i cannot be an entirely man when i listen to Ein deutsches Requiem, i do not know what comes over me, i really don't- it's a sudden lifting, as though my chair were levitating, and there's that feeling- the unbearable lightness of being, like the air in the balloon, that pushes on my skin and gives me shape, can finally seep back out, and drift off into the sky, and from my eyes i see the cloud inside me kind of leak out from my pores and drift off-
____-bye bye soul!
____-bye bye flesh!
and the two part amiably. neither one blaming the other for its nature- be it starbound or if it is to lie facing upwards in a dark box staring at nothing altogether much.
*__*__*
i was in a store today that sold only fairy paraphernalia. When my sister was younger than 10, she often insisted on going everywhere wearing her fairy wings. Mom thought it was ridiculous, i thought why hide the wings we know are there anyway?
i am determined that my unborn babies, when they find their way across three ethereal kingdoms, have their pre-life brief with a white bearded prophet under an olive-tree, get squished into a germinal cell and spend alot of time playing geometry exercises with their own body (EXERCISE: divide thyself in perfect halves approximately 18 billion times using only the intuitive sense of nature... and a protractor) spend nine-months tapping I AM TIRED OF BACH in Morse code on the inside of their mother's belly (while she and unborn.baby complain to me about yet another cantata), and finally come out too-red of their aquatic stale-mate, still more mermaid than man, crying and genetically predisposed to despise bright-white-lights (fluorescent or otherwise), will have several single-digit years to walk besides me with too-small steps i will never tire of watching her take, will hold my right hand with their left (holding a white wand with her right), wearing: tutu, tights, protruding belly, and compulsory wings, so that she will not forget her home before her home was the color of clouds, and had the smell of jasmine, and in heaven wherever you walk you hear the crunch of soft-white-rocks under your feet for reasons you won't know till you've endured being human once.
*__*__*
my project is almost finished. i usually make it a point to listen to whole works- an entire symphony, or whatever. but i am a little too excited this time i think. thus, i want to listen to:
____- Ravel, the slow movement of the piano concerto in G
____- Shostakovich, the percussion that closes the last movement of the last symphony (Robert brought my attention to this in December, and I've been dying to sit alone and hear it again)
____- Bach, Les plus belles Cantates (future-wife, if she reads this, shakes her head and mumbles dear god, it's already started, because she knows that's a 5-disc set)
____- Britten, Symphonia da requiem (the whole thing)
____- Rachmaninov, Prelude in G major, which to me sounds like the whole of spring put into 3 minutes- complete with ladybugs and the color green and a somewhat haloed sense of weightlessness
*__*__*
you need to master how you feel
and i don't know about that. it's true that i have a somewhat heightened sense of feeling. a somewhat excessive predilection towards sentiment. and that sometimes, after a movie, i can't quite move, or think or talk for a while. (I just watched Elephant, and its sheer aural and visual virtuosity... i didn't even notice the second half of the movie, i am still stunned by the opening) And Brahms can paralyze me, and love can fold me into a little oddly shaped ball and put me in its pocket, and snow can make me cry, and poems make my head turn, and concise mathematical proofs make me believe in God (and i feel on the inside the hairs of my bones stand straight).
and there's no doubt that there is an element of choice. i occasionally choose not to punch people in the face, even though i feel its probably warranted (and take my swollen pride home and plan in secret a tight-fitting lycra outfit, an appropriate super-hero name, and a nocturnal career as a crime-and-bad-manners fighting vigilante), so there's no reason why i can't choose various emotional responses. i think there might be a difference between attitude and emotion. Emotions i see a little too arbitrarily (i admit it's a faulty perspective)- almost like a scent in the wind, and sometimes, one is simply overcome by the sincerity of a spring day, and cannot contain a certain arctic thawing on the inside. other times, a tune or a small rattle-bag of words is enough to extinguish an entire afternoon. Word. faces. a woman who does/not smile at you. late trains, too many red lights, the scent of urine in stair-wells, too-wise graffiti on alleyway walls, the ever-kaleidoscope of life's mundane.sublime dramas... i can't control that. i can't even be too successful at managing my responses.
but attitude is different. attitude is a general 'ethos', a face that's pre-prepared to meet the faces that you meet (and Alex no doubt just jumped in her seat to see someone else also over-quote Prufrock)- and that can be controlled. The sad part of that is, attitude is too-much based on experience, on history... and that skews our preparation for the future, since we scientifically (erroneously) assume what has been previously true, will continue to be true in the future. There is no necessity for this consistency, and luck, good-will, faith, friendship, finance, desire, ambition, hope, can all dry up, or fly south for the winter and never come back.
i do not feel like writing out my 'ideas' presently.
i'll take this theme up again later.
*__*__*
I happen to be listening to A Sunday Smile, by Beirut, so I thought I'd end with the first of my:
____-bye bye soul!
____-bye bye flesh!
and the two part amiably. neither one blaming the other for its nature- be it starbound or if it is to lie facing upwards in a dark box staring at nothing altogether much.
*__*__*
i was in a store today that sold only fairy paraphernalia. When my sister was younger than 10, she often insisted on going everywhere wearing her fairy wings. Mom thought it was ridiculous, i thought why hide the wings we know are there anyway?
i am determined that my unborn babies, when they find their way across three ethereal kingdoms, have their pre-life brief with a white bearded prophet under an olive-tree, get squished into a germinal cell and spend alot of time playing geometry exercises with their own body (EXERCISE: divide thyself in perfect halves approximately 18 billion times using only the intuitive sense of nature... and a protractor) spend nine-months tapping I AM TIRED OF BACH in Morse code on the inside of their mother's belly (while she and unborn.baby complain to me about yet another cantata), and finally come out too-red of their aquatic stale-mate, still more mermaid than man, crying and genetically predisposed to despise bright-white-lights (fluorescent or otherwise), will have several single-digit years to walk besides me with too-small steps i will never tire of watching her take, will hold my right hand with their left (holding a white wand with her right), wearing: tutu, tights, protruding belly, and compulsory wings, so that she will not forget her home before her home was the color of clouds, and had the smell of jasmine, and in heaven wherever you walk you hear the crunch of soft-white-rocks under your feet for reasons you won't know till you've endured being human once.
*__*__*
my project is almost finished. i usually make it a point to listen to whole works- an entire symphony, or whatever. but i am a little too excited this time i think. thus, i want to listen to:
____- Ravel, the slow movement of the piano concerto in G
____- Shostakovich, the percussion that closes the last movement of the last symphony (Robert brought my attention to this in December, and I've been dying to sit alone and hear it again)
____- Bach, Les plus belles Cantates (future-wife, if she reads this, shakes her head and mumbles dear god, it's already started, because she knows that's a 5-disc set)
____- Britten, Symphonia da requiem (the whole thing)
____- Rachmaninov, Prelude in G major, which to me sounds like the whole of spring put into 3 minutes- complete with ladybugs and the color green and a somewhat haloed sense of weightlessness
*__*__*
you need to master how you feel
and i don't know about that. it's true that i have a somewhat heightened sense of feeling. a somewhat excessive predilection towards sentiment. and that sometimes, after a movie, i can't quite move, or think or talk for a while. (I just watched Elephant, and its sheer aural and visual virtuosity... i didn't even notice the second half of the movie, i am still stunned by the opening) And Brahms can paralyze me, and love can fold me into a little oddly shaped ball and put me in its pocket, and snow can make me cry, and poems make my head turn, and concise mathematical proofs make me believe in God (and i feel on the inside the hairs of my bones stand straight).
and there's no doubt that there is an element of choice. i occasionally choose not to punch people in the face, even though i feel its probably warranted (and take my swollen pride home and plan in secret a tight-fitting lycra outfit, an appropriate super-hero name, and a nocturnal career as a crime-and-bad-manners fighting vigilante), so there's no reason why i can't choose various emotional responses. i think there might be a difference between attitude and emotion. Emotions i see a little too arbitrarily (i admit it's a faulty perspective)- almost like a scent in the wind, and sometimes, one is simply overcome by the sincerity of a spring day, and cannot contain a certain arctic thawing on the inside. other times, a tune or a small rattle-bag of words is enough to extinguish an entire afternoon. Word. faces. a woman who does/not smile at you. late trains, too many red lights, the scent of urine in stair-wells, too-wise graffiti on alleyway walls, the ever-kaleidoscope of life's mundane.sublime dramas... i can't control that. i can't even be too successful at managing my responses.
but attitude is different. attitude is a general 'ethos', a face that's pre-prepared to meet the faces that you meet (and Alex no doubt just jumped in her seat to see someone else also over-quote Prufrock)- and that can be controlled. The sad part of that is, attitude is too-much based on experience, on history... and that skews our preparation for the future, since we scientifically (erroneously) assume what has been previously true, will continue to be true in the future. There is no necessity for this consistency, and luck, good-will, faith, friendship, finance, desire, ambition, hope, can all dry up, or fly south for the winter and never come back.
i do not feel like writing out my 'ideas' presently.
i'll take this theme up again later.
*__*__*
I happen to be listening to A Sunday Smile, by Beirut, so I thought I'd end with the first of my:
Poem-Variations on A Sunday Smile, a waltz, by Beirut
KEY:
____- words/phrases joined by . are interchangeable. Therefore, always still.soo can be read as either: always still, or, always soo.
____- words contained in parenthesis not to be read out-loud. They are secrets for the reader. Therefore, always still.soo (much) is to be read as either of the above alternatives.
KEY:
____- words/phrases joined by . are interchangeable. Therefore, always still.soo can be read as either: always still, or, always soo.
____- words contained in parenthesis not to be read out-loud. They are secrets for the reader. Therefore, always still.soo (much) is to be read as either of the above alternatives.
____I.
____a sunday smile,
________ not too much to ask for,
________ but still wonderful to see,
____________ always.still.soo (much) wonderful (to see.to ask for),
________________ and fall from.towards.to… (soo
____________________________________much.)
________ and also:
____________ (much)
________________________ to forget.
2 comments:
i can't explain why, but reading this was a complete breath of fresh air.
i really did jump in my seat.and then sat back in my chair and relaxed my shoulders...
your honesty and attention to reality and introspection and appreciation for life is very apparent.and reassuring.
thank you!
also, i was in seattle today and i tried a beecher's grilled cheese. SO great! thanks for recommending!
The paragraph about the babies made me laugh out loud. I love it.
PS: I was suffering from writer's block as well, a bit, since we last wrote, and I have discovered that usually the only inspiration I need is reading a few short words that hit me square between the eyes. I have yet to discover much of a pattern with these inspiring words, so for now it is hit or miss.
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