(This post has nothing really to do with anything. If I had the least sense of decorum or shame, it would be password protected. For fans of schadenfreude, you can be glad that I have neither of those things. I anticipate this coming back to punch me in the future)
NaNoWriMo starts in a little over an hour. I have only the vaguest idea what I’m going to write about. This doesn’t worry me as much as it should. Rambling for a hundred, hundred-fifty pages should be no big deal. Right…
However, that is only tangentially related to this post.
Several fine bloggers rate confession as an integral part of their creative process. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I’ve never really tried “confession.” However, I don’t want to spend NaNoWriMo writing about me, and that’s what I mostly think about (narcissism? obsession? dunno).
Maybe confession can be cathartic. I hope so. I hope that writing about what I’m thinking about can be the end of all of it. A grand letting it go.
I was on the younger side when my parents separated, reconciled, separated, reconciled, separated and divorced. Honestly, this has never bothered me. But that was a factor in how I felt about marriage. For a very long time I thought it was a waste. It was a religious ceremony I don’t believe in. It’s just tradition; it’ a social construct I had no respect for, blah blah etc.
Even when I met Andrea, my view on marriage didn’t change. Dating Andrea was wonderful. Living with her was… complicated. Sometimes, it was better than I imagined life could be. Sometimes it was frustrating. It was sharing a life with someone: messy.
She was, is, the first person I’ve loved more than just superficially. I think the concept of ai is the closest way to describe something that is rather difficult to pin down and is, to some extent, inexpressible. One day I was rather startled to find that I wanted to marry her. It made sense from the legal standpoint. Socially it was the only way to give greater recognition to our relationship. But more than that, I wanted her to be more than my girlfriend. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her and for that to be the end of the discussion. So we got married.
It didn’t last long after that. We had been together for six years, living together for most of it, and less than a year after taking vows that included the word forever, she left.
I wish that I could paint a better picture, but the failures of communication that I believe were a large part of of relationship ending did not go away with her leaving and I never got much of an explanation. This was not so pleasant an event from my perspective. Here was a person that was the reason I overturned so many views on life, the reason for so many choices I made (things that could be called sacrifices if I had not simply been choosing the more important outcome), as clichéd and pathetic as it is, she was the light of my world. With Andrea gone, it felt like nothing could ever be right.
I’ve suffered from had insomnia for as long as I can remember. Strangely, sleeping in a bed where I was able to keep the sheets all night and not be scrunched up the edge made sleeping worse and even more tenuous. (And I still can’t sleep) There was one day I didn’t want to survive to the end of it. I realized that was silly. Later I came to realize that hope is a cruel bitch.
I know, I know, that there isn’t anything I could have done. Not by the time there was a problem. Our ways of relating were just different enough to make it need work from both sides and, really, neither one of us knew it. Until she did, I guess, at the end. I can’t even fault her decision. Ethically, the greatest responsibility I believe we have in terms of happiness is for ourselves. I want her to be happy and have the life she wants. I just think it really sucks that it excluded me.
The movie Swingers has a short scene
How did you get over it?
Every day you wake up and it hurts a little bit less. And then one day, you wake up and it doesn’ t hurt anymore. And then you realize you miss the pain. You miss the pain?
Yeah. For the same reason you miss her—because you lived with it for so long.
Except I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t feel it’s true. I don’t think it’s true. It would be nice…. I think the past haunts us like something unburied. We can, however, use the good things in our lives as a covering, as dirt, grasses, flowers, maybe even castles, to cover them up. The pain is always there, but we can put it in a controlled and forgettable spot unless we need it. Sad trick to that is it requires sufficient “good” to obscure the bad.
So now I find myself in my late twenties, the jeering, mocking specter of happiness haunting every memory. I’ve always had a small social group and that has scattered over the years. Socially, politically, artistically, etc. I do not at all fit in with the area I live in, but I have something of a life here. Not a great one, but enough that giving it up is a fairly high cost that would require a high benefit to outweigh.
Balanced against that is my complete lack of understanding about what I should do. I have a job that could be a career if I wanted it to be (though I do not). My interests are so varied and so variable that no goal worth pursuing remains a goal for long. I try so hard to live a rational life and I cannot find the answers in all of this. We all have our own blind spots.
Every job interview I’ve had has asked that ridiculous question: where do you see yourself in five years. I’ve always made something up. What it so clear, is that every answer I’ve ever given, has been completely wrong. Let me pretend for a moment, that I am being asked that question.
In five years, I see myself where I am now, but mid-30s. Just older. And I hope—this time, I’m wrong too.
(And NaNoWriMo starts in but a few moments. I just need this blog post to hold these thoughts, these obsessions, these feelings, for thirty days. Forever would be okay, but I only need thirty days…)
This video is about this guy with the unpronounceable last name’s research into the mental states of creativity, etc., which he calls “flow.” An interesting look at the psychology of creativity in relation to the “normal” world.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives. A leading researcher in positive psychology, he has devoted his life to studying what makes people truly happy: “When we are involved in [creativity], we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life.” He is the architect of the notion of “flow” — the creative moment when a person is completely involved in an activity for its own sake.
Er, if you don’t see a video, click one of the gray bars and it should load the player.
I’ve been writing at fallen verses for a while now. I don’t plan to stop so you can stop worrying / start worrying depending on your perspective.
However, there are some things I don’t blog about, because I kinda figure they’re separate from what fallen verses is about. Decided I wanted to. If anyone cares, that’ll be ineffably tom (ineffably.net).
Every letter in the preaching scribed-
Every letter in the preaching scribed-
Truths formerly barred, allowed by this recharter.
Truths formerly barred, allowed by this recharter.
The scribed truths in this letter barred,
Every recharter formerly allowed by preaching.
Imperfect results sent turbo up the chain,
Imperfect results sent turbo up the chain,
Flooding the inbox of the falsifier of records.
Flooding the inbox of the falsifier of records.
Turbo flooding sent up the inbox. The records imperfect.
Chain of results. Of the falsifier.
What is called a guide is astraddle a hobbyhorse.
What is called a guide is astraddle a hobbyhorse.
Replying to dismay, he had sportingly offered a refund.
Replying to dismay, he had sportingly offered a refund.
A called guide is replying sportingly to what refund?
Astraddle dismay, he is offered a had hobbyhorse
The recharter is astraddle a barred dismay.
The hobbyhorse guide is called, allowed by
Imperfect truths formerly in the inbox of preaching.
This letter turbo-scribed is a what? Results falsifier.
Every chain had records replying to flooding
Sportingly sent, the refund he offered up of the A.
The Read Write Prompt for this week was to use echolalia as the “hinge” of the poem. The wikipedia description of immediate echolalia seemed suggestive of certain poetic uses of repetition and it occurred to me the paradelle, as a form, seemed kind of echolalaic (anyone?). And, because I like to surprise myself when I write, I headed to WatchOut4Snakes and used their random word generator to get some “seed” words. Anyway, other people’s variously echolalaic or ekphrastic poems will be shared here.
Briefly, regarding the paradelle, they are tough. Not so much to write (unlike, say, a sonnet), but to write well.
Really, seriously, I mean it. It’s just, well, sometimes you meet someone and it feels great and then in a couple of weeks you realize, yeah, this just isn’t my thing.
Well, maybe other people think that, I have trouble at the “meet someone” point. But this is going increasingly irrelevant.
Fallen Verses has yet another theme. Usual rules apply. Let me know if you have any problems or comments.
Disagree with me on what the refrains of the villanelle do cognitively with the most formal definition of the villanelle if you want. There’s room for interpretation that.
Disagree with me on whether content or form is most important in poetry.
Disagree with me on the role of poetry in the world, if you want to!
Do not, ever, fucking disagree with me on the definition of a goddamn word when I am right!!!! Don’t be some “expert” when your first freaking use of the word in question is WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Meter, in poetry, is not synonomous with form. Not. Synonomous.
Meter = binary opposition of the phonological features of language in a regular pattern. Courtesy the New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics.
Syllables have no opposition!!!!!And are not, for that matter, phonological features of a language!!!!!!!!
Syllables != Meter
Love the exclamation mark!!!!!!!!!!!
*It’s like road rage, but sipping a latte and wearing a beret.
Presented as an unordered list. Containing nothing of consequence.*
Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. (I wish we used rhetorical marks. And while we’re at it: tree, forest, sound? Is the sound the vibration of air or the perception of it? I know, the point of koan is not to answer them, as such.) It depends on the person. While I suspect most people who love or have loved would say it is the most glorious thing, it’s really the capacity to handle the loss that is the question. Some people don’t do loss well.
Feeling is like exposing a piece of photographic paper, or a digital sensor (but like all symbolic expression, only to a point). If you want to capture the really good, you won’t be able to discern much of the bad. On the other end, to define the bad means you can’t see the good.
Unlike photographic stops, I think there is no need for more than five “levels” of, I guess, happiness: really, somewhat, not, un and very un. People can live in two neighboring, and experience a third from time to time. Trying to live in more than that is like trying to see in an all black room when the lights have been turned out. Can’t do it. (Or the other way, like walking out of a movie theater into a sunny afternoon.)
Trying to write about spooky poetry while sitting in soft lighting, listening to Journey, and drinking wine produces cognitive dissonance.
Aside from holding contradictory ideas, the previous should be enjoyable. It isn’t. I wonder if I can enjoy anything.
Sometimes, thought move so quickly and so unpredictably, that it’s like bad carnival ride in my head.
*Isn’t it great that we have the capacity to be inconsequential at times? And have a public forum to do it? The troubling thing: our public figures are inconsequential most of the time, and they get to define the fora for everyone.
Still no one has seen the wind.
In these sepia photos the night
sky is the color of espresso.
Spring rains can be warm and gentle.
No one has really seen those either.
Still, no one has seen the wind.
Science, however, turns with the answer:
smoke. A trick that works in tunnels
but autumn remains stubbornly
unconvinced. Fire is too terrible.
Unless it is the incandescent burn
of passionate eyes. There is
velocity when falling,
even when falling in love.
The wind itself remains silent.
The wind itself explores all surfaces.
Realize, however, that the wind
is, itself, something to be explored.
Like silence. Like love.
Dana challenged us with a collection of words. Since I am never one to ignore a dropped gauntlet (er.. except the 30-40 prompts I didn’t do), I used that list as the basis. It took a few iterations before I found something that started working for me, and that is what remains above.
I didn’t use it, but in the wordle image the phrase “science turning tricksy” stood out to me. But it’s tricky like a mischevous god not tricksy like a con man. At least not true science, but you know what they say about true scotsmen.
Actually, being a pretty damn strict materialist / rationalist, I have enormous respect for science and the paradigm it works under. I don’t think it’s tricksy at all. I think Art is tricksy as all get out. And that is o.k. too.
Burger King Launches Canadian Online Poetry Contest (link)
…
Haiku is an ancient form of Japanese poetry consisting of a set number of syllables per line: five syllables in the first line, seven in the second line, and five in the third. The website includes haiku samples and an easy-to-use haiku-writing application….
/boggle
I think this calls for bullet points:
“Ancient” is a very fluffy word in this context. Language is so fluffy to begin with but then we take words that have meanings and we stretch those meanings and stretch them and stretch them and soon, they have holes big enough in their ears you could mini-putt through them! So, while this is true, it is only true in some meanings of the word. Regardless, I don’t think I would call the 17th century ancient.
Syllables: well, Japanese does not have syllables, so it is, in fact, impossible for Japanese poetry to have a form based on them. Japanese is measured in on (which are moras), which are not syllables!!!!!
Per line? Well, the line issue. The glaring 5-7-5 of grade school prosody. Haiku (as an independent form) were not three line poems. Often, they were written in one line. Or, when mixed with visual arts in haiga, were formed according to how they best fit with the image (something the poets at Postal Poetry are working with).
5-7-5… well, remember, not syllables in Japanese, but on. Haiku are not 5-7-5, not really. They employ (in their most formal sense) a kireji (cutting word) after the fifth or twelfth on. The kireji serving as a point of separation similar to colon, semicolon, dash, ellipses, something of that nature. A little math and you can see how 12/5 or 5/12 gets thought of as (5+7)/5 or 5/(7+5) to get the tripartite form we use in western haiku.
Feel free to ignore the man behind the curtain wearing the gold paper crown.
And feel free to ignore whoever wrote that idiotic trade-journal article. I mean, fuck, if you don’t know what you’re talking about, WIKIPEDIA it! How about, mr. fast-food-writer-man*, you write about the new innovation in fryers and leave the poem-talk to people that know more about poetry than your average 4th grader!
*I say man, of course, meaning the non-gender specific referent for person while still conveying “The Man.” mr. fast-food-writer-person just wouldn’t have had the same edge to it.
Tatterdemalion slink into depleted villas,
each step chasing memories deeper into
these antiquated courtyards.
Here are artifacts which nobody recognizes.
They remain untouched. Visitors, focused inward,
do not notice them. They tarnish, fade, rust.
Outside, civil guards scream obscenities.
Someone has posted Lorca’s broadsides
believing both duende and Andalusia are omnipresent.
Somewhere else, meditation resurfaces a lost “I.”
In that same place a girl is born. An old woman dies.
Later, the process is repeated. And again. And again.
In an open notebook are words brilliant but forgettable-
tenuously held together scraps called verses.
The page is a pin worked loose- the center holds,
but a breeze carries the frayed edges out of sight.
It seems such a waste to let those words stand alone on this page. Especially when so many of them will be repeated from piece to piece, each a playful rehuffling of context and content.
Tatterdemalion is a word I have only encountered previously in a Terry Brooks novel: Knight of the Word. It was a magic creature, animated by the spirit of a dead child, built of scraps. Similar to its real definition in an essence. Tatters, the ends, fading, decay. I also think it echoes the essence of this excercise. We all started with scraps and are putting them together.
Most of my poetry is written in a first-person perspective. I edited to remove the “I” from this poem. It seemed, to me, the “I” was too strong an identity for the poem to hold. The “I” was too complete. So I deleted it.
I’m curious to see so many other takes on this arrangement of words. See both what words get used most often and how their meanings change from place to place.
Additional information: I wrote the majority of this poem while listening to James Blunt’s album Back to Bedlam. Judge as you will.
Check out everyone else’s responses at Read Write Poem while you’re at it!
