Living with a talented six-year-old is a recursive indulgence. Brandon, he's my son, he picks up language with surprising skill--surprising for me, anyway, this being my first go-around living with and raising a developing mind. He is, in most ways, a regular 21st Century boy: likes Power Rangers S.P.D. and attention from his older brother, can be selfish with his toys and selfless with his love, is lost in catatonia during shows, snapping out precisely as the first commercial begins its whorish song.
He doesn't think about it, and ay, that's the Hub. He doesn't know that he continues to pick up new words, abstract ideas like imagination and responsibility, technical terms like detach and meditate, perfectly placed verbs that outrebound the basics of prepositions.
This morning: "Mommy, Stephan tickled me, I peed! I peed! I didn't mean to--he tickled, so I react on pee." One can try to teach this, but it won't work. There is a capacity here with context that will continue to build on itself. Vocabularly increase plus contextual expansion is a forming universe.
Is he John Keats reborn? Is he just another kid? Either way, on a blizzardic day where leaving is no option and the denizens of our homes are too loud for thoughtful odes, I can't imagine a better conceit.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
Hear the joke now
No one tells a story like a Trinidadian. There is a skill at work when one in the group gets things started with a key phrase, signifying something new is about to be shared. The room never gets quiet, the group never fully stops talking, but the attention, even if partial, goes to the speaker. Sometimes the interest is keen, sometimes the spite is evident, but never does anyone leave. It's on.
The oral traditions of poetry are clearly in motion. A rousing call turns microscopically aural in a turn of a phrase: absolute intonation incantation, and always an occasional silence to allow the others to comment, very much like your vision of a new testament church service, that same passion and shared focus, just irreverently so. Changes in pitch complement not just brilliant language colors, but the props of the play--a suck-tooth, a whoo-whee, a well boy, and dozens of onomatopeiac accents. Understanding dialect is not an issue for stories that hit us in a core many of us don't visit or even knowledge.
The story itself? Almost irrelevent to the joy of communication, the community of memory and purpose. I fear describing this too much from the side, but I also refuse to try to transcribe the moment. How quickly nice stories can rub us the wrong way; a journalist of different cultures toes lines of characteristics that too often spoil the point: as my beloved poetry professor William Kloefkorn said as only he can say, no guts, no sausage.
The oral traditions of poetry are clearly in motion. A rousing call turns microscopically aural in a turn of a phrase: absolute intonation incantation, and always an occasional silence to allow the others to comment, very much like your vision of a new testament church service, that same passion and shared focus, just irreverently so. Changes in pitch complement not just brilliant language colors, but the props of the play--a suck-tooth, a whoo-whee, a well boy, and dozens of onomatopeiac accents. Understanding dialect is not an issue for stories that hit us in a core many of us don't visit or even knowledge.
The story itself? Almost irrelevent to the joy of communication, the community of memory and purpose. I fear describing this too much from the side, but I also refuse to try to transcribe the moment. How quickly nice stories can rub us the wrong way; a journalist of different cultures toes lines of characteristics that too often spoil the point: as my beloved poetry professor William Kloefkorn said as only he can say, no guts, no sausage.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Obsession
Though I live within words, I'm always there as an outsider. I've so rarely had that moment, a one true moment of literary ecstasy. This frustrates me terribly, because I expect inspiration and life-changing events from what I read, and it doesn't play out. My life has changed in cataclysmic ways, though, and I have had those moments accompanied with music. Please enjoy one account from February 2005 that captures that. I include it here in hopes of jump-starting my soul to activate from words, to make love with what I see the way I have heard such perfect and horrible and changing chords and choruses that carried me in my occasional moments of quiet destruction.
Listening to the same songs over and over, I get that from my mom. I remember her playing “I’m Just a Gigolo” by David Lee Roth so many times that I would wake up humming the chorus. (Don’t hold the song choice against her—your moms loved that song too.) It wasn’t my favorite song, what with the strange words I didn’t understand; I was still trying to figure out what a casbah and Der Kommissar meant, let alone this “gigolo” thing. But I never minded it—I loved seeing my mom so taken with a song that it made her smile every time she played it. Maybe that’s the first time I understood music as some kind of escape.
I listen to the same songs all the time. I wore out my CD player listening to “Dig for Fire” when I spilled my confused heart onto paper at age 18, writing a letter I never intended to send. Or before cross-country races, I’d play some truly pathetic songs on repeat—I’m talking things like “Ain’t Nothin’ Gonna Break My Stride” over and over, okay? I tell you this not because I don’t get embarrassed—I assure you I am Loverboy-red as I write this—but so you trust me that you’re getting an honest piece of writing from me.
I always have honed in on certain songs and played them so many times in a row. I don’t do it because I’m trying to learn the lyrics or how to play air drums to the song, or even because I want to. I guess there’s some kind of comfort with it, boring as it is, so it just happens without me thinking about it. And while I certainly pick better songs these days, I’ve found that I revisit songs much more so now than I used to, which surprises me. It seems like a teenage thing to do, playing on repeat. Maybe it’s that I now listen to most of my music through iTunes, which given the fact I use the built-in speakers must horrify all lovers of music.
I think it’s the ease of repeating songs that has made this habit worse. I’m aware that I do this now more than I used to because of this horrible data field on the interface called “Play Count,” which lists the number of times you play each song. Where I once overlistened to anything without compunction, I must say that seeing 48 plays of “Hey Ya!” doesn’t make me feel particularly cool. To be fair to me, I can tell you that 46 of the listens were before that song started appearing on every awards show commercial in the world.
This Play Count started fascinating me, though, as I thought about not just what I listened to so much, but why. Is it the pretty sounds of The Flaming Lips' “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” that generated 78 listens, or do the words, eccentric as they are, just inspire some part of my life? What about tripe like 311’s “Amber” or Elefant’s “Misfit,” to which I’ve given 47 listens each? Does the easy stuff help me as I work on my computer? These large play counts may be less an indication of what I like and more a practical effort—these songs help me get stuff done, not so much an escape as an aid through what I’m not escaping.
Even with all of this on my mind, I’m shocked at what’s happened to me in the last month, when Interpol and Antics entered my life. I’m always a bit behind what others are doing; do you know anyone else who doesn’t have a cell phone? So, I didn’t start listening as this album came out, even though several friends had it and loved it. One friend let me borrow the CD right away, but after importing the songs, I proceeded to listen to Modest Mouse some more (92 listens of all songs to this point, and so many more for “The World At Large”—talk about a literal interpretation of “I know that starting over’s not what life is about, but my thoughts were so loud I couldn’t hear my mouth”...okay, so I’m still not particularly cool).
Then, it was just right. Interpol crashed into my world. It might have been a Tuesday or a Saturday, possibly in the day but more likely at night. Was I sad? Was I distracted? I don’t remember anything specific, not until I took the time, why I don’t know, to take in the album’s second track, “Evil.” At this point I stepped away from my life—but not to escape. I stepped away from my life to leap back into myself. If you’re honest with yourself, you know we all detach at times. But me, I was adrift, and I didn’t even realize it until I landed.
I’m a person who has listened to songs repetitively my whole life, but I have never been taken like this, not by an album, not by one song. I can’t stop listening to the album, to “Evil.” I can’t stop and I don’t want to stop. I listen at work when I’m busy, I play it in my head on the way home, I take it in at night as I close my eyes after a night on my computer, desperate to give my eyes a break, grateful to open up my blanketed insides one last time. Not so much repetitive as recursive. Or obsessive.
It’s with me so deeply right now that I may someday look back and be concerned. But now, I accept its necessity in my life and its strange relevance to what seems to be an ordinary life: mine. They talk directly to Rosemary and Sandy, but this song is me singing to…someone. Myself? You? Do I even know anymore? Can I be that honest? In a sky full of distant lights, can I reach up to grab the one that no one else sees igniting?
I must be building up to something, or maybe I’m being shown that I’m already there. The past tense world we fall into sometimes has shattered with this infinitive pulse, these dark notes and these simple truths. What does it mean to be evil? Is the world so black and white if everyone says it is, even if you know better? If those around you say something is wrong, who are we to say it is right? And how do those guitars so completely absorb and excite me, a first-time energy repeated forever?
I’ve put off writing this article for so long. Sometimes we distract ourselves when we’re afraid of what we might find. But I’m not afraid. I feel new, like I’m experiencing a first kiss, but with an adult’s ability to understand its significance, then ignore all that to taste the purity. We all know music can be an escape. But sometimes, if we let it, it brings us back to who we are. I am both contestant and audience of my own show. I am a dog, loyal to what I’m told but driven by instinct, and I am owner, taking his dog out so he can find the local news. We are all walking contradictions—we just realize it at different times. Maybe it’s just most of us. Maybe it’s just me. Those that don’t realize it: they are probably happy all of their lives.
Do I make sense to you? When deep into an obsession, we don’t always care about others, but I want you to understand who I am right now. This is my time to not sleep, to not eat, to go about my day in a daze—not to find who I am, but to let myself be found. If you don’t know me better from this, how can it end? Or do I really want you to know me this way? I’m honest with myself—that doesn’t mean I’m always brave about it. I’ve been so honest with you. Is it because I can’t be honest with myself? I will stop listening some day, when I am someone different and less complicated. But not now.
In a soul with this many complications, do you understand why I can listen one thousand times to something so intensely, beautifully, completely, and weightlessly simple?
Hey wait.
Great smile.
Yes.
This piece originally published in Some Other Magazine.
Listening to the same songs over and over, I get that from my mom. I remember her playing “I’m Just a Gigolo” by David Lee Roth so many times that I would wake up humming the chorus. (Don’t hold the song choice against her—your moms loved that song too.) It wasn’t my favorite song, what with the strange words I didn’t understand; I was still trying to figure out what a casbah and Der Kommissar meant, let alone this “gigolo” thing. But I never minded it—I loved seeing my mom so taken with a song that it made her smile every time she played it. Maybe that’s the first time I understood music as some kind of escape.
I listen to the same songs all the time. I wore out my CD player listening to “Dig for Fire” when I spilled my confused heart onto paper at age 18, writing a letter I never intended to send. Or before cross-country races, I’d play some truly pathetic songs on repeat—I’m talking things like “Ain’t Nothin’ Gonna Break My Stride” over and over, okay? I tell you this not because I don’t get embarrassed—I assure you I am Loverboy-red as I write this—but so you trust me that you’re getting an honest piece of writing from me.
I always have honed in on certain songs and played them so many times in a row. I don’t do it because I’m trying to learn the lyrics or how to play air drums to the song, or even because I want to. I guess there’s some kind of comfort with it, boring as it is, so it just happens without me thinking about it. And while I certainly pick better songs these days, I’ve found that I revisit songs much more so now than I used to, which surprises me. It seems like a teenage thing to do, playing on repeat. Maybe it’s that I now listen to most of my music through iTunes, which given the fact I use the built-in speakers must horrify all lovers of music.
I think it’s the ease of repeating songs that has made this habit worse. I’m aware that I do this now more than I used to because of this horrible data field on the interface called “Play Count,” which lists the number of times you play each song. Where I once overlistened to anything without compunction, I must say that seeing 48 plays of “Hey Ya!” doesn’t make me feel particularly cool. To be fair to me, I can tell you that 46 of the listens were before that song started appearing on every awards show commercial in the world.
This Play Count started fascinating me, though, as I thought about not just what I listened to so much, but why. Is it the pretty sounds of The Flaming Lips' “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” that generated 78 listens, or do the words, eccentric as they are, just inspire some part of my life? What about tripe like 311’s “Amber” or Elefant’s “Misfit,” to which I’ve given 47 listens each? Does the easy stuff help me as I work on my computer? These large play counts may be less an indication of what I like and more a practical effort—these songs help me get stuff done, not so much an escape as an aid through what I’m not escaping.
Even with all of this on my mind, I’m shocked at what’s happened to me in the last month, when Interpol and Antics entered my life. I’m always a bit behind what others are doing; do you know anyone else who doesn’t have a cell phone? So, I didn’t start listening as this album came out, even though several friends had it and loved it. One friend let me borrow the CD right away, but after importing the songs, I proceeded to listen to Modest Mouse some more (92 listens of all songs to this point, and so many more for “The World At Large”—talk about a literal interpretation of “I know that starting over’s not what life is about, but my thoughts were so loud I couldn’t hear my mouth”...okay, so I’m still not particularly cool).Then, it was just right. Interpol crashed into my world. It might have been a Tuesday or a Saturday, possibly in the day but more likely at night. Was I sad? Was I distracted? I don’t remember anything specific, not until I took the time, why I don’t know, to take in the album’s second track, “Evil.” At this point I stepped away from my life—but not to escape. I stepped away from my life to leap back into myself. If you’re honest with yourself, you know we all detach at times. But me, I was adrift, and I didn’t even realize it until I landed.
I’m a person who has listened to songs repetitively my whole life, but I have never been taken like this, not by an album, not by one song. I can’t stop listening to the album, to “Evil.” I can’t stop and I don’t want to stop. I listen at work when I’m busy, I play it in my head on the way home, I take it in at night as I close my eyes after a night on my computer, desperate to give my eyes a break, grateful to open up my blanketed insides one last time. Not so much repetitive as recursive. Or obsessive.
It’s with me so deeply right now that I may someday look back and be concerned. But now, I accept its necessity in my life and its strange relevance to what seems to be an ordinary life: mine. They talk directly to Rosemary and Sandy, but this song is me singing to…someone. Myself? You? Do I even know anymore? Can I be that honest? In a sky full of distant lights, can I reach up to grab the one that no one else sees igniting?
I must be building up to something, or maybe I’m being shown that I’m already there. The past tense world we fall into sometimes has shattered with this infinitive pulse, these dark notes and these simple truths. What does it mean to be evil? Is the world so black and white if everyone says it is, even if you know better? If those around you say something is wrong, who are we to say it is right? And how do those guitars so completely absorb and excite me, a first-time energy repeated forever?
I’ve put off writing this article for so long. Sometimes we distract ourselves when we’re afraid of what we might find. But I’m not afraid. I feel new, like I’m experiencing a first kiss, but with an adult’s ability to understand its significance, then ignore all that to taste the purity. We all know music can be an escape. But sometimes, if we let it, it brings us back to who we are. I am both contestant and audience of my own show. I am a dog, loyal to what I’m told but driven by instinct, and I am owner, taking his dog out so he can find the local news. We are all walking contradictions—we just realize it at different times. Maybe it’s just most of us. Maybe it’s just me. Those that don’t realize it: they are probably happy all of their lives.
Do I make sense to you? When deep into an obsession, we don’t always care about others, but I want you to understand who I am right now. This is my time to not sleep, to not eat, to go about my day in a daze—not to find who I am, but to let myself be found. If you don’t know me better from this, how can it end? Or do I really want you to know me this way? I’m honest with myself—that doesn’t mean I’m always brave about it. I’ve been so honest with you. Is it because I can’t be honest with myself? I will stop listening some day, when I am someone different and less complicated. But not now.
In a soul with this many complications, do you understand why I can listen one thousand times to something so intensely, beautifully, completely, and weightlessly simple?
Hey wait.
Great smile.
Yes.
This piece originally published in Some Other Magazine.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Macroscian
Macrosian is a mysterious word. It's so intentional and so unknown. I'm sorry I've only recently come across it.
Chair too stiff,
lights too bright,
slowly becoming mole people
Not-bad people
turned to not good,
assholes have vampire influence.
I miss the sun,
I miss cute girls,
I'm right downtown but still alone in a world.
Getting fat,
not from home cooking,
offices not in the Bible.
I'm no longer feeling vital
This life is no longer right
Maybe it was never right
But my goals weren't so white,
My teeth are still white,
but no one's seen them in months.
1. One casting a long shadow.
2. One who inhabits polar regions.
3. Me, always.
Chair too stiff,
lights too bright,
slowly becoming mole people
Not-bad people
turned to not good,
assholes have vampire influence.
I miss the sun,
I miss cute girls,
I'm right downtown but still alone in a world.
Getting fat,
not from home cooking,
offices not in the Bible.
I'm no longer feeling vital
This life is no longer right
Maybe it was never right
But my goals weren't so white,
My teeth are still white,
but no one's seen them in months.
1. One casting a long shadow.
2. One who inhabits polar regions.
3. Me, always.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
10 minutes
Plenty of time to write, really. Dr. Williams built his lifetime body in between delivering bodies from bodies. If not time consuming, applaud WCW for working his beatuiful works amid biological distraction. Many of us put our creativity and energy into the reasons not to write rather than typing some damn words. Worst decision I ever made was moving off of paper and into cyberia. Can cantos come between e-mail updates and the urge to post our face to strangers?
10 minutes before they arrive, before I am left and go become that. Do I really need more time? Not when I have been suffering with internal pleading for this peripateia, this relative abundance of peace, this declaration of intense and wondrous and tragically brief quiet.
10 minutes before they arrive, before I am left and go become that. Do I really need more time? Not when I have been suffering with internal pleading for this peripateia, this relative abundance of peace, this declaration of intense and wondrous and tragically brief quiet.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Xerophagy
These are supposed to be good days for woolgathering. But those eyes, like Guinness, they remind how much good things can be and so are not. Sad how we adapt to boring phrases and dull experiences rather than revolt. Our bodies physically repel against the unadventurous life with putrefaction, and we accept this? How can we call ourselves members of an animal kingdom with this response? Ah, tis our minds that make us different, minds that warn us to stay adroit by sending the message to laugh at sitcoms or respond to inquiries into our health and well being with one word, and never an interesting one. These warnings so often fail as we mistranslate this sirenic blare to mean "time to relax." Tell me again about our amazing brains? Let's wait until the commercial.
Those eyes, they should draw us from this grave, dissemble the bars with which we surround ourselves, and inject us with such passionate fury as to refuse the unoriginal and deny ourselves all our poison comforts.
Our lives are wired for these moments. And when obstructions occur, our wiring is supposed to adjust. War, economy, stress, relationships, futures: these are the guts of daydreaming, the equal and opposite pre-action to idle thoughts and restful minds and eyes that ignite, eyes that devastate with eternal depth and resuscitate with a blink of such perfect length. How did we fuck this up?
Those eyes, they should draw us from this grave, dissemble the bars with which we surround ourselves, and inject us with such passionate fury as to refuse the unoriginal and deny ourselves all our poison comforts.
Our lives are wired for these moments. And when obstructions occur, our wiring is supposed to adjust. War, economy, stress, relationships, futures: these are the guts of daydreaming, the equal and opposite pre-action to idle thoughts and restful minds and eyes that ignite, eyes that devastate with eternal depth and resuscitate with a blink of such perfect length. How did we fuck this up?
Sunday, November 4, 2007
An End for Daylight
The last time I wrote here, people told me to change my clock. Two seasons later, they tell me to change it back. I have singular feelings about being led astray by others, only to be brought back into the good stuff by the same ones who led me astray. There's some lesson here to be applied to meth users, or habitual cheaters, or the next kid to break his face trying to film himself popping a wheelie from his roof so he can send a YouTube link of the act to Vida Guerra's MySpace profile, but right now I need to concern myself with myself. That's evident in a blog entry, but not really now that I type that out and think about what those words mean. What is a blog entry but being unconcerned with ourselves for ourselves, and entirely filled with ourselves for others. Our personal pieces are for you to see, and we always act differently when others watch, don't we? Dostoyevsky comes out of the bag when the right people are watching. A stranger sees us grieving, and we show him how we grieve. How do we actually grieve? We don't know, you know. Single tasks don't give us cause to record internally.
I saw my friend look dead today. Maybe that's why I'm typing now. Maybe that's why any of us type, or read, or connect.
Couple of important changes in awareness to share. One: the lesson has already been written:
Typical with me: my best ideas are from others, learned in part, remembering just the basics and forgetting the luscious details and the essential core. Realizing this is a nice feeling, though. It's fun to take part in a Dante simulation, in a pantomime of what we are not. What we are so often disappoints when we take the time to go deep. Or frightens.
Second change: there is no change. The stream into which we step really is the same.
Third change: I'm writing again. Nothing new for me to start writing again. Maybe this will be the time it continues. If not, there's always more friends that will look dead, more authors to pretend to be, more streams to contemplate from the underside, where light never comes out of the bag because the right people are never looking.
I saw my friend look dead today. Maybe that's why I'm typing now. Maybe that's why any of us type, or read, or connect.
Couple of important changes in awareness to share. One: the lesson has already been written:
- “Master, what is it that I hear? Who are those people so defeated by their pain?”
And he to me: “This miserable way is taken by the sorry souls of those who lived without disgrace and without praise. They now commingle with the coward angels, the company of those who were not rebels nor faithful to their God, but stood apart. The heavens, that their beauty not be lessened, have cast them out, nor will deep Hell receive them—even the wicked cannot glory in them.”—Inferno, Canto III.
Typical with me: my best ideas are from others, learned in part, remembering just the basics and forgetting the luscious details and the essential core. Realizing this is a nice feeling, though. It's fun to take part in a Dante simulation, in a pantomime of what we are not. What we are so often disappoints when we take the time to go deep. Or frightens.Second change: there is no change. The stream into which we step really is the same.
Third change: I'm writing again. Nothing new for me to start writing again. Maybe this will be the time it continues. If not, there's always more friends that will look dead, more authors to pretend to be, more streams to contemplate from the underside, where light never comes out of the bag because the right people are never looking.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
In the Mood To Write
I just don't know what. I won't let that stop me, though--that's the point of this whole thing, right, to be able to write no matter when we're in the mood, and no matter if we have anything to say. It's the opposite of a blank piece of paper, which is so difficult to add ink to, just like that. You could say that this environment is so easy, too easy. When anything is worthy of writing about, do words die?
Time to end this, for self preservation. Just like that.
Time to end this, for self preservation. Just like that.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Ear Slime
This is why I'm hot, this is why I'm hot, this is why, this is why, this is why I'm hot.
This is why I'm hot, this is why I'm hot, this is why, this is why, this is why I'm hot.
I'm hot because I'm fly, you ain't because you not, this is—CEASE AND DESIST. Enough.
This song, which I'm sure is called "This Is Why I'm Hot," is such a complete pile of shit that I hesitate to use so familiar a term, lest you consider it in the same vein as any other pile of shit you might hear. My Humps is a pile of shit, but you might catch yourself dancing to it for a few seconds. "I went down, down to the disco--damn, can't believe I just shook my ass to that." But you did. But This Is Why I'm Hot? Like gonhorrea and our appendices, I wonder why it exists.
I cannot get that line out of my head: I'm hot because I'm fly, you ain't because you not." It's a wood-burrowing insect mistaking my brain for oak. It's an enormous wad of Big League Chew caught in a boot. I'd give up at least three toes to be fluent in any language, or to remember long sections of obscure plays, or even someone's birthday without help from Microsoft Outlook, but this stank line--probably with me for life.
This is why I'm hot, this is why I'm hot, this is why, this is why, this is why I'm hot.
I'm hot because I'm fly, you ain't because you not, this is—CEASE AND DESIST. Enough.
This song, which I'm sure is called "This Is Why I'm Hot," is such a complete pile of shit that I hesitate to use so familiar a term, lest you consider it in the same vein as any other pile of shit you might hear. My Humps is a pile of shit, but you might catch yourself dancing to it for a few seconds. "I went down, down to the disco--damn, can't believe I just shook my ass to that." But you did. But This Is Why I'm Hot? Like gonhorrea and our appendices, I wonder why it exists.
I cannot get that line out of my head: I'm hot because I'm fly, you ain't because you not." It's a wood-burrowing insect mistaking my brain for oak. It's an enormous wad of Big League Chew caught in a boot. I'd give up at least three toes to be fluent in any language, or to remember long sections of obscure plays, or even someone's birthday without help from Microsoft Outlook, but this stank line--probably with me for life.
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Incunabulum
What can you say about a person who prefers the lives of poets to the poems themselves? The poems now refer to their past so much that almost nothing is original. How can it be? To paraphrase someone I can't remember once said, Elizabethan England had 20 poets. There's now 20 poets in one neighborhood in Dayton, Ohio. It's all been said!
Give me the lives of the authors instead: Genet's impossible life, Anais Nin's non-self-published secrets, and Rimbaud's back-alley adventures! Their words are surely the same as something somebody did, but their lives, their creative quest, usual sexual and exciting, is always original.
I want to find the Ur-book, the one that makes no reference to others because there's nothing else to reference. This takes imagination, though. How can we imagine The Iliad as original when its progeny are everywhere? How can we understand a world of no Hamlet when we exist with him, when he is a part of our upbringing, like a home from childhood
Even Os Lusiadas, the greatest story no one reads. Even this gorgeous tale begins by ripping off Virgil, and ends I don't know how, because who can finish 10 cantos during commercials? No, better to read about Luis Vaz de Camoes, who lost an eye in battle defending his country in an unnecessary war, who fought the wrong guy in the streets and was jailed for it, who served in an Orient that knew no Occident: human suffering and perseverance that any dummy can get, even if they don't like that heavy stuff. Can't you see him, tossed into the water from a shipwreck, his masterwork in one hand above the waves as he struggles to reach land? Can't you feel that desperation? We need his words to need to know him. His words are for our souls, when we're ready. His struggle is for our lives, ready or not.
He died as his country ceased to be. Vice versa, probably. Either way, it's been done.
Give me the lives of the authors instead: Genet's impossible life, Anais Nin's non-self-published secrets, and Rimbaud's back-alley adventures! Their words are surely the same as something somebody did, but their lives, their creative quest, usual sexual and exciting, is always original.
I want to find the Ur-book, the one that makes no reference to others because there's nothing else to reference. This takes imagination, though. How can we imagine The Iliad as original when its progeny are everywhere? How can we understand a world of no Hamlet when we exist with him, when he is a part of our upbringing, like a home from childhood
Even Os Lusiadas, the greatest story no one reads. Even this gorgeous tale begins by ripping off Virgil, and ends I don't know how, because who can finish 10 cantos during commercials? No, better to read about Luis Vaz de Camoes, who lost an eye in battle defending his country in an unnecessary war, who fought the wrong guy in the streets and was jailed for it, who served in an Orient that knew no Occident: human suffering and perseverance that any dummy can get, even if they don't like that heavy stuff. Can't you see him, tossed into the water from a shipwreck, his masterwork in one hand above the waves as he struggles to reach land? Can't you feel that desperation? We need his words to need to know him. His words are for our souls, when we're ready. His struggle is for our lives, ready or not.He died as his country ceased to be. Vice versa, probably. Either way, it's been done.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Words Like Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks' decision: to stay seated when asked to stand. Physically this is an anti-action, but what a black person staying seated on a bus in 1950s Alabama meant when a white person wanted the seat ended up being a mighty, cataclysmic act. You don’t need me to tell you the story—you’ve read it already. If you’re American, you know it already.
Or at least know part of the story. The adjectives that always describe her are words like “quiet” and “humble.” Perhaps she was quiet and humble, but that puts heavy limits on how we picture her. By extension we then envision her as old and tired, and we assume that she stayed seated because her feet were sore: why else would a quiet, humble, old, tired seamstress stay seated when asked to move?
We never hear of who she was outside of this singular image. As she put it herself, she wasn’t that old and she wasn’t that tired, at least physically. She was just tired mentally of being treated as something less than she was. We all have our limits, and she hit hers 50 years ago on a bus.
So she didn’t give up her seat, so she was arrested, and so began an American upheaval: boycotts, sit-ins, nonviolent protest against sometimes-violent response, and forced recognition that race relations in American had to be confronted, under the leadership of Martin Luther King and so many others. All from one person staying seated. You’ll never see a Rosa Parks movie because the climax of the story is physically so underwhelming. In fact, it’s almost difficult for those of us who never lived with or were directly affected by Jim Crow to feel this completely, what not standing means fully.
This is why she’s one of my heroes. I don’t use that term loosely—this isn’t me being a politician (because admiring Rosa Parks isn’t particularly original or striking). I actually don’t have many heroes. There are lots of heroic people I’ve encountered and that have influenced me, but few that I understand as and treat as heroes—that combination of reverence, excitement, and comfort that they bring to those that adore them.
It’s how she became famous that makes her heroic to me. She not only confronted a frightening inhumanity in the face, but she did it alone, and she did it without fanfare or in the quest for attention. If this act had been planned, or if there was a group march off of the bus, things might have turned out the same, but maybe they wouldn’t have. The fact that this one person acted from her soul alone, that it was unstaged, that it was truly derived without pretense gave the act its inspired spark to start the Civil Rights revolution. The “civil” in Civil Rights refers to people as citizens, but her civility in the face of brutishness makes me think there’s dual meaning there.
I want to write words that are like Rosa Parks. I want to read words that are like Rosa Parks. I want to live in a time when words, even if spoken quietly or written in humble letters, are communicated freely and received openly.
Is it fair to say that words mean less than they once did? I dislike romanticizing the past at the expense of a modern present (writers of blogs shouldn’t be bashing technology), but I think of a time when words were available in far fewer and infinitely slower media. In the 1800s, there were books for those who could afford them, newspapers and broadsides, plays, and conversation—and a lot of quiet time in between to consider what was said. We now have so many words fighting for our attention that it’s a miracle that we can still function. I love our open access to the words of millions of people everywhere we go—blogs and myriad other venues for publishing what we write allow for free communication and open reception.
But I hate how easily they are written.
With a deluge of words comes a watering down of what they carry. Language is as spiritual an entity as any in my life. With words we are both one with each other and one with ourselves. This ability we have is so easy to take for granted, which is so sad. You can’t revere and benefit fully from that which you take for granted. If we all knew language in so pure a way, its message and meaning would be perpetually powerful, regardless of whom was communicating: seamstresses should be world changers just as much as presidents.
But now there are simply too many words. They are all over us at all hours of the day, and we have no escape. Before we can take the time with some words, new words are coming at us. Loud words muffle soft ones, and boisterous trumps thoughtful every time. The TV personalities and talk radio stars and public figures in our lives rarely express the best words. They are just the best at being heard.
And as listeners, we continue to be drawn to the words that force themselves upon us rather than those we have to find. Words we equate with dignity and civility are invisible or silent in a shouting match. We should be brave enough as listeners to not rely on those communicating to give us the best words, but to go out ourselves and seek them out. We so rarely do.
How can we know who we are if we can’t hear each other in our most thoughtful, defining moments? When it’s our turn to look injustice in the face and make a stand, will anyone be able to hear us? Will anyone know what we did?
This was originally published in Some Other Magazine.
Or at least know part of the story. The adjectives that always describe her are words like “quiet” and “humble.” Perhaps she was quiet and humble, but that puts heavy limits on how we picture her. By extension we then envision her as old and tired, and we assume that she stayed seated because her feet were sore: why else would a quiet, humble, old, tired seamstress stay seated when asked to move?
We never hear of who she was outside of this singular image. As she put it herself, she wasn’t that old and she wasn’t that tired, at least physically. She was just tired mentally of being treated as something less than she was. We all have our limits, and she hit hers 50 years ago on a bus.
So she didn’t give up her seat, so she was arrested, and so began an American upheaval: boycotts, sit-ins, nonviolent protest against sometimes-violent response, and forced recognition that race relations in American had to be confronted, under the leadership of Martin Luther King and so many others. All from one person staying seated. You’ll never see a Rosa Parks movie because the climax of the story is physically so underwhelming. In fact, it’s almost difficult for those of us who never lived with or were directly affected by Jim Crow to feel this completely, what not standing means fully.This is why she’s one of my heroes. I don’t use that term loosely—this isn’t me being a politician (because admiring Rosa Parks isn’t particularly original or striking). I actually don’t have many heroes. There are lots of heroic people I’ve encountered and that have influenced me, but few that I understand as and treat as heroes—that combination of reverence, excitement, and comfort that they bring to those that adore them.
It’s how she became famous that makes her heroic to me. She not only confronted a frightening inhumanity in the face, but she did it alone, and she did it without fanfare or in the quest for attention. If this act had been planned, or if there was a group march off of the bus, things might have turned out the same, but maybe they wouldn’t have. The fact that this one person acted from her soul alone, that it was unstaged, that it was truly derived without pretense gave the act its inspired spark to start the Civil Rights revolution. The “civil” in Civil Rights refers to people as citizens, but her civility in the face of brutishness makes me think there’s dual meaning there.
I want to write words that are like Rosa Parks. I want to read words that are like Rosa Parks. I want to live in a time when words, even if spoken quietly or written in humble letters, are communicated freely and received openly.
Is it fair to say that words mean less than they once did? I dislike romanticizing the past at the expense of a modern present (writers of blogs shouldn’t be bashing technology), but I think of a time when words were available in far fewer and infinitely slower media. In the 1800s, there were books for those who could afford them, newspapers and broadsides, plays, and conversation—and a lot of quiet time in between to consider what was said. We now have so many words fighting for our attention that it’s a miracle that we can still function. I love our open access to the words of millions of people everywhere we go—blogs and myriad other venues for publishing what we write allow for free communication and open reception.
But I hate how easily they are written.
With a deluge of words comes a watering down of what they carry. Language is as spiritual an entity as any in my life. With words we are both one with each other and one with ourselves. This ability we have is so easy to take for granted, which is so sad. You can’t revere and benefit fully from that which you take for granted. If we all knew language in so pure a way, its message and meaning would be perpetually powerful, regardless of whom was communicating: seamstresses should be world changers just as much as presidents.
But now there are simply too many words. They are all over us at all hours of the day, and we have no escape. Before we can take the time with some words, new words are coming at us. Loud words muffle soft ones, and boisterous trumps thoughtful every time. The TV personalities and talk radio stars and public figures in our lives rarely express the best words. They are just the best at being heard.
And as listeners, we continue to be drawn to the words that force themselves upon us rather than those we have to find. Words we equate with dignity and civility are invisible or silent in a shouting match. We should be brave enough as listeners to not rely on those communicating to give us the best words, but to go out ourselves and seek them out. We so rarely do.
How can we know who we are if we can’t hear each other in our most thoughtful, defining moments? When it’s our turn to look injustice in the face and make a stand, will anyone be able to hear us? Will anyone know what we did?
This was originally published in Some Other Magazine.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Wonderland-Bowdoin
Blank sheets are scary shit. They are why Jeffrey Dahmer got fat, why Adolf was so driven to leave his artistic whispering to hate some people so much, why some homeless are attacked by kids who should be trading candy, why beer is turned unbeautiful by the most unoriginal life forms you can imagine, why tears fall during a tire commercial of a bad show, why families are forcibly separated for no easy reason, why some rings are so heavy and others not heavy enough, why that song at this time punctures our vase.
I hate blank sheets too, almost all of us do. It's our reactions that differ, like stories from a 2:00 p.m. shooting in a busy downtown. So he might be pleased with your behavior and she might be annoyed. Me, I wish you the worst. I don't listen to music or read books during our commute, so what else can I do but see such dangerous visions, and push my hidden terrors into your future as I make myself throb in the ecstasy of occasional violence. All this, even though I don't know you and your only offense was not pissing me off when I hoped you would.
Time to fill some sheets, no matter what the cost. Our lives and your ribs are in the balance.
I hate blank sheets too, almost all of us do. It's our reactions that differ, like stories from a 2:00 p.m. shooting in a busy downtown. So he might be pleased with your behavior and she might be annoyed. Me, I wish you the worst. I don't listen to music or read books during our commute, so what else can I do but see such dangerous visions, and push my hidden terrors into your future as I make myself throb in the ecstasy of occasional violence. All this, even though I don't know you and your only offense was not pissing me off when I hoped you would.
Time to fill some sheets, no matter what the cost. Our lives and your ribs are in the balance.
Monday, February 5, 2007
Maundering Around
In the deepest part of the day, when the bottom of the most recent cup glares helplessly at us and we can't conceive of being orderly and efficient for another moment, we suffer. A white-collar suffering is a relative feeling—that is, relatively fine compared to the suffering that goes on in the rest of the world—but those of us with enough fortune in our life to be reading words online are allowed to have pangs, even if we are well fed and mostly secure. See, our decent lot in life is unknown to our soul, which is made of the same stuff as those in Papua New Guinea, Baghdad, Vladistovok, or even Darfur, the saddest place I'm capable of imagining. Our minds and hearts rise and fall with our circumstances, but our soul has its ups and downs independent of our plans. Whether buying Super Bowl tickets or robbing a house for a meal, people know joy from beautiful faces and know pain from a lack of petrichor or even daylit sky, blue with the newly dead.
Still, my soul ascends with what it takes in: your chatoyant eyes in surprising candlelight. My insides are vibrant with this experience that I have not experienced, this memory that will not go into the past. But such clumsy words for something so pure. Let's go pilgrim on this one:
I will be your sooterkin.
Let me be your slobberchops.
Still, my soul ascends with what it takes in: your chatoyant eyes in surprising candlelight. My insides are vibrant with this experience that I have not experienced, this memory that will not go into the past. But such clumsy words for something so pure. Let's go pilgrim on this one:
I will be your sooterkin.
Let me be your slobberchops.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
In Love With Lorum Ipsum
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit… So begins Lorum Ipsum. Long used by graphic designers, the text that constitutes Lorum Ipsum, originally a section of a book by Cicero, serves as filler in sample layouts or web pages. By varying in word and paragraph length, the text is much more useful in creating templates and designs than repeating "place text here" 500 times. For more on the history of Lorum Ipsum and to generate your own dummy text (you know you want to), please see www.lipsum.com.
I do design work, but that's not why I'm writing about this Latin today. What surprises me is that I love reading Lorum Ipsum. I use reading liberally here, since I don’t comprehend a word, but that doesn’t stop me from having a go. When I come across it—and this actually does happen from time to time in my line of work—I stop what I’m doing, take a few minutes, and read this text that I don’t understand.
I love the sound of the words as I pronounce them in my head, those fluent vowels and tweaked combinations of consonants in words that are vaguely familiar. I love the variety of sentence length; early on we get the two-word sentence “Nullam posuere.” Is this a command of some kind, or some kind of slang? In between two longer sentences, it’s lovely in its brevity. I mostly love the paradox of the text—so random by its intent, but so intentional on the page that seeing it filled later with English seems unfitting. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio, as they say.
I take the time when I have the time to soak in the words because my mind reacts with the satisfaction of comprehension, even if I can’t tell you what I’m comprehending. Is this so hard to imagine? Language is the one piece that separates us from the rest of what lives, the one thing we’ve got that no other being has. Anthropologists tell us that humans are almost identical physically speaking—it’s the extremely tiny remainder of chromosomal patterns that distinguishes how we look. I have to believe that language works with the same ratios, its purpose and intent almost 100% the same, despite coming in 6,000 varieties.
Don’t some words speak to you beyond their meaning, or as an extension of their meaning, or possibly in spite of their meaning? This happens in tongues we don't know, but also in our own language. The word woebegone haunts me: its meaning is evident just in how the word looks and sounds. So it goes with joy, and go, and sometimes eye. And I enjoy very much how awkward the word awkward is. These words take me to places my mind will not, on an unintended, unplanned, sub rosan journey.
Other members of the same language call me back home, but I don't lose what I gained. On a recent odyssey I drifted toward tintinnabulation. That’s my ultimate example of a word losing its arbitrary nature and existing on equal terms with its meaning. It’s not a big word, but it takes us on a big orbit, so evident, so lovingly crafted. I remember hearing the sound of bottles being cleaned up in London on New Year’s Day so long ago—thousands of city workers sweeping the broken glass through the streets hours after the city broke in celebration.
Like the Latin that pushed me to ponder that wormhole between language and meaning, tintinnabulation shatters the boredom of my insides in a melodic crash. This word, accessible but mythical, places language in its right place, full of mystery and artistry as it helps me understand my place in history, that place discovered upon its death.
I originally published a version of these words in Some Other Magazine, the online baby of good friend Beth Marois and me. You can still visit this lovely pub in its grave.
I do design work, but that's not why I'm writing about this Latin today. What surprises me is that I love reading Lorum Ipsum. I use reading liberally here, since I don’t comprehend a word, but that doesn’t stop me from having a go. When I come across it—and this actually does happen from time to time in my line of work—I stop what I’m doing, take a few minutes, and read this text that I don’t understand.
I love the sound of the words as I pronounce them in my head, those fluent vowels and tweaked combinations of consonants in words that are vaguely familiar. I love the variety of sentence length; early on we get the two-word sentence “Nullam posuere.” Is this a command of some kind, or some kind of slang? In between two longer sentences, it’s lovely in its brevity. I mostly love the paradox of the text—so random by its intent, but so intentional on the page that seeing it filled later with English seems unfitting. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio, as they say.
I take the time when I have the time to soak in the words because my mind reacts with the satisfaction of comprehension, even if I can’t tell you what I’m comprehending. Is this so hard to imagine? Language is the one piece that separates us from the rest of what lives, the one thing we’ve got that no other being has. Anthropologists tell us that humans are almost identical physically speaking—it’s the extremely tiny remainder of chromosomal patterns that distinguishes how we look. I have to believe that language works with the same ratios, its purpose and intent almost 100% the same, despite coming in 6,000 varieties.
Don’t some words speak to you beyond their meaning, or as an extension of their meaning, or possibly in spite of their meaning? This happens in tongues we don't know, but also in our own language. The word woebegone haunts me: its meaning is evident just in how the word looks and sounds. So it goes with joy, and go, and sometimes eye. And I enjoy very much how awkward the word awkward is. These words take me to places my mind will not, on an unintended, unplanned, sub rosan journey.
Other members of the same language call me back home, but I don't lose what I gained. On a recent odyssey I drifted toward tintinnabulation. That’s my ultimate example of a word losing its arbitrary nature and existing on equal terms with its meaning. It’s not a big word, but it takes us on a big orbit, so evident, so lovingly crafted. I remember hearing the sound of bottles being cleaned up in London on New Year’s Day so long ago—thousands of city workers sweeping the broken glass through the streets hours after the city broke in celebration.
Like the Latin that pushed me to ponder that wormhole between language and meaning, tintinnabulation shatters the boredom of my insides in a melodic crash. This word, accessible but mythical, places language in its right place, full of mystery and artistry as it helps me understand my place in history, that place discovered upon its death.
I originally published a version of these words in Some Other Magazine, the online baby of good friend Beth Marois and me. You can still visit this lovely pub in its grave.
Monday, January 22, 2007
Sentences That Melt Us Like Ice Cream on a Tongue
The right sentence hits us like a precise body walking past just when we need it. Speechless, ironically, that's how the perfect utterance leaves us, as if that crystalline grammar triggers some safety catch to prevent us from diminishing the significance with an inferior follow up. (Or for those more spiritually inclined, surely an intense angel wraps our mouths with ethereal duct tape to keep a divine moment so.) We freeze in the mouth; our insides burn.
We are lucky to hear a handful of perfections in our life. There's so many components that go into making something great into something more, something strong enough to make us change our career, or cheat on our husband, or remain in a daze as our subway stop is suddenly behind us, the driver's words about which stop silent to our engaged mind. But why list them, why bother? It's a simple thing to break down what comprises a good sentence, a good body—firm structure, concise message, original form, comfortable context, explosive confidence. But something perfect? If we can see the hydrogen separately from the oxygen in a glass of water, are we better for it?
Among other elements constituting this alchemy, it's the lack of details that create the memorable mystique. We don't understand why that certain phrase said by this specific person in that extant place during this nonce time affects us, but the reason is too individual and secret to warrant an examination. When the combination of structure, inspiration, and allure activates chemicals in our brain that flow so quickly we swear we can feel their movement, shoving our blood from a steady state into a torrent, we've been made, we've been knighted, we have sprung, we blossom, we are on, we are.
So when the Brazilian woman serves me English beer in a Chinese bar, those five or six lines that shaped the course of my life pulse through my now-perfect life. I may never have a beer this important again, but I'm willing to keep trying.
We are lucky to hear a handful of perfections in our life. There's so many components that go into making something great into something more, something strong enough to make us change our career, or cheat on our husband, or remain in a daze as our subway stop is suddenly behind us, the driver's words about which stop silent to our engaged mind. But why list them, why bother? It's a simple thing to break down what comprises a good sentence, a good body—firm structure, concise message, original form, comfortable context, explosive confidence. But something perfect? If we can see the hydrogen separately from the oxygen in a glass of water, are we better for it?
Among other elements constituting this alchemy, it's the lack of details that create the memorable mystique. We don't understand why that certain phrase said by this specific person in that extant place during this nonce time affects us, but the reason is too individual and secret to warrant an examination. When the combination of structure, inspiration, and allure activates chemicals in our brain that flow so quickly we swear we can feel their movement, shoving our blood from a steady state into a torrent, we've been made, we've been knighted, we have sprung, we blossom, we are on, we are.
So when the Brazilian woman serves me English beer in a Chinese bar, those five or six lines that shaped the course of my life pulse through my now-perfect life. I may never have a beer this important again, but I'm willing to keep trying.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Dead Letters
I envision Ned Maddrell’s last days with fear. I make an image of him—chiefly a craggy face and absurdly bushy white eyebrows that move independent of each other, because don’t all old Anglo men look like that? And a birthmark on his right cheek. Now he is as different as his circumstance.
When he dies, say a month later, the ancient Manx language becomes the extinct Manx language. Not all that many spoke it in the years prior to Mr. Maddrell’s final time—Sage Winvig is said to be the last that could have spoken with him in their tongue—but surely there were some. Once he dies, no one is left to speak it, at least in a frequency that the living can hear. Some will speak it once he's gone, but that doesn't change how life became for Mr. Maddrell, when his tongue became inert.
In between his community and his death, he is a human alone with his language. How incredibly unnatural; we are not wired to possess a language in this way. Marie Smith Jones, Ka'chi Lobo Golden, Tefvic Escenc, Dolly Pentreath, Laura Somersal, Sindick Jimmy, and Red Thunder are, with Mr. Maddrell, among the distinct few: to have a unique voice in a world of broken ears.
Those first days after Ms. Winvig's funeral must be quiet, as the very practical matter of an uninterpreable predicate occurs. With two or more speakers, subjects can act. When the language dies, the subject ceases to be. But the brutal in between, the predicate tells about the subject in a void. The actor is out of work despite a wonderful script, or she has her greatest performance in a barren theater.
I see him in front of me, speaking something organized and real, yet completely unknown; imagine a plant interacting with carbon dioxide as someone walks past thinking about the weather. He looks lost. Does he call to his wife, or Ms. Winvig? Those days must be past—perhaps he calls out to the bartender from his town, or Stephen, the boy who taught him all the bad words, or maybe even the man who stole his wallet decades back. To hear "give me your money" in one's native language must be a joy when no one has been speaking to you in a meaningful way. As the lone speaker, he ceases to be a speaker, and instead curates Manx as an artifact.
But then his time is at a close—how long or short those years of silent speech must have been are difficult for we in a language community to imagine. At the end, we know he celebrates his celebrity. This is not a silent man, but an extant culture, embracing peace, embracing the liberty of a perfect language. Without the possibility of being misunderstand, a flawless communication has resulted. Can you see him now in his joyous isolation: an atheist praying, or your exact likeness driving next to you on the highway as you happen to be looking the other way?
Despite this serenity and power, his speech amputation frightens me. This whole concept is not for any of us that meet on this page. But that's for now. In 1974, long before web logs and days before he dies, Ned Maddrell destroys the basis of our dialog, as he figures out the perfect explanation for the color red in a language no one else knows, and then drops into a long, long sleep.
I used several articles for reference, namely "let them die" by Kenan Malik.
When he dies, say a month later, the ancient Manx language becomes the extinct Manx language. Not all that many spoke it in the years prior to Mr. Maddrell’s final time—Sage Winvig is said to be the last that could have spoken with him in their tongue—but surely there were some. Once he dies, no one is left to speak it, at least in a frequency that the living can hear. Some will speak it once he's gone, but that doesn't change how life became for Mr. Maddrell, when his tongue became inert.
In between his community and his death, he is a human alone with his language. How incredibly unnatural; we are not wired to possess a language in this way. Marie Smith Jones, Ka'chi Lobo Golden, Tefvic Escenc, Dolly Pentreath, Laura Somersal, Sindick Jimmy, and Red Thunder are, with Mr. Maddrell, among the distinct few: to have a unique voice in a world of broken ears.
Those first days after Ms. Winvig's funeral must be quiet, as the very practical matter of an uninterpreable predicate occurs. With two or more speakers, subjects can act. When the language dies, the subject ceases to be. But the brutal in between, the predicate tells about the subject in a void. The actor is out of work despite a wonderful script, or she has her greatest performance in a barren theater.
I see him in front of me, speaking something organized and real, yet completely unknown; imagine a plant interacting with carbon dioxide as someone walks past thinking about the weather. He looks lost. Does he call to his wife, or Ms. Winvig? Those days must be past—perhaps he calls out to the bartender from his town, or Stephen, the boy who taught him all the bad words, or maybe even the man who stole his wallet decades back. To hear "give me your money" in one's native language must be a joy when no one has been speaking to you in a meaningful way. As the lone speaker, he ceases to be a speaker, and instead curates Manx as an artifact.
But then his time is at a close—how long or short those years of silent speech must have been are difficult for we in a language community to imagine. At the end, we know he celebrates his celebrity. This is not a silent man, but an extant culture, embracing peace, embracing the liberty of a perfect language. Without the possibility of being misunderstand, a flawless communication has resulted. Can you see him now in his joyous isolation: an atheist praying, or your exact likeness driving next to you on the highway as you happen to be looking the other way?
Despite this serenity and power, his speech amputation frightens me. This whole concept is not for any of us that meet on this page. But that's for now. In 1974, long before web logs and days before he dies, Ned Maddrell destroys the basis of our dialog, as he figures out the perfect explanation for the color red in a language no one else knows, and then drops into a long, long sleep.
I used several articles for reference, namely "let them die" by Kenan Malik.
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Embark
I need an audience, even though I'm doing this for me. I'm just not built to be meaningful alone, or to project beyond myself, despite my previous convictions on the matter. I wait to write and I don't. I cease to write and I can't. This is good, though: in cyclones my heart is lax, I have recently found. Now, intermittence unsettles stuff within me again. An agony of a good life.
But why here? Meaningful writing has a clear purpose, and I'm not with liberty to idenify why I'm here. I certainly can't, then, give you a satisfaction to why you find yourself moving both eyes left to right and slowly down at a pace of my making. Do you join me to pass seconds between better times, or to find meaning with me? Or is the meaning in the foggy drift, not the destination?
There's room for everyone as we figure this out together.
Here we
are. Let's
go.
But why here? Meaningful writing has a clear purpose, and I'm not with liberty to idenify why I'm here. I certainly can't, then, give you a satisfaction to why you find yourself moving both eyes left to right and slowly down at a pace of my making. Do you join me to pass seconds between better times, or to find meaning with me? Or is the meaning in the foggy drift, not the destination?
There's room for everyone as we figure this out together.
Here we
are. Let's
go.
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