What is it with me and associating myself with objects? Is it poetry? Is it cruelty? Both? The words ring true with me, my soul, but while others seem to enjoy them they do not seem to understand. But for me it is not a matter of mere words. It is myself expressed on paper without the poet's presenc e. Most poets say "I," yet I find myself using "it." Am I it? Am I the objectified unhuman? Do I not deserve the feelings that accompany humanity?
What a torture the act of contemplation is, questioning, confusing, causing chaos in the turmoil of heart and brain. Humans require one another to thrive but objects find difficulty in association. Doomed to solitude, and no ability to call it tragedy. An object may be forgotten -- missed perhaps, but ultimately forgotten in principle. A human grasps the minds and souls of others, steals away a part of them, leaving a void that can never be totally refilled. I feel replaceable, unacceptable, false, plastic. A living breathing mannequin, positioned always by others with no mouth to speak and no ears to listen.
But then, what have I to say?
Showing posts with label rant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rant. Show all posts
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Concavity 11/6/2010
Today, I went to Mom's house for the first time since she moved. It was mostly empty except for a some odds and ends. A TV here. A chair there. Everything looked so much larger than I recalled. It seemed as if it had been abandoned long ago, like hollowness was its natural state. As I wandered I tried to evoke memories of the home I had inhabited for so long, but could not. I felt just as empty as the house itself, a sort of bizarre bonding of likes in their concavity. A poetic blankness weighed my thoughts, searching for words to describe a feeling I did not possess.
Why can I not feel as others do? These false affections are like poison, contamination my head and heart in equal parts. Reality evokes only emptiness. Only fiction evokes the true power of sentiment. It is a torture to know in the end I cannot be happy without the mystery of the unattainable. The struggle for happiness will inevitably lead to unhappiness. Perhaps I was meant to be immune to the real. Perhaps hollowness is my natural state as well. Then the question is: do I accept this or do I change it myself? To remain hollow or to become false? Either way, I am lost.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Pure Articulation
So...I haven't been very emotionally stable the past few days, so I made myself hand-write everything that came to mind and this is what I got. It let me sleep. Good enough for me.
__________________________________________________________
I am cursed with the art of purely articulated emotion.
__________________________________________________________
I am cursed with the art of purely articulated emotion.
When my heart is glad, it is not merely so. It is joyous. Enraptured. Enlightened. Halcyonic. Contented. Happy. A whole dictionary of words all wrapped around each other like children rolled in blankets. They dance and sing and laugh about my head, pull at the dimples in my cheeks, bubble against my throat, spill bright paints into my thoughts until only the edges burn in gray and black.
In this way I am blessed...
In this way I am cursed, for when my heart is not glad or contented or enlightened it is instead weighted. Caged. Tortured. Ugly. Numb. Lifeless. It is a prisoner beating and struggling against its bindings, pulling and screaming and begging for the mercy it knows will not come, for its captor does not even recall its existence.
And yet, in all things, amidst all words and circumstances, one among them remains constant.
Love.
It is a precious word, at once black and brittle and perfect and beautiful. It is the poet's vice, for she cannot live without it, and yet to live with it she must die for it. She knows it is a privilege to be entitled Guardian of such a pretty fickle creature—but what torturous and cruel a thing it is, when all other poets she might share in love lie dead and unburied in its wake.
Must I walk this warpath alone, without companion but for love itself?
Must I sustain such loneliness? For naught?
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Paradise? Just a thought
"Paradise is not an oasis in a desert. It is a world where deserts do not exist...or is it a universe in which we are content with deserts?"
That's a quote from a friend of mine named Eric aka [another brick in the wall] on Elftown.
Why are we as humans constantly looking and begging and hoping for more from life instead of making the most of the deserts we're stuck with? We can synthesize our own happiness, I've learned, make ourselves believe we are happy or sad, content or lacking, but in the end it doesn't really matter. There comes a point when one realizes that it doesn't matter if there are deserts or oases, because they are part of the same structure, the same concept on two different sides. They blend into each other where it's hard to tell which is which anymore and suddenly we're questioning where one starts and the other begins.
Then again, who's to decide which part is the oasis and which is the desert? Is the oasis really a paradise or merely a new desert within the old?
Hmm...must investigate further.
That's a quote from a friend of mine named Eric aka [another brick in the wall] on Elftown.
Why are we as humans constantly looking and begging and hoping for more from life instead of making the most of the deserts we're stuck with? We can synthesize our own happiness, I've learned, make ourselves believe we are happy or sad, content or lacking, but in the end it doesn't really matter. There comes a point when one realizes that it doesn't matter if there are deserts or oases, because they are part of the same structure, the same concept on two different sides. They blend into each other where it's hard to tell which is which anymore and suddenly we're questioning where one starts and the other begins.
Then again, who's to decide which part is the oasis and which is the desert? Is the oasis really a paradise or merely a new desert within the old?
Hmm...must investigate further.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Without Significance
People don't die anymore the way they used to.
It used to be that people knew what camaraderie was, running into battles with swords and guns and cannons blazing, like all the good stories. It used to be that people died in the arms of others who prayed for them, softly and sincerely, in their final moments. Men holding each other because they had to, because there was no one else, and for an instant there could be unfathomable and unconditional love because there had to be. Then, the fires would roar and they'd be up again, leaving the fallen alone and cold but always within memory, always tingling on the edge of remembrance. Someone would write a song about them later and call it something simple and sweet so others might wonder what it's really all about.
Now there's just needles and white bed sheets and pills and strange little containers and bags with tubes that weren't there the week before. Dying alone with strangers and a strict deadline to keep. Six months. Six weeks. A few hours, maybe. Depends on charity. Depends on the money. Just depends.
The movies like to think the saddest part is letting go. Talking to the dying with some prepared speech that makes an audience weep and they don't even know why. Sometimes there isn't a reason at all, really. Just because it's an opportunity to feel something more than numbness. An opportunity to feel more than what we can muster for the people we know in our lives that needed to see it. Because that's all we are: numb. Numbed to the killing and the dying alone in hospital beds. Hearing another "I always loved you, always will" or "I forgave you a long time ago" while holding hands until one of them goes limp is a refreshing little twist of angst compared to the usual droll gray-white that always seems to end before the punch line.
A man sleeps in an otherwise empty bed. He's just turned eighty-four years old. A long time ago, he used to deliver papers on a bike that wasn't his. The man down the street named Mr. Johnson used to talk to him every day on his routes. He died a long time ago. He never remembered that kid's name, but he thought about it sometimes when he wasn't thinking.
His children call him on his birthday every year. They can never come up because it's always so busy at home. He doesn't mind though. It's understandable, and he loves them anyways because that's what fathers do. He has pictures of his grandchildren and old photos in black and white. He doesn't remember the faces well anymore, but he likes to look at them and try all the same when there's nothing better to do.
His wife died a few years ago. She was the prettiest girl in school when they first kissed, and her eyes were still the same old blue when she died, only they didn't twinkle so much as they had then and her hands were stiffer and colder than they had a right to be. Now there's no one to listen to him play his piano in the other room but walls filled with faces and an old TV he forgets to turn off.
On a warm sunny morning in May, the man wakes to find himself something to eat. As he reaches for a glass in the cupboard above the sink, his heart seizes. The glass falls and chips the edge of the counter. He lays on the linoleum floor of his kitchen, gripping his chest as he stares at a spot of black lint beneath the fridge. As his vision blurs, he tries to think of what Heaven will look like, but the pressure in his chest makes it hard to think, and all he can see is that fuzzy black spot. He can't think of anything else to do but wait, so he does, and dies.
No hands to hold. No sudden final call from loving relatives. No camaraderie. No note on the bedside table. Just the low gasping for breath that has run out. Just another average man's death in just another average town.
Sometimes we try to find reasons and meanings, when everything's over, just because we feel we should, when the reality is there is no reason. Reasons come with things that happen with consequence, and death has no consequence. It simply is. It comes and it goes and the rest of the world moves on because it must move on. Sometimes he's remembered. Most times, he isn't.
It's just the way it goes. I imagine in a hundred years things won't even need a reason anymore. People will just assume there isn't one and leave the guessing and the speeches we didn't get a chance to make to the movies about fake people and real people that didn't have a reason either, until the time comes for us to die too. So we'll slip into that darkness without a thought, without a reason, without a consequence. Without significance.
I guess people just don't die the way they used to anymore.
It used to be that people knew what camaraderie was, running into battles with swords and guns and cannons blazing, like all the good stories. It used to be that people died in the arms of others who prayed for them, softly and sincerely, in their final moments. Men holding each other because they had to, because there was no one else, and for an instant there could be unfathomable and unconditional love because there had to be. Then, the fires would roar and they'd be up again, leaving the fallen alone and cold but always within memory, always tingling on the edge of remembrance. Someone would write a song about them later and call it something simple and sweet so others might wonder what it's really all about.
Now there's just needles and white bed sheets and pills and strange little containers and bags with tubes that weren't there the week before. Dying alone with strangers and a strict deadline to keep. Six months. Six weeks. A few hours, maybe. Depends on charity. Depends on the money. Just depends.
The movies like to think the saddest part is letting go. Talking to the dying with some prepared speech that makes an audience weep and they don't even know why. Sometimes there isn't a reason at all, really. Just because it's an opportunity to feel something more than numbness. An opportunity to feel more than what we can muster for the people we know in our lives that needed to see it. Because that's all we are: numb. Numbed to the killing and the dying alone in hospital beds. Hearing another "I always loved you, always will" or "I forgave you a long time ago" while holding hands until one of them goes limp is a refreshing little twist of angst compared to the usual droll gray-white that always seems to end before the punch line.
A man sleeps in an otherwise empty bed. He's just turned eighty-four years old. A long time ago, he used to deliver papers on a bike that wasn't his. The man down the street named Mr. Johnson used to talk to him every day on his routes. He died a long time ago. He never remembered that kid's name, but he thought about it sometimes when he wasn't thinking.
His children call him on his birthday every year. They can never come up because it's always so busy at home. He doesn't mind though. It's understandable, and he loves them anyways because that's what fathers do. He has pictures of his grandchildren and old photos in black and white. He doesn't remember the faces well anymore, but he likes to look at them and try all the same when there's nothing better to do.
His wife died a few years ago. She was the prettiest girl in school when they first kissed, and her eyes were still the same old blue when she died, only they didn't twinkle so much as they had then and her hands were stiffer and colder than they had a right to be. Now there's no one to listen to him play his piano in the other room but walls filled with faces and an old TV he forgets to turn off.
On a warm sunny morning in May, the man wakes to find himself something to eat. As he reaches for a glass in the cupboard above the sink, his heart seizes. The glass falls and chips the edge of the counter. He lays on the linoleum floor of his kitchen, gripping his chest as he stares at a spot of black lint beneath the fridge. As his vision blurs, he tries to think of what Heaven will look like, but the pressure in his chest makes it hard to think, and all he can see is that fuzzy black spot. He can't think of anything else to do but wait, so he does, and dies.
No hands to hold. No sudden final call from loving relatives. No camaraderie. No note on the bedside table. Just the low gasping for breath that has run out. Just another average man's death in just another average town.
Sometimes we try to find reasons and meanings, when everything's over, just because we feel we should, when the reality is there is no reason. Reasons come with things that happen with consequence, and death has no consequence. It simply is. It comes and it goes and the rest of the world moves on because it must move on. Sometimes he's remembered. Most times, he isn't.
It's just the way it goes. I imagine in a hundred years things won't even need a reason anymore. People will just assume there isn't one and leave the guessing and the speeches we didn't get a chance to make to the movies about fake people and real people that didn't have a reason either, until the time comes for us to die too. So we'll slip into that darkness without a thought, without a reason, without a consequence. Without significance.
I guess people just don't die the way they used to anymore.
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