Here's a few Joyful thoughts by Uncle walt I've been reflecting over today...parlty because it's been a sandpaper- rough emotional abrading week, partly because my co-workers are still acting like royal you-know-what's.....enjoy (sorry Uncle Walt's Song of Joy's are smashed into a poetic heap).....
Yet, O my soul supreme! Know’st thou the joys of pensive thought? Joys of the free and lonesome heart—the tender, gloomy heart?Joy of the solitary walk—the spirit bowed yet proud—the suffering and the struggle? The agonistic throes, the extasies—joys of the solemn musings, day or night? Joys of the thought of Death—the great spheres Time and Space? Prophetic joys of better, loftier love’s ideals—the Divine Wife—the sweet, eternal, perfect Comrade? Joys all thine own, undying one—joys worthy thee, O Soul. 16O, while I live, to be the ruler of life—not a slave, To meet life as a powerful conqueror, No fumes—no ennui—no more complaints, or scornful criticisms. O me repellent and ugly! To these proud laws of the air, the water, and the ground, proving my interior Soul impregnable,And nothing exterior shall ever take command of me. O to attract by more than attraction! How it is I know not—yet behold! the something which obeys none of the rest, It is offensive, never defensive—yet how magnetic it draws. 17O joy of suffering!To struggle against great odds! to meet enemies undaunted! To be entirely alone with them! to find how much one can stand! To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, death, face to face! To mount the scaffold! to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance! To be indeed a God! 18O, to sail to sea in a ship! To leave this steady, unendurable land! To leave the tiresome sameness of the streets, the sidewalks and the houses; To leave you, O you solid motionless land, and entering a ship, To sail, and sail, and sail! 19O to have my life henceforth a poem of new joys! To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on, To be a sailor of the world, bound for all ports, A ship itself, (see indeed these sails I spread to the sun and air,) A swift and swelling ship, full of rich words—full of joys.
Because the errant button of yer reality is so much more than just a simple stage curtain, it is a passionate pergola of corporeal longing, a recital for every botched blessing that somehow, like your body creatively configured in hard-right geometrical angles of grace, is still to come.....
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Monday, July 26, 2004
Is That Your Nimbus 2000....
...or are you just happy to see me? Hello Hermoine!!! It's love-o-my-life J.K. Rowlings birthday this weekend, and although she's already comfortably married, I still harbor fantasies of marriage with Miss Rawlings and all the magic a Hogwarts Honeymoon would entail.
"Quiddith, anyone?"
When I read Order of the Phoneix last summer I just cried. I know what's it's like to be a younger writer who's piss poor and who writes and dreams and witnesses their vision blossom into fruition. Miss Rawlings constructs paragraphs of such sublime linearity that they could easily serve as a butress for Gothic Cathedrals. Attagirl J.K. !!!
Here's what the Writer's Almanac says this week about Miss Rawlings:
"As a child, Rowling was short and stocky and wore very thick glasses, just like Harry Potter. She says she was very bossy, very bookish and terrible at school. When Rowling started writing Harry Potter, she was unemployed and divorced and living on public assistance in a tiny Edinburgh apartment with her infant daughter. She wrote during her daughter's naps, at a table in a café. She couldn't afford even a used typewriter. Then the Scottish Arts Council gave her a grant to finish the book. She did, and in the U.S. it was called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (1998). It was a dramatic overnight success. She was instantly famous and Harry Potter became a household name. She experienced a level of fame usually reserved for politicians and rock stars. On book tours, she spoke at big sporting venues, with images of her face projected on big screens behind her. At age thirty-five she was the highest-earning woman in Britain, netting more than thirty million dollars in 2000. Rowling has had the plots mapped out for a series of seven Harry Potter books since 1995. There's a book for each year that Harry spends at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She said, "I want to finish these seven books and look back and think that whatever happened—however much this hurricane whirled around me—I stayed true to what I wanted to write. This is my Holy Grail: that when I finish writing book seven, I can say—hand on heart—I didn't change a thing. I wrote the story I meant to write."
Rowling released Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on June 21 last year. Within an hour, Barnes and Noble, the largest bookseller in the country, had sold 286,000 copies. That's eighty books per second. By the end of the day the book had sold five million copies total."
"Quiddith, anyone?"
When I read Order of the Phoneix last summer I just cried. I know what's it's like to be a younger writer who's piss poor and who writes and dreams and witnesses their vision blossom into fruition. Miss Rawlings constructs paragraphs of such sublime linearity that they could easily serve as a butress for Gothic Cathedrals. Attagirl J.K. !!!
Here's what the Writer's Almanac says this week about Miss Rawlings:
"As a child, Rowling was short and stocky and wore very thick glasses, just like Harry Potter. She says she was very bossy, very bookish and terrible at school. When Rowling started writing Harry Potter, she was unemployed and divorced and living on public assistance in a tiny Edinburgh apartment with her infant daughter. She wrote during her daughter's naps, at a table in a café. She couldn't afford even a used typewriter. Then the Scottish Arts Council gave her a grant to finish the book. She did, and in the U.S. it was called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (1998). It was a dramatic overnight success. She was instantly famous and Harry Potter became a household name. She experienced a level of fame usually reserved for politicians and rock stars. On book tours, she spoke at big sporting venues, with images of her face projected on big screens behind her. At age thirty-five she was the highest-earning woman in Britain, netting more than thirty million dollars in 2000. Rowling has had the plots mapped out for a series of seven Harry Potter books since 1995. There's a book for each year that Harry spends at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She said, "I want to finish these seven books and look back and think that whatever happened—however much this hurricane whirled around me—I stayed true to what I wanted to write. This is my Holy Grail: that when I finish writing book seven, I can say—hand on heart—I didn't change a thing. I wrote the story I meant to write."
Rowling released Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on June 21 last year. Within an hour, Barnes and Noble, the largest bookseller in the country, had sold 286,000 copies. That's eighty books per second. By the end of the day the book had sold five million copies total."
Moore Muse
"I guess," said Zoe. She wished she could think of a joke, something slow and deliberate with the end in sight. She thought about gorillas, how when they had been kept too long alone in cages they would smack each other on the head instead of mating.
-Lorrie Moore, "You're Ugly, Too"
*
"But if you don't want to work your ass off, you have no bussiness trying to right well--settle back into competency and be grateful that you have even that much to fall back on. There is a muse, but he's not going to come fluttering down into your writing room scattering creative fairy-dust over your typewriter or computer station. He lives in the ground. He's a basement guy. You have to descend to his level and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you. Do you think this is fair? I think it's fair. He may not be much to look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a conversationalist, but he's got the inspiration. It's right that you should do all the work and burn all the midnight oil, because the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. There's stuff in there that can change your life.
"Believe me, I know."
-Stephen King, "On Writing"
*
His eyes lit up. He wanted to talk about love. " But I keep thinking love should be like a tree. You look at trees and they've got bumps and scars from tumors, infestations, what have you, but they're still growing. Despite the bumps and bruises, they're--straight."
-Lorrie Moore, "You're Ugly, Too"
-Lorrie Moore, "You're Ugly, Too"
*
"But if you don't want to work your ass off, you have no bussiness trying to right well--settle back into competency and be grateful that you have even that much to fall back on. There is a muse, but he's not going to come fluttering down into your writing room scattering creative fairy-dust over your typewriter or computer station. He lives in the ground. He's a basement guy. You have to descend to his level and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you. Do you think this is fair? I think it's fair. He may not be much to look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a conversationalist, but he's got the inspiration. It's right that you should do all the work and burn all the midnight oil, because the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. There's stuff in there that can change your life.
"Believe me, I know."
-Stephen King, "On Writing"
*
His eyes lit up. He wanted to talk about love. " But I keep thinking love should be like a tree. You look at trees and they've got bumps and scars from tumors, infestations, what have you, but they're still growing. Despite the bumps and bruises, they're--straight."
-Lorrie Moore, "You're Ugly, Too"
Sunday, July 25, 2004
They don't write books like that anymore...
" What the hell's going on, I wonder. Frank Martin uncrosses his arms and takes a puff on the cigar. He lets the smoke carry out of his mouth. Then he raises his chin towards the hills and says, "Jack London used to have a big place on the other side of this valley. Right over there behind that green hill you're looking at. But alcohol killed him. Let that be a lesson. He was a better man than any of us. But he couldn't handle the stuff, either." He looks at what's left of his cigar. It's gone out. He tosses it into the bucket. "You guys want to read something while you're here, read that book of his The Call of the Wild. You know the one I'm talking about? We have it inside, if you want to read something. It's about this animal that's half dog and half wolf. They don't write books like that anymore. But we could have helped Jack London, if we'd been here in those days. And if he'd let us. If he'd ask for our help. Hear me? Like we can help you. If. If you ask for it and if you listen. End of sermon. But don't forget. If," he says again. Then he hitches his pants and tugs his sweater down. "I'm going inside," He says. " See you at lunch."
"I feel like a bug when he's around," J.P says. "He makes me feel like a bug. Something you could step on." J.P shakes his head. Then he says. "Jack London. What a name! I wish I had a name like that. Instead of the name I got."
-Raymond Carver, "Where I'm calling From"
"I feel like a bug when he's around," J.P says. "He makes me feel like a bug. Something you could step on." J.P shakes his head. Then he says. "Jack London. What a name! I wish I had a name like that. Instead of the name I got."
-Raymond Carver, "Where I'm calling From"
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Do not go gentle, do not go away.....
Been generously sifting through old heaps of books all week. Books that cranked my creative generator in the formative years...I came across my first ever book of prose/poetry by Kahil Gibran and can still remember when I bought it in High school, at Willow Tree second hand books near the north side of Town. Willow Tree heavily reeked of moldy-cardboard and thick, dusty old paperbacks with jaundice pages. Beautiful Rachael, the girl with the china-doll ashen face, velvet choker and thick black hair that hung over her bosom like renaissance drapes in the Louvre guided me to the poetry section. She was studying English at Southern Illinois University but had just dropped out for reasons she chose not to share.
Rachael wore thick burgundy fairy-tale dresses and bracelets. She was always sitting in perrfect erect posture reading behind the counter; her glazed marble-eyes stared into her current hymnal like she was gazing through stain glass in a eurpoean cathedral at dawn. I used to flirt with her. I had already been to Europe twice and was myself a "Poe-it" my unfledged poems, a branch stemming from the thick trunk of ego that someday, (thankfully) would be gradually axed into pools of saw dust.
She told me she had dabbled in poems herself, that she possesed a poets heart, only her professors in college had told her the her original poetical-tithes weren't very good. She played George Winston, enya and early "Under the Pink" Tori Amos in the store. There was a cat she called Dorien Gray that "lived" underneath the sky-line of books. There was a stash of complimentary Herbal-organic tea that I stole a box of once and snorted and then periscopically floated around in a helium cotton-cloud lavender haze for days.
And there was A TREASURY OF Kahil Gibran, a book of short stories which one-ups The Prophet. As the introduction made note, oddly enough, Gibran's short stories were often more mystical than his poems.
I remember the night I first read Gibran's short story THE TEMPEST. I remember how each page smelled like an old leaf salvaged from previous autumns. I remembered the wayfarer getting purposefully abandoned in the Tempest, so he could take refuge with a reclusive Hermit and hopefully glean a shred of mystical insight.
I remember how my bed was made with the quilt mother had stitched for me. How I had Ralphael and Renoir and Durer paintings tacked to my wall. How I had snap-shots of Big Ben and the Eiffle tower and a closet full of the old suits my cool Italian Granpa Frank used to wear-- fashionable 1940's jackets I'd wear to high school amd smile when I was mistaken by faculty as a Student Teacher.
I remember how I used to tape the Texaco Opera broadcasts. How I planned on proposing to Cecelia Bartoli on her next American tour. How I would attentively listen to The Writers Almanac every afternoon, at Three fifty-four, after cranking out an article for the school newspaper. I collected weekly editions of the BOOK sections shed from the chicago tribune. Everytime I read an article and came across a word I didn't know, I would circle the word and punch the definition into a word calculator my father had given me.
I misused words all the time in highschool. My highschool was more adept in churning out gangster disciples than it was Rhodes scholars but a few of the older teachers seemed to be amused by my forged poetic parlance. I told fiery red-haired Karen Strickler that it was very "pensive" of her to think about me over the holidays because I had read that the word "pensive" meant "thoughtful". I wrote a detailed paper about teen-angst and depression in a prozac marketed economy where I discussed the on-going perils of teen accentuation (A word I derived from 'accentuate' to emphasize 'stress' as on a syllable, not on a person). I remember very vivdly having my senior high school teacher lacerate my paper on "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" out loud chiding my excessive brooklynite-big poofy haired voacbulary so that my peers, a scattered handfall of sloped-scholars in a high school that boasted the Highest teenage Pregnancy rate in the nation my senior year, chuckled and derided me for weeks after. When I finally broke up with Jana Solomon (for good this time, I swear) she adamantly informed me that I misused the word 'facade' all the time in our relationship, and she knew words because her Uncle had reviewed Rick Moody's Purple America for the Tribune.
But words. Buckeling the perfect word in the perfectly constructed sentence; strapping it into the confines of the paragraph as delicately one would strap a child into a car seat.
There's no greater time in a writers life than that moment when he first slips on wet sentences and becomes inundated with language. I remember ferrying my original copy of LEAVES OF GRASS in the side pocket of my retro brown jacket my Dad had leftover from '78. I remember the color of that autumn, when the world chipped open, when I was in love with a girl who was unavailable and the only way I could manifest my emotions was to sit on my ass, crack open my skull and pour whatever carbonated heart I owned on to the perimeter of the page, whipping my pen, left to right, casting inky-waves into an invisible placid-sand shore I would someday find myself washed up on.
Rachael wore thick burgundy fairy-tale dresses and bracelets. She was always sitting in perrfect erect posture reading behind the counter; her glazed marble-eyes stared into her current hymnal like she was gazing through stain glass in a eurpoean cathedral at dawn. I used to flirt with her. I had already been to Europe twice and was myself a "Poe-it" my unfledged poems, a branch stemming from the thick trunk of ego that someday, (thankfully) would be gradually axed into pools of saw dust.
She told me she had dabbled in poems herself, that she possesed a poets heart, only her professors in college had told her the her original poetical-tithes weren't very good. She played George Winston, enya and early "Under the Pink" Tori Amos in the store. There was a cat she called Dorien Gray that "lived" underneath the sky-line of books. There was a stash of complimentary Herbal-organic tea that I stole a box of once and snorted and then periscopically floated around in a helium cotton-cloud lavender haze for days.
And there was A TREASURY OF Kahil Gibran, a book of short stories which one-ups The Prophet. As the introduction made note, oddly enough, Gibran's short stories were often more mystical than his poems.
I remember the night I first read Gibran's short story THE TEMPEST. I remember how each page smelled like an old leaf salvaged from previous autumns. I remembered the wayfarer getting purposefully abandoned in the Tempest, so he could take refuge with a reclusive Hermit and hopefully glean a shred of mystical insight.
I remember how my bed was made with the quilt mother had stitched for me. How I had Ralphael and Renoir and Durer paintings tacked to my wall. How I had snap-shots of Big Ben and the Eiffle tower and a closet full of the old suits my cool Italian Granpa Frank used to wear-- fashionable 1940's jackets I'd wear to high school amd smile when I was mistaken by faculty as a Student Teacher.
I remember how I used to tape the Texaco Opera broadcasts. How I planned on proposing to Cecelia Bartoli on her next American tour. How I would attentively listen to The Writers Almanac every afternoon, at Three fifty-four, after cranking out an article for the school newspaper. I collected weekly editions of the BOOK sections shed from the chicago tribune. Everytime I read an article and came across a word I didn't know, I would circle the word and punch the definition into a word calculator my father had given me.
I misused words all the time in highschool. My highschool was more adept in churning out gangster disciples than it was Rhodes scholars but a few of the older teachers seemed to be amused by my forged poetic parlance. I told fiery red-haired Karen Strickler that it was very "pensive" of her to think about me over the holidays because I had read that the word "pensive" meant "thoughtful". I wrote a detailed paper about teen-angst and depression in a prozac marketed economy where I discussed the on-going perils of teen accentuation (A word I derived from 'accentuate' to emphasize 'stress' as on a syllable, not on a person). I remember very vivdly having my senior high school teacher lacerate my paper on "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" out loud chiding my excessive brooklynite-big poofy haired voacbulary so that my peers, a scattered handfall of sloped-scholars in a high school that boasted the Highest teenage Pregnancy rate in the nation my senior year, chuckled and derided me for weeks after. When I finally broke up with Jana Solomon (for good this time, I swear) she adamantly informed me that I misused the word 'facade' all the time in our relationship, and she knew words because her Uncle had reviewed Rick Moody's Purple America for the Tribune.
But words. Buckeling the perfect word in the perfectly constructed sentence; strapping it into the confines of the paragraph as delicately one would strap a child into a car seat.
There's no greater time in a writers life than that moment when he first slips on wet sentences and becomes inundated with language. I remember ferrying my original copy of LEAVES OF GRASS in the side pocket of my retro brown jacket my Dad had leftover from '78. I remember the color of that autumn, when the world chipped open, when I was in love with a girl who was unavailable and the only way I could manifest my emotions was to sit on my ass, crack open my skull and pour whatever carbonated heart I owned on to the perimeter of the page, whipping my pen, left to right, casting inky-waves into an invisible placid-sand shore I would someday find myself washed up on.
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
You gave me a living song....
Here's the song I have wedged in my brain this morning by my favorite singer-songwriter Greg Brown. It's a song he wrote for Ani DiFranco called VIVID. Enjoy!
Vivid
You gave me flowers, all wet with dew,
You gave me flowers, I'd like to give you something too.
Vivid flowers, raggedy yellow red and blue,
Smell of rain and summer. Vivid, just like you.
You gave me music with the bouquet from your hand,
You gave me a living song, something I could understand.
Let's go walking when the party is through,
You gave me so much, I want to give you something too.
Vivid
You gave me flowers, all wet with dew,
You gave me flowers, I'd like to give you something too.
Vivid flowers, raggedy yellow red and blue,
Smell of rain and summer. Vivid, just like you.
You gave me music with the bouquet from your hand,
You gave me a living song, something I could understand.
Let's go walking when the party is through,
You gave me so much, I want to give you something too.
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Lyrical bouquet for a new-found friend
Here's KISS lyrics that serve as a gift for a friend. Maybe, she'll come out of her seventh-day shell, start a blogg of her own and introduce herself to us. Maybe.
Kiss's Lyrics - Beth Lyrics
Beth, I hear you callin’
But I can’t come home right now
Me and the boys are playin’
And we just can’t find the sound
Just a few more hours
And I’ll be right home to you
I think I hear them callin’
Oh, beth what can I do
Beth what can I do
You say you feel so empty
That our house just ain’t a home
And I’m always somewhere else
And you’re always there alone
Just a few more hours
And I’ll be right home to you
I think I hear them callin’
Oh, beth what can I do
Beth what can I doBeth,
I know you’re lonely
And I hope you’ll be alright
’cause me and the boys will be playin’
All night
More bad writing from dudes named david.....
And you thought my own writing was abysmally bad...this just in compliments of Yahoo news:
Dave Zobel, 42, a Manhattan Beach software development director and author of "Dave Zobel's Bent Book of Boatspeak: How to Sound Like a Sailor and Know Just Enough to Be Dangerous," bested thousands of metaphor-mangling, simile-slaying writers from Hong Kong to Bolivia with this submission:
"She resolved to end the love affair with Ramon tonight ... summarily, like Martha Stewart ripping the sand vein out of a shrimp's tail ... though the term 'love affair' now struck her as a ridiculous euphemism ... not unlike 'sand vein,' which is after all an intestine, not a vein ... and that tarry substance inside certainly isn't sand ... and that brought her back to Ramon."
The competition pays mocking homage to the Victorian author whose 1830 novel "Paul Clifford" opened with this all-too-familiar phrase: "It was a dark and stormy night."
"I never won and wasn't expecting to this year, but to be honest I'm a little jealous of people who won dishonorable mentions because that title would look better on the resume," the father of two told The Associated Press. He won $250.
Runner-up was Pamela Patchet Hamilton, of Beaconsfield, Quebec, who described her style as "Dave Barry with a feminist twist." Patchet, who has written humor essays for The (Montreal) Gazette and other newspapers, impressed judges with this putrid passage:
"The notion that they would no longer be a couple dashed Helen's hopes and scrambled her thoughts not unlike the time her sleeve caught the edge of the open egg carton and the contents hit the floor like fragile things hitting cold tiles, more pitiable because they were the expensive organic brown eggs from free-range chickens, and one of them clearly had double yolks entwined in one sac just the way Helen and Richard used to be," she wrote.
Scott Rice, the San Jose State University professor who started the contest in 1982, said this year's entries were unusually witty. "Sometimes the entrants are more clever than the judges," he said. "Those people generally lose."
**
And to show I'm not being totally biased, here's an excerpt from James Joyce's Ulysses, vastly regarded as the greatest piece of creative exposition offered from the previous Century. Ulysses used to be the most important book I had ever read until I had a prof. intellectually quash my thesis and then use it as his own. He left the University the following year but last thing I heard he's sporting three-piece threads and pontificating nonsense at the World Peace Conference.
Here's Ulysses:
By what reflections did he, a concious reactor against the void of certitude, justify to himself his sentiments?
The preordained frangibility of the hymen: the presupposed intangibility of the thing in itself: the incongruity and disproportion between the selfprolonging tension of the thing proposed to be done and the selfabbreviating relaxation of the thing done: the fallaciously inferred debility of the female: the muscularity of the male: the variations of ethical codes: the natural grammatical transition by inversion involving no alteration of sense of an aorist preterite proposition (parsed as masculine subject, monosyllabic onomatopoeic transitive verb with direct feminine object) from the active voice into its correlative aorist preterite proposition (parsed as feminine subject, auxiliary verb and quasimonosyllabic onomatopoeic past participle with complementary masculine agent) in the passive voice: the continued product of seminators by generation: the continual production of semen by distillation: the futility of triumph or protest or vindication: the inanity of extolled virtue: the lethargy of nescient matter: the apathy of the stars.
(oh, and the narrator, Leo Bloom, is drunk and is suppose to sport the equivalent of a tenth grade vocab. Like my first agent told me, "It's not what you write, it's how you market yourself...."
Dave Zobel, 42, a Manhattan Beach software development director and author of "Dave Zobel's Bent Book of Boatspeak: How to Sound Like a Sailor and Know Just Enough to Be Dangerous," bested thousands of metaphor-mangling, simile-slaying writers from Hong Kong to Bolivia with this submission:
"She resolved to end the love affair with Ramon tonight ... summarily, like Martha Stewart ripping the sand vein out of a shrimp's tail ... though the term 'love affair' now struck her as a ridiculous euphemism ... not unlike 'sand vein,' which is after all an intestine, not a vein ... and that tarry substance inside certainly isn't sand ... and that brought her back to Ramon."
The competition pays mocking homage to the Victorian author whose 1830 novel "Paul Clifford" opened with this all-too-familiar phrase: "It was a dark and stormy night."
"I never won and wasn't expecting to this year, but to be honest I'm a little jealous of people who won dishonorable mentions because that title would look better on the resume," the father of two told The Associated Press. He won $250.
Runner-up was Pamela Patchet Hamilton, of Beaconsfield, Quebec, who described her style as "Dave Barry with a feminist twist." Patchet, who has written humor essays for The (Montreal) Gazette and other newspapers, impressed judges with this putrid passage:
"The notion that they would no longer be a couple dashed Helen's hopes and scrambled her thoughts not unlike the time her sleeve caught the edge of the open egg carton and the contents hit the floor like fragile things hitting cold tiles, more pitiable because they were the expensive organic brown eggs from free-range chickens, and one of them clearly had double yolks entwined in one sac just the way Helen and Richard used to be," she wrote.
Scott Rice, the San Jose State University professor who started the contest in 1982, said this year's entries were unusually witty. "Sometimes the entrants are more clever than the judges," he said. "Those people generally lose."
**
And to show I'm not being totally biased, here's an excerpt from James Joyce's Ulysses, vastly regarded as the greatest piece of creative exposition offered from the previous Century. Ulysses used to be the most important book I had ever read until I had a prof. intellectually quash my thesis and then use it as his own. He left the University the following year but last thing I heard he's sporting three-piece threads and pontificating nonsense at the World Peace Conference.
Here's Ulysses:
By what reflections did he, a concious reactor against the void of certitude, justify to himself his sentiments?
The preordained frangibility of the hymen: the presupposed intangibility of the thing in itself: the incongruity and disproportion between the selfprolonging tension of the thing proposed to be done and the selfabbreviating relaxation of the thing done: the fallaciously inferred debility of the female: the muscularity of the male: the variations of ethical codes: the natural grammatical transition by inversion involving no alteration of sense of an aorist preterite proposition (parsed as masculine subject, monosyllabic onomatopoeic transitive verb with direct feminine object) from the active voice into its correlative aorist preterite proposition (parsed as feminine subject, auxiliary verb and quasimonosyllabic onomatopoeic past participle with complementary masculine agent) in the passive voice: the continued product of seminators by generation: the continual production of semen by distillation: the futility of triumph or protest or vindication: the inanity of extolled virtue: the lethargy of nescient matter: the apathy of the stars.
(oh, and the narrator, Leo Bloom, is drunk and is suppose to sport the equivalent of a tenth grade vocab. Like my first agent told me, "It's not what you write, it's how you market yourself...."
Mystic thumb
Just thumbing through an old, sallow-shaped, crinkly January 1978 editinon of the American Poetry Review and lo-n-behold I see RUMI translations by poet W.S. Merwin. This one made me think of our Bloggsville community:
What is the whirling dance
a greeting
from the friends at the center of the heart
their messages arrive
and the whole universe is renewed
What is the whirling dance
a greeting
from the friends at the center of the heart
their messages arrive
and the whole universe is renewed
Monday, July 19, 2004
The importance of being Earnest
Hemingway wrote every day, perfecting his writing style, following his motto, "All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know." Sometimes he wrote in his apartment and sometimes in cafés. He wrote in a letter to his father: "I'm trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across—not to just depict life—or criticize it—but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing. You can't do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can't believe in it. Things aren't that way. It is only by showing both sides—3 dimensions and if possible 4 that you can write the way I want to."
Saturday, July 17, 2004
Circled orb
Juliet: O, swear, not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
Romeo: What shall I swear by?
Juliet: Do not swear at all.
Or if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,
Which is the God of my idolatry,
And I'll believe thee.
That monthly changes in her circled orb
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
Romeo: What shall I swear by?
Juliet: Do not swear at all.
Or if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,
Which is the God of my idolatry,
And I'll believe thee.
Friday, July 16, 2004
Freshly Squeezed Salinger
Nothing beats being panned by the critics! When following your dreams you get sentimentally scorched by lots of overly-groomed seemingly educated Dragons who like to discourage you from creating and producing. Dragons, as Joseph Campbell notes, are people who hoard things, like feeble-wristed PHD candidates:
"They hoard heaps of golds (books in their office) and beautiful virgins (Their students) and they don't know what to do with either of them. They just hang on."
Here's a quote from the writer almanac for all my lovers and gypsy dreamers out there about J.D. Salinger and how the incendiary Dragon known as the book critic endeavored to scorch his budding career.
"Giroux didn't hear back from Salinger for months, and then, one day, Salinger walked into his office. Giroux said, "A tall, sad-looking young man with a long face and deep-set black eyes walked in, saying, 'It's not my stories that should be published first, but the novel I'm working on ... about this kid in New York during the Christmas holidays.'" Giroux said he'd love to publish it, but when it was finished one of his superiors thought the kid in the book seemed too crazy. So Salinger published The Catcher in the Rye with Little, Brown and Company, and it came out on this day in 1951.
The New York Times ran a review titled "Aw, the World's a Crumby Place" that poked fun at Salinger's style. The New Yorker refused to run any excerpts of the novel, because they said that the children in it were unbelievably intelligent, and the style of the novel was too "showoffy." But despite the mixed reviews, The Catcher in the Rye reached the bestseller list after being in print just two weeks, and it stayed there for more than six months. It has gone on to sell more than sixty million copies. It has been at one time or another the most banned book in America and one of the most assigned books in American classrooms. "
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche utilizes the image of the Dragon as the "ultimate" nemesis from which the ever-fluctuating spirit of mankind must devour if it is to be spiritually transformed.
According to Nietzsche, the spirit of mankind is always in a state of constant matamorphic flux.
Quick synopsis (very quick)=The spirit of mankind has three stages. The first of that is a camel.
A camel is an animal carrying substantial loads and burdens. Think of the young wayward artist cultivating his own aesthetic and ideas. Traveling by himself. Working for a goal. Spending hours alone in meditation, intriscally seeking. That's camel work.
Once the Camel is piled full the camel sets out to the Desert. A desert is a place of spiritual incubation. Numerous Manifestations have at one time or another, been swallowed in the arid sand of the desert. Christ fasted in the desert. The Israelites soaked up a few decades meandering around the desert searching for their collective ethos. Yeah.... the desert is a place, like the womb, demarcated for spiritual growth and change.
In the desert the camel transforms into a LION. The more loaded the camel, the more aggressive and potent the Lion. "If it wants to capture freedom and be lord in its own desert" Basically, be master of his/her own creativity. That which is latent inside his bones aching to crawl out.
The Lion has a job, the lions job is to KILL a golden-scaledDragon whose name is THOU SHALT. Dragon's, as previously noted, can be seen as individuals who are "stuck" in a certain spiritual purgatory for so long that their soul's become inflated and their hearts transition into sort've a waiting room. In my profession, the Dragon is the publisher who tells me "Sorry, not what we're looking for" and slips me a bussiness card for a local ad copying agent. But the Dragon is also the hoity-toity prof. who, as Ezra Pound says, "One avg. mind, with one less average thought each year"....basically prof.'s whose only claim to fame is making a carrer forged from footnotes to other people's genius.
It's stitched in the Dragon's nature to mentally thwart the budding soul of the creative individual in as much that the dreamer will succumb, grow hard cold scales and transition into an inwardly opinionated DRAGON himself.
Once the LION kills the Dragon the LION transitions into a child. With the child everthing is new and innocent. A child continues to badger out querries. A child continues to always look at the world as if it were a new creation and everything the child touches feels fresh in his grip.
Keep the chin up on your crazy heart and keep slicing apart the Dragon, one delicious scale at a time.
children (smiles)
"They hoard heaps of golds (books in their office) and beautiful virgins (Their students) and they don't know what to do with either of them. They just hang on."
Here's a quote from the writer almanac for all my lovers and gypsy dreamers out there about J.D. Salinger and how the incendiary Dragon known as the book critic endeavored to scorch his budding career.
"Giroux didn't hear back from Salinger for months, and then, one day, Salinger walked into his office. Giroux said, "A tall, sad-looking young man with a long face and deep-set black eyes walked in, saying, 'It's not my stories that should be published first, but the novel I'm working on ... about this kid in New York during the Christmas holidays.'" Giroux said he'd love to publish it, but when it was finished one of his superiors thought the kid in the book seemed too crazy. So Salinger published The Catcher in the Rye with Little, Brown and Company, and it came out on this day in 1951.
The New York Times ran a review titled "Aw, the World's a Crumby Place" that poked fun at Salinger's style. The New Yorker refused to run any excerpts of the novel, because they said that the children in it were unbelievably intelligent, and the style of the novel was too "showoffy." But despite the mixed reviews, The Catcher in the Rye reached the bestseller list after being in print just two weeks, and it stayed there for more than six months. It has gone on to sell more than sixty million copies. It has been at one time or another the most banned book in America and one of the most assigned books in American classrooms. "
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche utilizes the image of the Dragon as the "ultimate" nemesis from which the ever-fluctuating spirit of mankind must devour if it is to be spiritually transformed.
According to Nietzsche, the spirit of mankind is always in a state of constant matamorphic flux.
Quick synopsis (very quick)=The spirit of mankind has three stages. The first of that is a camel.
A camel is an animal carrying substantial loads and burdens. Think of the young wayward artist cultivating his own aesthetic and ideas. Traveling by himself. Working for a goal. Spending hours alone in meditation, intriscally seeking. That's camel work.
Once the Camel is piled full the camel sets out to the Desert. A desert is a place of spiritual incubation. Numerous Manifestations have at one time or another, been swallowed in the arid sand of the desert. Christ fasted in the desert. The Israelites soaked up a few decades meandering around the desert searching for their collective ethos. Yeah.... the desert is a place, like the womb, demarcated for spiritual growth and change.
In the desert the camel transforms into a LION. The more loaded the camel, the more aggressive and potent the Lion. "If it wants to capture freedom and be lord in its own desert" Basically, be master of his/her own creativity. That which is latent inside his bones aching to crawl out.
The Lion has a job, the lions job is to KILL a golden-scaledDragon whose name is THOU SHALT. Dragon's, as previously noted, can be seen as individuals who are "stuck" in a certain spiritual purgatory for so long that their soul's become inflated and their hearts transition into sort've a waiting room. In my profession, the Dragon is the publisher who tells me "Sorry, not what we're looking for" and slips me a bussiness card for a local ad copying agent. But the Dragon is also the hoity-toity prof. who, as Ezra Pound says, "One avg. mind, with one less average thought each year"....basically prof.'s whose only claim to fame is making a carrer forged from footnotes to other people's genius.
It's stitched in the Dragon's nature to mentally thwart the budding soul of the creative individual in as much that the dreamer will succumb, grow hard cold scales and transition into an inwardly opinionated DRAGON himself.
Once the LION kills the Dragon the LION transitions into a child. With the child everthing is new and innocent. A child continues to badger out querries. A child continues to always look at the world as if it were a new creation and everything the child touches feels fresh in his grip.
Keep the chin up on your crazy heart and keep slicing apart the Dragon, one delicious scale at a time.
children (smiles)
Monday, July 12, 2004
Champagne bubbles for Buckminster....
As reported on the Writers Almanac today:
It's the birthday of Buckminster Fuller, born in Milton, Massachusetts (1895). He was an inventor, engineer, architect, mathematician, poet and cosmologist; he once said "The only ones who don't get trained for specialization are artists, they want to be whole." He called himself a "Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Scientist" and many of his friends were artists. He said artists "keep the integrity of childhood alive until we reach the bridge between the arts and science. ... Artists frequently conceive of a pattern in their imagination before scientists find it in nature."
In 1927, when he was thirty-two, Fuller was about to throw himself into the freezing water of Lake Michigan. He was bankrupt and jobless with a wife and newborn daughter to support. There on the shore it struck him that his life belonged to the universe, not to himself, and he chose to devote his life to helping humanity. Before his death in 1983, he was awarded twenty-five U.S. patents, wrote twenty-eight books, received forty-seven honorary doctorates and numerous awards, and circled the globe fifty-seven times. His primary interest was shelter and housing, and he is best known for his invention of the geodesic dome.
It's the birthday of Buckminster Fuller, born in Milton, Massachusetts (1895). He was an inventor, engineer, architect, mathematician, poet and cosmologist; he once said "The only ones who don't get trained for specialization are artists, they want to be whole." He called himself a "Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Scientist" and many of his friends were artists. He said artists "keep the integrity of childhood alive until we reach the bridge between the arts and science. ... Artists frequently conceive of a pattern in their imagination before scientists find it in nature."
In 1927, when he was thirty-two, Fuller was about to throw himself into the freezing water of Lake Michigan. He was bankrupt and jobless with a wife and newborn daughter to support. There on the shore it struck him that his life belonged to the universe, not to himself, and he chose to devote his life to helping humanity. Before his death in 1983, he was awarded twenty-five U.S. patents, wrote twenty-eight books, received forty-seven honorary doctorates and numerous awards, and circled the globe fifty-seven times. His primary interest was shelter and housing, and he is best known for his invention of the geodesic dome.
Recital of gratitude for Lady Benzedrine and Mara Arya.....
Just wish to evince my love and gratitude to the ravishing duo of LB/MA, the yin and yang of my crazy blogging heart....Much thanks for your presence and your prayers, your dulcet voice and your attentive ears. As I've probably hinted, the last twenty-two months have left me nothing short of physically, emotionally and spiritually exhausted in every facet of my life. The last two weeks I've felt almost totally revived, youthful, and reinvigorated....and yes, even the insomnia that I've always equated as a creative sparkler is starting to wane......
Saturday, July 10, 2004
How come Ceo's never have songs like this?
The Beatles
Paperback Writer
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
It took me years to write, will you take a look
Based on a novel by a man named Lear
And I need a job, so I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.
It's the dirty story of a dirty man
And his clinging wife doesn't understand.
His son is working for the Daily Mail,
It's a steady job but he wants to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.
Paperback writer
It's a thousand pages, give or take a few,
I'll be writing more in a week or two.
I can make it longer if you like the style,
I can change it round and I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.
If you really like it you can have the rights,
It could make a million for you overnight.
If you must return it, you can send it here
But I need a break and I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.
Paperback writer
Paperback writer - paperback writer
Paperback writer - paperback writer
(psssst...I send these Beatles lyrics out everytime with my cover letter for my book. I'm hoping to land a middle-aged Cosmopolitan sexy inky-legged female editor who harbored a George Harrison fetish in fifth grade...who knows. Maybe someday. My first self-publishing foray was called MLFPUBHOUSE-read it when your Daddy's not home......who knows....maybe my next belletristic foray will be called Madame Mara Press--but that sounds just a tad bit like a Buddhist Brothel..........................)
Paperback Writer
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
It took me years to write, will you take a look
Based on a novel by a man named Lear
And I need a job, so I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.
It's the dirty story of a dirty man
And his clinging wife doesn't understand.
His son is working for the Daily Mail,
It's a steady job but he wants to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.
Paperback writer
It's a thousand pages, give or take a few,
I'll be writing more in a week or two.
I can make it longer if you like the style,
I can change it round and I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.
If you really like it you can have the rights,
It could make a million for you overnight.
If you must return it, you can send it here
But I need a break and I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.
Paperback writer
Paperback writer - paperback writer
Paperback writer - paperback writer
(psssst...I send these Beatles lyrics out everytime with my cover letter for my book. I'm hoping to land a middle-aged Cosmopolitan sexy inky-legged female editor who harbored a George Harrison fetish in fifth grade...who knows. Maybe someday. My first self-publishing foray was called MLFPUBHOUSE-read it when your Daddy's not home......who knows....maybe my next belletristic foray will be called Madame Mara Press--but that sounds just a tad bit like a Buddhist Brothel..........................)
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Birthday Poem!!!!!
Here's my favorite Birthday poem by former poet laureate Billy Collins. Enjoy (silly-smiles)
On Turning Ten
The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.
You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.
But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.
This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.
It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.
--Billy Collins
On Turning Ten
The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.
You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.
But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.
This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.
It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.
--Billy Collins
Saturday, July 03, 2004
Snowflake Kisses from West of Charlemagne
It started out with a girl as most things do.
*
The inward historical weight of Linklater's pending sequal and why I can't stop mentally drooling over it.
*
The first time I saw Before Sunrise I was an eighteen year old verbally-effete high school senior who had just returned home from his third eurpoean sojourn in as many years. (A blessing I had slaved for financially, which I would later culturally-contort to promote my own self-worth.) I sported a shock of short-slightly gelled nutmeg hair replete with pennisula sideburns flanking a sly-raffish grin; an innocuous white flag hoisted in the center of my youthful visage. In an effort to salvage culture in in a town, that, I was far too keen to point out to the random pedestrian, obviously wasn't "european", I wore charcoal flavor turtlenecks matched with thickly trussed Velvet Doc Martens. I sometimes sloped a beret over my head in tandem with my heavy Berlin-chic trench coat. I smoked cloves and cigars without knowing how to inhale, I swished boxed burgundy fluid around the inside of my cheeks while prematurely chatting about vintages and years. I supercilously felt like I was already an ordained authority on 'modern' poetry and recited T.S. Eliots "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" incessantly to anyone unfotunate enough to possess an earlobe. "Let us go then you and I/ When the evening is spread out agaisnt the sky/ Like a patient etherized upon a table."
Highschool was one endless elongated blue hallway shepherded by shrilling alarms and social clicks that failed to buckle emotional sanity. My junior year I started scribbling sloppy-inked feeble free-verse in notebooks and by senior year I was obsessed. I scribed only droopy first drafts, penning somewhere between sixty and 100 insufferable angst-laden poems a month. I was arrogant beyond all borders of the definition, all too certain of my destined literary stardom and, rather akin to Eliot's Tarrot identified "fool" in the previously mentioned poem, I remained pompously baffled why my peers had failed to recognize my pending literary sainthood.
It's interesting to note that most writers tend to go through this ugly indulgent ego-nourishing period at some point in their careers. Random readers are of course 'priveldged' to read their purportedly 'deep' yet shallow cannonical metaphores that will inevitably be archived in the British Museum someday b/c (obviously) everything this so--called self-ordained scribe has in print is obvioulsy the greatest thing in scripted ink since the King James edition. Many writers (such as local pretentious fop's conducting college comp. courses) never seem to slough this superior ego-cloak.
(Male writers, I think, are MUCH, MUCH worse at this 'feigned' pretension than female writers...in my experience that is....perhaps innately, females are better dancers, better movers and tend to be more highly literate early in life)
Joseph Campbell calls this ego-gourged individual a dragon. "Dragon's horde things," Notes Campbell. "They horde heaps of gold (unread books that pile up their offices) and beautiful virgins (their students)...and they don't know what to do with either of them.
I feel fortunate that I gradually flaked off these dragon scales over an eight year time span of simply ugly and bad writing where of course, I cared extremely little about the actual labor of the craft and paid scrupulous amounts of attention to my own Jack Kerouac bad-boy literary lifestyle.
Looking back over my early "poe-whims" (always a snooty dual-syllables)all I can say is that they were plastic lingusitic lego's that I would employ only later to snap the shape of my aesthetic identity.
Okay, no more tangeants. Back to pangs of high school.
Friday nights were spent at my best friends David Hale's abode in Bartonville. His mother would retire early and then the stash of semi-tepid malt liquer would avail itself from hidden panels in the basement. In those days a forty of Ice House or Mickey's circulated a long way being bartered between teenage boys who vociferously boasted in locker-rooms about the longevity of their livers. White-Trash Pat, Hale, Randall and Goth Dan would drop ten-sided dice and verbally illustrate the next move of their level two dwarf while I, of course the seemingly well-read narcissistic "cultured" one would swig shots in the corner while transpiring meaningless thoughts as they dripped out of my fountain pen.
There was always, of course videos. White-Trash Pat and Hale already possesed a formative heap of permy-haired adult sophisticated visual gumdrops by the age of fifteen. The first "porn" we ever watched together was titled something like Artic Orgy and it was about a group of rather voluptuous polar-nuclear physicits who find themselves stranded in Antartica without any heat and all of a sudden contract a great idea on how to conduct warmth.
I went through a lengthy phase where, much to the chagrin of Hale and White-Trash Pat, everything I viewed was endorsed by Merchant-Ivory. On the night I was trying to explain to them the cultual significane of Remains of the Day the group of sozzled gamers retired early. White Trash Pat and I stayed up and I flipped in Before Sunrise. Though the movie is 100 percent dialougue the flicker of the screen hushed a normally petulant-opinionated Patrick. By the end of the movie, we went outside and hugged each other. It was two in the morning. It was a senior year. When your in high school you advance a decade in knowledge each year. Patrick and I shared a cigartte and then Patrick opened his woodchip lips and paused slightly before commenting:
"Dude, man. That's us."
*
Of course there's more. Of course its about a girl. The girls name is Megan Kristin (I'll omit her last name here in deference towards her own privacy, but for privvy-fingered and omnisicent-eyed Mara-Arya's her maiden name is inserted into the title of this entry and has nothing to do with "osculation")Megan was from the tiny norwegian cheesehead hamlet of Appleton, Wisconsin, of all crazy places to fall in love.
I met Megan about a week after I first saw Linklater's verbal feast and even employed lines from the actual movie on her (smooth-Mistah' V; yeah). The first time we kissed her body squinted like a butterfly in mid-flap before her entire flesh transitioned into spring. Megan could be classified as cuddley and petite (5 ft.2). Her birthday is the first day of spring (Naw Ruz) and with a comfortable six-hours between us we started writing letters. The internet was just starting to wedge it's costipated modemic groan into universal conciousness (e-mail was foreign lexicon and waiting for the damn computer to usher its way into cyberspace seemed to take light-years back then). So Megan and I wrote letters. Huge, inky inky sounvabitches undressed from metered envelopes by itchy fingertips. NOthing beats finding your heart in a mail slot. Her letters were fraught with stickers and hearts; mine were verbose illustrations about everything stuffed with off-metered poems. She'd always smile when she told me that it used to take her forever to read them (smiles).
On October 18th, 1996 (I can still tell you the exact translucent denim sleek autumnnal-blue of the morning sky) I dropped out of my freshman year of college (mainly becasue it was a community college and my parents deemed that there son wasn't worth more than that intellectually) and bought a one way ticket to Appleton, WI of all places, arriving with notebooks and dreams and ambitions. Needless to say my sojourn was terse and our rapport didn't last long. Megan was still in high school her parents seemed rightfully nonplussed by their daughters suitor (although to this day I swear her dad loved it when I referred to him as "Master of the House"). I had written literally symphonies of poems for Megan and read them to her, feeling shunned by the silence of her face afterwards. She was young. I was young. Golden and kalidieoscopic autumn greets the sways and dips of northern Wisconsin in thick strokes of wind gulping down heavily from Canada. I remember seeing Megan through the airplane tint as I arrived on thew runway and I remember her standing next to me in the terminal as I caught my flight home with tear stained chin and cheeks arriving on the runway to an all too dubious future.
I also remember watching Before Sunrise with Megan in her parents basement. It was the only time during my trip we kissed, however tersely.
When I arrived back home to P-town both my heart and my bank account were empty. I locked myself in my bedroom and plugged-in my father's moribund Macintosh. I spent a week, incessantly, pelting out all the poems I had written for Megan into the computer screen. I revised, I chain smoked like a locomotive, I edited. At the end of a week my tears appeared in front of me and I had a tight fifty pages of verse for my elusive beloved who obviously wanted nothing to do with me. I printed the book up, engendered a calligraphic title POEMS OF LOVE AND ARDOR FOR MEGAN KRISTIN, took the book to Kinko's to have it bound and trussed and then, stuffed the manuscript into a Doc Marten shoe box and burried it into the back of my closet. Where it remained, unopend, for the next 16 months when Megan would re-enter my life at the most inopportune time possible, but I was eternally grateful that she re-entered at all.
I also bought a video edition of Before Sunrise and kept it unopened and stashed in my closet in the bushel of her letters. I finally watched it drunk, on Valentines Day 1997, dialing up Megan's digits, listening to her answer machine, confessinally still too apprensive to plant a message of my own merit.
I didn't watch the video again for a long-time.
*
But this is perhaps what has always allured me to the film. The fact that it was so much like life. The fact that, if ony for a moment, you're embracing this person, your holding that person, this moment in and of itself is an eternity. YOu don't need to ammend a nuptial contract, to procreate, to budget, to age, to grow infertile together. All you need to do is to have that moment. To hold that person and to know that, for as long as we are here, we are immortal.
*
It was late February 1998. I had dropped out of college once again. I was working full time as a supervisor at Barnes & Nobles, my paycheck was monoploized on discounted books and on Jana Solomon, my girlfriend. Jana was a feminine orchard of intelligence and beauty. We had just gone out of town together to Chicago and had rented a hotel room. I loved Jana but never wrote a solitary poem for her.
It was around 11pm and I was sitting in the living room of my parents old house re-reading Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist of a Young Man when the phone warbled its way into social cognizance.
"Is David there?"
Suddenly late winter had transitioned into spring.
*
I was dating Jana and I was in love with Megan. I worked all day, made love to Jana, went home and talked with Megan until 4am. I told her from the outset about my situation. Told her that I was already in love with someone. Told her about taking Jana to the Opera. About taking Jana out of town every weekend. About reading Thomas Pynchon and William Gaddis and David Foster Wallace. I told Megan all about sexual discovery and finding yourself above and below sweating in the pupil of the person inside of you. I told her all of this and then I told her that I never stopped loving her; that I never stopped loving Megan.
*
Earlier that morning, after one of our six-hour conversations, I opened up my closet and sifted through attire and manuscripts until I found the Doc Marten shoebox with the manuscript inside.
I went to the Post office and paid an extra ten bucks to have it federally expressed. When Megan opened the manusript two days later she told me that it was opening up her heart and finding her new born, only to realize that the father was out, caressing someone else becasue he had pledged his love to her first while the mother was out finding herself.
*
There was about six months of exorbitant four-hundred dollar phone bills. Jana and I would fight and hurtle furniture and end up going at it afterwards. Megan and I would discuss harvesting a family together. I saw Megan just once during those crazy months (another blog indelible details) and still cringe out a cry of nostalgia when I think about Megan's blue skirt and white shawl and the Chicago corner we concecrated with kisses.
There were lies and duplicitous emotions. Megan would tell me that she possibly couldn't consider dating me long term becasue of how I treated Jana, even though Megan herself was the catalyst for most of Jana's anger. The whole situation was just a mess.
*
It ended with Before Sunrise. It was late May and Megan and I were once again talking. I had wrapt up my copy of Before Sunrise to offically sned to Megan as a gift. The casette was tightly wrapt in Renoir Country Dance/City Dance wrapping paper. Jana found and told me that I would never hear fom her again if I continued to my liason.
She then pointed out that she dated a poet who never wrote her a poem.
*
For two years the video remained gift-wrapt, waiting for me to give it to Megan. eventually, I watched it with a girl named Jasna who had, for a while, been to Vienna. I gave it to Jasna after we watched it. She sprinkled smiles across the room.
*
That's the Before Sunrise antcis. In a weird way Megan was there when my dad died and the last time I saw Megan it was in Madison Wisconin, with uncle Mike. I sipped Knob's Creek and she told me about her pending engagement. I walked her out to the mini-van she bought from her dad "for a dollar". We embraced and in my typical fashion I hoisted her in the air and spun her around like a carousel.
"You're always so romantic David." She said to me. "When are you going to learn how just to say goodbye."
The next day I went to Greenlake and saw you-know-who presenting a formidable lecture on mysticism.
*
Even more so ironic was that the date, October 18th, the date I initially abandoned the port in search of my cheesehead bleoved, on that same date, six years later, I officially declared.
*
Life is good. Even if we don't have the girl of our dreams, we still have our dreams and that fifty percent is simply worth dying for.
*****************************************************************
*
The inward historical weight of Linklater's pending sequal and why I can't stop mentally drooling over it.
*
The first time I saw Before Sunrise I was an eighteen year old verbally-effete high school senior who had just returned home from his third eurpoean sojourn in as many years. (A blessing I had slaved for financially, which I would later culturally-contort to promote my own self-worth.) I sported a shock of short-slightly gelled nutmeg hair replete with pennisula sideburns flanking a sly-raffish grin; an innocuous white flag hoisted in the center of my youthful visage. In an effort to salvage culture in in a town, that, I was far too keen to point out to the random pedestrian, obviously wasn't "european", I wore charcoal flavor turtlenecks matched with thickly trussed Velvet Doc Martens. I sometimes sloped a beret over my head in tandem with my heavy Berlin-chic trench coat. I smoked cloves and cigars without knowing how to inhale, I swished boxed burgundy fluid around the inside of my cheeks while prematurely chatting about vintages and years. I supercilously felt like I was already an ordained authority on 'modern' poetry and recited T.S. Eliots "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" incessantly to anyone unfotunate enough to possess an earlobe. "Let us go then you and I/ When the evening is spread out agaisnt the sky/ Like a patient etherized upon a table."
Highschool was one endless elongated blue hallway shepherded by shrilling alarms and social clicks that failed to buckle emotional sanity. My junior year I started scribbling sloppy-inked feeble free-verse in notebooks and by senior year I was obsessed. I scribed only droopy first drafts, penning somewhere between sixty and 100 insufferable angst-laden poems a month. I was arrogant beyond all borders of the definition, all too certain of my destined literary stardom and, rather akin to Eliot's Tarrot identified "fool" in the previously mentioned poem, I remained pompously baffled why my peers had failed to recognize my pending literary sainthood.
It's interesting to note that most writers tend to go through this ugly indulgent ego-nourishing period at some point in their careers. Random readers are of course 'priveldged' to read their purportedly 'deep' yet shallow cannonical metaphores that will inevitably be archived in the British Museum someday b/c (obviously) everything this so--called self-ordained scribe has in print is obvioulsy the greatest thing in scripted ink since the King James edition. Many writers (such as local pretentious fop's conducting college comp. courses) never seem to slough this superior ego-cloak.
(Male writers, I think, are MUCH, MUCH worse at this 'feigned' pretension than female writers...in my experience that is....perhaps innately, females are better dancers, better movers and tend to be more highly literate early in life)
Joseph Campbell calls this ego-gourged individual a dragon. "Dragon's horde things," Notes Campbell. "They horde heaps of gold (unread books that pile up their offices) and beautiful virgins (their students)...and they don't know what to do with either of them.
I feel fortunate that I gradually flaked off these dragon scales over an eight year time span of simply ugly and bad writing where of course, I cared extremely little about the actual labor of the craft and paid scrupulous amounts of attention to my own Jack Kerouac bad-boy literary lifestyle.
Looking back over my early "poe-whims" (always a snooty dual-syllables)all I can say is that they were plastic lingusitic lego's that I would employ only later to snap the shape of my aesthetic identity.
Okay, no more tangeants. Back to pangs of high school.
Friday nights were spent at my best friends David Hale's abode in Bartonville. His mother would retire early and then the stash of semi-tepid malt liquer would avail itself from hidden panels in the basement. In those days a forty of Ice House or Mickey's circulated a long way being bartered between teenage boys who vociferously boasted in locker-rooms about the longevity of their livers. White-Trash Pat, Hale, Randall and Goth Dan would drop ten-sided dice and verbally illustrate the next move of their level two dwarf while I, of course the seemingly well-read narcissistic "cultured" one would swig shots in the corner while transpiring meaningless thoughts as they dripped out of my fountain pen.
There was always, of course videos. White-Trash Pat and Hale already possesed a formative heap of permy-haired adult sophisticated visual gumdrops by the age of fifteen. The first "porn" we ever watched together was titled something like Artic Orgy and it was about a group of rather voluptuous polar-nuclear physicits who find themselves stranded in Antartica without any heat and all of a sudden contract a great idea on how to conduct warmth.
I went through a lengthy phase where, much to the chagrin of Hale and White-Trash Pat, everything I viewed was endorsed by Merchant-Ivory. On the night I was trying to explain to them the cultual significane of Remains of the Day the group of sozzled gamers retired early. White Trash Pat and I stayed up and I flipped in Before Sunrise. Though the movie is 100 percent dialougue the flicker of the screen hushed a normally petulant-opinionated Patrick. By the end of the movie, we went outside and hugged each other. It was two in the morning. It was a senior year. When your in high school you advance a decade in knowledge each year. Patrick and I shared a cigartte and then Patrick opened his woodchip lips and paused slightly before commenting:
"Dude, man. That's us."
*
Of course there's more. Of course its about a girl. The girls name is Megan Kristin (I'll omit her last name here in deference towards her own privacy, but for privvy-fingered and omnisicent-eyed Mara-Arya's her maiden name is inserted into the title of this entry and has nothing to do with "osculation")Megan was from the tiny norwegian cheesehead hamlet of Appleton, Wisconsin, of all crazy places to fall in love.
I met Megan about a week after I first saw Linklater's verbal feast and even employed lines from the actual movie on her (smooth-Mistah' V; yeah). The first time we kissed her body squinted like a butterfly in mid-flap before her entire flesh transitioned into spring. Megan could be classified as cuddley and petite (5 ft.2). Her birthday is the first day of spring (Naw Ruz) and with a comfortable six-hours between us we started writing letters. The internet was just starting to wedge it's costipated modemic groan into universal conciousness (e-mail was foreign lexicon and waiting for the damn computer to usher its way into cyberspace seemed to take light-years back then). So Megan and I wrote letters. Huge, inky inky sounvabitches undressed from metered envelopes by itchy fingertips. NOthing beats finding your heart in a mail slot. Her letters were fraught with stickers and hearts; mine were verbose illustrations about everything stuffed with off-metered poems. She'd always smile when she told me that it used to take her forever to read them (smiles).
On October 18th, 1996 (I can still tell you the exact translucent denim sleek autumnnal-blue of the morning sky) I dropped out of my freshman year of college (mainly becasue it was a community college and my parents deemed that there son wasn't worth more than that intellectually) and bought a one way ticket to Appleton, WI of all places, arriving with notebooks and dreams and ambitions. Needless to say my sojourn was terse and our rapport didn't last long. Megan was still in high school her parents seemed rightfully nonplussed by their daughters suitor (although to this day I swear her dad loved it when I referred to him as "Master of the House"). I had written literally symphonies of poems for Megan and read them to her, feeling shunned by the silence of her face afterwards. She was young. I was young. Golden and kalidieoscopic autumn greets the sways and dips of northern Wisconsin in thick strokes of wind gulping down heavily from Canada. I remember seeing Megan through the airplane tint as I arrived on thew runway and I remember her standing next to me in the terminal as I caught my flight home with tear stained chin and cheeks arriving on the runway to an all too dubious future.
I also remember watching Before Sunrise with Megan in her parents basement. It was the only time during my trip we kissed, however tersely.
When I arrived back home to P-town both my heart and my bank account were empty. I locked myself in my bedroom and plugged-in my father's moribund Macintosh. I spent a week, incessantly, pelting out all the poems I had written for Megan into the computer screen. I revised, I chain smoked like a locomotive, I edited. At the end of a week my tears appeared in front of me and I had a tight fifty pages of verse for my elusive beloved who obviously wanted nothing to do with me. I printed the book up, engendered a calligraphic title POEMS OF LOVE AND ARDOR FOR MEGAN KRISTIN, took the book to Kinko's to have it bound and trussed and then, stuffed the manuscript into a Doc Marten shoe box and burried it into the back of my closet. Where it remained, unopend, for the next 16 months when Megan would re-enter my life at the most inopportune time possible, but I was eternally grateful that she re-entered at all.
I also bought a video edition of Before Sunrise and kept it unopened and stashed in my closet in the bushel of her letters. I finally watched it drunk, on Valentines Day 1997, dialing up Megan's digits, listening to her answer machine, confessinally still too apprensive to plant a message of my own merit.
I didn't watch the video again for a long-time.
*
But this is perhaps what has always allured me to the film. The fact that it was so much like life. The fact that, if ony for a moment, you're embracing this person, your holding that person, this moment in and of itself is an eternity. YOu don't need to ammend a nuptial contract, to procreate, to budget, to age, to grow infertile together. All you need to do is to have that moment. To hold that person and to know that, for as long as we are here, we are immortal.
*
It was late February 1998. I had dropped out of college once again. I was working full time as a supervisor at Barnes & Nobles, my paycheck was monoploized on discounted books and on Jana Solomon, my girlfriend. Jana was a feminine orchard of intelligence and beauty. We had just gone out of town together to Chicago and had rented a hotel room. I loved Jana but never wrote a solitary poem for her.
It was around 11pm and I was sitting in the living room of my parents old house re-reading Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist of a Young Man when the phone warbled its way into social cognizance.
"Is David there?"
Suddenly late winter had transitioned into spring.
*
I was dating Jana and I was in love with Megan. I worked all day, made love to Jana, went home and talked with Megan until 4am. I told her from the outset about my situation. Told her that I was already in love with someone. Told her about taking Jana to the Opera. About taking Jana out of town every weekend. About reading Thomas Pynchon and William Gaddis and David Foster Wallace. I told Megan all about sexual discovery and finding yourself above and below sweating in the pupil of the person inside of you. I told her all of this and then I told her that I never stopped loving her; that I never stopped loving Megan.
*
Earlier that morning, after one of our six-hour conversations, I opened up my closet and sifted through attire and manuscripts until I found the Doc Marten shoebox with the manuscript inside.
I went to the Post office and paid an extra ten bucks to have it federally expressed. When Megan opened the manusript two days later she told me that it was opening up her heart and finding her new born, only to realize that the father was out, caressing someone else becasue he had pledged his love to her first while the mother was out finding herself.
*
There was about six months of exorbitant four-hundred dollar phone bills. Jana and I would fight and hurtle furniture and end up going at it afterwards. Megan and I would discuss harvesting a family together. I saw Megan just once during those crazy months (another blog indelible details) and still cringe out a cry of nostalgia when I think about Megan's blue skirt and white shawl and the Chicago corner we concecrated with kisses.
There were lies and duplicitous emotions. Megan would tell me that she possibly couldn't consider dating me long term becasue of how I treated Jana, even though Megan herself was the catalyst for most of Jana's anger. The whole situation was just a mess.
*
It ended with Before Sunrise. It was late May and Megan and I were once again talking. I had wrapt up my copy of Before Sunrise to offically sned to Megan as a gift. The casette was tightly wrapt in Renoir Country Dance/City Dance wrapping paper. Jana found and told me that I would never hear fom her again if I continued to my liason.
She then pointed out that she dated a poet who never wrote her a poem.
*
For two years the video remained gift-wrapt, waiting for me to give it to Megan. eventually, I watched it with a girl named Jasna who had, for a while, been to Vienna. I gave it to Jasna after we watched it. She sprinkled smiles across the room.
*
That's the Before Sunrise antcis. In a weird way Megan was there when my dad died and the last time I saw Megan it was in Madison Wisconin, with uncle Mike. I sipped Knob's Creek and she told me about her pending engagement. I walked her out to the mini-van she bought from her dad "for a dollar". We embraced and in my typical fashion I hoisted her in the air and spun her around like a carousel.
"You're always so romantic David." She said to me. "When are you going to learn how just to say goodbye."
The next day I went to Greenlake and saw you-know-who presenting a formidable lecture on mysticism.
*
Even more so ironic was that the date, October 18th, the date I initially abandoned the port in search of my cheesehead bleoved, on that same date, six years later, I officially declared.
*
Life is good. Even if we don't have the girl of our dreams, we still have our dreams and that fifty percent is simply worth dying for.
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