i wrote this; it is a poem
In This Wise Did He Appear
like an angel, flying, dragging his feet
as if between two worlds he must weigh all things
between the sky to reach and the ground to meet
I am two halves a man and incomplete
like a minotaur: a monster and son of kings
like an angel, flying, dragging his feet
or a king that is thrown from his royal seat
whose seven years of feathers have not yet become wings
between the sky to reach and the ground to meet
two voices for my voice compete;
it wrestles between the songs it sings
like an angel, flying, dragging his feet
what the earth comes down to is a prison on Crete
on the horizon I search for the strings
between the sky to reach and the ground to meet
though clayfooted, and kicking through the street
yet my seven years to the wind still clings
like an angel, flying, dragging his feet
between the sky to reach and the ground to meet
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
(see reverse side)
i'm realizing now that my most recent posts have been a bit, shall we say, dismal. its true, i have sometimes been labelled as pessimistic, characterized as gloomy, and treated for being mildly depressed. but i beg to differ with and barely understand those who point out my more saturnine qualities as being strange or defective from the norm. firstly, why do people insist on walking around being fooled by mantras and medication into thinking everything's ok? if you need those things to help you believe that, isn't that the only proof i need to point out that you're wrong? secondly, people misjudge me for being merely bitter, just because they haven't a palette refined enough to sense the sweet. i am no different than a hershey's chocolate morsel, for use in cookies, cakes, and other baked goods (see recipes on reverse side of package).
they say its about perspective; i can hardly disagree. that the world is as you see it is a hard thing to contest. but i guess i'm not as interested in removing myself from what i see to examine how i see. and what i see is that it is the world, more than i, that is bittersweet. there is goodness, there is badness, and the fine lines inbetween become a hatchwork of grey, of mingled and only minutely distinct strokes that go one way or another.
ultimately, for me, its not what i see or how i see, but what i make of it. what i make is the key. the trapped debris in the junkyard of my brain is not so important as what i can make out of it. there is lots of ugly, lots of pain, lots of gloom and sadness. and even if that's all i see, i believe i can redeem it, i can create something with it, and that thing can be beautiful.
i'm neither a pessimist nor an optimist. i'm not even a realist. i'm just looking for recipes on the other side of the package.
they say its about perspective; i can hardly disagree. that the world is as you see it is a hard thing to contest. but i guess i'm not as interested in removing myself from what i see to examine how i see. and what i see is that it is the world, more than i, that is bittersweet. there is goodness, there is badness, and the fine lines inbetween become a hatchwork of grey, of mingled and only minutely distinct strokes that go one way or another.
ultimately, for me, its not what i see or how i see, but what i make of it. what i make is the key. the trapped debris in the junkyard of my brain is not so important as what i can make out of it. there is lots of ugly, lots of pain, lots of gloom and sadness. and even if that's all i see, i believe i can redeem it, i can create something with it, and that thing can be beautiful.
i'm neither a pessimist nor an optimist. i'm not even a realist. i'm just looking for recipes on the other side of the package.
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Atlanta, GA
just a few notes i brought back with me from my trip to Atlanta:
-- i lament marriage. its not just because i had a bad time at my cousin's wedding. its not because i think i'll probably never get married. its because marriage is so good at stealing people away from the world around them. i find it difficult and troubling that one other person can be your life's answer. that doesn't make sense to me. it doesn't make sense that when you get married you can't do anything by yourself, and you have to trade in all of your single friends for married ones. most of all it doesn't make sense why anyone would willingly walk into that situation knowing that is exactly what will happen. i want my cousin to be happy and i hope her marriage is everything she dreams it will be. and if it is, then all the better for her, but i'll still lament marriage. Jessica is the second of my cousins in my uncle's very large family to get married; she is my sister's age. Malinda, who is my age, was married about three years ago -- she just had a baby. every time my family has gone to Atlanta to visit, my sister and i have never failed to have a bonding experience with them. with the exception of this time. now they are married; starting families...creating lives of their own. no longer seeking or searching out themselves and the world around them. that is a part of their lives that they have chosen to set aside, and it is the very same part i've decided to devote my life to. i feel as if i can no longer connect with them...
-- i never resent growing up in buffalo more than when i go to atlanta to see our family there. the only family members my sister and i ever had that were anywhere close to our age were Malinda and Jessica, who are our age to within a couple of months. visits only took place about ever two or three years -- airfare was expensive, money was always tight, and my grandmother could give my mom a headache over the phone, much less in person. i always loved going. we went to atlanta so few times i have a vague recollection of my first meeting with my father's mother: no, your grandmother does not want to be called 'grandma,' she wants to you call her 'Sitti.' Grandaddy was always Grandaddy, but Sitti was lebanese, and in lebanese, grandmas were called sittis. she was the grand matriarch of my father's family; she was amazing; overly dramatic, often drunk, always eccentric and forever the most madly outrageous,hysterical, enchanting and generous person i will ever meet. this is the first time i've been back to atlanta since her funeral and its just not the same. Grandaddy gets along ok, Malinda and Jessica still live in the area, as do their parents, and their syblings, my nine other cousins (Steven, Esther, David, Joseph, Lela, Christina, John, Suzannah, and Emily).......but really, Sitti was the lynchpin of the family. She always made herself the center of attention, andwhatever frustrations that might have caused people in the past, now that she's gone we've lost the center around which we now realize we've loved gathering around. everytime i've been to atlanta, i've thought about moving there -- there is family, a beautiful city, no lack of entertainments...i had fantasized about hanging out with Sitti and Grandaddy, eating endless meals of her gourmet cooking, getting close to my cousins. and now...Sitti is gone, my cousins are married off, and the family feels disbanded. we all share a name, but now, at family gatherings, there will always be a reason for someone to leave early, a new baby to attend to, another holiday party they have to make...their lives shredded and tossed over a field of commitments with no hope of ever recovering the old, if uncultivated bonds we had formed as kids. i took a nap on Sitti's bed, it was the first thing i did when i got to the house -- my grandparents always slept in separate rooms, and my Grandaddy has kept her room exactly the same since she died. i laid down on it and i wanted to cry. i did, almost. i hate growing up. i hate getting older. i hate it when people die, i hate it when things change. and everything in atlanta has changed. all these people are my family, and i hardly know them. my Sitti is dead, and my cousins are married...what can i do now? i wish i could listen to Sitti's stories about Europe in the 50's, and my dad as a kid. i wish i could still revel with Malinda in our shared black-sheepery in the Bowman family. i resent never having any family bonds, the way other people have. i missed out on the cousin/best friend, and dinner at grandma's on sundays. i missed out on knowing my own family. i don't know my own family and it is a sin. it is something i hate, and am ashamed of and jealous for, and now there is nothing i can do about it.
-- i lament marriage. its not just because i had a bad time at my cousin's wedding. its not because i think i'll probably never get married. its because marriage is so good at stealing people away from the world around them. i find it difficult and troubling that one other person can be your life's answer. that doesn't make sense to me. it doesn't make sense that when you get married you can't do anything by yourself, and you have to trade in all of your single friends for married ones. most of all it doesn't make sense why anyone would willingly walk into that situation knowing that is exactly what will happen. i want my cousin to be happy and i hope her marriage is everything she dreams it will be. and if it is, then all the better for her, but i'll still lament marriage. Jessica is the second of my cousins in my uncle's very large family to get married; she is my sister's age. Malinda, who is my age, was married about three years ago -- she just had a baby. every time my family has gone to Atlanta to visit, my sister and i have never failed to have a bonding experience with them. with the exception of this time. now they are married; starting families...creating lives of their own. no longer seeking or searching out themselves and the world around them. that is a part of their lives that they have chosen to set aside, and it is the very same part i've decided to devote my life to. i feel as if i can no longer connect with them...
-- i never resent growing up in buffalo more than when i go to atlanta to see our family there. the only family members my sister and i ever had that were anywhere close to our age were Malinda and Jessica, who are our age to within a couple of months. visits only took place about ever two or three years -- airfare was expensive, money was always tight, and my grandmother could give my mom a headache over the phone, much less in person. i always loved going. we went to atlanta so few times i have a vague recollection of my first meeting with my father's mother: no, your grandmother does not want to be called 'grandma,' she wants to you call her 'Sitti.' Grandaddy was always Grandaddy, but Sitti was lebanese, and in lebanese, grandmas were called sittis. she was the grand matriarch of my father's family; she was amazing; overly dramatic, often drunk, always eccentric and forever the most madly outrageous,hysterical, enchanting and generous person i will ever meet. this is the first time i've been back to atlanta since her funeral and its just not the same. Grandaddy gets along ok, Malinda and Jessica still live in the area, as do their parents, and their syblings, my nine other cousins (Steven, Esther, David, Joseph, Lela, Christina, John, Suzannah, and Emily).......but really, Sitti was the lynchpin of the family. She always made herself the center of attention, andwhatever frustrations that might have caused people in the past, now that she's gone we've lost the center around which we now realize we've loved gathering around. everytime i've been to atlanta, i've thought about moving there -- there is family, a beautiful city, no lack of entertainments...i had fantasized about hanging out with Sitti and Grandaddy, eating endless meals of her gourmet cooking, getting close to my cousins. and now...Sitti is gone, my cousins are married off, and the family feels disbanded. we all share a name, but now, at family gatherings, there will always be a reason for someone to leave early, a new baby to attend to, another holiday party they have to make...their lives shredded and tossed over a field of commitments with no hope of ever recovering the old, if uncultivated bonds we had formed as kids. i took a nap on Sitti's bed, it was the first thing i did when i got to the house -- my grandparents always slept in separate rooms, and my Grandaddy has kept her room exactly the same since she died. i laid down on it and i wanted to cry. i did, almost. i hate growing up. i hate getting older. i hate it when people die, i hate it when things change. and everything in atlanta has changed. all these people are my family, and i hardly know them. my Sitti is dead, and my cousins are married...what can i do now? i wish i could listen to Sitti's stories about Europe in the 50's, and my dad as a kid. i wish i could still revel with Malinda in our shared black-sheepery in the Bowman family. i resent never having any family bonds, the way other people have. i missed out on the cousin/best friend, and dinner at grandma's on sundays. i missed out on knowing my own family. i don't know my own family and it is a sin. it is something i hate, and am ashamed of and jealous for, and now there is nothing i can do about it.
Monday, October 10, 2005
reasons not to have a girlfriend...
...a new series.
every time i see a beautiful woman with a big rock on her finger giving me "the look," all i can think of is : "yeah right, you look at me like that right now, but the fact is you have a big rock on your finger because that's what you wanted, and if you really wanted me you probably could have had me...
...but i wait tables for a living; i drive a car with a busted window; i live in a dank, moldy, uncomfortable hole of an apartment...and you are fooling yourself if you are thinking right now that you would actually go for me. "
which is fine, ladies. i understand that. honestly, why would you waste your time with someone who can't give you what you really need, no matter how cute i >ahem< he is?
i'm sometimes tempted to begrudge your attitude. mostly because i don't come from money, i don't have money, and its a serious question whether or not i ever will. and its not so important to me. i don't need things i don't need. it seems somehow unfair that the lack of money can make me a less desirable companion for someone, despite the other, more important aspects of who i am.
on the other hand, i understand it: you want someone to be able to take you out, for drinks, for dinner, for anything fun -- and lets not kid ourselves, fun don't come cheap. i understand wanting to do fun things with your man, and wanting to have a man who can do fun things. its only natural.
i've had girlfriends i've adored. i would have given them everything they ever wanted. they were not demanding girlfriends, but i would have given them more than everything they wanted, more than they knew they wanted; i would have given them things they deserved just for being the wonderful people they are. i would have taken them to expensive resturaunts. i would have taken them to soirees, and "functions," and "fund raisers." i would have taken them to new york, and to europe, and to my cabin on the lake in canada, and to the beach house in key west. i would have taken them to france on their birthday, to italy for christmas. i would show them off draped in all of the fine things i bought them. the truth of it is, even if i never did those things, it would still take money to do the normal things, the sweet things...the nice guy things. coffee, dinner, drinks, dancing, movies, flowers, gifts....my girlfriends didn't deserve to miss out on those kinds of things, and maybe if i could have afforded to pay more attention to that stuff....things might have been better, easier. i could feel like man who can take care of his woman rather than a boy being taken care of by an indescribably sweet and generous girl.
sure, money wouldn't have kept my relationships from imploding. it would not have been able to step in for my non-financial failures as a boyfriend. it would not be able to sustain the relationships that were fundamentally flawed. it would not even be able to make me treat them right.
but damn. it would have helped.
reasons not to have a girlfriend, #1
i have no money.
every time i see a beautiful woman with a big rock on her finger giving me "the look," all i can think of is : "yeah right, you look at me like that right now, but the fact is you have a big rock on your finger because that's what you wanted, and if you really wanted me you probably could have had me...
...but i wait tables for a living; i drive a car with a busted window; i live in a dank, moldy, uncomfortable hole of an apartment...and you are fooling yourself if you are thinking right now that you would actually go for me. "
which is fine, ladies. i understand that. honestly, why would you waste your time with someone who can't give you what you really need, no matter how cute i >ahem< he is?
i'm sometimes tempted to begrudge your attitude. mostly because i don't come from money, i don't have money, and its a serious question whether or not i ever will. and its not so important to me. i don't need things i don't need. it seems somehow unfair that the lack of money can make me a less desirable companion for someone, despite the other, more important aspects of who i am.
on the other hand, i understand it: you want someone to be able to take you out, for drinks, for dinner, for anything fun -- and lets not kid ourselves, fun don't come cheap. i understand wanting to do fun things with your man, and wanting to have a man who can do fun things. its only natural.
i've had girlfriends i've adored. i would have given them everything they ever wanted. they were not demanding girlfriends, but i would have given them more than everything they wanted, more than they knew they wanted; i would have given them things they deserved just for being the wonderful people they are. i would have taken them to expensive resturaunts. i would have taken them to soirees, and "functions," and "fund raisers." i would have taken them to new york, and to europe, and to my cabin on the lake in canada, and to the beach house in key west. i would have taken them to france on their birthday, to italy for christmas. i would show them off draped in all of the fine things i bought them. the truth of it is, even if i never did those things, it would still take money to do the normal things, the sweet things...the nice guy things. coffee, dinner, drinks, dancing, movies, flowers, gifts....my girlfriends didn't deserve to miss out on those kinds of things, and maybe if i could have afforded to pay more attention to that stuff....things might have been better, easier. i could feel like man who can take care of his woman rather than a boy being taken care of by an indescribably sweet and generous girl.
sure, money wouldn't have kept my relationships from imploding. it would not have been able to step in for my non-financial failures as a boyfriend. it would not be able to sustain the relationships that were fundamentally flawed. it would not even be able to make me treat them right.
but damn. it would have helped.
reasons not to have a girlfriend, #1
i have no money.
Thursday, October 06, 2005
drawing
i've been drawing since i was about two. i'm pretty good at it. i don't post my drawings here because a) it would be a bit time consuming to try to do from school computers, b) i don't know how to do it, and c) this blog is about my foray into another art field. using language as an artform fascinates me. drawing is my natural response to the world -- that is, i didn't have to learn that instinct, or even the mode of drawing, really. its just there. i'm not the greatest draughtsman in the world -- there are plenty of people who draw better than me, and sometimes i'm ashamed that i am not as good as i could be. i could be great. i could be spectactular; but i'm not. there are lots and lots of people better than me. granted, they've all gone to artschool, and have recieved formal and proper training. i have the chops to get into artschool, but i never had the money, and i don't draw every day. its not that i don't want to be better; but the structure of formal training would help me immensely, and i don't have that.
i've been gifted with a perfectly fine talent. it the company of my peers it has always made me stand out. it has come far more naturally to me than writing does. so why turn my attention to this?
i'm not sure really. maybe this is true, maybe it isn't, but it seems to me that pictures come first to everyone, and language comes second. language has to be learned, and pictures, as long as you are born with working eyes, are just there. you don't have to learn pictures. you don't have to learn the act of seeing. you don't even have to learn the instinct to represent what you see in a drawing either -- we all do it as kids, naturally. its why they make crayons.
language on the other hand has to be learned, taught; almost invented. it takes the abstraction process further, requires more sophisticated mental functions. it is not immediate. this doesn't make one necessarily better than the other, thats not what i'm getting at.
the primitivity, the inherent quality of pictures is primary to all of us. but the fact that it is specifically primary to me, isn't that an argument that it deserves more of my attention? shouldn't it take precedence for me over the secondary less naturally occuring structure of language?
maybe i shouldn't generalize. language is as naturally occuring a phenomenon as seeing -- while there is something contrived about language, something about it that needs building, that doesn't mean it is unnaturally occuring. but it comes after pictures, for everyone. and certainly, specifically for me, it comes after pictures as well. so again. why am i writing? why am i trying to be a writer?
i don't know, truthfully. when i started writing (mainly painfully bad poetry) it wasn't any good. i kept it up...because of the encouragement of people who maybe didn't know that it was bad poetry, or thought it more important not to care (God bless them). i don't really have any idea whether any of my poetry now is any good; i like it at first, but after a week or so i end up hating whatever i've written. but that's not as important as the fact that i'm a much better writer now than i was then, and some people tell me i'm a pretty good writer now. which makes me believe its really about practice, and a drive to do well, to chase quality, to put quality influences into your head and pull out a quality something.
i had an earlier start with pictures than i did with language. my writing is still in its infancy, in a lot of ways. ok, maybe in its terrible twos. but that doesn't mean i can't be good at it -- that i can't be great at it someday -- it doesn't mean that i can't be as natural and talented a writer as i am an artist.
initially, in their primary stages, pictures and language are about expression. later they evolve -- or we come to realize through the use of them -- that they are about representation. which is only a little bit different, but makes all the difference in the world.
i've been gifted with a perfectly fine talent. it the company of my peers it has always made me stand out. it has come far more naturally to me than writing does. so why turn my attention to this?
i'm not sure really. maybe this is true, maybe it isn't, but it seems to me that pictures come first to everyone, and language comes second. language has to be learned, and pictures, as long as you are born with working eyes, are just there. you don't have to learn pictures. you don't have to learn the act of seeing. you don't even have to learn the instinct to represent what you see in a drawing either -- we all do it as kids, naturally. its why they make crayons.
language on the other hand has to be learned, taught; almost invented. it takes the abstraction process further, requires more sophisticated mental functions. it is not immediate. this doesn't make one necessarily better than the other, thats not what i'm getting at.
the primitivity, the inherent quality of pictures is primary to all of us. but the fact that it is specifically primary to me, isn't that an argument that it deserves more of my attention? shouldn't it take precedence for me over the secondary less naturally occuring structure of language?
maybe i shouldn't generalize. language is as naturally occuring a phenomenon as seeing -- while there is something contrived about language, something about it that needs building, that doesn't mean it is unnaturally occuring. but it comes after pictures, for everyone. and certainly, specifically for me, it comes after pictures as well. so again. why am i writing? why am i trying to be a writer?
i don't know, truthfully. when i started writing (mainly painfully bad poetry) it wasn't any good. i kept it up...because of the encouragement of people who maybe didn't know that it was bad poetry, or thought it more important not to care (God bless them). i don't really have any idea whether any of my poetry now is any good; i like it at first, but after a week or so i end up hating whatever i've written. but that's not as important as the fact that i'm a much better writer now than i was then, and some people tell me i'm a pretty good writer now. which makes me believe its really about practice, and a drive to do well, to chase quality, to put quality influences into your head and pull out a quality something.
i had an earlier start with pictures than i did with language. my writing is still in its infancy, in a lot of ways. ok, maybe in its terrible twos. but that doesn't mean i can't be good at it -- that i can't be great at it someday -- it doesn't mean that i can't be as natural and talented a writer as i am an artist.
initially, in their primary stages, pictures and language are about expression. later they evolve -- or we come to realize through the use of them -- that they are about representation. which is only a little bit different, but makes all the difference in the world.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
