Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Then Mackenzie leapt up from the bed, shook his dorky friend by the shoulders and told him, “Oh, Vaughan! High school will be so much better! It really will. You’ll see. It’ll be the time!”
Vaughan had hoped a little bit that Mackenzie was right.
But only a little.
And freshman year had proven how wise that small hope had been.
Freshman year:
It had begun with insult added to injury. Cedric had never been solicitous of his sons’ wardrobe. In fact he had never had to be since Vaughan was in Catholic school, but now the boy was treated to all manner of taunts and ridicules. His jeans were not only the wrong sort, they were rolled, which was hopelessly out of style. His shirts were ugly. His hair was horrible. He talked like a book. Black people said he wasn’t Black enough. White people agreed. He faced being stuffed in a locker once or twice. Football players made fun of him. So did cheerleaders.
The only hope for him was to join the band--where everyone was a disgrace.
“I wish you would,” Mackenzie said.
“I can’t play an instrument.”
“You could do the triangle.”
Vaughan just looked at his friend through his glasses..
“I was actually serious,” Mackenzie said.
“I know.”
And Vaughan couldn’t figure our where Mackenzie had learned to play an instrument either. What’s more, being on the band did not make him less popular though Coach Foster was a little upset his son did not try out for the football team.
And then there was Coach Foster. It was not his fault that he was the gym teacher, it was just that gym was even worse for Vaughan than math and it was dreadful to be under a man who was his best friend’s father. Mercifully, Mackenzie was not in this class with Vaughan. It all had to do with what times math and foreign language classes took place. Mackenzie was taking French and he was in Algebra. Vaughan was in remedial math, taking Latin. So they wouldn’t see each other much that year.
What Vaughan had was his sister, who was an outcast in a whole other way. Dating the quarterback, beautiful and glamourous, Madeleine Fitzgerald was an outcast. He had Claudia who had cast herself out and Tina who had done the same and seemed doomed to live in the shadow of her sister.
Ashley was no outcast.
Nor was she worth talking about, and so they didn’t.
However, due to the advanced math class on Mackenzie’s part, extreme loneliness on the part of Vaughan, and learning how to cheat a little when it suited him, Vaughan learned at the end of his freshman year that he had the highest GPA by far in his class. Some boy he didn’t know was a distant second. Fourth place was held by Mackenzie.
“I’m so proud of you!” Mackenzie said, shaking his friend, which made Vaughan ashamed for feeling triumphant.
The year came to an end with high school as bad as ever, Vaughan a laughing stock, though a brilliant one, who’d narrowly missed being shut in lockers by basketball players. He was sitting on the large front porch of the Fitzgerald house, Coke bottle glasses down his nose, raspberry colored Argyle socks pulled up to his knees, and looking to his right, to the high school across the field when he made a discovery. Vaughan at the age of fifteen learned what most people never learned at all. It wasn’t high school or any other thing or place that would change him or how people looked at him. It was all him.
And now he was about to change his image.
-- FromThe Hidden Lives of Virgins
Vaughan had hoped a little bit that Mackenzie was right.
But only a little.
And freshman year had proven how wise that small hope had been.
Freshman year:
It had begun with insult added to injury. Cedric had never been solicitous of his sons’ wardrobe. In fact he had never had to be since Vaughan was in Catholic school, but now the boy was treated to all manner of taunts and ridicules. His jeans were not only the wrong sort, they were rolled, which was hopelessly out of style. His shirts were ugly. His hair was horrible. He talked like a book. Black people said he wasn’t Black enough. White people agreed. He faced being stuffed in a locker once or twice. Football players made fun of him. So did cheerleaders.
The only hope for him was to join the band--where everyone was a disgrace.
“I wish you would,” Mackenzie said.
“I can’t play an instrument.”
“You could do the triangle.”
Vaughan just looked at his friend through his glasses..
“I was actually serious,” Mackenzie said.
“I know.”
And Vaughan couldn’t figure our where Mackenzie had learned to play an instrument either. What’s more, being on the band did not make him less popular though Coach Foster was a little upset his son did not try out for the football team.
And then there was Coach Foster. It was not his fault that he was the gym teacher, it was just that gym was even worse for Vaughan than math and it was dreadful to be under a man who was his best friend’s father. Mercifully, Mackenzie was not in this class with Vaughan. It all had to do with what times math and foreign language classes took place. Mackenzie was taking French and he was in Algebra. Vaughan was in remedial math, taking Latin. So they wouldn’t see each other much that year.
What Vaughan had was his sister, who was an outcast in a whole other way. Dating the quarterback, beautiful and glamourous, Madeleine Fitzgerald was an outcast. He had Claudia who had cast herself out and Tina who had done the same and seemed doomed to live in the shadow of her sister.
Ashley was no outcast.
Nor was she worth talking about, and so they didn’t.
However, due to the advanced math class on Mackenzie’s part, extreme loneliness on the part of Vaughan, and learning how to cheat a little when it suited him, Vaughan learned at the end of his freshman year that he had the highest GPA by far in his class. Some boy he didn’t know was a distant second. Fourth place was held by Mackenzie.
“I’m so proud of you!” Mackenzie said, shaking his friend, which made Vaughan ashamed for feeling triumphant.
The year came to an end with high school as bad as ever, Vaughan a laughing stock, though a brilliant one, who’d narrowly missed being shut in lockers by basketball players. He was sitting on the large front porch of the Fitzgerald house, Coke bottle glasses down his nose, raspberry colored Argyle socks pulled up to his knees, and looking to his right, to the high school across the field when he made a discovery. Vaughan at the age of fifteen learned what most people never learned at all. It wasn’t high school or any other thing or place that would change him or how people looked at him. It was all him.
And now he was about to change his image.
-- From
Sunday, March 28, 2004
This is just to clarify:
Ms. Helen Hawarth did not STEAL the various disturbing quizzes now displayed on Witch's Blood. No, no. She made use of them with full credit to Doc the Weasel. If I were not so lazy I would link to them right here, but seeing as they are both already in my sidebar... no, I'm not gonna do it.
However I DID steal these quizzes from Helen's site. Helen, I also took that watch you're so fond of, and I'm not giving it back. So there! (He sticks out his tongue.)
Ms. Helen Hawarth did not STEAL the various disturbing quizzes now displayed on Witch's Blood. No, no. She made use of them with full credit to Doc the Weasel. If I were not so lazy I would link to them right here, but seeing as they are both already in my sidebar... no, I'm not gonna do it.
However I DID steal these quizzes from Helen's site. Helen, I also took that watch you're so fond of, and I'm not giving it back. So there! (He sticks out his tongue.)
Saturday, March 27, 2004
This comes from Helen's site. I think Helen got it from Doc. Find out your kith, kids!
What kith are you? Find out here.
Two experiences from college. One where we were at a party and someone who was becoming a friend asked me my major. I said “English with a religion minor.” She looked at me, and then said, “I never took you for being very religious.”
Another incident, when I was working in the coffee shop—which was under the dormitory I lived in, and I showed a patron there my room. She saw the crucifix and the Bible and the Virgin Mary and then said, “I never knew you were religious.”
In fact that pretty much summed up college. I do not know that I am religious or not, but I know I don’t trust ostentatious shows. Faith is between you, God, and the congregation of the faithful you are worshipping with. It is all about the reality you are experiencing, and your response to this experience. It is vital and living, and when you have to advertise then it’s dead. I will never be one of those people who grabs you and says, “God bless you!” Or who you hear saying, “Praise Jesus!” Though, to be honest, you might hear me mutter, “Jesus Christ!” or “Goddamn!”
Sometimes those can be prayers.
It is said by Americans and Europeans (I include Australians here) that Americans are far more religious, that we pray more, that we are a more spiritual people. I’m not sure I believe that. In fact, I’m sure I don’t. I’ve experienced the opposite. In the States we are very keen on the appearance of things and we have the appearance of religion down pat, but I think that what exist in European countries and formerly British ones (Canada as well as Australia) is what comes AFTER overt religion. After post-modernism and after post-Christianity, after “God has died” two choices remain to us. We can either equate divinity with the model of the giant old white man in the sky and say we don’t believe in that so there must not be anything. Or we can take our yearnings seriously and begin the honest search and the honest living of the mystery.
Religion comes from the Latin word for ligament, and it means that which connects us. To each other, to the past and present, to this earth. To this universe. I would urge everyone, everywhere to take that very seriously.
p.s. Jenny, thank you for your well wishes. I am feeling better now.
Another incident, when I was working in the coffee shop—which was under the dormitory I lived in, and I showed a patron there my room. She saw the crucifix and the Bible and the Virgin Mary and then said, “I never knew you were religious.”
In fact that pretty much summed up college. I do not know that I am religious or not, but I know I don’t trust ostentatious shows. Faith is between you, God, and the congregation of the faithful you are worshipping with. It is all about the reality you are experiencing, and your response to this experience. It is vital and living, and when you have to advertise then it’s dead. I will never be one of those people who grabs you and says, “God bless you!” Or who you hear saying, “Praise Jesus!” Though, to be honest, you might hear me mutter, “Jesus Christ!” or “Goddamn!”
Sometimes those can be prayers.
It is said by Americans and Europeans (I include Australians here) that Americans are far more religious, that we pray more, that we are a more spiritual people. I’m not sure I believe that. In fact, I’m sure I don’t. I’ve experienced the opposite. In the States we are very keen on the appearance of things and we have the appearance of religion down pat, but I think that what exist in European countries and formerly British ones (Canada as well as Australia) is what comes AFTER overt religion. After post-modernism and after post-Christianity, after “God has died” two choices remain to us. We can either equate divinity with the model of the giant old white man in the sky and say we don’t believe in that so there must not be anything. Or we can take our yearnings seriously and begin the honest search and the honest living of the mystery.
Religion comes from the Latin word for ligament, and it means that which connects us. To each other, to the past and present, to this earth. To this universe. I would urge everyone, everywhere to take that very seriously.
p.s. Jenny, thank you for your well wishes. I am feeling better now.
Friday, March 26, 2004
friday roundup
Technical matters first. When I went to another computer Witch's Blood was in miniature font, and Helen said that Wicked Fairy is in little itty bitty font on her computer, so does anyone know of a font adjuster THAT'S FREE. If you don't know, I'm going to find one anyway and try to add it to the template, then things can be as big or as small as you want.
Yay!
I'm going to try to post something new up on Wicked Fairy every week. Do not attempt (Helen...) to read the entire blog in one setting. It's there to be looked at whenever, and it will get larger over time. This week's post is the first part of a story called "Thirty-One". I'm wondering who it was written for, and now I think it's really dedicated to Brad, it's main character. I don't know who won't be able to identify with him. It's about Generation-X, but the problems people apply to Generation-X are problems everyone has. So....
And for anyone breathlessly waiting for it, the second half of chapter three for The Hidden Lives of Virgins should be posted some time tomorrow. This is especially for Helen who struggled through chapters and chapters of it on Joe.user. : ), but what's being posted she's already read.
Hail Brittania : )
Technical matters first. When I went to another computer Witch's Blood was in miniature font, and Helen said that Wicked Fairy is in little itty bitty font on her computer, so does anyone know of a font adjuster THAT'S FREE. If you don't know, I'm going to find one anyway and try to add it to the template, then things can be as big or as small as you want.
Yay!
I'm going to try to post something new up on Wicked Fairy every week. Do not attempt (Helen...) to read the entire blog in one setting. It's there to be looked at whenever, and it will get larger over time. This week's post is the first part of a story called "Thirty-One". I'm wondering who it was written for, and now I think it's really dedicated to Brad, it's main character. I don't know who won't be able to identify with him. It's about Generation-X, but the problems people apply to Generation-X are problems everyone has. So....
And for anyone breathlessly waiting for it, the second half of chapter three for The Hidden Lives of Virgins should be posted some time tomorrow. This is especially for Helen who struggled through chapters and chapters of it on Joe.user. : ), but what's being posted she's already read.
Hail Brittania : )
Thursday, March 25, 2004
this morning
It’s a while before I read my own posts, and I forget them after I write them. I am half ashamed now for any wallowing or worrying. If Woolf had had a blog and friends and friends with blogs she would have never filled her pockets with pebbles. You all don’t just say, “My, how artistic is his sorrow!” You say, “Let’s snap him the fuck out of it!” God, I appreciate that!
The first week of true spring. The world’s coming to life again. So am I. I don’t know that I was so much sad as worried and afraid. But that all needed to be passed through, and I’ve passed through it and I’m still here. We’re all still here.
Walking the earth today, with a little bit of rain on the air and the wind up I felt… I don’t think grateful is the word, but convinced. Convinced that the world is a good and holy place. Convinced of the rightness of the earth under our feet. Convinced that things are going to be quite alright.
This morning Mom knocks on the door. I have woken up late, but these days I figure my body knows what I need better than me, and I needed nothing so much as to rest and repair from the mental struggle of the last week.
“Linda is dead,” she says. And I hold back all the stupid questions and affectionate but annoying touches I know my father will give her. He’s always, “Are you alright?” Are you all right?” And Mother’s like me, or I’m like her. An irascible cat whose fur goes up and being stroked and whined over. I say, “When did it happen. I’m sorry,” and kiss her on the cheek. Her skin is so dry. She feels quite frail.
For Evening Prayer I sing her requiem. There is something about Linda’s name mixed in with the English of the Old King James’ Bible, and incense and Anglican hymns. Ceremony helps to put into some order those things the modern world cannot make sense of… like thirty years olds with lives full of trouble…. Whose lives get harder and harder until they just can’t go on.
Oh, yes, I know I am not alone. And I take all of you up on what you said and trust in your friendship: Jenny, Helen, London. There is a peculiar prayer I ran across in the BCP for lonely people, and I see them everyday. So I think I will say that prayer this evening.
It’s a while before I read my own posts, and I forget them after I write them. I am half ashamed now for any wallowing or worrying. If Woolf had had a blog and friends and friends with blogs she would have never filled her pockets with pebbles. You all don’t just say, “My, how artistic is his sorrow!” You say, “Let’s snap him the fuck out of it!” God, I appreciate that!
The first week of true spring. The world’s coming to life again. So am I. I don’t know that I was so much sad as worried and afraid. But that all needed to be passed through, and I’ve passed through it and I’m still here. We’re all still here.
Walking the earth today, with a little bit of rain on the air and the wind up I felt… I don’t think grateful is the word, but convinced. Convinced that the world is a good and holy place. Convinced of the rightness of the earth under our feet. Convinced that things are going to be quite alright.
This morning Mom knocks on the door. I have woken up late, but these days I figure my body knows what I need better than me, and I needed nothing so much as to rest and repair from the mental struggle of the last week.
“Linda is dead,” she says. And I hold back all the stupid questions and affectionate but annoying touches I know my father will give her. He’s always, “Are you alright?” Are you all right?” And Mother’s like me, or I’m like her. An irascible cat whose fur goes up and being stroked and whined over. I say, “When did it happen. I’m sorry,” and kiss her on the cheek. Her skin is so dry. She feels quite frail.
For Evening Prayer I sing her requiem. There is something about Linda’s name mixed in with the English of the Old King James’ Bible, and incense and Anglican hymns. Ceremony helps to put into some order those things the modern world cannot make sense of… like thirty years olds with lives full of trouble…. Whose lives get harder and harder until they just can’t go on.
Oh, yes, I know I am not alone. And I take all of you up on what you said and trust in your friendship: Jenny, Helen, London. There is a peculiar prayer I ran across in the BCP for lonely people, and I see them everyday. So I think I will say that prayer this evening.
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
sunshiny things iii
And I see you standing there
wanting more from me
and all I can do is try...
Nelly Furtado
And then the magic moment comes which saves you from jumping of the bridge, gassing your head or mixing a drug cocktail. Though often an artists may feel like the loneliest one in the room, seeing ghosts in the shadows of the wall, what she feels is really only the mirror of what all the other people at the party live with everyday. Everyone lives with the assumption that their little world is the world, and their little concerns are the concerns, cut off from everyone and everything else, and though everyone prays that their needs will be advanced, deep inside they know there's no reason they should be. Everyone walks lonely. The artists, the bard, the prophet, the poet receives that rare grace by which in an instant she knows that her small troubles, her fears and agonies are the trails, the fears and the anguishes of the whole world. Living inside herself she knows she is telling the story of everyone around her, and looking inside, and going beneath the skin.
And so whether we laugh or cry we do not do it alone.
And I see you standing there
wanting more from me
and all I can do is try...
Nelly Furtado
And then the magic moment comes which saves you from jumping of the bridge, gassing your head or mixing a drug cocktail. Though often an artists may feel like the loneliest one in the room, seeing ghosts in the shadows of the wall, what she feels is really only the mirror of what all the other people at the party live with everyday. Everyone lives with the assumption that their little world is the world, and their little concerns are the concerns, cut off from everyone and everything else, and though everyone prays that their needs will be advanced, deep inside they know there's no reason they should be. Everyone walks lonely. The artists, the bard, the prophet, the poet receives that rare grace by which in an instant she knows that her small troubles, her fears and agonies are the trails, the fears and the anguishes of the whole world. Living inside herself she knows she is telling the story of everyone around her, and looking inside, and going beneath the skin.
And so whether we laugh or cry we do not do it alone.
sunshiny things ii
Shortly before the appearance of her first book, when she ought to have been at the top of the world, and when everything was happening for her, Virginia Woolf's witticism failed her, her correspondances came to an end and she fell into a long madness.
This is rather how I feel. thoughts chase themselves around and around. You have started so late at this. Remember that boy, only twenty years old, working on a sequel, raking in the cash? You've started far too early, what do you expect? How at twenty-six, do you expect to have anything to say? Your problem, the reason you don't hang out anymore with anyone under forty is because you're a lot smarter than most people your age. Everyone my age is financially solvent and I can't get two pieces of bread on my own. You need to find proper work. You know in your heart the only thing you're fit for is going back to university. The tasks outside of academia that you're not willing to do, you're not qualified for, and that's the truth. What if the university screws me over? I will need to find another school? What other school? Will they have me... and so on and on and on.
When I get like this the only thing to do is get my messenger bag and a few books, take a long bus trip and go shopping. Get my mind off of me and onto my business, which is writing, which is storytelling.
The irony of it all is that no one lives in her head or is so fixated on his own troubles as a writer, and yet the only way to be good at what you do, is not to be fixated on yourself and your trials.
Shortly before the appearance of her first book, when she ought to have been at the top of the world, and when everything was happening for her, Virginia Woolf's witticism failed her, her correspondances came to an end and she fell into a long madness.
This is rather how I feel. thoughts chase themselves around and around. You have started so late at this. Remember that boy, only twenty years old, working on a sequel, raking in the cash? You've started far too early, what do you expect? How at twenty-six, do you expect to have anything to say? Your problem, the reason you don't hang out anymore with anyone under forty is because you're a lot smarter than most people your age. Everyone my age is financially solvent and I can't get two pieces of bread on my own. You need to find proper work. You know in your heart the only thing you're fit for is going back to university. The tasks outside of academia that you're not willing to do, you're not qualified for, and that's the truth. What if the university screws me over? I will need to find another school? What other school? Will they have me... and so on and on and on.
When I get like this the only thing to do is get my messenger bag and a few books, take a long bus trip and go shopping. Get my mind off of me and onto my business, which is writing, which is storytelling.
The irony of it all is that no one lives in her head or is so fixated on his own troubles as a writer, and yet the only way to be good at what you do, is not to be fixated on yourself and your trials.
sunshiny things
Spring is setting in, but barely. Northern Indiana seems just as unwilling to surrender winter as my heart is. I am not ready to start new things, make new endeavors, give up old ways, face possible truths. How can it be March already? Wasn’t it just December? Time is ticking, ticking, and it is all too easy for me to become a victim to my imagination and look at months as if they have been years.
The Vernal Equinox fell at new moon this year making it doubly holy day. It was also the day I finished the rough draft of the novel I’ve been working on, and said good bye, for a while, to that cast of friends. I do not return to proof a story until it is good and cold. Until I get to a place where it is removed from me and in going over it the same things that would confuse or surprise another reader would do the same to me. I opened the new site, Wicked Fairy, and I will mention it a lot and add to many forums because I don’t think I’m being vain when I see people should see it. The stories are good there, and I DO SAY SO MYSELF. I’ve been going over the ones that will be posted in near weeks.
I turn to one story I wrote sometime ago that I’m proofing, and I live in that tale for a while. Living with these characters it’s as if I’ve made some pact with darkness. Not evil, but with life’s underbelly and people’s deep concerns. I don’t know if it’s correct to say I like the dark, but I feel at home in it, even when it’s driving me half mad. I don’t know that I could be a story teller and tell bright sunshiny things.
Spring is setting in, but barely. Northern Indiana seems just as unwilling to surrender winter as my heart is. I am not ready to start new things, make new endeavors, give up old ways, face possible truths. How can it be March already? Wasn’t it just December? Time is ticking, ticking, and it is all too easy for me to become a victim to my imagination and look at months as if they have been years.
The Vernal Equinox fell at new moon this year making it doubly holy day. It was also the day I finished the rough draft of the novel I’ve been working on, and said good bye, for a while, to that cast of friends. I do not return to proof a story until it is good and cold. Until I get to a place where it is removed from me and in going over it the same things that would confuse or surprise another reader would do the same to me. I opened the new site, Wicked Fairy, and I will mention it a lot and add to many forums because I don’t think I’m being vain when I see people should see it. The stories are good there, and I DO SAY SO MYSELF. I’ve been going over the ones that will be posted in near weeks.
I turn to one story I wrote sometime ago that I’m proofing, and I live in that tale for a while. Living with these characters it’s as if I’ve made some pact with darkness. Not evil, but with life’s underbelly and people’s deep concerns. I don’t know if it’s correct to say I like the dark, but I feel at home in it, even when it’s driving me half mad. I don’t know that I could be a story teller and tell bright sunshiny things.
Monday, March 22, 2004
i i
daughters see visions
old men dream dreams
prophets walk naked
you know what i mean
sylvia, sylvia, that isn't bread
what you stuck in the oven
my dear is your head
young men prophecy
old men dream dreams
yeats died before thirty
you know what i mean
thomas and kerouac
raged into the night
and died on cheap booze
ah, that isn't right!
virginia, virginia,
we knock at your door,
take all the rocks from our pockets before
we go into the Thames
weighed down with our dreams
save all the prophets
you know what i mean
daughters see visions
old men dream dreams
prophets walk naked
you know what i mean
sylvia, sylvia, that isn't bread
what you stuck in the oven
my dear is your head
young men prophecy
old men dream dreams
yeats died before thirty
you know what i mean
thomas and kerouac
raged into the night
and died on cheap booze
ah, that isn't right!
virginia, virginia,
we knock at your door,
take all the rocks from our pockets before
we go into the Thames
weighed down with our dreams
save all the prophets
you know what i mean
Sunday, March 21, 2004
i feel guilty cause i sleep alone
i am guilty cause i stay at home
i confess that i make small progress
i am guilty of writing lines
that have meter
and standard rhyme
i am guilty of being unaffected
i am shamed for being poor
and that i really do not want much more
than the little i've already got
pack up all that i own
and throw in a bag of bones
and runes
and it would all fit on a cot
and i am jealous that i am not you
with the shiny new Subaru
and guilty of being bitchy
i twist my hands and scratch my head
tremble when i go to bed
other people's cash makes my fingers itchy
and i feel strong and connected
young and disinfected
touching all the world
but not fitting in
to the world of boys and men
women and girls again
cause these days they believe in isolation
and everyone thinks that this is liberation
but this is all i own
my flesh, my blood and bone
the candles i burn on the altar
and standing up through loss
the storm it came to toss
me this way and that for three long years
and it had it's way with me
and took half my sanity
it left my love, my life
dollar store paradise
change and a bag of cheap fears
i am guilty cause i stay at home
i confess that i make small progress
i am guilty of writing lines
that have meter
and standard rhyme
i am guilty of being unaffected
i am shamed for being poor
and that i really do not want much more
than the little i've already got
pack up all that i own
and throw in a bag of bones
and runes
and it would all fit on a cot
and i am jealous that i am not you
with the shiny new Subaru
and guilty of being bitchy
i twist my hands and scratch my head
tremble when i go to bed
other people's cash makes my fingers itchy
and i feel strong and connected
young and disinfected
touching all the world
but not fitting in
to the world of boys and men
women and girls again
cause these days they believe in isolation
and everyone thinks that this is liberation
but this is all i own
my flesh, my blood and bone
the candles i burn on the altar
and standing up through loss
the storm it came to toss
me this way and that for three long years
and it had it's way with me
and took half my sanity
it left my love, my life
dollar store paradise
change and a bag of cheap fears
Saturday, March 20, 2004
Edumacation
I just came back from London Kennedy's site where her latest article talks about seeing Jon Bon Jovi on Regis and Kelly-- the second and more gruesome incarnation of Regis and Kathie Lee. Anyway, Bon Jovi makes the comment that he never had to go to college because he was already making money at twenty. London's point was that the reason to go to school was not to make money but for the joy of education, and someone left a comment that he knew too many stupid people who had gone to school to equate schooling with education. That if she had been a rock star at twenty she might be saying the same thing. I think that's what he said, at least.
Well, I've got to weigh in. Firstly, Bon Jovi: what were you doing at EIGHTEEN because that's usually when people start school. Secondly, in South Bend, Indiana there are several people who say the same thing Bon Jovi did. They all work at Target, Dollar Tree or the neighborhood Ponderosa. Some of them, however, don't make bad money, and yes, some people with little education don't do bad in the work sector at all. I have to add that, living down the street from a somewhat major university, I've noticed that students are getting stupider and stupider.
What to make of this? There seems to be, in America at least, some confusion over the purpose of education. In the last fifty years higher education has become the property of the masses and not the elite: good, yes, but this has had a cheapening effect on people's views of education. Only the elite and the elite minded (I don't mean wealthy people, necessarily: caste and wealth are not the same thing) look on education as education for education's sake. For the rest of society college has become a sort of glorified tech school. You do your time to get the degree to make the money.
As someone who graduated with a bachelors in English and entered a monastery out of college and then, upon leaving, lived in seclusion before applying to graduate schools, I am well aware of the fact that the more education you have perhaps the less fit you are for making money in society. I am currently qualified to be a writer and poet (which I am), a coffee barrista at Starbucks (which I will never be) and good conversation (which I always am.)
So London is right. Education will more than likely not make you rich, and those who get rich without it will never quite understand the value of school. Education is there for the joy of it if you are willing to take joy in it. And if you delve into you will be the most adored person at the party. I promise! Everyone will laugh at your jokes and say, who's that witty guy, whose the clever girl? They'll want to know where you went to school, they'll want to know all about your exotic past. They'll want to know where you got that lovely blouse, those tasteful shoes.
And you will reply:
At the Salvation Army
I just came back from London Kennedy's site where her latest article talks about seeing Jon Bon Jovi on Regis and Kelly-- the second and more gruesome incarnation of Regis and Kathie Lee. Anyway, Bon Jovi makes the comment that he never had to go to college because he was already making money at twenty. London's point was that the reason to go to school was not to make money but for the joy of education, and someone left a comment that he knew too many stupid people who had gone to school to equate schooling with education. That if she had been a rock star at twenty she might be saying the same thing. I think that's what he said, at least.
Well, I've got to weigh in. Firstly, Bon Jovi: what were you doing at EIGHTEEN because that's usually when people start school. Secondly, in South Bend, Indiana there are several people who say the same thing Bon Jovi did. They all work at Target, Dollar Tree or the neighborhood Ponderosa. Some of them, however, don't make bad money, and yes, some people with little education don't do bad in the work sector at all. I have to add that, living down the street from a somewhat major university, I've noticed that students are getting stupider and stupider.
What to make of this? There seems to be, in America at least, some confusion over the purpose of education. In the last fifty years higher education has become the property of the masses and not the elite: good, yes, but this has had a cheapening effect on people's views of education. Only the elite and the elite minded (I don't mean wealthy people, necessarily: caste and wealth are not the same thing) look on education as education for education's sake. For the rest of society college has become a sort of glorified tech school. You do your time to get the degree to make the money.
As someone who graduated with a bachelors in English and entered a monastery out of college and then, upon leaving, lived in seclusion before applying to graduate schools, I am well aware of the fact that the more education you have perhaps the less fit you are for making money in society. I am currently qualified to be a writer and poet (which I am), a coffee barrista at Starbucks (which I will never be) and good conversation (which I always am.)
So London is right. Education will more than likely not make you rich, and those who get rich without it will never quite understand the value of school. Education is there for the joy of it if you are willing to take joy in it. And if you delve into you will be the most adored person at the party. I promise! Everyone will laugh at your jokes and say, who's that witty guy, whose the clever girl? They'll want to know where you went to school, they'll want to know all about your exotic past. They'll want to know where you got that lovely blouse, those tasteful shoes.
And you will reply:
At the Salvation Army
Thursday, March 18, 2004
"Kebyesou badji-m anwo
Badji-m anba!"
@
My temple is above
My temple is below!
--Vodou song
I make sure to wear only really comfortable clothing and take just enough money to get a small treat if I see something I have to get. Always the day before I hem and haw about how this time I will not make the journey. It takes too long. It is too onerous. It will not be worth it. But the morning of the trip I am excited, and as I make my way to the bus stop, prepared to end up in strange places, face holdovers and delays and find something totally new, there is a certain magic in me. I feel a little like I am flying.
Part of shamanic practice is the celebration of the full moons and the dark moons. For me the most time consuming and now the most rewarding is the journey to some place I’ve never been, the day that is blocked out so that I can have time to travel, to find, to be lost and to find a connection to the universe that, in this age, it is easy to lose.
A woman across from me had a look on her face that said she’d given up on life. Everything about her expression was sullen and sour. I saw, for just a little more money than I had, an alabaster chalice. It’s a good thing I only brought a few dollars with me or I’d steal be arguing with myself about buying it. Ah, but it will be there whenever I’m ready for it. Passed Dean’s apartment. He may have been there. Or maybe not. Passed over the highway and saw it stretching out, all the cars going east, going west. Breathed in and breathed out. Breathed out all the stale air and unclenched from so much of what I begin to cling to these days. Saw the sky overhead, grey and then pale and then blue and then grey again. It is a beautiful world, full of good people. And also full of sad people who would be looking for something if only they could just get the spiritual energy to begin the search.
“America and England are wealthy countries… but your people are starving in ways they do not even know. You have no community and no real love in your countries and so crazy things get made and the people get greedy and sick. Wars begin because people are hungry in their souls for power. They want only their ideas and dreams to rule the world. But thye do not know what to do with their power or how to use it when they have it, except to create more sickness and war. Their hunger is never fed because they do not know how to feed their souls.”
-- a houngan's comment taken from Voudou Shaman by Ross Heaven
Badji-m anba!"
@
My temple is above
My temple is below!
--Vodou song
I make sure to wear only really comfortable clothing and take just enough money to get a small treat if I see something I have to get. Always the day before I hem and haw about how this time I will not make the journey. It takes too long. It is too onerous. It will not be worth it. But the morning of the trip I am excited, and as I make my way to the bus stop, prepared to end up in strange places, face holdovers and delays and find something totally new, there is a certain magic in me. I feel a little like I am flying.
Part of shamanic practice is the celebration of the full moons and the dark moons. For me the most time consuming and now the most rewarding is the journey to some place I’ve never been, the day that is blocked out so that I can have time to travel, to find, to be lost and to find a connection to the universe that, in this age, it is easy to lose.
A woman across from me had a look on her face that said she’d given up on life. Everything about her expression was sullen and sour. I saw, for just a little more money than I had, an alabaster chalice. It’s a good thing I only brought a few dollars with me or I’d steal be arguing with myself about buying it. Ah, but it will be there whenever I’m ready for it. Passed Dean’s apartment. He may have been there. Or maybe not. Passed over the highway and saw it stretching out, all the cars going east, going west. Breathed in and breathed out. Breathed out all the stale air and unclenched from so much of what I begin to cling to these days. Saw the sky overhead, grey and then pale and then blue and then grey again. It is a beautiful world, full of good people. And also full of sad people who would be looking for something if only they could just get the spiritual energy to begin the search.
“America and England are wealthy countries… but your people are starving in ways they do not even know. You have no community and no real love in your countries and so crazy things get made and the people get greedy and sick. Wars begin because people are hungry in their souls for power. They want only their ideas and dreams to rule the world. But thye do not know what to do with their power or how to use it when they have it, except to create more sickness and war. Their hunger is never fed because they do not know how to feed their souls.”
-- a houngan's comment taken from Voudou Shaman by Ross Heaven
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
On the Feast of Saint Patrick
For the first times in years I am not at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart for the Saint Patrick's Day Mass. Once, seeing the procession of white robed priests, hearing choir sing in Gaellic, the beating of the drums, I felt a wonderful exultation, a sense of connectedness and energy to everyone around me. Last year what I felt listening to the old Irish bishop whose words I did not completely understand, looking at all the gold and all the people and all the priests in their vestments, sitting around the altar was.... skepticism, weariness. Right now the Mass is going on and I know I shouldn't be there, know I'd be sad and tired if I was there, but I wish I could be the person who was there once, the one who belonged.
The only difference between the church I belong to now and the one I left is I am happy in this one. There is another difference: I believe in this one. And yet I feel something that's a little like loss, more like vague sadness.
This day has always meant something to me. It was by total accident that I stumbled into church on Saint Patrick's Day and came to love the Catholicism I had found burdensome. For seven years from college to the monastery and the two years out of it this day was a hallmark. And the Basilica of the Sacred Heart was the church I stumbled into by accident, so the mass with all its pageantry meant that much more to me.
But last year, and all the time after I felt that amidsts that noise and the pretty clothes and the long speeches what I celebrated, my liberation, was lost. Sometime last year the building with gold and marble became... a building with gold and marble. And I began to drift off from the sermons and drift toward the windows to watch the trees and hear what God had to say. Last Saint Patrick's Day I walked out of Mass and the endless talking and posturing to breathe. And then months later I just walked out.
And here I am.
And there is no going back.
I have never been so aware as I am today, when I used to celebrate my entrance into the life of the church, that I am no longer Catholic.
It is not that i miss it, not really, only that I look back and I wish I could miss it.
For the first times in years I am not at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart for the Saint Patrick's Day Mass. Once, seeing the procession of white robed priests, hearing choir sing in Gaellic, the beating of the drums, I felt a wonderful exultation, a sense of connectedness and energy to everyone around me. Last year what I felt listening to the old Irish bishop whose words I did not completely understand, looking at all the gold and all the people and all the priests in their vestments, sitting around the altar was.... skepticism, weariness. Right now the Mass is going on and I know I shouldn't be there, know I'd be sad and tired if I was there, but I wish I could be the person who was there once, the one who belonged.
The only difference between the church I belong to now and the one I left is I am happy in this one. There is another difference: I believe in this one. And yet I feel something that's a little like loss, more like vague sadness.
This day has always meant something to me. It was by total accident that I stumbled into church on Saint Patrick's Day and came to love the Catholicism I had found burdensome. For seven years from college to the monastery and the two years out of it this day was a hallmark. And the Basilica of the Sacred Heart was the church I stumbled into by accident, so the mass with all its pageantry meant that much more to me.
But last year, and all the time after I felt that amidsts that noise and the pretty clothes and the long speeches what I celebrated, my liberation, was lost. Sometime last year the building with gold and marble became... a building with gold and marble. And I began to drift off from the sermons and drift toward the windows to watch the trees and hear what God had to say. Last Saint Patrick's Day I walked out of Mass and the endless talking and posturing to breathe. And then months later I just walked out.
And here I am.
And there is no going back.
I have never been so aware as I am today, when I used to celebrate my entrance into the life of the church, that I am no longer Catholic.
It is not that i miss it, not really, only that I look back and I wish I could miss it.
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Tuesday i i i
Obsessive me possessed by you,
it's what i do, just what i do,
unfold a thing, consider it
unwind it and examine it
and now the thing i wring is you,
it's what i do, it's what i do
think far too much of what never thinks,
hardly blinks for me
don't take it personally
i'd obsess over a flea
i wonder if the little smile
that underwhelms
in your realms where all your emotions are kept locked up
the passions in your body,
the way you walk,
the way you talk
are trapped up
and hobbled--
i wonder if that simple smile meant you were worth
all of my obsession
or is progression getting over mulling over
other people
(ah, i don't think so)
probably you don't think of me
let it be, let it be
you might not think of much at all
so i won't take it personally
Obsessive me possessed by you,
it's what i do, just what i do,
unfold a thing, consider it
unwind it and examine it
and now the thing i wring is you,
it's what i do, it's what i do
think far too much of what never thinks,
hardly blinks for me
don't take it personally
i'd obsess over a flea
i wonder if the little smile
that underwhelms
in your realms where all your emotions are kept locked up
the passions in your body,
the way you walk,
the way you talk
are trapped up
and hobbled--
i wonder if that simple smile meant you were worth
all of my obsession
or is progression getting over mulling over
other people
(ah, i don't think so)
probably you don't think of me
let it be, let it be
you might not think of much at all
so i won't take it personally
Tuesday
i i
Should I get the opportunity for self pity-- and there is no good fortune in the world that is so good it can stave off bad feelings-- I am surrounded by a world of people and words which I flow in and out of, knowing I have a stake in. I am not alone.
For the first time in weeks, sawDean in church on Sunday. I smiled and called out his name. He smiled brightly, and then went on with his business. The experience was all fairly underwhelming. I am constantly sure that most experiences will be just that: underwhelming. And yet a little let down when they actually are.
i i
Should I get the opportunity for self pity-- and there is no good fortune in the world that is so good it can stave off bad feelings-- I am surrounded by a world of people and words which I flow in and out of, knowing I have a stake in. I am not alone.
For the first time in weeks, saw
Tuesday
Yesterday morning, while studying in the library at Saint Mary's College, this is what I wrote in my journal.
I always loved a Roman Catholic Lent, especially toward the end: the days of the Triduum. Everyone fasted, everyone prayed, everyone was penitent and then everyone was joyous. But all of these things were superficial and tenuous: try as a Catholic might, the Church did not possess within its structure the ability to hold onto this vitality past Easter Monday.
Between Holy Thursday and Easter Sunday-- these were the days when the Catholic Church was just almost Catholic, and people began to feel like brothers and sisters.
And then it was gone.
I am at the end of this novel, and writing a novel has a different feel to it when you know someone will take it, someone will read it. The act of writing is one of supreme liberation, but once you know that someone is reading what you're writing there is a new responsibility which is not heavy, not a chain, but another sort of liberation.
Being read is like a flower being unfolded.
Or like being opened up and tasted.
Yesterday morning, while studying in the library at Saint Mary's College, this is what I wrote in my journal.
I always loved a Roman Catholic Lent, especially toward the end: the days of the Triduum. Everyone fasted, everyone prayed, everyone was penitent and then everyone was joyous. But all of these things were superficial and tenuous: try as a Catholic might, the Church did not possess within its structure the ability to hold onto this vitality past Easter Monday.
Between Holy Thursday and Easter Sunday-- these were the days when the Catholic Church was just almost Catholic, and people began to feel like brothers and sisters.
And then it was gone.
I am at the end of this novel, and writing a novel has a different feel to it when you know someone will take it, someone will read it. The act of writing is one of supreme liberation, but once you know that someone is reading what you're writing there is a new responsibility which is not heavy, not a chain, but another sort of liberation.
Being read is like a flower being unfolded.
Or like being opened up and tasted.
Monday, March 15, 2004
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I got this from the site Gutless Pacifist:
John Stott writes about the ‘do-nothing church’ in his book Issues Facing Christians Today...
I was hungry ... and you formed a humanities group to discuss my hunger. I was imprisoned, ... and you crept off quietly to your chapel and prayed for my release. I was naked, ... and in your mind you debated the morality of my appearance. I was sick, ... and you knelt and thanked God for your health. I was homeless, ... and you preached to me of the spiritual shelter of the love of God. I was lonely ... and you left me alone to pray for me. You seem so holy, so close to God ... but I am still very hungry - and lonely - and cold.
I got this from the site Gutless Pacifist:
John Stott writes about the ‘do-nothing church’ in his book Issues Facing Christians Today...
I was hungry ... and you formed a humanities group to discuss my hunger. I was imprisoned, ... and you crept off quietly to your chapel and prayed for my release. I was naked, ... and in your mind you debated the morality of my appearance. I was sick, ... and you knelt and thanked God for your health. I was homeless, ... and you preached to me of the spiritual shelter of the love of God. I was lonely ... and you left me alone to pray for me. You seem so holy, so close to God ... but I am still very hungry - and lonely - and cold.
Saturday, March 13, 2004
God, don't let me die in the river,
like driftwood drenched to the bone
don't let me drown in the river,
don't let me die alone
don't let me die in the subway
a trashbag all i own
don't let me pass near mass transit
don't let me die alone
for those who die in clinics,
the cynics in pillared homes,
the poor and the poor little rich ones
whose money could not atone
for the scourge of dying loveless,
now let the Spirit moan,
as i light at saints feet
these candles
for those who die alone
like driftwood drenched to the bone
don't let me drown in the river,
don't let me die alone
don't let me die in the subway
a trashbag all i own
don't let me pass near mass transit
don't let me die alone
for those who die in clinics,
the cynics in pillared homes,
the poor and the poor little rich ones
whose money could not atone
for the scourge of dying loveless,
now let the Spirit moan,
as i light at saints feet
these candles
for those who die alone
At Evening Prayer I'm filled with love:
Thou, who at thy first Eucharist didst pray
that all thy Church might be forever one
grant us at every Eucharist to say
with longing heart and soul, "Thy will be done."
O may we all one bread one body be,
through this blest sacrament of unity..."
How many years singing this in a place where no one wanted to understand that the whole world is God's church, and love is the unity and sacrifice that holds us together?
A week before Equinox the sun is still up at this time. The whole world is God's body. No one is excluded from his peace.
This is what I always sought, since the first day I walked into a church. A last thing to thank God for before I sleep... that at last I found it.
Or did it find me?
Or does it matter?
Grace.
Thou, who at thy first Eucharist didst pray
that all thy Church might be forever one
grant us at every Eucharist to say
with longing heart and soul, "Thy will be done."
O may we all one bread one body be,
through this blest sacrament of unity..."
How many years singing this in a place where no one wanted to understand that the whole world is God's church, and love is the unity and sacrifice that holds us together?
A week before Equinox the sun is still up at this time. The whole world is God's body. No one is excluded from his peace.
This is what I always sought, since the first day I walked into a church. A last thing to thank God for before I sleep... that at last I found it.
Or did it find me?
Or does it matter?
Grace.
Expect some new links to pop up in the sidebar. I'm been blog hunting and happily surprised. Lent can be a time of refreshment if you're willing to pass through a little of the muck. One thing I've seen is how I'm afraid to be too thankful, as if God will jinx me for being to thankful, as if life will turn to crap again. When I write this I wonder how I could ever have thought it. But it took a long bit of prayer and meditation before I realized I was even thinking it. There is so much to be thankful for, and so many people to thank. Thank you Jenny for reminding me of the world around me. Thank you Andrew for putting me into perspective and reminding me there's nothing like an old man and I'm nothing like an old man. Thank you, London, for... your name. There's a novel I read where people guard their real names and only give them to true friends. I will, in exchange, give some of my names away. Helen, you have been a wonderful friend and a marvelous agent on joe.user. (Read Jamnia everyone!) Thank you Doc, for stopping to give some good advice (medication?) And Tonio, thank you for leaving a comment. You never do! Thanks to all the people who pass through Witch's Blood, always straighten up the pillows and clean up, looking around, but leaving the house looking as if they were never here. Only the counter tells me otherwise...
Friday, March 12, 2004
i i
I need a retreat !
My church is having a mini one on Saturday, but I mean a real one where it's just me, the inner turmoil which needs to be explored, and the Almighty. A series of days separated from the rest of the world where I come back as something a little spiritually skinnier, and slightly more fragile, but able to deal with the world in a new and necessary way.
A bit of a retreat comes in skipping around the net looking at some favorites sites. In the past few days some of the sites I've been to are fat with their own self love and approval, full of nastiness and hatred, bashings of all sorts.
I haven't seen Dean in a three weeks now. If it gets to be a fourth I'll have to find a way to check on him without seeming nosey. In the last few days I've heard so much nastiness about gay people, and it is nastiness, I wonder, what is it like when it's you? People always speak of "them" as a moral issue or a political issue. But when you're the issue. Some of things I hear, and by people who think of themselves as known what is right, what God wants, makes me more than shudder. It's part of the crap I need to wash from me. And then I was always too sentimental. I'll be the first to admit that. But when I think of a boy who never got up and chose to be a political and religious lightning rod, going through his days hearing stuff said about him, it makes me want to shield him from that. It makes me so angry I nearly tremble.
And quite frankly I've been trembling enough already.
I need a retreat !
My church is having a mini one on Saturday, but I mean a real one where it's just me, the inner turmoil which needs to be explored, and the Almighty. A series of days separated from the rest of the world where I come back as something a little spiritually skinnier, and slightly more fragile, but able to deal with the world in a new and necessary way.
A bit of a retreat comes in skipping around the net looking at some favorites sites. In the past few days some of the sites I've been to are fat with their own self love and approval, full of nastiness and hatred, bashings of all sorts.
I haven't seen Dean in a three weeks now. If it gets to be a fourth I'll have to find a way to check on him without seeming nosey. In the last few days I've heard so much nastiness about gay people, and it is nastiness, I wonder, what is it like when it's you? People always speak of "them" as a moral issue or a political issue. But when you're the issue. Some of things I hear, and by people who think of themselves as known what is right, what God wants, makes me more than shudder. It's part of the crap I need to wash from me. And then I was always too sentimental. I'll be the first to admit that. But when I think of a boy who never got up and chose to be a political and religious lightning rod, going through his days hearing stuff said about him, it makes me want to shield him from that. It makes me so angry I nearly tremble.
And quite frankly I've been trembling enough already.
When there is not enough trouble at hand, I begin to borrow it from tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. I haven't been like this in a while. This whole last week is something I need to recover from. I'm starting to feel a bond to Virginia Woolf. Reading her letters helps me. In the epilogue to her journal I read there is a time where she stops writing altogether and just goes mad. It is when her first novel is due to come out. This makes me feel more normal. It seems like I've spent a long time overcoming a great deal of mess in my life, and now there's a sort of green light and things are going beautifully. Suddenly there is a lull in the space, like the calm water, and it does not put me at peace. I want to do something to stir the water, and then I feel like a shark is getting ready to jump out of it. I wait for the letter that tells me, "Mr. Gibson, we do not want your book anymore. This does not reflect on your abilities as an author...." I wait from the letter from the University that says, "Though we hear your book was rejected, and that you are useless for any real work outside of academia, we regret to inform you that we found someone better for our program and you are are doomed to a year of scrabbling around for something else to fill your time..."
The weather is shifting. Winter is giving way to spring, and everything in me is shifting. I'm recovering from a series of high strung days where I've felt like a champagne glass struck by a fork.
The weather is shifting. Winter is giving way to spring, and everything in me is shifting. I'm recovering from a series of high strung days where I've felt like a champagne glass struck by a fork.
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
I have perceived a wholeness, sometimes called God, but just as often not. It is ours to choose to live in this unity or to deny it, the first being called service by many, though I prefer the term surrender. Some pray in churches and temples, others in the forests, to a Lord, to a Lady, to one face, nay or no face at all. Some pray by doubting, and all be feeling. One thing remains the same, and this is the ultimate thing: that the route to this service is love offered wholly and without fear.
Monday, March 08, 2004
I am trying to write something: one idea in my mind that I have deleted over and over again because, as yet, I have not been able to get to it. Usually when I fail in words I resort to poetry. But even that does not work.
I spent some of the morning going through the directions for the yearly reading cycle in the Book of Common Prayer and finally realized we are in Year Two. Soon it will be time for Evening Prayer. Catholic of Protestant the cycle of prayer has been a constant in my life for some years now. I image what I am coming to is this: I am not so foolish to believe that everyone should believe the same thing, but what a shame when, because of a bad experience people choose to believe in nothing. That thing called religion is the ligament that holds us in reverence to each other and the world we are part of it. If we lose that essense of love, we lose all things. If we come into a place where we feel lost, disconnected, then we have indeed lost. We've lost out inheritance, for the world is ours and we are each others.
Now the words come, and I am late for evening prayer.
I guess this will be part of my evening prayer then. Let no soul be lost, let no soul forget love. Love is all we have. And there is so much more I have to say, but only twenty-six letters, one for each year of my life. Maybe on my birthday I will invent a new one, and have new words.
I spent some of the morning going through the directions for the yearly reading cycle in the Book of Common Prayer and finally realized we are in Year Two. Soon it will be time for Evening Prayer. Catholic of Protestant the cycle of prayer has been a constant in my life for some years now. I image what I am coming to is this: I am not so foolish to believe that everyone should believe the same thing, but what a shame when, because of a bad experience people choose to believe in nothing. That thing called religion is the ligament that holds us in reverence to each other and the world we are part of it. If we lose that essense of love, we lose all things. If we come into a place where we feel lost, disconnected, then we have indeed lost. We've lost out inheritance, for the world is ours and we are each others.
Now the words come, and I am late for evening prayer.
I guess this will be part of my evening prayer then. Let no soul be lost, let no soul forget love. Love is all we have. And there is so much more I have to say, but only twenty-six letters, one for each year of my life. Maybe on my birthday I will invent a new one, and have new words.
None of the work gets done without a fair amount of pacing. At least two days a week I go off to the library at Saint Mary's College, usually with books to study, with a journal, with rough draft work to do for stories, but always with the intention of pacing. In North America March means the end of snow as well as the occasional fitful return of it, and the mind and body are fitful also, stirring from their winter slumber, moving into uncomfortable spring with all it's urgings to clean up the life, shake out the staleness, put away old stuff and do something new. Not just anything, but the vital thing.
I have always felt like this during this time of year.
Half the candles I put out to mark the progression of weeks from Imbolc to the Equinox are lit now and Kore comes closer and closer, soon she will arrive, the Maiden of Spring, with blossoms at her feet where she goes, hair smelling of sunshine and life. Now Lent is the time of Christ, but it was always hers. Long before Mary Magdalene sat at the tomb waiting for resurrection, it was Kore, singing of it. We come to one of those high times of the year when religion is written in the body and the air. We feel the crisis of death and the need for resurrection.
I pace, purify, and scribble.
I have always felt like this during this time of year.
Half the candles I put out to mark the progression of weeks from Imbolc to the Equinox are lit now and Kore comes closer and closer, soon she will arrive, the Maiden of Spring, with blossoms at her feet where she goes, hair smelling of sunshine and life. Now Lent is the time of Christ, but it was always hers. Long before Mary Magdalene sat at the tomb waiting for resurrection, it was Kore, singing of it. We come to one of those high times of the year when religion is written in the body and the air. We feel the crisis of death and the need for resurrection.
I pace, purify, and scribble.
Friday, March 05, 2004
writing v
My advice to the poets? To the yarnspinners: consent to your madness. Insofar as it does not kill you consent to that which drives you wild, to those voices speaking to you and those pictures no one else can see? Everyone else needs those pictures. Those who don't know envy you for your gift. Some pay hundreds of dollars to learn what cannot be learned, what is gift. No matter how clumsily you think you express it, and we ALL think we clumsily express it, it must be expressed. Open your mouth and prophecy sister singers, brother bards. Just do it, damn it. Last night I lay in bed and one lay beside me I'd never known and addressed me by a name I never knew I had. He told me out story, how we'd grown up together here and there. He did not go away. He lives in inside me.
When I was young, at an awful time in my life I went to my mother and put down the book I was reading. I despaired, "It's not real," and she said no, that it wasn't." She had her own troubles and these made her a sorry comforter. Her wings were weighed down with the weight of the world some man had made for her and handed to her and she mistook it for the only truth.
Twenty-six years of seeing wings weighed down. Now I know the whole world is the product of imagination, and it is for us to dream the dreams which give us wings. Everything is real. Do you hear me? Everything? And by our imaginations we can imagine for ourselves such glorious wings we will touch the sun, and beyond.
My advice to the poets? To the yarnspinners: consent to your madness. Insofar as it does not kill you consent to that which drives you wild, to those voices speaking to you and those pictures no one else can see? Everyone else needs those pictures. Those who don't know envy you for your gift. Some pay hundreds of dollars to learn what cannot be learned, what is gift. No matter how clumsily you think you express it, and we ALL think we clumsily express it, it must be expressed. Open your mouth and prophecy sister singers, brother bards. Just do it, damn it. Last night I lay in bed and one lay beside me I'd never known and addressed me by a name I never knew I had. He told me out story, how we'd grown up together here and there. He did not go away. He lives in inside me.
When I was young, at an awful time in my life I went to my mother and put down the book I was reading. I despaired, "It's not real," and she said no, that it wasn't." She had her own troubles and these made her a sorry comforter. Her wings were weighed down with the weight of the world some man had made for her and handed to her and she mistook it for the only truth.
Twenty-six years of seeing wings weighed down. Now I know the whole world is the product of imagination, and it is for us to dream the dreams which give us wings. Everything is real. Do you hear me? Everything? And by our imaginations we can imagine for ourselves such glorious wings we will touch the sun, and beyond.
writing iv
I imagine anyone who writes feels it, but I am speaking to storytellers now. We are different, and poets I include in this, because faces and lines and plots and plans swirl in our heads like bits of lemon and cubes of ice in the lemonade pitcher Mother is stirring in June. Often we are driven nigh to madness by it, and what holy respite it is when at last the tales comes into some order and flows from our fingers. How many times, fellow wordsmiths, have you continued to see a face you've never seen, felt a pleasure in your body that never ever touched you in the waking world, and wondering, "Who are you?" "What are you?" "Where do you fit in?" How many times have you seen the half told tale and wondered, "When and where shall your time come?" "When, at last, will I be allowed to speak you so that the Word may at last be made flesh?"
I imagine anyone who writes feels it, but I am speaking to storytellers now. We are different, and poets I include in this, because faces and lines and plots and plans swirl in our heads like bits of lemon and cubes of ice in the lemonade pitcher Mother is stirring in June. Often we are driven nigh to madness by it, and what holy respite it is when at last the tales comes into some order and flows from our fingers. How many times, fellow wordsmiths, have you continued to see a face you've never seen, felt a pleasure in your body that never ever touched you in the waking world, and wondering, "Who are you?" "What are you?" "Where do you fit in?" How many times have you seen the half told tale and wondered, "When and where shall your time come?" "When, at last, will I be allowed to speak you so that the Word may at last be made flesh?"
writing iii
Damnit! Damnit! Damn it all!
I wanted to be the prodigy! I wanted to be the person whose books were read because he was young and precocious, because he had an amazing story. Now I am young and bitchy, and my story is only moderately amazing. I wanted to be read because I was the brilliant wunderkind, but I messed around and now I am only the fairly intelligent Generation X-er. I wanted to be read for many, many amazing things about me, about my circumstance. Now I grow up a little and realize that I must settle for being read because I am good.
Damnit! Damnit! Damn it all!
I wanted to be the prodigy! I wanted to be the person whose books were read because he was young and precocious, because he had an amazing story. Now I am young and bitchy, and my story is only moderately amazing. I wanted to be read because I was the brilliant wunderkind, but I messed around and now I am only the fairly intelligent Generation X-er. I wanted to be read for many, many amazing things about me, about my circumstance. Now I grow up a little and realize that I must settle for being read because I am good.
writing ii
I cannot resist. I go to a site on Christopher Paolini. He wrote a fantasy novel, and this is nothing terribly special. But he began it when he was fifteen. His family believed in it. They self published it putting the family business behind it. It got picked up by a major company. Now the book is very popular making handfuls of money. He is working on the sequel and going to hella booksignings.
I believe the boy is twenty.
I am neither so generous nor so philosophical that this does not irk me a little, make me a trifle jealous, make me feel a little old.
Even though I am only twenty-six.
There will always be someone younger, smarter, er-er. That is why you must grit your teeth, fuck it all, and settle to being yourself.
I cannot resist. I go to a site on Christopher Paolini. He wrote a fantasy novel, and this is nothing terribly special. But he began it when he was fifteen. His family believed in it. They self published it putting the family business behind it. It got picked up by a major company. Now the book is very popular making handfuls of money. He is working on the sequel and going to hella booksignings.
I believe the boy is twenty.
I am neither so generous nor so philosophical that this does not irk me a little, make me a trifle jealous, make me feel a little old.
Even though I am only twenty-six.
There will always be someone younger, smarter, er-er. That is why you must grit your teeth, fuck it all, and settle to being yourself.
writing
The book is too long. For publication I must divide it in two books. I write back to the publisher this means I shall change names, titles, chapter headings. Chapter lengths. Whatever works. In place of all the sentiment, all the "your such a good writer," only the cut and dry thing I want: we'll publish you. We want the book. Do what you have to."
Jamnia, a more and more displeasing name when I think of it, has been divided into TWO novels now. The first being The Hidden Lives of Virgins, the second called The Shadow of His Face. What I have learned is that no matter how fulfilling writing is for its own sake, and for the writers, something changes, the responsibility of the wordsmith, I imagine, the moment you know that someone is reading you, someone is listening to you. Someone would put down money for you. Or check you out from the library... Or snag you from the shelf of a Barnes and Nobles.
I went to someone else's web log a week or so ago. When I count people I know in my life, be they from a distance, or in town I realize that there are only a few writers whom I know who are roughly my age. My age, our age, is a fiery age. I feel a twenty-something duty to whip other writers into shape. To scream, "Rage! Rage, against the dying of the night !"
The book is too long. For publication I must divide it in two books. I write back to the publisher this means I shall change names, titles, chapter headings. Chapter lengths. Whatever works. In place of all the sentiment, all the "your such a good writer," only the cut and dry thing I want: we'll publish you. We want the book. Do what you have to."
Jamnia, a more and more displeasing name when I think of it, has been divided into TWO novels now. The first being The Hidden Lives of Virgins, the second called The Shadow of His Face. What I have learned is that no matter how fulfilling writing is for its own sake, and for the writers, something changes, the responsibility of the wordsmith, I imagine, the moment you know that someone is reading you, someone is listening to you. Someone would put down money for you. Or check you out from the library... Or snag you from the shelf of a Barnes and Nobles.
I went to someone else's web log a week or so ago. When I count people I know in my life, be they from a distance, or in town I realize that there are only a few writers whom I know who are roughly my age. My age, our age, is a fiery age. I feel a twenty-something duty to whip other writers into shape. To scream, "Rage! Rage, against the dying of the night !"
pewter sky
even wind
spring is starting up again
clouds now parting for the sun
raindrops glistening
everyone
with Apollo's tears in them
Kore coming back to men
and their daughters
hearts now sing
the approaching tramp of spring
praise the March and April rains,
praise melting snow making its lanes
down the asphalt
up the street
stronger now let me repeat
praise the days
and the warmer night
praise the one who made this beauty
praise the days and praise their light
even wind
spring is starting up again
clouds now parting for the sun
raindrops glistening
everyone
with Apollo's tears in them
Kore coming back to men
and their daughters
hearts now sing
the approaching tramp of spring
praise the March and April rains,
praise melting snow making its lanes
down the asphalt
up the street
stronger now let me repeat
praise the days
and the warmer night
praise the one who made this beauty
praise the days and praise their light
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
dark brown branches
flesh pink sky
this is all i prophecy
chilly weather,
early spring,
all that I am offering is my laugh
spring in my gait,
to fill your round collection plate,
collect the snow, collect the rain
collect the uprush lust,
the pain,
everything is yours i see
and you have poured it out to me
flesh pink sky
this is all i prophecy
chilly weather,
early spring,
all that I am offering is my laugh
spring in my gait,
to fill your round collection plate,
collect the snow, collect the rain
collect the uprush lust,
the pain,
everything is yours i see
and you have poured it out to me
Hard pressed to answer the question, where does a character come from? I cannot answer. I only have the certitude that she or he is as real as anyone else and deserves my utter respect. Every story I ever wrote is here, in this world I walk. Circling the mall I stop for a second and think, "Isn't this the very mall and the very moment I wrote about?"
Long after the story is old and I forget that any of the people in it came to me utterly real, when I am convinced that they are not real, not possible at all, at a party, in a church, on a bus, the park, at the library I turn around and see him or meet her, blinking back at me. I am so ready to say, "What took you so long to get here? Don't you know, I've got a book all about you !"
Long after the story is old and I forget that any of the people in it came to me utterly real, when I am convinced that they are not real, not possible at all, at a party, in a church, on a bus, the park, at the library I turn around and see him or meet her, blinking back at me. I am so ready to say, "What took you so long to get here? Don't you know, I've got a book all about you !"
Praying without dogma or doctine, but with an exuberant sense of joy, and a terrible certainty of holy presense. Praying with no one to tell you that you are doing it wrong, with no writ prayers, and only the words of fire. Atheists know this sort of prayer more than all the religious fundamenalists in the world... though they may not call it prayer.
Three things more of less happened at the same time. I became Anglican, began to constantly lose my beloved black rosary and a book on prayer beads fell into my hands. Since then I have been obsessed with making my own prayer beads with their own special prayers for peace and healing, life and joy.
My body tells me when it is time for the full moon. The calendar says my body has been off by about two weeks for those special celebrations. During a celebration i take one day to see some place or go somewhere new, do something I usually don't have time for. today I get to splash about Grape Road searching for prayer beads.
I am lazy. Back in college I had hippie friends who could make the necklaces and bead strands I wanted. They'd do it for free. Now going through the stores of the mall I see those simply like beads strung up for a price that makes me wish I'd bought the one I saw a year ago a Farmer's Market... only a dollar-fifty!
At the crafts store economy and desire erase laziness and I buy my own brilliant red stone beads. These with the wooden beads of old rosaries will make the perfect prayer chain.
And now, made, the beads have a certain wonderful power. I don't even know what prayers will be attached to which sets of beads. Right now there are no real prayers of words, just a spirit of grace. Here a prayer in the setting sun, there a holiness in the distant flight of birds past my window. On this rough strang the memory of times and places, people in my life. This redness reminds me that no matter how awful the turnout, love is never wrong. The joint in the bead wiring a reminder that love like this, grace like this; rich peace, is what keeps me dreaming and telling stories and living them.
My body tells me when it is time for the full moon. The calendar says my body has been off by about two weeks for those special celebrations. During a celebration i take one day to see some place or go somewhere new, do something I usually don't have time for. today I get to splash about Grape Road searching for prayer beads.
I am lazy. Back in college I had hippie friends who could make the necklaces and bead strands I wanted. They'd do it for free. Now going through the stores of the mall I see those simply like beads strung up for a price that makes me wish I'd bought the one I saw a year ago a Farmer's Market... only a dollar-fifty!
At the crafts store economy and desire erase laziness and I buy my own brilliant red stone beads. These with the wooden beads of old rosaries will make the perfect prayer chain.
And now, made, the beads have a certain wonderful power. I don't even know what prayers will be attached to which sets of beads. Right now there are no real prayers of words, just a spirit of grace. Here a prayer in the setting sun, there a holiness in the distant flight of birds past my window. On this rough strang the memory of times and places, people in my life. This redness reminds me that no matter how awful the turnout, love is never wrong. The joint in the bead wiring a reminder that love like this, grace like this; rich peace, is what keeps me dreaming and telling stories and living them.
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