it was like someone hit a bell and the clarity and simplicity of its sound keeps reverberating in my head.
experience is unconditional. how simple: that which happens to us happens.
what, then, are the mechanisms that condition our experience?
i've been thinking about this in the context, of say poking fun at Sarah Palin (she doesn't seem to realize Africa is a continent).
Is it dismissive or disdainful when I label 59 million people who voted (a second time) for bush as stupid?
i wonder how our reactions to those of others might condition experience and the ensuing interactions among us. what am i filtering out that makes it near impossible for me to understand teaching creationism as science? it isn't so much that i mind another view point, but come on. it is religion. not science. or is it?
But don't worry, I'm not insulted. I'd be the first one to tell you that I'm a terrible choice for hostessing Writing in the Raw. "No batter" indeed...
And although I've had months to ponder the concept, I have nothing to say, and even less inclination to do so. There hasn't been a reasonable, coherent, or relevant thought in my head for quite some time now. It's been lovely.
hey! a quick update and reminder for the next three months of writing in the raw
June 5th: Rusty1776
June 12th: Alma
June 19th: geomoo
June 26th: keirdubois
July 3rd: Rusty1776
July 10th: tahoebasha3
July 17th: dharmasyd
July 24th: 73rd virgin (maybe she'll tell us what that means?)
July 31st: dharmasyd
August 7th: Rusty1776
August 14th: RiaDarlin'
August 20th: ek hornbeck
August 28th: srkp23
i'd like to prevail upon undercovercalico, Victory Coffee, RiaD, and Shaharazade for September. ucc said she needs to see her work schedule before committing to date. so if the others could commit without a definite date until i know ucc's avail, that would be great.
9/11 falls on a thursday this year... so perhaps srkpy, as a new yorker, would like that spot.
if you are on the schedule, let me know you've read this and are still available.
i really didn't have time to write much. but i didn't want anybody else to take this evening either. it is the last writing in the raw i'll do from the states for a while, so even with a sparse essay, i think i'll keep it for myself.
actually, it's after 10pm as i start writing this. so it will be brief.
i'm packed. ready to go. exhausted. i'll definitely blog from the airport tomorrow. i usually pay to get into the business lounge... for $45, you get fruit, cheese, coffee/tea, cookies, alcohol, tv, internet and a little desk from which you blog, and a comfy, quiet place to zone out for a few hours. premium wine/alcohol will cost you... hey Mu, might be one of the tips for your travel space.
okay. so that's it.
well, and i'll explain the title. just a bit.
getting on that plane tomorrow is amazing. there have been difficult times and yet, somehow, ej and i managed to hold onto to each other. over the phone. one-line e-mails. packages filled with small fetish items. a sense of humor. and well, we just get along. whenever i'm with him, by heart rate slows (unless you know...), i become very at ease. i smile a lot. i'm actually funny when i'm relaxed and not thinking about George Bush et al.
i sleep really well when i sleep with him. and when we get up, he has this funny little fresh face, squinty eyes and he's smiling. maybe he looks a little like a baby bird or something. but it touches my heart. and it inspires me to get up and make coffee and cook breakfast.
we hold hands. we like the way each other smells. we think it's funny when strangers fall down or break something in a store (but we don't really want anybody to be really hurt). we love to go to museums. or find secret gardens. we like to wander in cities and towns. oh. and we both love madly medieval cathedrals and churches.
he likes to cook. i like to eat. he likes to complain. i like to sit, cross-legged, and listen and laugh at him and how he, in a very animated fashion, counts off each absurdity with his fingers.
i tell him everything has a shelf life. if we're lucky, we'll just die together, around 99 years old, in a plane crash or car accident. because i always see us together, old and beautiful. and i just know i'll love him even more then... the two of us always walking, looking at the world together, my hand in the pocket of his old jacket.
(isn't that the title!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - promoted by pfiore8)
But regardless of that, I do believe in exclamation marks...and always have. They exist, I've seen them. And I've used them on many occasions! Even when they're completely unwarranted!
See?!
More inappropriate punctuation, a dozen or so YouTube clips, and completely disjointed and non-sensical 'semi-goodbye' ramblings and thoughts from a complete fool who was drunk during the writing of a good part of this "thing" continue down below the "fold", "jump", or whatever you want to call it...
I bring the funk below, and depending on how fast you read; probably a bit more than 5 minutes -
It's a roller coaster ride. A tumbling act. We let words loose to persuade, describe, exclaim, defame, refute, convince, lie, confuse, or clarify.
We take stands, have platforms, craft mission statements and credos, construct constitutions, and write theses and treatises. We're busy alright. Conquering worlds with words... and sometimes the horizons explode. Sometimes all light is lost.......
It's all about having something to do, really. About how you keep your creative brain churning when it's already spent the entire workday creating for other people. About how you can make music by yourself when the guys in the band have all moved away so gigs & rehearsals are rare and special. About being selfish. About lying your fucking head off. About writing what you know, with deliberate mistakes. About lots of things that won't be crammed into a riffy list. Abou...yeah, well, you know.
The backstory is not important. It will only get in the way and make readers guess at motivation when they should just enjoy the story. Because hey, even amateurs and dilettantes never let the truth get in the way of a good story, right? That's right, buddy. The rules are likewise less than important. Oh really? Fuck yes. Maybe not made to be broken, but made to be bent. Bent to your will. Bent to what suits the story. Third person not honest enough? Ditch it for first-person narrative. Why trust those narrators, anyway? What have they ever done to earn that? Point A to B to C plots too boring? Duh. Okay then, how about some medeas res, dude? Eh, okay, I guess, but what else you got? Split narratives, man. Split narratives and alternating tenses? Damn, give me a goddam headache, whydoncha.
(without further ado... i give you militarytracy, raw... - promoted by pfiore8)
I'm always at choice. It's the only rule I can count on and I have come to accept with 42 years of reluctance. At this point in my life I choose to ponder Iraq daily or even hourly because the country that I have been born into has done things to Iraq that deeply conflict with the laws that my soul knows and understands. All aboard the Iraq War train. I wish I was standing on the platform though like a citizen of France maybe or a citizen of any other country that didn't invade Iraq in my lifetime, and just taking all this in from that distance. I wish that lightening had not struck my train.
On my walk to the train early Tuesday morning, I realized that my apartment building has a new resident. Or at least the property does...
He sleeps wrapped up in a blanket in the 18 inches or so between our building's far northwestern corner and the bush that runs along the edge of the sidewalk. At first glance, it's easy to mistake the man for an abandoned pile of clothing. I'm sure that's by design, and frankly I doubt even I would have noticed him at all if I hadn't dropped my keys in my early morning stupor.
And now that I've gotten my personal matters straightened out again; and I will finally leave this miserable neighborhood for good in 6 weeks to single-handedly multiply the Coolness Factor of SE Hawthorne by a factor of 10...I wonder where this man will go from here? Will he stay out this way for long? Will anybody else "catch him"? Does he even care? Does he have anything to lose?
I wonder about this man's life...but I'm never going to wake him. Does anybody ever think about him? Now, or in the recent past? Besides me, of course...
A wife? Kids? Parents, brothers, sisters...nieces, nephews?
Does he know that somebody's writing about him right now?
For rusty1776 in gratitude for his
"Writing in the Raw: Valentine Confessions"
I remember when you brought me hyacinths
We walked the path under pepper trees
Laughed our way to the beach
To play in the surf like yearling seals
And when you kissed me, your salt wet curls
Dripped ocean on my face
I was a virgin then, and you a married man
In a country with strange taboos
Yes, that's correct, I'm one of those anal retentive writers who believe in spelling and capitalization and punctuation and grammar. Links lend credibility and context.
Sometimes people mistake my style for stream of consciousness. They would be surprised to learn that almost everything is outlined and constructed. What I do is tell stories, like Garrison Keillor or Mark Twain or Dashiell Hammett. Because most of them do in fact come from personal experience while they have a middle, they seldom have a firm beginning or end; though I am always trying to make a point.
In the beginning. Where is that exactly? First the Earth was formed, then the dinosaurs came and Jesus rode them like ponies. Homer started his poems in medias res and at the beginning we are on the shores of Troy or Ithaca and have the great relief for the rest of the tedious tale that our hero makes it that far at least, so we have no serious concerns for his welfare.
Much of the rest may seem mere wandering flashbacks but because the reader has peeked ahead they are assured they will eventually get somewhere.
So every essay is also all about process as long as you learn from it.
Here I've been experimenting with form, trying to write shorter, and more political, and shorter AND more political. An ideal Front Page piece will have 200 to 500 words and at least one graphic or blockquote for visual interest. That's about 4 or five paragraphs. Not much time to get to the point.
Although I had lived, and hiked, and backpacked in the Southwest for twenty or so years, encounters with rattlesnakes were pretty rare. If one sees snakes at all, they're usually stretched across a trail or road. I had sure never encountered one where it posed a problem, like crawling into someones sleeping bag. The closest anyone I knew ever came was when I was hiking with my nephew, he once sat on a large large rock that had a rattler underneath. When it rattled, he moved. This is generally considered appropriate behavior. He might have been maybe a little too excited, and ran much farther than he needed to, but the move-away--leave-it-alone strategy is all one really needs to do in most cases. The people that do get bitten are usually young, drunk, and male.
Most people in rural areas with great hideouts like barns and woodpiles, will usually handle rattlesnake encounters with matter-of-fact blowing them away with a shotgun.
I somehow got a job at a nature sanctuary near a small town and moved there from Tucson. I had been a volunteer for a few years and Jerry, the manager, finally had the funding to hire some help. Meetings with rattlesnakes increased.
"What is a LEADER?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"A LEADER isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. It's realizing that every experience develops some latent force within you.1 You begin to understand that vision is the art of seeing the invisible2 so that when you want to build a wagon, you don't gather the other toys to collect wood or assign them tasks, but rather you teach them to long for ways to traverse the endless immensity of the backyard.3 Then you become a LEADER."
before my 16th birthday, my dad took me out for dinner. he said he figured it was time for the "sex" talk. whoo boy.
so we're at dinner and i say, dad i know about sex... haven't had it yet, but like i know about it. he says i only wanted to tell you this one thing: don't ever let anybody fuck you. if you want to fuck them, that's fine. but don't EVER let anybody fuck you. holy shit. what did he just say?
and then we both started laughing.
my father gave me one hell of a gift: the knowledge and confidence to own myself. to own my decisions. to be my own person.
yeah, you own yourself and you give yourself... don't ever let anybody take anything you are unwilling to give.
but when you let go, let giving yourself be a completing act. because it's love we all want, so make it about loving somebody.
then sex is a playground, an archeological dig. it's absurd, a comedy, a vacation of hours... it's making poetry in grunts and groans. it's about that slow reveal... the getting there...
maybe, when we stop letting others define us
maybe, when we stop letting life define us
maybe, when we start defining ourselves
we'll stop creating worlds in which we hate to live
Facts... silver bullets in the war against the ignorant, the uninformed, and the intolerant.
Facts. That's all we need. Forget love, faith, religion, God, even reason or logic. It's all about the facts. Why can't these damned neocons and wingnuts just ACCEPT the fucking FACTS???
i don't have much tonight. i thought i'd write about writing on the blogs. like how to structure these essays or diaries. how to make them work better. but suddenly, i don't want to anymore. I want to jam about Jay Elias's essay, Of Politics and People
Many of you may wonder why I have been so dogged with my "Quotes for Discussion" posts over the last year. I usually offer them up without context or commentary, and they are tangential to the point of the sites where I post them at best. Further, few people, including few of you, bother to read them or discuss them. And even more, sometimes the quotes, and my purpose in posting them, is very hard to gather. So, I'll tell you why.
I post those quotes to remind us about people, and to try to get people to think about them, often in a different way than usual for politics. Because it is easy to speak of political policy and strategy without thinking about these things, about the crucial role that people will have in them.
It is my belief that most political programs and ideas fail because they are not conceived or implemented with people in mind.
emphasis mine (and also a bit out of order of the original)
And I want to go on about Delivery in jessical's Pony Party: Oh Superman, In a Box.
March on Washington
