Literary Exercise # 21: Have To Blog

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

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

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

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

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

"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

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.