NaBloPoMo Failure
Yeah. I realized Thursday I had not posted anything for the day, this was at about 10:30. By the time I thought to get over to the computer and post, it was ten minutes after midnight. I thought about faking the timestamp, but a little electronic badge is not worth cheating over. I got through 21 days, and I’m certain there are over 30 posts in there. Had I queued them instead of posting them, I’d have been solid. For those of you still rockin’ the NaBloPoMo challenge, six days left, bring it on home. Since I have no (self-inflicted) requirement to do so, I may not post anything for the next few days either, I have quite a bit of Real Life™ work to take care of by the first half of next week.
Distraction
Sometimes it is vital to distract oneself from the abject misery of really shitty days. Today’s distraction of choice: Mass Effect.
Kudos to the bloggers
who post every day and sometimes more than once a day. This self-imposed by participation requirement to post at least once a day is very draining. I have little desire to write anything. It may be because this past week has been busy and cold-infected, or by-product of the pressure of NaBloPoMo. It has definitely shown me I do not have enough to say to the world at large to be a full time blogger, so kudos to those who can and are and rock their blogs!
I’ve been posting terrible and short snippets merely to fulfill the posting requirement these past few days, and this is not much of an exception. Hopefully tomorrow, and over the holiday weekend I’ll have more to say, at least about the sestina I’ll be forcing myself to write for class. So, for today, I’ll just mention that I received my copy of The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel — Second Floor from LuLu today. I am on the whole pleased with the physical quality of the book, though the cover feels more like photographic stock than laminated cardstock which feels weird. I haven’t gotten too far into it yet, but within the first dozen are some pieces that I really like. So a big hat tip goes out to Cati Porter for the link and for being included in the anthology (and yes, it’s a really good poem).
And I should mention that the first Get Your Poem On post at ReadWritePoem is up and waiting for your beat-inspired sentences a la Ginsberg. Oddly, my recent posts are short enough to qualify as American Sentences (some too short), I find it hard, in general, to confine my poems. But I’ll get something for you all before the post is closed.
And, now, I realize I have already posted today. I completely forgot about that post from this morning. Damn the unintentional over-achieving.
The naming of things
Last week was a good week for naming things. On top of the PolkaDotWitch’s excellent comment naming the distinction between the personal and the private, my friend Lucas (incidentally working for his PhD in Philosophy) had the perfect name for the epistemology I follow: I am a hypocritical skeptic. I “believe you can’t really know anything, but I don’t act that way.” It’s too bad he isn’t interested in being a philosopher, he would have a lot of interesting things to add to the conversation of ideas, but he will be an excellent teacher.
I want
Rock Band. And perhaps a chanteuse as I’ve never gotten the hang of singing rock music.
NaBloPoMo
Just past halfway. This is a post.
/cry
I’m linking about children’s television. This may be a low point, but I have a cold and the world is fuzzy.
“I call that a first world problem…”
“…having to read Hamlet again.” -M. Rutherglen
Totally Optional Prompts: To the Angel Using Windows XP
Totally Optional Places
Well, not really, libraries are still one of the most awesome of places. In my poems I tend to focus more on people than places, after all, I don’t relate to concrete or leaves, but to people. Personal preference and all that. So, something of a moment that could only have happened in a definite type of place, the previously mentioned library, was the basis for the poem today. It’s about the closest I’d get to a “place” poem.
To the Angel Using Windows XP
Believe me, that startup sound is
unmistakable,
But don’t worry about it.
Don’t worry about the way it echoes
Off these cabinets of books
Or bounces around the clerestory.
Don’t worry about how it was
Loud as a jet engine
Compared to a page flip.
Don’t worry about attracting the attention
Of everyone in the library-
it’s only me
And I gladly trade
The poor sonnet in front of me
To see you glowing and on silver clouds….
It may only be a trick of the light,
the glowing,
but it suits you.
So, if you want more placeiness in poems to read, go check out the Totally Optional Prompts “Place” Poem Page (alliteration, teehee) and read the thirty-some poems linked there.
Personas
This post courtesy of insomnia. A more awake tom would probably not be doing this, but, hey, if you can’t be self-indulgent when sleep deprived, when can you be?
One of the first poems I enjoyed was Dunbar’s “We Wear The Mask.” While he may have meant it to refer to the cultural issues facing African Americans in white society following the civil war (if I remember correctly), I always thought it was a good statement on the human condition. We all wear masks, we all wear personas, we all indulge certain aspects of ourselves at different times. For most of us, our work selves differ from our selves at home or with friends. Different with acquaintances than with lovers. Most of us, I suspect, have identities we keep to ourselves, only allowing them from thei iron masks when no one is around to see the resemblance.
On this blog, I have made a conscious choice to be open, but not very personal, in the prose. The persona I inhabit here is one that I intend to keep “up front” with you, but, ultimately, responds “Fine,” when asked “How you doin’?” I didn’t want to be incredibly self-indulgent and, not writing under any pseudonym, a certain remove seemed appropriate. Really, anyone I know could easily tie this blog to me without me telling them about it. It seemed better to keep the sorts of things I wouldn’t tell acquaintances off this blog. At times I wish I had written with a pseudonym and could be self-indulgent without remorse. Some people write journals, I suppose, for that, but it’s the idea that people do read this, that, in some manner, find value or interest or entertainment in what I write that gives purpose to the writing. It clarifies, refines, but also limits.
That only applies to the prose. The verse is pretty much unfiltered. I think as artists we’re baring ourselves in our work and the most remove we get is a gauze veil…. Not that the verse gets the level of unmitigated self-pitying I might be in the mood for at the moment. I wouldn’t even want to read that drek. It will be used, burned as an offering to the muses, turned into an obfuscated memoir of stanzas. So, in honor of keeping things hidden, feelings, identities, etc.:
We Wear The Mask - Paul Laurence Dunbar
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,–
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
