It’s the hope
That makes me
Put on a blindfold,
spin three times,
and trust that the darts
hit the bull's eye.
They have landed now,
(but only for now),
And now I've
wriggled them out,
a little pang each by each,
every pluck
merciless, fair, clean like bleach.
It’s the hope
That makes me
lay out more and more
red and blue chips on the table.
And this time I will win it all
The cards have been dealt now
(and already I’ve taken a vow)
the jacks won’t do me any good
I shout and I know and I say out loud
It’s the hope,
the hope of something so great I know not just how—-
It’s the hope.
It’s a rush.
It’s a monster.
It’s an out.
(It rears its head and I
beckon to its call
before the roar
's vibrations hit the air.
Its breath landed--just now--
in my ear.)
It's the game. It's in your head. It's the pre-original sin
It's my drug and it's his power and it's their win.
--It’s the goddamn hope.
I know that now.
**
Monday, May 31, 2010
Saturday, May 29, 2010
lioness
I’m afraid I’m becoming the party to invest more than my partner does…again. Some part of me just loves the gamble…almost unconsciously, I lay out more and more red and blue chips on the table.
It’s the hope, the hope of something so great you don’t even know exactly how great, it’s the hope. It’s a rush. It’s an expensive habit. It’s a lovely monster.
It rears its head and I beckon to its call before the roar even vibrates through the air. It's my drug and it's his power and it's their win.
It’s the goddamn hope.
**
It’s the hope, the hope of something so great you don’t even know exactly how great, it’s the hope. It’s a rush. It’s an expensive habit. It’s a lovely monster.
It rears its head and I beckon to its call before the roar even vibrates through the air. It's my drug and it's his power and it's their win.
It’s the goddamn hope.
**
Thursday, May 27, 2010
paint
Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind.
-Plato
Beauty indeed makes man enlarge his kind. In ways of physical attraction. In ways of creativity. In ways of attempting immortality. People think pursuing beauty is shallow, and in the most base ways, it is. But it is also the way to paint elements of the fantastic in our lives. If we knew how gray the world really is, we wouldn't write, or look, or love another imperfect being. It is through the splattering of these colors on the canvas that we can even begin to understand these self-portraits--the only path available to us...without becoming so colorless we sink into non-existence.
Maybe in higher dimensions of reality we can live and desire and create significance without the pursuit of beauty. But in our constraints and in that here and in this now, we live only by seeing it everywhere...and not at all if we do not.
**
-Plato
Beauty indeed makes man enlarge his kind. In ways of physical attraction. In ways of creativity. In ways of attempting immortality. People think pursuing beauty is shallow, and in the most base ways, it is. But it is also the way to paint elements of the fantastic in our lives. If we knew how gray the world really is, we wouldn't write, or look, or love another imperfect being. It is through the splattering of these colors on the canvas that we can even begin to understand these self-portraits--the only path available to us...without becoming so colorless we sink into non-existence.
Maybe in higher dimensions of reality we can live and desire and create significance without the pursuit of beauty. But in our constraints and in that here and in this now, we live only by seeing it everywhere...and not at all if we do not.
**
Sunday, May 23, 2010
black holes
I saw a softball game today in the first wave of the sticky summer heat. It was wonderfully out of the normal scope of my life. To see these people doing something so different--and to see them doing it so well--leaves me a little in disbelief. It's weird what has the power to change entire perceptions: a little game, or two little hours.
Last night I went to a party where people of my peripheral circle came center stage. Similarly, to see them in their context, with their main characters, with their histories. I realize again how difficult it is to break into such bubbles...or at the very least, I see the bubble that needs breaking into. In that situation, the new context serves as a blockade, in the other, it is a new way of entry.
It's always unsettling when we realize the limits of our own visions. What else could we have missed? Are there more black holes undetected by our telescopes floating around out there, only to be guessed at by the presence of a dark ignorance, instead of a positive existence that we could have seen, had we only turned our lens earlier? The mind teems with unimagined possibilities.
Anyway, I would say it's something to think about. But I'm afraid the very act of thinking about it will be the exact time-thief that makes me miss these sights. What makes the bubble so limited (though clearer) is precisely the narcissism in thinking.
**
SIDENOTE: I realize this is all too worn a subject. All I have to do is get out of my head. Stop thinking so much. And get rid of my narcissistic self-examination. But I can't. I can't. And I can't. It's like I am that patient in psychoanalysis who, in the moment of the breakthrough, clings even tighter to the mirage of being a helpless child, praises the analyst instead of attributing to herself the solution, so that she would not lose the comfortable relationship with Him in her newfound possibility of independence. God I hate myself sometimes. (But maybe there is something about the allure of self-examination that speaks truly of some Good it will give me. However, I cannot postpone admitting that there's a real chance this might be a blind faith rooted in a sick pleasure rather than a sure bet stemming from the truth)
**
SIDESIDENOTE: In honor of making a real change I think I will stop posting on my tumblr so much, at least none of the mundane things that contribute no artistic value.
Last night I went to a party where people of my peripheral circle came center stage. Similarly, to see them in their context, with their main characters, with their histories. I realize again how difficult it is to break into such bubbles...or at the very least, I see the bubble that needs breaking into. In that situation, the new context serves as a blockade, in the other, it is a new way of entry.
It's always unsettling when we realize the limits of our own visions. What else could we have missed? Are there more black holes undetected by our telescopes floating around out there, only to be guessed at by the presence of a dark ignorance, instead of a positive existence that we could have seen, had we only turned our lens earlier? The mind teems with unimagined possibilities.
Anyway, I would say it's something to think about. But I'm afraid the very act of thinking about it will be the exact time-thief that makes me miss these sights. What makes the bubble so limited (though clearer) is precisely the narcissism in thinking.
**
SIDENOTE: I realize this is all too worn a subject. All I have to do is get out of my head. Stop thinking so much. And get rid of my narcissistic self-examination. But I can't. I can't. And I can't. It's like I am that patient in psychoanalysis who, in the moment of the breakthrough, clings even tighter to the mirage of being a helpless child, praises the analyst instead of attributing to herself the solution, so that she would not lose the comfortable relationship with Him in her newfound possibility of independence. God I hate myself sometimes. (But maybe there is something about the allure of self-examination that speaks truly of some Good it will give me. However, I cannot postpone admitting that there's a real chance this might be a blind faith rooted in a sick pleasure rather than a sure bet stemming from the truth)
**
SIDESIDENOTE: In honor of making a real change I think I will stop posting on my tumblr so much, at least none of the mundane things that contribute no artistic value.
Friday, May 21, 2010
dartboard
I don't know why some people are built with softer skin than others. And the easier a target you are, the more darts you attract. (Or is it only a skewed perception? Yet it's gone on too long and too intense for it to pass for a coincidence or incorrect vision. Maybe it's group think, or whatever it is that makes people jump on the bandwagon).
In any case, there's something confusing about what's going on here. These people are not my enemies. They care. Or at least, I think they do. So I justify it in all sorts of ways...and they do too, mostly with the claim of a lack of intention to harm. They don't think it's anything bad, so it's not. Right?
How do I make people realize it's not all about their own view? That what they thought was painless actually prickles deeper than I care to even admit to myself? How do I make myself realize it's also not all about my own view? To what degree can I--as I've been so often told to do--"get over it?" How do I bring these things up without sounding immature or demanding or egocentric? Is it too much to ask? Is it necessary to even have to?
The darts have landed now, (but only for now), yet I'm still wriggling them out, a little pang each by each, every pluck even, fair, and merciless.
**
In any case, there's something confusing about what's going on here. These people are not my enemies. They care. Or at least, I think they do. So I justify it in all sorts of ways...and they do too, mostly with the claim of a lack of intention to harm. They don't think it's anything bad, so it's not. Right?
How do I make people realize it's not all about their own view? That what they thought was painless actually prickles deeper than I care to even admit to myself? How do I make myself realize it's also not all about my own view? To what degree can I--as I've been so often told to do--"get over it?" How do I bring these things up without sounding immature or demanding or egocentric? Is it too much to ask? Is it necessary to even have to?
The darts have landed now, (but only for now), yet I'm still wriggling them out, a little pang each by each, every pluck even, fair, and merciless.
**
Friday, May 14, 2010
theft
this is from a blog i read today
I...remain prone to ill-thought-out sentences and disguised clichés, clichés buried under baroque cruft. Every comma, every pause, every dash: if I think long enough I can recall the novel I’m lifting it from...
I feel like this is the recurring theme of every person who writes (because i can't call myself a writer, just like how i don't think i can ever call myself a philosopher, they are settled in too lofty a place for me). The first memory that popped into my head was about a year ago when I hated every word on my own blog, but the second is rooted in a time long ago, when I wrote an essay and promptly confessed to my mom that, like I had stolen a five dollar bill from the kitchen counter, my opening line was "lifted" straight out of my textbook. (*i love how this blogger uses the word "lift" here, an ordinary term that usually gives off nothing at all, except a faint neutrality like some unscented fabreze, except, wrapped in these surrounding words, reminds me of shoplifting, a theft of some sort. Clothed in its new context, it reeks of the discreetly sinful)
When my mother heard my confession she assured me there was absolutely nothing wrong with what I did. How are you going to build a house, she said, when you don't allow yourself to pick up the bricks? That logic sounded desperately like a justification to me, and still leaves me dissatisfied now. Every time I read something original I am filled with wonder and a slight envy for the writer, it is what i (a person who writes) crave most of all.
I have spent all my years searching for those pieces, and when I've found them I tucked them away somewhere in a corner of my own creations, artfully arranged to highlight its sparkle, but not so polished that its stolen status becomes too blatant. And so, i get to display what i love most of all, originality, in its blinding, borrowed glory.
**
I...remain prone to ill-thought-out sentences and disguised clichés, clichés buried under baroque cruft. Every comma, every pause, every dash: if I think long enough I can recall the novel I’m lifting it from...
I feel like this is the recurring theme of every person who writes (because i can't call myself a writer, just like how i don't think i can ever call myself a philosopher, they are settled in too lofty a place for me). The first memory that popped into my head was about a year ago when I hated every word on my own blog, but the second is rooted in a time long ago, when I wrote an essay and promptly confessed to my mom that, like I had stolen a five dollar bill from the kitchen counter, my opening line was "lifted" straight out of my textbook. (*i love how this blogger uses the word "lift" here, an ordinary term that usually gives off nothing at all, except a faint neutrality like some unscented fabreze, except, wrapped in these surrounding words, reminds me of shoplifting, a theft of some sort. Clothed in its new context, it reeks of the discreetly sinful)
When my mother heard my confession she assured me there was absolutely nothing wrong with what I did. How are you going to build a house, she said, when you don't allow yourself to pick up the bricks? That logic sounded desperately like a justification to me, and still leaves me dissatisfied now. Every time I read something original I am filled with wonder and a slight envy for the writer, it is what i (a person who writes) crave most of all.
I have spent all my years searching for those pieces, and when I've found them I tucked them away somewhere in a corner of my own creations, artfully arranged to highlight its sparkle, but not so polished that its stolen status becomes too blatant. And so, i get to display what i love most of all, originality, in its blinding, borrowed glory.
**
Saturday, May 8, 2010
circus
Right now I have the heart of a six-year-old, I want to close my eyes and stomp my feet over and over again faster and faster, in hopes that it would take me out of here. Of course, this is all impossible, because as someone said tonight, we are "contingent" in our right-nows.
This limbo-like state, it’s not even the good kind. Not the kind where your heart pumps bass-like beats of a rock concert, the kind where you feel like you’re walking on a tightrope many feet off the ground. No, not that kind. This is more like a cloudy mess. Like a dance floor of a cheap prom with a fog machine.
This mess is so very unappetizing. Probably because the signs aren't pointing anywhere, because the situation doesn’t depend on me, yet. I feel like I'm getting all the right things from the wrong people. Maybe I just pick them badly, maybe I'm just bad at catching the right ones. In any case, why should this signing up process be so impenetrable? Shouldn’t it be the actual race that’s the hard part?
Raise the platform and tighten the rope, I’m ready to play.
**
This limbo-like state, it’s not even the good kind. Not the kind where your heart pumps bass-like beats of a rock concert, the kind where you feel like you’re walking on a tightrope many feet off the ground. No, not that kind. This is more like a cloudy mess. Like a dance floor of a cheap prom with a fog machine.
This mess is so very unappetizing. Probably because the signs aren't pointing anywhere, because the situation doesn’t depend on me, yet. I feel like I'm getting all the right things from the wrong people. Maybe I just pick them badly, maybe I'm just bad at catching the right ones. In any case, why should this signing up process be so impenetrable? Shouldn’t it be the actual race that’s the hard part?
Raise the platform and tighten the rope, I’m ready to play.
**
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