Pre-Dawn dalliance still serving as a welcome matt for insomnia. Even after two showers and two books, sleep is almost seen as a trangression; a lunar tresspass against my latent urge to spill words into sentences. Perhaps it's b/c, since I officially 'declared' my alcohol blood level has diminished considerably. Finding a devout writer who has a healthy pair of lungs and an unjaundiced liver is like finding a hockey player with a full-set of teeth: A rarity. This is a hard-image for writers to slough because nearly all of our hero's were intelligent, well-read alcoholics. It's like when you are in third grade and you save up money to buy a pair of Air Jordan's (or AIR JORDACHE's, in my case) and you go to the playground and emulate all the moves you saw Jordan himself perform in applauded slow motion on the Highlight reel. You wanna be like those people whom you look up to. Those people who have made it. Go and stare at the literary vignette in your local Barnes and Nobles cafe. When I was a young writer I almost always tuned up ye olde ribbon in my Smith-Corona with a few brewskies first, demanded still-life-with-a-bowl-of-pruned-ego-nourishing-silence and eventually slopped a few paragraphs of indulgent, forgettable drivel onto the page.....and my community (the literary one)...is in DIRE need of writers who don't get manacled to their work and can let go of their ego and their solipsistic/hedonistic urges. The last Christmas I had with my father he gave me an old gray file cabinet. I embellished the side of the file cabinet with cut-out pictures of writers I admire. There was the James Joyces and the TS Eliots. The Ezra Pounds and the Kerouacs, Ginsbergs. J.D. Salinger and a rare blur of Thomas Pynchon. Hawthorn and Whitman (of course) but also Contemporary angels like Carole maso, Dave Wallace, Rick Moody, Laurie Moore, Jhumpa Lahari Franzen and Eugendies and George Saunders. William T. Vollmann and Richard 'I-don't sign-autographs-b/c-I-still-can't-get-over-the-scientific-truism-that-I-was-unpopular-with-cheerleaders-in-high-school' Powers. There were buckeye poetic-eyed photographs of high school slyphs: Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath...and in the center was a balck-and white nonchalant ciagarette in paw portrait; the godfather of the minimalistic short-story himself, Raymond Carver... A photograph I ripped out of a library book in Normal, Illinois (along with Josesph Campbell authenticated autograph....I know, Thief in the Night...) Carver drank like he was supporting his local aquarium for most of his life and then, in the last decade, he was sober and produced a glut of subtly crafted short-stories and poems--his short stories are by far, arguably, the best of the latter portion of the 20th century. He died when he was just fifty (even though he quit drinking he still smoked something like three packs of cigarettes a day) Here's a poem that was published in the New Yorker just after his demise.
Gravy
by Raymond Carver
No other word will do. For that's what it was. Gravy.
Gravy, these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving and
being loved by a good woman. Eleven years
ago he was told he had six months to live
at the rate he was going. And he was going
nowhere but down. So he changed his ways
somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?
After that is was all gravy, every minute
of it, up to and including when he was told about,
well, some things that were breaking down and
building up inside his head. "Don't weep for me,"
he said to his friends. "I'm a lucky man.
I've had ten years longer than I or anyone
expected. Pure Gravy. And don't forget it."
Mara disguised as sleep depriven agony. During my second shower a voice kept telling me to put down Sebastian Junger's Perfect Storm and go downstairs, into Uncle Mike's boxed archieve and fish out one of his crazy books. I told the voice to go away. Told it I wanted to sleep. I held up my index, middle and pointer fingers and told it to read between the lines, but eventually (has the topic this week been surrneder?) I capitulated, in towel and damp hair, and descended into the catacombs and reeled up an old edition of the Baha'i world. '68-71 I think.
For me, being so new to this elusive faith, there has honestly been no greater teacher than the Bahai World (although Uncle Mike comes close)....in particularly I love reading the detailed Memorials of the early pilgrims and praying for them. Lives of unalloyed surrender and service. Saints and angels and disciples who never once questioned the call to orchestrate a dance in a foreign country or surrender all personal material wealth to a cause greater than themselves...the sort of humble servants my parents were for their own faith (literally, my mom gave away the money Dad had saved up for her engagement ring to the church).....and so I open the book up and of course (TC SMILES) the first black and white rectangular photograph I see right when I randomly plop open the book is one Arya's grandfather pioneering in Jamaica, flooded by Jamaican townies, an almost feather-golden eternal grin humbly stitched into his face.
Uncle Mike has always been keen on praying for souls that have previously deaprted.
"Always remember to pray for the souls who don't have anyone to pray for them." Uncle Mike says, and whenever we drive past a cemetary, Uncle Mike always chants the short prayer for the departed and tells the anecdote about how he teaches Chinese students to drive in cemetaries, telling them. "Don't worry if you run over anything. They're already dead."
On my first dip into the House of worship, March 2003, I was all alone. I chain-smoked my way to Wilmette and went into the basement of the House first. A silver-haired, very tall, somewhat lanky woman dressed all in black named EVE, appeared in front of me. I told her I was a visitor from Peoria. She smiled. I asked her if she knew Uncle Mike. She said she didn't. I watched a brief cursory movie about the faith and then I entered the House fo Worhsip from the bottom via elevator. I still wasn't 'declared' or wahtever but the one prayer I said over and over again was the prayer for the departed. I thought about my father (I was still pissed off at God, maybe rightfully so)...I thought about my grandmother whose funeral was on Naw Ruz and whose time had come. I stared up at got lost into the satellite ceiling, my eyes, dizzy and flapping inwardly at the sight of the Greatest Holy Name.
But there was only silver-haired EVE with me in the House of Worship. She has a deep, baritone voice that blossomed forth in verbal bouquets everytime she smiles. She addressed everyone as honey.
"Thanks for coming honey," She said before saying the greatest holy name as I walked out of the House of Worship by myself.
I smiled.
Later that year, at Green Lake (where of course, all the magic happens--see Arya's recent splendiferous 'novel') I bumped into Eve again. She was in the cafeteria ferrying a tray to her seat. She was seated with a Knight of the Master (though, I didn't know it at the time). I scurried up to Eve and immediately thanked her for the tour the previous March. I told her that I was new to the faith and that was my first time at the House of Worship, last March, en route to my grandmother's funeral.
It was amazing what happened next. She didn't remember me but at the word 'funeral' she set down her tray on the nearest table, clasped her fists into a prayer sized-heart and immediately beagn to chant the Prayer for the Departed, in the middle of the cafeteria. She said it with her husky, feminine brass-instrument baritone. She kept her eyes stamped closed like she was shielding her spirit from a pending spiritual hurricane. She said the one prayer that I had been saying every night, and she chanted it for me even though she didn't know me at all. Even though I had approached her simply to thank her.
I almost cried right then and there.
Greenlake's sorta like sleepy-hollow. A Midwestern Baptist affilated bastion that once a year breaks out in spirtual hives. It's bloggworthy and inevitably will be. Strange things happen there. Mystical pinings and gentle breezes. Greenlakes how I know arya and where I met my friends Cool Abir and Dick and Anne (Anne's an artist, she's my spiritual godmother who has purple hair. She taught Uncle Mike the faith.....)
Last year at Greenlake was crazy because spiritual guru Thich Nhat Hanh, who wrote the book, Living Buddha, Living Christ and received ( I think) a nobel prize for peace, was slated to hold a conference the same day that the Baha'i conference ends. There was all these Buddhists disciples from all over the world, clad in taupe capes sauntering around the premesis lost in serene meditation ( the story about how I spilled a cup-of-java on a French Monk is also bloggsworthy...but not here).....
Last year at Greenlake I was being incessantly stalked by GreenLake Gretchen. She's sweet but also ( ) (smiles)....so yeah, needless to say I was graced with a shadow last GreenLake and somehow the shadow even got a hold of my work number and called me incessantly for four weeks straight after the conference ended.
While trying to evade the persistent paws of Greenlake Gretchen, I forced myself to actually HIDE near the lake for close to an hour Saturday night, and availed myself only when the mass of bodies exited from the auditorium from the talent show.
Caught up in the fluss and hoi-poloi, trying cognizantly to avoid Gretchen without hurting her feelings, who do I literally come tete-a-tete with? Unbelievable. There she was. The Knight of the Master, at eleven-thirty at night, slowly grappeling the rail outside the main building.
What happened next was also a gift.
I walked up to her, introduced myself, jutted out my elbow and offered her my arm. I escourted her back to her lodging facility, very slowly, talking. All I could do was thank her. She smiled and seemed slightly confused but nodded after my every effort to feebly convey spiritual gratitude.
When I helped her back into her room, Eve was there, asleep.
When I got back to my own room and told Mike about my experience the next morning at breakfast, he slanted his head back and forth
in disappointment.
"She's a Knight." In a hundred years from now she'd be swamped if she were walking home late-at-night. Alone."
Indeed, the faith has given me many gifts. Spirtual tablets, the insight of Uncle Mike, a return to prayer, the daily discourses with blogging beauty queens,... but no greater a gift has it given me than that one night at GreenLake last August where I was somehow granted the priveledge to escourt the arm of both a Knight of the Master and an angel at the same time.
O my God!
O Thou forgiver of sins, bestower of gifts, dispeller of afflictions!
Verily, I beseech thee to forgive the sins of such as have abandoned the physical garment and have ascended to the spiritual world.
O my Lord! Purify them from trespasses, dispel their sorrows, and change their darkness into light. Cause them to enter the garden of happiness, cleanse them with the most pure water, and grant them to behold Thy splendors on the loftiest mount.
-Abdu'l-baha
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Love is not Love which alters when it alteration finds....
*
This was originally a comment on Daniela's blog, but, alas, brevity has never been my forte.
*
I think the biggest mistake I've made in previous bouts with amour is this: it was always, (solely) about the other person and what I thought society orchestrated as acceptable. Not initially at first. At first it was about (still is about) my heart doing a little irish jig inside my chest and often times (honestly) being more allured to the feeling of Love...that drooling, dizzying, perplexing, wonderful state where everything around you....all of your romantic pinings, intellectual longings and flirtatious fetishes sprout up in front of you with boobs and bangs and sunset smiles. Moments like these propel the world of art. Laura inspired the pen of Petrach to devise his heart in the shape of the sonnet. Beatrice escourted Dante into the realm of the eternal light. Shams of Tabriz enflamed Rumi to swirl out his dervish longings in mystical adages. The Fair young Lad and the syphillis-ridden prostitute compelled the quill of William Shakespeare, whose sonnets were actually never intended to be published (kind of like our blogs--perhaps that's what they are eternal...the sonnets)....Here's my favorite Shakespeare Sonnet of all time. Sonnet 116:
Sonnet 116
William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
*
I used to, of course, have good bullshit definitions of the word love I'd employ in the late ninetites to (as they say in the locker room) cirlce the infield. I used to quote First Corinthians 13 (The love chapter of the bible...you know, love is patient, love is kind, love is lugubrious, love is a financial burden, love is watching her pms outta control for three days a month and nodding your head in feigned measured incrememnts as she tells you over and over again that "You just don't understand me,")...I had this schtick where I said that if you take out the word Love from that biblical chapter and insert the word of your purported beloved there instead, you would have crafted via MAD LIBS a valid definition of the word Love.
*
I dunno. I went through a five year period where I dated a lot of older women. To my chagrin (hindsight being twenty-twenty) there was approximately a quarter of a century between Swissy-Who and Crazy Laurie. The only way I can tell about what I learned is to insert it honsetly into a recital like entry....And my advice to Lovers (I'm graciously flanked by two of them) is this. Find yourself first...Find that joy that you as a person solely possess...find what you are capable of giving and then give all of it. When this happens, mysterious creatures (some are lovers, but also little elves) creep out from the most unsuspecting places to assist you. To tell you that they believe in you. To tell you that they are in your corner, with their thumbs up, smiling.
My biggest sin was that, for years, I always equated my own self-worth and emotional status to the blonde on my left shoulder. We live in an accelerated image-driven society that hasn't made it easy for the true and disciplined lover. I don't know about you, but when the time rolled around and I was a crackly-voiced facial blemished fourteen year old with thick glasses and FINALLY (GHAST) had my first kiss (ahhhhhh......Jessica...wait, her name ends in an....!!!!!!), I had probably seen close to fifty thousand kisses climaxed on television and we didn't even get cable til I was ten.
So that's my ramble. I don't know much. I know that I love and that I live for apical moments of human connection. I know that I like to kiss. I know that it's just not plain healthy to follow your every innate, lusty animal instinct, even though you often find yourself on a dance floor where it seems to be encouraged (Funny how the Valley of Unbriddled Lust somehow got omitted from the final draft). I know that I live for moments of timelessness even though I live in the terse fleeting evaporating second of the moment itself. I know that I probably wouldn't have been a writer had I not had my heart smashed and crazy-glued back together and smashed again. I know that I'll never be a writer if I behave like a rockstar (even though I can dress like one). I know that I believe in the syncopated thuds of the human heart, the fathomless potential of mankind. I know that I'm sometimes a little envious at cool couples who have made it work and are still in love. I know that some nights I'm lonely but have no doubt that the pillow I'm groping will bear flesh and wings someday. I know that I'm grateful for everything. Dollops of blessings with a slice of forever pie.
This was originally a comment on Daniela's blog, but, alas, brevity has never been my forte.
*
I think the biggest mistake I've made in previous bouts with amour is this: it was always, (solely) about the other person and what I thought society orchestrated as acceptable. Not initially at first. At first it was about (still is about) my heart doing a little irish jig inside my chest and often times (honestly) being more allured to the feeling of Love...that drooling, dizzying, perplexing, wonderful state where everything around you....all of your romantic pinings, intellectual longings and flirtatious fetishes sprout up in front of you with boobs and bangs and sunset smiles. Moments like these propel the world of art. Laura inspired the pen of Petrach to devise his heart in the shape of the sonnet. Beatrice escourted Dante into the realm of the eternal light. Shams of Tabriz enflamed Rumi to swirl out his dervish longings in mystical adages. The Fair young Lad and the syphillis-ridden prostitute compelled the quill of William Shakespeare, whose sonnets were actually never intended to be published (kind of like our blogs--perhaps that's what they are eternal...the sonnets)....Here's my favorite Shakespeare Sonnet of all time. Sonnet 116:
Sonnet 116
William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
*
I used to, of course, have good bullshit definitions of the word love I'd employ in the late ninetites to (as they say in the locker room) cirlce the infield. I used to quote First Corinthians 13 (The love chapter of the bible...you know, love is patient, love is kind, love is lugubrious, love is a financial burden, love is watching her pms outta control for three days a month and nodding your head in feigned measured incrememnts as she tells you over and over again that "You just don't understand me,")...I had this schtick where I said that if you take out the word Love from that biblical chapter and insert the word of your purported beloved there instead, you would have crafted via MAD LIBS a valid definition of the word Love.
*
I dunno. I went through a five year period where I dated a lot of older women. To my chagrin (hindsight being twenty-twenty) there was approximately a quarter of a century between Swissy-Who and Crazy Laurie. The only way I can tell about what I learned is to insert it honsetly into a recital like entry....And my advice to Lovers (I'm graciously flanked by two of them) is this. Find yourself first...Find that joy that you as a person solely possess...find what you are capable of giving and then give all of it. When this happens, mysterious creatures (some are lovers, but also little elves) creep out from the most unsuspecting places to assist you. To tell you that they believe in you. To tell you that they are in your corner, with their thumbs up, smiling.
My biggest sin was that, for years, I always equated my own self-worth and emotional status to the blonde on my left shoulder. We live in an accelerated image-driven society that hasn't made it easy for the true and disciplined lover. I don't know about you, but when the time rolled around and I was a crackly-voiced facial blemished fourteen year old with thick glasses and FINALLY (GHAST) had my first kiss (ahhhhhh......Jessica...wait, her name ends in an....!!!!!!), I had probably seen close to fifty thousand kisses climaxed on television and we didn't even get cable til I was ten.
So that's my ramble. I don't know much. I know that I love and that I live for apical moments of human connection. I know that I like to kiss. I know that it's just not plain healthy to follow your every innate, lusty animal instinct, even though you often find yourself on a dance floor where it seems to be encouraged (Funny how the Valley of Unbriddled Lust somehow got omitted from the final draft). I know that I live for moments of timelessness even though I live in the terse fleeting evaporating second of the moment itself. I know that I probably wouldn't have been a writer had I not had my heart smashed and crazy-glued back together and smashed again. I know that I'll never be a writer if I behave like a rockstar (even though I can dress like one). I know that I believe in the syncopated thuds of the human heart, the fathomless potential of mankind. I know that I'm sometimes a little envious at cool couples who have made it work and are still in love. I know that some nights I'm lonely but have no doubt that the pillow I'm groping will bear flesh and wings someday. I know that I'm grateful for everything. Dollops of blessings with a slice of forever pie.
When all the girls chatter about love....
When all the girls chatter about love, all the guys talk about sports. Major League's baseball All-Star game is tonight at 7:20.
Monday, July 12, 2004
A lil' universal nonsense sprinkled with a slice of ego....
In the immortal words of gumdrop daddy Willy Wonka....
"My dear friend, Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker."
No, in the immortal words of Willy Wonka....
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of a dream."
"No!!!! In the immortal words of Willy Wonka....
"A communist, a lesbian and an Oompa-Loompa walk into a bar...."
NO!!!! In the immortal words of Willy Wonka, "A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men." Only in the movie Gene Autry hums the proverb into the Winston Churchill-ish chin of my ex-girlfriend Veruca Salt's father after he pans Wonka's golden "good" egg "bad" egg machination as "alotta nonsense." Last night, during an untapped phone conversation with a friend (hmmmm...geez... wonder who?)I jabbered that I was going to change my name from the healthy germanic gruff of "David Von Behren" to the narcissistic banner of "Universal Male" so that everytime an angel hushes out a mystical maxim linked to the "Universal Male" motif they can feel free to flutter in my direction......
My health is improving in Goliath-like strides. Color has been finding it's way back into the folds of my face. Dreams adorn themselves to the ritual of sleep. I'm smoking less, hacking less, even keeping Uncle Mike's pad tidy for once. And even though I'm first to confess that longevity is over-rated and I'd rather die young than see myself in fifty years in both Dentures and Depends (the last Father/Son activity I shared with my Dad was helping him take a shit--God, who wants to be remembered like that?), the steady cramps and rashes and nausea that accompanied me like the trinity these last twenty-or-so months are slowly starting to subside, lifting north like a billowing stage curtain at the beginning of a high school thesbian production.
Of course, I can't grouse too much. I learned poverty, found Uncle Mike and learned not to be so stuffy and pretentious with my literary ambitions. One night, after fifteen months of failure and no sleep, I came home far past midnight and told Mike that I felt compelled to ink my John Hancock on a Declaration of faith.
And of course, imminently, there was no change. I still didn't sleep. I wrote filth disguised under the substratum of literary greatness. My car died the very next week (also a blessing), beautiful Erica Johnson still smiled at me crookedly and pretended she was deaf everytime I availed my dreams ...but, of course, I feel blessed to have been on such a path and await with wild anticipation what "universal" creature will sprout up naked next before my eyes.
*
"I saw grief drinking a cup of sorrow and called out, "It tastes sweet, does it not?" "You've caught me," grief answered, "and you've ruined my business, how can I sell sorrow when you know it's a blessing?" — Jalaluddin Rumi
*
Sometimes I wonder (even in my own lifetime) if human beings will totally divorce themselves from the biological category of mammal. If the onslaught fluss of technology and global acceleration of mankind will propel us into a divine realm of both omniscient and astonishing creations. Even in my own lifetime, I've gone from sitting in front of a fuzzy screen, being educated by stringed-puppets ferrying letters and numbers to having eveything I can every fathom or even want to know (even sins) in front of me, instantly, accessed with a few right clicks.
What a time it is to be alive. What a blessing it is simply to be.
*
And the blessings were like poets that we never find time to know,
But when time stopped I found the place where the poets go.
And they said, "Here have some coffee, it's straight, black and very old,"
And they gave me sticks and rocks and stars and all that I could hold,
I had the blessings, a moment of peace even when the night ends,
Yeah the blessings, can we meet? Can we meet again,
At the crossroads of disaster and the imperfect smile,
With the angel in the streetlamp that blinks on as I walk on a mile, the blessings.
And the best ones were the ones I got to keep as I grew strong,
And the days that opened up until my whole life could belong,
And now I'm getting the answers, when I don't need them anymore,
I'm finding the pictures, and I finally know what I kept them for,
I remember, I can see them, see them smiling, see them stuck,
See them try, I wish them luck and all the blessings.
I was fast asleep at three in the morning when I got the payphone call,
And she said, "Did I wake you up," I said, "Hey, no, not at all."
And she said, "I got this suitcase and I don't know what to pack,"
And I said, "You can take anything you want, just wait and see,
It's not a release, not a reward, it's the blessings,
Its the gift of what you notice more,"
And I walked out and I watched her kick the big pile of the night,
And we sat down and we waited for that strange and empty light.
Yeah the blessings...
Folk Singer Dar Williams, "The Blessing" Mortal City (1996)
"My dear friend, Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker."
No, in the immortal words of Willy Wonka....
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of a dream."
"No!!!! In the immortal words of Willy Wonka....
"A communist, a lesbian and an Oompa-Loompa walk into a bar...."
NO!!!! In the immortal words of Willy Wonka, "A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men." Only in the movie Gene Autry hums the proverb into the Winston Churchill-ish chin of my ex-girlfriend Veruca Salt's father after he pans Wonka's golden "good" egg "bad" egg machination as "alotta nonsense." Last night, during an untapped phone conversation with a friend (hmmmm...geez... wonder who?)I jabbered that I was going to change my name from the healthy germanic gruff of "David Von Behren" to the narcissistic banner of "Universal Male" so that everytime an angel hushes out a mystical maxim linked to the "Universal Male" motif they can feel free to flutter in my direction......
My health is improving in Goliath-like strides. Color has been finding it's way back into the folds of my face. Dreams adorn themselves to the ritual of sleep. I'm smoking less, hacking less, even keeping Uncle Mike's pad tidy for once. And even though I'm first to confess that longevity is over-rated and I'd rather die young than see myself in fifty years in both Dentures and Depends (the last Father/Son activity I shared with my Dad was helping him take a shit--God, who wants to be remembered like that?), the steady cramps and rashes and nausea that accompanied me like the trinity these last twenty-or-so months are slowly starting to subside, lifting north like a billowing stage curtain at the beginning of a high school thesbian production.
Of course, I can't grouse too much. I learned poverty, found Uncle Mike and learned not to be so stuffy and pretentious with my literary ambitions. One night, after fifteen months of failure and no sleep, I came home far past midnight and told Mike that I felt compelled to ink my John Hancock on a Declaration of faith.
And of course, imminently, there was no change. I still didn't sleep. I wrote filth disguised under the substratum of literary greatness. My car died the very next week (also a blessing), beautiful Erica Johnson still smiled at me crookedly and pretended she was deaf everytime I availed my dreams ...but, of course, I feel blessed to have been on such a path and await with wild anticipation what "universal" creature will sprout up naked next before my eyes.
*
"I saw grief drinking a cup of sorrow and called out, "It tastes sweet, does it not?" "You've caught me," grief answered, "and you've ruined my business, how can I sell sorrow when you know it's a blessing?" — Jalaluddin Rumi
*
Sometimes I wonder (even in my own lifetime) if human beings will totally divorce themselves from the biological category of mammal. If the onslaught fluss of technology and global acceleration of mankind will propel us into a divine realm of both omniscient and astonishing creations. Even in my own lifetime, I've gone from sitting in front of a fuzzy screen, being educated by stringed-puppets ferrying letters and numbers to having eveything I can every fathom or even want to know (even sins) in front of me, instantly, accessed with a few right clicks.
What a time it is to be alive. What a blessing it is simply to be.
*
And the blessings were like poets that we never find time to know,
But when time stopped I found the place where the poets go.
And they said, "Here have some coffee, it's straight, black and very old,"
And they gave me sticks and rocks and stars and all that I could hold,
I had the blessings, a moment of peace even when the night ends,
Yeah the blessings, can we meet? Can we meet again,
At the crossroads of disaster and the imperfect smile,
With the angel in the streetlamp that blinks on as I walk on a mile, the blessings.
And the best ones were the ones I got to keep as I grew strong,
And the days that opened up until my whole life could belong,
And now I'm getting the answers, when I don't need them anymore,
I'm finding the pictures, and I finally know what I kept them for,
I remember, I can see them, see them smiling, see them stuck,
See them try, I wish them luck and all the blessings.
I was fast asleep at three in the morning when I got the payphone call,
And she said, "Did I wake you up," I said, "Hey, no, not at all."
And she said, "I got this suitcase and I don't know what to pack,"
And I said, "You can take anything you want, just wait and see,
It's not a release, not a reward, it's the blessings,
Its the gift of what you notice more,"
And I walked out and I watched her kick the big pile of the night,
And we sat down and we waited for that strange and empty light.
Yeah the blessings...
Folk Singer Dar Williams, "The Blessing" Mortal City (1996)
Saturday, July 10, 2004
Iron, achilles and the lips of all eternity
Speaking of cyclesarya (sorry--I should try to me more respectful towards my friends name) "cycles arya", every four years or so I find myself reading the same book, a book called IRON JOHN: A BOOK ABOUT MEN by poet ROBERT BLY. It's very Tristan Legend-of-the-Fallish in terms of mature masculine archtype. As badly as I want to make a career continually as a "published-purveyor of language" (damnit I'm already a writer, no matter how much lint I pocket in lieu of cash) part of me desires so badly to be able to DO THE RIGHT thing; become the man that I'm somehow suppose to be, to treat people the way they are meant to be treated....and to know what's the write (sic)...right thing to do at the time.
It's so hard, which is part of the adventure, if not the initial fun.
IRON JOHN is a Grimm's fairy tale that Robert Bly mythologically dissects like a game of Operation (when you feel an uncomfortable nasal shrill blinking through your body you know you've recognized what stage of the fairy tale your currently in)....I'll save you a book report but here's the chapter I was reading today (again)....The golden-haired boy has been exiled from the Wild Man to learn poverty (descending into his own wounds)...
"The man today, as he embarks towards the father's house, is in between these two mythologies. If he is an ascender, he flees from earth, dust, and flesh and effectively asks women to take care of the earth. By contrast, the old men, in traditional initiation lead the young man to the Beneath Father, near where the ancestors live and where the snakes are. The voyage does not exile him from heaven, for snakes can be found even in the crown of the tree. The snake swims in water as well. The snake is the Lord of the Waters. Mythologically, then, the snake resembles the Wild Man, the King, and other being who lie in the water at the bottom of our psyches.
"We surmise then when a man accepts Descent as a way to move to the father's house, he learns to look at the death side of things, he glances down at the rat's hole, which is also the snake's hole, and he accepts the snake rather than the bird as his animal. The father ins a middle-class household may own the car and the credit cards, but the motehr lives longer, and comes back form the cememtary after the fatehr is burried. The son feels a pull to identify with the mother's sturdiness and, beyond that, with the vibrant energy of the Great Mother.
" Initiation asks the son to move his love energy away from the attractive mother to the relatively unattractive serpent father. All that is ashes work (errata-like Cinderella )When a man enters this stage he regards DESCENT as a HOLY thing, he increases his tolerance for ashes, eats dust as snakes do, increases his stomach for terrifying insights, deepens his ability to accept evil facts of history, accepts the job at working seven years under the ground, leaves the granary at will through the rat's hole, bites on cinders, learns to shudder, and follows the voice of the old mole beneath the ground."
-(pgs 90-91)
It's so hard, which is part of the adventure, if not the initial fun.
IRON JOHN is a Grimm's fairy tale that Robert Bly mythologically dissects like a game of Operation (when you feel an uncomfortable nasal shrill blinking through your body you know you've recognized what stage of the fairy tale your currently in)....I'll save you a book report but here's the chapter I was reading today (again)....The golden-haired boy has been exiled from the Wild Man to learn poverty (descending into his own wounds)...
"The man today, as he embarks towards the father's house, is in between these two mythologies. If he is an ascender, he flees from earth, dust, and flesh and effectively asks women to take care of the earth. By contrast, the old men, in traditional initiation lead the young man to the Beneath Father, near where the ancestors live and where the snakes are. The voyage does not exile him from heaven, for snakes can be found even in the crown of the tree. The snake swims in water as well. The snake is the Lord of the Waters. Mythologically, then, the snake resembles the Wild Man, the King, and other being who lie in the water at the bottom of our psyches.
"We surmise then when a man accepts Descent as a way to move to the father's house, he learns to look at the death side of things, he glances down at the rat's hole, which is also the snake's hole, and he accepts the snake rather than the bird as his animal. The father ins a middle-class household may own the car and the credit cards, but the motehr lives longer, and comes back form the cememtary after the fatehr is burried. The son feels a pull to identify with the mother's sturdiness and, beyond that, with the vibrant energy of the Great Mother.
" Initiation asks the son to move his love energy away from the attractive mother to the relatively unattractive serpent father. All that is ashes work (errata-like Cinderella )When a man enters this stage he regards DESCENT as a HOLY thing, he increases his tolerance for ashes, eats dust as snakes do, increases his stomach for terrifying insights, deepens his ability to accept evil facts of history, accepts the job at working seven years under the ground, leaves the granary at will through the rat's hole, bites on cinders, learns to shudder, and follows the voice of the old mole beneath the ground."
-(pgs 90-91)
Friday, July 09, 2004
Angel wing patina
Greek weekend and everyone on campus seems to know my name. Walking back from Jesters with cup of java wedged in paw I get three simultaneous car beeps and two frat heads propping out of SUV side-windows cackeling, "DAVE!!!!!!!!!" Have no clue who these people are. Like a strand of DNA I keep weaving my way in and out of social clusters, seeking solitude one second and eternal companionship the next, knitting the genetic fabric of my own crazy aesthetic. Somehow, on campus, everyone knows me. I'm the crazy long-haired librarian who writes books. The one who's a few years older, but a few years youthful. The one who smiles at everyone, chats with all the foreign students, harnesses a weird lexicon, observes Holy Days for a weird religion, and sips coffee like his first wet-dream was about a mocha-eyed lass by the name of Gloria Jean.
Is this the Mara carnival? The escapade of strobelights reverberating their neon fizz in the streets beckoning me to join? The wadded phone digits with her name initialed and scribed in bubbly little carbonated feminine hearts? The one she hands me and I discard and crumple up into a baby cabbage and pretend that I'm in the NCAA tournament with three seconds on the clock when I fake, look, pump and fire for the nearest trash receptacle?
I once wrote a horrible indulgent puppy-eyed book by the name of "Where all the Dream charchters dream too" It was about a charchter named Maya (illusion) who could traverse time and space like it was nothing more than ledger lines on sheet music. It was sort've a cross between the girl I was in love with in fifth grade and watching her traipse to and from her piano lesson every Thursday.
But the idea of time being a veiled illusion; that diaphonous see-through cloth that the groom avails before seeing his bride's unblemished visage for the first time (although she had experienced him before) is intriguing.
*
Angel hoasanna and quick accolades! The Holy day went well!!!! We had a total of five people and I designed a cool program that Uncle Mike even approved. I read Chapter thirty-five from a book called "The Hour of the Dawn" by Mark Perkins.
The story of the Bab is one I've been thinking about lately especially in terms of surrender. The Bab employs his noted mystical "vanishing theatrics" because he has a job to do. He has a conversation to complete.
In the notion of surrender I feel like, even though the nature of life is precarious and transient, we know what our individual jobs are and we have the priveldge of tackeling them with joy on a daily basis. Yet, I feel a tugging below my ribs that informs me that, whatever you have to do in this lifetime, whatever you feel lead to acheive, will be completed; even if the fussilade of bullets is only a half-breath away from seperating you from mortality; your job, your duty (dharma), will sprout into fruition.
Is this the Mara carnival? The escapade of strobelights reverberating their neon fizz in the streets beckoning me to join? The wadded phone digits with her name initialed and scribed in bubbly little carbonated feminine hearts? The one she hands me and I discard and crumple up into a baby cabbage and pretend that I'm in the NCAA tournament with three seconds on the clock when I fake, look, pump and fire for the nearest trash receptacle?
I once wrote a horrible indulgent puppy-eyed book by the name of "Where all the Dream charchters dream too" It was about a charchter named Maya (illusion) who could traverse time and space like it was nothing more than ledger lines on sheet music. It was sort've a cross between the girl I was in love with in fifth grade and watching her traipse to and from her piano lesson every Thursday.
But the idea of time being a veiled illusion; that diaphonous see-through cloth that the groom avails before seeing his bride's unblemished visage for the first time (although she had experienced him before) is intriguing.
*
Angel hoasanna and quick accolades! The Holy day went well!!!! We had a total of five people and I designed a cool program that Uncle Mike even approved. I read Chapter thirty-five from a book called "The Hour of the Dawn" by Mark Perkins.
The story of the Bab is one I've been thinking about lately especially in terms of surrender. The Bab employs his noted mystical "vanishing theatrics" because he has a job to do. He has a conversation to complete.
In the notion of surrender I feel like, even though the nature of life is precarious and transient, we know what our individual jobs are and we have the priveldge of tackeling them with joy on a daily basis. Yet, I feel a tugging below my ribs that informs me that, whatever you have to do in this lifetime, whatever you feel lead to acheive, will be completed; even if the fussilade of bullets is only a half-breath away from seperating you from mortality; your job, your duty (dharma), will sprout into fruition.
HAPPY B-DAY DANIELA!!!!!!
Although Milton continually carps, "How soon hath time the subtle thief of youth," After hearing your voice and listening to your heart whistle I've decided there's nothing subtle about your smile.
Happy Birthday!!!!
Happy Birthday!!!!
Thursday, July 08, 2004
Milking my Mara into curds and wey....
One way to intuit Mara madness in my life is this: Mara represents that creature that I had to volitionally surrender in order to live the life that needs to be lead. Like the mother of Moses planting her swaddled progeny into the nile I love my Mara's so much (Swissy-Missy and the Morning Mara of today)and know that they will transition into a Pharoah goddess someday. Mara comes back to tempt me, to show me perhaps what could have been, to say "This creature could have been yours if you'd chosen the path of society. The path of the village-compound."
Joseph Campbell--The Campbell crackhead that I am--says that in life there are two paths; The path of the society and the path of the individual.
{Please refrain from jesting the all-too-obvious Robert Frost "Road Less Traveled" chorus.}
The path of society is the path with road signs. It's the path that tells you exactly how-many-miles-there-is-to-the-next-port. It's the "coacktail" or "family holiday obligatory query" path b/c it shows similar passengers just exactly where you're at. When a relative asks you how many more years of school you have left? or what islands you plan on frequenting on your pending cruise? you know that your on the path of the society. On this path the landmarks are very well meted and emotionally measured. My sister and her husband are grand navigators of this path. They know exactly how much more schooling they have left, exactly where they will be in five years (Lawyer, Doctor) and even in fifteen years (senator, congressman--ooops, sorry Beth-- Congressbitch...or, I mean woman (smiles sis)...It's really beautiful in a way because the sole purpose of the village compound path is to ensure the continuity of the immediate surroundings and the cultural augmentation of society.
This is a wonderful path. The essence of the American dream is the pavement for this interstate. If you know how to read the signs, the destinations are endless and there's no telling how far you can travel and what sights will be seen! But, with this path, you have to obey the traffic lights. You have to stop occasionally, you can't speed. The detination is there and the atlas unfolds into a perfect map of your own heart. It's a grand path and one that ensures the greatness and vast depth of mankind.
The second path Campbell notes is more precarious--it's the path of the individual. The individual path is the path of which society has no notion, but it is a path that, if traversed, is often historically venerated with awe. It's the path that, if your at a family holiday and you inform your in-laws that you've spent over 2000 hours diligently milking a book mansucript they look at you with their holiday tonic and immediately want to know when you're going to be published and the net worth of your advance.
It's a very lonely path and it's dangerous because there's no stop signs, the sun sets are more luminous, the mountains are full of menacing dragons.
There are no stop signs on this path. No mileage charts or assurances to tell you "if you go here, you'll get here." You could write the perfect song on this path or push the realm of contemporary art to the next canvas and never see the destination port in your lifetime. Many artist have slip in unhealthy tendencies b/c, they are expecting to have the imminent rewards and mileage of the first path intesect with the spontaeous spring and torrential fall of the second.
"You can't have it both ways." Campbell iterates. "The insecure path is really the secure path."
In regards to my Mara all I can say is this: Swissy-Missy and other makeshift muses become emblematic of what might have been--what my life could be; could obtain if I spent more time crusing on the Society's freeway and less time scaling the side of my own Devil's Tower. When I was 'with' Miss Swissy I wanted so F'ing badly to give her everything; to kiss that tiara of sunshine on her forehead everymorning and tuck her in with my voice everynight. The problem being, as Campbell points out (again)....
"You can't have it both ways."
At least not now. I'll find the elusive queen or whatever eventually (find her so many times), I have no doubt about that, since I've found magicians, gypsies, trobadors, Kings, dragons, trollopes and fellow warriors on this path, I'll find the golden-tressed daughter of a King or whatever.
My Mara looks at me with those eyes that say "come" everytime they blink. Those eyes that say "If you come with me we could have a wonderful life on the Interstate path. We could be successful and have a morgage and a beautiful family."
I think the reason the last two Mara's have appeared "blurry" is because my inner-self, the self that serves a Virgil to my mischevious Dante, knows that I'm acknowledging this Mara and I know what has to be done. Knows that you can't serve two masters and be successful. Knows that, kiddo, you chose the road of the individual and there's so many more sunsets, so many more creatures and that every moment on that road will last forever.
Joseph Campbell--The Campbell crackhead that I am--says that in life there are two paths; The path of the society and the path of the individual.
{Please refrain from jesting the all-too-obvious Robert Frost "Road Less Traveled" chorus.}
The path of society is the path with road signs. It's the path that tells you exactly how-many-miles-there-is-to-the-next-port. It's the "coacktail" or "family holiday obligatory query" path b/c it shows similar passengers just exactly where you're at. When a relative asks you how many more years of school you have left? or what islands you plan on frequenting on your pending cruise? you know that your on the path of the society. On this path the landmarks are very well meted and emotionally measured. My sister and her husband are grand navigators of this path. They know exactly how much more schooling they have left, exactly where they will be in five years (Lawyer, Doctor) and even in fifteen years (senator, congressman--ooops, sorry Beth-- Congressbitch...or, I mean woman (smiles sis)...It's really beautiful in a way because the sole purpose of the village compound path is to ensure the continuity of the immediate surroundings and the cultural augmentation of society.
This is a wonderful path. The essence of the American dream is the pavement for this interstate. If you know how to read the signs, the destinations are endless and there's no telling how far you can travel and what sights will be seen! But, with this path, you have to obey the traffic lights. You have to stop occasionally, you can't speed. The detination is there and the atlas unfolds into a perfect map of your own heart. It's a grand path and one that ensures the greatness and vast depth of mankind.
The second path Campbell notes is more precarious--it's the path of the individual. The individual path is the path of which society has no notion, but it is a path that, if traversed, is often historically venerated with awe. It's the path that, if your at a family holiday and you inform your in-laws that you've spent over 2000 hours diligently milking a book mansucript they look at you with their holiday tonic and immediately want to know when you're going to be published and the net worth of your advance.
It's a very lonely path and it's dangerous because there's no stop signs, the sun sets are more luminous, the mountains are full of menacing dragons.
There are no stop signs on this path. No mileage charts or assurances to tell you "if you go here, you'll get here." You could write the perfect song on this path or push the realm of contemporary art to the next canvas and never see the destination port in your lifetime. Many artist have slip in unhealthy tendencies b/c, they are expecting to have the imminent rewards and mileage of the first path intesect with the spontaeous spring and torrential fall of the second.
"You can't have it both ways." Campbell iterates. "The insecure path is really the secure path."
In regards to my Mara all I can say is this: Swissy-Missy and other makeshift muses become emblematic of what might have been--what my life could be; could obtain if I spent more time crusing on the Society's freeway and less time scaling the side of my own Devil's Tower. When I was 'with' Miss Swissy I wanted so F'ing badly to give her everything; to kiss that tiara of sunshine on her forehead everymorning and tuck her in with my voice everynight. The problem being, as Campbell points out (again)....
"You can't have it both ways."
At least not now. I'll find the elusive queen or whatever eventually (find her so many times), I have no doubt about that, since I've found magicians, gypsies, trobadors, Kings, dragons, trollopes and fellow warriors on this path, I'll find the golden-tressed daughter of a King or whatever.
My Mara looks at me with those eyes that say "come" everytime they blink. Those eyes that say "If you come with me we could have a wonderful life on the Interstate path. We could be successful and have a morgage and a beautiful family."
I think the reason the last two Mara's have appeared "blurry" is because my inner-self, the self that serves a Virgil to my mischevious Dante, knows that I'm acknowledging this Mara and I know what has to be done. Knows that you can't serve two masters and be successful. Knows that, kiddo, you chose the road of the individual and there's so many more sunsets, so many more creatures and that every moment on that road will last forever.
Two venti coffee's and one missing ponytail holder
...and I still can't wake up. Bumped into yet another Mara this morning. Her name also ends with the letter a; which is rather quickly becoming my least favorite vowel of the entire alphabet. Her boyfriends name is also Tim (Swissy-Missy b-friend's name) and she's also a wheresdaniela/ patiencearya mystical compository i.e., she studies Cherokee medicine and knew all about me and I didn't recognize her. Didn't recognize who she was at all. For two whole days.
Still couldn't sleep last night. The insomnia richter scale is toppeling man-made topography inside my chest and forehead. I once saw a baptist pastor friend of mine give this poignant sermon where he said that, in terms of universal sign language, the finger sign for "peace" was second only to the hands-in-the-air capitulation motion that equates "surrender".
I like that anaolgy a lot. Some Baptists like to pray with their hands in the air, as if surrendering themselves--everything they are as individuals--to the godhead.
My mom prays like this. She's a very spiritual person (reminds of patiencearya in alotta ways that are not freduian connoted). Growing up mom was always up before Dawn, hunched over her throroughly annotated bible, underlining stanza's and praying with a constipated expression on her face. I've seen her fast and from a young age I was taught that the really only thing that was important in life was "acknowledging Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior". For her notion of God, she's lived a life of complete humilty and servitude and I feel like I myself may even trump her notion of God by availing certain facets of the Universal Light which I have been fortunate enough to have spiritually felt.
But I love the notion of surrender. True in faith, but even candidly, more true in artistic endeavors....I had a dream last week where I was wedged inside an advent calender and everytime I opened a door there was another door. The doors were hard wooden and mideval and thick and I had absolutely no trouble opening them (which seemed to surprise the faceless companion in my dream)but after about twenty of thirty doors I was exhausted, and couldn't pry open the hedge of another thick wooden door on my own.
Being the Advent calender it was like, always Christmas Eve but never Christmas.
From that periphery, I was having a hard time getting to the virgin birth. I was having a hard time leaving my Jerusalem for the city of David. Was having a hard time caring for my pregnant wife who was carrying a child that was not really my own. I was having a hard time adjusting to the shit-stench of the stable. Was having a hard time giving birth to the virgin, revitalizing "new" energy that was waiting behind the last door.
I thought about how Christ says that when you knock the door would be open, but you have to knock (I didn't knock in my dream, I just shed door frames, tossing them down like loosing lottery tickets)...I thought about how Rumi has a poem where the seeker knocks and knocks and still the door won't open and then he realizes with a laugh that "He's been knocking on the inside door"--(TCSMILES)that he was already in the realm he yearned for just could not see it spiritually. I even thought about Axl Rose caterwauling a stellar rendition of Dylan's "Kocking on Heaven's Door" 1992 Wimbledon benefit memorial concert for Freddie Mercury. I thought about all of this. Knock on wood, and then I thought about the notion of surrender and maybe that's what's wrong with me. That I have to surrender all to my little world of sloppy sentences and character development. That I have to give more and not think about myself.
As Black Sabbath (of all the conspicuously non-spiritual bands) note: "Give it all and ask for no return and very soon you'll see and you'll begin to learn that it's alright, yeah it's alright."
So I need to capitulate more. I understand what I'm here to do is just pure action. I left the port along time ago to find that crazy dreamer enmeshed between the covers of his creations and there's more than that. When you get to your destination and you see that the person whom you have been so assiduosly seeking looks exactly like you, you know that what you were yearning for was the experience. What you were seeking was the initial search. The reward is in the sojourn and in the giving. It's pure giving; it's sacrifiecing the security and commodities of life for something that will help someone else.
It's Alright (1976)
Told you once about your friends and neighbors
They were always seeking but they'll never find
That it's alright, yes it's alright
Where to go, where to be
It's always been that way and it will always be
But it's alright, yes it's alright
Give it all and ask for no return
And very soon you'll see and you'll begin to learn
That it's alright, yes it's alright
Don't you know that it's so good for you
You can be making love and I see it all go through
But it's alright, yes it's alright
Hold her now and you can both go home
It's been a long time coming but you've fianlly shown
That it's alright, yes it's alright
Still couldn't sleep last night. The insomnia richter scale is toppeling man-made topography inside my chest and forehead. I once saw a baptist pastor friend of mine give this poignant sermon where he said that, in terms of universal sign language, the finger sign for "peace" was second only to the hands-in-the-air capitulation motion that equates "surrender".
I like that anaolgy a lot. Some Baptists like to pray with their hands in the air, as if surrendering themselves--everything they are as individuals--to the godhead.
My mom prays like this. She's a very spiritual person (reminds of patiencearya in alotta ways that are not freduian connoted). Growing up mom was always up before Dawn, hunched over her throroughly annotated bible, underlining stanza's and praying with a constipated expression on her face. I've seen her fast and from a young age I was taught that the really only thing that was important in life was "acknowledging Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior". For her notion of God, she's lived a life of complete humilty and servitude and I feel like I myself may even trump her notion of God by availing certain facets of the Universal Light which I have been fortunate enough to have spiritually felt.
But I love the notion of surrender. True in faith, but even candidly, more true in artistic endeavors....I had a dream last week where I was wedged inside an advent calender and everytime I opened a door there was another door. The doors were hard wooden and mideval and thick and I had absolutely no trouble opening them (which seemed to surprise the faceless companion in my dream)but after about twenty of thirty doors I was exhausted, and couldn't pry open the hedge of another thick wooden door on my own.
Being the Advent calender it was like, always Christmas Eve but never Christmas.
From that periphery, I was having a hard time getting to the virgin birth. I was having a hard time leaving my Jerusalem for the city of David. Was having a hard time caring for my pregnant wife who was carrying a child that was not really my own. I was having a hard time adjusting to the shit-stench of the stable. Was having a hard time giving birth to the virgin, revitalizing "new" energy that was waiting behind the last door.
I thought about how Christ says that when you knock the door would be open, but you have to knock (I didn't knock in my dream, I just shed door frames, tossing them down like loosing lottery tickets)...I thought about how Rumi has a poem where the seeker knocks and knocks and still the door won't open and then he realizes with a laugh that "He's been knocking on the inside door"--(TCSMILES)that he was already in the realm he yearned for just could not see it spiritually. I even thought about Axl Rose caterwauling a stellar rendition of Dylan's "Kocking on Heaven's Door" 1992 Wimbledon benefit memorial concert for Freddie Mercury. I thought about all of this. Knock on wood, and then I thought about the notion of surrender and maybe that's what's wrong with me. That I have to surrender all to my little world of sloppy sentences and character development. That I have to give more and not think about myself.
As Black Sabbath (of all the conspicuously non-spiritual bands) note: "Give it all and ask for no return and very soon you'll see and you'll begin to learn that it's alright, yeah it's alright."
So I need to capitulate more. I understand what I'm here to do is just pure action. I left the port along time ago to find that crazy dreamer enmeshed between the covers of his creations and there's more than that. When you get to your destination and you see that the person whom you have been so assiduosly seeking looks exactly like you, you know that what you were yearning for was the experience. What you were seeking was the initial search. The reward is in the sojourn and in the giving. It's pure giving; it's sacrifiecing the security and commodities of life for something that will help someone else.
It's Alright (1976)
Told you once about your friends and neighbors
They were always seeking but they'll never find
That it's alright, yes it's alright
Where to go, where to be
It's always been that way and it will always be
But it's alright, yes it's alright
Give it all and ask for no return
And very soon you'll see and you'll begin to learn
That it's alright, yes it's alright
Don't you know that it's so good for you
You can be making love and I see it all go through
But it's alright, yes it's alright
Hold her now and you can both go home
It's been a long time coming but you've fianlly shown
That it's alright, yes it's alright
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Eyelash Oracle
Every year on my birthday I always imagine the same scenario. I see myself in a big smoky room with lots of books and I am having conversations with myself at different stages of my life. For instance, twenty-seven year old David with long hair and cigarettes and a telephone thick manuscript he keeps referring as his "three-and-a-half-year-old" is in the same room with seventeen year old David who has short hair and smooth skin with the occasional forehead blemish. Seventeen year old David keeps on whipping a picture of his Drivers License which he just got (sixteen year old David failed the test his first three times) and twenty-seven year old David wryly offers a nostalgia ridden smile when he sees his younger self, listening to the seventeen year old rant about being the cross-country captain in high school; talking about his recent trip from Paris, and how he is still in love Jennifer. Twenty-seven year old David refers to seventeen year old David as Kiddo (Seventeen year old David doesn't like this) and tells him that if you think ashen-face Jenny Wilson was anything wait to you see what the next quick decade has in store.
The two David's exchange glances. They both have the same color eyes, an anomolous hue what can only be described as "Honey-Blue". Seventeen year old David wants to know the answer. He wants to know about adulthood. He wants to know about his friends and family (he is oblivious that his grandmother has four years left on the planet and his own father has seven)he wants to know where he will be in ten years (surely London) and who he will marry (either Harmony, Renae or Jen Wilson for sure)or what he will be doing (probably working for a traveling magazine, no, wait--he'll be a curator at the uffizi since he loves art and plans on majoring in art history in college) only Twenty-seven year old David smiles, utters something about the search being more important than the Discovery and tells him to enjoy the next ten years. To enjoy every second of it.
Seventeen year old David wears a cross around his neck. He thinks twenty-seven year old David is cool, only he uses a ton of vocab-words that seventeen year old David has never heard used casually before. Seventeen year old David looks at the thick manuscript in twenty-seven year old David's arm and wonders why it is, exactly, that his decade older shadow refers to that as his daughter. Seventeen year old David has never written a short story or a poem and reads usually only what is assigned to him. Twenty-seven year old David smiles. He wants to inform seventeen year old David about all the timeless beauty, the pain and sadness that will inevitable transpire over the next ten years. He wants to tell him to spend more time with his Dad and grandma-as much time as possible. He wants to tell him to implore his father to switch high schools because something bad is about to occur. He wants to tell him to quit feeling like a sinner all the time. That, in terms of theology--seventeen year old David is president of the Church Youth Group--Wow kiddo, the shit is really gonna hit the fan and somethings you believe in now very passionately will, in ten years, be totally reversed.
Twenty-seven year old David wants to tell seventeen year old David about his mistakes. Tell seventeen year old David that he will fuck up royally on more than one occasion. That he will hurt people. That he will fight with his parents and damn his rival siblings. That he should learn to respect people. That he should not let his pending hobby ameliorate his ego the way it will.
Twenty-seven year old David wants to tell seventeen year old David about the places he has been. About the writers he has discovered. The people he has met; the hands he has held in public.
Twenty-seven year old David wants to be a mentor to seventeen year old David. He wants to tell him that, when someone is doing something bad (seventeen year old David had some bad shit happen to him when he was younger) be a man and show some fucking balls.
Twenty-seven year old David wants to tell seventeen year old David that smokings not cool (as he hides his own cigarello behind his back), that being drunk all the time by no means helps cultivate your artistic merit, that its not cool to cheat on women, that he should learn how to wear a condom since his father never really told him about sex.
He wants to tell seventeen year old David all about bills and credit cards. car insurance, cell phone bills, internet fetishes and exorbitant college loans.
He wants to tell him all about joy.
Twenty-seven year old David smiles to himself when he thinks that he should really tell seventeen year old David that, when he meets any person by the name of Brook, Lisa, Elisa or Laurie he should run like a bat out of hell. He wants to tell seventeen year old David to keep up with the athletics. That even though he's gonna be going through some tough shit, he still has it better than more than 90% of the planet and that all of his talents are by no means afforded privledges; they are gifts and should be used to help others.
Twenty-seven year old David wants to tell seventeen year old David to believe in himself. To roll up his shirt sleeve and have a little confidence. To quit sulking all the time and stop listening to so much Morissey.
Twenty-seven year old David confesses to seventeen year old David that he still lisetens to Tori Amos and Enya from time to time, that no, he doesn't live in Europe but he's found what could one day be a proffession and he's found something he actually loves doing.
Twenty-seven year old David quotes Wittgenstein and Augustine ("Beerstein" thinks seventeen year old David) Seventeen year old david looks at him funny. He will discover Walt Whitman this October. In less than a year Seventeen year old David will be less of a burgeoning athlete. His room will smell less like a locker room and more like moldy, second hand books.
Just when Twenty-seven year old David is informing seventeen year old David that, whatever you do in life, don't take it too seriously, laugh, can the ego, in walks thirty-seven year old David. Thirty-seven year old David stares for a long time at seventeen year old David. He still has all his hair and smiles more than both of them combined. Thirty-seven year old David has secrets and joy and more loss. There's been more deaths. The shade on his face informs his two younger selves that he's had some success in whatever arena he's in. Forty-seven year old david walks in, smoking a pipe with crisp gray hair followed by (if I'm lucky) a fifty-seven year old david, having experienced even more loss but even more joy.
All the David's congregate in the smoky room and they laugh. They are all telling jokes. The older David seems to have a problem with gas. The seventeen year old David tries to bum a cigarette off the Twenty-seven year old David who harnagues him. There is laughter and food and drinks. Each decade david has a secret, has something he has done in the last ten years that he's not proud of and something he has done that he is. Soemthing that the younger David doesn't know about yet. Soemthing the older David wishes he could forget.
All the David's have something the other David's want. The forty-seven year old David seems to have a little bit of financial largesse. The thirty-seven year old David wants to show the Twenty-seven year old david a picture of his knock-out wife. The fifty-seven year old David wears old-computer thick glasses, has gained weight after a bout of chemo and somehow has a thick white beard (all the other david's can't grow beards) granting him the semblance of Harley-Davidson mugging Santa Claus. The oldest David keeps looking at the twenty-seven year old David like he has something that he lost once, and was never able to get back. He wants to tell him not to lose it; not to lose that one thing. He wants to tell him this as much as Twenty-seven year old David wants to tell seventeen year old david things--only he can't because all the David's silence when they see a young boy the size of a barstool apprehensively looking at the older men in fuddled astonishment. The boy has an alter-boy haircut, kitchen floor smooth skin and blurred vision (glasses come when he's eight)--Seven year old David has never heard of the 'f-word', and goes to Sunday school every week. He's capable of informing the older men of who Jesus is and that Ronald Reagan is the president. His parents let him stay up and watch the A-team sometimes.
Seven year old David is afraid of the older men. He is apprehensive of their disel-thick odor. He coughs at the slightest lick of their nicotine.
But seven year old david (with the same color eyes) has soemthing inside of him that completely silences all the other five David's. He has something beneath his skin, inside the jungle gym of his calcium-fortifying ribs that simply astounds the other five men in the room. The fifty-seven year old David smiles.
"Tell us something, brother." I say to myself; a half-century between my voices.
Seven year old David loves Jeusus. He loves his mom and he cried at Christmas when he found a BMX stashed under the Christmas tree.
Seven year old david has been completely free of sorrow.
"Tell us something, little man." The fifty-seven year old David says. Everyone in the room is silent. Seven year old David has a room of his own now. He is a big boy. He knows that Jesus loves him. He knows his phone number and address. He knows his am and pm's. He can point out Peoria on the map and spell the state that he lives in. His parents held him back in first grade because he was slow at math and tentative with reading. He is by far one of the slowest learners in Miss Heintz second grade class, yet all the men want him to say something almost important.
"Ok," David says, looking down. He shushes his honey-blue eyes and quietly quotes the one poem he says every night when his father comes into his bedroom and kisses his forehead and tells him that he loves him and tucks him in....Seven year old David even smiles as he bows his chin and clicks his eyes into a squeeze and says the prayer he says with his father every night. A prayer about the light going away and a prayer about a God who is implored to listen to his children while they pray.
The two David's exchange glances. They both have the same color eyes, an anomolous hue what can only be described as "Honey-Blue". Seventeen year old David wants to know the answer. He wants to know about adulthood. He wants to know about his friends and family (he is oblivious that his grandmother has four years left on the planet and his own father has seven)he wants to know where he will be in ten years (surely London) and who he will marry (either Harmony, Renae or Jen Wilson for sure)or what he will be doing (probably working for a traveling magazine, no, wait--he'll be a curator at the uffizi since he loves art and plans on majoring in art history in college) only Twenty-seven year old David smiles, utters something about the search being more important than the Discovery and tells him to enjoy the next ten years. To enjoy every second of it.
Seventeen year old David wears a cross around his neck. He thinks twenty-seven year old David is cool, only he uses a ton of vocab-words that seventeen year old David has never heard used casually before. Seventeen year old David looks at the thick manuscript in twenty-seven year old David's arm and wonders why it is, exactly, that his decade older shadow refers to that as his daughter. Seventeen year old David has never written a short story or a poem and reads usually only what is assigned to him. Twenty-seven year old David smiles. He wants to inform seventeen year old David about all the timeless beauty, the pain and sadness that will inevitable transpire over the next ten years. He wants to tell him to spend more time with his Dad and grandma-as much time as possible. He wants to tell him to implore his father to switch high schools because something bad is about to occur. He wants to tell him to quit feeling like a sinner all the time. That, in terms of theology--seventeen year old David is president of the Church Youth Group--Wow kiddo, the shit is really gonna hit the fan and somethings you believe in now very passionately will, in ten years, be totally reversed.
Twenty-seven year old David wants to tell seventeen year old David about his mistakes. Tell seventeen year old David that he will fuck up royally on more than one occasion. That he will hurt people. That he will fight with his parents and damn his rival siblings. That he should learn to respect people. That he should not let his pending hobby ameliorate his ego the way it will.
Twenty-seven year old David wants to tell seventeen year old David about the places he has been. About the writers he has discovered. The people he has met; the hands he has held in public.
Twenty-seven year old David wants to be a mentor to seventeen year old David. He wants to tell him that, when someone is doing something bad (seventeen year old David had some bad shit happen to him when he was younger) be a man and show some fucking balls.
Twenty-seven year old David wants to tell seventeen year old David that smokings not cool (as he hides his own cigarello behind his back), that being drunk all the time by no means helps cultivate your artistic merit, that its not cool to cheat on women, that he should learn how to wear a condom since his father never really told him about sex.
He wants to tell seventeen year old David all about bills and credit cards. car insurance, cell phone bills, internet fetishes and exorbitant college loans.
He wants to tell him all about joy.
Twenty-seven year old David smiles to himself when he thinks that he should really tell seventeen year old David that, when he meets any person by the name of Brook, Lisa, Elisa or Laurie he should run like a bat out of hell. He wants to tell seventeen year old David to keep up with the athletics. That even though he's gonna be going through some tough shit, he still has it better than more than 90% of the planet and that all of his talents are by no means afforded privledges; they are gifts and should be used to help others.
Twenty-seven year old David wants to tell seventeen year old David to believe in himself. To roll up his shirt sleeve and have a little confidence. To quit sulking all the time and stop listening to so much Morissey.
Twenty-seven year old David confesses to seventeen year old David that he still lisetens to Tori Amos and Enya from time to time, that no, he doesn't live in Europe but he's found what could one day be a proffession and he's found something he actually loves doing.
Twenty-seven year old David quotes Wittgenstein and Augustine ("Beerstein" thinks seventeen year old David) Seventeen year old david looks at him funny. He will discover Walt Whitman this October. In less than a year Seventeen year old David will be less of a burgeoning athlete. His room will smell less like a locker room and more like moldy, second hand books.
Just when Twenty-seven year old David is informing seventeen year old David that, whatever you do in life, don't take it too seriously, laugh, can the ego, in walks thirty-seven year old David. Thirty-seven year old David stares for a long time at seventeen year old David. He still has all his hair and smiles more than both of them combined. Thirty-seven year old David has secrets and joy and more loss. There's been more deaths. The shade on his face informs his two younger selves that he's had some success in whatever arena he's in. Forty-seven year old david walks in, smoking a pipe with crisp gray hair followed by (if I'm lucky) a fifty-seven year old david, having experienced even more loss but even more joy.
All the David's congregate in the smoky room and they laugh. They are all telling jokes. The older David seems to have a problem with gas. The seventeen year old David tries to bum a cigarette off the Twenty-seven year old David who harnagues him. There is laughter and food and drinks. Each decade david has a secret, has something he has done in the last ten years that he's not proud of and something he has done that he is. Soemthing that the younger David doesn't know about yet. Soemthing the older David wishes he could forget.
All the David's have something the other David's want. The forty-seven year old David seems to have a little bit of financial largesse. The thirty-seven year old David wants to show the Twenty-seven year old david a picture of his knock-out wife. The fifty-seven year old David wears old-computer thick glasses, has gained weight after a bout of chemo and somehow has a thick white beard (all the other david's can't grow beards) granting him the semblance of Harley-Davidson mugging Santa Claus. The oldest David keeps looking at the twenty-seven year old David like he has something that he lost once, and was never able to get back. He wants to tell him not to lose it; not to lose that one thing. He wants to tell him this as much as Twenty-seven year old David wants to tell seventeen year old david things--only he can't because all the David's silence when they see a young boy the size of a barstool apprehensively looking at the older men in fuddled astonishment. The boy has an alter-boy haircut, kitchen floor smooth skin and blurred vision (glasses come when he's eight)--Seven year old David has never heard of the 'f-word', and goes to Sunday school every week. He's capable of informing the older men of who Jesus is and that Ronald Reagan is the president. His parents let him stay up and watch the A-team sometimes.
Seven year old David is afraid of the older men. He is apprehensive of their disel-thick odor. He coughs at the slightest lick of their nicotine.
But seven year old david (with the same color eyes) has soemthing inside of him that completely silences all the other five David's. He has something beneath his skin, inside the jungle gym of his calcium-fortifying ribs that simply astounds the other five men in the room. The fifty-seven year old David smiles.
"Tell us something, brother." I say to myself; a half-century between my voices.
Seven year old David loves Jeusus. He loves his mom and he cried at Christmas when he found a BMX stashed under the Christmas tree.
Seven year old david has been completely free of sorrow.
"Tell us something, little man." The fifty-seven year old David says. Everyone in the room is silent. Seven year old David has a room of his own now. He is a big boy. He knows that Jesus loves him. He knows his phone number and address. He knows his am and pm's. He can point out Peoria on the map and spell the state that he lives in. His parents held him back in first grade because he was slow at math and tentative with reading. He is by far one of the slowest learners in Miss Heintz second grade class, yet all the men want him to say something almost important.
"Ok," David says, looking down. He shushes his honey-blue eyes and quietly quotes the one poem he says every night when his father comes into his bedroom and kisses his forehead and tells him that he loves him and tucks him in....Seven year old David even smiles as he bows his chin and clicks his eyes into a squeeze and says the prayer he says with his father every night. A prayer about the light going away and a prayer about a God who is implored to listen to his children while they pray.
...and the Santa Maria.
Can't even begin to smash enough syllables together and describe to you what I felt during the two consecutive screenings of BEFORE SUNSET (Shown in funky Lincoln Park no less!)--Everything in my chest just sort of rumpled opened and emptied like ice in a kitchen dispenser. The first movie was nothing short of a romantic slice of perfection and verisimilitude mingled with a potent shot cinematic chemistry a la Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke. I was reading one review where the critic said that you could put both movies on mute and watch the two protagonists facial nuances and subtle tics and experience exactly what they are feeling! It's so true! What's amazing is how the charachters still harbor many of the same predilections that emotionally governed them in their mid-twenties even though they are now in their early thirties. It's more than a work of art; its a work of life and should be required viewing for anyone randomly peaking into the question mark-shaped keyhole of the Eternity blog--all 800 of you!
Mystical fortissimo or romantic malaria? I stayed out way late July 4th and snatched the Peoria Charter en route to Midway at 4am Monday morning.Hoo-kay; given the blogging discourses over the past month whom do you think was the only other patron on the bus at that time? Ms. Mara guised as a Stepford Wife-wannabe, Swissy-Missy, herself! Un-bull-insert-your-most-shocking- invective-here-leave-able! At 4 am in the freaking morning! (Thank you madame arya for diagnosing myself and swissy-wishy with a 'spiritual contract' way back yonder--it's time we got that neutered)...anyway, what's even more weird is that we didn't talk and I really didn't offically 'see' her until right when she got out....
Let me explain. Everytime I try to be quote 'adultish' or quote 'responsible' things get socially unkempt. Happens every time. I was in the midst of a no-sleep binge and figured I'd somehow endeavor to garner a little shut-eye on the charter bus. I took my contacts out (I have horrible vision and despise spectacles) a little before I arrived at the station and stoically waved at a blurred couple who knew my name. Since I'm a workaholic allota people know me from the library so I figured it was no big deal, plus my whole body was anchored in exhaustion.
When I boarded the bus my first thought was-"Shit, that was Swissy-Missy and her beau who bested me and I just gave them the figurative finger by being aloof and standoffish." I dismised the thought and fell asleep and woke up around six-thirty, plopping my contacts in just before I saw Swissy herself exit the bus. I wasn't even sure it was her (she on the other hand was wearing glasses, something I'd never seen before)until I saw her last name in the license plate of the car that picked her up.
What do you think about that?
Even more ironic, The last gift I gave Swissy-Missy was my DVD of Before Sunrise, Linlater's first moive, whose sequeal I had gone to Chicago solely to see later that day.
Let me iterate that I'm completely over Swissy and ardently apologetic that I raffled so many of my emotions in front of my fellow beloved blogsters. Swissy and myself didn't really have that much in common from the outset; we never 'officially' dated, had a few moments of snug intimacy that normally ended with her being extremely polite and professional on sort've an airplane stewardess caliber and me drooling, begging, living mostly in my cloudy little dreamworld of perfection I have gyrating at all times inside my skull. If Swissy would pop out of a birthday cake today wearing nothing but a Detroit Pistons ballcap and panties I would still be turned off; but something in the fact that we keep on randomly sauntering into each other (esp. when its just not healthy) is plain weird.
Mystical fortissimo or romantic malaria? I stayed out way late July 4th and snatched the Peoria Charter en route to Midway at 4am Monday morning.Hoo-kay; given the blogging discourses over the past month whom do you think was the only other patron on the bus at that time? Ms. Mara guised as a Stepford Wife-wannabe, Swissy-Missy, herself! Un-bull-insert-your-most-shocking- invective-here-leave-able! At 4 am in the freaking morning! (Thank you madame arya for diagnosing myself and swissy-wishy with a 'spiritual contract' way back yonder--it's time we got that neutered)...anyway, what's even more weird is that we didn't talk and I really didn't offically 'see' her until right when she got out....
Let me explain. Everytime I try to be quote 'adultish' or quote 'responsible' things get socially unkempt. Happens every time. I was in the midst of a no-sleep binge and figured I'd somehow endeavor to garner a little shut-eye on the charter bus. I took my contacts out (I have horrible vision and despise spectacles) a little before I arrived at the station and stoically waved at a blurred couple who knew my name. Since I'm a workaholic allota people know me from the library so I figured it was no big deal, plus my whole body was anchored in exhaustion.
When I boarded the bus my first thought was-"Shit, that was Swissy-Missy and her beau who bested me and I just gave them the figurative finger by being aloof and standoffish." I dismised the thought and fell asleep and woke up around six-thirty, plopping my contacts in just before I saw Swissy herself exit the bus. I wasn't even sure it was her (she on the other hand was wearing glasses, something I'd never seen before)until I saw her last name in the license plate of the car that picked her up.
What do you think about that?
Even more ironic, The last gift I gave Swissy-Missy was my DVD of Before Sunrise, Linlater's first moive, whose sequeal I had gone to Chicago solely to see later that day.
Let me iterate that I'm completely over Swissy and ardently apologetic that I raffled so many of my emotions in front of my fellow beloved blogsters. Swissy and myself didn't really have that much in common from the outset; we never 'officially' dated, had a few moments of snug intimacy that normally ended with her being extremely polite and professional on sort've an airplane stewardess caliber and me drooling, begging, living mostly in my cloudy little dreamworld of perfection I have gyrating at all times inside my skull. If Swissy would pop out of a birthday cake today wearing nothing but a Detroit Pistons ballcap and panties I would still be turned off; but something in the fact that we keep on randomly sauntering into each other (esp. when its just not healthy) is plain weird.
Saturday, July 03, 2004
Vagabond Terminal and a Moment of Peace.....
Just blogged an 'ugly' recital entry with a pretty name where all my sins drip down the side of the page like dirty icicles in late February. Uncle Mike has been effusive to the point of emotional anarchy. We're always on the go and he insists on picking me up and dropping me off at work, even though I much rather walk.
Love Uncle Mike to astral-schellings but eventually I need a moment of late-twenty-something peace.
No one in the library seems to speak english today.
As with daniela, I'll be unbloggable for the next couple of days (ha-ha get your mind outta the gutter!)It'll be nice to be by myself and think my own thoughts.
Yeah, that's a good way to enter your next lap around the sun. To be by yourself, and to harvest big thoughts. Thoughts that eventually, will change the world.
*****************************************************************
Love Uncle Mike to astral-schellings but eventually I need a moment of late-twenty-something peace.
No one in the library seems to speak english today.
As with daniela, I'll be unbloggable for the next couple of days (ha-ha get your mind outta the gutter!)It'll be nice to be by myself and think my own thoughts.
Yeah, that's a good way to enter your next lap around the sun. To be by yourself, and to harvest big thoughts. Thoughts that eventually, will change the world.
*****************************************************************
Friday, July 02, 2004
Confetti
Hooray!!!!!
Mara-Arya has returned to Blogsville with a new pair of Shoes! (Guess there's no place like home!) Lady Benzedrine is out breaking hearts and communing with nature! Crazy Mister D once again spent the entire blogging day pelting out sentences for recital entires he never posts!
Life is back to normal in the Eternity blog!!!!! Not to sound blasphemous, but the trio of arya, daniela and david consturct a pretty solid trinity on their own acord.
Mara-Arya has returned to Blogsville with a new pair of Shoes! (Guess there's no place like home!) Lady Benzedrine is out breaking hearts and communing with nature! Crazy Mister D once again spent the entire blogging day pelting out sentences for recital entires he never posts!
Life is back to normal in the Eternity blog!!!!! Not to sound blasphemous, but the trio of arya, daniela and david consturct a pretty solid trinity on their own acord.
Thursday, July 01, 2004
Memory and Lip
Birthday itineray is in germinal fetus-kicking-the-underbelly-blueprints stages. Tenatively I'll be kicking it with Moma Bear this sunday for lunch. Her chucrh always sports a jingoistic fourth of july farce and she already bought me a ticket...maybe I should tell her that I'm a Ba....a very semi-spiritual person as is. (Smiles)-My sister and cool brother in law will be in town so we should have a good time.
Hang out with Uncle Mike Sunday afternoon. We still couldn't get the Tractor to utter a mechanical yawn this afternoon so tomorrow I'll be using an old 1940-ish manual mower to trim the fornt of the house.
Monday morning (day b-4 b-day but day library is closed for fourth) I leave P-town via bus at 4 am and arrive at Midway airport 7:30. Take the L into the gut of Chi-town, depart L in the Loop, hit heavily the mutlifarious Starbucks, about a billion green constellations dotted circuitously off Michigan Ave, spend a narrow hour absorbed in the Contemporary wing at the Art Institute (there's this one Matisse that absolutely DESTROYS me every time my eyelashes channel surf across it)--go to AFTERWARDS my favorite used book store on the planet--talk to the owner like I am Hemingway's heir (this is called netwoking--selling myself to get my pages 'out there') and then at 1:10 hit the first of two consecutive showings of BEFORE SUNSET before eventually, wending my way back to Midway en route to Peoria via charter bus.
Not a bad way to official welcome my 27th year on this planet. Age is arbitrary and completely subject to the vicissitudes of passion and joy. When I was twenty-two I was arrogant beyond all belief, thought I was important and omniscient (though not in the beloved Mara-Arya sense)- and behaved like Frasier's younger borther Niles--socially snotty and hard to digest. Now I'm a burgeoning 27, (incidentally, half the age of my father before his demise)and I can't stop clicking the heels of my Doc Martens together in youthful elation and perpetual ambition. I can't stop writing, I can't stop falling in love with other human beings, I can't stop learning, I can't stop pulsating with life. I can't stop living.
"The opposite of war isn't PEACE--it's CREATION."
-Jonathan Larson
"The world of arts is the earthly paradise."
-Joseph Campbell
"If by eternity is understood not infinite temporal duration but non-temporality, then it can be said that a man lives eternally if he lives in the present."
-Wittgenstein
Can't think of any more cool quotes. On a high right now. One of my cool creative writing prof's, BRILLIANT Doc. Palakeel just sauntered into the library and I was already talkin' writing jive with JORDAN-to-my-Pippen writer NIck Thorton. NOthing beats it when writers hang out together (esp. when they've been pummeling out those sentences all day, all week)...We kind of augmented each other's highs. Palakeel's written three refulgent plays in the last year!!!!! One of his formidable play's was titled THE GOLDEN ASS ass and guess who got to play the eunuch (hmmmmmmm)....
Alright, winding down. Life is good. I still won't be able to sleep tonight.
Hang out with Uncle Mike Sunday afternoon. We still couldn't get the Tractor to utter a mechanical yawn this afternoon so tomorrow I'll be using an old 1940-ish manual mower to trim the fornt of the house.
Monday morning (day b-4 b-day but day library is closed for fourth) I leave P-town via bus at 4 am and arrive at Midway airport 7:30. Take the L into the gut of Chi-town, depart L in the Loop, hit heavily the mutlifarious Starbucks, about a billion green constellations dotted circuitously off Michigan Ave, spend a narrow hour absorbed in the Contemporary wing at the Art Institute (there's this one Matisse that absolutely DESTROYS me every time my eyelashes channel surf across it)--go to AFTERWARDS my favorite used book store on the planet--talk to the owner like I am Hemingway's heir (this is called netwoking--selling myself to get my pages 'out there') and then at 1:10 hit the first of two consecutive showings of BEFORE SUNSET before eventually, wending my way back to Midway en route to Peoria via charter bus.
Not a bad way to official welcome my 27th year on this planet. Age is arbitrary and completely subject to the vicissitudes of passion and joy. When I was twenty-two I was arrogant beyond all belief, thought I was important and omniscient (though not in the beloved Mara-Arya sense)- and behaved like Frasier's younger borther Niles--socially snotty and hard to digest. Now I'm a burgeoning 27, (incidentally, half the age of my father before his demise)and I can't stop clicking the heels of my Doc Martens together in youthful elation and perpetual ambition. I can't stop writing, I can't stop falling in love with other human beings, I can't stop learning, I can't stop pulsating with life. I can't stop living.
"The opposite of war isn't PEACE--it's CREATION."
-Jonathan Larson
"The world of arts is the earthly paradise."
-Joseph Campbell
"If by eternity is understood not infinite temporal duration but non-temporality, then it can be said that a man lives eternally if he lives in the present."
-Wittgenstein
Can't think of any more cool quotes. On a high right now. One of my cool creative writing prof's, BRILLIANT Doc. Palakeel just sauntered into the library and I was already talkin' writing jive with JORDAN-to-my-Pippen writer NIck Thorton. NOthing beats it when writers hang out together (esp. when they've been pummeling out those sentences all day, all week)...We kind of augmented each other's highs. Palakeel's written three refulgent plays in the last year!!!!! One of his formidable play's was titled THE GOLDEN ASS ass and guess who got to play the eunuch (hmmmmmmm)....
Alright, winding down. Life is good. I still won't be able to sleep tonight.
Kiss of Glory Pedals
Having a hard time writing and sleeping this week for some reason. Maybe its the trying move pinched with allergy nausea (my nose is a gunked-up faucet) Uncle Mike said something really brilliant last night. He talked about the faith rocketing solely towards the future.
"Often times in our own lives we have a tendency to look back and try to figure out what happened. This is true in psycho-analysis. Instead of focusing with precision on where we want to go, we ponder invariably what traumatic event must have happened to us the moment the baby carriage rolled off the front porch.
"The faith focuses on the future. It focuses on changing our thinking (as Shogi Effendi says). It's not about what has been done before as much as it is what will be done."
Mike used a cool proveb by Jesus but I was too enervated to remember the exact details. Soemthing about when your ploughing a field and slicing up arable soil into furrows, if the driver of the plough keeps his eye keenly focused on a spot in front of him, he will have a straight line and a profitable harvest. If the driver of the plough keeps looking over his shoulder to see what land was already sewn, his horse will slightly swerve and at the end he will discover that his line is not straight, diminishing the supply of his harvest.
I really liked that analogy. I'm always hung up and looking back over something. Whether it's inwardly lamenting over my father's death or reflecting over that one moment with that one perfect girl and trying to viacriously relive that emotion in ersatz others...and I still emotionally tackle the painful penumbra's of highschool and around-the-clock work life as a validation for my own personal "sulk"--but honestly, as much as I love to look into the purple-hue of that country sunset and think about what once was, I love theorizing the fact that I haven't hit my peak yet, that I haven't yet said what I'm suppose to say and that in my own life (as well as in the faith) everything is spring soil fraught with mulch and dirt and who knows what color the pedals will unfold when touched by the fortifying shaft of light?
"Often times in our own lives we have a tendency to look back and try to figure out what happened. This is true in psycho-analysis. Instead of focusing with precision on where we want to go, we ponder invariably what traumatic event must have happened to us the moment the baby carriage rolled off the front porch.
"The faith focuses on the future. It focuses on changing our thinking (as Shogi Effendi says). It's not about what has been done before as much as it is what will be done."
Mike used a cool proveb by Jesus but I was too enervated to remember the exact details. Soemthing about when your ploughing a field and slicing up arable soil into furrows, if the driver of the plough keeps his eye keenly focused on a spot in front of him, he will have a straight line and a profitable harvest. If the driver of the plough keeps looking over his shoulder to see what land was already sewn, his horse will slightly swerve and at the end he will discover that his line is not straight, diminishing the supply of his harvest.
I really liked that analogy. I'm always hung up and looking back over something. Whether it's inwardly lamenting over my father's death or reflecting over that one moment with that one perfect girl and trying to viacriously relive that emotion in ersatz others...and I still emotionally tackle the painful penumbra's of highschool and around-the-clock work life as a validation for my own personal "sulk"--but honestly, as much as I love to look into the purple-hue of that country sunset and think about what once was, I love theorizing the fact that I haven't hit my peak yet, that I haven't yet said what I'm suppose to say and that in my own life (as well as in the faith) everything is spring soil fraught with mulch and dirt and who knows what color the pedals will unfold when touched by the fortifying shaft of light?
I wonder....
In ten years if we'll look back on the botched blogging fetish with such sour nostalgia as we reminisce over such has beens as C.B. antenae's, 8-tracks and tube socks?
Intellectual flirting....
Of course, just my luck. "Before Sunset" opens tomorrow and it has a limited release. I was planning on spending my birthday totally whacked out in the theatre, bawling, sipping on my doctored libation, having terse, meatphysical awakenings and eye-opening epiphanies, realizing that its myself on screen (the Ethan Hawke charachter has become a novelist--go figure)....oh well, my friend Shannon gave me a free ticket to Farenheit 9/11 and my new mantra for the pending election is this: John Kerry's just like a condom-it may be uncomfortable but for your own health you sometimes have wear one. Kerry's political antics may be initially uncomfortable to the earlobe but for the time being, we have to vote for him.
Anyway, work still sucks (or my bosses cudgeled lip is sucking the life outta me!) Uncle Mike and I have been moving. Our house is a mess, our lawn needs to be mowed and our 'tractor' lawn mower we inherited has a dull blade. Life is sometimes perfect in its domestic turbulence--don't you think?
Here's what Mercury News says about Before Sunset:
In "Before Sunset," Celine and Jesse also achieve a sort of peace together. As fans will remember, at the end of "Before Sunrise," they left each other at the train station in Vienna without exchanging last names or addresses, but with a promise to meet again in six months (from June 16, which James Joyce readers will note is Bloomsday) at that very same spot.
From the beginning of "Before Sunset," it's clear that they did not meet again in Vienna. But Jesse is open about the fact that he never got over it: In fact, he has just written a highly romantic novel about their experience. He's on a book tour, doing a reading at Paris' Shakespeare & Co., when she shows up. He's bowled over; she's outwardly casual. They have about an hour before he has to catch his plane back to New York.
What's unusual about "Before Sunset" is that while it is the sexiest movie to come along in years, the actual physical interaction between Celine and Jesse is kept to the barest minimum. Any seduction is within the mind and, as a result, it's a study in subtlety. Linklater, working in real time - the couple has only 80 minutes together this time, in contrast to their full day and night together in Vienna in 1994 - has managed to capture that unique tension between human beings on the edge of touching, but not quite there.
"The goal was actually to capture that moment before anything happens," said Delpy, calling from her home in Los Angeles to talk about the film. "All that flirting, but not the obvious flirting, the kind of more intellectual kind of flirting."
Maybe that's because desire, an emotion best displayed in our eyes, has become a commodity, a commodity co-opted by an immature pop culture revolving around gyrating teenagers with impossibly perfect, oiled-up bodies. Movie desire has to look like the desire portrayed in ad campaigns: chiseled features, tousled hair, a Versace number cut down to here. Linklater and his two stars have deliberately made a movie that refutes that.
Anyway, work still sucks (or my bosses cudgeled lip is sucking the life outta me!) Uncle Mike and I have been moving. Our house is a mess, our lawn needs to be mowed and our 'tractor' lawn mower we inherited has a dull blade. Life is sometimes perfect in its domestic turbulence--don't you think?
Here's what Mercury News says about Before Sunset:
In "Before Sunset," Celine and Jesse also achieve a sort of peace together. As fans will remember, at the end of "Before Sunrise," they left each other at the train station in Vienna without exchanging last names or addresses, but with a promise to meet again in six months (from June 16, which James Joyce readers will note is Bloomsday) at that very same spot.
From the beginning of "Before Sunset," it's clear that they did not meet again in Vienna. But Jesse is open about the fact that he never got over it: In fact, he has just written a highly romantic novel about their experience. He's on a book tour, doing a reading at Paris' Shakespeare & Co., when she shows up. He's bowled over; she's outwardly casual. They have about an hour before he has to catch his plane back to New York.
What's unusual about "Before Sunset" is that while it is the sexiest movie to come along in years, the actual physical interaction between Celine and Jesse is kept to the barest minimum. Any seduction is within the mind and, as a result, it's a study in subtlety. Linklater, working in real time - the couple has only 80 minutes together this time, in contrast to their full day and night together in Vienna in 1994 - has managed to capture that unique tension between human beings on the edge of touching, but not quite there.
"The goal was actually to capture that moment before anything happens," said Delpy, calling from her home in Los Angeles to talk about the film. "All that flirting, but not the obvious flirting, the kind of more intellectual kind of flirting."
Maybe that's because desire, an emotion best displayed in our eyes, has become a commodity, a commodity co-opted by an immature pop culture revolving around gyrating teenagers with impossibly perfect, oiled-up bodies. Movie desire has to look like the desire portrayed in ad campaigns: chiseled features, tousled hair, a Versace number cut down to here. Linklater and his two stars have deliberately made a movie that refutes that.
Tattered topography and nearsighted fatigue.....
Tired. Tired. Tired. Here's a fun little poem by Sharon Olds I've been thinking about while riddled with bouts of insomnia:
Topography
Sharon Olds
After we flew across the country we
got in bed, laid our bodies
delicately together, like maps laid
face to face, East to West, my
San Francisco against your New York, your
Fire Island against my Sonoma, my
New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho
bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas
burning against your Kansas your Kansas
burning against my Kansas, your Eastern
Standard Time pressing into my
Pacific Time, my Mountain Time
beating against your Central Time, your
sun rising swiftly from the right my
sun rising swiftly from the left your
moon rising slowly form the left my
moon rising slowly form the right until
all four bodies of the sky
burn above us, sealing us together,
all our cities twin cities,
all our states united, one
nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Topography
Sharon Olds
After we flew across the country we
got in bed, laid our bodies
delicately together, like maps laid
face to face, East to West, my
San Francisco against your New York, your
Fire Island against my Sonoma, my
New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho
bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas
burning against your Kansas your Kansas
burning against my Kansas, your Eastern
Standard Time pressing into my
Pacific Time, my Mountain Time
beating against your Central Time, your
sun rising swiftly from the right my
sun rising swiftly from the left your
moon rising slowly form the left my
moon rising slowly form the right until
all four bodies of the sky
burn above us, sealing us together,
all our cities twin cities,
all our states united, one
nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Did I mention?
My boss is still fair-game for a fictional butchering. Expect to see his scalp sitting hefty on a heap of bargain books sometime soon.
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Corporate-collar sulk
Blog bi-day today because of wrangled work ethos. Why is it so cool to deride 'assiduous' workers for sub-menial pay....(I have to due a buncha shit while everyone else in the office bats their eyes at the solitaire screen)Oh well, every ass-hole boss that's ever pillaged my paycheck is fair game when it comes to antagonist fictional charchters...So, all I can say is, ( to my bosses) thank God we live in a society that reads far less than they did ten years ago....this may be you're one shot at fettered-fame.
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