Sketches and Poem

Well, I can't post the play because, through editing the third act before the first, the second act before the third, it makes no sense. I've come to realize that I'm just putting off giving the Persian hero of the play a voice of her own. I don't have a primary character that the play is supposed to revolve around. Instead, I have stage direction, suspended-disbelief, and the dialogue of every other character. I do have some character sketches that seem interesting to me: Play takes place is California Darakhshan: Persian lady, 24, olive skin, hereditary and bruise-like eclipses under eyes, thin frame and thin face that shows grotesque bone structure. Adopted to a california couple--mother a news anchor, father a producer Murphy: writer, 32, unlucky, from French, Lick Indiana Mickey: 50, ex Longshoreman, deep creases in face, cataracts that give him white and clouded eyes Nurse: 35, Spanish-American, short, curvy, full lips, and deadpan Those are the sketches. Anyway, I figured I should post a poem if anyone out there wants to read something that I took legitimate and personal thought into. A Dim-Lit Scene A policeman's son taught me The major roadways of Ohio While we drove an eighteen-hour Summer drive to Florida. I-71 travels from Louisville to Cleveland, I-74 from Iowa to Ohio, I-76 from Westfield, OH to Newark NJ, and I-75 from Canada through Ohio, and all the way to Florida. Currently, I'm en route to Canada. Rain falls into Saturday night. Windshield wipers slide back and forth. Lights from headlamps reflect and break apart In a blinding manner. Red and blue police lights Flash on an ambulance parting traffic On the same interstate but in the opposite direction. Every light is mute. Talk radio is on an AM station. The disk-jockey Henry narrates from his room Glossy, green signs with white script. Off exit rampt 32 Down Euclid St. and passed The Camera's Photography Store There is a sunken parking lot surrounded by stores. An electric restaurant's sign illuminates in the rain. A chain of retail stores remain closed for the weekend. I came across a kitchen appliance store. Dim lights fell on each staged, bourgeois scene. It was like walking through a model home, But each room a different kitchen. It was like watching a dying man Who searches But finds every compartment In every room of his home Empty.

A Play and A Poem

Well, I've been busy writing a play for a magazine contest. Hopefully, I'll be able to post the first act soon. Been reading Faulkner and Stoppard, and watching tons of movies to help with this new experience of writing something that is meant to be performed. Its great because I have no clue what I'm doing. Anyways, between classes I wrote this poem . . . Concrete, Grass, Snow Concrete steps that lead away from a building. Trees without leaves but With limbs that bend like wilted flowers or extend out like arthritic fingers. The rusted and broken-off bar Among the other bars of the step-railing. Melted snow, in the courtyard on the horizon, With those crippled trees that are strewn throughout As if they were subsidized houses, Or accentuated mountains on A globe of green water and white land. A squashed, pea-sized plant-fruit at my feet With a pool of yellow Surrounding its empty skin. Small concrete stones huddled together. Clear salt-rocks turned blue. A freshly laid square of concrete, Lighter than its surrounding squares. The section along this building that is roped off With cautionary tape and orange cones. Arm-length icicles hang off the gutter: By-and-by they will pierce The chalk-outlined victim In a bullet-speed reaction.

After assigning the book Evocative Objects, my english professor later assigned the class a paper on our own evocative object. Some of the evocative objects in the book included: stars, a datebook, a radio, an ax-head, a car, photographs, etc.. Always, the author's evocative object led to a grander philosophy, that in turn intersected with his profession.

Mitchel Resnick's object was "stars" --the pure wonder they initially put inside him, and the childish yet essential questions they caused him to ask: what is it for? how big and how far and where and when and who and what?

But before his essay was a long quote from Jean Piaget that, more or less, closely analizes the "assimilation of reality into systems of transformations."

Interestingly, and take a deep breath, Resnick is now............"LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research and Director of the Lifelong Kindergarten research group at the MIT Media Lab."

Resnick's eagerness to pursue his quesions, as child, student, and graduate, turned him from the stars, to complex mathmatical equations, and then to a multitude of philosophical paradoxes and riddles.

In class, the discussion of his essay morphed entirely into LEGOS, and brought me back to the interesting idea of delight and simplicity. This simplicity took me away from the muddled concepts of New Criticism, reader-response criticism, and New Historicism criticism; away from the objective the subjective the relative; away from modernism, naturalism, realism; away from the exact and precise definitions of the simile, metaphor, and personification.

The clarity of these LEGOS led me to find my own evocative object which made a good amount of sense to me-- my first tackle box.

I guess the point is--I returned clear and unattached when I returned from the chaos that occurs when you closely study something( in my case literature), and blind-sightedly accept the dogma of its religion as FACT or even FAITH.

These are a few excerpts I wrote on my tackle-box:

Snowing in Cincinnati

Intersections I walk down an avenue turned over black and brown from tires discarding snow. On the sidewalks, men in heavy jackets and woolen ski masks hunch over with metal shovels. Cars lining the curbs are iced and re-iced over, drowned in snow. A single car is free of snow though wrapped around a splintered telephone pole. The car is left unattended, emergency lights flashing. A tall and thin, sun-yellow home sits at the end of the avenue. The sidewalks continue, north and south, up and down the steep intersection that travels separate ways-- each running into other intersections that veer off into unseen roads. Snow on this intervening street has been tread, and tread over, compacted into two parallel paths. The sidewalk running north and south has boot-prints at varying angles meshed together in a chaotic history-- Spinning the compass of direction without end. Carefully, I trace this history through fear of stepping outside it. The sun-yellow home stands behind me. Men shovel on the avenue I recently passed. The Chevelle is left alone slowly collecting a thin layer of snow. I walk up a road turned over in parallel, snowed-in lines that never touch.

First Post

Yes, this is my first post. I can tell you're already skeptical on consistency-- me leaving, and coming back on Easter Sunday, then on Independence Day, and finally, in an array of fireworks, I simply commit Internet-Blogging-Suicide with the plagiarized statement: 'No Exit.' This statement is true. This statement is false. I'm too lazy to change the font style so it correlates with what exactly I am trying to say--I'm sure it will be altered on a Cincinnati snowed-in day when I am bored. I will try to post a poem every week. This is, hopefully, the first of many. Somewhere Else Other Than Here This morning, his living room is diluted From an awakened sun coming through the blinds-- As if a cool glass of milk Is being passed under a water faucet. Birds outside are discussing religion, Perched on urbanized trees: The chain-linked fence, The cables running between electrical poles, The brown dumpster. He knows each From the differences separating them: The subtle, burnt red of the Fox Sparrow, The blue-grey of the American Kestrel, The chickadee qualities of the Carolina Wren. The opposing, passe supplication Revealing itself Through the contrasting united silence of the apartment building Denotes the day. Sunday morning, and the workers Who typically complete the building's effect-- Mailmen, garbage-men, leasing agents-- Are somewhere else other than here. The silence of these handy-men Is heard even past the avenues. He returns from revelry, Back to the morning. To his sugar and to his cream, To the running shower, and the steam Travelling under the door-- To the morning kitchen-ware before him: from a spoon, milk mixes with coffee-- with a spoon, milk stirs coffee.