Wednesday, December 29, 2010

2010?

fuck.

all the lists that come out: keith kelly with his songs of the year (damn good), johnny t with his general (and quite funny) best of, just to list two of the many we will all come across until the passing of the 31st and possibly well into january.

well, here is my anti-list, my list that refuses to be one:

Thursday, December 16, 2010

so i started thinking about this room.

it sits in the corner of a home that is modern, the ones that are almost all white with hard wood floors and a wall that is all windows. but...

this room is not.

in the middle of the main living area of this home is a multi piece sofa that can be re-arranged in a varying number of ways, there is little clutter around the sofa but for some art, no other funiture, nothing, crouds the sofa it is really quite spacious. but...

the room is not.

the kitchen has ladders to reach the two story shelves, pots and pans and kitchen appliances sitting around, organized very, mathematically. but...

the room is not.

someday i may tell what the room is like, but for now at least you know what it is not.

Wednesday, December 08, 2010

my running, for various and likely stupid reasons managed to get pushed back until after 11pm this evening. on a normal occasion i might have been upset with that, and to be honest this was nearly a very normal ocassion. but then there was tchaikovski's "october", part of his "seasons", and then there was bach and his unaccompanied cello suites as played by yo-yo ma, and then there was the considerable dark, and yet another piece was the considerable cold. every piece playing perfectly into the hands of the other so that i could be reminded what running was like, alone, in the middle of the dark, down the middle of what is a normally busy street all with good music quietly accompanying each audible step. i bought the shuffle about 4 years ago to keep me company during my morning runs - some people can remember my telling of them, others (few) had been privey to their witness, and fewer still (one) managed to keep me company on a handful (for those the shuffle was left in its port) - and many of those early mornings shared the characteristics of this evening's run, a short 42' or so.

i had forgotten that the dark really helps to erase everything from your head, letting it wonder a bit through the space. seeing too many things is like having too much planned, it all just lumped into a mess and nothing can be comletely enjoyed as it should be. tonight, the focus somehow turned towards poetry. the disgust most people have toward poetry preferring the narrative. it may be that poets seem too self-engaged, too removed possibly. but i imagine another source of, maybe distrust?

the love of narrative and the hatred for poetry both seemingly have root in the same concept: effects. while narrative often allows you to feel the effects through, or even in another character, poetry has a much more direct effect on the reader. that is the point, poetry is emotive and that seems to make people rather uncomfortable with it. the thought of allowing something to get close, without some kind of fitler, is just too close. poetry in nature is like pealing the leaves of a roasted artichoke, verse by verse each getting richer until getting to the heart, where there is nothing to mask its rich flavors, and nothing left to disgard. the last piece has to be eaten, swollowed. literature has all the characters, each having to go through a certain process through which the reader can sympathise or empathise with the character. poetry does not evoke sympathy, nor empathy, it is the emotion rewrapped for the reader to stumble upon, happily, painfully, frustratingly, or simply bemused. good narrative can manage to tear away he filters of character, and make the public feel the emotion internally, and that may be what makes some keep their meaning instead of becoming pastel-binded novalties sold used in the local coffee.

can the reader trust something that makes them feel so much? can the modern figure accept a poem that causes a feeling of being weaker than a subordinate nature before borders ("psalm")? or before a clock, created by human kind, that grows to govern as a god?


Sunday, December 05, 2010

as much as the writing needs be be done today, there are (unfortunately) other things that trump in the hierarchy of need. included in the pile that has accumulated over the past few months would be the most recent readings for a class tomorrow and the possible murder of a character's soul. not to be outdone, the marginal figure is pushing his way into the lime-light and the never ending presence of the mujer desechable just won't go the hell away.

thankfully, the hallucinagenic hold that keep me from my feet the last few days has been released and the pile shouldn't grow any larger. all the better since its shadow is growing much shorter,
so it was handel's messiah, and there was just something about the baritone. he didn't want to be there; had no interest other than a few fleeting moments that involved himself, memory and imagination, and the young soprano. previous to the evening, he managed to sip out of his pocket flask the required whiskey to whet his palate for uncontrollable vibrato, so that the moments of staccato scales came with a difficulty in differentiating between the frivolous vibrato and the change in actual base note. not that it was really a matter any longer, as this was obviously just another pass toward a hopeful retirement that had been pushed back a bit with a collapse of his investment in a certain hedge fund.

in his chair on the left he sat, with his slacks lifted to clear the knees of any discomfort leaving the socks to tease the front row with their possible edge. his tux jacket fit rather well, but the shirt underneath was forced to a wrinkled lump pressed out from a belly exacerbated by a slumped and apathetic posture. there was a moment where apathy seemed to wane from his face and body, but unfortunately the ephemeral change died when the realization that the soprano was not the same as that one. one of his first concerts after finishing the conservatory. she was thin for an operatic singer, with a voice that was anything but. she lead him down a path of notes where his baritone became a tenor, and then as if the two voices morphed, managed to drop to a D2 with the sudden desire for a cigarette. but this young soprano had only fleeting moments that reminded him of the past muse. that is to say, once her voice failed to fill him in any way with feeling, that was the reminder of just how long ago it was when he last felt something that resembled having swallowed a fresh ember.

what he really needed was another few whiskies and a prostitute named bambi: the first feeling almost like the warmth of love that pleasantly burns as it passes through the chest bringing a slight change in perception and the second a body whose loving intensions last equally as long as the time paid on the parking meter. he would never have told you that directly (unless you were bambi), but the empty look on his face during most of the performance, and the fact that he almost missed his cue for one of his solos, should lead you to understand where he really was. just like so many others who never became quite what they wanted -even if they were revered by so many- what he held inside was vacancy, a neon-sign announcing room for rent; even temporary tenants would be better company than the memories with no corners and a coffee with no cream or sugar.




Friday, December 03, 2010

now to hell with spellcheck, caps, etc.: caps are for creating an importance, giving value to something that should really be perceived the same as all the rest, and spellcheck is for making sure that you can show how well you memorized the expected representation of a thought, without ever having actually gone through with the act, but instead leaving it to a machine.

Thursday, December 02, 2010

even when other things must be done, there is always the blog. now what that really means is that the practive of writing, be i in spanish or in english, is an art of practice. of course there are people prediposed to better apply their vision to any given medium, but without the formation of artistic development, a person's own style and voice are completely overwhelmed by everything that they have read and studied. what i really mean, is that without the practice, you may as well sit with your favorite book at hand and copy word-for-word each chapter you want to be your own, or take a place with your favorite painting, and slowly mimmick each brush stroke you are able to discern (maybe even a little more difficult than copying words for most) but lest i stray from the point, the art is in the some novalty, not continual repetition. whether people will value that art at the time of its inception is another topic and maybe another entry (i will pretend to have learned not to form empty promises to an empty readership) at some possible juncture.

Wednesday, December 01, 2010

really not so far from the final stage, he just found nothing left in his legs and couldn't reach any further. after arriving to work on the rickety old bicycle, he found himself in front of the only elevator in the building and it was broken. there were a few people stuck inside the elevator between the 27th and 28th floor, and the technicians were just leaving their office 17 blocks away. well fuck, he thought, first it was the ignition in the car after my alarm didn't set itself last night, and now i have to climb all these fucking stairs. He had been meaning to get back into shape, but just found himself far too lazy every morning before work, at lunch break, and every evening. and plus, there just wasn't enough time in the day to do what he really wanted to do.

the thing that he really wanted to do was to quit his job, leave all that shitty world of exploiting one person for someone else´s gain. not that it would have taken that much time to write the letter, hand it in, and wait out the two weeks of the mandatory notice. the starting of the letter was taking him more time than he had in a lifetime. often he thought to himself, i am compromising my beliefs, why? so that some fat and happy man, his unfaithful wife, and the children who might not be his, can all go on another 2 week vacation to aspen, drinking wine that is more expensive than my bar tab for the month, and sleeping in their fifth home that he paid cash for. but he was still working on starting the letter.

after waiting fifteen minutes for the elevator mechanics to arrive, he finally gave up on the hope of avoiding the grunt work, let his head drop between his slumping shoulders that struggled to fill the over-sized suit, and began to shuffle (as much as one can) up the stairs to the floor where his office was, and the floor where his immediate boss was sitting in the office across, staring at the empty chair in tony's cube. it wasn't even remotely entertaining to stare into tony's cube, there was a picture of his ex-wife hanging crooked in the corner, a few scraps of disorganized paper built into uninteresting stacks, each just slightly less colorful than the last, a map of his sales territory with a few lines drawn, delineating the boundaries that seemed to be continuously retracting, and a cup for his coffee with his college football team's logo. after each step, he began to question the previous, and started to note that, although he knew he was going in the right direction, the numbers did not pass nearly as fast as he was expecting.

Since in the rush to get out the door, he had forgotten to put on his watch, he had no clue the amount of time consumed by this climb, and he was starting to get hungry. he hadn't had his typical breakfast of honey ohs and a glass of don diego's pre-ground coffee. on an empty stomach, there was no way the energy was going to be there to make last the rest of the flights of stairs, so he sat at the landing where he found himself, and buried his head in his hands, running his fingers disgustedly through stingy hair. without the energy to move for the next several minutes, and with a pad of paper that he had in the briefcase, he found a pen and just began to doodle, the doodles became words, the words became musings and the musings became justification for another step. really, what the hell am i doing. slinging myself left leg then right up flight after flight of stairs, to throw my pride to the wolves around me, and sell their feed to the sheep for a better feast. and one that i don' even get to taste.

taking out another sheet, he began writing the letter that he never had time to write. he finished the last word and finally had the energy to climb the stairs to hand in the literary masterpiece and wait out the two weeks, then he realized he was actually two floors above his office, and walked sheepishly down the stairs with his paper in hand. his boss, waiting for his just as he had expected began to pounce, when tony handed him the letter. his boss read it, and calmly explained that letters of resignation had to be accompanied with a form, and in addition to being typed and placed in the slot in his door, they were also to be filed electronically through the human resources page on the intranet. he placed the paper, just as the last in one of the lifeless piles on tony's desk, gave tony a pat on the shoulder, and turn back towards his office closing the door behind him, knowing that tony just didn't have time to write complete the steps necessary. just too much work to be done.