I know that my family has been at unrest for a number of years now. It's been a slow budding that's brought most, if not all of us, to this hard pause. But what I really need to do at this point is break down my own defenses, decontextualize my mother and father, allow the image of us all to be rendered without edits and escapist discontinuity. I've always looked down my nose at the emotive (re)claiming of one's identity as a means of self-affirmation and empowerment. But I might need a little help with this. I can roar and I can weep to great effect. More than grace I hope I can do this with animal sensitivity. I move stoically through these days with a gnawing fear that one day I will experience without restraint the whole capacity of my love for my family. So I work, constantly, to avoid it. I conjure false intimacies. I can not sit still in one room so I move from one to the other and keep on foot.
+
Originally this was going to be some kind of story, or narrative, or more simply, a recap of the past 3 years. I wrote and wrote but the entire deposit is too much to take the day after. So this is it for now. My animal at bay. He plants his seeds and keeps his bees one by one by one.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
Shame, a Hymn
This might be another post I delete before publishing. It's happened 5 times since I last allowed myself to simply give in to submitting photos as a means of entry. As I expected, I've become terribly self-conscious about this whole thing.
Just today, for instance, looking to divulge into what I hoped would be a somewhat well-informed tirade in response to Esquire magazine's recent article about how Jessica Simpson has managed to stay out of the hollywood gutter by never putting out and keeping her panties on, I ended up reading a more interesting article by Chuck Klosterman that is best summarized with the subtitle: "Hannah Montana would be nothing without the internet. In fact, she is the internet."
The article went on to discuss how our internet alter-egos (no matter how sparsely, thoroughly, falsely or genuinely we pepper them with the honest-to-god 'real' qualities of ourselves as living breathing people pooping real poop in a real room) often compel us to reconcile the same kinds of identity issues celebrities must in terms of public image and private self. Stepping away from that point, Klosterman's analysis generally made me more leery of blogging and my intentionally constructing an electronic representation of myself.
With myspace, facebook, etc. I justify membership in the name of convenience. How else would I maintain a sense of connectedness with people I know but do not care to talk to? Wouldn't I be considered even more hermitic than I already am if I also wiped myself clean off the face of the web? And what of the few people who I do maintain some kind of contact with via these sites. Do I maintain membership because I am ultimately grossly and weakly afraid of being alone? The old void filled up with fluff. I also justify membership because of what I do believe are somewhat notable benefits. I have actually shared and had shared with me worthy links to essays and articles, compelling images and art forums, the occasional video made with something like integrity. Also, I've always fancied myself as straddling the line between a forward thinker and conservative nolstagist. I could not care less about blackberrys (blackberries?) but I'm fascinated with Reactable Tables and the opportunities that lay within the realm of vast and live media forums. I don't want to be left behind. Then again, I do. I want out of the mess. I want to live in a neighborhood, literally, where neighbors act neighborly and know each other. I want the world to get bigger because my surroundings are okay with thinking smaller. When I fly across the planet again I want it to mean something that I call, or write. I want it to be a little tougher to get from here to there. I do not want to always feel like I am running technologically, emotively, and cognitively out of time.
Finally, I've reached the pinnacle of the turmoil, and of course, it churns and spins back to some simple and pathetic issue of identity-conflict. Typically, I do not think of who I am now. I don't enjoy the experience. Instead, I divulge in possible futures built on somewhat institutionalized constructs of personality types. Shall I be some kind of vague brooding figure in the city with an impressive back patio garden and a knack for making lady baltimore cakes or will I raise a witchy garden near the ocean and sell jars of jam? I'm too conflicted, passive, indecisive, and honorably uncompromising to be satisfied with my own type-cast projections.
I suppose it's not so hard to understand. I don't know what I am doing right now. I serve fine food and hate every word I have to sputter to people. I have a degree whose meaning I can barely and only vaguely identify. I know that I love to think critically about the world around me, but I scarcely have the sense of being part of that world. When I am not one step critically removed from it I am daydreaming in the middle of it. It's a rather dumb weedy state I'm in right now. And to boot ( I must allow myself this desire ) I'd love to have someone to open the car door for. I feel like a stone faced statue in some town common, desperately trying to look dignified in my singularity. I fear I am cold to the touch. All around me are couples. Couples who read good books and discuss them; who go to the gym together; who sit side by side in coach on a plane crossing the country; who live together; who make weekend plans and thrill at the sudden clearing of one's time so romantic spontaneity can ensue.
"That keeps me searching for a heart of gold, and I'm getting old. "
Just today, for instance, looking to divulge into what I hoped would be a somewhat well-informed tirade in response to Esquire magazine's recent article about how Jessica Simpson has managed to stay out of the hollywood gutter by never putting out and keeping her panties on, I ended up reading a more interesting article by Chuck Klosterman that is best summarized with the subtitle: "Hannah Montana would be nothing without the internet. In fact, she is the internet."
The article went on to discuss how our internet alter-egos (no matter how sparsely, thoroughly, falsely or genuinely we pepper them with the honest-to-god 'real' qualities of ourselves as living breathing people pooping real poop in a real room) often compel us to reconcile the same kinds of identity issues celebrities must in terms of public image and private self. Stepping away from that point, Klosterman's analysis generally made me more leery of blogging and my intentionally constructing an electronic representation of myself.
With myspace, facebook, etc. I justify membership in the name of convenience. How else would I maintain a sense of connectedness with people I know but do not care to talk to? Wouldn't I be considered even more hermitic than I already am if I also wiped myself clean off the face of the web? And what of the few people who I do maintain some kind of contact with via these sites. Do I maintain membership because I am ultimately grossly and weakly afraid of being alone? The old void filled up with fluff. I also justify membership because of what I do believe are somewhat notable benefits. I have actually shared and had shared with me worthy links to essays and articles, compelling images and art forums, the occasional video made with something like integrity. Also, I've always fancied myself as straddling the line between a forward thinker and conservative nolstagist. I could not care less about blackberrys (blackberries?) but I'm fascinated with Reactable Tables and the opportunities that lay within the realm of vast and live media forums. I don't want to be left behind. Then again, I do. I want out of the mess. I want to live in a neighborhood, literally, where neighbors act neighborly and know each other. I want the world to get bigger because my surroundings are okay with thinking smaller. When I fly across the planet again I want it to mean something that I call, or write. I want it to be a little tougher to get from here to there. I do not want to always feel like I am running technologically, emotively, and cognitively out of time.
Finally, I've reached the pinnacle of the turmoil, and of course, it churns and spins back to some simple and pathetic issue of identity-conflict. Typically, I do not think of who I am now. I don't enjoy the experience. Instead, I divulge in possible futures built on somewhat institutionalized constructs of personality types. Shall I be some kind of vague brooding figure in the city with an impressive back patio garden and a knack for making lady baltimore cakes or will I raise a witchy garden near the ocean and sell jars of jam? I'm too conflicted, passive, indecisive, and honorably uncompromising to be satisfied with my own type-cast projections.
I suppose it's not so hard to understand. I don't know what I am doing right now. I serve fine food and hate every word I have to sputter to people. I have a degree whose meaning I can barely and only vaguely identify. I know that I love to think critically about the world around me, but I scarcely have the sense of being part of that world. When I am not one step critically removed from it I am daydreaming in the middle of it. It's a rather dumb weedy state I'm in right now. And to boot ( I must allow myself this desire ) I'd love to have someone to open the car door for. I feel like a stone faced statue in some town common, desperately trying to look dignified in my singularity. I fear I am cold to the touch. All around me are couples. Couples who read good books and discuss them; who go to the gym together; who sit side by side in coach on a plane crossing the country; who live together; who make weekend plans and thrill at the sudden clearing of one's time so romantic spontaneity can ensue.
"That keeps me searching for a heart of gold, and I'm getting old. "
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Thursday, April 3, 2008
The Monkey Paw
on love and other things
And in a spitted sentence I claim it.
I took him for a working-class dinner. I ate fried cheese and potatoes dipped in hot oil. And next I suggested photography blurted out incorrectly in a two-hour period and kept my shoulders lenient. I've come to notice what it means to touch in the electronic palaver we've come to call dating. So it was done; a coat that couldn't keep warm anyway offered up like a gypsy: completely misunderstood, a history wiped off the slate and laughed at quietly, gold teeth making a perfect frame, and compromised. I could have liked you and I will not always look like this; I know I won't. That is, I think, a damn great smile you have.
I'm padding through this, numb-pawed, an idiot. I watched a special once about apes. One's mother died and so he perched himself on a tree above her quiet body and wept and shut his eyes and went to sleep and noticed the sun and the shadows and slept, did not eat or drink and died right there, unmoved, 10 feet above, went to sleep on and on. Right there. Dumb with love an animal just finished himself off right there.
And in a spitted sentence I claim it.
I took him for a working-class dinner. I ate fried cheese and potatoes dipped in hot oil. And next I suggested photography blurted out incorrectly in a two-hour period and kept my shoulders lenient. I've come to notice what it means to touch in the electronic palaver we've come to call dating. So it was done; a coat that couldn't keep warm anyway offered up like a gypsy: completely misunderstood, a history wiped off the slate and laughed at quietly, gold teeth making a perfect frame, and compromised. I could have liked you and I will not always look like this; I know I won't. That is, I think, a damn great smile you have.
I'm padding through this, numb-pawed, an idiot. I watched a special once about apes. One's mother died and so he perched himself on a tree above her quiet body and wept and shut his eyes and went to sleep and noticed the sun and the shadows and slept, did not eat or drink and died right there, unmoved, 10 feet above, went to sleep on and on. Right there. Dumb with love an animal just finished himself off right there.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
The Withered Hand
We're going to see how this goes. The prospect of writing multiple complete sentences on a regular basis is unsettling. But I will give it a go and I will do my best not to rely too much on blatant lying, self loathing, and the making of unsubstantiated comments to get me through the majority of my entries.
This is a first post. Maybe of just a few. I thought I would creep out here quietly at first, avoiding fallen branches, see what the weather's like. I am, in part, confronting a phobia and can't help but wonder if "blogophobic" has yet been entered into some recent edition Dictionary whose most recent entries involve the up and coming lingo of this, the electronic information age. I always felt terribly self-conscious keep journals. My language came off as forced and contrived, as if read aloud: I couldn't help but hear it cinematically and imagine the beginning of a saccharine and sweetly nostalgic movie where an old yet enduring voice reads from an adolescent diary that has flower petals pressed between its pages. It made me feel gross. And this does too, a bit. Nervy, in fact, for expecting people to listen. For assuming my vapid rambling deserves space, even free electronic space.
But I'm interested in spaces. And how we occupy them. So in this moment of self-affirmation, with my chin smelling handsomely of an after-shave balm and my little lamp ablaze, I am going to claim this space, and occupy it, and be okay with it.
This is a first post. Maybe of just a few. I thought I would creep out here quietly at first, avoiding fallen branches, see what the weather's like. I am, in part, confronting a phobia and can't help but wonder if "blogophobic" has yet been entered into some recent edition Dictionary whose most recent entries involve the up and coming lingo of this, the electronic information age. I always felt terribly self-conscious keep journals. My language came off as forced and contrived, as if read aloud: I couldn't help but hear it cinematically and imagine the beginning of a saccharine and sweetly nostalgic movie where an old yet enduring voice reads from an adolescent diary that has flower petals pressed between its pages. It made me feel gross. And this does too, a bit. Nervy, in fact, for expecting people to listen. For assuming my vapid rambling deserves space, even free electronic space.
But I'm interested in spaces. And how we occupy them. So in this moment of self-affirmation, with my chin smelling handsomely of an after-shave balm and my little lamp ablaze, I am going to claim this space, and occupy it, and be okay with it.
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