Categories
humor personal poetic

I’d rather be better than plastic

Another skipped day. My apologies.

Emily got back from Vegas. All is once again right and good in the world. Well, in Oberlin, anyway. Ideas escape me tonight. I’ll post something cute I wrote a couple weeks ago. A month ago? Time escapes me.

From the Kas journal: a rhyming thingie –

Curse Neitzsche for being so witty,
Liberace for being so gay.
Curse Mozart for writing a ditty,
and Shakespeare for penning a play.

Curse Flaubert for his eloquent diction,
and Germans, I curse all of them!
I doubt I could write science fiction
much better than Stanislaw Lem.

Curse Chopin for every sonata,
Rachmaninoff for each cantata,
for goodness curse Saint Liberata,
be better at something, I gotta!

At writing I’m just mediocre,
when singing I sound like a toad.
When painting I like to use ochre,
I curse all who’re talent “Van Gogh’ed”.

My rhymes are always an earsore,
my meter is half a beat late.
Originality, I need a size more,
my normalcy’s all that is great.

Yes, my mundanity’s simply fantastic,
and though it may make me seem spastic,
I’d rather be better than plastic
at being more normal than you.

Okay, so there’s that. Yeah….
Where in the world are you, Kas?

Categories
cinema personal poetic

Prolificity

No frost today, but a wet layer of snow – sticky, cold, more like a mixture of ice and water than actual snow. We are now less than a week away from March, and then only a month away from April, and then only a year away from me, 25 and counting. The nearby community college has begun to offer the MLS (Masters in Library Science). At two nights a week, they say you can get your MLS in two years. Not bad … something to consider.

Emily is still abroad in a foreign land they call “Nevada”. My dad’s mom lives in “Nevada”. I might say my grandmother, but considering the fact that I haven’t communicated with her in about four years, I think she may have disowned me. Which may all be for the best. I’m not sure, really.

Last night was a fest of new, bad movies. Charlies Angels: Full Throttle and Radio. When I say bad movies, what I really mean to say is completely mediocre. I can deal with a bad movie, it’s mediocrity that’s painful. It really makes me want to make a movie, and god knows I have the ideas in my brain … I simply have to conquer my hatred of egoism. This blog may be a good start towards that. I haven’t decided yet, especially since, having put a hits counter at the bottom the other night, I can now see that no one actually reads this. Oh well, I’ll just tell myself it’s the best things that no-one has ever read.

Now, a vocab quiz.

Prolificity: a word meant to enrage artists who believe in quality over quantity.
Usage: “Prolificity? Fuck off.”
See also Prolifi-city: a populated area near L.A. known for producing 99 brain-numbing lumps of slag metal for every brick of gold.

Categories
personal

The hesitancy of hoarfrost

It is morning now. By the time I awoke, the hesitancy of hoarfrost had vanished. I slept, not well, but long enough and well enough that today may not be an unendurable ordeal.

The drapes in our upstairs bedroom were raised, for them to install the door to our bedroom closet, I assume. Rather than close them, today or last night, I snuck about furtively, naked, in my own bedroom, using whatever garment was nearest to divert the worst of my debauchery from the innocent morning commuters. We’re at most two blocks from the high school.

From the France journal –

Today there is rain and wind in Paris. I have lyrics to songs I have never heard demanding to be written, and no time for a creative thought. It’s 1:10 in the afternoon at a cheap cafe in the sex district. I did a sketch of Meighan, a decent work for a feeble-sighted hand. Tomorrow we will be on another train. The last time I rode one was yesterday, 3 years ago. Time does not exist. We are traveling here, throughout Paris and then to Lyon. A million miles away for all we really know of it. A million days away for the way times runs here. Everyone is a foreigner here, and we all feel at home. Children run through sex museums with their parents like it was Disneyland. Foreign men on metros who can only say two phrases in English. Fuck you. I love you. On drugs, condemned to odd behavior, with foreign rap playing through small ear phones. For me, a “fuck you”. For the girls, a passionate, brutal “I love you.”

Categories
love music personal

A strength in weakness

There is a strength in weakness. Fortitude, in allowing yourself vulnerability. We are weak when we lean, but in this fashion a peak is made – two sides leaning, weak, and make something strong. That’s why relationships can be hard, people don’t like to make themselves vulnerable – and then if one side disappears, you’re left with a leaning line, who may have forgotten how to stand up straight. For some reason, illness makes me feel strong. I feel a surge of vigor when I experience my own frail humanity. This structure I live in may topple and fall – though no time soon, I think – there is something inside that is not collapsible, that will not break. It’s as if when the outside material wears thin, I can see through it, ponder the gears and pulleys, the drive-shafts of my mind and the hamster-wheel of my soul.

Can someone explain to me inertia? Can someone tell me the differences between vigilance and paranoia, decadence and excess? What about language and expression? Sometimes, I think I could draw something interesting, if I only had a bigger piece of paper. I could be an artist, if somehow all the right materials were placed in front of me. The days of feeling like a child genius have passed. Left behind is a fragile body, housing a mind still guilty over past megalomanias and a spirit that alternates its weekends between pure selfishness and pure charity. After everything, I’m still not sure if I believe in an unselfish act. Not even that!

Rimbaud channeled devils, demons, angels – innocence and madness! I would be content to channel Rimbaud. But no, I would not want his life, nor his agony. Self-crucifiction is the pinnacle of vanity.

On the loud-speaker: Clem Snide, Iron & Wine, and Death Cab for Cutie. Emily today called it “music to slit your wrists by”. Somehow, I don’t know what could be more uplifting. I’d rather live in Sartre’s plays then Chernyschevsky’s utopias. Strange fact: I’ve never attended a funeral.

I don’t remember now why I started this. Emily is gone for days (though so far, only hours) and there’s an emptiness already. Looking at it, I actually only feel happy – I’m lucky, because this emptiness is temporary, a ghost. There is a fullness that takes its place. Not completion – I am not incomplete alone. A sense that the world is so much more beautiful when it can be shared. Camus talks about art, and the multiplication of experience. It’s the banal part of his essay, where he sells out absurdity. Not that I don’t agree with him. But I can’t think of a better way of multiplying experience than by sharing: the world, ideas, perspectives –

– a mirror, a blanket, affirmation and warmth and the voice of reason in madness and the voice of passion against reason.

Thank you so much for all these things.

Categories
libraries news personal

Today, someone died…

The snow is melted, huzzah!

Today, a shot was fired within a block of the library. We locked our doors, called the police, gabbed about the possibilities. “Was it a gunshot?” “Yes!” “Where? Who? What?” I continued to unlock the door any time a patron wanted in or out … I was told to, but really, I was unconcerned. Grafton is hardly the type of town to host the next Dog Day Afternoon. When the police arrived and told us it was just a car trying to start with no manifold cover (something about spraying ether), and backfiring, I wasn’t surprised. Still, that’s what passes for excitement when you work in a small-town library, I guess.

Today, someone died in Grafton. No, they weren’t shot by the car backfiring. Someone died at the bowling alley, and that’s all I know. Not how, nor why … they waited, and the ambulance never came. They called for one twice. Somewhere nearby, there is grief. Nearby, there is anger. I know no details, only third-hand information (if not fourth).

If I had a spiritual guru, it would be Rob Brezsny.

Aries (March 21 – April 19)

On February 1, six big-name entertainers took control of the Super Bowl halftime show. The result was a histrionically boring spectacle of robotic sexuality and fake emotion. If there was any saving grace amidst the monumental emptiness, it was Janet Jackson’s climactic unveiling. In a New York Times article, Alessandra Stanley wrote, “The one moment of honesty in that coldly choreographed tableau was when the cup came off and out tumbled a normal middle-aged woman’s breast instead of an idealized Playboy bunny implant.” Your assignment in the coming week, Aries, is to be inspired by that moment of honesty. Strip away pretension and phoniness everywhere you find them, thereby exposing the raw humanity that lies beneath. One caveat: Do this ethically, and without breaking the law.

I’m not one for pretension or phoniness as it is. For some reason, though, I really, really appreciated this perspective on something that the rest of the nation has been playing up as shocking, horrifying, or – and perhaps this shocks me more than the others – even newsworthy. Today in Grafton, someone died because the ambulance never came. It will affect the news no more than a passing breeze, but Janet’s breast will never be forgotten.

I die of shame.

Categories
personal

The opposite of conceal

Though yesterday was warm, this morning blew in a light snowfall. It’s a too-thin blanket, like a bride’s veil – the type of covering that does the opposite of conceal.

Today is another work day. Today is another work day. Today is another work day. I get tomorrow off, and all I want right now is 2 more hours of sleep.

From the France journal –

When I get home, I won’t believe me when I say that I went to France. I’ll laugh. It must have all been a dream. Flowers on every table and rough sketches at 1:10 in the afternoon…

Categories
cinema game personal

Buridan’s Ass

No apologies for my absence. I have no excuses. Health feels fragile today, like a toy top spinning — we all fall down.

I watched Dummy today. Adrian Brody before “The Pianist”, and well worth the watch. One of the better movies I’ve seen – lately, ever – good movie, anyway. Emily leaves for Vegas on Sunday for a few days. The sister’s (2nd) wedding. I wonder what a wedding is like, what a 2nd wedding is like. How much can the bride be blushing when it’s all been done before? But no, maybe that’s mean and insensitive, and illogical. That’s like saying how much fun can a relationship be if it’s your second one, no matter that it’s to someone different.

A return to Everquest, but a casual return. In the last week, I’ve played twice. I feel strangely ambivelent to EQ itself. I enjoy spending that time with Emily, sharing an activity — as I enjoy any activity we spend together / share. Still, EQ IS fun. So is Prince of Persia, so is Hoyle Majestic Chess, and so is reading and writing.

I am Buridan’s ass. Status quo, miasma, feet locked in an iron cast — not struggling. I’m Rimbaud’s companion “down below”. I have not taken the road less traveled. Somehow, I think I am a villain. I have no evil laugh, nor curled mustache, nor black sedan with tinted windows. I haven’t got evil intentions. If I had, I would not be a villain. No, my villany comes from a fullness of goodness, unacted upon. My coffers full of charity, I stand by and watched the world starve, consuming depravity like a chimera’s feast. Worse, I criticize, mock, or stand off to the side with an air of careful detachment. That last may be the worst.

Buridan’s ass starves to death. Perfectly good food within sight, within reach, no bars between, nor chasm. No device keeps the ass from its feast except rational thought, the bane of all good dreamers.

No, I am not Buridan’s ass.
But sometimes I catch a glimpse of the beast’s death.
Sometimes I understand it.

Categories
book personal poetic

We must submit to baptism…

I feel smote down by the duldrums of $8.50 an hour and having to work on a Sunday. My revenge is to sit here and blog about it, which is some small recompense.

Emily and I have a new boarder in our home, whose heart thrums like an engine when she’s happy, and who only speaks at night. She’s very shy, but she hasn’t gotten used to us yet.

As for the perfection of language, I think that language is perfect. It is those who try and use it that are flawed. Our expression, as well as our understanding of language are both intrinsically flawed, because we don’t think and we don’t see in words. In any case, I like language for its ambiguity. I like that two people can read a book and get different things out of it, because so much depends on our perception of language, as well as how it is used.

Entire novels are written simply to express one idea. That’s 500 pages devoted to trying to express one thing, in the end, and even then they aren’t always understood. As for my writing, even I don’t understand it sometimes.

Today my brain is tired, and my heart feels like lead.
My fingers are typing independently, willfully … I can’t keep track of them. My eyes simply gaze, straight ahead, listless. I blame it all on the duldrums of $8.50 an hour and having to work on a Sunday. I blame it on the extraordinary distance between two points, and the law of half-lives. I’m walking towards my future, closing half the distance each step, knowing that at this rate, I’ll never reach it.

The white man is coming! The cannon!
We must put on clothes, submit to baptism, work…

With my apologies to Rimbaud for what is probably a mild mis-quote.

Categories
humor personal

In Soviet Russia …

In Soviet Russia, the dishes do you. *evil russian-accented cackle*

Okay, so I stole that from Emily, who posted it on our chalkboard (which is on the fridge in the kitchen) this morning as a subtle hint that some accidental harm (involving sharp utensils, I imagine) might befall me if the dishes were not sparklingly cleaned. Needless to say, the dishes are done … so that I might live on a little longer.

Some other fun “In Soviet Russia” phrases:

In Soviet Russia, the books read you.
In Soviet Russia, the movies watch you.
In Soviet Russia, the blogs write you.

In Soviet Russia, — yes, yes, okay … so it’s silly. That reminds me.

In Soviet Russia, the jokes tell you! HAhahahahaa….

Okay, someone please set my “dumb” switch to “off” please. Thanks. And off to work I go, wheeeeeeee.