31.12.08
2009: Here's hoping!
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we'll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
Everyone ready?
9.12.08
Yuletide
I was raised in a forest of Christianity,
weaned from a wolf of God.
Had I known a heath: been a heathen.
An olive grove: a luminous paganus.
Who cares who hijacked whose holy days,
in dark Decembers I know candles and souls.
There was no snow in Bethlehem.
There was far more blood in the firelit hills.
Give me this tempered concoction of belief,
smelling of pine, warm as fleece.
I wear it like an animal skin, heavy with horns.
I pray for a birth from the biting cold.
Where science shrugs to foist human dreaming
up against the icy rote
I will meditate, crown and thorn
buried in virginity, beloved by both.
Spiritual Darwinism
A world of things that I pinned my identity to, a host of stories and personal mythologies, now feel distant and untouchable. If who we are and what we root ourselves in can shift so dramatically--if things we once said we would die for (meaning it or not) are now things we remember fondly but fail to seek--then who or what are we?
My scope of focus is narrower. I am putting effort into my occupation, into little projects here and there. A year, two years ago I was reading poetry into a microphone, reading my well-worn copy of Rexroth's poems all the time, the same way some people would read a bible. I love these things no less, but... I'm not reaching for them.
And it's very possible that this is completely what human beings are always supposed to do. We inhabit an identity for months or years and then it evolves--which only means survival of the fittest, not survival of that which we choose to believe is most dear. As I've told myself before, somehow the tomorrow's keep coming, one after another, and I'm still here. So I must be doing something right.
Winter has set into the region. Today it's cold rain, last week snow. The leaves are all down. It's going to be four months of bare branches and gray curbs, just like every year. I don't feel heartbroken that the greenery is gone, or that I didn't get outside more often during the summer. I would have, a year or two years ago.
New Year's resolution: Grow lungs and legs. Leave the cold, gray ocean. Learn to fly.
My scope of focus is narrower. I am putting effort into my occupation, into little projects here and there. A year, two years ago I was reading poetry into a microphone, reading my well-worn copy of Rexroth's poems all the time, the same way some people would read a bible. I love these things no less, but... I'm not reaching for them.
And it's very possible that this is completely what human beings are always supposed to do. We inhabit an identity for months or years and then it evolves--which only means survival of the fittest, not survival of that which we choose to believe is most dear. As I've told myself before, somehow the tomorrow's keep coming, one after another, and I'm still here. So I must be doing something right.
Winter has set into the region. Today it's cold rain, last week snow. The leaves are all down. It's going to be four months of bare branches and gray curbs, just like every year. I don't feel heartbroken that the greenery is gone, or that I didn't get outside more often during the summer. I would have, a year or two years ago.
New Year's resolution: Grow lungs and legs. Leave the cold, gray ocean. Learn to fly.
3.12.08
Prop 8: The Musical
Okay, I've converted this from the mini-player to just a link because the anal-retentive side of me can't stand that it was overlapping my archive list. Yes, I realize the irony in that statement. Ahem. As you were.
Watch Video
Watch Video
24.11.08
From a letter to a friend
If you're going to allow others to read your work; if you want it to have even the remotest chance of surviving beyond you; one has to let go of trepidation. Your words are pieces of you--replenishing fragments, pheromones loosed on the wind. A lot of times, nothing will come back. Sometimes it will come back twisted, and yes, you'll have to defend yourself. You must want those rare and beautiful instances of true reciprocation badly enough to not be afraid of all the other possibilities.
We are lucky to be remembered at all, and one-in-a-million gets to become a legend that sticks in the world’s consciousness through the ages; considering that, to fret about exactly how one will be remembered seems almost greedy. If my choices are nameless, meaningless dust, versus scorn and notoriety for "corrupting the youth" (we're looking at you, Socrates) I still believe I would rather go down in the history books as something. Even if entire nations don't understand or agree with me, a solitary college student who happens upon my work and feels a moment of clarity, or sympathy, or curiosity from having read my words is enough reason for me to press onward.
We are lucky to be remembered at all, and one-in-a-million gets to become a legend that sticks in the world’s consciousness through the ages; considering that, to fret about exactly how one will be remembered seems almost greedy. If my choices are nameless, meaningless dust, versus scorn and notoriety for "corrupting the youth" (we're looking at you, Socrates) I still believe I would rather go down in the history books as something. Even if entire nations don't understand or agree with me, a solitary college student who happens upon my work and feels a moment of clarity, or sympathy, or curiosity from having read my words is enough reason for me to press onward.
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