Lost

Jack is the story, and it's a good one. Stay tuned, because it's only season 3.

Poetry Award

Recently, I finished third in 'The Undergraduate Academy of American Poets Prize' category for best single poem for U. of Cincinnati. Here's the poem, posted again.


The Conceit That Unravels Into Meaninglessness

In the meantime, I'm living here,
keeping the house in order for showings.
Everything, from the paintings on the walls,
to the furniture on the patio,
has been tagged for sale.

I've been here for weeks.
Just today, I answered the door,
told telemarketers so-and-so don't live here anymore,
made coffee, smoked a half-dozen cigarettes,
had a beer, and walked the rooms trying to hear a sound.

A friend once told me
(First, prefacing the advice
by liking it to tombstones
above dead bodies)
what she does when walking into a strange place:
she imagines each face
to be a face of her past--
the young girl who looks up to her mother to speak,
or the teenager with a mouth-full of braces bagging groceries.

But what happens when the faces inside the rooms I enter are owned by dead people?
And I find myself walking past photographs
of this deceased elderly couple,
and past their son's collection of paint-by-number pieces
hanging on the walls.
I catch glimpses of myself
from the small mirrors on every wall.
No one is coming here unannounced,
so I can act this way.
Everyone went west after the funeral
and I find that I can't remember
the original placement of things.

I know the date
only from the newspaper.
I leave the shower running
and fall asleep nude.
Nude, and asleep with the shower running,
I am the pretension of a misplaced object
that has become a conceit
which unravels into meaninglessness.

***I don't know. Fine enough. The school has a ton of good writers, good poets much more refined than me. Especially the women, or young ladies? I don't know the expression. But for the most part, the girls dominated the contest in each category: short stories, poetry, playwriting, essays, and compositions, etc. I don't know much about the female writer, because I don't read many female authors. But from what I've observed of women, they are less, I would say, troubled . . . or less rough around the edges. They remember, or keep in mind, the forms of composition. But a writer is a writer. Men have Faulkner, women have McCullers. I cannot choose and it probably doesn't matter.

So I'm going to keep writing, and hopefully my writing gets better. Better scope, less serious, more humor, less measured, and more creative. Recognition doesn't matter. When you're ready, you'll get recognized. Even then, it doesn't really matter. I let it go because

there is a quick and sudden excitment, then you do it all over again, but hopefully better with the added experience you keep in the back of your mind. And it is continually improving, getting more refined. Exhausting, this pursuit of improvement. Putting the pieces together, the concepts you've read and learned ardently. Eating pages, eating books, eating music, eating films, buying, adding, improving, expressing it all in a long, drawn out single breath. I let it go, with the hope that it will come back when I need it. Fall lazily into my lap when I least expect it. It's not patience, because I'm not waiting or expecting a thing from writing, or from you.

In my world, cleverness does not exist, nor do expectations. Meaning unravels into meaninglessness. You begin, then get tired. Rest back into meaningfulness. Hopefully, eventually, I rest less and less, and watch less television. 

Bolding, italicizing, quoting, capitalizing, and separating a single word

I know everyone likes movies, and for this, I am definitely in the majority. However, there's a certain kind of movie-buff that I'm thinking of. Not the fan of Garden State. Not the fan of genre, or director, or actor. Not the fan of the box-office, or of the made-for-television movie. Not the critic, or the sport's fan who marvels with curiosity at the off-beat. Not the athlete who enjoys sports documentaries. I think the type of movie fan I'm looking for is . . . myself. How original. What I'm saying is, is that there is always something wrong.

Nothing can live up to my exact preference of style and meaning. That's not to mention the fact that I don't bother with what isn't my speciality.

That being said, the type of movie fan I'm looking for is probably my opposite, though I'm not sure. Or-- when you make a decision, everything opens up. The person who has no opinion is not enlightened, but only anxious. I would know. The person who has a dominating opinion, does not make a decision. It's similar to Russell's paradox:

There is a town, where it's required that every man shave daily.
You are not required to shave yourself.
For the people who don't want to shave themselves, there's a barber.
The town's law states: "Those who don't shave themselves are shaved by the barber."
The question is: "Who will shave the barber?"
(I'm infinitely indebted to the graphic novel Logicomix)
***
My point, and I think Russell's ultimate point as well, is that we are all 'the barber.'

(The barber cannot shave himself, for being the barber, it would mean that he is shaved by the man who shaves only those who don't shave themselves."

Also, the barber cannot go to the barber because he would still be shaving himself.)

So, we are all barbers, or ostracized movie-buffs. Or exceptions to the rule. Or paradoxes.

BUT... we love to be entertained. So, going along with Beckett's credo of: "There is nothing to express, and nothing to express with. There is only the obligation to express," (Conversations with Samuel Beckett and painter Bram van Velde) I want to make a new list of my favorite movies:



1) Happiness--The stories of various characters intertwine and relate. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is a perversely sexual character. Also, the movie throws in a gay therapist.

2) Miller's Crossing-- An old Cohen brothers film. Seamless dialogue . . . that can be embarrassing at times. However, far-and-away my favorite Cohen brothers film ( above Fargo, Barton Fink, A Serious Man, Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou, No Country For Old Men) I think that says enough.

3) The Dreamers-- An American student in Paris during the 1960's revolts. The movie is meta-film, and has some incest.

4) The King Fisher-- Robin Williams is a homeless man.

**

So, what have I learned while writing this post? Well first, the Cohen Bros. are very underrated. Second, we are never going to agree, cannot agree, cannot even agree to disagree.

Thus, we come to the axis of my post: a paradox is-- a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory, or absurd, but in reality expresses a possible truth. ( I understand the word 'absurd' to be the definition relating to the 'theater-of-the-absurd' : [plays] stressing the irrational or illogical aspects of life, usually to show that modern life is pointless)

Also, the word 'self-contradictory' : two propositions related in such a way that it is impossible for both to be true or both to be false.

First, sorry for this. Second, welcome to my life. Seriously.

Anyway, so, a paradox is a proposition that seems like [two propositions related in such a way, that it is impossible for both to be true/false] or a proposition that seems like something which stresses the irrational or illogical aspects of life, showing that life is meaningless.

Or. . . A paradox is this 'OR' this. OOKKK, OK dictionary. Paradoxes are absurd--illogical, meaningless. We are "barbers," or men who cannot shave, but who live in a town which requires that men shave daily.
We are breaking the law.

Intuition says that I should end this with the sort of literary technique which I think of as "the-build-up-before-sex-and-calm-cum-afterward" OR "the-sweet-here-after" or  "the final 4 1/2 minutes of a basketball game, where the lead changes continually, but the team you're rooting for ends up losing."

*** Everyone enjoys movies. I'm no different. "The previous statement is false." Or, who can know if it's true, or if I really mean it. Am I really no different?  Probably. I'm probably no different. Most likely, I'm controlling the conversation, or undermining the girlfriend I don't have, or graduating from a previous life-level. However, you're listening to me, although I don't notice or care. I'm no different than you-- I like Brad Pitt because I think he's an accurate and visceral actor. I believe Mr. and Mrs. Smith was great. I like John Cusack, therefore I liked him in Serendipity.
But, what about my love for literature, my love for women, and my love for sports? What about my love for literature, women, and sports.
I am a paradox, and so are you:
you enjoy the rush of gambling, but despise the feeling when you lose,

you are empty, on and off, throughout the day, during work--even though you are making money, while around other workers. You are not an 'employee.' You are the exception to the rule. You are a paradox. This is not your life until you encourage yourself that this is your life.

What about being an American; a blond hair, blue-eyed-22-year-old; a poet and brother; a son and student?

What about being the man who enjoys movies which fit the abstract criteria of his cross-hairs. What about being empty or full. What about being the person to grotesquely illuminate the paradox of the barber. What about writing with good intentions, but instead, writing into abstraction. What about abstraction? What about you, the voyeur, the reader, who uses his cross-hairs to narrow down my illuminated and grotesque intentions and transform them into failed attempts at something you understand only by intuition.