Revisiting the Conversation

I’d like to touch on a subject I’ve talked about before, at least a bit, is that of the Conversation.  Every experience we have as people informs us and alters our later behaviors.  As writers, artist more generally, but as writers, we seek out these experiences, these influences, and we seek to be those influences for others.  I like to think of it as a web of piano-wire, the entirety vibrating in some cacophonous glee.  As wires are tightened or loosened the rest of the web has to adjust to accommodate.  And the whole song has changed.

For me, one of the highest honors that can be paid is to have influenced someone, to have changed the tenor of their conversation with the world.  Paisley paid me that honor this week.

Today has been a, well, a pretty good day.  I showed up to class on time and prepared (that’s a shock), met with my instructor after class and received some useful feedback on my poetry.  One of the hardest things about being a writer, is finding out who we should be in a conversation with.  Frankly, Longfellow would not inspire me much at all.  My instructor suggested Wallace Stevens and, even more, John Berryman.  They’ll be added to my reading list.

After that, I managed to get done a giant research project that I had thought I could not get done.  It’s not great, but done and… solid.  Got a paper back, an A, yay, got out of class early.  There’s a nice bit of pride in all of that… and yet…

And yet…

At the end of the day, I still drove home to an empty apartment.  I’ll still be sleeping in an otherwise empty bed.  As nice and intellectually satisfying as The Conversation is, it still falls flat compared to shared experience, compared to intimacy, compared to directly twisting those piano wires and hearing the song…. 

We’re all special snowflakes, unique.  Some are beautiful.  Some intricate.  I suppose I’m just looking for a snowflake in my life whose structure appeals.  But how?

Distraction

The longer-time readers of my meandering thoughts may have caught that I enjoy Boston Legal.  For the last week or so I have been re-watching the series.  Tonight I began season 3.  Fantastic show.

For forty-five minutes at a time, I can ignore the complete barrenness of the midwest (barren culturally, there is certainly enough corn).  Or if not Boston Legal, there are books, or video games: distractions.

The problem with distractions, after you have piled distraction upon distraction is that eventually you come back to reality and no matter where you went, no matter the adventures and insights, you’re life is still there.

The dream while wrapped snuggly in the warm blanket of distraction fades to the flatness of an Iowan plain.  You still wake up to… I still wake up to my life as me and something in the relation of those two things is the issue.  The relation of entities… what’s between… I think, perhaps, that I live too much in gradations.  I should introduce more absolutism.

Wisdom by Chocolate part 2

I can’t decide if the chocolates are attempting to proffer advice of if they are just taunting.

Don’t think about it so much.

Naughty can be nice.

Send a love letter this week.

Dare to love completely.

Love without rules.

When two hearts race, both win.

Bohemian Villanelle

I wrote the piece below for my workshop class and is a “found” poem by the criteria the instructor set forth. Because of the formatting, I had to post it as an image, which I set so you could click it and see the full image which is slightly larger than the one below.

Wisdom by Chocolate

I opened up a tasty chocolate morsel and it told me:

Lose yourself in a moment.

Better than a fortune cookie, and better tasting.

Fortunately, it didn’t tell me

Finish your freakin’ homework.

Because that’s just not happening.  Back to procrastination.  And chocolate.

Without delight

All the afternoon he had sat there at the table where now Augusta was reading, thinking over his life, trying to see where he had made his mistake. Perhaps the mistake was merely an attitude of mind. He had never learned to live without delight. And he would have to learn to, just as, in a Prohibition country, he would have to learn to live without sherry. Theoretically he knew that life was possible, may be even pleasant, without joy, without passionate griefs. But it had never occurred to him that he might have to live like that.

-Willa Cather, The Professor’s House

It does seem rather unsatisfying to think that life must be lived in the sort of middling ground, the area without passion. And yet, I have to wonder if that may be the key to existence. No matter the passion, for person or ideal, activity, it fades.

Despite any personal inclination to the contrary, I’ll grant that love can abide, the persistent, deep love and companionship of devoted equals, but not passion.

Passion blazes like a bonfire. It can fill you and the heat pours from your eyes. The body does not carry enough fuel to sustain this inferno-one day the fire burns low. The lucky ones end up with a pile of smoldering embers to keep them, at the least, warm.

It’s, I guess, learning to live with the cold inside, and being okay with the memory of fire, that’s the trick. That’s the trick.

A Perfect Moment

Off topic: I bought a new laptop today, yay!  I am writing this post on it and, yeah, quite pleased with it so far.  If only it didn’t have Windows Vista.

Last couple of classes, I’ve been thinking about environment and how it relates to personality (within the literary texts we’ve been studying), and class and all that other boring stuff.  That led me to ponder how much that really matters: how much does environment matter.

(Also, I had a slip of a thought about the nature of social networks and their simultaneous nature as conceptual entities in the ‘cloud’ and as physical constructs composed of bodies.  Something to think about.)

I decided that I don’t belong in the midwest-I don’t want to have to smell farms and stockyards while driving.  I want to be near water.  Large amounts of water.  Not waves, a more placid type.

And it occurred to me then, as I was walking back to my car along the Iowa River, what the perfect moment would be: sitting at the shore of a lake watching its rippled surface reflect the moonlight, wrapped in a blanket with someone special and eating chocolate-covered strawberries and drinking sparkling wine.

That is the moment that would be perfect for me, the moment I would just love to languish in, to just exist without conscious self-awareness, just Be.

Heroes

I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that everyone has a hero, an idol, someone who represents their ideals, or seems to.  I’ve decided mine is Alan Shore from Boston Legal.  His complete disregard for decorum, I think, is what clinches it for me.

Integrity + Ruthlessness = =)

I want my life back

This is off topic, so feel free to ignore.

For the record, I disagree with the order.

The yale order makes a bit more sense:

disbelief
yearning
anger
depression
acceptance

And not an order, but an order of the peaking of each of those feelings following a loss.  For the record, I’m probably just nuts (not insane, just nuts).

Windows Live Writer

I’m diggin’ it.  this is all.