Notes II

If I could wear you like warpaint
I would
a slick rouge up the cheeks
to identify my patronage
remind me of purpose
to caution strangers
______________________________

Winter Palace, Saint Petersburg; The Alhambra; Ko Samui; Florence; The Vatican
______________________________

Andrea Doria

I don't care if you're a boat or a hole in a dirt road
Remains of a rotted cake, can hardly remember then
kissed her on both cheeks taught her to hate men
______________________________

I'm standing at the window
waiting to see a walking figure or headlights
some sign that you've arrived
some sign that you've stayed
______________________________

When I see you smile so genuinely, an old smile I feel like a boy so open it's a pleasure and a fear I never feel
like a boy
______________________________

If I were a prince I would like to imagine
that I was not the product of a dowager
that I was not imperious and vain
that I could hold no distance between stations
and that such gravity as I could provide
would be made manifest in smiles and hale greetings

Notes

Once I served The Nothing
My car is full of spiders
______________________________

I am going to cover one eye
I am depleting the quantity of incoming stimuli to the betterment of greater exclusivity
______________________________

Unable or unwilling to differentiate between varying collections of sensory experience and this location is indented and experience [illegible] all of colors and sounds the pressing immediacy of form and object
______________________________

Microfiche

Describe the circumstances in which one would level a flare gun at the horizon instead of vertically: entity one wishes to contact is both known and distant
______________________________

There's this false expectation that a relationship should last forever. And that's ridiculous. Every relationship eventually ends and that's okay. The expectation creates a hostage scenario. And it makes for awkward situations in which you can't be friends with that person or even be around them.
______________________________

Everything is moving but me most of all. I cannot be still I cannot find stillness nor certitude.
______________________________

trying to invent rules mutually exclusive goals worry about spectrum and brain growth rates

1. communicate/provide an authentic representation
2. successfully engage

grapple with the postmodern division that has become too common

do you see what I see? do you hear what I hear?
______________________________

Confessional
Deep leviathan crown prince of the new sincerity I am interested in the development of my personal brand I cannot function independently I am motivated by shame I need a girl who is better than me I am terrified of girls who are better than me I just want to get drunk and talk about dark matter I have a thing for ponytails
______________________________

as mistakes accrue
the extent of work that the muscles do
to hinder and hold what they might of you
truthfully, I don't know what you're going through
______________________________

Haunted House next door
wet rock and curtained windows
slate shingles flecked with oxblood and bleak view obstructed by bare trunks
and telephone wire
scaled siding, cake, spoiled sugar/confection
slime, serpentine
white chimney, cracked ivory darkened fire damage
especially today it's raining
______________________________

a peck, tip of my nose
the few strands that work their way across a headband
the hollow of my arms filled neatly
a soothing of the chest completely
the note I produce is a
vibration/a resonance
I think in D
I think in D
______________________________

this is so simple
a smaller pattern of fewer threads, one band of color,
don't spoil the arrangement
through touch
or at least insensate grabbing
a harsh and directionless need
______________________________

The benefit of breath
is largely
the altitude of momentum
and not
the power to comment on same
as once I suspected
______________________________

Geryon, Moloch
shall we mythologize
______________________________

FAVORITE
CRAVE
______________________________

Brunettes are great because the follicles are filled up so it feels like you're getting your money's worth.
______________________________

Identifying something as awkward says more about your lack of social facility than it does about the situation.
______________________________

"More weight"

The difference is temperance born of fatigue. A blunting of sensation (that allows for a cleaner, more efficient interaction of cogs) I don't feel so much better as *heavier* which mimics the motion of deliberate choice

a chronic but sustainable malaise

Foxes

Cavities of your body,

the charm of any cave.

The hollow of your chest

a den of foxes.

Leaves and sticks and clumps of hair -

the by-products of wanting.

Memory

Memory is an adornment.
The only marking made upon a body by its own hands
And thus to know one from another.


The purpose of narrative is to create meaning. Experience itself has no essential qualities beyond basic sensory input. The world is perceived as an unrelated succession of lights and sounds and impact. These data are processed by the central nervous system and joined in an attempt to make predictions about the environment which will facilitate survival. The urge to organize, to make meaning through association, is a hallmark of humankind. Experimentation teaches that a certain series of sensory phenomena indicates danger while another indicates safety. Language allows these sequences to be labeled and explained. It becomes possible to convey the lesson without the experiment. This conveyance is narrative. Narrative is the primary method for imposing order on gross input. It is the method used to remember such order oneself and to share it with others. After the sensory input – the experience – has passed, what is left behind as memory is an approximation of that experience which is distinct from the experience itself. This fact is so obvious and such a commonplace that it is rarely examined. Recollection is necessary to catalogue memory, but also to create a sense of self and a sense of context among other non-selves. Narratives agreed upon by many become the foundation of culture. It is, no doubt, a useful evolutionary strategy, but one that involves a certain amount of construction.

Experience is limited by perspective. A given viewer witnesses a given event from a particular vantage point, which influences understanding. Perspective is both physical, as in an observer’s actual field of view, but also psychological. One sees what one expects to see. Such elements of subjectivity ensure that even the most meticulous attempt to relate past events is definitionally handicapped. There is an unbridgeable distance between experience and memory. Attempts to share those memories with others widens the distance further. When narrative is shared, each participant introduces a new perspective and a new set of variables. The information is subject to a new set of filters which alters final understanding. “Truth”, if such a thing exists, is not accessible. Unfortunately, such a postmodern approach is as uncommon as it is unsatisfying. The more we empower narrative as an explanatory device the more we need to believe in its fundamental trueness. Even those who are familiar with such theories suspend disbelief in order to privilege certain narratives. Even in fiction, a genre approached and understood as imaginative, readers require a level of plausibility based on seemingly arbitrary guidelines, many of which are created and perpetuated by the works themselves. Anomalous events, which occur in experience, are frowned upon in fiction. A constructed narrative, labeled as such, is judged by a different metric than the narratives we ascribe to direct experience, but is judged nonetheless. Whether or not something is true, or at least believable, matters.

It's how we recognize each other. I'm told that can happen.

Ninth Grade

I came across this excerpt.

I was an awkward child. My principle interests consisted of Dungeons and Dragons and the vivid fantasy world I inhabited. These were related but distinct. My fascination with Dungeons and Dragons revolved around designing and populating adventure scenarios rather than actually enacting those scenarios with others, which was always an exercise in disappointment. The fantasy world, on the other hand, stemmed from imagined re-enactments of daily life, which became imagined acts generally, then developed into a vast, personal mythology in the order of Walter Mitty. This isn’t to say that I didn’t have friends, I certainly did, but there was always an element of distance. I was focused inward to an alarming degree, a fact which school pictures from this period bear out. Here was a boy who paid literally no attention whatsoever to his appearance. My hair was maintained rather than styled, evoking a median or park hedge. My clothing was accumulated rather than chosen and begged for peer disapproval. Amongst my fellow students I was quiet, but not too quiet; studious, but not too studious. I cultivated the role of spectator. I was forgettable.

For whatever reason, Mrs. E had divided the class into two or three groups, I can’t remember, and each had read a different book. Each group took turns gathering with the teacher to discuss what they had read. My group had been assigned To Kill a Mockingbird. There was a strict lesson plan. She’s called Scout because she’s like a scout and she’s exploring new ideas. Every name had some godawful, heavy-handed symbolism behind it, and this infuriated me. I couldn’t let it go. Clearly, this was the information we needed for the quiz laid out neatly. It didn’t matter and I didn’t even like this book. Karen and Paul happily fed her the clearly telegraphed responses she sought, but I demanded to know how she could make these claims. There was something base and vulgar about it, some belittling element that pulled the humming string of meaning too tightly and held it too long. I didn’t understand the source of my indignation. I was content to believe that she was stupid and unfit; unable to see what I could see. It was easy to dismiss Mrs. E on these terms as I would proceed to dismiss hundreds of others, thousands, with youthful conceit untempered by perspective or humility. I hated her and I hated my class and I hated being a drab boy in a drab place with no control over what happened around me.

It is tempting to engage such memories armed with the vocabulary of critical theory, but that would solve nothing. Such description is a violation somehow; an act of confinement in which a live, formless thing is conquered and made to die. I struggle with how to logically conclude about this experience, which though not particularly important in my life is nonetheless representative of many such moments. I want to say that what Mrs. E was doing, passing tidy judgment on Harper Lee’s fantasy, represented a very real threat to the imaginative core that fueled me and maybe draw some larger parallel. What I do know for certain is that, many years later, I still remember this room and I remember this day and I am still wary of explanations about literature.

Patterns

So today I went pillaging. The original plan was to put up another piece of KotB, but after spending some time poring over the outline – which is abundant – I decided to leave it to fill the coming week.

I have an email address from many years ago which is mostly inactive. It actually shunts to my current address. I’ve never bothered to cancel it because it’s full of relics and I’m too lazy to sort out what I would want to keep. I thought it might be interesting to pull forth some moist specimen and pin it to the dissection table.

There’s some dark product in there. Things were not quite as I remembered. Some of these memories persist more strongly than I would have predicted. They recall pain or, worse, pain inflicted on another. It’s difficult to know how one should handle memories like these. They are defining and important, certainly. Instructive. They catalogue mistakes I plan to not make again. At the same time, what good can come of opening old wounds? It’s not as if I can track all these people down like a Nick Hornby novel. Who the hell would want to? There’s a statute of limitations on seeking emotional catharsis, and I’m glad for it. I can think of quite a few faces I’d hate to see at my door, mostly because there’s only so many ways you can say, “I know, you’re right, I’m sorry.” Some of you may be reading this, in which case please understand that I know, you’re right, and I’m sorry.

It must be a question of temperament. Most people I know don’t feel some sacred compulsion to analyze every facet of their past. It is enough to make choices, to recall those choices, and to proceed under the auspice of result. Perhaps it’s because, looking back, I don’t see a pattern. Despite my best efforts, I have not been able to create an acceptable narrative through which to define myself. I have been too many people. I have held too many contradictory beliefs. I have said too many wonderful and horrible things. Whenever I attempt to explain the particulars of my life I am left feeling that my audience has failed to appreciate the scope of what happened. I am both better and worse than they now believe. My solution? More words. Words and words and words. I back the truck up and just bury them alive in all my language.

I considered a poem I had written at seventeen. It’s clumsy, but the precision of metaphor is undeniable. It’s also one of the few pieces I still have from high school. I would periodically suffer through maudlin fits during which I would destroy everything I had recently written. The recipient sent it to me many years later, for which I am thankful. I just can’t bring myself to drag that out. It’s been through enough.

I considered the final break-up letter of my last serious relationship. What a jagged enterprise. It’s beautiful and tragic in precisely the correct proportion and I couldn’t even read the whole thing. That shit’s still raw. Not the girl. It’s not about the girl, that’s the crazy part. It’s the letter! The letter too accurately recalls my exact psychological state, which in turn evokes that state. I would like to think that it would be imprudent to loose such a thing into the world, but in reality it’s just too personal, even for me.
Let’s talk about evocation, instead.

A term I plan to someday define properly, it made me remember a piece of paper I found a few days ago. I am guessing this is from about 2005. It contains four distinct sections, presumably unrelated. At least, I hope they’re unrelated:


Evocation // involves the set of all object properties which create subject reaction. It is, specifically, the process by which one discovers/decodes these reactions, and the willful and deliberate act of symbol use to manifest, or “evoke”, predictable and desired subject-based outcomes.

Imagination is the most potent and least understood human phenomenon.

Empathy is a hindrance to communication as often as an asset. Aggravated concern for the position and comfort of the listener detracts greatly from both attention and message precision.

Have you ever seen two retards making out? It’s like a civil war field hospital. It’s like watching a calf being born.


I know, right?

It’s possible that some of that previous madness may end up lashed to the post for your amusement eventually. Not today.

A Genre

I would like to suggest a new specialization of verse. I am speaking of the love letter, a traditionally staid and rather uninteresting form for which I believe I have developed an unusual facility.

Looking through old documents, it's astounding how many of these I've written. Reams. They run the gamut from youthful and embarrassing to poignant and textured. Mostly embarrassing. More than anything else I've written, though, these seem to clearly delineate the evolution of my voice.

There's also a fascination to be had looking at the wreckage of your past. Like poking your tongue into a sore tooth, or rather breaching the stale sanctity of some lost tomb and knowing that it was you who were buried here.

When I bring one of these up from the seafloor I will change the name to Elizabeth and edit out identifying features.

Here goes:

The car stands fixed as Route 322, punctuated by both rain and the Commodore Barry Bridge, solidifies from an arching, gray planetarium. A foreign and tender softness. A gray of plumped moth bodies and the underside of garage doors heavy with age and lousy with unhatched eggsacks. A firmament of gray which undoubtedly marks entrance to the Guf and a return to unspoken places of our most sacred and solemn common memory. This sky is heavy. This sky is pregnant with water and with nostalgia.

I am here and in this car I am racing. I am a body and a mind which is individual. It's an important assertion and one I should make often.

I am cataloging the immediate history of my heart and thereby that of mankind generally. There are decisions to be made. It's been the same decisions each time. The choices made seem brave and deeply felt, but everyone ends up at home disappointed and hungry.

The cycle is starting anew and I am flush with potential. The springtime pantheon - championed by Hope herself - again enthroned on high. My limbs heal; pace quickens; thoughts become whole and deliciously melodious.

There's so much I want to tell you. How your grace and your smile were a beacon - an unfurled spinneret leading out of the labyrinth. How the rhythm of our laughter these past weeks coaxed blood back to a drowned heart and twisted fingers. For a solid moment my vision was unblurred and your walls unmanned and I stood within your kingdom. I knew you.

The lives we lead are stunted and hunchback. The pleasures still found desperate and drunken. Surrounded daily with examples of the worst of love, sick and dysfunctional. Chambered hearts like furious angels sobbing and clawing in ritual lust and ritual abandonment.

The place where we work is a thing of poisons. Its walls may as well be wreathed in gnashing teeth. Its corners choked with fiercest, jagged vines and fragmented bone. It is a temple built to disappointment and futility. We are obedient to the pulse of this hive. In the absence of any other guiding force we are shunted through its piping and waterways to rest when the flow rests and move when it moves. To bump into one another. To mumble the daily litanies and continue hollow, beaten, and unfulfilled.

You are wondering, of course, why I'm telling you these things. This earnest but monstrous tirade which I find in turns sincere and frightening. I've seen you glide about in the periphery of my vision for a very long time with little concern. Graceful movement, haunted expressions, a laughter rare but intoxicating. With your hair up immaculate as a chesspiece and wearing furrows in the floor to follow the same path day in and day out. A white queen on the field. This queen and I, when alone and moved by liquors, are now grand friends. There are tea parties and tinkling laughter; strolls arm in arm on the promenade. Enveloped in night's secrecy and separated from the mad pulse we put our heads together and whisper secrets.

Sorrow clings about your person like a gown. I could smell this from the moment we met. Sense the furrows and rivulets traced in eyes sunken - totally at odds with smiles and speech and gesturing hands. Eyes clouded by broken promises. The eyes of a soul alone. It is this which struck me so deeply, just as it is this which gives me reason to analyze your cruelties.

I sensed at [location] a way out, a hook in the sky. If it turned out true or if it turned out idle fancy I could follow the light and be saved again. I knew that this hook would support my weight even if it was itself supported by nothing. A bit of smoke, a bit of music, and an ardent wishing - all that beauty is ever really birthed from.

Ah, if only you could have known me in years past. I was a thing of fire. My face a tempest of intensity in vision and passionate combat. I did all the wrong things, but dear god how I meant them! In tiny stages of complacency and compromise do great things end. What you know and see of me is a husk. The abandoned summer carapace clinging to an oak branch. An armless statue. A wet letter.

The culminating note I am approaching here is one of thanks. I wish to thank you. You are a reader, and so I must assume that behind closed doors you take words into yourself and you feel them. The day's defenses are relaxed and a more primitive and vulnerable hand turns pages and makes adjustment. In this way, then, do I visit you. Dust and offal has lain upon the belts and driveshafts. Animals took refuge in the rafters and October winds blew dead leaves in lazy spirals about the interior.

No longer. I can hear the purr and whistle as birds take flight rotors test their integrity.

The heart is sometimes shut in a large box, locked, and buried in the earth. Such things are imagined to be for safety, but are in truth merely acts of demented sacrifice to that very earth.

A lazy heart surrounded by a flock of cats; a desperation of cats. To stay in rooms with some kind of shepherd. Crook driven through the reverse and emerging somewhere near the navel. Not an ear to receive a tenth of your thoughts and dreams if you'd even share them.

Make no mistake, this is not something I am asking of you. It is something you have already done. I am reminded of what it is to have your chest tighten at the sight of a face. Why men build and birds sing. Perhaps in this way we will always communicate. Trading stout notes from miles distant, subtle jokes and suggested movies and necessary pep talks. The things that define humility and worth.

Elizabeth, we grow older. Nothing is predictable. Life is a succession of moments and it is in these moments that we shape ourselves. I hand you these papers with pride, with the knowledge that I may look back from the perch of forever and know that I met love with thankfulness and honesty. Should these words resonate within you and seal an alliance forever more, then such an act is to be admired. But if, instead, it causes irreparable collapse...then maybe such an act is to be revered.

The car is still now. From a little closed patio I can see it peek above the fencing like a snail shell. Smell the ocean, face tightened by the sun.

Mission Statement

In this series we will consider particular artifacts.

Once, many years ago, a psych professor tasked our class with creating personal mission statements. It was a dark time for the rebellion. I did not sleep. I did not speak. I found myself in a parking lot, an hour to kill, waiting in the fading light and considered this assignment.

What if I answered sincerely?

The coping strategy I chiefly employed was silence. It's easiest to just not draw any attention to yourself. When you are unremarkable no one asks any questions. They expect less. I would liken this to avoiding eye contact - when you are not being actively perceived you are functionally invisible. It allows the hidden to believe that they have deferred judgment; that this is not yet real. Because I wasn't ready.

The difficulty is, of course, that as the gap between your thoughts and behavior widens, it becomes increasingly difficult to communicate. True intimacy becomes impossible. The lack of intimacy increases feelings of alienation which lead to further withdraw. It whirs like a turbine.

I wondered if I could actually express myself, even in so petty and fleeting a medium as this assignment. With a notebook propped on my knee and squinting in the halflight, this is what I wrote. This was my mission statement:

I will endeavor to unite the disparate aspects of my personality into a defined and objective whole. Through this unification I seek to solidify an identity that can be displayed, tended, and understood. I will better my relationships with those I hold dear by behaving in a way which is constant and reflective of my internal dialogue.

I will endeavor to make peace with my past before bitterness and regret poison the things I value completely.

I will endeavor to distill the composition of beauty in the hopes that it will no longer hold power over me.

I will endeavor to discover whether having no convictions is a weakness or a strength. I hope to see if there is room for compromise between the fluidity of intelligence and the rigidity – and comfort – of belief.

I will endeavor to find a field which I enjoy and which fits the particulars of my talents and shortcomings.

I will endeavor to sleep adequately every night, preventing the shamanistic horrors of sleep deprivation from compounding other, unavoidable difficulties.

I will endeavor to finally begin the process of writing. It is necessary, at the very least, to create one book. This will serve to flush my system, begin my unification, and validate the tenets that underlie my reason.