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.

Three Poems About Death

Ok, well, I'm officially finished with writing for a week or two. I'm exhausted. However, the three poems I'm going to post, I have entered into another contest. The prompt, or prize award, is the 'best collection of 3-5 poems.' So, I wanted to give the three poems I entered something in common. The best concept I could think of was death. For the first time, I used a voice which I was most comfortable with, and I think that's why I'm actually proud of these three pieces. Tell me what you think.

Art of Dying


Lately, the news hasn’t been good.
On and off, she’s been dying for months.
It started with a single spot on her ovary,
so they cut that piece out.
Then it started with a follow up appointment.
Turns out, the cancer had spread,
and at the least, she can’t have children now.

Now that she has it full blown,
her mother tells her that it is genetic.
Her mother tells her that she had it,
and that her mother had it.
They found the cancer before it got bad though.
Something then passes between them,
mother and daughter,
which they don’t know what to do with.
Sure, the mother is supposed to go before her children.
We all know that.
What if, as a subject, death is impossible to avoid?
Confronts and makes friends with you,
like a mother does when you’ve grown up.

The change that comes over a mother,
as her child comes into adulthood,
is the change that’s now come over you.

You’ve breathed a sigh of relief,
because as the deformity was cut into,
then taken out of you,
it left you disfigured and impotent.

You, the woman who loved being
the woman pregnant with death,
has now given birth to it.

This dying art,
of living the death
we are born into,
has now accompanied you.

Thus, you are unafraid.



Death As Life-Affirming


The diagnoses is not good,
and I would know.
I work with dying people every day.
Her blood is too thin, and her liver is failing.
They are considering pulling the plug.
There is me, my husband, the five of them, and a doctor.
They’re discussing the possibilities around a table.
They argue: “She would not want to live like this.
She is only alive because of the breathing machine.
And she can’t do dialysis.
Dialysis will kill her,
because her blood is too thin.”
People spend days, at most a week, in the ICU:
She’s been here for three and a half weeks.
They argue: “Do you want to pull the plug?
She’s a fighter, she would want to fight.”
There is screaming and shouting and crying,
and extreme sadness.
Then, there is silence.
I realize the husband
has been silent up to this point.

I don’t know why I’m here,
and I don’t want to be here.
I ask my husband why I’m here,
and he takes my question the wrong way.
He’s been debating with his brothers and sisters,
and is worked up.
He whispers to me: “If I ever get to this point, please,
just shoot me.”

Misery is something
he wants me to put him out of.
I’ve seen that look before:
Death as life-affirming.
And I’ve seen the look that
my father-in-law quickly gives me:
Death as the final breath of his wife.



Rooms


There was a time
when I thought I couldn’t die.
I didn’t think that far ahead.
No one close to me had passed away,
and I also hadn’t died yet.
But, still, even when not thinking about Death,
He was thinking about me.

I was born blue-faced, with the umbilical cord
wrapped around my neck.
Later on, I flipped my Honda three times,
from hood to underbelly,
into a ravine.
I opened my eyes, alive,
and climbed out of the window:
Much like I did when being born.
My father told me: “I don’t know,
I just don’t know. Freud would say
you have a death wish.
Do you want to die?”
This was not my first serious accident,
but the third or fourth.
I went through three cars
during my first two years with a license.
It got to be a farce within the family.

Then, years later, something happened.
It was not a suicide.
Please, stay with me now.
Every second,
someone is born and someone dies.
You open your eyes, alive,
astonished and confused.
So goes my on-going relationship with Death.

In a room,
the midwife takes out a child:
Much like what happened during my birth.
Subsequently, another room
is lowered into the ground.
In my room,
I am belted to a bed,
with a catheter, IV, and breathing tube.
I open my eyes,
alive and confused.
My immediate family hovers above me,
in this small room.

Finished Poem

Well somehow I finished a poem. This first poem has been submitted for a particular contest. Please tell me what you think. I think this is all I'll post for now.


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 entering a strange place:
she imagines each new 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.

Eye for an eye, mother fucker

   Things seem to be happening all at once concerning writing. A fellow UC english student approached me with a cool idea about a publication, along with a few other UC undergrads. The idea is a publication of UC students by UC students, in the form of an e-book (Im not sure what the 'e-book' is, but I get the idea its a little more relevant than a chap-book.) Among the myriad of details I was given about it, it sounds pretty serious in the sense that you'll be able to buy it online, and we would have to give a % of the sales to UC for the use of their name. Anyway, its supposed to be due for publication in mid-June. SO BUY IT, when I'm able to give more of the who-and-what about it. Also on the writing front is the yearly UC writing contest, May 1st, where the winners are given pretty good cash prizes. Soooo, my backlog of writing seems to be coming in handy right about now, although I really only have one poem ready-- I have a short story, short play, and about fifteen other poems in the works. First, I wanted to post the one full poem I have finished . .

The Price is Right

Water from the metal shower head
Beats like a heart-murmur
Against the glass door,
Though the shower is unoccupied.
Above the ivory sink

A square mirror collects condensation.
Small drops supplement, then fall,
Leaving a clean trail.

Under a canister of shaving cream
Is a perfect circular rust-ring.
Its morning in southern California,
And a breeze comes in through the window's open screen.
Behind the bathroom's wooden door
I hear Drew Carrey commentating
On The Price is Right
From the living room television.

From the canister, I apply lather--
To the temple
And down the cheek,
Under the jaw line
And up to the temple,
Under the jaw line
And above each half
Of the upper lip.

Shaving is like skating on ice
Covered in six inches of snow.
The razor parts and takes everything.

Like a heart beat
Water beats
Against the shower's glass door,
As steam rises to the ceiling.
Its as if I'm skiing
Through the eye of a heavy blizzard.

Above the sound of running water
From the faucet and shower head,
I hear old women, in the distance,
Nervously guessing the price of a cleaning product.


Here.. is... the... beginning of a short story I've been working on. . .

In a sunlit park 10,000 small, blue and silver, Independence Day wind-mills, spin in perfect circles, while in perfect 100 x 100 lines. Sunlight catches the silver, and breaks apart reflecting infinitely into no particular direction. A three year old girl, in a pink dress, jumps up and down inside the array of moving wind-mills. Its Sunday, and traffic procedes as normal along the outlining streets. Its spring, and people procede as normal with picnic-lunches, frisbees, and kissing. My dog, half-beagle and half-husky, timidly approaches the myraid of rotating, planted wind-mills. She is two years old.

****
Anyway, someone once told me the word 'myraid' is one of the top ten over-used and pretentious words in literature, and I just realized I've already used it twice in this post. I don't especially like the word 'myraid'. . . it reminds me of the word pyramid.
O.K.--a quick list of my favorite words
1. riven
2. beatitude
3. ether

The Last Five Movies I've Watched

1. The Painted Veil
2. From Paris With Love
3. The Ninth Gate
4. When A Man Loves A Woman
5. Sherlock Holmes

The most startling of the five movies has to be When a Man loves a Woman-- with Meg Ryan and Andy Garcia. A young meg ryan and andy garcia. If you're imagining meg ryan as a mother of two and suddenly becoming an alcoholic, then your exactly right. I think I really like this movie, but I'm not sure yet. It kind of came out of nowhere.
*****

I would listen to any Bill Simmons' podcast, rather then go out 'on the town' and see the opening of a Shakespeare play on Broadway. I would rather talk about it later, instead of talking about it now. Between cigarettes and alcohol, I choose cigarettes. Between hemingway and fitzgerald, I choose Hemingway. Between sports and literature, I choose literature. Between family and friends, I choose myself. Between College and High School, I choose to not attend class. Between Fiona Apple and Liz Phair, I choose Fiona. Between Nirvana and The Black Keys, I choose Joseph Arthur. Between Elvis and Andy Warhol, I pick Elvis. I choose dying on a toilet, rather than listening to one more expert.

Digression rather than progression.
Absurdity rather than creativity.
Zooey Deshanel rather than Katy Perry
R.E.M over Prince
Vignettes that make sense, rather than stories that make sense

*****

"How are you?" He said

"Good, good. Its been a long time. How are you?" She said

"Good, good. I know! You never answer your damn phone." He said

"I know, I know. I'm changing networks. I'm fed up with Nextel. My signal keeps dropping." She said

"Ah shit. Really? You should try Sprint. I haven't had any problems with it." He said

" Thanks. Really, thanks. Anything has to be better than Nextel. I'm caught in a contract, though." She said

"Ah shit. How long? Get a lawyer. I have a lawyer I know who can help." He said

"Lawyer. A lawyer? For what?" She said

"For the contract." He said

"My cell-phone contract?" She said

"YES. My lawyer is a cell-phone-contract-lawyer." He said

"Really?"

"Yes, really really." He said

"Its been a long time." She said

"A really, really long time, I would say. I've called you, though." He said

"I know. Its my fucking service. I don't know what to say. Its just the service." She said

"I know I know, that sucks." He said

"Of course, but I'll live. So, anyway, how are you?" She said

"I'm good, I've been travelling, but I'm back in town for the weekend. Are you back in town?" He said

"Ah shit. I was last weekend for a funeral, but only for the service. I'm back in Texas." She said

"Jesus. What are you doing in Texas. People rot, carry guns, and vote Republican in Texas. I never knew you lived in Texas?" He said

"Southern Texas." She said

"So you have a gun now?" He said

"Hell yes I do. Eye for an eye, mother fucker." She said.

Red Light . . . Green Light

The heavens parted, and I haven't smoked a cigarette in three days. For some reason. But its 8 AM on a Saturday and I'm up, drinking coffee, and half reading a poem I wrote last night. I feel a little like Adam Sandler in Big Daddy when he thinks he's up early enough for McDonald's breakfast. Anyway, the Cavalier's first post-season game is today, so it got me thinking about my favorite basketball or sports movies. 1. Hoop Dreams 1. Raging Bull 2. He Got Game 3. Blue Chips 4. White Men Can't Jump 5. King Pin Sports movies are tricky, and I found when thinking of my favorite ones, certain borderline films had to be left out. Like Better of Dead, or A River Runs Through It, or even Caddyshack. All formidable choices though. It got me thinking about my favorite actors, and I really wanted to narrow the list down to one man and one woman. And then my favorite movies in general, and I wanted to narrow that list down to one movie. So, my favorite actress has to be Liv Tyler. I need to dedicate a post solely to Liv Tyler, and her ability to do nothing effortlessly. On the opposite spectrum would probably be Natalie Portman. She's pretty good too. I could watch Liv Tyler sit on a bench for an hour and a half. Then, my favorite actor would have to be Billy Bob Thorton. Something about him makes me laugh uncontrollably. Johnny Depp and Benecio Del Toro come in close seconds, along with Zooey Deschanel and Jennifer Connelly and Emmanuelle Seigner--and any other actresses with thick eye-brows. The least favorite actor award goes to Glenn Close and that red head from Sex and the City. My favorite movie could be Stranger Than Paradise. I also got to thinking about my hollywood crushes in chronological order. I think my first major crush was Willa Ford. And my current crush is that Beetle host from 'Sports Nation.' With Willa Ford, I went so far as to buy her address on a website. This was 8th grade, I think. I never got a reply though. That's not to say I never got any replies from famous people. I sent letters to Tony Gwynn, Patrick Roy, and Tony Hawk . . . off the top of my head. . . and received autographed photos or sportscards back. That was around 5th grade. But no response from Willa Ford. I wonder how many people wrote letters to J. D. Salinger and got no reply. Oh well. I sent an email to Scoop Jackson, about Spike Lee in Reggie Miller's documentary 30 and 30, and actually got a response. ********* Or, we begin, as is, in a good way. Then, there is a middle where we deviate and experiment. Finally, there is the beginning again, as it was at first--the middle, as it never could be--the end, which looks the beginning in the eye, and realizes it is the reversal. But there is no flashback. There is no meaning. There is no final answer or knowledge of where one is going. There is no supplication. There is no Time, because Time is Earthly. Time is a philosophy denoted by color. The End does have an exit, because I've seen a dead body. There is nothing there, absolutely. The corpse is something we see but only understand through our memories of its life. A dead body is an empty object. Stale blood and a dead heart that does not rise or fall. A heart that doesn't rise or fall is a useless object. We are born with a rising and falling heart, and we die with the same heart. So there is a beginning and an end. There is a stoppage of life. You stop a car, then accelerate again. There is no stoppage of life. To stop alludes to begin again. The heart does not begin again after it officially stops. Then what? The heart stops rising and falling, and exists as a useless object. The heart is the sun and the moon, when beating. How would you compare death? How do you compare something that you can only witness from your own perspective: You are bed-side. Your grandmother or grandfather are on their death bed. Slowly, their breaths are further apart. Minutes apart. Then the breathing stops, and does not start. You wait, wondering if the breathing will begin. But it stops, forever. Someone puts a gun to their head, and shoots. What can you say about it? The aim is to famously prove. The evolution of depression is suicide. The erosion of life is death. The connection is an evolution toward death. The word play of sound is universally despised. You die in childbirth, you die in your twenties, you die in your thirties. You die in your eighties. There is absolutely no way of expressing--we've covered and covered it--layer upon layer--the deed has already been committed--and we are a couple of first loves speaking a secret language . . . the obligation to express is like asking the question 'What's the occasion?' God is a hypothetical question. Faith is a suicide hotline. The metaphor is the occasion the simile must dress up for. Reality is the unstable, suicidal man calling the suicide hotline, and discussing philosophy.

Resolve Carpet Stain Remover

I try to vary it up when purchasing things at CVS pharmacy, which happens about every other day. Today, it was a combo of Resolve Triple OXI Advanced Carpet Stain Remover, a pack of Marlboro 27's, 10$ headphones, and a cheap fan for the apartment. That was this morning. The conversation behind me, at the cash register, follows (between Mother and Young boy/son) Boy: Mom, I want a Redbull Mother: Not until your in college. Absolutely not. Boy: Why college? Mother: You can have a Redbull in college, when you're cramming for final exams. Boy: (sigh) . . . (not understanding the words 'college' or 'exam') Cashier: (Black, young woman, two piercings above lip (in that strange 'no-mans-land' of the face) Do you have a CVS card? I've been to this particular CVS many times, and have had this particular cashier many times--each time the answer is the same--"no" Anyway, after this I drove home, and once again the tail-pipe of my car was rattling against my back wheel. Had to pull over, detach tail-pipe in Burger King parking lot, move into trunk, and drive home. These little conversations and events make up everyone's experiences, as well as mine, and everyone notices with a passing glance as they continue on. At a red light, the car infront of mine konked out as it ran out of gas. The emergency lights were put on, and he stepped out of his car, as the light turned green. He looked into the sky. He looked at me. He tilted his head and looked at the car behind me. Realizing no one was going to help him-- realizing the code of self-propulsion, the idea that all systems are self-sufficient-- the man waved ongoing cars by, and concentrated himself separate from the traffic.

Elipses

No matter how much I want to edit past posts with knowledge that I have today. . . I can't. . . because I don't think its necessary. Just like it seems that much of my life goes back to an axis of an event that is different every time. I wonder where it will all go. I was thinking of grad school today. . . no that's not right. . . I was thinking of school today. . . still no . . . definately I was thinking of Halloween 4 today after watching it last night--@ 3 AM and wondering about past autumns, and football games with hard aluminum benches, and death. . . then to the first stanza of James Wright's poem Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio In the Shreve High football stadium, I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville, And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood, And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel, Dreaming of heroes. . . . . . then to Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio and the bookstore where I bought it in some mall in Lexington KY. Anderson went from Ohio to Chicago and then wrote about Ohio. Mostly though he wrote letters, more pages in letters than in fiction . . . think Gertrude Stein. Then to Woddy Harrelson, but that wouldn't do. I moved back to the hard benches of football games and compared them to the benches off the piers of Orange Country and the Pacific that I never had a connection to. Then to the famous people I have known . . . which resulted into thinking of Liv Tyler. And the famous people that I will hopefully know in the future. And Sartre's idea of being famous. Finally, I picked up a composition book, and began writing.

On Writing

I've been going to the Burnet Woods Park recently. More and more, I'm finding that I prefer a pre-determined, controlled setting--thus, I go to the park, lets say, an hour and a half before sunset. Late, late afternoon, or like, 8:15. This afternoon the highlight was the inspiration of "joggers at dusk" and the "woman selling potted flowers on the street-corner."

Ideas of poems I've been working on: something that involves the washer/dryer machines in my building and the quarter cartridges of these machines (they remind me of Chucky Cheeses, but instead, I would allude to the sound they make--cha-ching-- like the the sound of putting a bullet in a six-shooter, and the circular rotation of the cartridge in a Russian-roulette-like manner. Or Springtime in the city, and the changes it brings-- more street-walkers, people selling flowers in-front of gas stations, pools opening up...etc.

I can't get this Eliot line out of my head... "April is the cruelllest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead..."

This quarter, I'm taking a "Forms of Poetry" class, and I feel that I need to face my fear of talking poetry with peers that probably know more about the subject than me. I don't hang out with other writers, although I probably should. Do writers hang out with one another? Anyway, when I'm put into a group, or in this case, a class of peers, who I can see are similar to me in their genuine love of writing and the writing process, I tend to say 'Fuck it and fuck writing.' Its strange. O.K., I consider myself a writer and I dont think that this is pretentious. I used to think that writers who thought of themselves as writers were going too far. Now, I think that if a writer wants to be a writer, then good luck to him. This is after reading Stephen King's On Writing, and Rilke's Letters To a Young Poet. Especially Rilke's small book of letters. Everyone writes. Diaries, journals, blogs, e-mails, letters, etc. But someone who wants to professionally be a writer is different. Of course, the motives of writers are different. For me, I simply enjoy the process of writing, and the variables of the writing process--smoking and writing, waking up from a dream and writing, remembering something and writing. To me, writing for a living seems as sensible as my sister becoming a corporate lawyer.

So, I want to stop thinking "fuck it," when I'm sitting in my 'forms of poetry' class. I want to stop reading 'only authors who are dead.' Don't get me wrong, I don't want to hang out with other writers. Instead, I want to be friends with family and (some) high-school friends. I want be a sidewalk-pedestrian, contemplating, observing--who finds the atmosphere of a 7-11 less intimidating than a classroom. I want to think of writing as an athlete thinks of muscle-memory. Well, I already do. But I feel that I think of writing sometimes as something that classifies and separates. Really, my true understanding of Art/Writing, and other professions, is not separate---all are the same, all hobbies/professions necessary to provide for your 'real life' of laziness and relaxation.

So, when in my 'forms of poetry' class, I'm going to try my hardest to include myself as someone interested in poetry.

Also, eventually, I'm going to write a children's book with my sister.

More March Madness w/ Editors Note

Editor's note: These last two posts have been terribly difficult to publish. For one, after accidently deleting out of the blog, each time, before publishing it, I thought the posts were lost. But no! I found that they automatically save under the 'draft' section of the blog. Ok, thats it for the editor's note While watching the Michigan State-Tennessee game, my thoughts immediately turned to a childhood friend who I played on basketball teams with (on and off) from 6th-12th grade. Specifically, when Brian Williams, Tennessee's Center, was on the line shooting free-throws. You never knew what exactly was going to happen. Was Williams going to throw it over the basket, or miss the rim completely? Well, he did throw a couple airballs, and I couldn't help but laugh when thinking of the same impredictability of my long time friend: over the span of 6 years, I had seen it all-- free throws banking in, a free-throw going completely over the basket, and the next one missing the rim alltogether. Sometimes, the solid nothing-but-net smooth and money free-throw. My father, a Michigan State graduate himself, attended many of these games. I still remember the car rides home with his in-depth analysis of my game-- 'don't take it into the trees, but stop-and-pop mid range.' I was 13. It was an overall good relationship that aided my interest in sports: being a general contractor, he had house keys to the dayton hospitals, and more importantly, keys to the hospitals' gyms. So we would spend uninterrupted hours playing among the waxed floors and immaculate rims of tax-payers, hospital courts. Now, we talk Michigan State basketball, especially during this tournament, after each game.

Tom Izzo

I want to start this post on a sport's note, and end it with an unfinished poem. My NCAA Starting Five (who I would pay to see play the Nets in a 5-v-5 street-ball game) PG: John Wall SG: Jordan Crawford SF: Evan Turner PF: De'Sean Butler C: Omar Samhan Also, Michigan State and Tom Izzo deserve a shout-out after beating N. Iowa and making another Great 8. Could Calipari or Roy Williams do more with less? Doubt it. Are Calipari and Williams bigger sell outs? Lets put it this way: Izzo has 'been there, done that' when compared to Williams and Calipari. He already had his chance at a multi-million dollar deal coaching the NBA Hawks. He turned it down. Williams and Calipari are sports-agents disguised as college coaches--full of gimicks, one-and-done players, and players who can't pass an SAT placement test. However, I am a Kentucky fan--let the Calipari era begin. Anyway, here is an untitled and unfinished poem: From the glass bowl in the cafeteria, full of apples pears and peaches, we would fill up a paper bag with a half dozen Red Delicious and walk to the horse stables. On the way, Charis Ann and I would stop by the small pond and watch the orange and white coy zip from rock to rock. Clear sky spread silver and gold these evenings. We would split the apples into halves against the wooden fence, and reach our hands through the stable's gate to feed the horses. The stables overlooked the shaded, Santa Catalina Mountains and acres of rolling hills sectioned off by picket fence. Paolo Verde trees were in yellow bloom, and small purple violets emerged in groups.......

From Archer to Digger Phelps to the Ice Man

Because 'series premiers' have aired since my last post, I have not had a chance to really write. I think exams and the NCAA tourney are also partially to blame as well. . . I've only entered one bracket into contest--5$, and the winner buys a keg for everyone and collects the extra winnings. Its a win-win situation. As of right now I'm only sort of screwed--Georgetown lost who i had going to the final 16--and I took a lot of big east teams who lost. Right now I'm rooting for Baylor, Kansas, Kansas St., West Virginia, and Temple. So far so good with the exciting tourney...as of right now I'm uninterested in Dicky V's picks, but more intrigued by the buzz-kill of Digger Phelps, and the dry-eraser-board picks of President Obama [yawwnnn] Obama is always right with his pick for the national champion but butchers ev-ery sin-gle upset I urge everyone who respects Doug Gottlieb's opinion to youtube him wearing his shorts backwards during a televised game for A & M, but then you have to watch Doug's alley-oop gift to desmond mason. On a different note, the new season of South Park, the premiere of Justified, and season finale of Archer have aired since my last post . . . Archer is absurb but awesome, Justified is cool and serious, while the new South Park is...well..the new south park I feel that what makes Justified good is the 'handle' everyone has with their gun. The show is like a continual mexican stand-off, but the cool thing is that the sheriff (Tim Olyphant, or the porn-mogul from The Girl Next Door) only pulls his gun after the criminal does. He is quicker, smarter, cooler, and better dressed than everyone. My favorites so far in the NCAA tourney:

• Jimmer Fredette's name, and his mormon-white-men-cant-jump-persona dropping 37 points
• the recurring point that a particular upset pick is 'sexy' or 'trendy'

Just a few more wikipedia-esque, open-ended questions: Who has better stats this season--Jason Kidd or Steve Nash? What are the specific stats of the 'big pick up' Richard Jefferson for the season? Who is more valuable--Richard Hamilton or Ray Allen? Which team is more successful in their pursuit of history--The 09-10 NJ Nets or the 95-96 Chicago Bulls.

Finally, whose overall he-got-game-persona most closely resembles the "Ice Man"--Kevin Durant. or George Gervin?

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.