Metaphysical Musings

One of the gravest issues with studying and applying logic is that rarely does life fall neatly into syllogisms. How often do I look at an argument on abortion, feminism, racism, the death penalty, christianity, the existence of God, warfare and think to myself, "ahhhh, if we take axiom A to be true, then B, and if B is true, C must be true, so if A then C.
These are too simplistic as representative of reality. More often than not, we end up with a situation where:
if A,B,C,D....n1, n2..., then (B1, C1, and D1 or E1) or (B2, C2, E2) or maybe (D3, C4). Even in the first clause of our logic tree, we've run into a problem with branching, and indeterministic branching. A lot of simple arguments you see in social media use fast hasty generalizations, red herrings, strawman arguments, and slippery slope methods that tend to argue inductively rather than deductively. The reason for this is, we cannot prove many of these aethereal arguments - it's like grasping tendrils of fog and dragging clouds around as fortifications.
But as impossible as this sounds, people do it all the time. We've constructed cloudy castle walls, and hunker behind our false fortifications with smug satisfaction at our intellectual theft. But the puzzle pieces don't fit, and we don't probe too deeply  into our own beliefs, because letting down our guard might bring us to the realization that there is little actual truth holding these battlements up.
I remember a friend saying something that stuck with me: the greatest thing I ever learned was intellectual humility. (paraphrased) The understanding that you know very little of the truth of everything, and that examination is a prerequisite of wisdom, and doubt isn't necessarily the lack of faith, but perhaps the pursuit of it.
English is a strange language. We have countless words, but so few where it matters. We are stuck with singular words like "love" to define the countless emotions associated with relationships; words like doubt and fear to discuss our relationships with God - hardly incidental that in a culture starved for relationship and fraught with individualistic capitalism, the words our language suffers a dearth of are found in this locale. We've create a God who is our friend, mother, father, sister, brother, buddy, gentle teacher, because these are the things we don't understand.
And these are the truths we clothe ourselves in are as moth-infested and tattered as street-rags and we stubbornly pretend the cold doesn't affect our version of reality.

Herbert the Snail

My drawing exercise for today was a shell. I've decided that I'm the worst at shading in the whole of the world. I probably only make it worse because I get impatient and start scribbling, then I get patient again, but it's too late; I've already ruined it. Then I think, maybe I'll get creative and smudge everything with my fingers (this is fun), and try to balance the silly shading that way. It-never-looks-good. Month #1 sketching log: I'm the worst artist in the history of ever.
Right now, practice doesn't seem to be making perfect, it seems to be making pathetic. I'll keep trying.
So for my drawing project, I think the shell is for a mollusc, but when I was drawing one of them, I got frustrated and added a really silly looking snail. I like him a lot - he reminds me of the music machine and Herbert the Snail (have patience)
In other news, I've started reading The Brother's K (Duncan), and I'm getting along. I'm liking it more than I did on my first attempt. I think I like it all the more for having read the Brother's Karamazov (though the similarities are few), because in my head I keep pretending there are connections.
At church today, I drew a snail, a bird, a turtle and a fish, and none of them are on the same gravitational plane. The pastor discussed Thomas, and made him out to be something of an ISTJ, which I appreciated. I think there is more to Thomas than the doubting fellow we disdain, though the Bible contains few passages that even include him.
I won all the games today - I'm pretty much the luckiest.
That was my day.
And snails.




silent the shell your ear is in
echoes the ocean within,
for this mollusc has never been
subsumed by the sea.
oh, I exude the ocean -
it wells in my eyes,
runs in runnels down my spine,
wets my brow.
I swim in my mutable brine
and I am an island, John
unto myself, and this shell
is echoes of me, and I
am contained wholly inside -
hold your ear close and hear me
for I am the sea, old man,
and I will ever be
wild and whimsy -
don't pretend you know
the depths of me, or the swells
of my emotions.
How high I rise when the moon
summons me, and low I sink
when she moves beyond my reach
though she hides her face
or ripples in my waves
her gaze pierces my hide, this shell,
and I sing, howling at the night sky
oh, what heights I'll go
(though never sufficiently)
and in the end, she chose the night
and bears what's beneath behind
as the trail of a wedding dress
spiraling down into a whisper
that echoes in this shell

Something Electric

leave me 
one more chance to be
spinning like the falling leaf
tumbling, silently down -
between the ears, it's too silent,
behind the eyes, I notice nothing
and nobody - 
I feel and hear and see, 
these long-limbed beasts,
solely synapses blinking 
on and off, off and on,
though there is in your eyes
something electric


Thanks S for a delightful day with bipolar weather and much laughter. I had a few exciting things to write tonight, but my eyes are extra droopy, and I think I'll just turn in. Droopy eyes... whyyoubetrayme?

1am adrenaline - the best and worst of things.

Never compete before going to sleep should be a rule in my life. All the adrenaline surging through my body, I can feel my heartbeat in every artery, pulsing like a mad drummer patting out couplets - rattat-rattat-rattat, will I get any sleep, tonight?

Tonight, I remember laughter, and victory, and I found myself pacing my room wondering if I could be the greatest at this. I know, I know it's too late, and I don't even think trying would warrant me success at any rate, but as my veins stand out on my hands from the too-fast blood rushing through my everything, I believe anything is possible, everything is within reach. I'm Tantalus, laughing with handfuls of berries and scooping mouthfuls of fresh, perfect water into my mouth. 

You cannot beat one with nothing to lose

Why am I awake? It's 1am and I'm on fire - I keep tossing the blanket off the bed, dragging it back up, and it's fifty-five in my room.

I'm beginning to see shapes, vaguely, as in a fever-dream. A mist claws at my eyes, as though I'd passed out and now awaken in the arid desert, and I feel the sandman's dust in the corner of my eye. Quiet, the roads, when everyone else is gone, or not alone as you are. Smokestacks from shacks and cottages in every forest grove beckon, but you know that if you approached, your deceiving eyes would bleed away the home into something homely and decrepit, a vacant, ramshackle witch's hovel, long since left as bones.

The forest quakes, the ents shudder at what we've become, and no less they, the martins whistle appalling remarks at your passing.

Where is the fire if all I can see is smoke?

But it's nowhere, and all places at once; the burning in your gut, the fire in your belly, the volcano rising with your gorge until you finally erupt. Is it fair, knowing that rising to the top requires you stand alone, and surrender guarantees no returns, and together suffers a long, patient road following two divergent dreams with slow, misguides steps. None of these fill your heart, no?

Turn me upside-down and shake me, and I'll glitter like your snow-globe, drop me and I'll shatter, set me on a shelf, and I'll collect dust, void and empty, hold me gently, and I'll melt.

is it friday yet / catharsis inanity

It's catharsis, no? My hands clenched so tight, my plans crushed to dust beneath the might of anxious anger. Calcium gates closing and the sinuous railroads slides back, and the bindings of cells untie like an unknitting, an unzipping of flesh inside, and the muscles unwind and breathe, slowly, relaxing. Fingernail pits mark the prints where fingers once clasped as a vice. Like chaff, confetti, or dandelion seeds the dreams are ballooning into the sky.
Some drown in the ocean, or suffocate in the stones; some birds bear home, completing their nest. A few float forever, stuck in the winds of time, or land in the desert, shrivel and die. But a few, those dreams I never knew might fly so high, join the stars, or the fireflies, or the wildflowers on the mountainsides. I'm still staring through the holes in my hands, the paths between these unclenched digits...
Where do they lead?
These blind worms never link with anything externally alive, but they harbor life so defiantly. Where are you going, dear, without your hands, without your friends of fret and floundering, the lens of life? They crush and cradle, touch and trundle, and if they callous, it's kindness or it's careless. And they sweat in the catharsis of heat, and they fight or fly with equal ease. And now, across this keyboard they rap-taptap, popping keys with the inanity of fighting destiny, but they hope, believe, and tonight that's all we need.


I read endless blogs, news articles, stories, and sometimes I wonder if I should transform my rhetoric to follow the masses out there. Not necessarily as a means of subsuming my style into the majority, but as a practical means of mastering the popular. I don't think that's me, however. I don't want to argue politics or exclaim titles in all caps to garner attention, like "STUDY OF CATHARSIS: RESULTS YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE" or "TEN WAYS TO SUCCEED AT ALL YOUR DREAMS" or something equally banal. It's these giant blogospheres that are swallowing everything smaller by mass producing material. It's like that Donald Hall quote (and essay) that I've grown to love. America has once again managed to gobble up the voice of mankind and transform it into a marketable, consumerist product.
Blogs are popular? Okay, we can "mcdonalds" that, and serve fake-meat articles a hundred times an hour - something for everyone. And we've got fast food, but no cuisine, nothing palatable. I'm fairly certain that style isn't beyond me, but I'm not writing this for the consumption of countless blithe readers. This isn't a popularity contest in the slightest, as I'm really not advertising any of these nor attempting to harvest "followers" and "likes" and "+1's", because that would probably render me more grief than pleasure.
But I do still sometimes wonder whether I should attempt to fill this space with more meaningful content, content that can be engaged with, and approached with purpose. I rarely spend the time fleshing out ideas, as I've previously considered this space a hit-and-run, freestyle writing outlet that is an alternative to journal, story, and competition writing.
It's not edited, it's not a platform for some soap-box ideology. Occasionally I share ideas or philosophy, but this is more for sophistry than philosophy, anyway. I probably should write an essay now and again, though. I think something (maybe everything) in me missed school, and the continual, forced application of research to produce an argumentative, or expository, essay. I miss those. Forcing yourself to write them without a return is more difficult.

Sculptor

Chisel the marble of my being
Michelangelo - the little ones
splashing in the little floods
remember nothing of Noah
though the rain does
and its currents runnel down
the chinks in my stone
until they've found, (as do we all)
puddles to call home
and the great sculptor has
painted my limestone bones:
Adam reaching out
feebly across me, lying
on Mary's knee, weeping,
and both the Pieta and the sky
share the same grief
it's grey, and love - a call to arms



One of the methods in which I've been writing lately is a pealing away of layers. Often, I've used this method, collecting all the possible pieces of research and possibilities, and chiseling away the unnecessary portions to draw out the figure from the marble. Michelangelo saw his forms in the marble before he started, he would say, and all he had to do was remove the extraneous portions. Lately, I've enjoyed writing using a somewhat similar method.
Another method I've enjoyed is building pieces up in layers, like a wasp building its nest with saliva and pulp. (gross? maybe not my best analogy). I write a very basic outline, and start "dressing" it, adding flavor and apparel to flesh out the piece into a fullness. This is usually a bit easier, because then you can always end with the sculpting away once you've finished. Most pieces require a bit of both, but lately I have been fancying myself as a bit of a sculptor, transforming existing objects, scenes, places, and people into stories: the material is already there, I just need to carve out the stories from the distracting stone.
These last couple of days, all my writing has been a bit wobbly, so trying out new things is a nice way to break free of stagnation and disgust.

Motifs

Writers, and perhaps artists in general, enjoy motifs. I know do, and when viewing paintings, drawings, or reading the writings of various authors, I notice recurring tidbits cropping up throughout major works. More particular authors attempt to remove achingly obvious redundancies, but you'll still often see favored words, phrases, or thematic plot lines that are intrinsic to the author's artistic style.
For instance, Eoin Colfer always uses the phrase "drumming like a tattoo"; Stephen Donaldson loves the word "clenching"; Brandon Sanderson struggles writing a plot without deus ex machina as denoument. Some authors tend towards devices, like Brent Weeks turning a situation sour for the main character, and then circumstances worsen, and when you think you've hit the bottom, he drops the last few rungs on the ladder out from beneath you into a pitful of jaw-snapping alligators.
It's clearest, I think, with poets. Because of the brevity of poetic works, themes, words, and similarities emerge all the clearer, as each line, stanza, and verse stands alone in easy contrast to the poems on the following page.
I'm still lapping at the sides of the greatest of artistic lakes, but in my works, already I've seen the rise and fall of personal tendencies. When I began writing, I overused the word "dance" in much of my material. Now, I too frequently abuse a number of vague words (especially when writing ambiguous online entries) such as "sometimes", because I enjoy the wistful appeal of the word, despite it's dubious nature. I wave my hands and breeze past differing styles and traditions, trying to snatch a hold onto patterns of the past and present methods, but even in my "dancing" spontaneous approach to learning, imitation, and practice, I maintain a core set of mannerisms, the axiomatic principles of my artistic understanding. These, too, change, but slowly, meticulously, like the movements of the bottom of the ocean compared to the top.
The goal, I think, is to develop such a secure foundation that even brief examples of writing will possess something intrinsically fascinating. Like listening to Neil Gaiman speak, and being tossed in the currents of the mythos that rolls behind his words.

the trees form pink parades
cherryblossom leaves toss
their pompom hoorays into the spring
and flowers cup their hands like children
holding fireflies, or colorful surprises
or are they just praying? 
I'm near to knowing
the hearts of the trees
and wildflowers - a bracelet of daisies
dancing necklace of dandelions
psyche, I'm falling in love
and her hands are still closed

Just Spring

Drawing with the sloth friend this evening.  Spring was showing its colors in force today, even though the rain is coming (perhaps that is the true face behind today's masquerade). Cherryblossoms are bursting into bloom with radiant pink petals, and the dogwoods accepted the challenge, and effloresced in beautiful whites, and the greengreengreen is trickling out in greater quantities, and the blueblueblue of the sky, why, sometimes this is all a person needs.

hibernation, then, is all
this soul gets and remembers
The freezer too long, friends,
until now, I hear the flute of pan
fawning over the land - listen
the cedar bellows though faintly
listen and you'll hear echoes of nymphs
and dryads giggling with the leaves in the trees
and it's rising, wildflowers caressing the hillsides
crescendo, as the witch's white hand recedes
cold lessens and the world is all puddles and glee
trumpeting, spring into dance the world is blossoming
birds fluttering home and building their nests with the bees
buzzing warily across the newborn earth, and somewhere a star
shines, and passes over a land whose bitterness needs passing over
Immanuel, resurrect in the baptism and christening of vernal verdancy
Floating like cottonwood on the breeze, breathe, the world is whole again.





Some of my favorite ee cummings poems are on spring: in just and I also like the balloonman. I wrote a short story for a competition (and lost) using the balloonman as a basis. Someday, I'll have to return to that short and edit it a bit. I think it had a little potential. Well, the week is coming, and sleep is gearing up in my gut. Back to ye olde hibernation.

Sandbox Thoughts

I finally finished the book I've been desperately trying to find time for all week. Not a bad book, neuromancer, though I feel like the ending is a bit empty. It's one of those Clockwork Orange endings, where you hope a character develops throughout the story, and at the end, they return into the ruts of their past. This was actually one of the reasons I disliked Mistborn so much was because the main character learned to trust and in the second novel remembered how to be paranoid and forgot everything the first book  had worked so hard to instill.

I had all day to write, and all I did was draw a fish, un-draw a fish, re-draw a fish, read, go walking in the sun - actually, I think I did all of the introvert activities I wanted to get accomplished except writing. And now, I'm at the point where I'm not even sure I'm creative anymore.
Tonight will be a sandbox night and a journaling night, then.

----------------------------------------
sandbox

In my dreams, I always imagined trains moving faster, like hyperspace tunnels blue-shifting past in a cosmic blur, and I'd be staring out - and in - mesmerized by something behind my eyes. Trains raced along railways of transient color, existing only at two stations. Between destination and origin, trains followed phantom rainbows or chugged between twilight stars.

strange looks, he received, but if it doesn't concern them, even a walrus can conduct a train unnnoticeably
children shouted as they boarded, look at the walrus, mama!
why, what a rude thing to say. he may have whiskers like a walrus, or the stomach of one, but that is our conductor, and it is unkind to call him a walrus.
but i am one - is it rude to be a walrus?

Ah, for my last trick,
I clamber into the box
and saw myself in half,
it's magick, don't scream,
I say, dragging myself free -
but I've forgotten my legs
look what a fool is me.

Let it (me) go [to sleep]

My eyes are burning. I'd hoped to finish my book tonight, but I think I've been out of social energy for two weeks, and I'm beginning to crash a little - a lot - and I simply cannot sleep. Tonight was my night for poetry, a little more story writing, finishing my book, doing some drawing, and getting to bed at a reasonable hour, but I'm going to have to settle for just one, and I can't decide which. My body can't even remember the last night I had time to myself for more than thirty minutes before sleeping (except for insomnia, and that doesn't count). Tonight was going to be my night, but I'm crashing hard.
I guess this is only delaying my decision time.

My hands are cold, eternally so
I'm flipping pages, but no longer feel
my thumbs, and my feet
wrapped in countless layers are numb
and I'm using these cold devices
to warm my freezing heart.


no, I'll just hit sleep like a battering ram and pray.
some days, introversion is my enemy

le train pour paris (part 0)

Seven years, and your eyes are beneath every lovely braid of brown. I find myself sneaking peaks inside every passing blue accord, hoping you'll be there. Do you still own one, this far down the road? Sometimes, when I sit at coffee shops or on park benches, I glance at the shoes of passersby, looking for yours - is it odd, even now, I remember the grace of feet - how tiny, how petite - but your face is lost to me; that memory, I couldn't bear.
The thin stratum of cirrus clouds burned like phosphorus this evening at sunset in a gorgeous display of fireworks, as though someone ignited taffy as it stretched across the heavens, and the sunset was the pulling wheel. Nostalgic, somehow, though of what I do not know. Maybe there is in my soul the dream of platonic, eternal sunsets; of a world where all the colors don't make sense, but just are, and the formless mystery is enough.
When I envision you, imagine you living, it's with someone you love for true. You are sitting at a park bench, laughing and delighting in the magic of it all, and he's holding your hand as treasure. Neither of you see me, stretched against a willow tree a hundred feet away, and neither of you would care. Then this sunset would be yours, and the romance of it all would suffuse your faces with an ember-glow, like lanterns of gold making icons of each sanctified moment, and cherubim hovering at your sides are singing such wonderful hymns - immaculate dreams.
The sky transforms into the dingy and smoky crumble of the train station ceiling, held up by cylindrical cement columns and sheer persistence. The earth quakes and the air vibrates with cigarette fumes, summer heat, and the dust. Everyone shuffles by with vapid resolution, in suits and jackets despite the arid weather.
If tomorrow, a friend knew and told me I'd lose my heart again, oh, I'd probably fall all-in. The ante is worth the pain, just for a glimpse into the prisms of another's soul. And when, once more, I stumble into the same pitfalls I made on that first train, and again on that mountain ridge before sunset with words I cannot rescind, I'll be reminded why you, and they all, traded this for another, for the better. I wish I could trade one broken-heart for another - seven is too long a forever.
And I did.
Two weeks past, on another incidental train, this one again for breaking chains, it was different. I saw someone else's eyes and hair and shoes, and didn't mind. Once, years ago, someone asked me if I missed love, having never known, like a boy-child misses his father who left before he was born. No, I don't, I said, for I believe I've always loved, and always known. But this was the first I've done so, not alone. When you love, is it always for the first time?
Are you with me, mon ami? I see your ripples in the lake of my soul, can feel the broad brush strokes of aquamarine and the swans, singing their song and leaping into the sky from the reeds. These pictures ever limn my reality.
The locomotive burst free of the tunnel with a sinister speed. From the first car to the last, as it passed neatly into the station, I imagined it as a giant, puffing caterpillar, an Alice in Wonderland vehicle of dreams. Together, soon, we would cocoon in a recursive metamorphosis, and with a fragile, dawn-wet flutter, we'd stretch and fling ourselves at the stars, as monarch machines brandishing nascent wings.
I am surprised, as always when the train huffs to a halt, that such inertia can screech into spot like a mechanized lock. It's a devastating potential energy, like a predator, coiled and eager to spring into destructive motion. My heart surged into my throat at the rawness of it all, the sanctitude of this spectacular sepulcher - because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me.
The doors opened and a few meandering souls boarded, waiting for the klaxon warning and whistle of our leaving. Every moment was the held-breath of goodbye, a severing from this country once part of me. I could feel the whistling blade that guillotined the past from beneath me, and with a whistle and a pop, the groaning metal beneath began rolling into the darkness of the future.


-------------------------------

This was originally not one piece, but three separate empty thoughts, just thrown out there as per usual. One was a story moment (not beginning) and the other two were just day reminisces. Now, they are all so jumbled little remains of the origin of any of the three.

Sharks! (not really)

I think I'm a shark. (not a card shark, though maybe that too)

I think we all need movement. There is a reason people locked in the prisons of their minds are jokingly (or not) referred to as vegetables. Mammals, animals in general, move, and require motion I believe to thrive. Not necessarily to survive, but if survival was our only motivating factor then we are sorry beasts, indeed. And I don't mean that we need to pack up our bags and hit the road every couple weeks or months, but that "motionlessness" does not suit us. Sitting in one place and staring at the computer screen; gluttony and sloth.

I may be speaking for myself a bit, but sometimes it's like I'm a shark. The moments I cease moving are those moments I feel least alive. And this isn't always so; immediately someone is going to suggest the verse: "cease striving and know that I am God" and forge an argument for "stopping". But stopping has never been a problem for me (and I know some people who do struggle with rest and sabbath). But even in our moments of stillness, we are hoping to move closer to God. 

This Lenten season, I chose a passive "waiting" approach of sacrifice. I gave up a few things, but not to create of stagnancy, like an 8-year-old boy who is punished with no computer games and claims he has nothing to do. The object of Lent isn't punishment by sacrifice and fasting. It's a preparation of self, a movement if you will, and I'm racing.

So I'm a shark, I think. Did my layers of teeth unmask me?

spindle-pricked thumb on a pencil stub

and dizzydizzy down this rabbit hole -

it's a mad hatter even 

with the twisting twilight sky, 

and I'm escaping 

into well-worn pages, scrawled lines -

and nights like these have the silence

of the sirens, sight of the cyclops,

discretion of the gods 

and Titanic complacence,

stuffed into a tiny mason jar and rattled

Mummy

(I may or may not have written this while driving down scholls in the rain, in the dark, in the silence of the night when the fog hung heavy around my car and I skidded around corners in the collected puddles that huddled there, and I stopped like a culprit at each car that rounded the sides of the hill, caught in the beams of accusatory light - I may have written it on a dime, one that still spins, and I can make neither heads nor tails of it - I may be still writing, because some stories are never finished until they stop beginning, and this may or may not be such a one. I may completely re-write it when I wake in the morning, cold without a fire and only the dust at my side, and contemplate my foolishness at trying. Shikata ga nai. Do svidaniya)

A stranger, wrapped in white, woke

beside me on the road, hoping 

for warmth by the once-fire, 

now reduced to coals.

How he shudders and groans, 

his bandaged-body and tired, old bones.

in the brisk morning breeze, I ask,

what does the mummy desire?

stirring to speak, he glances at me,

and tells me of wars long ago:

battles and fighters in warrior attires

engaged in the hatred of yore

but whose? mine or yours? no,

the avarice of kings paid with the blood

of just beings who craved only the hearth

or the home.

Then on he goes about the gods below

and above in whose sight we marred

the earth we love, and the child whose name

we don't know.

Of sickness to death, of hope and love cleft

in the eyes of the lover and loved.

So what do you need, I ask, if you please?

and he hushes me with a hand, let me speak.

He saddens me with tales of ships with wide sails

white, rife with slavery beneath.

Of pirates and lies, and what lies down,
deep in the oceans of hearts.

and what now, can I offer, I ask, 

my soul suddenly cold.

A little tea and warmth by the fire,

and tales of what, for love, you have sold.

Beneath the white folds of cloth

beneath every one, there's a soul

and one worth dying for,

I reply as the fire sparks its rebirth.

Hamburger Writing (yuck)

"Give me a night by the fire, with a book in my hand, not that flickering rectangular son of a bitch that sits screaming in every living room in the land."
~ Helprin

I have not read Winter's Tale yet. Matthew quoted this at me, and I was pleased at the mimicry of my own sentiments, despite not knowing the context.

Always, on long drives I have significant time for thinking. Add into that the fact that I couldn't find my media player, I had some opportunity for *quiet* thought. I was contemplating mostly on the topic of intellectual humility. I think one of my greatest irritations are those who view their own works as intrinsically better than anyone else's, and beyond comparison or improvement. Maybe it is; maybe they've reached the pinnacle of human achievement in writing or artistic endeavor, but I tend to doubt it.
There is always room for improvement.
But even more than that is this internalization that once you immediately assume a new task, you will automatically be a maestro. I mean, c'mon! I've put a week into it! Maybe you are a prodigy, or a savant, but still (yes, still) there is room for improvement, for change, for adaption. One of my favorite quotes by Donald Hall: (it's a long'un)

The United States invented mass quick-consumption and we are very good at it. We are not famous for making Ferraris and Rolls Royces; we are famous for the people's car, the Model T, the Model A—"transportation," as we call it: the particular abstracted into the utilitarian generality—and two in every garage. Quality is all very well but it is not democratic; if we insist on hand-building Rolls Royces most of us will walk to work. Democracy demands the interchangeable part and the worker on the production line; Thomas Jefferson may have had other notions but de Tocqueville was our prophet. Or take American cuisine: it has never added a sauce to the world's palate, but our fast-food industry overruns the planet.

We get into a groove of production and never leave it, all too often. One of the reasons that I started this blog was to try out different forms of writing, and mimic different artists in their creativity. Sometimes, imitation can be incredibly helpful in learning to understand what makes something artistically relevant, or good.
But really, more than anything, I don't want to get caught into the McPoem, McStory groove. I don't want to be the Thomas Kinkade of writing, where I simply discover a beautiful scenery and mass produce it in workshops. I want novelty, innovation, and thoughtfulness. I really appreciate Elizabeth Bishop's argument that if it takes 40 years to write a good poem, then that is how long she'll work on it.
Unfortunately, with capitalistic motivation as the driving force behind art, it becomes more difficult to wait so long for a muse to strike us on the head with the creative mallet. For me, this isn't a problem, because money isn't a driving point at all for me (since I'm earning no money from my pieces at this juncture - nor are they worth any). But the problem for me, at my level, is still that tendency to get rutted into a line of faults.
Some of the statements Donald Hall makes in that essay are frightening, in light of entering the sphere of artistry to any degree. I understand what Keats was saying when he wrote the words: I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.
This is the same driving force that sips at the edge of my sanity. Because I know where my tipping point is, the place where I withdraw from society and make a competitive run for greatest "something" in the world. And honestly at this point I don't even know what that something is. I know it could be almost anything that I put my mind to, within the constraints of my mechanical prowess (it's too late for me to become the greatest futbol player of all time).
One thing I know, at the end of the day, is that in order to improve I have to first understand that improvement is possible, and that I need it. If I don't believe that I can improve, I won't; if I don't believe I need improvement, I'll continue creating hamburgers of stories and poems.
Which sounds gross.

Or I can try outrageous, silly, obscure, unusual, messy, ugly attempts at artistic creation and pray something rises from the dust eventually.


You're the worm for the early bird
dressed in asps and newspaper wraps.
your hands read: violent murder/politician/
hundreds wounded in/going under
in smudges of running ink.
but through this window peering back into me
I see Alexander the Great playing violin,
lacrimoso, sharing his odyssey;
and Cleopatra feeding pigeons,
cooing at all the appropriate points
and her hair reads: hostility in/
concealed disaster/media sexist rem-/
how does she not weep with the music,
covered in such head-lines?
pulling back from the vantage, gradually, asking
who's the bleary-eyed captive in the mirror scene?
another snoozing worm, losing
to the carpe-vermis bird

Charon

in dante's insomnia, it's divine comedy

all night long, and stepping outside

into a bleached-bone dawn, you see 

venice and your taxi is Charon, 

holding an incense lantern which swings 

wildly in the windless air.

He asks if you want pennies for your eyes

but you'll be fine, fine, you want your sight.

pennies, says he, is what most people see,

but all right, and he rows backwards

through time, until dusk limns the horizon -

and you're still in bed at 1am

feeling like a seasick dog with three heads

and no one who will ever know.

Perception Persephone

Later, she wonders
if she merely dreamed of such
transcendent passion.
~ new york times haikus

whether ash or snow falling from the sky,
well, it's your dream, shouldn't you know
what drifts past your window?
Persephone paints in holographics
a scene that shifts with the seasons,
while staring at a plaster wall that poses
blankly, in sterile-scrub white.
some see wedding trees, garbed in gossamer
others icy rivers and evergreens,
or the great, pink thumbs of mountains at sunset,
and some see cities like fires, windows flitting
off and on like sparks and fireflies.
but it's a wall,
and she hasn't started painting, yet,
or even opened her eyes.

Late night thoughts: Hasty Generalizations #2

** Disclaimer: I shouldn't be writing at this hour, and I make a lot of half thought-out statements. If any of them offend you, throw something at me. Nicely.

A number of things are on my mind, at the moment: "bossy", turtles, dystopia, friends, books, writing, drawing, poetry, love, prayer, worry, impatience, sleep.

I usually go to bed at 10 and try to get to sleep by a little after eleven. I'm not a night person. I'm actually not sure why I'm still awake, the night brushing up against 1am and I'm still not ready for sleep as yet. I wanted to write, but I couldn't get my fingers to move. I wanted to read, but after eighty pages, I couldn't seem to focus on the story enough to continue. 

http://i.imgur.com/UQtTn.jpg

I feel like this turtle. I'm on my back, helpless and stuck, but I believe that I'm flying.  Or maybe like someone has taken the kaleidoscope of my thoughts, and is twisting them around faster and faster, until the colors mesh into a mesmerizing soup of jumbled thoughts instead of an elegant fractal of glittering images. 

Also, I really like turtles.

I started The Giver by Lois Lowry tonight, just because it was convenient and I knew it would be a short read. Hence the contemplation of dystopia. I really enjoy it so far, even as simplistic as it is. I think I liked farenheit 451 better, but that is an unfair comparison, I suppose. 

The whole anti-"bossy" campaign is something I've been digesting today, and contemplating the positives and negatives of. The argument itself is a bit fallacious, as something of a hasty generalization and a bit of a red herring, but there is importance in what is being said, nonetheless. 

Sometimes, I wonder why there aren't more women leaders and women competitors. Why aren't there more women CEO's? Part of this is media, cultural, and sexist subjection, and it is these which I disagree with wholeheartedly. I would abolish gender inequality on the spot if I could. (can I?)  But there is a part of it that is, in my experience, relational. I'm about to make some foolish, possibly hasty generalizations of my own. Forgive me of I offend, but I'm not thinking at my brightest: it is late. 

Men tend to incline towards the mold of alpha, gruff, competitive roles more frequently, because it's a means of proving oneself, and the male hormone testosterone acts as a natural competition enhancer. And it isn't that women aren't competitive, or don't vie for leadership roles, but men produce 20x as much testosterone daily as women, and during spikes of the hormone, men are more selfish, competitive, and willing to take risks. 

I say this, even though it is a bit sexist: I have never in my life met a woman who is as over-archingly competitive as I was during my teen years. This sounds like a challenge, doesn't it? But whenever I was challenged, I had to win (if I cared. If I was challenged to a bacon-cooking contest, I think I would have ignored it). Grades at school; sports; computer games; card games; board games; proficiency at some skill. I didn't always have to be the best at everything, I just had to know that I could easily surpass anyone I wanted given enough effort. I was willing to do anything to win regarding things I cared about, if that's what it took. Usually, I didn't have to go very far. 

(And I by no means am suggesting this is a good thing)

What I'm saying is, I've met countless men who are within similar levels of competitive angst as I often was (or even am, still occasionally). But women generally have smaller, more directed instances of such competitive drive. They are often more focused in their competitive natures, and definitely as skilled when it comes to it, if not more so. 

Anyway, the "bossy" campaign is interesting, because it is saying that this male subjugation of women is what prevents women from being capable leaders. I think this is partially true, and partially I just think more men crave leadership for leadership's sake, whereas this is less common for women. Women tend (hasty generalization #150) towards desiring leadership for relational reasons, though this is not always true. Men just want dominance (not always true, either. When it comes down to it, humanity has just as many exceptions as rules. Maybe there are no rules, only exceptions. Kinda like English)
Men are willing to take selfish risks, because they deem the reward of dominance worthy enough a pay-off. Women who tend more to the relational path of competition and self-improvement won't take the selfish sacrifices, because that overrides the relational component of their drive. It's partially a competition thing. If I want to win, how many heads to I have to step on?
I remember in high school actually having this run through my head: how many people do I have to crush before I exhibit my complete dominance? Because it wasn't about winning, only, it was about proving a superiority complex - like an alpha wolf complex. Ok, I'll stop digging my ditch now.

I think it is time to sleep before I make a fool of myself with all these hasty generalizations. These are just thoughts, and I may very well regret these come morning. I think there are differences between males and females, differences in our sex that does distinguish us. Gender is a cultural construct, sex is biological. However, I do not believe this differences necessitate a hierarchical factor: men and women should be equal, not subject to subjugation. I don't think my existence as a man necessarily dictates that I'm better at competing or anything - in fact, I can't tell you how many times I've been beaten by women superior at activities.(though I used to go into the zone and practice for days and days straight without rest until I was the best) Countless times. 

Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn't be focusing on a "don't do this" approach, but a "do this" approach. Instead of a "ban bossy", maybe a "nurture leadership and important qualities" approach, or a "value differences and ensure equality" approach, but perhaps that is a bit too vague for a campaign, and certainly less flashy. 

Yertle the Turtle Days

Where one hiccup cascades until all comes falling down.
Today, a Bible verse:
But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him** who loved us. 

This verse is a triumph, which I felt was needed today. Everything seemed to go wrong and I suspect tomorrow will feel the aftershock.
sometimes I wonder how much Christ is like my father or my mother, walking behind me and sweeping up and forgiving me my mistakes; shaking his/her** head at my foolishness; praying I choose wisely at each juncture, but not forcing me in a direction; celebrating with me in my accomplishments and holding me in defeats.  It is a testament to the quality of my parenting that I can even make such a comparison.
Yet, how awful a child I can sometimes be. I argue and whine and fight and disagree, just because I can't see clearly, and how could I possibly be wrong? And there are days when I forget things for work (like how I forgot to bring home my iPod and samsung media player for programming), and I panic and run around in frantic terror until God shows me another way. Or days when I inadvertently delete a large portion of the database for work, and am pretty sure I'll be annihilated on the spot,  or where my fever breaks a million and I can't sleep for weeks.
As awful as I am in the bad times, I suspect I'm probably worse in the easy times.
There are tough days, but they never last forever.
There are bright days; these, too, will pass.




**I'm a bit of a wimpy feminist. That is to say, I'm a feminist, but I haven't done much about it because I'm spineless. Punching someone out over my beliefs is on my bucket list, but it's at the end, in case I get punched out afterwards and the rest of my dreams are prematurely terminated. However, I hate gender pronouns when it comes to God. I wish I could invent a new one, but it seems disrespectful inventing gender pronouns for divinity (especially lousy ones). Sometimes I switch off between his and her to keep people on their toes. Sometimes, I use both at the same time. When I'm quoting, I just leave it, even if it makes me grumpy.


0.2v
painted shell with legs, you've no hope
to dislodge the bird riding your back.
ferry him across muddy waters,
stomp up the beach while he preens.
ah, friend yertle, the turtle king
if king ye be, and I were thee
I'd bear the weight of eternity
and all the world, not just one bird,
and harbor this, my secret identity -
or maybe whine indefinitely

Daylight Savings

a fake wind blows in a steady, oscillatory rhythm, and my eyes are punished. I'm crying unemotional tears, from sleeplessness, from slight allergies induced by the upcoming season, and only one eye possesses such soulful resolve. It's early, but my body feels late, despite the time change in the other direction. Circadian rhythm out of whack, my mental state is revolving on a hypnotic hampster-wheel, and with every revolution my eyes are drooping, my faculties are fraying towards sleep - what time is it? not even late? one of those nights, huh?
 I received my first drawing battle-wound today. I got a little enthusiastic about erasing (I probably do more erasing than drawing - that's probably telling about my current calibre of artistry), and paper-cut a good chunk of the unnamed finger away. It's okay... I didn't need that one. Other than that, I mostly rested from the long drive, the wedding-weekend, the several visits to radioshack trying to get everything collected for work.
I started reading the Brother's K; I finished Simic's Walking the Black Cat; I regretted leaving my guitar in Oregon; I browsed the internet absently for too long (twitter is the new bane of my existence); and I ate more chips and salsa than dinner. That's my day. And family.

Night swoops in on hawk talons
and distantly a creek trickles
through the fairy woods,
or frogs croak with the day,
or wind scuffles by
like a jazz-drag-shuffle
tipping hat at the empty trees as though they,
like ballroom ladies standing 'round,
might agree to dance -
or maybe a solemn silence
drizzles down with the rain
as the plumage of clouds illuminated
in street lamps collects in soulful puddles
on the ground -
I don't know, did you stop
and look?

Heart-String Bard

I'm a heart-string bard with a guilty bow
fiddling all night in concerto solo
beggar me with stories and I'll break into song -
tonight, regret memories - please, sing along
rainy percussion beating its drums
the man by the bar, tromb-moans on and on
and I'm just a blind-bat muse, facing the music
and when the dawn comes, I'll leave this world to it
chime in with the  flute 'til we lose track of time,
love trills and my lute, this night is yours, and mine



I went to a very lovely wedding today. I only knew the groom, and I hadn't even seen him for almost nine years. When I first received the invitation, I wondered if the groom was hoping for a high-school showing, and I was interested to see if anyone from that era of my life might show up. None did (save one: a groomsman).
The theme was fireflies, and several lines of bare-bulbs were strung over the aisle, and at the front, a crystalline "chandelier" blinked with lights like lightning bugs behind glass. Curtains hung on either side over which dim blue lights shone, and above the strung lightbulbs were the venue's original lights which looked like upside-down bells with metallic rose-thorns circling around the outside. The venue was held in a building constructed of distressed wood to grant a barn-countryside appeal, despite its location in south-downtown seattle.
At the venue, I realized how much I wish I wasn't terrible with colors. I'm a concrete sequential thinker with a miserable lack of observational ability. If all of my friends walked into the room, one-by-one, and said hello to me and asked me about me day etc, and then left. And someone else subsequently came in and asked me what each one was wearing, I suspect I'd have a less than 1/20 success rate. I don't think in colors, I don't describe very well in color. When describing a scene, I'm more apt to define it in terms of movement.
Seeing motion comes naturally to anyone with athletic background: a ball is flying at my head, so I should duck; someone is passing me the soccer ball, so trap it, and so on. But what hue of green was the grass, what flavor blue the sky, and that yellow-bellied goldfinch - your beautiful color haunts my dreams. I just want to notice you; teach me to notice you.

sonnet fails and other unfinished ramblings

Every year, I struggle with what to give up for Lent. Again, I don't know. Instead of giving up nothing, I generally make a mess of things and give up an assortment of tiny pieces of life. One thing I found I enjoy doing is giving up a specific time of the day. Like saying: 10-10:30 in particular is not mine anymore. It's something like devotions except more like an additional meditation. It doesn't seem like quite a "fast", but I'm bad at this Lenten thing anyway.
The problem I've often faced is that I don't really find myself craving anything. The things I do, I do for one of two reasons generally: personal growth, or social growth. I don't watch television by myself, because I don't consider television to be a point of personal growth. And giving it up socially doesn't make sense, since that isn't a positive sacrifice (it affects my friends more than me).
I don't like chocolate, or alcohol, or coffee a whole lot. I don't drink enough tea to consider eliminating it from my life. Food isn't really an issue in general with me, I think. I could give up certain foods, but unless I'm eating socially, I don't generally have many cravings (except juice and chips and salsa - maybe I should give up those someday... but I'd probably starve)
So what else is there?
I could give up people (just kidding!)
Or reading (terrible, terrible idea)
Or writing (nope)
Or gaming (I just do it socially - so that would only eliminate how I get to interact with a few people. Not worth it)
Or work? aha!
Nope nope nope.
I wish I could give up computer-time after work. That doesn't really work, unfortunately. I could give up facebook, but I'm spending less time on facebook anyway. It's still an option.
My roommate A once gave up his beard. I could do that. Nah.



I fear, more than anything, those days where my heart is a giant hole, a whirlpool at the center of me dragging everything in, and its obverse: an eruption, an explosion of everything falling out without aim, direction. I fear these not, except as uncontrollable spews of devastating days. Where you find yourself lying and staring at the ceiling, wondering how long it might be until anyone noticed you could fly; you collect the tears of angels and brew a bitter tea, and sing the most beautiful outpouring the world has ever seen, but if you are a tree in a forest, great and empty, what joy does it bring?
I think two nights ago was thus, the staring endless at the ceiling.


kneeling, my knees battered, gnawed to the bone -
like the doe that's panting, grant me water -----zzzzz
to fill the cup of dawn, dry and alone.
intercede, holy ghost, and heav'nly father
bring honey and mead, lead on beside streams;
though we e'er falter, help me rise again
grant me the grace of being, of sharing dreams
until nothing of me but love remain.
imploring of the stars, merciful Lord
one wish, upon all the singing sea sands
oh how long, how long will we be ignored?
I'm whispering; praying such things thus ends:
I begged for great things, and of it naught got.
I asked of a little, and gained a good lot

I think there is a reason I don't try to freestyle slant-rhyme sonnets. I probably shouldn't try sonnets in the first place, let alone quickly. This is a testament to my sonnet shame. 

Champaign

everywhere
bronzed and golden wheat, and flatlands
covered in cornstalk greens lay
beside endless meadows beneath
the charioteer sun,
which stretches higher without mountains
nipping at its wheels -
I know, les miserables, why
they call these the plains;
without opening my eyes, I see
every bird, butterfly, soul, and shadow,
forever east, forever west, without trees.
in this country land,
you are I, and this is thee,
and we never without another breathe.
that is the story of the champaign:
battling plains and empty terrain of unity -
or so the story goes...
in the sanguine sunsets,
sometimes I see only crows
and know too readily why they're circling.
not comprehending hope, you hunt it viciously



It's my older brother's birthday tomorrow: happy birthday, Phil! You, more than almost anyone else, are responsible for my being who I am, so thank you and hopefully many more.
Tomorrow is a busy day, so I shan't stay up too late (and I want to read some more about "Dave at Night"). I hope and pray that everyone is doing well, tonight. Only a couple more days until my drive north towards Seattle (and then a little north and east), and I'm pretty excited. I rather enjoy visits to my parent's house - any getaway into the countryside restores me.

Last time I was home, it looked a little like this on the left portion of my backyard, glancing into the forest. I'm excited to see the buds of spring poking out on the maples (maybe - might be a bit early to hope for too much), and the oaks hopefully have something to show me. If not, at least the evergreens will brighten up my days.

Transitions, Dreams, or Artistry

My dreams last night were beautiful, though I remember them so poorly. There was a beautiful forest of oceanic greens and blues, waving in slender, gentle hues and towering towards the heavens. I remember there were people, great and illustrious people, illuminated from within like angels, shedding auras of gold and drinking from crystal clear waters, singing in songs that moved the waters and the wind in an organic dance.

You always wake up, of course, without knowing where the people are going into the woods and for what, or whom, they sing. But I knew they were singing for me, and it was a procession of sorts, not unlike a wedding or funeral, except with a natural festivity - a religious festival.

Today, my drawing assignment was an apple, with light shadow effects. I can tell you that after less than a week's worth of practice, I'm still quite miserable at drawing, but I can already see a little difference in my outlook on things. Really, this is a practice in visual comprehension more than mechanical aptitude. Normally, I see a door and think: "functional; means of passing from indoors into nature or vice versa; opens in or opens out" and so on. 

Already, I've noticed a fractional improvement towards, "door: crimson red with small, indentations like a subliminal window underneath a low-sloped triangular threshold. Immediately over the door is a thin, rectangular window that allows little light through due to the overhanging threshold; brass, rotund knob, and no lock; door is constructed of a light, polished wood though paint is peeling; swivels outward onto a small block patio of cement surrounded by rhododendrons, with ivy crawlers sneaking up the walls on either side of the door" and so on. But mostly, shapes and shadows, moods and tones. What can I reproduce in simple pen or pencil sketches using my current knowledge of such things?

Even though this will be a long process, I'm excited for where the journey will lead me, and already I'm enjoying my little sketchbook and flipping through the pages, noting the small improvements and mistakes as I've learned tiny new tricks.

Virgo Rosas

A small hill before the larger climb

beneath the clear-blue sky, punctuated

by a low line of clouds
crowding in purple-white against the horizon

like the shadows of mountains, erupting

in the setting of the sun -

a purple, thorny coronet
around the heavens.

I summit the wide, eagle peak

spreading its craggy, ridged wings,

bald-capped, save a fairy ring of trees - 

it pauses before flight, locked in ice

and an angel in a tee and casual jeans

prays, kneeling, desperate for some way.

daisies braided in her hair, and roses, but

she's crazed and

a little fae from the nightmare of her days

she begs for love, and faith, and light

to guide her on the path that fades.

the sun descends and the owls, too,

ask unanswered questions, who

am I, passes through my mind, 

as the beautiful girl and the flowers

in her hair, become but ghosts in the mists -

who am I, Antheia, to love thee

Antheia please

The flowers, the blooms, I can smell them heady-strong, and I'm drunk with their love. The starlings nesting in roof slats warble obnoxiously; the trees shrug the world of ice from their shoulders with deep, ancient groans; the stars glitter and parade into new locations while the sky subtly lightens her hue; but it's the flowers, the blossoms I await in my room.

The prickly roses are sleeping beauties, tulips, voluptuous lips of spring, the wildflowers showering the mountainsides paint a picture so brilliant, I discard my easel and become a boy again, rolling down slopes and beneath the willows and evergreens. Spring, spring is coming, the season of life-giving green, days where the light is greater than night.

Where baby bunnies cluster around in the tall grasses, glancing at the true blue sky between the shivering pines, and the sing-song breeze brushes past and whistles to the tune of life; as deer pause by the shimmering silver of streams and lap at ease; when the squirrels chatter with the chirping chickadees, and cottonwood seeds float along the streets and hillsides. Antheia, please, clothe the mountains extravagantly; Rhea, lady of the wilds, wrap the stones, forests, earth, and living with verdancy, and let us see something worthy of a resurrecting.

Sometimes, the loneliest of places are within the wildest of crowds full of unfamiliar faces. You catch fleeting glimpses of passing emotions like sparks from a fire, but never linger long enough with another soul for warmth. It's like a dream, in a city street full of ghosts (are you walking through or with the stream? it's impossible to tell. Is anyone moving?), and the voices and noises around could be the hiss of the wind as easily as the words from the lips of these empty, translucent beings. (am I the same ghostly figure as these? what do I look like in their eyes?) Sometimes, the most fulfilling talks are held from hundreds of miles away, and you only wish they would drag you through these crowds, or that you might fight through them together. But it's only a dream, and the sun will rise and shed new light on life if you wait long enough. 

Sometimes, the greatest joys are those where it's just the holy spirit and I, and she doesn't mind that I know not how to pray, she intercedes anyway.