Neil Gaiman said:

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”

“…and everyone’s in love and flowers pick themselves.” ee cummings

Where are the poets today? No, pardon me let me re-phrase this question. Where are the love poets of today? It is quite possible that I am looking in the wrong places but as of late the poetry I have heard and seen is all about stage posturing and cute flip flop word plays. Now, that this is not my cup of tea in no way negates the power or refutes the authenticity of these poets. No, but I just want to know where the love poems of today are. Does all poetry have to have an agenda? Race related, poverty related, I got the society blues related?

I ask again: Where are the poets of today? The love poets? Are we so hardened and cynical that we no longer need or desire to hear the words of love spoken? Do we present such an unlovable presence that the world no longer has a want to hear tender words spoken? Has Hallmark and the other corporations who have made things like Valentines a money making fiasco also jaded us to the point where we wouldn’t know good love verse if it jumped up and bit us in the ass?

Is it that poetry doesn’t pay? And our poets have now become lyricists? Writing and fronting music bands? Did Leonard Cohen set the pace when he crossed over from poet to singer?

And what if none of it really mattered at all? What if this is all some kind of randomness that we can’t see through anyways? What if there is nothing? Truly nothing to live for except life? Would we be able to recognize such a mediocre idea as this?

I Ching wisdom in the flash of a coin toss

#29 K'an/The abysmal (Water)
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From 6 in the 1st line:
"By growing used to what is dangerous, a man can easily allow it to become part of him. He is familiar with it and grows used to evil. With this he has lost the right way, and misfortune is the natural result."

a joke

I read this joke in a book a couple of months ago and was in one of those situations where before I could do anything I was the guy on the subway laughing uncontrollably. Now I have had a couple of different reactions to it. I wasn't sure whether or not a written joke would be funny said out loud. Some people laughed as hard as I did, some guffawed, some smiled enjoying the joke, and one person said "I don't get it." And after explaining the joke they said "Yeah, I understand it but I just don't get what's funny." Which stunned the room and got quite a few laughs. Ok, ok, the joke:

One day up in heaven St. Peter has to go and run some errands so he asks Jesus if he would mind watching the gate for the afternoon. Jesus says no problem. Jesus is sitting there and an old man approaches. Jesus says hello, what good things have you done on earth to make you think that you should enter the gates of heaven? The old man says well, it's not so much what I have done. I am but a humble carpenter. But my son, my son brought much happiness and joy to the world and was known and loved by many. At hearing this Jesus throws his arms around the old man and cries out Father! Father! The old man replies Pinocchio?

Letting the thieves into my own mouth to steal my brains!

These days without hearing or feeling these keys beneath my fingers... makes me wonder what have I been doing? On what travels of fancy or dread have I been? Time appears quite static and space has a heaviness weighing upon me that Sisyphus would have envied. And yet the closer I draw to the grand negative, the sleep of the damned, death, the more I fight. The brighter my inner flame burns, burns for life. To live. To die on fire. To never stop until it is over.

The non-stop bombardment of image and sound that repeats and echoes itself ad nauseum. We are a society of sameness and sound-clip communication. I am not beyond this is any better than or hoiler than thou way. I am in it. I am of it.

What is the fascination, no, obsession of being lost in others' worlds? How does the writing of another hold me so fascinated, so stuck in a moment, so absolutely beyond my being? It is staggering. I reel. I rock.

How can I believe in others' words so completely? To think that I have had some similiar thing happen to me? Objective subjectivity. It's all about almosting. Almosting the feeling, almosting the emotion, almosting the scene... then we are one, one humanity. How can pain, like love, be felt in harmony? What does it matter? Is it about the fear of realizing we are alone, that communion, brother and sisterhoods are mere band-aids to the truth? What veil has been drawn that we have collectively allowed ourselves to believe in this? Happier times, childhood eyes filled with the fiction of living. How to live in this world? How not to? Mere muscle reflex is all that truly keeps me going.

Is there a term for life that is in the realm of alone that does not incur the idea of loneliness? Solitude? But with a positive light?

These are my 'day' thoughts. The ones that see the light of outside. Outside my cracked and dusty cranium.

hodge-podge

This life has been an ongoing series of "realityizing" my image of it. I imagined it all as a child and since I have been going out and exploring all of it, it has been illusion of sorts. The cold reality sometimes standing up, sometimes even more impressive but never does the world template of my mind "fit" over the other world. My eyes are slowly opening. I don’t feel as though I am on the earth. No feeling of connection; no binding factor. I can smell the cold in the wind; but it is an abstract. The sound of my crunching boots in the snow fills my ears; but I am beyond a relation to my own forlorn steps. I can see the miles of country, roads, and sky; but they do nothing for my senses. The metallic taste of blood when I suck on my teeth reminds me of little. What gravity-less moments. I’d say floating-like if the weight of knowledge wasn’t pressing down on me. Realizing the minutest particles of my being’s day to day routine. Understanding the tick tick machinations of my soul; and body. Excluding myself from an outward self, a social self. Seeing the futility in such pursuits. O, damn. The conclusions, foreseen, are without future. I wish they were without merit. The beep beep of the computer chess game brings me back to the excitement of the day. A rather devious bishop of mine has breached the wall, so to speak. Looking for a binding factor. A point of reference that can hold this mess of consciousness together. And a Rosetta Stone in order to understand it all. These are some of things I will put on my list for Santa Claus this year.

One day I will want to live in a poppy dream, somewhere pretty.

I have fears about how words sound. Too simple. Too dull. Too slow. Too habitual. When is the magical time of words going to dawn? A revolution of alphabets? The marching of letters?
I live in an inverted future; really my past.
I was broke, lonesome and my shoes were full of blood as I walked the cold streets of Paris. I walked miles and miles each day in order to save a few coins in order to gain entrance into another museum. To see masterpiece upon masterpiece until I thought no more tears could run down my face. No more pure joy could be transmitted into me without my becoming two people, there, then and permanently, to boot. It was a re-birth in the midst of one more light going out.
A trick to save money at the museums: go to the gift shop and look at the postcards of the collection. If there is a painting that you have to see live, well then you pay. If not you might buy a p.c. or two still coming out ahead from the admission price. Often the equivalent of a rewarding beer in a smoky and warm cafe nearby.
It's all about realizing that money and how it's saved and how it's spent is a very fluid motion. It must always be moving in order for more to come along. Logic that is.
Anyways, one of my days I arrived at the Musee de Picasso. I was enjoying it very much. Learning about and seeing a lot of his work in one place at one time. It wasn't until I came face to face with the painting "Man Eating an Ice Cream Cone" that I realized how very playful the masters, the true masters, the geniuses, truly are. Leading us along, showing us the way, or a way, and the power of their shared visions pulling us along like back-drafting a semi in a V.W. bus across the praries. Poetry. Belief. Harmony.
Some works are very much like a theatrical wink given so that nobody misses the irony or humour of the situation. What moxy! What chutzpah! What balls! Bravo! I cry out again Bravo!
For in all things I see 'it' in a flash. I also see the cheap imitations in a flash, a heartbeat. Transported to the heaven inspired heights and just as suddenly to fall to the depths of bad taste, mainfested misguided inspiration. (Bullocks!)
God, the mad deaf Ludwig knew it.
Sweet, beatitudinal Blake knew it.
Montreal's own Mordecai Richler knew it.
There is a long and worthy list of those that exalted in it.
I'll tell ya a secret. It could have only come from one thing, simply: LOVE.

there's a first for everything; once.

Um, well thinking about starting this off w/ some kind of a great bang. Y'know like taking on all the evil in the world, inviting it to a Ball of some kind and then playing accordian music all night.
So, instead of a great big bang it would seem this beginning is going to be a slow one. My fingers are a bit itchy and the thoughts are knocking on the door to be let out but something is holding me back.
I'm going to think on it. I will return.