Categories
book internet libraries

World 2.0

The president of the U. of Michigan gave an excellent speech yesterday on Google’s book digitization and its impact on libraries, information, and publishing. (full text)

New technologies and new ideas can generate some pretty scary reactions, and Google Book Search has not been immune. The project, for all that it promises, has been challenged: on the editorial page, across the airwaves, and, with your organization’s endorsement, in the court system.

It is this criticism of the project that prompted me to accept your invitation to speak — and explain why we believe this is a legal, ethical, and noble endeavor that will transform our society.

Legal because we believe copyright law allows us the fair use of millions of books that are being digitized. Ethical because the preservation and protection of knowledge is critically important to the betterment of humankind. And noble because this enterprise is right for the time, right for the future, right for the world of publishing, right for all of us.

Relatedly, a lot of discussion has been happening about “library 2.0”. ACRLog has a good post with lots of links here. Stephen Abram has a post here that covers the spectrum of web 2.0, library 2.0, and the 2.0 world. I guess it’s the 2.0 revolution, hope you brought your mittens.

Categories
book libraries poetic

When the rains came

When the rains came
the books were unprepared,
languishing in their regulated air,
they knew no more of wet
than a babe of fire
or an animal of greed.

The drops started slow,
cold dark moisture creeping
along the undersides of pipes,
melting through crevices,
plummeting in the manner of spring leaves,
patient for their fate.

When they reached the wall they balked,

hesitated.

The drops behind piled down upon them,
forced them to push through,
not hungry,
but desperate to obey gravity,
however slowly they would go.

Now, finding paper,
old trees,
the water soaked,
spread,
saturated those folds of wood and ink
and tried to remember
the call that nature gave
to water and to wood.

The water soaked,
and remembering by instinct,
told the books, “drink. grow.”

At first it was an onslaught
to paper that had never known
worse than cries of censorship,
which does not warp the page
nor smear the ink. Gradually,
listening,
they drank.
Page by page,
thoughts hazy as the ink ran,
as the pages twisted,
they tried to remember being trees.

Eventually the water stopped,
human error made right by human hand.
Some books were saved.
Some had gone mad, the lust to grow
turned their spines to sap
and their pagination
to rings of age beyond their memory.

Later, tossed out amidst debris,
the books, mad with life,
found sediment,
water,
sky.

And from each page,
a tiny sprig took hold,
following down into the earth,
the driving voice of gravity and life.

Categories
book personal

Huzzah for the blue and bronze!

That’s right, ’cause I’m clever like a fox.

Said Ravenclaw, "We’ll teach those whose intelligence is surest."

Ravenclaw students tend to be clever, witty, intelligent, and knowledgeable.
Their diabolical cunning should be well-respected, if not worshipped.
Notable residents include Cho Chang and Padma Patil (objects of Harry and Ron’s affections), and Luna Lovegood (daughter of The Quibbler magazine’s editor).

Take the most scientific Harry Potter Quiz ever created!

Categories
book cinema poetic

De nos amis des pays étranges

Beh oui. Aujourd’hui, je bloggerai en Francais. Parce que je peux, même si je ne peux pas très bien. Vous, les Francais et les Canadiennes qui viennent ici, soyez libre de me corriger. Je n’ai pas écrit en Francais depuis longuetemps. Alors …

J’ai lu une article intéressante à propos de Benoit Charest, le musicien qui a fait le chanson pour Les Triplettes de Belleville. Dans cet article, je le trouvais le plus intéressant que pour le projet prochaîne, Charest peut rencontrer encore avec Sylvain Chomet (le réalisateur de Belleville) pour un ou deux films: The Tale of Despereaux ou/et L’Illusionniste, d’après des scénerios de Jacques Tati. Sur IMDB, Despereaux et un autre film, Barbacoa, étaient annoncé pour Chomet, mais on ne sait pas si Charest va faire la musique ou non. Moi, j’adorait la musique de Belleville, et j’èspere que Charest ferai la musique pour Despereaux, au moins, parce que j’aimais très bien le livre de DiCamillo.

C’est tout pour aujourd’hui, en Francais. Les accents me fatiguent beaucoup. Les p’tits cons. Je vous laisse à rire; je traduis le Francais en Anglais mieux que j’écris, je le jure.

Categories
book cinema personal

King Weneseseslaaaas

Who was that king guy, anyway?

Watched Love Actually last night. Such a good, nice, warm film, even if it has its sappy and overly romantic bits. I like it. Played some cribbage and went to sleep after reading some Charles de Lint. It’s been many years, but I still remember believing in Santa; lying in bed pretending to sleep, ears straining to hear reindeer bells, or Santa shuffling about under the tree. Without fail, I always feel asleep within an hour (I was an active kid, and so a sleepy one come nighttime). Last night, I fell asleep with a simple feeling of contentment that felt unrufflable. It’s Christmas today, and it’s a good day. That’s enough.

I wouldn’t normally brag about Christmas loot, except that in this case it’s relative to the blog. My family pooled together and got me a digital camera, which means pictures on the blog! Woo! Woo woo! Yeay! A’ight! Yippee! I desist. You get the idea that I’m excited, non? I plan on getting myself a 1gig flash card, or at least 512MB, so stay tuned for some serious picture mayhem. Rock. On.

Categories
book dance love personal poetic

Local non-celebrity

I’ve had adventures too, rather beautiful adventures. –I came down the railroad cut at twilight. They had been gaining on me all day. My mouth tasted of sweat and black fear. It doesn’t do to let it go too long–You get mixed-up. You begin to think you know what is hunting you down. You begin to think that maybe the only thing which has the power to comfort you is to get caught, to lie helpless and meek before them. You begin to think that the only real escape is to give in, to offer them your life and your soul–because somewhere, in fire and glory, it was arranged that they should have them.
– Kenneth Patchen, from Sleepers Awake

Months ago, in the days of weekly poetry readings at Last Word Books with a vibrant crowd of local talent (I’ve talked it up plenty in past posts), I read a poem called Café Muse which particularly impressed a local poet named Amy. It’s an ode to the beauty and grace of the café barista, silly romantic and evidently (from the general reaction as I read it) pretty funny. Amy asked me for a copy of the poem, which I got to her some weeks later. I don’t see Amy often, but ran into her two days ago at the Swing Club meeting out at Evergreen. It was just her and Nick and Emily and Sam and I at the meeting, since most students are done out there or extremely busy with last-minute end of the quarter work. Sam, a fabulous musician, played music on the old piano in the room we use as a dance space. Mostly he played his songs (remeniscent of a male Fiona Apple, sort of), but he also played us a couple swing tunes, to which we gratefully danced.

I chatted with Amy a bit. She’d just arrived back from a trip to San Francisco. She took some great photos, which she showed me. We didn’t talk much, since the room greatly proliferated the echoes from the piano and we didn’t want to try and yell over it; but she told me she’d read Café Muse to a few people, in a few places, and everyone had liked it. She mentioned further that she had been invited to the Batdorf and Bronson (a local café) Christmas Party, and had been asked to read it there. I think this is all greatly amusing, as I’ve few aspirations to the greatness of my literary prowess, and no particular pride in the quality of this particular work, particularly. But hey, if people are enjoying it, I think that’s great. I can only imagine that she’s giving me credit (she was very considerate in asking me if it was okay that she was reading this poem to folks); perhaps one day I’ll meet someone for the first time, introduce myself, and they’ll say, “Ahniwa … Ahniwa. Hey, you’re the guy that wrote that Café Muse poem!” Heehee, as if. If anything, it makes me think I need to stop slacking on the creative writing. Which I do, I do.

My innocent companions, They imagine an earth, a sky; imagine that they are alive; and they die. – Kenneth Patchen

Some time ago, Jason swung through town toting a book of Patchen’s poetry. I skimmed through it, and since then the bastard’s been stuck in my subconscious. If you’re interested, you can read some of his work online: Let Us Have Madness & The Hangman’s Great Hands, The Orange Bears, and Excerpts from Sleepers Awake; and a further list here.

Florida is out for the holiday. Instead of sun and warmth I’ll marry myself to the rain and the constant thrum-thrum of noises muted in the dripping embrace of the evergreens’ branches. I’ll drive up the rainforest-lined peninsula, watch divers prepare their equipment along the side of the road, digging into the backs of their small pick-ups, and people spread out along the mud flats leading to the water, digging for clams and secret treasures forgotten but subconsciously in their childhood imaginings. I’ll sip a latté or mexican hot chocolate in the Silverwater while I watch raindrops splatter against the fountain across the street, and talk to people I knew when I was seventeen, when I worked for a year before college, trying to find something out about myself and the world. I’ll savor blackberry pie a la mode and remember days of that year I’d forgotten, and I’ll get sentimental but remain content. I’ll dig through the bookstore looking for treasures, wasting happy hours and walking away with either two full bags of books or none at all. I’ll try to skip rocks along the water, walking the beaches slick with mossy rocks and large logs that drifted in one day and have sat for years now, happy playthings of children and perches for lovers to sit and watch the waves. Perhaps I’ll see whales playing in the spray, and turning over rocks I’ll watch small crabs scuttle away to seclusion, annoyed with my human need to disturb things, and I’ll feel momentarily guilty.

Christmas morning will be quiet, but cheerful. Coffee and breakfast and a fire in the pellet stove; warm air blown out loudly by a fan that can be hard to talk over when you’re naturally soft-spoken. A small tree, not overdecorated, hugging the corner of the room, guarding presents neither numerous nor large, but picked out in a genuine spirit of caring.

I’m getting well ahead of myself.

Had coffee with Alexis last night after dropping Joseph off in the glen. She’d had a rough week, and then a rougher night, and needed some decent company. We smiled across the table at each other, drank our coffee and chatted. When we left, I took her back to her place and we watched about three minutes of cartoons before the TV died. I held her for awhile, trying to imbue her with all the positive energy I could muster so she could sleep without suffering through nightmares. I did my best to be supportive to her, and to be close, without offering more than I could give. As I left her house, tired and stumbling into the cold and wet, some of her warmth lingered, pressed against me like a blanket. I have missed her company, but I don’t want to hold open a wound that will close more easily in my absence. December will be busy, but perhaps afterwards it will be easier for us to hang out more often.

Categories
book montreal personal

A great disturbance in the force…

… as though some fifty million voices shouted out
in terror, and suddenly, were silenced.

Disappointment’s branded into my skin,
seeps into my bones and would make me sick,
if I weren’t already. It may have been naive
(I’m known to be so), but I had a lot of hope
that this country knew better, that fear didn’t
rule us and that as a whole we were becoming a
more open and accepting society.
Sure, I set myself up for disappointment;
nothing was pointing to these things being true,
after all.

Even so, now I feel as though the country is
a stranger to me. I’m about as liberal as we come,
so how do I fit in now?

On a less grave note, events have seemingly
conspired against my participation in NaNoWriMo.
It was going to be tight on time in the first place,
but then I got sick, had job applications I needed
to fill out and books I needed to send off,
and my dad came to visit and is staying at my house.

So, unless I somehow decide to write a novel in the last
two weeks of November, I think I too might have
to concede, painful though it is. However, I’m going
to leave the “City of Familiar Light” blog up, and
hopefully will be able to chip away at it over time.
If not, well, I’ll write a novel when I’m good and ready.

Well, I’m off to explore the web, and see if I can find
any viable ways to move to Montreal.

Categories
book love personal poetic

A jellyfish, maybe; but definately electric

Sometimes I forget that we love to complicate,
that it’s easy to complicate,
and that it’s generally gratuitous to complicate.

I enjoy that people are complex, multi-faceted
creatures, full of intricacy and detail;
but that needn’t mean we can’t be simple too.

And this is the trap that I fall into,
too often: a mind-trap of worry, doubt,
second-guessing and over-thinking.
But I’ve overcome it again, loosed my grasp
on the shiny bauble of drama that had my hand
caught tight in its snare, and relaxed.

Were I once a buoy, I’ve now grown a sail,
and I’ve set my course with no fear for waters unknown.
Here there be monsters.

To be plain: I feel I’ve lightened up a lot,
particularly as concerns romance and relationships.
Perhaps we can never truly know another person,
but I find people fascinating anyway, as is,
and if I find one person particularly interesting,
or beautiful, or fun and exciting, then by all
means I’ll do my best to know that person better,
and no longer fear the consequences.

It’s that fear, itself, that dooms us.
I was so sure of that in Ohio, but I forgot
somewhere between, so that the higher I’d climb
the more I’d look down and the farther I’d have
to fall. But I’ve stepped off the ladder now;
nowhere left to fall but up.

I feel good about this.

I started reading Plato’s Republic yesterday,
but quickly got tired of his rhetoric.
I hate sophists! These are the types of conversations
I zone out to when my friends have them:
semantics and verbal trickery; and it’s not much
more interesting in print. I’ll return to it,
but I’ve given up for the time being to read
Swan Lake by Mark Helprin, since I’ve finally
finished Winter’s Tale (and it only took me a few months!).
Come November, I may have to eschew reading to write,
but ’til then I’ll try to find some quick inspiration in
Helprin’s angelic prose. Speaking of, if you never have,
read Winter’s Tale. It may be the best-written book
I’ve ever read, even if I wasn’t entirely happy with its finish.

On one last note, my very good friend, Jason, has
emerged from his cocoon of web-silence and started
his very own blog. He’s a fantastic writer, thinker
and poet, and one of the most educated people I know,
so stop over at In Search of Honesty
and wish him a pleasant welcome to the blogosphere.

Categories
book love music personal poetic

City of Familiar Light

This one’s for Alexis; you know, because
I think she’s neat. *warning: sap content*

We sit untouching
but for the hairs on our arms
brushing together,
and this is bliss.
Kissing follicles, sensual molecules,
our skin flaunts what lips miss.

You shift,
lift your palm to your smile,
yawn a while,
limbs stretched, reaching
for stars in the nile-black sky.
You lean back, sigh,
high as the moon and
I’m just so high on your high
I could cry.
And I’d die right now,
content, because every moment
underwent a thousand smiles spent,
and each smile sent my heart
a thousand skipped beats.

I may lengthen it one day.
It ends rather abruptly, I think.

So, I’ve decided to take part,
for what it’s worth, in both NaNoWriMo
and NaNoBlogMo; so I’ll be doing my best,
in the month of November, to blog a novel.
The title is “City of Familiar Light”, and it’s
a quasi-existential (of course) sci-fi story.
I’m trying to set up the blog for it,
but Blogger’s giving me problems; hopefully
I can get those resolved soon.
[edit: is resolved, novel blog is here ] So …
who all else is going to take part in this madness?

Yesterday: coffee and trying to read
(still finishing “Winter’s Tale”, sadly)
overtaken by helping Alexis study for her
Western Civ exam today, which meant a slow and
mostly incomprehensible journey (for me) through
19 pages of her notes. Not enough coffee and some
hours later, we finished said “studying”, and took
a brain-break to watch “Crybaby“.
If you’ve not seen it, it’s a must, particularly
if you enjoy Johnny Depp (and that includes everyone!).

Post-movie we forced friends to make us tacos
(mmmmmmmmm, tacos), and hung out at their place for
an hour or so. They tried to rope us into staying for
“Settlers of Cattan”, but we had places to be,
namely at a concert including Romanteek, a duo of
drum and keyboard, with female vocals. They were
awesome, and made us all dance! I get nervous dancing
in public (swing-dancing doesn’t count), but definately
had a good time, anyway. Alexis looked very comfortable,
but later admitted she’s only danced in public three times,
and was incredibly nervous also. Go figure.

Natural progression: coffee –> homework –> movie –>
tacos! –> dancing –> ice cream! –> sleep. Food items
get exclamation because I’m hungry right now.

So, life’s good and the nerves have calmed.
There’s yet a butterfly or two, but they’re just
fluttering about now, rather than chewing holes
in my stomach, so I suppose that’s acceptable.

Tonight’s poker night!

Categories
book personal poetic

Sun-dappled leaves of cedar

It’s a happy, sun-shiny sort of day today,
odd for mid-October. We should be into monsoon
season by now, or at least feel the threat of it
more strongly. Instead, we had a few days of rain,
a few days of sun, then rain again, and now sun.
It’s definately getting colder though,
and it’s becoming damned hard to get out of bed
in the frigid mornings.

November is NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month.
Blogger has adapted this to NaNoBloMo, which looks cooler
but is essentially just writing your novel using a blog.
Like Karla, I’m unsure of whether or not I can
muster the commitment to plunge so far into words.
I’ve got my idea, and even a fairly lucid story-line,
characters and plot twists, all worked out in my head.
Problem is, I’m already too busy to do half the things
that I’d like to be doing. I have enough of a problem reading
a novel in a month, with all my other activities, and I’d
hate to, in the midst of this, try and write a novel within
a month only to fail, maybe to never try again.
Oh, the horror! (Ha, I’m so dramatic.)
Seriously, though. I’d like to do this, but don’t think
I can balance my time well enough to pull it off.
But then the question that begs to be asked:
If not now, when?
November is just around the bend, so I must
focus on this with the most heavy of ponderance.

50,000 words sure does seem like a lot.

Categories
book love personal poetic

17 Black and 29 Red

I feel as though I’ve swallowed
a nest of caterpillars, which have all
metastasized into hungry butterflies,
chewing at my stomach lining. Pleasant as
this image is, it’s entirely self-inflicted.
I had the pleasure this weekend of hanging out
with a wonderful girl who I’m very much interested in.
Turns out, she likes me too!

So, the butterflies are little envoys of giddiness,
and betray my nervousness. Normally confident,
I’ve begun to examine all my foibles and weaknesses,
waiting for the dream to end or the other shoe to drop.
I’m entirely aware of this, and that I need to relax,
and to enjoy. I’m not entirely loathsome, after all.
I think that a lot of this anxiety is owed in part to the
fact that I (fairly) recently got out of a near-four-year
relationship, and I’ve had little choice since but to
examine how I failed in that relationship. This is good
in a sense, as I’d like to think that I can learn from
my mistakes, but easily leads to me being a bit hard
on myself. I’m in the second half of being 24, and
last time I started a relationship I was 20. I’ve changed
a lot since then, and I’m still learning how this
new me works. Hopefully I can get the bastard to chill.

We’re to start poker nights on Thursdays,
boisterous evening of jazz, poker, and vin rouge.
I stayed up ’til two the other night, watching
celebrity poker, and though I realize it may mean I’m
a dork (who woulda guessed), it really made me want
to play some Texas Hold ‘Em. Anyway, poker night has
been an idea in the works for some time, but now we’re
gonna make it happen, so good for us. I had too many
evenings free as it was, so ha! (yeah right)

We’re also thinking of starting some sort of weekly seminar,
which would be great if it means getting me off my ass
and reading some more. I don’t know where the time goes,
honestly, but not into books! Theo keeps calling me
intellectual, and even uber-intellectual, but I haven’t
been feeling it lately, so hopefully some good reading
will help. I are pretty smart, after all.

Categories
book music personal work

Spin records like Capone

I’m convinced that were he alive today,
Al Capone would be a fabulous DJ.

Theo should have gotten his paycheck by Tuesday,
as I did; but as yet it hasn’t arrived.
And we need to pay rent today;
he’s floating some checks with fingers crossed,
while payroll says their hands are tied.

Reading the religion and politics forum on
The Crossroads, I often came across the idea
that the reason people don’t have money is because
they aren’t working for it. To them I say,
“Go read Nickel and Dimed.” These are stories
of people that work their asses off, 40+ hours a week,
and still can’t afford to pay a month’s worth of rent.

People are poor because minimum wage is low,
because server wages drop as low or lower than $1.50 an hour,
because breaking a limb can cripple you financially,
because cars and housing are unaffordable and
mass transit is unavailable, slow or unreliable.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that if people are
unhappy with their lot, they can do something to
change it. However, I think the system, also, needs
to change; and I strongly disagree that poverty is
necessarily a sympton of laziness. My radical, liberal
thought says: “Stop bombing, start fixing things at home.”
But hey, that’s just me. My true colors show.

So, with one gmail invite left;
I leave it here for the first interested
party to acquire. Enjoy.

Categories
book personal poetic

Vita baby!

– Café Muse –

Your hair-fling bewitchment
beguiles me;
muse of hazelnut-latté eyes and
a whipped-cream smile.
Your kisses would satisfy
the most ambitious sweet-tooth.
That’s my heart you are steaming to foam,
my mind you excite with your
double-caffeinated flair.
Your siren’s song has me shipwrecked
on a dry-roast wasteland.
I raise my mocha sails and set out
into the foaming cappucino seas;
I’ll be back again
in the java-toothed sunrise.

My small homage to beautiful café girls.
The weekend approacheth, fist raised high,
singing its battle march in a clear tenor.
“For those about to rock!”
Our house-warming party is tomorrow;
you are all invited.

Mark Helprin really does write like an angel.
An excerpt:

They glided over dimly lit roads, springing upon shocked families of deer that had an air of offended innocence, and which they sent white-tailed into the forest, carrying their solid six-foot horns like little battleaxes with which they smashed down waxy bushes bloody with red berries.

Something neat and scary about a novel
that reads like poetry.
I’m mostly envious.

Categories
book personal

Sparse hair and an air of disparity

Okay, so I lied.
It’s not yet Friday
(as my keen-minded readers have surely noticed),
yet here I am, blogging! The humanity!

It’s Wednesday, yes, and I am in Boulder, yes, and it is sunny though it will rain today, yes, and this library is quite big, yes indeed. And as interested as I was in seeing what the library would be like, I admit that it was only an ulterior motive, a far second to my terrible internet addiction. Yes yes yes.

Tomorrow my odyssey begins anew,
blessed by Pallas Athena and all that,
you know. I’ve been making good time,
so perhaps even Hermes is looking after me a bit.
In the meantime, Boulder is your quintessential,
very tres hip college sort of town,
with myriad street performers like so many
toy robots, wound up and let loose in
the busy plazas.

I had coffee and a blackberry-chocolate scone,
two cigarettes – so far today.
I crave sustenance.
My driving arm is crab-apple red,
which is better than sea-cucumber purple;
I have two days yet to work on that.

The Boulder bookstore is large and
reminds me of the bookstore in Cambridge.
However, their selection of graphic novels
is far inferior. Pity. And I’ve a horrible
compulsion to buy books (lots of them), though
that would just be one more thing I would have
to tote along with me for 1300 miles –
and I’ve got a budget you know, and all that.
Sooooo, no books for me. *big sigh*

That sums up my traveler’s notes thus far.
Nebraska is still my least favorite state,
ever. My car WILL survive the next two days
(I hope), and Olympia will be there waiting for me.

Watch out for cyclops and sirens;
I’ve seen my share of the latter.
Now, back to the underworld I go,
and all will be grand if
I can keep from looking back.

Categories
book cinema music

Sisyphus seeks employment…

… skills: pushing boulders up mountains; having boulders fall down mountains; pushing boulders up mountains, again – cursed by gods to do this for eternity. References: Albert Camus – Camus says, “We must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

On the big speakers: Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Reading: The Tale of Despereaux; Kate DiCamillo

I meant to say this awhile ago,
but I forgot, so I’ll say it now.
Anyone who has not yet watched,
“FAHRENHEIT 9/11″
GO WATCH IT NOW!
Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Seriously. Whether or not you agree
with Michael Moore,
this film deserves to be seen.

Anyone who stops by here more often that occasionally may have noticed that I’ve included links and such on the sidebar. I’m also thinking about a complete template overhaul in the near future. Too much black at the moment. Anyway, if anyone knows of any particularly fantastic links/webcomics/blogs I should know about, please do tell.

Categories
book cinema music personal

No such word as “cipitate”

Today, the sky precipitates cipitation.
It’s as if a mist hasn’t exactly fallen,
but risen from the ground up –
invisible and damp and thick.
My lungs feel like sponges,
tarred and viscid;
my heart beats double-time to keep up.

We have, tentatively, a house in Olympia.
A nice 4-bedroom westside mansion,
except much, much smaller than a mansion,
and it needs some yard-work.
Still, can’t beat the rent.

On the big speakers: Joss Stone
Reading: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World;
Haruki Murakami

Last night I cleaned some,
made some phone calls,
and watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Things to do in Olympia when I’m dead:
Swing-Dance: no idea how active the swing scene is now.
French: tutor, speak, translate, read – rediscover.
Madden: kick some butt.
Write: I’ve got some good ideas brewing.
Laser-tag: ’cause Evergreen is the best damned battleground.
Poetry: there should still be an open mike or two around.
Guitar: actual, real lessons, so I don’t play like an ass.
Aikido: if I can swing it, financially.

The hypotenuse of an hypothesis is
the shortest distance between two ideas.
Or the longest.
I just felt like saying that.

Categories
book cinema personal

Trippin’ the energy electric

Winds blowing strong, and I hear thunder in the distance. We get a lot of false warnings here, thunderclaps in the background and blows past us, miles away. I hope it blows directly over my head. I could use a good thunderstorm.

I finished watching the first season of “24″ last night. Absolutely amazing series; but, as all things that run for so long and then end, the ending itself was a let-down. It reminds me of the anime series “Berserk”, where none of the main characters die at any point during the show, so you expect them to live through it all, and then BAM! – everyone, EVERYONE! dies in the last two episodes. “Cowboy Bebop” kills off Spike in the last episode; and “Neon Genesis: Evangelion” – hoo boy, I don’t even want to talk about that ending (though I guess there is a new ending I haven’t seen yet). Having invested so much time in these series, a crappy ending really is a huge let-down. Also, in the case of “24″, too many of the characters started to annoy me. I began to guess who the traitors were, what the plot-twists would be, etc; and I was always right. Very annoying. There is a lot of character action, but not as much character growth as I like to see when I’ve invested so much time into them. I will make allowances that most shows span days, weeks, and months; while “24″ only spans one day – even so. RAR.

I got an email from my most excellent friend, Daniel. He is back in the States, which is excellent; and I get to see him in August, at the latest, which is most excellent indeed. It’s been too long, and too much seperation from my friends – I’d like to just start some commune somewheres where we can all just live on the land and hang. Realistically, though, I really do think it’s good that we’ve all had our own adventures, far away though they might have taken us. We have each grown, learned; and remained friends, which is the most important. Even so, I ache to see them all again.

I’ve been reading the book, “Eats, Shoots & Leaves”. So I’m now mildly obsessed with punctuation, though I still have no clue whether or not I am semicoloning correctly. The one way I really grasp it thus far is that it is useful to prevent confusion in lists, by setting groups off from each other. For instance, a phrase: “The school had to choose between the colors: red, white and gold; orange, blue and grey; or magenta and cyan.” Very useful in this sense. I know there are other ways to use it, and I’m experimenting haphazardly; if you are a true and real punctuation stickler, please offer your advice. As Lynne Truss mentions, the biggest danger of the semicolon is its addictiveness. Like a drug; I need to get my fix, but I don’t want to abuse it.

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book personal poetic

We must submit to baptism…

I feel smote down by the duldrums of $8.50 an hour and having to work on a Sunday. My revenge is to sit here and blog about it, which is some small recompense.

Emily and I have a new boarder in our home, whose heart thrums like an engine when she’s happy, and who only speaks at night. She’s very shy, but she hasn’t gotten used to us yet.

As for the perfection of language, I think that language is perfect. It is those who try and use it that are flawed. Our expression, as well as our understanding of language are both intrinsically flawed, because we don’t think and we don’t see in words. In any case, I like language for its ambiguity. I like that two people can read a book and get different things out of it, because so much depends on our perception of language, as well as how it is used.

Entire novels are written simply to express one idea. That’s 500 pages devoted to trying to express one thing, in the end, and even then they aren’t always understood. As for my writing, even I don’t understand it sometimes.

Today my brain is tired, and my heart feels like lead.
My fingers are typing independently, willfully … I can’t keep track of them. My eyes simply gaze, straight ahead, listless. I blame it all on the duldrums of $8.50 an hour and having to work on a Sunday. I blame it on the extraordinary distance between two points, and the law of half-lives. I’m walking towards my future, closing half the distance each step, knowing that at this rate, I’ll never reach it.

The white man is coming! The cannon!
We must put on clothes, submit to baptism, work…

With my apologies to Rimbaud for what is probably a mild mis-quote.

Categories
art book personal poetic webcomics

Seize the day and throttle it!

Carpe diem. That’s the short, latin version. I like the american version by Bill Watterson, too.

Calvin: ‘My elbows are grass-stained, I’ve got sticks in my hair, I’m
covered with bug bites and cuts and scratches…
I’ve got sand in my socks and leaves in my shirt. My hands are
sticky with sap, and my shoes are soaked! I’m hot, dirty, sweaty,
itchy and tired.’

Hobbes: ‘I say consider this day seized!’

Calvin: ‘Tomorrow we’ll seize the day and throttle it!’

Well, my day was not precisely throttled. I’m sorry to say I spend it feeling unwell, physically, and very reflective, mentally (not so sorry about that part). Reading back on old writing, some dating back to 1995, always reminds me of how foolish a creature the human is … or if nothing of so broad a scope, how foolish I am, particularly. On the bad days, this gets me down. On the good days, I revel in it. After all, the implication of looking back on your life and not feeling foolish is that you have not grown, not changed, and can’t blush at your own naivety because you have not yet realized and overcome it. This victory, of course, only heralds in new battles, more naivety … of a heightened kind, maybe so and maybe not, but new. Every day IS a new day, and we awaken as new people not only every morning, but every hour and every minute. What I am now is not what I was even 30 seconds ago, where I was only beginning to formulate a thought that the present me has already had and the future me will one day have long since forgotten.

Today, I work in a library, and it is, in many ways, a standard 9-5 type of job. Tomorrow I may be in my car driving to New York to make my living as a street poet. That there is only a tiny fraction of a percent of a whisper of a chance that that might in fact come to pass does not really lessen the idea as a possibility.

And the point is, we have choices. Not just little choices like: “What tie shall I wear today?”, or “What shall I have for dinner this evening?”. And not only big choices like, “What will I do for a living?” or “Should I ask her to marry me?” In every second of every day there are a million (literally) and more choices waiting to be made, turned down, ignored, hesitated upon, and overlooked. Every positive choice I make is a million negative choices at the same time. That I choose to type this also means I’m choosing not to get a drink of water, not to write something else, not to watch TV or read a book, get more firewood, build a swimming pool, go for a walk, move to New York, call a friend, learn to speak Polish, buy a gun, kill someone, overthrow the political system, streak the town or go out dancing. If you think about it, the amount of “no” you say everytime you say “yes” is staggering.

The point of all this is that maybe some of the “no” should become “yes”. I think a lot of people make decisions because they don’t realize that there are other, valid choices out there. I feel secure in my choices because I am willing to recognize the other possibilities. I am happy doing what I do because I choose to do it, out of a million other things I could be doing. Most of the time, saying “no” to a choice is subconscious, an automatic response that accompanies saying “yes” to another choice you may have grown so accustomed to making that you have, in your own mind, raised it from beyond being a choice to now just being “how things are”.

“How things are” is a lie. It’s a comfort we want to use because we are afraid, as Mandela says, not of our weakness but of our great strength. It’s not scary to have no choices. What’s frightening is having countless choices. Each of us is nothing less than a god, with complete dominion over the most essential: ourselves.

You are responsible for every minute detail of your life. You can change, and you can stay the same, and either involves making one or numerous choices. There is ABSOLUTELY no such thing as being powerless, especially not concerning who you are.

In twenty years, I’ll look back on writing this, and I’ll surely feel foolish for sounding like a damned fortune cookie. But I chose to write this, instead of a million other things I could have done, and I’ll not regret that.

“Action is choice; choice is free commitment to this or that way of behaving, living, and so on; the possibilities are never fewer than two: to do or not to do; be or not be.” -Isaiah Berlin, From Hope and Fear Set Free

In the end, all it is: carpe diem.