End of the World in the Big Lots Parking Lot

I had a dream the other night where Dua Lipa was giving a concert in the parking lot of a big box store that was on fire. She performed next to large shipping containers while we all sat on ratty lawn chairs. They were green and white plaid.

There's something to be said about not giving into despair even in the face of certain doom. Dance in the parking lot. Be the band on the Titanic, play until the water takes you.

As I turn the dream, and the metaphor of the band, over in my head, I realize that the metaphors for perseverance that I know seem to no longer work. In the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century we are so accustomed to playing until we can physically no longer go on that the very idea of not doing it is strange to consider. There are so many swords hanging over us that the sky is all sharp points.

The world is ending and we will still have our fun. And the waters will rise around us and we will continue until we can't and that is just true. We've been playing and the water has been rising. For decades. So what does one do with a broken metaphor when the water is still coming?

A broken platitude or metaphor becomes a zombie saying. Something that we all understand but is so divorced from itself that silence would be better. I don't believe that meaning can be reattached once it's lost. Broken things can only be assembled in a simulacrum of the original. And the new meaning will always be there as well. Maybe we're way passed sayings being helpful anyway.

In the dream, we danced and had fun while the building burned. On the Titanic the band really did keep playing. We even think we know what song was the last played.

I leap to thinking about individual vs collective responsibility. How we put up blinders to both protect ourselves and to turn off our responsibility. I lived in New York long enough that I tend to walk by people with their hands out on the street. This isn't a ding against cities, it's an acknowledgement that to live in the US today, you have to find ways to exist. Sometimes existing means ignoring those who are struggling more than you because if you stop to try and help all of them, you will go under yourself.

If there were to be an idealized takeaway from the COVID-19 pandemic, it would be that we find a more concrete version of collective responsibility. A better version. One where we can openly discuss the lines between personal, individual responsibility, and the greater collective one.

This is obviously not happening.

One look at the news will point out that many, possibly most, have instead found a more insidious shade of righteous selfishness in the aftermath. A truly lost opportunity if there ever was one in modern history.

It's inviting to make a claim like "we owe each other more than this", but it's a bit of a false narrative. The collective good should outweigh the personal unless it will cause harm. Ultimately we owe ourselves to be better. But seeing that is difficult. Forest for the trees - which is a metaphor that still works. Though a metaphor where the original version was "he who sees no wood for trees" which has a totally different connotation to the modern version.

The individual isn't really capable of change at the level needed anyway. Unless you are incredibly wealthy, most individuals are only capable of small changes. The big stuff, the putting out the fire stuff, takes a group working as one. And the putting out the big fires, takes governments, the rich, and corporations. If the world around us just pops back to pre-pandemic ways, it's hard to push against that when you need an ever increasing in cost roof over your head. It's a question of scale. Where is the line between what I can do and what I cannot?

It's a gray area that is dependent on the person doing the work and the work needing to be done. And again, the good being done amplifies the more people working towards it.

An example of sorts: It has been drilled into the public that it is up to us to fix climate change. Drive less, recycle more, get a bike, use less plastic, eat a plant-based died, cut down on beef, etc etc etc. Every major drive to course correct on climate change that I've witnessed in my lifetime has focused on the personal level. And personal, small scale, change does help, just not at a scale that impacts the massive undertaking in front of us. We are way passed volunteering to clean up a roadside as a means to impact the climate.

When you learn that BP invented the concept of the personal carbon footprint and sold it to the world as a means to distract from their corporate culpability it's hard to take any of the things that individuals do to combat climate change seriously. Corporations have spent billions convincing us that we are to shoulder the weight of many aspects of modern life that are simply out of our hands.

The attitude that only we can change things, that we must because governments and corporations will not has bled throughout culture. It is a broken social contract. You can see the results in the US in the disintegration of public trust for institutions. The obvious, dangerous, endpoints that spiral out of this inward focus can be seen in events minor to international. Not wearing a mask to dumping trash on the side of the road to storming a capitol building.

The tirelessness of continuing to carry on in the face of all of this is supposedly virtuous. An attempt to stem some kind of tide. But in 2022 it feels like this concept has been boiled down into a strange parody of itself. Working 10-hour days 6 days a week with no time off is virtue. Today, going down with the ship means holding onto the computer keyboard so you can get that report out before the waves get you.

I'm not advocating for giving up. But the energy needs to be refocused onto those who can actually effect change at scale. The billionaires, the governments, the corporations.

Obviously there is a movement to correct some this going on - at least in the workplace. Unions are once again rising in the US, and wages seem to be going up in a real way for the first time in decades. People are talking about work life balance in ways that aren't about optimizing their time off. Real discussions are happening. But it is hard not to be cynical about what will occur in the next 18 months as the US and the world moves further out of pandemic mode. Toxic patterns that have been hard-wired are hard to break and we've been here before.

Underestimating the power of the wealthy and corporations to reaffirm their dominance even in the face of immense tragedy is a losing game. Every single one of the band members on the Titanic died that night. Only 3 of the 8 bodies were found. And the company that did the booking for the White Star Line sent a bill for the lost uniforms to the grieving families. Public outrage led to those bills being voided, but they should never have been sent in the first place.

Corporations should not be considered people under the law. Their money should be out of politics. They should have limits on the demands to their employees. Billionaires should not exist full stop. Governments should not be afraid of saying these things, or of acting on these issues. And all the above should be the ones being asked to make the largest sacrifices to protect the world around us.

I'm all for shaming the devil. So let's fucking dance. Let's focus on the small things we can do. Let's pick up a bucket and toss some water on the fire in front of us. But let's also think about how and when the fire started and who is responsible for putting it out completely.

RELATED READING:

• Sweetest Pie // Megan Thee Stallion & Dua Lipa
• Musicians of the Titanic
• The Damaging Myth of Individual Culpability // Alison Heslin
• The Dangerous Myth of the Individual Carbon Footprint // Tabitha Whiting

Poem-A-Day #325 : On the Evening Before the Inauguration of the 45th President of the United States

On the Evening Before the Inauguration of the 45th President of the United States

The cold has sat on my face - holed up
in the caves of my sinuses

I sleep - wake
sit with the cat
an endless stream of movies runs by

I feel as though I am waiting for someone to come home

I have strange sentimental thoughts about an ex-boyfriend
and almost text him
but do not - and this proves something

I fall asleep and miss the sunset - it is the night and it is cold outside
the snow from last week melts and turns into mud

I found a patch of rust on the hood of my car this morning
a pock or orange-red amid the green - it is rough to the touch
it is probably spreading - I think about ways to patch it

Are there patches

I noticed that the cat is walking stiffly - that
age is creeping in him

Age is creeping everywhere

I math - I will be 39 in 2020 - the cat will be 17
will possibly not be here - will have turned into glass

On the eve of my 40th birthday will I know where I am

There is a progression of things - I told my class today
write towards the future
because whatever you write will date the second it is done
and the future needs you in ways the present does not

A moment of folding occurs

Tonight the world will go to sleep and I will not set an alarm
at 9:30 in the morning things will occur that I will not see
paths before us will have quietly lessened - and multiplied

Poem-A-Day #323 : Amber Alert

Amber Alert

Across the restaurant phones begin to siren
a child has been kidnapped
people glance          silence
               some read

A woman mumbles
she thought she had turned it off
she shows her friends how to turn it off

White sedan with New Mexico license plates
tinted windows

The child is 5          was wearing red
               shoes that light up

Normalcy returns
near immediate
a few moments and a single phone
repeats the sound

A muffle in someone's bag
embarrassed to be there
               no one looks up

And it must be ok
because within 8 hours they find them
they arrest the man
               the child goes home

It must be
because despite no one helping
everything went well

Poem-A-Day #319 : Oracle 1990s

Oracle 1990s

In the 90s - a sense of end times - the fall
of airplane engines from the sky

We would hoard water until we had no place to sleep -

There was that drill - under your desk - hands
up and over your head - head
down and in your lap

The same thing for tornadoes - useless -

A sense that oral sex could only occur in the Oval Office - that
everything was going to get worse before it got Star Trek -

You used to be able to see the horizon - now. . .

Poem-A-Day #306 : Alien

Alien

I want to go to Mars -

They are sending them in - are going to give them the keys to the place
experiments and the building of bubbles to live in

I dream of the bubble housing the smaller bubbles

The small growing things in the shield of man-made ecosystem

Think about the likes on those selfies -

God this is boring - is broken - there is a sense that a hole in the window would send everything in this world into space

It will freeze there

Lose itself in the not-black not-dark

Why don't we have a word for the color of space - the vacuum of our heads

I want to go to Mars -

Put on that suit - drift in the expanse for years - and come out the other side alone
where I would send cryptic emails and video messages

Where I would piss on the dead sand of that planet and make castles from the mud

Mainly -
I don't want to talk to people anymore

And that is the thing that resonates - the internet has left me not wanting to hear or be heard

I long for a rotary phone that only clicks and never receives but that's not true because Candy Crush -

Here is the buoy in the open wilds of imagination - it blinks seven times
is silent -
is even and calm - it only knows what fingers have touched it tell it to know

It beckons -

Poem-A-Day #294 : English

English

Let's again discuss language

It is unable to explain the noise of cars on the road
the color of breath in cold

Language does not know how to talk about feelings

It muddles across the page the best it can

A sort of clawing thing a hand
reaching never quite reaching

Poem-A-Day #292 : Refusal

Refusal

I hear that you don't want the flag to burn
that you believe we are divided
and our hands are hurting for lack of holding

Across the table I see your eyes
they are reflecting and moving like fish in a bowl
'darting' is a word that one would use to describe them

I must confess that I am tired of kumbaya
and have little interest in comforting anyone
this is perhaps a broken part of my soul

Your words bounce around the white space
they say things like 'politics is boring' and
'we must move beyond' and 'color isn't real'

I want to throw water in your face
slam your head into the wall until everything cracks
I want there to be blood when I am done

There is the sound of winter from the doorway
a sort of whisper death come to sit at the table

The flag will burn and your hands will grow cold
is what it seems to be saying

Again
this could be a fracture in myself

The idea that nothing is politics is a refusal
a turn from the world from ourselves

Politics is just a fancy word for feelings
which you seem deeply concerned with

Poem-A-Day #199 : Instructions for How to Engage with Art

Instructions for How to Engage with Art

The canvas wants you to touch it
to run your fingers against the raised strokes

Feel the ochre burnt and otherwise

It wants you to lose yourself in it
to become so encased in its universe
that you will not escape unchanged or at all

It wants to yellow wallpaper you

All of this is contingent on the artist
understanding the canvas well enough
to reveal the need within it

All of this requires you to step closer

To press your chest against the Mona Lisa and to search for her pulse
Take your clothes off and jump into The Water Lilly Pond

Be naked and covered

Poem-A-Day #194 : Fragment

Fragment

The world is full of platitudes wanting everyone to get along
They slap against the faces of people who have felt the other side of the boot
Violence was ok as long as it was the kind dealt by European faces
Over the last millennia over the last for ever
We do not get to decide our histories
Nor do we get to decide when those stories are done with us

Don't Breathe

*
Water scares the shit out of me.

A day on a boat. Swimming in a lake. Spending time at a pool. These things do not calm me. To this day they call up a set of pre-made plans of escape.

The fear manifests in subtle ways.

Because I couldn't handle water in my face I insisted on baths until well into my teens.

The ocean is almost too much water to be afraid of so I can be near larger bodies of water without too much of a problem. I can even wade into water a bit. My height allows me to get fairly far out before I become buoyant. It isn't until then that the concern kicks in.

I'd be terrible on a cruise and have often thought about how I would deal with that situation. None of them are good solutions as they usually involve hiding from windows and fresh air.


*
I love horror movies.

The more full of tropes the better. I live for the moment when victims go up the stairs when they should go out the door. When they don't check to see that the villain is dead. I love trying to guess who will be the 'last girl' and who will die first.

Fede Alvarez
Photo by Gage Skidmore

It's a game. It's silly. It rarely scares me for real.

This evening I saw Don't Breathe. The movie was directed and written by Fede Alvarez. He also was responsible for the surprisingly good remake of Evil Dead from 2013

The premise is deceptively simple: three thieves enter a house owned by a blind vet to steal his money. The vet is not what he appears.

Where the movie enters into greatness is in how the premise reveals itself and plays out.

This is a brutal movie. It does not relent. The final act manages to up the ante of the film while subtly referencing horror tropes.

And it does this without being overly gruesome or falling into the pitfalls of torture porn that has ruined a lot of horror films in the years after the successes of the Saw series.


*
This circles around a question that I have about horror movies.

What scares us?

I'm sure that you have an example like mine. But these things are not what I'm actually interested in. Most horror movies don't actually depend on the things we are really afraid of. They play off making us jump and our natural inclination to be turned off by gore and death.

What I'm thinking about though is more what scares US. Collectively and culturally. What are WE afraid of.

Horror doesn't always feed off of cultural fears. But they inform it. The 80s were full of films featuring nameless, powerful, murderers coming after groups of beautiful youths. These fears can easily be tied to cultural fears of lawlessness and cold war fears of the 'other'.


*
Don't Breathe is set in Detroit. Most of the movie takes place in a lone house in an otherwise abandoned neighborhood.

It Follows was released in March of 2015 but made its way slowly into theaters. The story is, again, deceptively simple. A monster chases a young woman and wants to kill her. What sets it apart is that the monster is sexually transmitted. You have to fuck your way out of the death. This is a pretty good upending of the classic trope from 80s movies where the people who have sex usually die early in the movie.

The two movies both use traditional tropes to both utilize them and to break them. Though they do this while maintaining tension and refusing to make fun of the genre.

These are not the Scream movies. There is not an attempt to undermine or mine the genre.

Did you notice that both are set in Detroit? It's key to what I think scares America most in 2016. We are not afraid of terrorism, immigration, or any of that.

We are afraid of collapse.


*
Since the 1950s Detroit has experienced a 60% drop in population and even though the metro area of the city still has 4.3 million citizens Detroit has become the poster-child for what happens when an economy collapses in the 21st century.

This is what scares us.

The idea that a once-prosperous and important place could become unimportant and less wealthy goes against everything that American Capitalism promises. It proves us fallible. It says that the American Dream has cracks in it.

Setting these horror movies amid the collapse is a cunning representation of a new fear. The creature from It Follows and the vet from Don't Breathe also have faces. They are not the masked monsters from the 80s. They are people who look normal. They are us responding to collapse.

Interestingly, both movies also focus on white protagonists. And both manage to show a Detroit void of minorities. So it is not just collapse in general but specifically white collapse that is the source of fear. Don't Breathe renders this in literal terms with a brief appearance of a white supremacist. Both films also point out that the 'bad' parts of town are not where our protagonists live. They are not the white parts.

The danger is in the collapse. The breaking. And in the breaking the real danger is in what we do in response.

Do we retreat into our corners and stare at each other in fear. Lashing out when one comes close to us.

Or do we try to build something new.

Poem-A-Day #180 : Modern

Modern

In the bent metal siding your reflection is a mass of muted shades hard to label as you
though there is want to see you in the not you

Broken water is what all of this feels like
stone tossed into the lake then gone forever and then all you want is the stone that is gone

This is not a breakup poem these are words about the self about the missing thing
the thing that never was anyway but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


This is the curse of the bent metal reflected word the blobs of color across its surface are static
there is no nostalgia nostalgia is for nostalgia

I want to say you are beautiful but how do we say that
@--'--,-- I suppose or I like your colors reflected in this space tell me what they look like for real

THIS! 6/17/16 : The Super Queer Edition

I'm going to revive THIS! my Friday list of things that were catching my interest for the last week. I will be up front on this - it may not happen every week.


1) Small Town Security

This show is so insane. I cannot even explain it. It aired on AMC after Breaking Bad from 2012-2014. The premise for this unscripted show is really simple: a small town security firm owned and operated by Joan Koplan in Ringgold, Georgia is followed by cameras. The end. It's a basic weird workplace reality show, except...it's really REALLY weird.

Joan is basically Roseanne. Except even less likable, but that somehow makes her more likable? And she has a series of tiny dogs. And battles cancer and other illnesses that dominate the third season.

Joan's head of security is Dennis Starr Croft. He lives in the office. He's a transman, which is revealed early in the first season. This is one of the lease interesting things about the show but the handling of his trans status is treated with compassion and amazing nuance. He goes on dates. He discusses surgery. He deals with bigots.

Joan's husband Irwin is there too. But he basically wonders around in the background and goes off and does the strangest things imaginable. Like manage a roller derby team or become obsessive about mini golf.

The weird sneaks in in the surreal, almost Twin Peaks moments of just...oddness. Irwin roller skating backwards while humming as a disco ball fills the strangely red space with points of light. One episode begins with the security team in a shoot out using machine guns, but it's Joan fleshing out the plot to a new training video. The original McGruff the Crime Dog actor comes to help them reach out to children, but due to copyright they can't use his name or let him speak while in costume...and the final episode involves Dennis' theory that Joan is actually an alien sent to earth to save us...I mean...come on.

Only season 3 is on Netflix, which is a crime against culture, but you should still watch it.



2) Katie O'Neill's Princess Princess

Princess Princess tells the story of Princess Amira and Princess Sadie. It begins as a traditional Disney-ish fairy tale. Girl in tower needs saving, other girl saves her. It quickly dovetails into a tale of two princesses kicking ass, saving the boys, and falling in love. And it is a great representation of two kinds of femininity.

It's beautifully drawn and so awesomely cute that it hurts. It's available for free at the link above or to purchase (which you should do - support queer artists) on Amazon.

Katie's Tumblr is also fun. Give her some love.



3)  Frog & Toad

Arnold Lobel's classic children's series about amphibian best friends began in 1970 with Frog and Toad are Friends. Between 1970 and 1979 4 books would be published, all amazing and wonderful and so so so worth revisiting. They are about love and friendship and just goodness.

Lobel came out as gay in 1974 at the height of Frog & Toad fame. He kept this mostly a secret from the general public, which, as a children's author was probably smart in the 70s. He died in 1987 from an AIDS related heart attack at the age of 54.

The New Yorker just ran this amazing article by Colin Stokes about Lobel and his sadly forgotten biography. But the article puts for a shockingly simple idea - the Frog & Toad stories are about same-sex love. A relationship that is presented as platonic, obviously but take a look at this plot summary from the article:

Take, for instance, the story “Alone,” from “Days with Frog and Toad,” in which Toad goes to Frog’s house to visit him but finds a note on the door that reads, “Dear Toad, I am not at home. I went out. I want to be alone.” Toad begins to experience a little crisis: “Frog has me for a friend. Why does he want to be alone?” Toad discovers that Frog is sitting and thinking on an island far from the shore, and he worries that Frog isn’t happy and doesn’t want to see him anymore. But, when they meet (after Toad falls headfirst into the water and soaks the sandwiches he’s made for lunch), Frog says, “I am happy. I am very happy. This morning when I woke up I felt good because the sun was shining. I felt good because I was a frog. And I felt good because I have you for a friend. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to think about how fine everything is.” In the end, the trials of their relationship are worth bearing, because Frog and Toad are most content when they’re together.

And sure, you could say this is a reach, but seriously, go read these stories again. They are about the strong emotional ties between two male characters. And it's kinda revolutionary when you begin to think about it in context to a society that has a hard time letting boys feel anything, let alone love for another male.

Poem-A-Day #105 : Ça va

Ça va

At some pointI will laugh
until my head comes off

The lines of my mouth stretching until the skull
pops like one of those plastic easter eggs
there will be nothing inside
save the remnants of an abandoned spaceship
that you lost when you were 5

This is the only sane response
to the story of easter and to mass killings
that feels appropriate

The skullcap makes a great bowl or so I'm told
it's one of those rhetorical things
that we know but don't Know

Recently I was explaining trepanning to some horrified person
they didn't understand that the hole is a hole
that you could blow into it like the end of a Nintendo cartridge
keep those webs away and those bits forming levels
there was confusion that it would repair itself reknit bind
and of course it heals skin covers everything eventually
but I mean a hole in your head is a goddamn hole in your head

There is a joke in this
somewhere a man drives
to a bar and opens fire

All those people opening like gifts
blood ribboning into the night
what song was playing when it happened

We are unaware of how much we tear each other apart
and until we get to the yellow fatty bits and the bone
it is hard to cease our hands
now tell me we both matter don't we
look beautiful in the reflection of moonlight off pavement

I imagine the bowl that was my skull
it is full of candy
there are so many hands that cannot be bitten

Skull of girl (3500 BCE), Natural History Museum, Lausanne

The Blank Screen

Jason Shulman - 2001: A Space Odyssey

The above image is a time elapse photo of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. It takes a familiar medium, film, and renders it unintelligible. There are objects within the image, but holding them for long becomes tenuous.

English photographer Jason Shulman has been getting a lot of press lately for these images. It began, as far as I could tell, with a piece in Wired on May 9th. From there, the story has been 'picked up' by various reblog sites. This trend of posting another sources news to your own website as if you came up with it is an odd internet for of the Associated Press that I'm both ok and really wary of. But that's another discussion.

J.M.W. Turner -
Rain, Wind, and Speed - The Great Western Railway (1844)

The images are beautiful. They recall the works of J.M.W. Turner, I have professed my love before.

In some of the photos you can make out distinct images from the movies. The above 2001 image, for instance clearly showcases the red light of Hal at the center of the frame.

And while they most strongly resemble Turner or more abstract painters like Rothko or even Pollack, I was immediately struck by an omission from the discussion.

From the Wired article:

Shulman lives and works in London, and typically creates sculptures. During the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics he decided to test an idea he had about photography, which basically involved shooting the Games without going to Russia. He trained a camera on his television and took long exposure photos of athletes in motion. Most of the events he recorded were brief, leading him to wonder what might happen if he shot longer stretches of action.

And I don't doubt that this is the inspiration that Shulman's idea originated from but...

Hiroshi Sugimoto - Akron Civic Theater, Ohio (1980)

This is a photo by Hiroshi Sugimoto taken in 1980. It is a long exposure of a movie screen playing a movie. As a result of the black and white film and long exposure the screen becomes a clean white omnipresent eye hovering over the audience that appear, albeit as nearly unrecognizable smears in their seats. He started this series in 1978. His description:

Different movies give different brightnesses. If it's an optimistic story, I usually end up with a bright screen; if it's a sad story, it's a dark screen. Occult movie? Very dark.

The Guardian ran a great gallery of this series on March 1 of this year.

Interestingly both the National and Tate galleries in London have Sugimoto pieces in their permanent collection. And there was a full exhibit of his work in 2004 at the Serpentine Gallery. Also in London. Where Shulman lives.

Hiroshi Sugimoto - Lightening Fields 128 (2008)

Now. I'm not calling this stealing. I'm not even going to really blast Shulman because artists can and should find inspiration where it lies and I don't think this is malicious or intentional.

Inspiration comes odd, when it comes. And it's not always clear even to the creator where the seed idea came from. And that's what I'm guessing occurred here.

Shulman can be excused for not knowing a photographer since he works mainly in sculpture. I don't know every writer, so I'm going to give him a pass.

The people writing articles about him on the other hand. These are people paid to look into topics. A quick search online brings up Sugimoto's work. And that work was featured in Wired in 2014. Sugimoto's work has been in Wired at least 5 times, the most recent one in January of this year. So I don't blame Shulman. I blame bad reporting.

Because Sugimoto's work is really well-known. His experiments in photography are diverse and well-documented. He spent a few years shooting electricity at photo-sensitive panels. He photographs wax figures in a way to make them look like living people. He's an odd dude.

Hiroshi Sugimoto - Fidel Castro (1999)

And that's the problem.

In all of this press about Shulman and his movie photos there is not one mention of Sugimoto. A Japanese man who has spent the better part of 60 years innovating and experimenting in his genre.

Let me be clear. Both works can, and should, be praised. They are working towards different ends. Shulman seems interested purely in what each film looks like filmed this way, in the aesthetic of the result. Sugimoto is interested in everything but the movie. He is interested in the rooms, the people, the eeriness of sitting in a room staring at nothingness for a few hours. He is interested in the time it took to film it, what it says about that time.

And this is where I will say something bad about Shulman. One of these artists is creating works that ask us to inspect ourselves and out space. The other is making a pretty picture.

Poem-A-Day #86 : The Road

The Road

It's not so much that everything has been done
things are just the same as they've always been

man is man so...

               I'm trying to be nice about this

     but it's tiring to see people make claims about the breaking of the world

and not just sigh...

There is no road less travelled
just roads less defined
ambiguous meandering ambiguously

Here is a story: someone does some thing it doesn't matter what and someone looses their life savings as a result and in anger they pull a gun and the police come and there are more guns and how this ends is obvious to everyone even if it is shown that the thing done is terrible and the first person is at fault...

Perhaps molecules can only arrange themselves in so many ways

                    and maybe those arrangements can only interact in so many ways

          and those interactions can only happen so often

And they burn out ?
to be replaced by ?

So here's that road
worn and clear of overgrowth the ruts of wheels deep

man is man so...
               might as well...

Poem-A-Day #66 : Political Poem No.2

Political Poem No.2

The book ends with a scene of a woman and a man in the rain
her pregnant belly revealed - her sudden acceptance of the way the wind blows

He looks at her and begs her for status

And in that rain - the book bleeds off the page - her pregnant belly
is the room you are sitting in - hard with life - pulsing in the sounds of cloud

And this book from Mozambique across 14 years of translation

Opens the door into something - a pit - a sort of repetition of thought
it prolongs the moment and shortens it - is this universe his

That there is no clear answer to that question is perhaps the literal end of colonialism

And that the answer is not as simple as yes or no - is also a sign
that there is no end - that there is never an end - that rising begets collapsing

Tired from the climb and the balancing

• The scene described is form the book The First Wife by Pauline Chiziane

Poem-A-Day #53 : Thoughts on the Death of Prince

Thoughts on the Death of Prince

Every time someone famous dies you post that picture of Kanye West
where the reporter is disappointed to find him still alive -

And I get it

                    But I don't really

Tonight at the bar this guy made a joke about Queen Elizabeth's birthday
and why did Prince have to die when this 90 year old white woman is still going

And I mean

                    Sure - Imperialism sucks - but really -

I think about the first time I became aware of sexuality - watching
this man in butt-less pants sing about getting off on MTV

And the moment - expanded

                    And being a boy became less of a box

I know he became homophobic later in life - I know he moved into
a strange brew of anti-sex and religion that was definitely a contradiction
with his music -

And I get all of that

                    But I don't really

Because I want to say that people die - that they do - that they go
and we have no control and if anything threaded from Lovesexy to HitNRun

                    It was that we don't live forever

That we should - just possibly - enjoy these bodies while we have them

Poem-A-Day #36 : O'Hara

O'Hara

MoMA the battlefield, the broken edifice

I am looking for O’Hara – there must be stains

Some part of his newspaper in a corner – something

about the day that Hart Crane died

There are only cell phones stalking the Van Goughs

Yoko Ono’s invisible instructions

            scream.

1.     against the wind

2.     against the wall

3.     against the sky

Sellers : When Breath Becomes Air

When Breath Becomes Air
Author: Paul Kalanithi
Publisher: Random House (1/12/16)
256p

This isn't about this specific man's life or death.

I know little about either, though his story has been all over various mainstream media outlets, I've actively only read the bare facts. I have little interest in stories that fall into the 'human interest' category. The kind of thing that is discussed in hushed tones on the Today show. I have little interest in these stories beyond the headline and one sentence break down.

These kinds of stories are culturally woven into us. Many people enjoy clicking on the links to stories about the person who saved the dog from the highway. The kid who was dead for a few minutes and what they saw there. The person who raised a ton of foster kids being thrown a big party.

We are drawn to tales that highlight our humanity. Our best selves. This is how we've ended up with a book published 10 months after a man's death topping the bestseller list.

It is important to note that Paul Kalanithi was neither a 'known' person nor a writer before his diagnosis with cancer. It's important because this book exists because of that diagnosis, and the marketability of it as a 'story'. The newly graduated doctor in his 30s suddenly realizing that his priorities are off that his life is actually at its end. What does he do, and by extension, what would we do.

I feel like I must defend myself from imagined readers up in arms over me trashing this dead man's book. Which, I'm not. By all accounts the book is an interesting look at being young, and educated, and expecting of a long life only to have it all thrown out the window by a diagnosis. These kinds of stories are important. They teach us something about what it means to live every day, what is important.

So no, I'm not going to trash this book.

I'm more interested in the posthumous book as a cultural trope.

We put a lot of power into 'last thoughts'. The final breath before leaving this world. Call it a religious hangover in a secular society. And yes, I know, that is debatable, but...

Why do we do this?

Is it an attempt to see the other side before we get there? Those who are very ill, who are near death, are thought to be - to quote from Tony Kushner - "at the very threshold of revelation." They can see into some space we, the healthy, cannot. Supposedly.

There is a whole genre of books by the dying. To the point that it is a morbid cliche that a diagnosis, especially in youth, can net you a book deal if you can write about your illness in an enlightening and comforting way.

That 'if' is key.

We don't want a book about how fucked up being in your early 30s and dying is. We don't want to see you suffering, unless that suffering can somehow teach you, and by extension, us how to live better lives. We need a cliched 'happy ending' tied up in your tragedy. You, who are dying, what can you tell us about living better since you will not.

Oliver Sacks was a fascinating man. Culturally, he held this space that I would liken to Neil deGrasse Tyson or Bill Nye. He was a pop intelligence. A man who could make big ideas feel close, small, relatable. His post-death collection of essays, Gratitude, was published only months after his death in 2015. This quote sums it and my point up nicely:

“My predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved. I have been given much and I have given something in return. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.”

I want to be careful. It is tempting to classify these books as a sort of grief-porn. And they do fall in to that vein. Even the best of this genre of books will play with that emotion. They are, at their base, meant to make us sad. Make us think about death and life and our choices. They are reflective, and thus, they are about feelings.

A feeling we don't talk about much. At least, not in western culture.

Joan Didion has made a strange shift at the end of her career. She is now the oracle of death. And while her writing has always had the air of melancholy and reflection, it has now become full-blown sermonizing on the topic of endings.

Her duo The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights are, if anything, elegies/eulogies. She has somehow survived death, though I would argue that many readers/fans/literati believe these two books to be her final books. There is an air of 'the end' about them.

Even though we all experience death, we somehow need a Joan Didion, a Oliver Sacks, a Paul Kalanithi to explain it to us.

These books become our coping mechanism.

We don't allow death into our lives, so we ask a great penance of those who can access it while still with us.

You, who are dying, tell me how to live.


Sellers is my attempt to examine what books are topping the best-seller list and why. To talk about and understand the trends in popular writing.

Warsh

I often think about the ways languages change.

Over time standards move.

The Guardian spent some time running down the ways English evolves.

The one that stands out to me is Epenthesis. This is when a consonant appears where there isn't one. The examples given are 'thunder' and 'empty'. These words used to be 'thuner' and 'emty'. The example of a word that this is in the process of happening to is 'hamster'. Most people insert a 'p' in there.

This brings to mind the word 'wash'. In central Pennsylvania you will hear it pronounced as 'warsh'.

A lot of people get really caught up being bothered by this.

Say the word 'balm' out loud. If you pronounce the 'l' you are a part of this shifting language. That 'l' was left out. Until very recently.

I can't. Language is beautiful because it isn't a pure thing. We change, borrow, and steal to make it what it is. And I'm happy to see it living and breathing and becoming something new.

Think about people 100 years from now not understanding our spelling and syntax. It's a trippy thought, but take a look at syntax and language from the late 1800s sometime. It will explode your view of how quickly language shifts.

I've recently begun teaching a class on contemporary North American plays. We were reading Jose Rivera's Marisol. We began by talking about the early 90s. The kids in the class are all int heir early 20s so they were babies in the 90s.

Babies.

We talked about the weirdness of that time. The L.A. riots, the Tailhook scandal, the first World Trade Center bombing, abortion clinic bombings, the mere fact that Nirvana became #1 and a week earlier Michael Jackson was...

There was a sense that culture was in upheaval.

It made me realize that culture shifts quickly the same way language does. That what matters in 1992 will be strange and hard to explain in 2014.

That time and place are impermanent.

))))mind expands((((