A Lyric Essay on Commercialism, Love, and the American Childhood
1. “Some people would never have fallen in love if they had never heard of love,” aphorized French writer Francois de La Rochefoucauld. La Rochefoucauld’s implication is that love is neither some inexplicable force nor a conceivable passion of the heart. Rather, love may be an attractive idea that has been presented to and pursued by the mind through suggestion. But when do we first hear of love and why is it so appealing to us?
2. Madison Heartfield is a three-year-old living in Portland, Maine with her parents. Madison is different than most children. She is silently behind in her development. She is of normal height; she stands forty-one inches, barefoot on the kitchen floor. Next week she will stand forty-two inches with the addition of her sparkling Cinderella-inspired glass slippers. These slippers were purchased in the toy section in a distant Walmart. These slippers, more like miniature high-heals really, mark Madison’s departure from a brief phase in her life. They are the first materialization in her unrealized pursuit for love. But for now, she is forty-one inches tall, which makes her average. For now, she knows nothing of romantic love, which makes her different than most of the world.
3. Would we fall in love if we had never heard of anyone doing it before? Answering this question is nearly impossible. This is because one would have to imagine a life without ever knowing love. This means eliminating the notion of love as one has experienced it. And furthermore, erasing one’s exposure to its many expressions. Try now. Imagine a world without romantic comedies showing at local theatres. Imagine libraries less every novel that muses on love. Without these materials would the heart follow the same inevitable path towards romantic love? Would love exist as we know it? In Western societies these expressions are everywhere. They are unavoidable. And they enter our realm at surprisingly young age.
4. Madison lives in this world we find inconceivable. She lives in this world without love. She does not read novels and knows nothing of the intricate patterns of courtship written by William Shakespeare and Jane Austen. She has not been to the movies like her parents to see the routine breaking Meg Ryan’s heart. She is not especially attuned to noticing the advertisements on highway billboards and bus stops that display happy couples and red hearts. If she has seen them, they were quickly forgotten and replaced by thoughts more appropriate for the mind of a three-year-old: I am hungry; I am tired; I feel sick. And when these thoughts come into her young mind she has learned to voice them. Soon enough her qualms are soothed. A banana enters her hand, already peeled. Her father’s strong arms sweep her up and land her in a soft place well suited for sleep. Her mother strokes her hair and takes her temperature. Madison is well cared for.
5. This is not the world any adult in the Western world is accustomed to. We do not find peeled bananas in our hands so quickly after announcing we are hungry. We take note of the signs and expressions of love that surround us. So saturated are we in love propaganda that all an advertiser need do is present the image of two hands holding each other. The Western viewer understands this image as a representation of love and affection. The viewer often understands this before they understand the product being promoted. Beyond advertisements – we find love at the movie theatre, in literature, on television and in music. These advertisements not only offer us the products they are selling, but they are seemingly advertising love itself, in all its hand-holding glory.
6. Madison has not even witnessed this – this holding of hands. Her parents are often separated due to work schedules. She rarely sees them in the same room. She has somehow missed their every embrace. She knows them entirely separate from each other. She does, however, recognize they serve the same purpose – to supply bananas, to put to bed, to take her temperature. We, as adults and versed in concepts of love, are tempted to say that Madison loves her parents. This is entirely false. She sees them only as providers of care. She seeks their protection. Even when Madison falls to the ground and scrapes her knee. She looks up to find rescue. Her mother places a bandage over the wound and provides embrace. The embrace is merely comfort in a time of fear, reassurance that she is protected. As her mother strokes Madison’s back to comfort the crying child, her mother turns towards the family’s new television. Madison rests her head over her mother’s shoulder, facing the opposite direction. The television was purchased yesterday and her mother has just used the remote control for the first time. She has found a soap opera. Quickly, the program is interrupted by a commercial for a body lotion. The woman on the screen boasts of pregnancy scars or stretch-marks that have disappeared due to the hydrating nutrients of a skin-cell rejuvenating lotion.
7. Advertisers are right to play on the social phenomena of love to market their goods. At the root of advertising there lay a single goal: to relate to the buyer. It has been determined that the human mind functions in this manner: I relate to that person, therefore I want what they have. Madison’s mother places her hand on her own stomach. She looks down at the fresh and ever present stretch marks that grew as Madison did within her womb. She had not considered using lotion to be rid of these scars. The thought enters her mind and she makes note – perhaps she will pick up some lotion when she is at the store. The commercial appealed to her because she relates to the woman on the screen who expressed her dismay over the imperfections of her body. Madison’s mother related to the woman and thus wanted what the woman had – the supposed cure for stretch marks. Madison’s mother goes on with her day, thinking more routinely of her stretch marks before seeking out the lotion at a local market.
8. When an advertiser makes use of images relating to love, they suddenly appeal to a vast and varying market. The advertiser uses a repertoire of images that relate to love. The images have long since been established – be it the simplicity of the red Valentine’s heart or the cliché of candles surrounding a bathtub littered with rose petals. Making use of these images immediately draws forth the notion of love to the viewers mind. This is appealing to many. The audience is comprised of those who boast of currently being in love. With them sits those longing to experience love for the first time. And last in line are those who have been burnt by love’s bath-side candles and remain broken-hearted. Not all people are victim to the scars left by childbirth. But perhaps if the commercial Madison’s mother watched boasted the ability to heal the scars of love – sales would soar. Buyers would not only be those wishing to heal the scars left by a recent breakup, but also those anticipating a breakup. And standing somewhat sheepishly behind those customers would be the ones who have no scars to date, but are buying their lotion ‘just in case.’
9. Madison’s life without knowledge of love is coming quickly to an end near the afternoon. Her mother has grown increasingly tired. She has made lunch and just when Madison is typically ready for an afternoon nap, the young girl is bursting with energy. Despite her hesitation to introducing Madison to the world of television, Madison’s mother opens a box of video-cassettes. The collection of Disney videos was purchased at the same time as the television. Madison’s mother picks Aladdin at random. She puts the cassette into the VCR and reclines on the couch. Madison is sitting attentively before the television screen.
10. SEDUCE: pronunciation- /si-düs, -dyüs\, fuction: transitive verb, meaning: to persuade to disobedience or disloyalty, to lead astray usually by persuasion or false promises, to carry out the physical seduction of : entice to sexual intercourse (Webster)
11. Perhaps it is more accurate to refer to advertisements using the above term, seduce. Advertisements (such as the one viewed by Madison’s mother) are images, words, or media that lead the consumer astray. Is it not fair to say Madison’s mother had no intentions of ever buying a skin-cell rejuvenating lotion to be rid of her stretch marks? Her intention was to seek entertainment in the television set. In doing so she was inadvertently led to consider her scars and a way to remove them.
12. S.M. Greenfield proposed, in an article in Sociological Quarterly, that love exists today because of its need in modern capitalism to:
… motivate individuals – where there is no other means of motivating them – to occupy the positions husband-father and wife-mother and form nuclear families that are essential not only for reproduction and socialization but also to maintain the existing arrangements for distributing and consuming goods and serves and, in general, to keep the social system in proper working order and thus maintaining it as a going concern.
13. Most adults are confirmed and unconscious consumers of love sales. Madison’s parents are seduced into their commercial purchases. Were they even seduced into their marriage? Their courtship revealed a standardized format similar to their friends and most young couples. There were initial “butterflies” upon meeting each other. Both will confirm the other truly “stood apart from the crowd.” The couple attended county fairs and drive-in movie theatres. They had a Spring wedding. All their family and friends gathered to celebrate the couple’s truly unique and abounding love. Madison was born a year later. Madison’s parents unknowingly acted out a performance for each other. Similarly, they had inadvertently been studying for a long time. They had studied the love and courtship of the couples they watched on the screen of the drive-in theatre. The couple’s love, as abounding as they believed it was, was anything but unique. It was remarkably similar to every love they had seen throughout their lives, starting at their childhoods.
14. As the film begins, Madison’s attention is quickly waning. Although it initially seems alluring, the color and sound of it, she is unsure of its prospects. The story she is being told is not nearly as interesting as the ones her parents have made up for her, all involving animals and nature and instructions on how to use the potty. Instead, the film begins with an old and ugly merchant in the mystical city of Agrabah, who tells the story of a magical lamp and how it changed one young man's life. Madison becomes irritated with disinterest and stands. Then she quickly sits at the sound of music. “Arabian Nights” fills the room as Madison squirms along. Shortly after she is introduced to the character Aladdin who is an orphan. Madison turns and looks at her mother. “What’s an orphan?” she asks. “A baby without a mommy and daddy.” The idea is terrifying for Madison.
12. Children have no interest in love, at the very least romantic love. They quickly learn their parents are providers and protectors. They seek comfort in the soft embrace of their mothers’ breast as it reassures of them of that nurturing figure. They seek the warmth of the womb from which they sprung. It is perhaps the first thing they became familiar with. To imagine a world without their parents is perhaps to confront their greatest fear. It is to have lost all protection and care. Almost every child experiences that truly unsettling and icy fright; it seeps over them when they reach for a parents hand only to turn and see their parent is not there. To find a child in this state is to be of no help unless you are the parent. There is no way of reassuring the poor thing without being whom and what it longs for.
13. As the film progresses Madison sits attentively as her mother sleeps on the couch behind her. She is rapt in the film. She waits to see what Aladdin will wish for when he comes in contact with the magical lamp containing the Genie. The Genie can grant him three wishes. She is aghast to see that he does not wish for parents of any kind. Perhaps this is because the Genie forbids Aladdin to wish to bring back anyone from the dead? Yes, Aladdin’s parents must be dead. Again Madison is horrified at the thought. Instead Aladdin begins an endless journey to pursue the Princess Jasmine. Madison can understand this just slightly. Princess Jasmine is beautiful. She has long dark hair, like Madison herself. She lives in a castle and has a pet tiger. Madison imagines herself in the same position. Soon Madison is smiling as Aladdin and Jasmine soar through a starlit sky and sing “A Whole New World” while riding on a magic carpet.
14. Likewise, Madison herself has entered a whole new world. Behind her, where her mother sleeps on the couch, is the world without love we find so impossible to believe. Her unadulterated view of the world has forever been altered in the viewing of this animated film. Aladdin worked for Madison as the commercial worked on her mother. The film related to the three-year-old’s greatest singular fear: a life without her parents, the life of an orphan. In doing so it hooked the young mind and gained her attention. Her fear in relation to a life without her parents is calmed only by the reassurance that Jasmine is happy in the end. The Princess gets to ride on magical carpets and marries Aladdin because she loves him.
15. Madison’s father returns home as the film credits take the screen. Madison’s mother awakes at her cheers. She runs to her father and embraces him excitedly. She had never considered life without her parents. Suddenly the sight of her father comes as a great relief. Her father is happy to hold his child in this state. He is proud to have worked hard enough to earn the new television. He is proud in his fatherly decision to purchase the video cassettes that brought his daughter this joy and won him her embrace. Madison’s mother leaves to work the night shift. After her mother has left, Madison’s father selects a second film from the Disney collection. He pops Cinderella in the VCR and begins to prepare Madison’s dinner. Madison experiences the same stream of emotions and is shocked to find that Cinderella is also an orphan. Cinderella’s fate is perhaps worse when Madison learns of Cinderella’s evil stepmother. But still, there is Prince Charming and ‘happily ever after.’
16. In the week that follows Madison becomes obsessed with the characters from the Disney films. Her parents think little of the obsession. They even encourage it. Seeking the same embrace after he purchased the videos, Madison’s father seeks out toys that will elicit Madison’s joyful cries. On Friday before work he stops at Walmart and purchases a pair of glass slippers with Cinderella’s image on sole. They are clear and tinted lightly blue with specks of silver embedded in the plastic. Madison is thrilled as expected. She stands forty-two inches and totters across the kitchen floor. She does not ask why her slippers are plastic and not glass. She does not ask why Cinderella’s image is on the shoe and not her own. Instead she waltzes across the linoleum with her father. When he leaves for work she dances alone, holding her arms in the air, imagining Prince Charming between them.
30.11.07
25.11.07
14.11.07
I; King Canopy
It is possible to remain passive to the world. Oh, shame on me. To think that I have encountered the world is the great naivety – the great woe is me: the human being. But so we manage to believe. The crowd, the boys, the man, and me: the King Canopy.
I was fated to be the man who passed this three with neither guts nor fury – a panda, a goat, a sheep. I have felt the cold spittle of their mouths spray against my neck, my back, my knee. Not in great sheets, but enough to consider the three.
The crowd: I wore a pink shirt, my first mistake. And while walking through Thompkins Square I found myself in a gauntlet. There were two walls of boys, not young enough to be conceived as harmless, not old enough to know their doing. Three and three, and in the middle: me. Perhaps it was my pink shirt. Perhaps it was my canopy. My two able eyes numbed and staring forward as if at the sea. They wanted to wake me. Uttered “faggot,” and spit. From their mouths to my back. I walked their gauntlet and onward to Avenue B. I never looked back at them nor to the shirt of me, but felt their saliva soak through the fabric and to my skin. Yes, through my shirt, but not through me; the King Canopy. Nothing permeates me.
What a sin of the human being. He believes the moisture of his tongue, projected through air and landing on another the greatest of insults. What a sin of me. I did not change my pace, but ignored the dark skinned boys who spat on me. I did not meet their eyes, like so few ever do. I walked on. I; the Kind Canopy.
The boys: The second time it was by chance and by boredom I came to feel their spit. Two boys, young enough to know the acidity of their tongues but with lesser aim. Their saliva hit the back of my bare knee. I considered myself nearly missed, it was not my face nor the back of me. They spoke Spanish and had been recently freed from the chambers that be, standing on the sidewalk of their elementary school. Again, I walked onward with my father’s step, looking forward through my mother’s eyes, and swallowed with my own passive tongue whatever words one might say to a child that has just spat on me.
I am twenty-three and of no great storm, but a small and quiet pond. I am frozen and unthawed through and through; there is no shocking me; I, the Kind Canopy.
The man: Standing in the middle of the platform, waiting for a train. I noticed him at a yards length, darker skin than mine, and mirrored glasses. I stepped towards him and then to the side, looking down the tunnel for the train’s light. It was near arriving when I saw it fly pass my, a fleck of paper sodden with spit. I nearly glanced backwards but knew the mouth from whence it came. He must have sensed or saw my eyes follow the fleck pass my face and onto the tracks and so followed it with another that hit me directly on the cheek. I, without flinching, brushed it from my face, leaned forward and over the tracks as if I had not, in fact, been spat on. Nothing permeates this canopy. “You,” he said, “shoo.” Alas the train came and I boarded and took my place, not raising my eyes to see my reflection in his mirrored lenses as he sat across from me and continued to speak.
I, the King Canopy, shed whatever moisture falls on me. It falls down the lids of my eyes and past my tight mouth and to the floor or the street. From there, your thoughts on where it goes is as good as mine. Perhaps onto the tracks and under the East River where it collects itself until it causes train delays. Spit on me, let’s see.
Oh shame on me. I, the human being, have only triggered the three: the crowd, the boys, the man – my canopy – neither words nor actions that teach, to make them see. My ignorance to the spittle from their tongues causing their belief – that they are a power, a sea. That they can do as they please. And they will, not to me, but to whomever they please. And all because of me; the King Canopy – who ignores all he feels, thinks, and sees.
I was fated to be the man who passed this three with neither guts nor fury – a panda, a goat, a sheep. I have felt the cold spittle of their mouths spray against my neck, my back, my knee. Not in great sheets, but enough to consider the three.
The crowd: I wore a pink shirt, my first mistake. And while walking through Thompkins Square I found myself in a gauntlet. There were two walls of boys, not young enough to be conceived as harmless, not old enough to know their doing. Three and three, and in the middle: me. Perhaps it was my pink shirt. Perhaps it was my canopy. My two able eyes numbed and staring forward as if at the sea. They wanted to wake me. Uttered “faggot,” and spit. From their mouths to my back. I walked their gauntlet and onward to Avenue B. I never looked back at them nor to the shirt of me, but felt their saliva soak through the fabric and to my skin. Yes, through my shirt, but not through me; the King Canopy. Nothing permeates me.
What a sin of the human being. He believes the moisture of his tongue, projected through air and landing on another the greatest of insults. What a sin of me. I did not change my pace, but ignored the dark skinned boys who spat on me. I did not meet their eyes, like so few ever do. I walked on. I; the Kind Canopy.
The boys: The second time it was by chance and by boredom I came to feel their spit. Two boys, young enough to know the acidity of their tongues but with lesser aim. Their saliva hit the back of my bare knee. I considered myself nearly missed, it was not my face nor the back of me. They spoke Spanish and had been recently freed from the chambers that be, standing on the sidewalk of their elementary school. Again, I walked onward with my father’s step, looking forward through my mother’s eyes, and swallowed with my own passive tongue whatever words one might say to a child that has just spat on me.
I am twenty-three and of no great storm, but a small and quiet pond. I am frozen and unthawed through and through; there is no shocking me; I, the Kind Canopy.
The man: Standing in the middle of the platform, waiting for a train. I noticed him at a yards length, darker skin than mine, and mirrored glasses. I stepped towards him and then to the side, looking down the tunnel for the train’s light. It was near arriving when I saw it fly pass my, a fleck of paper sodden with spit. I nearly glanced backwards but knew the mouth from whence it came. He must have sensed or saw my eyes follow the fleck pass my face and onto the tracks and so followed it with another that hit me directly on the cheek. I, without flinching, brushed it from my face, leaned forward and over the tracks as if I had not, in fact, been spat on. Nothing permeates this canopy. “You,” he said, “shoo.” Alas the train came and I boarded and took my place, not raising my eyes to see my reflection in his mirrored lenses as he sat across from me and continued to speak.
I, the King Canopy, shed whatever moisture falls on me. It falls down the lids of my eyes and past my tight mouth and to the floor or the street. From there, your thoughts on where it goes is as good as mine. Perhaps onto the tracks and under the East River where it collects itself until it causes train delays. Spit on me, let’s see.
Oh shame on me. I, the human being, have only triggered the three: the crowd, the boys, the man – my canopy – neither words nor actions that teach, to make them see. My ignorance to the spittle from their tongues causing their belief – that they are a power, a sea. That they can do as they please. And they will, not to me, but to whomever they please. And all because of me; the King Canopy – who ignores all he feels, thinks, and sees.
17.10.07
22.8.07
The Allure of Invisiblity
Genre: Lyric Essay, Photograph by Pierre Debroux
Humans (pre-ghosts) have long been allured by the invisibility of ghosts (post-humans). I write this in the most vague sense. I mean not to say that we are all chasers of spirits, but merely to observe that there is a breed of humans (mostly gaunt and with a urge towards Polaroid photography) who wish that we possessed an enchanting invisibility. I understand this attraction. I am attracted to ghosts; moreover I want only to be one. This has been a constant in my life and only recently understood after being haunted by Philip Vlasov.
I am a Ghost. I want to be photographed out of focus. I want to escape the first-person. I carefully arrange my things in my carefully cleaned apartment; I savor the possibilty that someone might enter without my presence and want to know more. And because I understand this attraction, I am able to comprehend the itching desire for Ghosts to strive towards invisibility within our daily living. It is in our art. It is in our writing. It is in our endless attempt to be seen and chased but never caught in the physical.
The essence of ghostliness is the subtle note. In a photograph: a room the corner of a room occupied by a single, worn shoe; a bed made for sleeping but unclear for who. The messes, the imprint of where someone was and the question of what they were doing. Anonymity is pre-ghost's attempt at invisibility. I, perhaps like you, came to New York to find anonymity. I came to a place where everyone could see me, but few knew whom I was and what I was doing. I came to make fleeting eye contact with strangers on the metro. I came to give my name, but not my phone number. I came in contact with the photography of Pierre Debroux after a strangely anonymous interaction with Philip Vlasov. And with this interaction came to ponder our desire (the aforementioned three - Pierre, Philip, me) for invisibility (I am, but you can't see).
Vlasov, Creative Director of Vogue Russia, keeps a loose schedule around his office. He leans back with his hands behind his head, often. He throws his head back and le
ts his hair fall, often. His hair is gray though he is just thirty-two. He searches Myspace profiles, searching but unsure for whom. I imagine him sitting amongst modern furnishings, leaning back in his gray, leathered chair. He leans forward and into his computer screen examining the profile of a 23-year-old writer living in Brooklyn. Perhaps he only examines the photos. Or perhaps he is thorough and looks further; reads my written words in their vague absurdity. Nonetheless, he chooses to make contact with me. Not a message with words in return, but a simple request that would link our profiles, allude to some sort of relationship. "Do you really want to add Bowen Ames as a friend?
Click "Add" only if you really wish to add Bowen Ames as a Friend. "
And still, Vlasov, perhaps with the throwing back of his head, clicked 'yes.' Yes, he is sure. Yes, he really does wish. In lesser circles this might be a bold gesture. But Philip and I know the allure of requesting the friendship of another Ghost. If done properly the profile is just this; it is a ghost town, a quiet remnant of where a human once was. I upload. I type carefully arranged words beneath "About Me." Still, I am not here. I am the profile of Bowen Ames. Requesting my friendship is to request the hypothetical. The pending possibility that the Ghost me might peruse your hypothetical. And I do.
"New Friend Request"
"Philip Vlasov wants to be your friend!"
Impossible, the Ghost muses. Philip Vlasov would never use an exclamation point. Philip Vlasov leans back in his chair, mussing his pre-maturely gray hair. I examine his profile and find it's true. Philip Vlasov knows the allure. Photos, just four. He is concealed for the most part. Exceeding and excessive photos of the pre-ghost diminish invisibility. It is a ghost’s nature to limit the angles at which you can see him. It is his nature to be shot in black and white. The ghost writes in no or limited captions. Beneath the second of Philip's photos he writes, "On board Mouna Ayoub's yacht Phocea. Photo by Bettina Rheims."
The ghost keeps few friends. The friends he has are names without faces, but grandiose titles. In the photo Mouna Ayoub, most certainly a Ghost herself, has the allure of her name but veils her eyes behind large black sunglasses. She is the French socialite and Businesswoman of Christian Lebanese origin. You have never met her; she is invisible except to the camera. She herself has no origin, though she is often the guest of the Cannes film festival. When she was 20 years old she converted to Islam to marry Nasser Al-Rashid, a 40 year old businessman and advisor of King Fahd. The ghost is drawn to tragedy made into fortune. After eighteen years of marriage she left Al-Rashid (too human for her) and Saudi Arabia. She made a fortune in real estate. In the photo Philip and Mouna Ayoub sit at a table set for twenty and attended by two. Ghosts order dinner for many and invite only few.
Looking onward, I examine the hypothetical friends of the Ghost of Philip Vlasov. I find myself examining the profile of Photographer Pierre Debroux, Male, 98 years old, Belgium. At a hypothetical ninety-eight, Debroux writes nothing of himself. He too is a Ghost. I contemplate if he and Philip are more than hypotheticals, if perhaps they've passed each other in an empty room. If this were true, I'm sure no words were exchanged between the two. The ghost makes fleeting eye contact and is silent too.
Debroux's photos capture exactly his, mine, and our sentiments on invisibility. A bed made neatly in a space that discretely is without recognatives. No one will sleep there. Not even Debroux. Ghosts don't sleep, they saunter through hallways. They stand numbly in vestibules, smoking a cigarette. They pass through the interspace between profiles making gestures to other unresponsives. They are gay but date no one. They take photos with no subjects. They create profiles with no photos. They do not smile. They are always in waiting. The allure of invisibility is, to them, a response the blaring fact that they are visible and no one is looking. The subtleties of their exchanges bring them both pleasure and frustration in that it can never go beyond vaguety, cheerless flirtation. Any more would to be human, and humans are without subtelties. They know too little and speak too often. It is the ghost's silence that makes him seem austere.
And so "Accept Friend Request," but make no contact. Go to a bar and make sideways glances, but no conversation. Your reward is in what others suppose, a larger and greater fortune than you may possess - the allure of invisibility.
28.7.07
The Inexplicable Personification of Objects and Their Touchers
Genre: Lyric Essay
I struggle sometimes, sometimes more than most times, to stay occupied with myself rather than occupied by others. And it feels, most times, that I put more thought into others, not always in the best ways, than I put into myself. So, I’m constantly asking myself - with whom do my loyalties lie? And what does loyalty do? Am I more loyal to others than I am to myself? Ooo. This can’t be true. I’m not loyal. Am I important to myself? Is my self-importance important? No, I am not. Yes, it is. Ooo, I don’t know. Ooo.
I say all this to a woman who sits, legs crossed, in a comfortable chair before me. I assume her chair is comfortable because she looks comfortable sitting in it. Objects touched by people take easily to the mood of the person who touches. The chair is blue. The chair is the type of chair a therapist sits in. The woman sitting in the chair is a therapist. These observations are certain. And the simplest certainty comes as comfort in the silence after a question is asked to the self.
I realize I’m sitting in the same chair, one of two in her apartment. In her apartment is a pair of chairs and I’m sitting in one and she is in the other. One of the pair of chairs is comfortable. The other is contemplating its capabilities in interpersonal relationships.
The chairs are similar to the pair of chairs I have in my own apartment. Her chairs are blue but with more stuffing. My therapist has put a green throw over her chairs that makes them look more expensive than mine. She is more expensive than I, and likewise her chairs. I sit and talk for free. She is paid by the minute to nod, smile, talk. I pay her to listen as I spit and mumble and squawk.
Sometimes I feel like my meetings with her are like a class. Sometimes I feel like she’s teaching me about myself. Most of the time I don’t understand what she is trying to teach me. Most of the time, like one does in an uninteresting class, I pretend to understand. Nod, listen, and contemplate a pair of chairs. And I don’t feel very bad about this, because I know that she is pretending to understand. Now she is talking. While she is talking I am half listening and half contemplating the chairs. Now she has stopped talking and my contemplation goes from the chairs to what I will say next – after this silence, after I decide what I will say about what I’m tying to say about myself.
I’ve been thinking a lot about wire hangers lately, I say. About how they bend – about how I bend like them. And I’m not sure if she follows me, but I feel I'm saying something interesting, so I don’t stop. If I’m a wire hanger and I bend myself out of shape to pick a lock, how easily do I bend back into my original shape hang a shirt? Because someone, a writer I think, said that hangers can do that. But I’m not terribly convinced they can really do that. And if I am a hanger, am I the kind that does do that? I don’t leave room for her to answer me, because I’m almost certain she disagrees, does not understand, is not listening, is contemplating her chair. And for a moment my statement resounds, the words coming back to me so that I hear what I've said, the sound how I've said it.
I said ‘a writer, I think’ as though I was unsure of who wrote about a wire hanger and bending to dry shirts and unlock doors. I said 'I think,' despite the embarrassing fact that 'I know' without a doubt the writer was Annie Proulx. It was Ms. Proulx. It was Ms. Annie Proulx who, some time ago, wrote about gay cowboys and wire hangers, stiff and rigid, unlocking doors -- drying tear-wet shirts.
I do not wait for my therapist’s response. I do not wait because I am afraid she will know this too (know it was Annie Proulx). She will not understand but turn the conversation to 'Brokeback Mountain.' From there th conversation will no doubt turn, steer itself like a herd of sweat-soaked cattle, to how I feel about being gay. And then perhaps she will mention that she likes my cowboy boots. Or how much she dislikes Annie Proulx.
I think I do. I think I do do that, I say. I think I bend back and forth a lot. Do you like doing that, she says. Does it feel good? I’m not sure, I think to myself. I’m not sure, I say to her. I just worry that I may break eventually. Hangers, they break, right? If you bend them too much, they break. I’m not sure, she thinks. I'm not sure, she says to me. I’m not sure if she means she's unsure about hangers or if she's unsure about me. Or perhaps she's unsure how much she likes my boots.
Which one, I say, the hanger or me? And I can’t believe she still looks so comfortable, because God knows I need a cigarette at this point. God knows this and so do I. I lean back in the chair. Now the chair is creaking with my lean. For a moment I think the creaking sounds like the chair’s small voice. The chair that is one of a pair. The less comfortable of the chairs. The chair that is saying in a small, creaking voice that it very badly needs a cigarette, that it is tired of all this, that it does not believe that a therapist is anymore revealing than a good lay, a weekend on a farm, a chapter of Annie Proulx's gay cowboys.
This chair is saying, but I'm not sure to who, 'what does one say when there's nothing to be done? what does one say when there's nothing to do?'
I struggle sometimes, sometimes more than most times, to stay occupied with myself rather than occupied by others. And it feels, most times, that I put more thought into others, not always in the best ways, than I put into myself. So, I’m constantly asking myself - with whom do my loyalties lie? And what does loyalty do? Am I more loyal to others than I am to myself? Ooo. This can’t be true. I’m not loyal. Am I important to myself? Is my self-importance important? No, I am not. Yes, it is. Ooo, I don’t know. Ooo.
I say all this to a woman who sits, legs crossed, in a comfortable chair before me. I assume her chair is comfortable because she looks comfortable sitting in it. Objects touched by people take easily to the mood of the person who touches. The chair is blue. The chair is the type of chair a therapist sits in. The woman sitting in the chair is a therapist. These observations are certain. And the simplest certainty comes as comfort in the silence after a question is asked to the self.
I realize I’m sitting in the same chair, one of two in her apartment. In her apartment is a pair of chairs and I’m sitting in one and she is in the other. One of the pair of chairs is comfortable. The other is contemplating its capabilities in interpersonal relationships.
The chairs are similar to the pair of chairs I have in my own apartment. Her chairs are blue but with more stuffing. My therapist has put a green throw over her chairs that makes them look more expensive than mine. She is more expensive than I, and likewise her chairs. I sit and talk for free. She is paid by the minute to nod, smile, talk. I pay her to listen as I spit and mumble and squawk.
Sometimes I feel like my meetings with her are like a class. Sometimes I feel like she’s teaching me about myself. Most of the time I don’t understand what she is trying to teach me. Most of the time, like one does in an uninteresting class, I pretend to understand. Nod, listen, and contemplate a pair of chairs. And I don’t feel very bad about this, because I know that she is pretending to understand. Now she is talking. While she is talking I am half listening and half contemplating the chairs. Now she has stopped talking and my contemplation goes from the chairs to what I will say next – after this silence, after I decide what I will say about what I’m tying to say about myself.
I’ve been thinking a lot about wire hangers lately, I say. About how they bend – about how I bend like them. And I’m not sure if she follows me, but I feel I'm saying something interesting, so I don’t stop. If I’m a wire hanger and I bend myself out of shape to pick a lock, how easily do I bend back into my original shape hang a shirt? Because someone, a writer I think, said that hangers can do that. But I’m not terribly convinced they can really do that. And if I am a hanger, am I the kind that does do that? I don’t leave room for her to answer me, because I’m almost certain she disagrees, does not understand, is not listening, is contemplating her chair. And for a moment my statement resounds, the words coming back to me so that I hear what I've said, the sound how I've said it.
I said ‘a writer, I think’ as though I was unsure of who wrote about a wire hanger and bending to dry shirts and unlock doors. I said 'I think,' despite the embarrassing fact that 'I know' without a doubt the writer was Annie Proulx. It was Ms. Proulx. It was Ms. Annie Proulx who, some time ago, wrote about gay cowboys and wire hangers, stiff and rigid, unlocking doors -- drying tear-wet shirts.
I do not wait for my therapist’s response. I do not wait because I am afraid she will know this too (know it was Annie Proulx). She will not understand but turn the conversation to 'Brokeback Mountain.' From there th conversation will no doubt turn, steer itself like a herd of sweat-soaked cattle, to how I feel about being gay. And then perhaps she will mention that she likes my cowboy boots. Or how much she dislikes Annie Proulx.
I think I do. I think I do do that, I say. I think I bend back and forth a lot. Do you like doing that, she says. Does it feel good? I’m not sure, I think to myself. I’m not sure, I say to her. I just worry that I may break eventually. Hangers, they break, right? If you bend them too much, they break. I’m not sure, she thinks. I'm not sure, she says to me. I’m not sure if she means she's unsure about hangers or if she's unsure about me. Or perhaps she's unsure how much she likes my boots.
Which one, I say, the hanger or me? And I can’t believe she still looks so comfortable, because God knows I need a cigarette at this point. God knows this and so do I. I lean back in the chair. Now the chair is creaking with my lean. For a moment I think the creaking sounds like the chair’s small voice. The chair that is one of a pair. The less comfortable of the chairs. The chair that is saying in a small, creaking voice that it very badly needs a cigarette, that it is tired of all this, that it does not believe that a therapist is anymore revealing than a good lay, a weekend on a farm, a chapter of Annie Proulx's gay cowboys.
This chair is saying, but I'm not sure to who, 'what does one say when there's nothing to be done? what does one say when there's nothing to do?'
29.6.07
Let Me Tell You One Thing
Genre: Lyric Essay, Dramatic Monologue
Illustrations by Walter Gabrielson
"She's a real mess. And a very bad mother I'm sure, that Anna Nicole. Very bad, indeed. So I don't know what everyone is crying about. Just look at her. What'll bring you to tears is when you see her kid, the poor thing. That child hasn't a chance. Well, not that anyone is doing a very good job these days, raising their kids, I mean. The kids on this block nowadays. They're starving! My kids, they may have grown into strange people - my little Sherry, for instance, she's all talk about veganism and gluten-free pumpernickel toast and asparagus. But when she was a girl, you bet as sure as Sunday dinner she was well-fed. We were a real family. Oh, we were as happy on Tuesday afternoon as we were on Saturday evening. And my husband, may he rest in peace, he was a good man. We used to take the kids to the movies. I'd get all dolled-up and look real nice. My husband would tell me 'Sandy, you're as perfect as a painting. You're a real woman with pearl earrings.' The kids would have on their nice clothes. We knew how to do things up. And on Sunday we went to church with a real pastor, not these 'spiritual healers' they talk about nowadays. We were good Catholics and we never heard a word about 'Scientology' or 'psychiatry.' We were just good hardworking people. Not anymore, not these kids. They don't stand a chance. Not with the way things are now - Pop Stars molesting kids right off the street. Did you know there's parents who don't even let their little one's celebrate Christmas? They're all talk about 'commercialism' and 'where our forefathers went wrong.' They all think they know better. All these ideas these young parents have today... But I don't say anything. Dean and I just sit on the front stoop and watch them go by. Because I had a good life, look at me. I'm as happy on Tuesday afternoon as I am on Saturday evening."
Illustrations by Walter Gabrielson
"She's a real mess. And a very bad mother I'm sure, that Anna Nicole. Very bad, indeed. So I don't know what everyone is crying about. Just look at her. What'll bring you to tears is when you see her kid, the poor thing. That child hasn't a chance. Well, not that anyone is doing a very good job these days, raising their kids, I mean. The kids on this block nowadays. They're starving! My kids, they may have grown into strange people - my little Sherry, for instance, she's all talk about veganism and gluten-free pumpernickel toast and asparagus. But when she was a girl, you bet as sure as Sunday dinner she was well-fed. We were a real family. Oh, we were as happy on Tuesday afternoon as we were on Saturday evening. And my husband, may he rest in peace, he was a good man. We used to take the kids to the movies. I'd get all dolled-up and look real nice. My husband would tell me 'Sandy, you're as perfect as a painting. You're a real woman with pearl earrings.' The kids would have on their nice clothes. We knew how to do things up. And on Sunday we went to church with a real pastor, not these 'spiritual healers' they talk about nowadays. We were good Catholics and we never heard a word about 'Scientology' or 'psychiatry.' We were just good hardworking people. Not anymore, not these kids. They don't stand a chance. Not with the way things are now - Pop Stars molesting kids right off the street. Did you know there's parents who don't even let their little one's celebrate Christmas? They're all talk about 'commercialism' and 'where our forefathers went wrong.' They all think they know better. All these ideas these young parents have today... But I don't say anything. Dean and I just sit on the front stoop and watch them go by. Because I had a good life, look at me. I'm as happy on Tuesday afternoon as I am on Saturday evening."
28.6.07
Neither House Nor Harbor
Genre: Lyric Essay
My mother’s kitchen is filled with smoke from bacon that is being cooked in heavy butter on a frying pan. She is outside calling at a dumb-brained dog that I brought home from the pound when I was sixteen without her permission. She is yelling at the dog from the back porch that overlooks the harbor. Upstairs is a twenty-five year old woman named Lilith who works at the local organic food coop. Lilith lays on her bed and rolls her eyes at the sound of my mother’s yelling. Below Lilith’s room is the kitchen. The kitchen is old and wooden with counter tops that slant downwards towards the floor, sagging with their age. My mother runs inside the house, the dog following behind her with a grin on his face and mud on his paws.
The smoke rises from the pan and drenches the lace curtains, which have slowly turned yellow. Sunday after Sunday my mother cooks bacon in the pan, which is black from Sunday after Sunday’s worth of butter and bacon being left too long to cook. Sunday after Sunday the lace curtains are drenched in the smoke from the bacon. My mother scuffles into the kitchen and grabs a blue-and-white-checkered cloth and swoops up the pan, landing it on the butchers block counter. The bacon continues to sizzle as the butter slides across the pan with the slope of the counter top.
My mother turns around and bumps into the dog. When she looks down at him she sees his muddy paws and begins squawking at the trail of prints he has left behind him on the pine floors. She shoos the dog back out the door, waving the cloth at him as he cringes at her squawking. She bends over and attaches him to a leash that is tied to a post that holds up the porch roof. The porch roof is also sagging with age. The entire house looks as though it is melting.
Inside is the dining room, which is next to the kitchen where the bacon has stopped sizzling but continues to smoke below the lace curtains. In the dining room there are piles of magazines that my mother reads on Sundays as she eats her bacon and biscuits. Three years worth of The New Yorker spill from the wooden bookshelf that sits next to a down-stuffed chair where my mother does her reading. My mother runs back inside, not noticing that the kitten that belongs to Lilith, the woman who lives in one of the house’s three bedrooms, has ran out the door and into the yard behind her. She goes back into the kitchen waving at the smoke with the blue-and-white-checkered cloth.
Billy Holiday’s voice bellows from the stereo in the dining room. The volume of the music drowns out the sound of knocking on the front door. As the song ends my mother hears the knocking and scuttles from the kitchen, through the dining room and into the living room where she sees Levi on the front porch. Levi lives in the second spare bedroom and he has forgotten his keys. Lilith comes downstairs when smoke from the bacon has crept up the stairs and fills her room. Lilith is a vegan and hates when my mother cooks bacon on Sundays. Levi storms past my mother, who is blocking the stairs and past Lilith who is coming down the stairs. He runs up the stairs to get his keys. He is late to get to work at the wood shop where he works restoring antique sailboats.
I am on the phone with my mother as all this happens. I have never been to see her house on Squirrel Island. She moved there three years ago and rents out her spare rooms to young people because she 'can’t live with too much silence.' I have spent the last ten minutes listening quietly from my bed in my loft, a converted warehouse in in Bushwick, where my roommates are either not home or still sleeping. There are three of us living here and I have not seen anyone in three days.
I am listening to my mother mutter cheerfully through the phone about how much she loves Sundays – about how much she loves having a house filled with people – about how the dog loves living by the harbor where he can go on walks without a leash – about how Levi is helping her find a sailboat to buy before the summer – about how Lilith hates when she cooks bacon – about how the kitten and the dog are getting along – about how the lace curtains in the kitchen are turning yellow – about everything, until the three of them, my mother, Lilith, and Levi, collide at the staircase, which is now filled with smoke from the bacon and butter.
Lilith asks where her kitten is. Levi yells from upstairs asking if anyone has seen his keys. My mother says she must get off the phone ‘Levi lost the kitten’ she says ‘and Judith can’t find her keys – oh, and I think the bacon is still on the stove.’ I try to engage in some sort of formal good-bye but find the line dead before I can speak the words. I hang up the phone an turn into my pillow which is yellow because of one summer's worth of sweat and my hatred towards the long, quiet walk to the laundromat. My neck is damp and hot, though the fan is directly beside me. It doesn't cool my neck, just moves the warm air of my room which has no windows to the outdoors, just two squares cut into the top of the wall which look into the living room. The living room windows look into an alleyway. The alleyway looks down.
My mother’s kitchen is filled with smoke from bacon that is being cooked in heavy butter on a frying pan. She is outside calling at a dumb-brained dog that I brought home from the pound when I was sixteen without her permission. She is yelling at the dog from the back porch that overlooks the harbor. Upstairs is a twenty-five year old woman named Lilith who works at the local organic food coop. Lilith lays on her bed and rolls her eyes at the sound of my mother’s yelling. Below Lilith’s room is the kitchen. The kitchen is old and wooden with counter tops that slant downwards towards the floor, sagging with their age. My mother runs inside the house, the dog following behind her with a grin on his face and mud on his paws.
The smoke rises from the pan and drenches the lace curtains, which have slowly turned yellow. Sunday after Sunday my mother cooks bacon in the pan, which is black from Sunday after Sunday’s worth of butter and bacon being left too long to cook. Sunday after Sunday the lace curtains are drenched in the smoke from the bacon. My mother scuffles into the kitchen and grabs a blue-and-white-checkered cloth and swoops up the pan, landing it on the butchers block counter. The bacon continues to sizzle as the butter slides across the pan with the slope of the counter top.
My mother turns around and bumps into the dog. When she looks down at him she sees his muddy paws and begins squawking at the trail of prints he has left behind him on the pine floors. She shoos the dog back out the door, waving the cloth at him as he cringes at her squawking. She bends over and attaches him to a leash that is tied to a post that holds up the porch roof. The porch roof is also sagging with age. The entire house looks as though it is melting.
Inside is the dining room, which is next to the kitchen where the bacon has stopped sizzling but continues to smoke below the lace curtains. In the dining room there are piles of magazines that my mother reads on Sundays as she eats her bacon and biscuits. Three years worth of The New Yorker spill from the wooden bookshelf that sits next to a down-stuffed chair where my mother does her reading. My mother runs back inside, not noticing that the kitten that belongs to Lilith, the woman who lives in one of the house’s three bedrooms, has ran out the door and into the yard behind her. She goes back into the kitchen waving at the smoke with the blue-and-white-checkered cloth.
Billy Holiday’s voice bellows from the stereo in the dining room. The volume of the music drowns out the sound of knocking on the front door. As the song ends my mother hears the knocking and scuttles from the kitchen, through the dining room and into the living room where she sees Levi on the front porch. Levi lives in the second spare bedroom and he has forgotten his keys. Lilith comes downstairs when smoke from the bacon has crept up the stairs and fills her room. Lilith is a vegan and hates when my mother cooks bacon on Sundays. Levi storms past my mother, who is blocking the stairs and past Lilith who is coming down the stairs. He runs up the stairs to get his keys. He is late to get to work at the wood shop where he works restoring antique sailboats.
I am on the phone with my mother as all this happens. I have never been to see her house on Squirrel Island. She moved there three years ago and rents out her spare rooms to young people because she 'can’t live with too much silence.' I have spent the last ten minutes listening quietly from my bed in my loft, a converted warehouse in in Bushwick, where my roommates are either not home or still sleeping. There are three of us living here and I have not seen anyone in three days.
I am listening to my mother mutter cheerfully through the phone about how much she loves Sundays – about how much she loves having a house filled with people – about how the dog loves living by the harbor where he can go on walks without a leash – about how Levi is helping her find a sailboat to buy before the summer – about how Lilith hates when she cooks bacon – about how the kitten and the dog are getting along – about how the lace curtains in the kitchen are turning yellow – about everything, until the three of them, my mother, Lilith, and Levi, collide at the staircase, which is now filled with smoke from the bacon and butter.
Lilith asks where her kitten is. Levi yells from upstairs asking if anyone has seen his keys. My mother says she must get off the phone ‘Levi lost the kitten’ she says ‘and Judith can’t find her keys – oh, and I think the bacon is still on the stove.’ I try to engage in some sort of formal good-bye but find the line dead before I can speak the words. I hang up the phone an turn into my pillow which is yellow because of one summer's worth of sweat and my hatred towards the long, quiet walk to the laundromat. My neck is damp and hot, though the fan is directly beside me. It doesn't cool my neck, just moves the warm air of my room which has no windows to the outdoors, just two squares cut into the top of the wall which look into the living room. The living room windows look into an alleyway. The alleyway looks down.
25.6.07
The Desk Dream
Genre: Lyric Essay
I, like you and any other attentive person, hear a good deal of interesting things day to day. Some are more interesting than others (last January during a horrible storm my building's super told me that more than 10% of the world's salt is used to de-ice American streets and sidewalks). And some are not interesting at all (the dull-voiced boy at the market loves to remind me that 'Eggplants aren't vegetables, they're really fruits,' which, I'll add, I'm not sure is true). Like most attentive people, I have forgotten a great many of the interesting things I've heard. Often times, the less interesting things pass through my mind as I lay in bed at night trying earnestly to recall the interesting things. That is how it happened I came to fight Virginia Wolfe (oh yes, I know - how boring).
Did you know, Virginia Wolfe once mused on her life? I'm sure you did. What I mean to say is there was a time before the river. Before her mind had come to questions like, how heavy a stone to sink a woman my size? (large, but small enough to fit in the pocket of her coat). Yes, she wrote of her life without considering her sort of mortal end. She wrote of how she imagined her life in furniture form (with corners and shelves).
She imagined her life being a great big desk, or so she wrote.
This is not an entirely interesting thing. A desk, holding papers, dripping candle wax and bleeding ink from it's oaken pores, like her (oh that drama queen, the Sinking Princess). And it was this less than interesting thing - a relatively dull musing (The Desk's) and my musing upon it that brought her to my dream.
Many have told me not to bore others (and I suppose myself) with writings about dreams and meanings. I rarely take notice of what other advise and will do just half of this. I will tell you of the dream and spare you the meaning (anyhow, you'd be at a loss, I'm sure). Nonetheless,
Because I am too late (too young and have seen The Hours) Virginia (The Desk) looked much more like an actress playing herself (Virginia 4.0, not Nicole Kidman - no prosthetics, but a cheaper, softer version - yes).
As I lay in bed thinking of her, I asked myself... would you (me, the dreamer) be a desk? and falling asleep I answered,
*
Why, yes. What a desk I'd be. I'd be wanting. If I were a desk I’d be wanting to be a bed. And I agreed. That is, before she came hammering. Yes, Virgina came to my door. I opened it and thought: Virgina's fist are peculiar little acorns, and turned to see her rattling the windowsills of my apartment.
'All in the name of! All in the early hour of!' I screamed (which, in a dream, sounds like a scream but underwater) .
'All in the name of misinterpretation,' she said. She continued, 'you've misinterpreted me.' And I told her, 'I am bored with you, Pestering Woman.’
'What did you say?' - Her question.
And my unexpected answer was to let her in, and sit her on my couch. I reminded her that she knew boredom well. I reminded her that she understood bitterness, like mine. I told her I was bitter with her for stealing all my short paragraphs, for taking out narrative and filling it in with tea parties and ‘I’ll get the flowers myself.’
(It’s an awful thing to quote an author in your coy assault on them) And when she bit her lip and turned to the side, I saw her then an awkward girl. Not -The Desk- but more The Cafeteria table. She slumped beside me, and I pressed my thumb on the nape of her neck. And then (with something like a sniffle, but in poetics and with rhyme) she said:
‘If you, The Dreamer, were a book it’d be Kundera’s' (somehow she knew I hated that book). I stopped and thought of Prague (it's not really pink, you know). I grew angry. How dull. Unbearable Lightness, a sham. I yelled.
'Life and death, I?'
'Heaviness and Lightness, I?'
'From first to last?' and I put my index finger over her mouth.
‘You're nothing but a shallow conflict. ’ she went on ‘The reader, left to try,to decide which life is happier: light or the dark? grace or weight?’
'What is so unbearable about lightness, Fickle Heart?' she asked.
Only she doesn't (didn't, or never did) know the charm, that Virgina, that smoked-fruit. She was never light. She could only write with lightness. And even then she wrote of flowers so as to describe the grey hallways in which they sat.
*
And then, that falling feeling. From the bed to awake as loud as the alarm clock stops. And I was awake – awake and with the the realization that, with no hope of knowing the right, the shady pathways from the wrong, there is no wrong path.
Absolved of mistakes. The necessity of significance. And she wasn't there in my bed (because then was a dream and now was awake). I thought of Virgina and her sense of weight, a stone in her coat. Because what happens once never happened. And I fell back asleep with no stone in my pocket. It did not happen once for her, but over and over until her final waltz into the currents that be. And now here I am, telling you (in some detail) about this less than interesting thing, a dream about Virgina Wolfe. But I will not tell you the meaning. That would be boring. Which is, of course, to assume you are like those who advise not to write of dreams - those stubborn minds who have yet to realize that the dream is the meaning as soon as one tells it to a third party. That is to say all this really means is I'm the sort of person who dreams about The Desk.
I, like you and any other attentive person, hear a good deal of interesting things day to day. Some are more interesting than others (last January during a horrible storm my building's super told me that more than 10% of the world's salt is used to de-ice American streets and sidewalks). And some are not interesting at all (the dull-voiced boy at the market loves to remind me that 'Eggplants aren't vegetables, they're really fruits,' which, I'll add, I'm not sure is true). Like most attentive people, I have forgotten a great many of the interesting things I've heard. Often times, the less interesting things pass through my mind as I lay in bed at night trying earnestly to recall the interesting things. That is how it happened I came to fight Virginia Wolfe (oh yes, I know - how boring).
Did you know, Virginia Wolfe once mused on her life? I'm sure you did. What I mean to say is there was a time before the river. Before her mind had come to questions like, how heavy a stone to sink a woman my size? (large, but small enough to fit in the pocket of her coat). Yes, she wrote of her life without considering her sort of mortal end. She wrote of how she imagined her life in furniture form (with corners and shelves).
She imagined her life being a great big desk, or so she wrote.
This is not an entirely interesting thing. A desk, holding papers, dripping candle wax and bleeding ink from it's oaken pores, like her (oh that drama queen, the Sinking Princess). And it was this less than interesting thing - a relatively dull musing (The Desk's) and my musing upon it that brought her to my dream.
Many have told me not to bore others (and I suppose myself) with writings about dreams and meanings. I rarely take notice of what other advise and will do just half of this. I will tell you of the dream and spare you the meaning (anyhow, you'd be at a loss, I'm sure). Nonetheless,
Because I am too late (too young and have seen The Hours) Virginia (The Desk) looked much more like an actress playing herself (Virginia 4.0, not Nicole Kidman - no prosthetics, but a cheaper, softer version - yes).
As I lay in bed thinking of her, I asked myself... would you (me, the dreamer) be a desk? and falling asleep I answered,
*
Why, yes. What a desk I'd be. I'd be wanting. If I were a desk I’d be wanting to be a bed. And I agreed. That is, before she came hammering. Yes, Virgina came to my door. I opened it and thought: Virgina's fist are peculiar little acorns, and turned to see her rattling the windowsills of my apartment.
'All in the name of! All in the early hour of!' I screamed (which, in a dream, sounds like a scream but underwater) .
'All in the name of misinterpretation,' she said. She continued, 'you've misinterpreted me.' And I told her, 'I am bored with you, Pestering Woman.’
'What did you say?' - Her question.
And my unexpected answer was to let her in, and sit her on my couch. I reminded her that she knew boredom well. I reminded her that she understood bitterness, like mine. I told her I was bitter with her for stealing all my short paragraphs, for taking out narrative and filling it in with tea parties and ‘I’ll get the flowers myself.’
(It’s an awful thing to quote an author in your coy assault on them) And when she bit her lip and turned to the side, I saw her then an awkward girl. Not -The Desk- but more The Cafeteria table. She slumped beside me, and I pressed my thumb on the nape of her neck. And then (with something like a sniffle, but in poetics and with rhyme) she said:
‘If you, The Dreamer, were a book it’d be Kundera’s' (somehow she knew I hated that book). I stopped and thought of Prague (it's not really pink, you know). I grew angry. How dull. Unbearable Lightness, a sham. I yelled.
'Life and death, I?'
'Heaviness and Lightness, I?'
'From first to last?' and I put my index finger over her mouth.
‘You're nothing but a shallow conflict. ’ she went on ‘The reader, left to try,to decide which life is happier: light or the dark? grace or weight?’
'What is so unbearable about lightness, Fickle Heart?' she asked.
Only she doesn't (didn't, or never did) know the charm, that Virgina, that smoked-fruit. She was never light. She could only write with lightness. And even then she wrote of flowers so as to describe the grey hallways in which they sat.
*
And then, that falling feeling. From the bed to awake as loud as the alarm clock stops. And I was awake – awake and with the the realization that, with no hope of knowing the right, the shady pathways from the wrong, there is no wrong path.
Absolved of mistakes. The necessity of significance. And she wasn't there in my bed (because then was a dream and now was awake). I thought of Virgina and her sense of weight, a stone in her coat. Because what happens once never happened. And I fell back asleep with no stone in my pocket. It did not happen once for her, but over and over until her final waltz into the currents that be. And now here I am, telling you (in some detail) about this less than interesting thing, a dream about Virgina Wolfe. But I will not tell you the meaning. That would be boring. Which is, of course, to assume you are like those who advise not to write of dreams - those stubborn minds who have yet to realize that the dream is the meaning as soon as one tells it to a third party. That is to say all this really means is I'm the sort of person who dreams about The Desk.
20.6.07
Limp
“Unlike femininity, relaxed masculinity is at bottom empty, a limp nullity. While the female body is full of internal potentiality, the male is internally barren. Manhood at the most basic level can be validated and expressed only in action.”-George Gilder 
13.5.07
Today (Ways of Thinking)
Genre: Lyric Essay
Today you wake up and feel limited. You are unable to locate the exact reason why you feel limited. Perhaps this sentiment of limitation came from a dream you had while you slept in which you felt limited. No matter the reason, the idea of limitation is in your mind as you are stirring. Limitation is a heavy thing, you think to yourself – like a mattress being carried up a narrow staircase. You imagine yourself carrying a heavy mattress up a narrow staircase. You feel limited.
(Redundancy, doing things over and again, is inescapable. Each day is inevitably similar to the one before it. This is how one lives. One makes decisions, silly ones, superficial even - to buy a shirt, a green shirt. And we feel things have changed. Because one does not buy a new, green shirt every day. The outcome of the action is lasting. Even after the tag is removed, the smell of new seeps from the threads and into the air, the shirt becomes the color we always wear. It's fabric becomes our skin, the texture our lover's fingers recognize at a slightest graze. We forget that the shirt was ever new; that it once marked a begining. And so the challenge is to reconsider, to reexamine – to find a begining, a new way of thinking. For example: one discovers one can be aware of words. One discovers that one’s emotions are not limited to emotions, but to particular words. One can experience one’s day guided by the word. The word can be used as a lens. One can look through the lens of that word for one’s entire day.)
Today you decide to explore the word limited. Still, you must dress yourself. You rise from your bed and walk to your dresser. You open the drawers of your dresser and look at your clothes. In your dresser are the clothes you have always worn. You look at your choice of shirts. You stand over them and stare. You own so few shirts. You feel limited by the options you have given yourself. There are shirts with short sleeves in your dresser. There are also shirts with long sleeves. You do not own shirts that have three-quarter length sleeves. You are limited to either short sleeves or long sleeves. But you must choose a shirt to wear. You choose a shirt with short sleeves because you are limited to either short sleeves or long sleeves and you must choose one.
Now you must choose the color of the shirt. You are limited to the colors you have always worn. You have always worn green shirts and brown shirts. You do not own a red shirt. Still, you must choose what color shirt to wear. You choose a green shirt because even though you are limited, you are still forced to choose a color. You think to yourself: getting dressed is a limiting thing. Limiting things are colors and sleeves.
(The discovery that one can live by the definition of can be frightening. One thinks it might be simpler to buy a new shirt. But shirts have been bought and nothing has changed. A new way of thinking ensures change. One hesitates at employing this way of thinking. However, this way of thinking can be an experiment that stimulates one’s interest in once ordinary things. One navigates situations using the word as a lens through which one looks one’s world.)
You leave your house and you are still feeling limited. Still, you must leave your house to get coffee. There is only one coffee shop in your neighborhood. You feel limited because of the lack of coffee shops in your neighborhood. You stand outside your house and look at the streets. There are only two streets you can take to get to the coffee shop. And to get to the coffee shop you must choose one of these streets. You feel limited by the streets you can take to get to the only coffee shop in your neighborhood. You feel limited because there are only two routes to take to get to the coffee shop. Yes, you can walk out of your way and thusly have a third route. But you are not interested in walking out of your way. If you walk out of your way, you will be late to meet the friend that you made plans to meet after you get your coffee. You are not interested in making yourself late. You are interested in getting coffee. You can only walk down one street or the other street. You choose one street because, though you are limited to these two streets, you must choose one of these streets in order to get to the coffee shop. Walking to the coffee shop is suddenly a limiting thing.
As you walk down the street you consider this notion of limitation. If you had a dictionary you would look up the definition of limitation. You do not have a dictionary. You only have your notebook. You imagine how limitation might be defined: the quality of being limited? No, that’s not right at all. You are frustrated by your inability to define a word that haunts you so deeply.
(As one descends into this way of thinking, there is a blissful moment in which one lets go. One lets go of the way one thought in the past. This new way of thinking is new and one wishes desperately for something new. Redundancy is suddenly escapable. And while this new way of thinking is new and therefore unknown to be a good way of thinking, one rests assured that one is capable of retreating to past ways of thinking. There is a narrative one keeps. The narrative speaks the thoughts of the past. It tells one that one knows what one is doing – that one can retreat from this way of thinking and process things as one once did. But the prospects of a new way of thinking are exciting. One goes on thinking in the voice of the new.)
You get to the coffee shop and you are feeling limited. Still, you must get coffee. You enter the coffee shop and look at the menu. You put your hand in your pocket, the place where you keep your money. You remove the money you keep in your pocket. Today you only have enough money for a small coffee. You cannot afford a large coffee. You feel limited by the options of coffee you can afford. On the menu there are only two variations of small coffee. There is decaf coffee without caffeine. There is regular coffee with caffeine. You can only afford to choose between these two options. You chose regular coffee because there are only two options and you must choose one. You pay for your coffee. Now you must choose a creamer. The creamer that coffee shop offers is free. But they only offer you two kinds of creamer. There is heavy cream and there is light cream. You are limited to heavy or light. You choose light because you are limited these two options and in the past you have always chosen light cream in your coffee. Drinking coffee is a limiting thing when you only have enough money for a small coffee and creamer comes only in heavy or light.
(The word, which is now a lens through which one looks, can be put to everything. This is more than can be done with a shirt. Everything one does becomes in relation to the word. When this notion is conceived, one conceives the secondary notion that the word can be applied not only to the present, but also to the past. One examines the past looking through the word which is now a lens.)
You sit down at a table in the coffee shop and feel limited. Still, you must write. You are a writer. But you feel limited by the words you can write. You open your notebook and read the words you have written in the past. You feel limited by the way you have always written. There are happy words. There are sad words. The happy lines in your notebook are dotted with words like love and epiphanic and consistency. The sad lines contain the word love as well, but the word is paired with words like dispiriting and constraint. You feel limited by these words. It seems you are limited to writing either happy words or sad words. But you must choose something to write. You choose to write sad words because you are limited to sad words or happy words and this idea of limitation is starting to make you sad. You see no other option – you feel limited by this sadness. Words can also be limiting things.
(It becomes a dangerous thing to look at the past through this word which is now a lens. The danger is that the past, the time when one was not examining things in relation to this word, seems meaningless because it was undefined and without the lens that one now finds so important. Again, there is the shirt, the shirt one has always worn. Alarmed by the possibility that one’s past is meaningless – one averts ones view and uses the lens to examine the future. The future is filled with others. And others can be examined through the lens.)
You leave the coffee shop and feel limited. Still, you must meet with your friend. You have made plans to meet your friend. You have not made plans to do anything else. So, you go to meet your friend. There are two things you have always talked about with this friend. You have always talked about writing and art. When you start the conversation you must decide between talking about writing or talking about art. You feel limited by the things you can talk about with your friend. You meet your friend and begin talking. You choose to talk about writing because you are limited to talking about either writing or art. And now that you have begun talking about writing, you realize that there are only so many things about writing you can talk about. You talk about your experience today and how you discovered that words are limiting. You feel limited by this conversation. Talking to your friend is a limiting thing.
(One inevitably becomes tired of the word one has used as a lens through which one has examined one’s world. Sleep becomes a possibility of clearing one’s mind of the word. One can wake up and find a new word, a new way of thinking.)
You end the conversation with your friend and feel limited. Still, you must go home and take a nap. You must take a nap because you are tired. You go home to take a nap. In your house are the two places where you have taken naps in the past. There is the couch where you have napped. There is also the bed where you have napped. You feel limited by the places where you have taken naps. You choose to nap on bed because you are limited to taking a nap on the couch or taking a nap on the bed. You must choose between the two, and so you choose the bed. Taking a nap is a limiting thing. As you fall asleep you ponder the notion of limitation. You rise and find the dictionary that you did not have with you on your way to the coffee shop. You find your place back on the bed and look up the definition before you fall asleep: an imposed restriction that cannot be exceeded or sidestepped.
Today you wake up and feel filled with possibility. You can do anything you want. This feeling is to be filled with possibility. You decide to dress yourself, though it is possible to stay naked in bed where it is comfortable and warm. But, you feel a tremendous sense of possibility in the options of what you might do today.
(One has escaped the word one has used as a lens. But the notion that one can be guided by a word and the emotion attached to that word becomes a notion filled with unlimited possibilities. There are many words. There are many ways of thinking. This notion is paired with the notion that one can decide upon the word one uses as a lens through which one examines one’s world. Because one possesses the capability of choosing the word, one feels in control. One no longer feels limited.)
You open the drawers of your dresser and look at your clothes. In your dresser there are the all the clothes you can possibly wear. You feel a sense possibility in the options you have given yourself. You look at your choice of shirts. There are shirts with short sleeves. There are shirts with long sleeves. It is possible to choose to short sleeves or long sleeves. You choose a shirt with short sleeves because you have the option to wear either short sleeves or long sleeves. These are two very different possible shirts to wear. Now you can choose the color of your shirt. You have the possibility to choose between the colors you have always liked. You have always liked the colors green and brown. You choose a green shirt because you have the option to choose between green and brown. Today you feel like wearing green. You love the color green. But it is possible to wear brown. Getting dressed can be filled with possibility.
You leave your house feeling anything is possible. You decide to get coffee. You leave your house and look at the streets. You feel a tremendous sense of possibility in the routes you can take to the coffee shop. There are two possible routes you can take to get to the coffee shop. You feel a sense of possibility because anything could happen on those two routes to the coffee shop. You can walk down one street or the other street. You choose one street because you are excited by the many possible things that might happen on that street as you walk to the coffee shop. Walking to the coffee shop is filled with possibility. You consider the word possibility: something that is possible. The definition is small and precise and you remember it in full without the need of a dictionary.
You get to the coffee shop and you feel anything is possible. You enter the coffee shop and look at the menu. You decide to get coffee, though it is possible to get tea. You feel possibility in the options of coffee you can drink. On the menu there are two kinds of coffee you can afford. You feel possibility in the options the coffee shop has given you. There is decaf coffee without caffeine. There is regular coffee with caffeine. You chose regular coffee because you possess the ability to choose the kind of coffee you want to drink. When you choose regular coffee you chose the possible end result of being more energetic with the aid of caffeine. Now you can choose a creamer. There is a heavy cream and there is a light cream. It is possible to choose between heavy or light. You choose light because you prefer light cream in your coffee, though it is possible to choose heavy. Drinking coffee is filled with possibility.
It is exciting that one can navigate one’s day, looking at the world through such a positive lens. One has become increasingly able to use this lens to examine one’s world. Gone are the doubts one ever had that this way of living was remotely dangerous or questioning of the past. The past (the time when one chose to examine the world through a word like ‘limitation’) is a marker of the time when one chose the wrong word to examine one’s world. One now sees one’s own capability in choosing a word which is now a lens.
You sit down at a table in the coffee shop and feel anything is possible. You decide to write in your notebook, though it is possible to draw in your notebook. But you are a writer. You feel a tremendous sense of possibility in the words you can write. You open your notebook and look at the words you have written. In your notebook are the words you have written in the past. You see the ways you have written in the past. There are happy words. There are sad words. Today there is the possibility to write different kinds of words. You choose to write sad words because you are excited by the many possible ways to write sad words. Words are filled with possibility.
You leave the coffee shop and feel anything is possible. You decide to meet up with a friend, though it is possible to go to the park. But you feel excited by the things you might talk about with your friend. You meet your friend and begin talking. There are two things you have always enjoyed talking about with this friend. You have always enjoyed talking about writing and art. When you start the conversation you decide to talk about writing. You choose to talk about writing because you have discovered a new way of writing sad words and it is possible your friend will have exciting insight to this new way of writing. Talking to your friend is filled with possibility.
You end the conversation with your friend and feel anything is possible. You decide to go home and take a nap. You go home to take a nap, though it is possible to go somewhere else. In your house are the places where you have taken naps in the past. There is the couch where you have enjoyed napping. There is the bed where you have also enjoyed napping. It is possible to take a nap in these two places. You choose to nap on the bed because it is possible that you might sleep very well on that bed. It is possible you might have a very nice dream should you nap on the bed. Taking a nap is filled with possibility.
Today you wake up and feel indifferent. You suppose you should dress yourself. You understand there are options in what you can wear, but you do not care. You open the drawers of your dresser and look at your clothes. In your dresser there are the all the clothes you can possibly wear. You understand this possibility. You have, after all, allowed yourself these options.
(The descent into this way of thinking has gained momentum. Choosing the word which one makes one’s lens through which one examines one’s world becomes a task which one has little control over. One merely awakes with a word in one’s head and one cannot seem to escape the word, as the word is in one’s head as one was sleeping and one cannot clear the word from one’s head as one awakes. Furthermore, the past narrative, the narrative that reassured one that there was a way of retreating from the way one thinks becomes less clear. One is no longer reassured by the past – the time when one did not choose a word which one made one’s lens, and past narrative, which is neither conscious nor unconscious, begins to sound incredibly more like the present narrative, which is entirely conscious.)
You look at your choice of shirts. There are shirts with short sleeves. There are shirts with long sleeves. You are indifferent on whether you should wear short sleeves or long sleeves. You choose a shirt with short sleeves because you are somehow indifferent about wearing either short sleeves or long sleeves. And now you realize you must choose the color of your shirt. In the past you have liked the colors green and brown. Now you must choose between wearing the color green or the color brown. You cannot wear both shirts. You choose a green shirt because you are indifferent to these two colors, even though they are the ones you have liked in the past. In the past you very much liked wearing green. Today you are indifferent to the color green. So you chose to wear green based on the fact that you have liked it in the past. Getting dressed is something to which you are indifferent.
You leave your house feeling indifferent. You suppose you should get some coffee. You leave your house and look at the streets. There are two possible routes you can take to get to the coffee shop. You are indifferent to the routes you should take to the coffee shop today. You feel indifferent because nothing that exciting could happen on those two routes to the coffee shop. You can walk down one street or the other street. You choose one street because you are indifferent to which route should take to the coffee shop. You just want some coffee. Walking to the coffee shop something to which you are entirely indifferent.
You get to the coffee shop and you are indifferent. You enter the coffee shop and look at the menu. You decide to get coffee, but not because you particularly want it anymore. You are indifferent whether or not you should even drink coffee. On the menu there are two kinds of coffee you can afford. There is decaf coffee without caffeine. There is regular coffee with caffeine. You don’t really care either way. You choose regular coffee because you are relatively indifferent to the kind of coffee you want to drink. Now you can choose a creamer. There is a heavy cream and there is a light cream. You have no stance on whether you should add heavy or light cream to your coffee. You’re not even sure you want coffee. You choose light because in the past you have preferred light cream in your coffee, though today you don’t really care about coffee or what kind of cream is in it. Drinking coffee is something to which you are indifferent.
(The danger in the technique one has adapted in examining one’s world is that one loses one’s ability to remember that one once went about one’s day without using a word through which one examined one’s world. Examining is not what one does with the word one once chose as a lens. Rather, the word one chosen becomes darkened and one can’t see through the word that is now a lens, a very dark lens. The word itself is now one’s world. One’s world becomes a word from which one cannot escape.)
You are feeling a bit indifferent on what to do today and so you sit down at a table in the coffee shop. You look out the window. Outside the coffee shop is the street. You are not interested in what is happening on the street so you decide to write. You are a writer. You consider the things you can write about. You are unsure of what you feel like writing. You open your notebook and look at the words you have written in the past. You read the words you have written in the past. There are happy words. There are sad words. Today you are unmoved to write different kinds of words. You choose to write sad words because you are indifferent to words and writing and you merely write because it distracts you from the fact that you really do not care about anything or the words that can be used to describe it. Words don’t make a difference.
You leave the coffee shop feeling it does not make a difference where you go. You remember though, that you made plans to meet up with your friend. At present you don’t care about meeting up, though apparently at the time you made these plans you were intrigued by the things you might talk about. You meet your friend and your friend begins talking. Your friend is always asking you questions about writing and art. You have always humored your friend by talking about these two things, though you are truly indifferent. When your friend starts a conversation about writing, you are not surprise nor do you care. You talk about writing and how it doesn’t make a difference what anyone writes. Talking to your friend is filled with possibility.
(Finally, one becomes confused by the way one is thinking and since one is not in control of the way which one is thinking, one becomes entirely controlled by the words which one made one’s lens. One’s past lens and one’s present lens which is also one’s narrative – a narrative to which one is both conscious and unconscious, one gives into the words and the words give into their meaning – becoming blurred and interchangeable.)
You end the conversation with your friend and feel the conversation didn’t make a difference. You decide to go home and take a nap. You go home to take a nap, though it is possible to go somewhere else. In your house are the places where you have taken naps in the past. There is the couch where you have been limited to napping. There is the bed where you have also enjoyed napping. It is impossible to take a nap in these two places. You choose to nap on couch because it is indifferent that you might sleep very well on that possible couch. It is possible you might have a very indifferent dream if you nap on the limited couch. Taking a limited nap is filled with indifferent possibility.
(One rests. One awakes. One sees things differently. And that was one's hope with this new way of thinking.)
painting by ariel churnin
12.5.07
If I Were a Year
Genre: Lyric Essay
I'd be the year Tracy and Max Schmidt-Dobbs found themselves in the same freshmen homeroom after Max excelled and skipped eighth grade, subsequently landing him next to his older sister Tracy. 1979. Unlucky forces combined, or perhaps it was merely the alphabetical seating arrangements, and this photo was taken: Tracy, half in glee for being the auspicious someone to be seated directly center and therefore assigned to hold the text-board (a truly coveted but chance position) and half mortified to be seated next to her younger brother - whose eyeglass prescription had recently been strengthened and had chosen, in Tracy's opinion, "the most hideous frames ever worn by a pre-pubescent nark of a should-be eighth-grader."
11.5.07
28.3.07
A Man, A Student, Once A Boy:
The Societal Detriment of the Excessive and Rapid Learner
Genre: Lyric Essay
There once was a man, a student. To be completely accurate he was first a boy. Upon entering the very best of schools he became a student and later grew into a man. He began awkward and verdant, much like you and me. But this boy had a distinct trait at a very young age – well before one is expected to develop distinct traits. Things fascinated this boy when other children his age were merely curious. He learned to read far too early. He began school at a considerably younger age than some of the world’s greatest thinkers. He was an exotic learner before the exotic became novelty. He was what people today formally refer to as a scholar, but simply because no other word has yet to develop beyond this definition.
The boy learned aggressively. He insisted that petty things not interrupt him. He was always shooing the distractions; always requiring time to think; always determined to understand and comprehend all the questions that hissed at his ears.
Like we who are boys tend to do, this boy inevitably became a man. The man was an adult, much like you and I. He understood adult responsibilities. Adults must pay rent and taxes and other petty fees. But this man was an elite learner. He made the rationalized decision he was above all this. Or rather he was not ready – his mind needed more time. So he went on learning and others paid his way. These others only asked that he pay them back later – when his mind was ready and would earn him far beyond his own needs. And learn he certainly did; understand he surely did; comprehend he did particularly well, of course.
He understood medicine and knew that a scrape on a child’s hand required privacy and time – time for it to return desperately to normalcy; time for the skin envelop and wrap around itself; time to bury itself beneath new flesh.
He studied music and knew its intricacies. When others heard the sound of a folk singer’s voice intoning against her guitar and thought it beautiful – he knew it meant more. He knew it meant the singer had never been taught to be ashamed of sound. He knew she had never been told to be quiet.
He understood math and knew numbers were universal, like the ideas of time and silence. He knew their capabilities in measuring, but not to be tricked and think them tangible.
He was always in school, always an academic. After many years of instruction his mind was seemingly ready for the world. He proved this to his teachers by flexing his mind, exercising it with theories and experiments and writings. Then on one not-so-special day in the spring, as summer approached, the man gowned for his final graduation. He had earned the last and most prestigious of degrees. Those that loaned him what he needed to sustain his life of learning gathered together. They applauded and celebrated that his mind was complete. They were comforted by the notion that his mind was finally finished. He would do all that they had been waiting for, they thought. They had waited so long in a world where minds were never ready. They invested in this man so that he might find answers. They were often unable to fix what needed fixing. Finally, he would repay them far beyond monetary means. He would be their hero.
But this man (who started off as just a boy) did not want to be a hero. He did not believe he was ready. He felt space in his mind where more would fit and complete what he had built. The man clawed and scowled and searched for more things to learn. But he had run out. He had read every page of every book. He understood it all. There is nothing to finish, to fill in, to crown what he had built. But somewhere in his mind he knew there was. There was the bad – the truth, the things that no one could solve or fix or comprehend, not even this man who knew the most.
He knew how and why hurricanes brewed. He understood that winds that disagree will fight. But he did not know why they fought over cities instead of empty rolling hills less harmed by windy scuffles.
He understood precious things like oil are only called precious because they run out. He knew that these oils had been used throughout history as religious medium because they contained energy. But he did not know why men grew angry at things that run out.
He understood literature and knew the capabilities of well-arranged words. He knew that the stories of others, when told correctly, were a gift of experience for the reader. But he did not understand why men found stories created by the dreamers an experience so valueless.
The man sat in his gown and thought for a long while on that Spring day. His gown was dark and its breast was covered with pins and metals and tassels that marked his achievements and the things he had learned. He looked past the pins at the dark cloth below. The fabric only reminded him that there was still space. There were things he did not know.
But this man did not want to comprehend bad things. He had built his mind with things that were good and useful and that fascinated him. He did not want to make a crown so ugly. Still, he was unable to imagine a life with nothing more to learn. He could not go on. He knew this phrase was considered cliché. He knew this was only because of its unfathomable sound in the ears of people who could go on. And so the man dusted his books, he tidied his very nice place he had taken on loan and loved and understood. He wrote a letter of resignation.
The letter was simple and austere but remarkably personal. He apologized for all he would leave for them to do; for the messes he could not clean up; for the loss they would endure. And finally, for being so embarrassingly unable to repay them. But this was his only true option. If they had known what he had known, understood what he understood, they too would understand and agree. A mind so beautifully built could not be tainted with a tarnished coronet. This is how he felt. He explained to them his largest mistake was in shooing the interruptions. He understood that if he had allowed himself the time to be distracted, his learning would have taken longer. He hypothesized for them: his time spent learning combined with an appropriate time allotted for distraction would have amounted to a lifespan thought to be average. He warned them not to let their children to become students too soon.
He left the note on his desk, the place where he sat the most. He climbed to the roof. His last step was easier than he had expected. Fewer thoughts struck him as he fell and he was not fearful as he had expected. He was surprised to find it was not a quick decent. It was deliciously long and something like swimming. He understood why others had replicated before with safety nets and parachutes. He also understood that they were restricted by their fear of striking the ground.
And in a few days time, as it usually happens, those that had loaned him and loved him so much gathered in confused sadness. They wore black and gray and colors strangely appropriate for the occasion. No one understood. Most shook their heads and cried, somehow seeing the situation as simple and small yet strangely and immensely painful. They all questioned why. They knew that if the man were alive he would be able to tell them. His note was kind and simple but they could not understand its complex hypothesis. Why should they be able to?
There were others who did not question or cry. They did not stand with their heads low and sulking. They fidgeted in their suits and kicked at the ground. They were children, much like the man was before he was a man. They did not understand and they were not expected to. They only grew bored and curious at who the man was and why so many people were sad to see him in a box. There curiosity waned as it grew windy. Hats were blown off and skirts turned upward. The children laughed at the sight. Their parents hushed them. They told them to be quiet and to show respect. The children did not understand. Why should they?
Genre: Lyric Essay
There once was a man, a student. To be completely accurate he was first a boy. Upon entering the very best of schools he became a student and later grew into a man. He began awkward and verdant, much like you and me. But this boy had a distinct trait at a very young age – well before one is expected to develop distinct traits. Things fascinated this boy when other children his age were merely curious. He learned to read far too early. He began school at a considerably younger age than some of the world’s greatest thinkers. He was an exotic learner before the exotic became novelty. He was what people today formally refer to as a scholar, but simply because no other word has yet to develop beyond this definition.
The boy learned aggressively. He insisted that petty things not interrupt him. He was always shooing the distractions; always requiring time to think; always determined to understand and comprehend all the questions that hissed at his ears.
Like we who are boys tend to do, this boy inevitably became a man. The man was an adult, much like you and I. He understood adult responsibilities. Adults must pay rent and taxes and other petty fees. But this man was an elite learner. He made the rationalized decision he was above all this. Or rather he was not ready – his mind needed more time. So he went on learning and others paid his way. These others only asked that he pay them back later – when his mind was ready and would earn him far beyond his own needs. And learn he certainly did; understand he surely did; comprehend he did particularly well, of course.
He understood medicine and knew that a scrape on a child’s hand required privacy and time – time for it to return desperately to normalcy; time for the skin envelop and wrap around itself; time to bury itself beneath new flesh.
He studied music and knew its intricacies. When others heard the sound of a folk singer’s voice intoning against her guitar and thought it beautiful – he knew it meant more. He knew it meant the singer had never been taught to be ashamed of sound. He knew she had never been told to be quiet.
He understood math and knew numbers were universal, like the ideas of time and silence. He knew their capabilities in measuring, but not to be tricked and think them tangible.
He was always in school, always an academic. After many years of instruction his mind was seemingly ready for the world. He proved this to his teachers by flexing his mind, exercising it with theories and experiments and writings. Then on one not-so-special day in the spring, as summer approached, the man gowned for his final graduation. He had earned the last and most prestigious of degrees. Those that loaned him what he needed to sustain his life of learning gathered together. They applauded and celebrated that his mind was complete. They were comforted by the notion that his mind was finally finished. He would do all that they had been waiting for, they thought. They had waited so long in a world where minds were never ready. They invested in this man so that he might find answers. They were often unable to fix what needed fixing. Finally, he would repay them far beyond monetary means. He would be their hero.
But this man (who started off as just a boy) did not want to be a hero. He did not believe he was ready. He felt space in his mind where more would fit and complete what he had built. The man clawed and scowled and searched for more things to learn. But he had run out. He had read every page of every book. He understood it all. There is nothing to finish, to fill in, to crown what he had built. But somewhere in his mind he knew there was. There was the bad – the truth, the things that no one could solve or fix or comprehend, not even this man who knew the most.
He knew how and why hurricanes brewed. He understood that winds that disagree will fight. But he did not know why they fought over cities instead of empty rolling hills less harmed by windy scuffles.
He understood precious things like oil are only called precious because they run out. He knew that these oils had been used throughout history as religious medium because they contained energy. But he did not know why men grew angry at things that run out.
He understood literature and knew the capabilities of well-arranged words. He knew that the stories of others, when told correctly, were a gift of experience for the reader. But he did not understand why men found stories created by the dreamers an experience so valueless.
The man sat in his gown and thought for a long while on that Spring day. His gown was dark and its breast was covered with pins and metals and tassels that marked his achievements and the things he had learned. He looked past the pins at the dark cloth below. The fabric only reminded him that there was still space. There were things he did not know.
But this man did not want to comprehend bad things. He had built his mind with things that were good and useful and that fascinated him. He did not want to make a crown so ugly. Still, he was unable to imagine a life with nothing more to learn. He could not go on. He knew this phrase was considered cliché. He knew this was only because of its unfathomable sound in the ears of people who could go on. And so the man dusted his books, he tidied his very nice place he had taken on loan and loved and understood. He wrote a letter of resignation.
The letter was simple and austere but remarkably personal. He apologized for all he would leave for them to do; for the messes he could not clean up; for the loss they would endure. And finally, for being so embarrassingly unable to repay them. But this was his only true option. If they had known what he had known, understood what he understood, they too would understand and agree. A mind so beautifully built could not be tainted with a tarnished coronet. This is how he felt. He explained to them his largest mistake was in shooing the interruptions. He understood that if he had allowed himself the time to be distracted, his learning would have taken longer. He hypothesized for them: his time spent learning combined with an appropriate time allotted for distraction would have amounted to a lifespan thought to be average. He warned them not to let their children to become students too soon.
He left the note on his desk, the place where he sat the most. He climbed to the roof. His last step was easier than he had expected. Fewer thoughts struck him as he fell and he was not fearful as he had expected. He was surprised to find it was not a quick decent. It was deliciously long and something like swimming. He understood why others had replicated before with safety nets and parachutes. He also understood that they were restricted by their fear of striking the ground.
And in a few days time, as it usually happens, those that had loaned him and loved him so much gathered in confused sadness. They wore black and gray and colors strangely appropriate for the occasion. No one understood. Most shook their heads and cried, somehow seeing the situation as simple and small yet strangely and immensely painful. They all questioned why. They knew that if the man were alive he would be able to tell them. His note was kind and simple but they could not understand its complex hypothesis. Why should they be able to?
There were others who did not question or cry. They did not stand with their heads low and sulking. They fidgeted in their suits and kicked at the ground. They were children, much like the man was before he was a man. They did not understand and they were not expected to. They only grew bored and curious at who the man was and why so many people were sad to see him in a box. There curiosity waned as it grew windy. Hats were blown off and skirts turned upward. The children laughed at the sight. Their parents hushed them. They told them to be quiet and to show respect. The children did not understand. Why should they?
2.3.07
Apparel
Genre: Lyric Essay, Dramatic Monologue
"This is the store and we sell cotton; even these jackets that are nylon, if anyone should ask, have cotton here on the collar; nothing is made in a sweatshop; that’s called vertically integrated; everything is arranged by style and color; we only keep one size in each style, except for black and white; in black and white we keep two of each size on the floor; if you see more than one of the same size, pull it off the floor and put it over there for the men who work downstairs to take away; if someone asks for a size they can’t find, use the radio; ask the men down stairs if they have the size; if they do, tell them to bring it upstairs; don’t look bored; say hello to every costumer; when there are no costumers, don’t stand around; separate the hangers so that there’s an even space between each of them; every time a costumer buys something it needs to be replaced so another costumer can buy the same one; that’s what this rack of clothes is; the men downstairs will bring them up and put them on the rack; these clothes need to go back onto the floor; Samantha, put these back on the floor; don’t cluster with who ever you’re working with; stay in your zone; don’t leave the floor to hang out with the men downstairs; don’t try on clothes when you’re working; don’t steal clothes; I have to check your bag every time you leave so you don’t steal clothes; so if you steal clothes, don’t put them in your bag; a girl in the Chelsea store got fired for stealing clothes; she wasn’t very smart; don’t feel special if the owner hits on you; the owner hits on everyone; don’t check your Myspace on the floor computer; use the computer downstairs; if the men who work downstairs are using the computer, tell them you’re on your break and you want to check your Myspace and make them get off; don’t do drugs at work; if you do drugs, use the bathroom on the floor and not the bathroom downstairs and don’t be obvious and clench your jaw and sniffle; don’t drink with the men downstairs after closing; if you drink, drink upstairs but drink in between those two racks where the cameras can’t see you; the store always supposed to look perfect; when the owner comes everything actually should be perfect; his assistant will call and tell you if he’s coming; if he’s coming you have one hour to make things perfect; if he doesn’t come in an hour you have keep things looking perfect until he comes; when he comes everyone needs to be wearing the right clothes, even the men downstairs; if I’m not here, Samantha will make sure everyone is wearing the right clothes; when he comes he’ll swear and scream and yell at you for not keeping things perfect; don’t look scared when he yells at you; at least you’re not the men downstairs; the men downstairs get yelled at the most because they never do anything."
"This is the store and we sell cotton; even these jackets that are nylon, if anyone should ask, have cotton here on the collar; nothing is made in a sweatshop; that’s called vertically integrated; everything is arranged by style and color; we only keep one size in each style, except for black and white; in black and white we keep two of each size on the floor; if you see more than one of the same size, pull it off the floor and put it over there for the men who work downstairs to take away; if someone asks for a size they can’t find, use the radio; ask the men down stairs if they have the size; if they do, tell them to bring it upstairs; don’t look bored; say hello to every costumer; when there are no costumers, don’t stand around; separate the hangers so that there’s an even space between each of them; every time a costumer buys something it needs to be replaced so another costumer can buy the same one; that’s what this rack of clothes is; the men downstairs will bring them up and put them on the rack; these clothes need to go back onto the floor; Samantha, put these back on the floor; don’t cluster with who ever you’re working with; stay in your zone; don’t leave the floor to hang out with the men downstairs; don’t try on clothes when you’re working; don’t steal clothes; I have to check your bag every time you leave so you don’t steal clothes; so if you steal clothes, don’t put them in your bag; a girl in the Chelsea store got fired for stealing clothes; she wasn’t very smart; don’t feel special if the owner hits on you; the owner hits on everyone; don’t check your Myspace on the floor computer; use the computer downstairs; if the men who work downstairs are using the computer, tell them you’re on your break and you want to check your Myspace and make them get off; don’t do drugs at work; if you do drugs, use the bathroom on the floor and not the bathroom downstairs and don’t be obvious and clench your jaw and sniffle; don’t drink with the men downstairs after closing; if you drink, drink upstairs but drink in between those two racks where the cameras can’t see you; the store always supposed to look perfect; when the owner comes everything actually should be perfect; his assistant will call and tell you if he’s coming; if he’s coming you have one hour to make things perfect; if he doesn’t come in an hour you have keep things looking perfect until he comes; when he comes everyone needs to be wearing the right clothes, even the men downstairs; if I’m not here, Samantha will make sure everyone is wearing the right clothes; when he comes he’ll swear and scream and yell at you for not keeping things perfect; don’t look scared when he yells at you; at least you’re not the men downstairs; the men downstairs get yelled at the most because they never do anything."
25.2.07
Flashbulb of a Thought #1
Genre: Work In Progress
This is the begining of a series I've called 'Flashbulb of a Thought.' The title comes from my favorite Burroughs quote 'we see God through our assholes in the flashbulb of an orgasm.' The true purpose the series is to find a way to string together the constantly growing pile of ideas and dialogues I've acquired but lack the attention span to fashion into a larger piece. Each are a moment or sentiment I've come up with or imagined so fast I don't have the ability to understand them. Someday, and until then - enjoy.
Myspace Message
dear stranger i sometimes see on the subway,
i think i've seen you 3.2 times in the last 4 months. which is, you know, insignifigant in almost all respects. but i guess we lead similarly L train-based lives, or something. nonetheless, i secretly scoured the internet (myspace, facebook, friendster all included) for some online trace of your existence off the L train.
this message is to ensure the next time we run into eachother, or rather the next time i notice you on the subway, it will surely be awkward and involve even less saying 'hello, how are you?'
yours, idiot
This is the begining of a series I've called 'Flashbulb of a Thought.' The title comes from my favorite Burroughs quote 'we see God through our assholes in the flashbulb of an orgasm.' The true purpose the series is to find a way to string together the constantly growing pile of ideas and dialogues I've acquired but lack the attention span to fashion into a larger piece. Each are a moment or sentiment I've come up with or imagined so fast I don't have the ability to understand them. Someday, and until then - enjoy.
Myspace Message
dear stranger i sometimes see on the subway,
i think i've seen you 3.2 times in the last 4 months. which is, you know, insignifigant in almost all respects. but i guess we lead similarly L train-based lives, or something. nonetheless, i secretly scoured the internet (myspace, facebook, friendster all included) for some online trace of your existence off the L train.
this message is to ensure the next time we run into eachother, or rather the next time i notice you on the subway, it will surely be awkward and involve even less saying 'hello, how are you?'
yours, idiot
14.2.07
A Play By Bowen Ames
Genre: Lyric Essay, Dramatic Monologue
Written and Performed By Bowen Ames
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the first and continual performance of A Play by Bowen Ames, written by Bowen Ames and also performed by Bowen Ames. I am Bowen Ames, and I welcome you. [Hold for applause] Before the performance begins -- I’d like to thank Judith Butler for her influence in the writing of this play. And therein I must thank Jacque Lacan. And in thanking him I not only thank the beloved Judy B., but also all influenced by Lacanian psychoanalysis and phenomenology: Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, George Herbert Mead, etc. And of course the structural anthropologists: Claude Levì-Strauss, Victor Turner, Clifford Geertz, etc. And also those believing and fleshing out for me, the speech-act theory: particularly the work of John Searle, etc. I must thank them all for eliciting my understanding of the "performativity" of my identities, and henceforth the performance of A Play By Bowen Ames.
You see, all of these theories have allowed me to explore the ways that my social reality, and I suppose your social reality too, is not a given. It is but a continually created illusion. See me? I am Bowen Ames and I am an illusion you see simply through language, gesture, and all manners of symbolic social signs. See how I wave to my mother right now, sitting there in the second row, third seat from the left, hi mom. You only know that I’m saying hello to her because this gesture, this waving of a hand is but a performance of me… saying hello… to my mother, hi mom.
If you don’t understand, and really you should in order to fully enjoy A Play by Bowen Ames, I will provide an example using the speech-act theory. But first you must understand the speech act, you really should. John Searle terms illocutionary speech acts, those speech acts that actually do something rather than merely represent something. And now that you understand that, I will give an example. The classic example, because I dare not confuse you with the contemporary one, is the "I pronounce you man and wife" of the marriage ceremony. In making that statement, a person of authority changes the status of a couple within an intersubjective community; those words actively change the existence of that couple by establishing a new marital reality: the words do what they say.
And as Judy B. explained to me over our performance of ‘lunch’ “within the speech act theory, a performative is that discursive practice that enacts or produces that which it names.” And that is to say to you, my beloved audience, that a speech act can produce that which it names. And I have named this A Play by Bowen Ames and I welcome you. Please do not use flash photography, in case of emergency use emergency exits. Thank You.
Written and Performed By Bowen Ames
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the first and continual performance of A Play by Bowen Ames, written by Bowen Ames and also performed by Bowen Ames. I am Bowen Ames, and I welcome you. [Hold for applause] Before the performance begins -- I’d like to thank Judith Butler for her influence in the writing of this play. And therein I must thank Jacque Lacan. And in thanking him I not only thank the beloved Judy B., but also all influenced by Lacanian psychoanalysis and phenomenology: Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, George Herbert Mead, etc. And of course the structural anthropologists: Claude Levì-Strauss, Victor Turner, Clifford Geertz, etc. And also those believing and fleshing out for me, the speech-act theory: particularly the work of John Searle, etc. I must thank them all for eliciting my understanding of the "performativity" of my identities, and henceforth the performance of A Play By Bowen Ames.
You see, all of these theories have allowed me to explore the ways that my social reality, and I suppose your social reality too, is not a given. It is but a continually created illusion. See me? I am Bowen Ames and I am an illusion you see simply through language, gesture, and all manners of symbolic social signs. See how I wave to my mother right now, sitting there in the second row, third seat from the left, hi mom. You only know that I’m saying hello to her because this gesture, this waving of a hand is but a performance of me… saying hello… to my mother, hi mom.
If you don’t understand, and really you should in order to fully enjoy A Play by Bowen Ames, I will provide an example using the speech-act theory. But first you must understand the speech act, you really should. John Searle terms illocutionary speech acts, those speech acts that actually do something rather than merely represent something. And now that you understand that, I will give an example. The classic example, because I dare not confuse you with the contemporary one, is the "I pronounce you man and wife" of the marriage ceremony. In making that statement, a person of authority changes the status of a couple within an intersubjective community; those words actively change the existence of that couple by establishing a new marital reality: the words do what they say.
And as Judy B. explained to me over our performance of ‘lunch’ “within the speech act theory, a performative is that discursive practice that enacts or produces that which it names.” And that is to say to you, my beloved audience, that a speech act can produce that which it names. And I have named this A Play by Bowen Ames and I welcome you. Please do not use flash photography, in case of emergency use emergency exits. Thank You.