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Wednesday, September 21st, 2011
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at the end of all of this
it's what i've wanted since i could think
and as much as i am an eclectic person
i'm still me
with my private aspirations, when the lights go out
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Sam--
These two passages from Kierkegaard reminded me of our conversations about authenticity and intellectualism:
"To be sure, every human being is a bit of a subject, in a sense. But now to strive to become what one already is: who would take the pains to waste his time on such a task, involving the greatest imaginable degree of resignation? Quite so. But for this very reason alone it is a very difficult task, the most difficult of all tasks in fact, precisely because every human being has a strong natural bent and passion to become something more and different."
"The objective tendency, which proposes to make everyone an observer, and in its maximum to transform him into so objective an observer that he becomes almost a ghost, scarcely to be distinguished from the tremendous spirit of the historical past--this tendency naturally refuses to know or listen to anything except what stands in relation to itself."
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Saturday, March 5th, 2011
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when i ask you to let me love you
what i mean is i want you to limit my freedom
but the question i pose somehow becomes generously cumbersome
like asking the gas station attendant to keep the 9 cents:
“Thanks, but it’ll screw up my total; I’d prefer to keep everything neat.”
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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Sunday, January 2nd, 2011
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c.
I did not know what I would not want
That you would want
just a fill in your blank
h.
Your polite rage
Stings me
Passé
as quiet riot
Let’s not have another clash.
Though nothing is left but a pillar of salt
L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux
a.
Projections abound,
But withhold
i.
I’m sorry to have held up the mirror
To what you did and did not want to see
Strange, the convolutions and diffractions of the reflective:
We are trapped in our mind’s eye;
For all its convexity and concavity,
Alone there can be no depth perception
n.
Thank you for the time spent
Sitting beside me on the couch
Teaching me how to calculate potential energy.
In kinesis energy can be misdirected
But never lost
m.
A true siren
Your biology is in keeping with evolution,
of pressures of fitness.
The brightest colors are to be avoided,
Attractive in their portent.
I wish you didn't cry so,
Or that I was farther away so as not to hear your music
Pied, I'll always be inclined
e.
What if we do?
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, December 2nd, 2010
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i dreamt that a house was falling down on my family, it was a house within a house.
it wasn't enough to be apocalyptic, it was a frame within a frame. a fill frame, crashing in on the living room. i made it out of the house first, but ran back in to pull the rest of my family out. everyone escaped unscathed, but it was the idea of the destruction that did the most damage. only upon asking myself what it meant, did my character in the dream pull the chain on the lamp of my consciousness, and i switched on. made it to class just in time
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Saturday, November 27th, 2010
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i don't quite know why it is that i feel encumbered by life. looking back on how i've changed since high school, i realize how much certain aspects of my demeanor have not changed. i have always been a lover of humanity, but of the flavor that i've coined, a Dark Optimist. i am most at ease when i am doing things for others, which is why i think that college has been such a terrible experience for me, beyond the circumstantial chunks, existential vomit. i'm self-motivated to a fault. i keep beating myself up, stressing myself out, dreading the academic performance. i suppose i could pinpoint the onset of this bizarre rebellious condition, track it to the spring of junior year when i would drop an assignment off, and skip school to go to the library on the water in downtown fort pierce. the image surfaces so cleanly to mind; i'm certain that if i were to search the archives of my journal and find the day, the descriptions would be so similar. though i suppose the mundane is called for in the construction of livejournal entires; sometimes i wonder if i chose to even bother recording the most memorable days of my life. in trying to fall asleep i was listening to various Wellesley College professors reading excerpts of books they are currently enjoying; i listened to my independent study on the Golem mythology in Jewish mysticism, Ed Silver, reading an excerpt ouf of the book Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. In the Bible "Gilead" means hill of testimony or mound of witness. the narrator of the novel is a 76 year old preacher writing a memoir of his life, containing advice and philosophical musings, to his 7 year old son. i would love to read the entire work, if i had time. to relate this impression to what i was getting at previously, the next excerpt reading i clicked on was that of Courtney Lannert (who i thought always reminded me of hailey), reading out of a book on the history of quantum theory up through the 1960s. there were two quotes that resonated with me, spoken by none other than Einstein himself:
If everyone lived a life like mine, there would be no need for novels. --
Only a life lived for others is worth living. --
I am exhausted and unfortunately most likely won't make it to flesh out my impressions, but i took particular solace in the entire experience of hearing my professors read aloud in a dark, solitary room. after a thanksgiving spent alone (well, the terrier i was dog-sitting did stare me down, unblinking, as i devoured the dry slices of turkey breast from a royally A+ shitty Whole Foods), i'm realizing the tranquility that comes along with being beholden to nobody but yourself, your own boring, generally unsurprising, mealy consciousness. well clearly the previous description boils it all down for you as to where my head is currently 'at.' this bizarre, stifling tranquility is making me intellectual uneasy--i realize how much i miss having someone to share my ideas with, to talk excitedly about the problems of the world, the problems of a particular class, SOMETHING TRULY OF SUBSTANCE. it's so miserable how quiet everyone keeps about their contemplations; i suppose i'm assuming that everyone has the kinds of friends i have here at wellesley. i realize i am someone who is very aural and kinesthetic, and to just keep my ideas to myself becomes literally itchy; i hope he is doing okay and that you are not passing out.
oh wow. i am so tired that i just turned the latter half of what was intended to be a coherent sentence actually manifested in a prayer to my friend Gladyz, regarding a baby sibling and a grandfather. i have no idea. i should sleep. perhaps i'll get back and write what i truly signed in to write, a poem about the stifling "How are you?" well. using it as a contributing image. probably would be the least esoteric reference. i am so tired, fnally.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, October 4th, 2010
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my grandfather may have been a garbage collector on staten island, but he lived his life so i wouldn’t have to pick up trash in the future.
my great aunt was an artist who could see the beauty in trash, and the ugliness in the lavish.
i don’t know who i will be, or what you are
some of these days you’ll miss me, honey
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Sunday, September 19th, 2010
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i wanted to take
your hand and run with you
together toward
ourselves down the street to your street
i wanted to laugh aloud
and skip the notes past
the marquee advertising "women
in love" past the record
shop with "The Spirit
In The Dark" past the smoke shop
past the park and no
parking today signs
past the blue velvet and i don't remember
what you wore but only that i didn't want
anything to be wearing you
i wanted to give
myself to the cyclone that is
your arms
and let you in the eye of my hurricane and know
the calm before
and some fall evening
after the cocktails
and the very expensive and very bad
steak served with day-old baked potatoes
after the second cup of coffee taken
while listening to the rejected
violin player
maybe some fall evening
when the taxis have passed you by
and that light sort of rain
that occasionally falls
in new york begins
you'll take a thought
and laugh aloud
the notes carrying all the way over
to me and we'll run again
together
toward each other
yes?
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[ ]
there is a hunger
often associated with pain
that you feel
when you look at someone
you used to love and enjoyed
loving and want
to love again
though you know you can’t
that gnaws at you
as steadily as a mosquito
some michigan summer
churning her wings
through your window screen
but the real world says you are strong
and anyway she never thought you’d really miss her
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Friday, August 27th, 2010
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I. Cowed
our ancestors were so broken!
teeth falling neatly into a pile, millions of years old Man
floating, stagnating.
looking at your eyes, i used to be able to know what you were
thinking. and you would look at my eyes, knowing that i knew
what you were thinking. and i would know that you knew that
i knew what you were thinking…
we were floating.
years later, when i see you i will see your unhappiness, and
that you see that i see it. i do not want this.
i am uncomfortable for the same reason that we want to close
the eyes of a corpse—ethereal blankness.
i don’t want to see it in you,
two running black pools in your pretty little head.
II. Dyad
in the Night of the Living Dead, the part that always scared
me was the eyes of the young girl as she awakes a zombie.
though the film was black and white, i remember the scene and
her eyes as bathed in the sheer blue of dawn. like the whole
scene had been dyed cornflower.
the most terrifying color, the most terrifying thought, to see signs that the sun will rise over a dead hope. signs of dawn that do not share the colors of dawn. these days i am terrified to be awake here, that i am alone becomes palpable. i would prefer not to watch. even while we were together, you would be laying next to me, asleep, as i would become possessed by this suffocating blue. i remember staring up at the ceiling of your room, hearing you breathing, my eyes transfixed on this blue ceiling that was not the sky, that was not the sky in the day, that was the wrong hue. and i would feel so alone, so terrified to be alone even though i was alone with you. you were asleep, pleasantly ignorant to this most stygian of colors.
i’ve since rewatched that scene, and it’s
never how i remembered it; it’s just black and white and
gray, not a hint of blue. but i still feel the sharpness of
that color, the burn of the friar’s lantern as it infuses me awake with life in a dying night: I loved you.
III. Dyads, Dryads
ignis fatuus
blue eyes, brown eyes: dyads
skin cowed by time becomes leather.
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Thursday, July 29th, 2010
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i thought about Paul tonight, thought i would try and find him on facebook. oddly enough, i found him in a wedding.com registry, engaged to a Fiona lady--their wedding is tomorrow, july 30th. i found them both on facebook, and it is legitimate.
how bizarre. i'm happy for everyone
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I wish you'd looked me in the eye when we said goodbye; instead i'm left with this clumsy portrait of the back of your head, dirty blonde.
Dirty blonde, with your clean blue eyes and lips, sweet razorblades!
Now that I've cut my mouth apart I can sing with nothing to say:
If the moon is a fond memory, so far away that it follows me
then the Man in the Moon is the face of a friend.
The moon looked caught up in a tree like my mind and heart caught in a dream. I thought it was where it was not; I thought I was when I was not awake.
Walden isn't real. When you're gone, you're really gone--there's no chorus in this love song.
There's no pretense in solitude, but maybe a cat or two
and the sweet wine of sour grapes.
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Saturday, June 12th, 2010
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just ran 3 miles on a treadmill, did a mile of high-resistance stairmastering, and rowed 2000 m. and worked a little bit (45 lb chest pressing and 50 lbs tricep stretching) on my triceps. a little bit, haha. all in one hour, from 9-10 pm.
i'd been running around Lake Waban a couple times for the last two weeks of my time at Wellesley, and have played a little bit of basketball with my family since i've been home, but other than that i have been inactive for most of the past 4 years, so i'm pretty shocked and proud of myself. cardio all the way! at particular points of increased resistances i sadistically imposed on myself, my heartrate got to 206, but not to worry--my average was 170, which is definitely a workout, boyyyy.
it felt good to do this; i failed to think ahead about bringing my own music, so the half hour on the treadmill and the 10 minutes on the stairmaster were very contemplative. almost too much so....as my thoughts wandered away from the stress on my body, the places they ended up were perhaps even more stressful, in a negative way. but by the last quarter of it, it felt like i was in this kind of meditative release state, where my mind became open to esoteric impressions of my surroundings, and not myself; i felt a rush of euphoria in tandem with this state of perception.
it was wonderful. i think i will go again in the morning. the body is an amazing piece of work--sometimes i am moved by its capabilities moreso than the mind's....more from an engineering approach, i guess. by the end of it, i was just so amazed at my body's latent strength and endurance. i think that these kinds of experiences will do wonders on convincing my mind of its similar power; i want to sweat away the negativity.
perhaps florida is the best place to do this! it was 93 and humid today, ladies and gents!
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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There is a moment after you move your eye away
When you forget where you are
Because you've been living, it seems,
Somewhere else, in the silence of the night sky.
You've stopped being here in the world.
You're in a different place,
A place where human life has no meaning.
You're not a creature in a body.
You exist as the stars exist,
Participating in their stillness, their immensity.
Then you're in the world again.
At night, on a cold hill,
Taking the telescope apart.
You realize afterward
Not that the image is false
But the relation is false.
You see again how far away
Each thing is from every other thing.
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Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010
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It is this deep blankness is the real thing strange.
The more things happen to you the more you can't
Tell or remember even what they were.
The contradictions cover such a range.
The talk would talk and go so far aslant.
You don't want madhouse and the whole thing there.
walked around staten island today, had a pristine time alone, in my own head. mistakes continuously made once i decided to respond to messages on my cell phone. it's funny, there's always that little voice, or tug, if you will, that disinclines me to respond to invitations that make me feel at all uncomfortable. i suppose most normal people are able to resist or decline entering themselves into situations that might make them feel uneasy; for me nearly all social interactions are associated with a tinge of unease or obligation. i need to get away from that, and i don't know how. i honestly think living alone, in a place where nobody knows me, and avoiding the internet's increasing pressure to create an avatar of onesself will help release me from all of the stress that has welled up. it's funny, on the face of it i'm sure i possess some charm or charisma, but i feel like it's lately serving more of an insulating function. lately i find that i enjoy situations like cafe el table, where i can serve some function to someone, make polite conversation, and then be done. i am thoroughly exhausted with being or feeling beholden to the will of other people. i need to find a way to get back to myself, reaching out of this paralytic well for what it is that i want out of life. but it's hard to do, morbidly paradoxical, even, when i am conflating being alive to being stuck in a fleshy well. i do realize that we are multitudes, and perhaps putting pressure on having a cogent self is a bit presumptuous, a bit much. but i think recognizing this and acting nihilistic as a result is irresponsible. i have at times felt completely comfortable embracing ways of being that are perhaps discontinuous with my overarching theme of selves, my identity. but i think such comfort comes from being in environments that foster frenetic growth, not recursion. Every day feels permutative. Which comes as no surprise; much of life operates combinatorically. It's only problematic in that I feel that the elements or substrates of my life that are being permuted are shit. I keep introducing new elements, thinking that novelty might help, but, no. A maelstrom of shit. While I was feverish these past couple of days I fantasized about shrinking down to a point, a cathartic period.
What name do I have for you?
Certainly there is not name for you
In the sense that the stars have names
That somehow fit them. Just walking around,
An object of curiosity to some,
But you are too preoccupied
By the secret smudge in the back of your soul
To say much and wander around,
Smiling to yourself and others.
It gets to be kind of lonely
But at the same time off-putting.
Counterproductive, as you realize once again
That the longest way is the most efficient way,
The one that looped among islands, and
You always seemed to be traveling in a circle.
And now that the end is near
The segments of the trip swing open like an orange.
There is light in there and mystery and food.
Come see it.
Come not for me but it.
But if I am still there, grant that we may see each other.
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wrote this song in '42
i'll reincarnate just for you
marching to the battle drum
when this song was just a hum
rolling in my head
and keeping me from losing it
is this little soldier gonna make it
'till it's june n july?
till june n july?
it's hard to tell this story without
giving away confidential facts
about the secret army camp
and all it's occupants
two girls in particular
had the eyes of officers
upon them, they were twins
and their names happened to be
june n july
they were june n july
calling june n july
they were june n july
i can't fight the fever
when i think about that summer
i can't fight the fever
when i think about that summer
it was the coldest morning
we had seen upon the battlefield
two of the enlisted were frozen
from the inside out
and when they called for
special volunteers then
i knew that it was my turn
i stood up
and so did june n july
so did june n july
what happened on that day
i can't repeat
i'm sworn to secrecy
we thought we were
the side of righteousness
freedom and liberty
now i look back through the years
and i feel differently
what if we had waited
had held out
till it was june n july?
till june n july
calling june n july
oh june n july
i can't fight the fever
when i think about that summer
i can't fight the fever
when i think about that summer
will you listen to my story
call it testimonial
will it matter to you
will it change your mind at all
i know that you're young, girl,
got so much ahead of you
listen to your heart then
only to yourself be true
i can't fight the fever
when i think about that summer
i can't fight the fever
when i think about that summer
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Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
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je donnerais cher,
pour être a nouveau
assise sur un banc,
au parc avec toi
le fond de mon cœur,
était radiation
là toutes les couleurs,
une révélation
le temps s'est figé
et là j'ai vu
combien tes lèvres
sont désirables
l'impalpable est
devenu matière
il s'est blottit
contre le vide
la tendresse aboutie
la violente caresse
qui réveille
dans mon être
chaviré
une énigme
The Emergency Kisses
I gave dearly, to become new
Sitting on a riverbank,
In the park with you
All the colours there
A revelation
The depth of my heart
Was radiation
Time grew older as I saw how desirable your lips are there,the impalpable
became matter
It is wrapped up against the void
The victorious tenderness
The violent caress
That awakes
Within me
Capsized
An enigma.
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Monday, February 8th, 2010
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The Haunting Melody:
Music, Emotion, and Subjectivity in Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience,
1900-2009 What is music, and why is it so powerful? How can it incite intense emotions, conjure deep memories, and even trigger involuntary physical reactions? These questions have haunted musical thinkers for centuries, and have especially crystallized over the past century, with the development of contemporary psychology and neuroscience. This
module will offer an introduction to the intellectual history of psychoanalytic, psychological, and neuroscientific theories of music in the 20th century, beginning with Freud’s anxieties about music, Reik’s writings on “haunting melodies,” and various
psychoanalytic studies of Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, and Wagner, and ending with current critical theory and neurological research on music, emotion, and subjectivity. We will also interrogate the complex philosophical dimensions of studying musical affect from a scientific perspective, especially given music’s long historical relationship to notions of spirituality and transcendence.
email i wrote to a friend that needs help with the creative aspect:
"this one's called 'Free'
wrote it as a reaction to the popular perception of what constitues jazz....i see jazz as an emotionally whimsical form of music, which doesn't have to adhere to scales or modes or rhythm or musical conventions, but hinges on improvisation, moves someone emotionally via its novelty, a theme that keeps permuting...an emotion is there, but is constantly evolving with time. i see this kind of song as a symbol that encapsulates time and consciousness, sound as entropy. what's interesting about the experience of playing this kind of stuff is how to know when you're 'finished'
i play shit like this alot, can never play it the same way twice.
it's on the uke
if she's ever looking for someone to come in and play something some day, or if you choose to do Option 2 for your project-- 'must be performable by
by you and/or a friend at the May 4 symposium'--i would be more than happy to help out! i'm only taking three classes. i'm sure that they aren't offering it next semester, and this is the sweetest class ever. sorry i'm so annoyingly enthused. i should've noticed/taken this class instead of PE : (
but, i found the course conference, stole the syllabus and the readings thus far! : ) "
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Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
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The moon is like a fond memory, following you everywhere you go because it’s so far away The man in the moon is just the face of a friend. |
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i'm not stupid but i feel dumb
i know all the answers to stupid questions
that i'm starting to forget
am i stupid for knowing the answers to stupid questions
or am i stupid for not knowing the answers to stupid questions?
i think i need to disappear from everyone for a while
but i don't know how
Walden isn't real
when you're gone you're really gone
there's no going back,
no pretense in solitude
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