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

Abstraction

It was a busy day, but a great one, spent with CB. Among the many things we discussed, abstraction was frequently brought up as a necessity in our chosen - of late -  ventures of creativity and thought. CB loves historical reenactment, metalworking, shop-working, and many sorts of historically re-creative craftsmanship of a most excellent sort. If you willingly lend a listening ear and ask the right questions, his quantity and quality of knowledge in the area is seemingly boundless.
(Thank you very much for this, and hopefully again)
CB was explaining how he loves walking into various shops like pet stores, radio-shack type businesses, and other assorted businesses and just glancing at everything, locking it away in his memory. When walking through the pet store, he noticed a peacock feather, and noted how usable that sort of thing is in costume recreation; or a dog-ramp, and abstracting that into a means of easily loading equipment into the truck (if suitably weighted - and he mentioned constructing his own, simply abstracting from the designs of the given ramps).
I commented how it is this sort of abstraction that displays his love and aptitude for these creative shop adventures. He sees a piece of metal, and checks its tensile strength (ductility) and its type, and can infer information about how he might reuse those estimates in other projects making similar or dissimilar things. Don't I do the same thing with words (though with less practice and understanding)?
Both CB and I tend towards rational minds, and abstraction was a trained learning process, not a natural step in our thought patterns. I see a tree, and I see a web, and the tree is under no circumstances a web. However, when I abstract, I can marvel at how the branches leap out into a net of limbs and leaves, woven and draping over me, cast like I am the fish beneath the draping web, frozen in time. I'm terrible at this abstraction as yet, but the study of poetry has opened my eyes, showing me how the peacock feather isn't just that, it is a fountain pen, a tuft in a fancy hat, fletching, rainbow eyelashes, and so on. The universe of abstraction isn't just a vast array of stars in a night sky, but their constellations, stories, coruscation, and the dreams and whispers they share on breezy summer nights.

Ghosts of Faces

ghosts of faces are passing by
past they fly
could they be your friends, or mine?
or I theirs? - it's fine
for on streets or trails there's no goodbyes
for passersby living their own lives
rarely intersecting lines

and what of friends in different places
gone ten million paces
witness distant times
sharing but a moon and stars
of the sky's -
not ours
mountains here, desert there
forests and valleys
or dunes and seas

our times may meet but never, or twice
And your eyes say,
I love
I fly
my spirit's a dove
you'll never watch scrape the sky
nor the tears,
it cries,
of the endless phantoms you never meet
never treat for cups of tea
or campfire retreats
where rivers run besides
and their stories, well
you can never tell
they might have changed your life
might have loved, too
if only you, they, had chanced to say
who are you?

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We celebrated my mother's birthday today. Surprisingly, the weather held. Here's to hoping it lasts a couple more days, so I might hike along the ridge or up a mountain on Wednesday. It does not look promising. We drove to the beach and went to a restaurant that mother dearly loves, and we all glanced out the windows over the ocean and into the water as the ducks paddled by, the jellyfish bounced their way through the waters, the seaweed drifted in its soggy swirls, and kayaks drifted by in the amiable waters. The sun gleamed off the waters and the windows of passing boats, fishing, drifting or sailing in the brine with sea breeze gently pushing at the waters.
Matthew is going to Korea, tomorrow, which is my last outside-the-house friend in Washington that I'm aware of (currently in the area discounting his family and my family - sorry if I forgot you). It will be quiet, perhaps, though I've long needed a little quiet. And how quiet is it really when the word games get crazy? When the card games with the family get joyful? Not. So. Silent.
Or when the coyotes howl with the distant neighbors huskies or when the wind races through the valley, stirring all the trees into frenzied whispers and wooden groans. It is a good sort of silence, and loudness. A restful set. Maybe I'll finish a few more books this week, too. Time for some creativity, time for some art, time for story magic and myth.