Wednesday, July 18, 2012

his labyrinth

to hell with borges and his labyrinths, this was a true labyrinth a room of art that required a different perspective, theory, in order to be able to understand each piece: one, descarte, another barthes, another freud, another... that was his basement gallery. his own place to find himself another, while observing and re-theorizing. each work would convert him into another thinker and throw him, with all his current knowledge, into his own past. there he made different decisions than he did the first time confronted with the situation (this time with less caution)

and then there was the room, the one room in the house that had not changed with the modern, minimalist renovation. there inside was an academic clutter: books, novels, magazines and publications, a globe, maps, a lamp, another armchair... there, his decisions were made with categorical and meticulously measured science. each past was a present to be remembered without remorse, and without change. isolated from the decision itself, and more aligned to the effort that later ensued.

he would button the top botton on his sport coat, run his hands through his measuredly disheveled hair, and step back through the door that looked to go back to the outside world, but that brought him to his modern moment, to the life he was living now between the four outer-walls that was built by his past and that held played as the battlefield to his current reality.

four walls and so many different worlds.  


Wednesday, May 30, 2012

imagined creativity


cannot sleep.

this is not the regular occurrence it once was, but i guess there are reasons enough. in the past, the moments of sleeplessness were fueled by readings, by tortured souls who years ago had written their internal worlds into a form that would later meet my eyes, by sudden moments of forced energy that urged immediate action. for the moment it is not the same, though it drive me to write as it did. wooded surroundings, things to come, responsibilities once so shunned, now almost desired.

i can imagine moments just like this, productive, fruitful pushes towards a long held goal. the unwritten manuscript that lays somewhat dormant in a beautifully bound notebook (a gift from an unknowing friend) and the source that struggles to find the way to unite and express what still remains un-"translated" from the human experience; my human experience.

i don't have a photo of a keyboard, though i wish i did. it would be placed somewhere here amongst the words i have pecked on on that very object. ideas must keep me awake, but in them...

Monday, February 06, 2012

a pretentious (and worthless) nook review

one of the few outgoing pecuniary transactions that manages to give me pleasure these days is one of a subscription to the nytimes on what has become the fascinating little ereading devise. while a feeble attempt at sticking to the paper and ink was superficially intact, there was a little rat that continued gnawing at my internal wiring, the last bite being that of an email from my mother sending me a link that advertised the nook for free with a purchase of the new york times. rather than my typical consumer-driving, knee-jerk reaction that brought me to previous, and often disheartening pecuniary results, i did not react immediately upon her email, but rather began a slow search to decide if the purchase was going to be made. initially, the offerings that the nook had seemed limited, the closest competition offered all of the news papers that i  have wanted to receive to my doorstep for the past 9 years, and this offered only a few, one of which has had my interest for the past 11 years (since my only tangential foray into the world of international relations through a class by a phenomenal professor and the book the peloponnesian war by thucydides). with the murder of motivation at its peak for the nook, i hurried to my usual monday night engagement and let the cold air ice the trails of intrigue that wound through the misfiring neurons. i began to vacillate between the prospect of the juggernaut of the ereaders and the one that offered my an easy point of entry.

the online digital nytimes (non-subscription) limits its readers (on each device, I might add) to 20 articles per month. in one of my last remaining articles i read the following: external link to the NYT. the decision as to which device, if any, was entwined in the lifeblood messaging of the article.

i still only have one paper delivered to my house -electronically- each morning, but there are also, much to my initial dismay, a couple ebooks whose letters, words, paragraphs and pages all hide themselves in code until the finger-tap is completed on the touchscreen. i will forever want to hold the pages of a book in my hand so that i can feel the history of the work in my hands, the tangible evidence of the process to existence, the smell of the historical trail of the contents and those fingers that previously molested the pages, waking them from the dormant period that precluded the momentary attention, that ended in a seeming ignorance of the contents with a re-gifted shadow of the next temporary focus. the existence in digital form seems even more ephemeral than the tactile paper-ink combination, but somehow it has manage to engage me just the same. it will never replace the desired bookshelves in my final place of non-celestial (given my aversion to an expected continuance) residence, but it has a place, a function, and even a facility that cannot be granted to the otherwise stimulating printed material. especially those publications that take the periodical form.