In writing on 03.08.10 at 01:02:19 AM i am mostly foolish,
if that is even the phrase:
a myth of the legend
running by at even pace.
we all have hours,
tied up in rigid red lace:
tis the timing of futures
that absolve the riddle’s case.
simple allegorical knots
sewn up in fate’s chaotic vice:
like destinies conundrum
and coincidence spun thrice.
an oath
and a turn
in the prestige’s count,
a suit well worn
mussed up
carousing for sound.
an eclectic collection
of baubles
random and slight,
is the confusion of
flattery in our silence
of sight.
i am mostly foolish,
if that is even the rhyme:
the unknown ahead
is closer
than the distances traveled
and left behind.
In writing on 03.01.10 at 02:20:36 PM you might just be Mussolini in mascara
or Hitler in heels,
ordering the masses from your balcony,
but I have a feeling that is just
the misdirection of restrained history.
there is the chance that you
just might be
Stalin in stockings
or Pol Pot in a peignoir,
but I have the notion
that those are just definitions
chosen by those that you properly
ignore.
there may be the possibility that you
are Castro in a camisole
mixed up in the menagerie of Mao,
but from what I have seen
it is far easier
to believe that you
are a Hume between the heat
of the sheets,
and I am just
your
Dada for dictators.
In writing on 02.05.10 at 01:11:06 PM my writing is wrong,
or bad,
this i know and accept
every time i step away
from the letters written
in second hand cursive
next to the colons, and commas
and misplaced participles
of verbs and nouns
of subjects lost in
the predication of rushing
the revisionism;
but the truth in the relativity of
language dictates that as each
character drawn by a practiced hand
is left in the surf of infinite
words:
the unexpected of imperfection
and waiting for the kiln
to react long and slow and
subdue the method in the beauty
of fire and spark and blue-green
hot sweat rising up over a clay
glazed and new and unused and
placed at that exact distance
from the start and finish
of flowing tip-tip-tip-tapping
and running through the steel
next to the succulence of a pond
that is all of these miles away from
your home,
and writes, types, draws, paints, etches
the scattering of shoulders that
turn, churn, learn, and verbs a word
that has yet to be created,
or corrected.
In writing on 01.11.10 at 05:25:09 PM there is a bridge,
covered with blackberry
and ivy and feet shuffling
along the dusted
fastidiousness of the
halcyon cracks left
from the decay
left over from a time
when the world traveled
slowly and consumed
the portents of a smile
left in the carafe of
everything that cannot be sold,
won’t be sold, and should’t
be
sold.
there is a ridge,
covered with juniper
and clay and hands
scraping at the
crack in the rock
left red by the
millenia of galcial shift
of pushing and molding
and shaping of the lava beds
that slip up from the spine
of the one thing that cannot
be told, won’t be told and
shouldn’t be
told
that direction has
no bearing
on soul.
there is the collision,
forming the gold of the
authentic rope,
that can be held, will be held
and should be held
in our nights recklessly climbing
hand over hand by hand
at every knot jointed
on our way over
the
road.
In writing on 01.06.10 at 01:38:52 PM promises are just virtues
wrapped up in a vice
locked away inside the
wisdom, or perhaps
it is folly of a
laugh at the absurdity
of permanence or
justification or a life
that could be better,
if better has a definition
if only so much as it is
looking in, or is it looking out
or back in through a window
with frost climbing like spider webs
from the corners of impropriety
like intermissions in existentialism
and the eight second pause where
the story is told in a reality
of what exactly a future of
supposition in surrender
on a sandbar at the
end of a river
we both know
carves out
the banks
of where
we are
at.
In life, writing on 12.06.09 at 05:40:44 PM
Last night I purchased and read a book. It was the first time in possibly ten years that I bought and read the book through in the same day. It may have been the length, or it may have been that it was the right book at the right moment, regardless of the cause it was like a mini-vacation in my mind that not only pulled me out of my reality, but somehow made me feel closer to it. The book that I am referring to is Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist”. This book has been recommended to me multiple times since its English language printing, but I always either forgot about it, or put it in the pile of “Books about philosophy I don’t need to read since it talks about God.”
The interesting thing about the book, is that purchasing and being driven to read it was almost synonymous with the message it relayed. A message of following who you are, no matter what distractions arise. A message that is easily understood, but just as easily forgotten when life gets in the way. I won’t sit and recap the story for you, I think the stark and simple yet accesible language of the story cannot be condensed any further, especially by the hand of one such as myself.
The line that struck me the most (as I am sure that other’s that have read it have found their own connecting gem) was
“To show you one of life’s simple lessons,” the alchemist answered. “When you possess great treasures within you, and try to tell others of them, seldom are you believed.”
I am not quite sure why this line captured me. Perhaps it is something I poorly attempted in my last post of being myself. I think it captures a certain feeling about who I am and how I communicate in this world. A month or so back, a friend and I were at a bar and having a conversation, when he playfully took the piss out of me for one of my myriad of verbal ticks (I have a penchant for asking others if I am making sense, not out believing they are dense, but more that I tend to talk in circles and never properly relay a point, hence all of the parentheses so far), I finally asked him what the value was in that, since I am insecure in how I communicate.
It was an odd moment of honesty. More honest than I have been with almost anyone else I have ever met in this world. At times I used to wear the fact that I had developed a complete extroverted character to cover up my introversion as some sort of badge of honor. That for me to let someone into my introversion was some sort of egotistical anointment bestowed on that person, and when they violated my trust, I quickly rescinded that grant. In that moment in the bar, with the honesty of my own insecurity in how I relate to others laid out on the table, I saw that my integration into who and what I am is a treasure that I myself seldom believe.
I have always believed that novels, or stories, or poems or lyrics, or art are many things to many people, and something that can draw a perfect conclusion for one, may be considered pedantic or derivative or cliché to another. I have lived my life within the notion that everything is a matter of perception, and no matter how far you push the edge case argument, in the end solipsism was outweighed only by existentialism, and both were outweighed by those singular experiences that can only attempted to be relayed, but never truly communicated. I believe that “The Alchemist” falls into this category. Not only does it communicate a core principle we all know to a certain extent, but the connections that it extends are truly only for those that are searching for a connection beyond themselves.
Over the last month I have gone back to those seconds in the bar, and that honesty. Trying to figure out how that fit into my own story, and how there was a part of me that was quick to burst out of my normally measured for effect statements. I don’t know if I am any closer at figuring out where in all of this (Albany, Seattle, the train, love, acting, writing, music, my profession, solitude, imperfection, chaos, patterns, omens, etc.) truly fit into the man I wanted to be when I was a boy, reading anything put in front of him to try and find that secret path that we are all searching for in some way (whether beknownst to us or not). What I do know is in that 10 seconds of honesty, I was closer to those notions than I ever have before.
In that there is treasure that I still believe in.
In life, writing on 12.05.09 at 12:07:29 AM
I tend to not be one for missives. Well, not so much in writing, in speaking I am sure there are those that can attest to the fact that once you start me on a topic I feel strongly about, the elocution won’t stop. However, all in all, I tend not to be one that sits at elucidate just how strong my feelings are on certain topics, and why I feel that way. Perhaps it is formed from apathy, or my own introverted indifference that I never have felt the need to explain why my value structure is the way it is. Perhaps it is formed out of the fear that who I am and what I believe is something so different from others, that it is easier to maintain a quiet belief structure, than it is to debate that belief structure. I do know that there is no perhaps in my belief structure, which may be the additional cause in that I believe what I believe, and before I decide on that belief I leave it in the column of indifference, so that once I settle on a value structure, it is there no matter what. It may just be stubbornness, but I also know that it is my own fucked up sense of self-integrity.
That said, perhaps one thing that I need to become more aware of is how strongly I do believe about certain things, and have the courage to talk about those things, no matter what the consequence is. Life is a series of choices, and no matter what input went into that choice, nor what consequence comes out of that choice, every second of every day is a choice that we can control. Some may not be able to control it to the degree that others can, and I am certainly not espousing some sort of rigid libertarian dialogue blaming everyone for their own place in life. However, we as people, as citizens, as animals can and do make a choice, whether conscious or subconscious every moment of our lives.
I think over the past 30 years of my life I have known this. The one fact I never wanted to come to terms with was that through the act of avoidance on those beliefs I hadn’t decided upon, I was merely prolonging an apathetic notion that infected the rest of my life. That the slippery slope of indecision gained more and more traction into who I was on a daily basis. I believe it is this indecision and lack of purpose around elements of my belief structure that leads to the normal modern American bouts of depression. That whether a system or way of life was designed implicitly or explicitly does not matter, what matters is that the system operates and that each day we all move through it, trying to find identity within the confines of who and what we are supposed to be.
Each day I see myself wake up, shower, eat and go about my day disguised in a pale form of the remembrance of the imagination of my youth. I don’t think it has anything to do with lost dreams, or desired goals; it has completely to do with the fact that the business of carving out truths from fiction makes one feel even more detached from a system and society that is not meant to foster evolution. The sole purpose of modern society is to do everything better, faster, smarter, uniquer, and more efficiently. It feels that in the quest to rid ourselves of inconsistencies, we all become lost in a cycle of pushing widgets out of a factory.
My profession is to manage the delivery of professions. It is to organize the ideas and notions of people into a consumable, detailed and simplistic map on how to do everything better. In itself this concept isn’t a bad idea. I am sure that you could point me towards a thousand instances in human evolution (or animal evolution for that matter) where someone pushing and organizing society solved a drastic calamity. In the end, the devil is in the details. If we all become efficient and overly connected, is not our imagination that forms in the crucible of our own solitude and desire to experience every moment through the eyes of transfixed grandeur lost. Are we not further separating ourselves from our own community of self, and further alienating the concept of witnessing new and soul altering moments. When one can download a picture of the pyramids, does one still truly desire to see them before they turn to dust. And if they do still desire to experience them, is that same desire multiplied or blunted?
I am by no means a Luddite. I think that out of everyone I know, I have one of the best understandings of the concepts of technology and where the past, present, and future will take us. I also by no means fear the standard technological boondoggles presented by the Assimovs, or Matrixes. But I wonder if by sharing a facsimile of outward appearance, something that previously we only did on an isolated communal level, with the rest of the world, do we all become a feedback loop of expectation? Do my beliefs and desires really matter in the maelstrom of a billion beliefs and desires?
I am more than aware of the irony and inherent narcissistic naval gazing these questions and thoughts are. But one core tenant of my value structure is when your back is up against the wall, that is when it matters to be who you truly are. I think at close to 31 years of age, it is now time to be who I am, and forget that the rest of the world may not want to fall in line, but at least the experience that I share with even just myself is more real then the display of expectation that I feel has led to the bi-product of the place our society is currently occupying. Throughout history, cultures and empires and philosophers and geniuses and the crazy have all had one thing in common: they expected a system to be just that a system. If my intimate knowledge of technology has taught me anything, it is that a system will always breakdown, especially when the eventually the only thing supporting the system is the system itself.
I am not sure (as always) where this missive came from and is going. I also am under no misconceptions that I am the first nor last person to question the need for falsified structure in a largely chaotic reality. What I do know is from here, who I am matters less about what is expected of me, and more about the experience of being me.
In life, writing on 10.29.09 at 01:02:56 AM the most often advice a writer receives is to write what you know. that without dipping into your own well, everything comes across as contrived. this always seems like such simple advice, always seems like simple fact in the face of trying to write fiction or truth. I don’t know about other writers, but I find this the hardest piece of advice to follow. I don’t know why, to be honest. Fear? maybe. Boredom? perhaps. Confusion? more than likely. It makes no sense, in reality. The only person with your complete history and perspective is you, yet I fail to be able to conjure it out of the aether of my life.
Tonight, I am yet again sitting here faced with a million possible word combinations, and none of them seem important enough for the words I do want to say. That my life, and thoughts, and word choices up to this moment are not necessarily false, but that they have no true context, no conjoining knot to follow through to the soul of the definitions. I think at times that maybe poetry is where it comes out, and at times it does. There are honestly five poems that I have written in my life that have told more truth about myself than any other thing I have shared. Be it through acting or music, or memoirs, none of them compare to those five poems in my heart, in the soul of my own truth.
I don’t know what happens in between those poems. Perhaps it’s like the musician trying to recapture that perfect rhythm over and over again. Trying to hang onto fleeting beauty, and who you are when that creation flows from you. It’s almost ironical when viewed from the prism of life. To be frank, I don’t know what happens from the start of saying something, to the end of it. It’s as if a metaphor is waiting to be written that I can never find the method to. Each word chosen too carefully, each sentence edited too much, each stanza carved down to everything but I want to say.
I drove this last week up to montreal to help some friends move. The whole drive I was lost. The whole moment of moving them, lost in the notion that I have lived thirty years and have no way to truly tell that story. No way to get those words out. At times I feel like I have lost my center, but in reality it feels as if I have never found that middle in the first place. That I have been drifting my entire life, and because of that, all of this passion is like an afterburner without a rudder.
Currently I work a job. That is all it is. I know that others have it harder, and I feel guilty most of the time for even thinking that I need for something else. But the more I run from it, the more I just say I need to pick myself up, the further I drift away from those five poems. From the truth of who I am in those words. I read them over and over again, trying to figure out where that person is. When I know that person is right here. There is no key that will unlock being able to write what I know. Not enough editing in the world that will find me carved out of the clay of this accumulated life of other peoples wishes.
I know something has to change, and I am tired of waiting for that. A long time ago I swore off grandiose statements because of my lack of follow through for myself. Perhaps that is the change I need to make now, and here. Because no matter what, if I am going to write: I need to become that person that I know I want to be and am in those five poems. Afterall, life isn’t an excuse for justifying what this world turns us into. Life is who we are when writing what we know.
In writing on 10.15.09 at 08:29:49 PM i’ve never asked for perfect,
or expected heroism.
balancing between action
and dilution
are the laughs
sharing slumber with
elocution.
i’ve never wanted for chaos,
or accepted absolutism.
teetering betwixt diction
and subterfuge
are the stories
sharing stumbles with
confusion.
i’ve never thrown out relativity,
or victimized solipsism.
laying between words
and meaning
are the definitions
sharing remembrance with
conviction.
In writing on 10.12.09 at 01:23:28 AM i am not a patient person,
never have been,
but i want to be:
balancing impetuousness
with wisdom
like the apothecary’s
scale.
i am not a slow deciding person,
could never afford to be,
but i wonder at it:
balancing moments
with choices
like the taoists
spell.
i am not a fixed person,
don’t choose to be,
but i know it’s wine:
sweet righteousness
with vinegar
like the old
tale.
i am looking forward to
being this person
i know, when i hear:
the footfall
with future
like our chests
swell.
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