We Should See Other Blogs

Rasping breath of metal on metal;
exhalation of sparks against
indigo sky the singular stars;
whetstone against palm
against rough iron.
The smooth, soothing sound of sand
or war before war before
the door of dawn opens
and we resume fighting.

Drink deeply from the flask of silence:
your aborted words shout louder than
the screed could ever scream.
Let the nothing that remains
lie as the remains of something
that is or is not:
you choose.

Think deeply in your flash of silence:
too soon earth spins up like a broken record
and screeches back to life.
Let your thoughts be an anchor
to the your resolving door.
This in or this out:
you choose.

Someone in my office just told me that Norah Jones has “no talent”.

But of course, when people who listen primarily to classical music for the pretty tunes, I think it’s safe to say that Norah Jones does, in fact, have talent, but the aforementioned critics have bad taste.

And yes. I do have a high horse.

I’m posting this entry from the “Blog Entry Poster” in the Edgy repos… and hoping it works. If it does, it’ll be maybe the coolest thing I can do with Ubuntu yet.

Also, strangely enough, the Ubuntu spelling program (which I understand is not native to Ubuntu) doesn’t actually have the word “Ubuntu” in it.

Tangentially, it’s strange to see that both Ubuntu and Mac OS X have inline spelling capabilities built in, though Windows does not. It seems something trivial enough to implement, does it not? I mean, just write up an API or something, and let the developers use it as they wish.

In any case, let’s see if this works…

/goes to post entry.

• MS Word HTML Cleaner
  Works well.
  (tags: html tools web)

I have a theory: there are two kinds of people in the world. One kind enjoys music for the sake of the music, whatever that may mean: this type of person interfaces with the music in such a way that he meets the music on its level and enjoys it for what it is. Some people in this category may not be able to engage a certain kind of music in a certain kind of way, thus why some people adore post-rock and hate shoegaze, and why others love grimestep and dislike house.

The second type is by far the larger, that person who consumes music as if it were food. This person approaches music as something that’s supposed to do something or make them feel something, whether that be sad or happy. They use it as a soundtrack for their lives, and they eventually tune it out altogether. Music is a collection of different feelings put to a tune. Music is primarily about enjoyment, not art.

You may like or dislike either kind of person, but you’ll almost always be able to tell one of the latter by engaging her in a discussion on how you engage music, especially if you place yourself in the former group. If she approaches music as an art form, primarily, she will respond by either accepting or rejecting your premise and arguing or at least allowing that argument is possible.

If she approaches music as a product, she will most likely reject the idea that her music is inferior and go on to argue about how your assertion that she has bad taste makes her feel. Which is, of course, scratching exactly the same surface her music barely touches.

I’ve seen quite a few people ask this question: why, in the west, do we view explicit violence in film differently (or, more the point, take less offense from it) than we view explicit sex? And I suppose there’s an answer, but that’s tangential.

When I was kid, my dad used to watch Bond flicks; I always wondered what he saw in them. I still do; the Pierce Brosnan period of the franchise was a very silly time indeed, and he always looked a bit too much like a French waiter for my liking. Never mind the techno-obsession each movie took to a new and ridiculous hight.

However, I just finished watching Casino Royale. And it was good. Very good. Maybe even the Bond film by which all future Bond films will be judged.

That is all.

Sometimes I don’t think I’ve come to even basically grasp how self-indulgent blogs are. I read my ramblings–including this post, which is after all just my thought about my thoughts–and want to slap myself mostly because of how transparent they must seem to the people that know me.

Worse, I write posts about myself that aren’t really about myself, but about someone else. Or they’re about something that bothers me wrapped in this pretentious cloak of self-absorption. Maybe I should just be more honest about things, but then this doesn’t exactly seem like the right forum in which to do so.

I wonder sometimes about how children view adults. They look at us–and yes, here I am, an adult–and what do they see? Do we seem somehow invulnerable? Do we seem in control? Read your friend’s blogs and see them struggle with the same things over and over and over again. In their most honest moments you can place them on a curve and figure out exactly how vulnerable and clueless they are.

You could do this with me.

But in that sense self-indulgence is a good thing, as we throw open our kimonos to the internet but manage to hide the dangly bits, in that we can understand that the same things we were almost on the verge of talking about to everybody–and the things we sometimes in a moment of panic let slip–are the same things we’re trying to hide from different everybodies now. Months and years later, though we have maybe changed circuses, we’re still performing the same rituals and painting our faces into the same mockeries of express and still trying to balance things on a high-wire whilst riding a unicycle.

This is not to say that you will always struggle to know God or struggle to find value in just one man or woman or struggle to love idiots or struggle not to run from conflict or struggle to simple become the you that you are. It is simply to say that looking back can be good. If this is my personal narrative, it’s nice to know that I’m finally getting somewhere, even if that somewhere is exactly the same place I’ve always been getting, even if the mountain has not come to Mohamed and is ever in the distance.

I wish I could go back in time and ask a younger version of me–before puberty changed the world into something quite different from what it was–what he sees.

I imagine he might think I’m bulletproof.

But I’m not. Really. I still carry the lead in my chest.

• Franz Kafka: In the Penal Colony
  Electronic text for further reading.
  (tags: fiction literature media free)

Prologue

Before the I that was I was the I that is,
in colander amneosis, on transfer paper,
the words written that will determine
the carbon copy I that will be;
phrases that begged only breathe
and it will appear, lemon in their infancy,
first scream itself a word,
first suckling itself a sentence;
in the I that was not was that I that is,
also, before a mirror and behind it,
the fog clearing itself paragraphs,
the paragraphs erasing all but
faint traces themselves chapters,
the crumpled pages of which
have become the I that was and is
and will be and encompasses
all the I’s that are.

Movement 1

These are fingers and these are toes
and these are the motive bits that determine
how it goes;
my father teaching me math before numbers
and speech before the advent of alphabet,
my other father teaching me arithmetically
that words are powerful beyond powerful;
for every extended baseball bat
there is a sentence that swings with it,
over the plate;
for every elastic core stitched tightly
and slung over the fence there is a trail
of letter following like starlit ice
from the hind end of a comet.

Movement 2

As if walking down a street instead of across
it would solve the problem;
the cool metal steady in my hand
but those same nerves unnerving
till it dropped surgically to the floor;
for seven years I saw the chip where it had bounced
and skidded into the corner;
every time my toe slid into the groove
I’d recall the few inches I dared not cover,
sometimes cursing sometimes blessing sometimes
absent-mindedly doing the calculations;
there still my concrete Jesus is the absence
of something, though those who walk on him now
do not stuff their prayers into the gap.

Movement 3

Round the pole, round and round the pole,
like she would one day bridle horses,
I swung under trellis and grave vines
till the wine of my blood sprayed from
between my toes;
a broken perfume bottle in the grass,
oh they have done a wonderful thing,
they have scent me a gift I didn’t see coming,
as if to say, “You too will die!”;
the trail of bloodied footprints to this door
and that and another, till
the white-coated soldier coolly took
a spear to my flesh;
I was dead to the world for three hours
till I awoke, and still I do not recognize myself.

Interlude

The tangent is determined by measurement;
if the conscious decides
how the conscious decides,
is the difference between the two
not a tangent also, leading back to
the original question just
differently?

Movement 4

First of many wounds or wound of many firsts
I am still not sure; shoeless in the orchard
you turned to a pillar in the corners of my eyes;
strewn fresh on the ground like ash: I can still see
the field sewn to Carthage;
at the end, to the soft music of clandestine meeting
I told you told you told you and sang you a song:
“The Lord is my
the Lord is my
the Lord is my
shepherd
and I shall not
I shall not
I shall not.”;
in that moment the tracks diverged
and we chugged off in directions that seemed
good, and only slightly better now that we
no longer speak eachothers names.

Movement 5

The worm in my head keeps me awake
as if I were fruit bearing fruit unto righteousness,
when you called me the core of your eye,
I hadn’t the humor to refuse;
blind but now I see I am seen blindly
as the congregation bows to lick the cup
I ache deeply to drink deeply of;
shuffle
shuffle
shuffle
in hesitation toward the font,
unaware that the cards are dealt face up,
and we are all going somewhere;
daunting in its excellence, it will burn my throat:
it is a coal on my tongue already and I have
naught but touched my lips to Thy chalice;
Thy Word
Thy song
Thy walk
Thy yoke
Thy Ghost
Thy lead
Thy match
Thy bomb
Thy Head
Thy death
Thy life
Thy fief
and all that is within them bless His Holy Name;
damned if I’d rather down the gall.

Movement 6

There and back again and there and back again
and there and back again again;
feet of clay mixed with iron and you have
worn them clean to the knuckle;
how many ridiculous hoops on fire before
I’d burn the whole thing down just to show you
who’s boss is whose boss?
Sharp angles and I felt each acutely,
in the sweetest vomit over the side
of my porcelain ship,
in the frenzied stuttered hammering to keep
the charred timbers and holy sheet afloat;
the idol falls, the axe is laid at the root,
and I am stumping for a new vessel.

Epilogue

Before the we we are we were the we we were,
in colander amneosis, encased in carbon;
now, when you are to me like oxygen to fire
to a city made of matchsticks
to a world of crumpled newspaper,
I can only admit to the movement that
brought me to this place;
soon enough, my love, soon enough,
but not soon enough.