of course I have the same desire as everyone else to say my piece and expect some applause, or at least a silent moment of respect as I step away from the podium. And perhaps that isn't all that bad.

And of course there is room for more, room for stories that really do bring infinity to the finite, and relieve us from this natural world that tears and grinds away at us--our bodies and our souls. And of course that isn't bad. And no perhaps.

And of course, writing, no matter what the Egyptians say (and I actually can't remember what they say--was it Theuth--and the memory and wisdom of the people at stake), is a gift, and of course we should be prone to use, apt to rely on it, quick to defend its practice. And of course we would be right. Or perhaps we would be wrong.

And of course, this isn't meant as real knowledge, or at the least the kind of real that you can take home with you and reference whenever life's difficulties seem overwhelming and you need a solid stance to lean on--or practice. But perhaps it may be right. In its own way. After all, it's just 15 minutes, and I needed something to write about, something to say. Literally, literar-il-y, every day. Jot down your thoughts for 15 minutes. Make a habit of it--what good may come!

Literary Exercise # 20: The Life Without

2008-04-02T00:56:00.000-07:00

Hey all, this is a poem that I've been working on for the past couple of weeks. I read it at my school for an open-mic night, and I got a really good reception. Maybe online audiences carry the same receptivity--at least I hope. Enjoy.

Six cigarettes Between Hell and Heaven

Oh Lord, you’ve been a-calling,
I’ve been stalling, sprawled out on this freeway,
Trying to pretend a jack, spare, and elbow grease
Are all I need, to get me up and running.

You’ve been the affront of my cunning,
Cleverly-devised stunts for the allegorically-impaired,
And after staring down this dashboard for months,
I wonder why, though I fill my tank, I never get where
I’m going;

Road maps are out of the question,
In fact they beg it,
And that presupposes, epistemological fuels,
Not even our top oil-drillers can reconcile,
When they are paid, and when they blink to the situation.

And doesn't your plot provide ecosystems?
All this exhaust and rubber burnt,
Guarding against guard rails,
Makes life a tragedy by two counts: by air and by noise pollution.

I admit, that outside of this poem and the poem-maker,
I’m alone, six cigarettes left as ashen consolations
To a life, smouldering towards indecent expulsion,
No longer with five-star infrastructures and whatever message XM radio had for me today.

If that’s what you wanted, couldn’t you have signaled me?
A two-way transmission from a trucker’s radio,
Letting me know that cops lie under every bridge and it’s not always best to press on?

So sure, I'm singing out, for the first time, interrogatives,
But then others have sung their tune too, to the law,
Only to find where grace abounds, sin propounds,
And there's no prerogative to make a statement,
Unless its seductive, of the oral persuasion.

If everything is as ordered as you say,
Why doesn’t the day come and go without Dionysian-drama happening,
Daily, to update the day?

Mr. Flew, of the two alternatives: free or framed--
Story will decide that for us,
We've to select which end to retain,
Your's was a matting into cloth materials,
Method acting at its fiercest and famed,
Mine is a figure draped,
Nape over steering columns,
Expression in pitiful feign,
That hope would come again.

Stanislavsky would be quick to object,
And Auden would point to the Id,
But if theories are found falsifiable,
And answers in their remains,
In the doctrine of self-destruction,
A holding off of judgments,
Lies a liking of final solutions,
And desires for preservation.

Literary Exercise # 18: How to Build a Civilization...Or Where to Put the Nuts and Bolts When the Instructions Have Gone Bad

2008-03-07T23:13:00.000-08:00

So I'm back on this etch-a-sketch now--if you shake your computer seven times fast you might just create an enjoyable read--otherwise, I hope I can lead you along the tree villages and roped bridges of my mind without you thinking too badly of the view, or entertaining the act of jumping off. I've been thinking about civilization--partially because my school's addressing the topic at a conference--and I'm trying to get a bird's view down--flying over it, picking out the topography and the favorite tendencies of the landscape. You might say that just as mountains like to stay where they are, so do people like to establish settlements--and walk around them as if to secure the corner stones with a kick of their heel. In that sense topography is the dimpled soil that follows the stride and fancy of these man-walkers. You know, looking down from above is almost like watching someone speaking an unknown language right in front of you. Two young bronzed students sitting on lawn chairs by the edge of a small bluff--following the traces of the decline until it plunges downward and outwards of terra firma. A couple on a walk through a park mixed with cement and trees shedding their bark and meshed garbage-receptacles and benches and underpasses tagged with young ambition or ambivalent imaginations. Two humans standing 12 inches apart, where I could dive in and do four barrel rolls between them without them noticing my presence or critiquing my sophomoric movements. One human hunching around a soaked canopy, smoking a cigarette and wincing at its sting, leaning back a little too fast, feeling the natural liquids within him try to maintain their equilibrium against the introduction of another warm current.

These are all experiences that are common to man--are common to the nature that trod in his shadow and vanishes when we try to shed the light of reason upon it. They are all in nature, and if you will, we are all in nature, which we expose by stories, songs, architecture, art galleries, contemplation, exploration, takings walks, hunting (dare I say it? One nature asserted over the rest), ice fishing, four-wheeling, going to the mall, bowling, drinking, drinking games (and cards), frustration, boredom, restlessness, anger, strife, divorce, abortion, politics, policies, diplomacy, political correctness, passiveness, indifference, agnosticism, determinism, democracy, world orders, humanity, humanitarian efforts, sociology, anthropology, education. Really, the canon is only closed when we stop speaking. And speech is only stopped when we stop living--or when our thoughts are too utterly redundant and self-torturing that we have to stop them--if we are to continue existing. I will say this. I read a young writer named Brendan Case, and of his desire to explore the world by the stories it tells. And I have to plant my flag in the same soil, never imperialistically but listening--straining to hear beyond the world's conventions--how nicely they are determined by man--and to drink the distilled draughts, if to poison myself, at least to arrive at the essence.

So where can I begin? If the world didn't need politics it would be solely with story, and I can envision a world as such, where we present our ideas to each other and gape in astonishment that such a wonderful mystery would be revealed to us. And even if partially, that it would consider us in its thoughts to feel the subtext grazing against our chest--wading through it as fellow travelers, not conspirators. And here I see the utter breakdown of civilization--we have no choice but to claim to know the mystery, whether through our laws, our governments (and thus our nationalism), our knowledge, and our behavior (scratch this last point--it may not even be remotely connected--or perhaps directly). If we didn't have to know the knowledge of the universe, we wouldn't have to decide what is right. And if we didn't have to decide what is right, we wouldn't have to stand for it. And if we didn't stand for it, we could stand for whatever we wanted...but hang on, that would be for what is right.

Do you see this conundrum? Our whole existence requires us to slide down a funnel to a central opening, one that may or may not fit all preconceptions of a desirable ride or destination. Do you see that we are creatures of movement? We cannot help but be in space, and by our negation of static-ity, choose one place over another. And this leads to tension, argument, exclusion, fighting, and striving for dominance. It is something that every civilization has been fated to deal with, and that every civilization has been doomed to resolve. Our choice then--in being able to make such stories as delight the heart of man--is our damnation--to be right or to be wrong, to be included or to be left out.

Is determinism any better? Perhaps from the general drift of this essay, you would surmise that I have an opinion on that. And that may be correct, except that we have no terms of evaluation--our hosts are the scientists of skepticism--and we have to entertain them, to the last point. Thus the tragedy of human existence (oh what absolute terms!). To choose you have to suffer, and to not choose, you have to be unaware (or aware of your unawareness) of yourself and anything else.

Perhaps you find my efforts a bit feeble. Never mind that Plato and Aristotle were just men like me, men like us, men like the world. So they may have taken one of these for granted, and, it seems, so must I. Which I do not know--it is entirely possible that we live in such an advanced world that even determinism can critique itself. The "I" may critique the "I." The "what is" may question "what is." It seems though, that we have to do one or the other. Whatever the contradictions may suggest about our actions. So--the question is--if we have those who claim to know, and claim to do what is best--do we have those who claim that our bests may really not be the question? I do know...but I suspect.

Literary Exercise #17--Say Goodbye to a Bygone Era

2008-02-10T00:33:00.000-08:00

Say goodbye – I – say goodbye to a bygone era. To leave one vice behind in hopes that I won’t pick up another one ahead—in hopes that I’ll cease to pick them up at all. Cigarettes never really symbolized anything but a symbol—that I needed affirmation, exultation—wonder and excitement 10 to 15 times a day. Gone—the gates guarded by the flaming sword of an archangel, my footsteps mimicking the man-trail whose usage has become archaic. But my Eden-need has never left. It is simply wandering through arid places seeking rest—a wink and a nod to my perseverance until it chooses another form of attrition.

Yet I wonder what the great literature would have to say about this—theirs, my own—respired into my lungs – the Savage’s mustard and hot water – working things to the surface, purging me of pretense and any subtext I detected or inferred. I am more in need of this than air—the atmosphere only stimuli to further the chemical reaction—agitating cube crystals of thought that are set on a spoon and melted into prose (cause only liquid can flow along uneven surfaces and human veins).

Oh fiend! Oh friend! If you could only see me now! I am Kerouac on the road, Bilbo’s kerchiefs left at home—a set of contradictions null and imaginary—and thus very much within the reach of modern science. Oh victor! Oh assailant of the night! How tempting it is to trod your textured, luminescent path—Van Gogh’s or someone less predisposed to madness. How dark and how deep, how utterly lovely and insatiable your velvety down of ambiguity! What the scant! What the chance! What the paucity that I could pillow into your feathered symmetry. Oh I hate and wretch until I bless the earth with my belly’s provisions and leave it richer in search for solid ground. And still, I pick up the brush, stumbling toward the canvas, raking an unsteady hand across it’s surface—hues that blot other tints in their shadow—and paint myself of that same color… two dark strokes under two pallid moons, a steep ravine and a dark crevice that emits heat in dreadful blasts—hiss! and pops! and burns!

But I reject that. Not to give objectivity the upper hand. But if my words cannot be measured, sawed, and slotted into a foundation, I have no hope for my acts. Thinking clearly helps one to live clearly, and living clearly must involve one or two things about pencils and pieces of paper.

So what is at the end of my dock that occupies my thought when the wave’s lap lulls my lesser objectives to sleep? I could tell you in three’s: love, God, and purpose. What is to be done when a young lady refracts my life’s situations into fantasies of family life—socks and shirts and ripped jeans, sandboxes and vacations, fort building and doll houses, and of course, the time when we did all those things alone—with all the glee of a newly wedded couple. What is to be done with a God who claims to know if that woman is the one, or if I have yet to meet her, or if she exists at all? Can love be photoshopped into scenes and scenery, the understudy center-stage but the scenario never quite the same? Are the lines or love as meaningful when they’re delivered with the same force from two different souls? Asking questions like that prompt a change of subject. So…what is to be done with the two of them…love and God and the love-God…are they intertwined to form a two-pronged purpose or is purpose a separate, un-Trinitarian concept in itself?

I exhaust myself. I admit I don’t have much of a mind to mull these much longer. I’d much rather be drinking spiced wine that finally leaves everything in its right and proper perspective, and keeps it there till morning until I can find someone else to control the universe. Staffs are meant to be leaned on, not attached to strings in charge of planetary motion…so really, I’m like Moses who gains the Lord’s favor, only my arms aren’t strong enough to win the battle and I need a mighty fortress to restore myself. Is it bad to ask that the bulwark comes in the soft touch of a slender hand? I swear she knows a sacred spot—a reassuring hand on my side that was the entry and exit point God used to make woman from a ribcage, connect her to my flesh.

But we shall see. Jacob wrestled the same holy struggle—and was lamed! God! The angel’s hand, in the same spot that gives me such hope and elation! A warning…to my will…if it is turned to anything but the Lord's. Oh, if this could be a subject of epic poetry long-lived and long-past, for other minds to dwell and agonize over.

It seems quite personal and alarming that I would write this for you—the unattached observer to take in. Really, I don’t do this as much for you as I do for me. And it is only for me so that I can fail in description…because I don’t know any way to describe that clear, necessary, beautiful, refreshing, mystifying, and regenerative touch...in logic or in love...except to say that I can’t.

Literary Exercise #16--A Lesson in Homelessness

2007-11-27T16:46:00.000-08:00

Below is a poem I wrote for my poetry final. It's called the "Cardboard Stories of Bungalow Bill" and it follows the transitional arc of a homeless writer named Bill. He used to write in writer's circles, but became dissilusioned. Part of the inspiration for this poem is the Beatles's song, "The Continuing Stories of Bungalow Bill." I'm including a brief abstract below, as it will help in understanding the poem. There are also three Eliot references and one Yeats allusion. See if you can catch them.

==Richard A. Cooke III had gone on a tiger hunt in India when he was staying with John Lennon at a retreat. Cooke, who Lennon refers to as 'Bungalow Bill' in the song, was with a group of people watching a herd of elephants milling about. Suddenly, a tiger jumped out to attack the elephants, and 'Bill' shot it. Initially he was proud, but after he returned to the lodgings, Lennon questioned the ethicality of his act. Afterwards, 'Bill' felt remorse and gave up hunting altogether==

The Cardboard Stories of Bungalow Bill:

Bill is a story-maker, he crafts stories,
on the edifice of homeless life, his cardboard box.
He shrugs and he coughs; fidgetates his fingers –
like the neurons racing in the shade of his forehead’s shelter –
And he writes – on the underbelly.

To coax a black-tipped marker he found at rest,
he says:
“Forget the cold, unclot your arteries –
as I do mine. Last night you had no hand,
and I no bed, but today we have each other.”

And to appease himself he later mutters:

“I ain’t afraid to put name to my work,
and there’s no more a totem to be found.”

And to distract himself he tells a story:

“Marker, you had a store, I had a home.
I was young. I had a job. I had a wife.
I wrote the headlines for my state recorder.
I felt the vagrant pull of a writer’s life.
I was Prufrock pinned! Oh God!
Little marker! At a damn cocktail party!”

He paused, cradled his friend, and spoke again:

“I’m afraid I lack the skill to tell my story,
I can point to the light, but I can’t name you the star,
that shines it down, one night I heard the Beatles.
Do you like music? Forgive me for my candor,
but I’ve always been fond of music for its fervor,
in separating the grays from the black and the white.
It was the White Album – Side One – Sixth Track –
Lennon was crooning about a bungalow chap
that shared my name and shared my same disaster –
can you imagine? I was at a lack
for words, but Lennon kept his verses coming.
This ‘Bill’ shot past an elephant herd at a lonely tiger,
claiming he had an eye for the hunt and the knack,
but later gave up his guns and never went back.”

“And I, dear marker, was shocked I was a partner,
in shooting past my life at paper tigers.
And when Lennon asked poor Bill if he had sinned,
He asked of me what he had asked of him,
‘to take to the streets and be a brown-bag writer,’
where critics devoured less-than-edible authors,
picking their teeth with the bones of renegade hacks,
crumbling their remains to sprinkle as ash.”

“But marker, there’s more to be feared than Eliot’s dust.
Bad art,” he said, and vanished into the dusk.

So Bill has become a prophet without honor,
A rough beast that haunts the hovels of Bethlehem,
But if he’s slouching towards the Second Coming,
He said, “They should be glad of another death,
‘Cause materials change, but art it never did.”

Bill wouldn’t think twice of ripping it to pieces,
His box, his artifice, his lonely life,
‘Cause he says “What’s yours is yours and you freely own it.
And I’d rather give it away before they try.”

Literary Exercise #14--A Rebirth Constituted In the Lower Parts of Man

2007-11-26T23:28:00.000-08:00

"With every passing second comes a second chance..."

When I'm Jekyl-n-Hydeing these streets, its hard to imagine the damage powerful fingers will imprint upon your neck. I leave my mark on you, and your death is the hangover I just can't seem to shake...it's the antidote that only makes sense in hindsight, it's the passions buried until society or something better stirs them to the surface. It's not enough that I have to travel these ghoul-infested subways, and walk down streets with more than a second thought to whirl around and face my deepest and darkest fears--I have to live with your lifelessness, your utter refusal to buy into my deadly game...and at what costs you'll keep me from winning.

Oh Jehovah! Save me! Make me turn and take my murderous thoughts away...cause this is the path that only despair travels, and salvation is in the opposite direction.

The second measure, and the rhythm begins to pick its beat and hammer it in my ears. I can't think rationally, and I can't think right--the night sounds are too dense for concentration, I start to writhe my fingers back and forth in my pockets--hysterically, wondering about the humanity and the dark-sided laughter that sees this as a pleasant sport. If only I could pull out my ears--stop my senses from their receptivity to such evil stimuli.

Oh, would it be that this is only an aberration of a pleasant bygone world that will return with the sun...instead of illuminating the carnage wreaked and havoced on the poor souls of the night.

Please, please let it be past. Let the present fold in against itself and cancel out my actions. Let the future come and rapture me from this horrid state--let it claim me with four poles and interlocking bars and protect me from myself.

Now, see, now see this wild and wretched life--moment by moment of insanity and then a prayer for something less strenuous on my nervous system.

Oh Jehovah! Come near! Come near in a book written with holy words or a presence undefiled by static spikes of abnormalities. Pyschopathic demons await those who follow the way away from your heart, and I fear that my own is beating to a different theme and mandate.

Oh Jehovah! Abba Father! If one who was crucified screamed your name in utter anguish, let me be another that echoes his cry and ask that my cup be taken from me. True, true, you did not from him, but I am weaker, my spirit darker, my hopes dimmer on my own. My flesh is tingling, crawling from the very idea of consequential retribution. I am not my own lamb, nor do I pretend to be un-spotted and un-smeared. I am hideous, I am disfigured, I recoil first from myself before others do the same--let me not be the sacrifice, let me not be the lesson learned by others as disparaged as myself--let me be redeemed.

See, see now, that in the morning I'll forget about the whole of this. See that I will straighten my collar and press the last wrinkle out of my pants, and while I work with the requirements of the day, press the last worry from my mind. See, see now that I won't even call to you to bring such a horror back, or even think such things exist or that I'm in peril of them. See how I will turn myself from you again--from the guilt, from the unnecessary inconvenience of your pragmatically-impractical demands. See how I will go with what works, what's tried, what's true, at least with enough truth to sliver myself through my obligations and skirt around the painful festering in my heart. See how I won't believe...anymore. See how I'll turn my back, only to look back as a face in the crowd...a face with evil and anger and malice and hate and dark things creeping along the taut lines and dark shadows under my eyes. See how I'll be utterly and totally lost. See how I'll have taken that path, the boar-run of despair, without even putting up a fight. And hear my prayers:

Oh. Jehovah. I want to. I wish to.

Change.

Literary Exercise #12--The Need for Constancy

2007-09-20T00:26:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I'm writing this. In a journalistic headline, it's late and I should be asleep. I feel akin to the madness that many others have felt--Shelley in her first telling of Frankenstein and Poe is in his morbid dreams and tales. The irrationality, the experience that tells me better--I must ignore them. I have to or it will never happen. See, I have things to do, but I also have things to write. I don't want this to become a bemoanment of my inner tensions, but really, they get in the way. I know that I draw life from this, but every time I pick up a pencil, the sketch comes back to haunt me--not in show-and-tell and refrigerator magnets, nor pieces that merit a bronze or golden frame, but in horrific distortion, clown faces that become bandersnatches and forests that turn dark and brooding. But what am I to do? The reality is, I miss it, and not even hallucinations or scratches from gnarled branches can hold me back. This is, as I said, what I live for. So I can die for it as well.

Where to start? Oh, how it is to feel free, to frequent the fields of elysium and wander down its many jaunts and paths. I long for it so much I'm tempted to fall on my own sword. I cherish it so much I'm willing to stay that emotion. To be free! Pragmatically, real life and I are mutually exclusive. We've never been on talking terms and it's unlikely to start now. I am Dracula who has left his coffin and returns to the office only on weekdays. I am the prodigal son who has to learn his lesson, for better of worse. I am Lewis and Clark, and I must have my America. And I am you. When you stub your toe, and sooth your blisters with loam and crisp leaves. When you give your presentation to the janitors, and finally find a caring audience. When you run a spare on the interstate and enjoy the slowing scene. When you burn your job, tie, and hair-cut in your mid-life crisis and finally have room to breathe. I am like one hanging on the cross, bleeding your frustrations so they can be expressed in flowing crimson warmth. I fear that you never will, so I will it upon myself. What is it like to save humanity at the expense of your own soul? Can salvation come from those who have spent your life, all because you wished their's to be lives worth spending? I do not know. Semper Fi, as they say, is not to question. It is a resolute resignation. And if I have to determine myself by closing my eyes, cradle my racking sobs till they rest like a sleeping giant, and summon my throat to hold down the bile, please do not mark me with disdain. For I am your newborn child, precariously perched, and if the winds don't have their way with me, I'm afraid that you will.

Literary Exercise #10--A Writer's Life: Isolation

2007-08-12T01:30:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I just got done talking to a friend on the phone, and an idea struck me. Most writers are lonely people. Take the comic strip writers, they publish their amusements weekly if not daily, but no one wants to invite them to their parties. They are notoriously bitter, whether from life experience or rejections from the A-list, who knows. I suppose they could be one in the same. But take other writers, take their mantra: to write about society you have to be disengaged with it. I don't know if I agree with that statement. Maybe it's because although I'm a writer at a heart, I'm also a human. I have always thought it important to live life...as stupid or abtruse as that sounds. So maybe that makes me a half-breed, a bastard of the art. I can't quite seem to keep myself pure...I always have to dirty my fingers in every interesting little nook and cranny.

Although there is something to be said for observation...I've always felt that the best writers are the introverts...those that notice obscure things most people pass by. It's definitely that way for me. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if the poetry (in the broad sense) of a writer came to life in daily activities. They'd probably be regarded as one of the most beautiful people alive. It's so weird that some people can write so majestically and yet they have the hardest time carrying on a conversation. I mean, it makes sense. Writing is a conversation, but it's a staged one. As a writer, you have the capital to buy any prop you want, make any set you can imagine, and stage you characters wherever your fancy strikes. And you can draft their conversations...and redraft them until their perfect. It's more of a conversation with yourself. In fact, I think the best way to describe writing is the way that the world would be if nothing had gone amiss. I suppose, it's the paradise of that particular person. Some might call it their heaven, their nirvana. And I think, the more people write, the more they write well, the closer we'll all get to that place. If only it was real.

And I think it is.

Literary Exercise # 9--Poetic Diction

2007-08-06T13:05:00.000-07:00

I've been on an essay kick for quite a long time now (about a year and a half), but one thing I haven't written for a while is poetry. I find it hard, uncomfortable, like a pair of new shoes, and I haven't figured out how to break them in without blisters. For some reason, my essays just flow. But as soon as the fowl changes, as soon as the seasons shift, as soon as I place myself in my predetermined box, I lose it. What do I really want with poetry? I want to look around the lines, over them and next to them and spiraling between two lines in three-dimensional movements. I want to feel free just like I do with my essays...but really appreciate the unique art that it alone proffers. Thus, poetic diction? Besides being a title copy/righted by Owen Barfield, I think it will also have to be the approach I take. Some of the lines in my essays are already poetic, and if I could keep that free attitude while taking on a more compressed form, that would be awesome (IMO). Although, I think I'll have to revise it. A lot. This is one area that I have neglected. If you saw me muscled by my literary strength, it would be quite comical--strongs arms and legs but a beer belly whose intake could not be confused for any other beverage.

The Trade-Off at Greeley Square:

I fold papers in four directions
directly pointing out the dimensions of this park
and you rise with a start
as if the homeless chairs hold stories to bring out your competition;
where the bark is less than clean and
cheap green laminate peels away to reveal afternoon jaunts
where joints and not jobs (but nut jobs) are the keynote address

You're freckled face tells me one of two things
one, that you are tired, two, that you are leaning down
the spirit of inspiration, so that he speaks, only,
when the mininum of words has the maximum effect.
the rest is intuition.

It's dangerous to fit your thoughts
Between slots of iron-shod bars
When felons take up residence
nightly, with keys that scrape the thin, veneer off luxury cars
and break the skin of lesser-willed pedestrians,
Just outside the public borders of Greeley Square, the fare far from anything you and I would like, but the closest thing to a fair trade

But, maybe, if, and, or when you decide
to care and continue in care
we can laugh this off as one of those buyer-impaired decisions (let the buyer beware)
and chalk it up to careless incisions, the surgeon on hand, trembling ('cause a good scare is all it takes for malpractice, and if your lot was Job and not Abraham, it'd be more than you could bear)
as our smoke remissions and fissions the foggy air
ash settles bare, a cold night passes, age on the rusting square

Literary Exercise #8--A Sunny Day.

2007-08-04T14:17:00.000-07:00

I've decided that I don't have to a paragraph intro to every blurb I write. So I'm just gonna jump right in. Yeah. ;)

A sunny day. A summer day. I wonder if it's possible to translate warm breezes and clear sunlight onto blue-lined paper and bic-made pens. Maybe if I leave my notebook out in the sun for a while, let it soak up the rays. Maybe if I take my pen with me, out to the streets, to the beach, to the city, to the clattered multi-lingual communes. There's something about the perfect day that makes you feel better about yourself. I never thought of the weather as an apparatus to absolve my lesser qualities, but when I stepped outside, all my worries turned chaff-like and were whisked away.

And you know everybody's out. Back in Minnesota, on the chop and turf of the lake waves. Out in California, in the mite-free air streaming down onto crags and gulleys and brown and blue creeks. In Texas, but you know that there, in is out, and they don't emerge until the latter-day evenings and nights like shadows. In Maine, though I think the sunlight is their first experience with a liberal sense of joy, neither to the left nor the right. In London, although their perfect experience could easily be exchanged for heavy fog and drizzling rain. In fairy tales, where the princess delights as the first light peers through her blinds and paints patterns on her floor. In Australia, Jamacia, where Fosters and Red Stripe meet together for "Hooray Beer" festivals and the kangaroo long jump. In Paris, where the outdoor cafes are filled to their capacity and they're forced to bring some chairs inside. In blenders, as the strawberries, ice, and tequila lend their juices to the perfect concoction and serve their long line of thirsty patrons. On the internet forums, where laptops are brought outside and bloggers have to squint to see their carefully crafted lines. In the church, where stain-glass windows leave their crystalline bodies and join the twirling, dazzling dance across pews and dark wooden support beams. You see, no one wants to play the guardian on a day like this. Hug a musician, they never get to dance, but watch them throw their pianos and guitars down prematurely and free-verse it on the dance floor. The real encore happens when they lift their tangled mass of strings and splintered carvings to the sun and ask for one more song. In the heavens, where angels frolic with the agility of elves, leaping in softly rounded arcs and stopping mid-air without the awkward recoil home to thirteen-year-old boys armed with safe fire arms and their first hunting experience since the wild west. In a writer of sorts, where sorting through turns of phrases is akin the sun choosing which rays to send down. And the turning of the page breaths softly on the bare skin of the reader until his bones are warmed and soothed. In wedding parties, where the groomsmen arrange the patio furniture with smirking smiles and glistening necks. Like in chess, it's a matter of where you set the pieces, and if you want to take the queen, make sure your table is close to the bridesmaids and the open bar. In concerts, in eminem and dr. dre, filtering through the grid shield of metalic microphones and sounding through the elevated speakers. In everybody's perfect dream, where they don't want to close their eyes because they don't want to miss a thing, and sleeping is waking, until the sun sees that everyone is singing their favorite bar songs and retreats to his own reserved party. In the cosmos, where stars burn bright like young bucks, seeing who can get closest to supernova-ing the moon without turning into a black hole. In the eyes of everything deep and profound, seeing all that is good and and the mystery in the bad, and seeing that all is good. No one walks out without having a party to attend--and no one seeks to amend it--not until the night comes, not until the morning light, and not until the sun ends its sunny days and summertime plans. It's not the day who makes the sun, but the sun who makes the day.

Literary Exercise #6--Description

2007-07-11T21:54:00.000-07:00

If you ever read Dickens, you'll notice straight off that description is a huge part of his writing style. He delights in bringing to light the most minute detail of existence. Description can be both exposition and imagery--and those two can intermarry and divorce at any point. The interesting thing is, while audiences have lost their taste for longer, descriptive sentences, they have become infatuated with imagery--images in film, media, modern art, and advertising. I can't speak authoritatively about the whole system, but I think that literary imagery was lost (along with poetry). Unfortunately. I don't know how we should reclaim it. I have suspicions that it will have to reflect the images--The Science of Sleep, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Dizzying camera movements, rapid scene changes, a sense of beautiful disorientation. We'll see. But until then (or during then), I offer my sixth exercise. May you fall in love with the nouns, verbs, adjectives of imagery--again or for the first time.

Sitting outside on my porch--my writer's porch, my thinking porch, my peaceful porch, it's easy to get reminiscent. I use the same tactic every time...a cigarette, a glass of water, and an inspiron 700m. Water can be subverted by beer, my laptop by a lined notebook, and cigarettes by self-control, but the approach, and result, are always the same. I don't come out here because I want to--because I need to. It's when you don't breathe to survive but to take in the cold, pure draughts atop a 6,000 foot mountain. It's when finding water in a desert becomes second to riding a camel across sun-baked sand deep into the Arabian night. It's when religion stops being a homework assignment and becomes a mystical journey. It's when your parents stop raising you and start living alongside your life.

It's because it's in me. I can't get away from it. My fingers are conduits, my nerves switches, my heart electricity that pumps neurons out to the page. I can't stop. It's part of me. It's living instead of existing. It's talking instead of responding. It's feeling, idealing, revealing, and healing. And it's reeling--for anyone able to cast out the line. I wish you could see it, and pick it up--rub the fine material with your dominant hand, and wrap it around your finger a couple of times. It's in this lighted cigarette, when the heat is white and the lighter an orange bic. It pulls back like a dragon and releases like a cloud. It comes with all the anemities you could ask for--that crackling, popping sound like a boyscout's box-fire, that comfortable position between your fingers a smoothly worn couch, and that glowing embers that points to more than just long cancer--imagination. Give me a riddled body with dying organs and an unstable hand--but give me a heart, and give me a mind. And let me explore the disconnect between the two until they're algamated into my soul. And give me ideas that flow like rivers, or strong, choppy waves in a harbor. A lighthouse to peer into the unknown. A cave to follow down to its roots. A life to lay in suns and moons--a love to bring it close to others. Give me all these things, and watch me try--watch me try to deny my nature for anything else. It cannot be done. It cannot be stopped. It cannot be lost for long...it can only be my long-lost love.

Literary Exercise # 3: A London Morning

2007-06-24T09:53:00.000-07:00

One of the better skills of a writer is being concise. It's damn hard to do, and not even fun. Writers seem to be stricken with the illness to write beautifully, but readers are wary of the contagion of boredom, and will often not read your work to avoid the risk. How do you engage the audience without resorting to hypnosis? How do you keep their attention when, as a culture, we have moved back to an oral tradition? Well, by being damn good. By being good. Being good. Cut, cut, cutting, and snip, snip, snipping your words to the essentials. How? Rewrite. William Zinsser, in his book On Writing Well, said that the key to writing is rewriting. I'm liable to agree with him. And if I'm ever contaminated with that debilitating disease, I will be liable. I hope to never be the cause of that infection.

I named this exercise "A London Morning" to avoid copyright issues over "London Fog" but to get at the same idea. In it, I will be writing a paragraph(s) without paining myself to be concise, and then go back with my scissors and trim all the excess verbiage. Sounds good? Hedge trimmers are for more than just haircuts:

The weird thing about listening to an AC unit at 2:30 in the AM is that pretty soon it doesn't seem like you're listening to it anymore...it's more like it was always there...and people and noises blend in and out. It's like speaking with a fan-voice...that warbly, vibrato voice that sounds like it was sampled by regina spektor. It reminds me of when I was growing up in Minnesota. We lived on the river, and the trains ran on the other side. Every time their horn would blare I would swear that they were a part of me. The trains are you. A part of your experience, a part of your identity. Maybe that's why I like backgroud noise...low murmurs, street traffic, refrigerator hums...they all can be identified with...or maybe they identify with you.

Literary Exercise # 2

2007-06-23T14:56:00.000-07:00

This exercise is geared towards providing as many alternatives as possible to a simple phrase. An example my professor gave me was, "She broke my heart." "She crushed my aorta like a can of Dr. Pepper." "She pole-axed my left ventricle." and so on. This exercise is helpful for stretching the writer, making him think outside of his literary toolbox, while at the same time, staying true to the subject matter. So here goes:

"He looked out the window into the garden."

"The window was his camera and the garden was his snapshot."

"He looked through a portal to the origin of evil."

"He looked through a trick mirror to the other side."

"He looked over the edge of the ledge into a row of hedges."

"In hindsight, he wished he would have gone for the bigger room."

Pen-ups

2007-06-22T11:20:00.000-07:00

Well, the real purpose of this blog is to turn this writer of sorts into a great writer...which means there will be plenty of literary excercises. The sad things is, writers accrue as much flab as the ordinary person, and not just in the winter. It happens anytime they think amazing thoughts and decide not to write them down. As the would-be gym bum starts out at a slow languid pace, most of these exercises will be rough drafts. And just as the weight room jock slims down to the muscular frame hiding underneath, I will come back later on and edit them. Let's just say I'm in good need of some pen-ups. Fifteen. Maybe forty. Maybe I should just try for one.

Not the First Time

2007-06-19T12:04:00.000-07:00

Everyone that starts a blog has a certain ceremony they use to christen their website. To get it started right. To get a blank piece of paper and press the led point down for the first time. To burn all those other crumpled heaps that were supposed to be the first time. To do things right.

Well, this is not my first. This is not even the best of my first. This is a haphazard project somewhere along the way--a middle-aged life (as a metaphor) too late to start over and too early to give up. This is what organized people hate--not quite systematized, not quite random, but somewhere in between. And this is where most of life is lived--at least mine anyway. See, the ironic thing is that as we have chased after the ideals of perfection, we've shirked and distanced ourselves from every good thing that we have at the present. It's ironic because I don't think anyone gets it. In a good college on your way to a good job? It's not good enough because you're not there yet. Married with a lovely wife and children? Well, you're not making enough money...and someone else is always more lovely. Working at a ministry that is reaching out to the hurting? You could do it better, so you start your own. The problem with a perfect world, though, is that there is no one to share it with. No one will ever understand you completely. No one will ever be able to tap into your dreams and emotions quite like you can. The only way to get that is by yourself, and to be by yourself.

I've thought about this a lot because I want that perfection. I want everything to fall with the exact subtle grace I envision in my mind. I want the freedom to stretch my mind to the limits, to be exactly where I want to be. But I don't want to be alone. Maybe the ideal is still possible--money can buy a stone castle in Ireland, rolling hills and meadows, a quiet study, sophisticated people. But I've come to the realization that it'll never be quite right--whether you're okay with that depends on your religious persuasion. I am.

I use to think that it was the most vain and meaningless thing to do something that wouldn't get any recognition. To read a poem that only the air hears. To sing a song that will never be remembered. It was in the legacy that the art reveled--it was in the legacy that the art was celebrated. We want to be remembered. We want to be understood. We have a lot to understand and remember about both those things. Now about that bottle of champagne.