The first even though midway through

I decided I was not too ambitious but I was merely impractical. I came up with this project too late (sort of). I have sixteen days left of April, National Poetry Month, so I have to read 1.875 poems a day in order to have 30 poems read, one for each day of the month, but the end. I read two yesterday:

"Emaciate Buddha" by Brett Eugene Ralph from Black Sabbatical

and

"Wind Camp" by Joanna Rawson from Unrest

I was pleased with myself for choosing two contemporary poets to begin with. I really thought I was just going to go the easy route and only read "the classics." I found these on Ron Hogan's literature blog Beatrice. I highly recommend you read his blog. He is a writer but what's more is he is a very active impresario of literary arts in New York. In all narcissistic honesty, I would like to be the Ron Hogan of Omaha. I just don't read enough. I am not involved in the literary circles I wish to be.

Frequently I do searches for writing and reading groups around Omaha and I am also dismayed and tickled by the ones that I find. There are abundant middle-aged to elderly women who write and read droll romance and romantic sci-fi. Interesting, but certainly not what I am looking for.

I was pleased to see that Jeffery Koterba, Omaha World Herald cartoonist and recent author of a pretty good memoir (and a jazz musician to boot), was mentioned in a Washington Post article about tourette's.

Oh, and the poems were pretty good. I liked wind camp better. It reminded me of a poem an old classmate of mine wrote in college in which he pondered a tree that seemed to be alive and personified by the enormous amount of black birds rattling around in its branches. He was delighted by the birds but Rawson took a little more offense to the natural activity of these little guys. Her's seems to fit with the Hitchcockian paranoia birds engender or the Poe-esque madness that comes by giving a little too much control of one's peace to incessant bird banter.

And the Ralph poem reminds me of a poet I used to be in monthly reading group with. He was bald too. This was when I lived in Cincinnati and the guy read this one poem nearly every month about him sitting next to the Ohio river and perceiving himself to be a circle on the ground and attaining a zen sort of "okayness" with his state. I was never sure if it was the state of Ohio, the state trying to write poems for a living, or a more cerebral sort of thing. Anyway, Ralph's poem conjured that up for me.

I like the poem but I am trying to figure out why we scarcely see the guy this poem is talking about. Is it that we won't see him? Is he actually invisible? Because if he is displayed like the second stanza makes it sound like he is it seems as though he would be a bit of a spectacle. But, I have a feeling he embodies that seemingly unattainable spiritual emptiness/wholeness that most say they desire but won't commit to. Or perhaps the guy is just a self-made martyr. Either way it is an intriguing picture.

brandon

in the same house

I had grand plans/illusions to drive to a semi-remote place with trees and perhaps a bit of grass poking through the snow. I would arrive around five o'clock slip into the back of my car where I have the seat down and turn on NPR because at five o'clock they played an episode of American Routes featuring John Prine. John Prine always reminds me of my dad. Not necessarily the man's particulars but my father introduced me to his music and I was stymied by my lack of knowledge of someone who was so terrific and had been directly under my nose, living in the same house even (his records anyway). Perhaps that is actually the similarity I find between my dad and John. I remember telling one of my roommates in college how fascinated I was with my dad. I was going to write him a letter while I listened to the radio show. I will write him later this week.

brandonpiercegeary

no idea

I was just reading an acquaintance's blog and about his "integrated" media company he built from the ground up. While I highly admire the raw ambition and headstrongness it takes a person to see such a thing through I could not help but recognize a widening emptiness as I read about the possible capitalizations to be made on said entwined media -- producer engages consumer -- experience. He spoke of having a "set apart" sensation from early childhood and that this media exploration of his was to be the conduit through which his intrinsic purpose could be satiated. From my perspective it is no wonder he also remarked on this not actually being his "true calling." It seems to me that if a person has an authentic, birth-rite purpose and if this person believes this to be a God-ordained purpose then pursuing a dream that (from his own description) appears to only serve to put money in people's pockets who have a great deal of it and push content on undiscerning consumers solely for the sake of having more content. Integrate because you can. It's the future and the future is all that matters. It's all we have. The future is fucking now.

New media has always fascinated me mainly because it seems to be a phenomena that isn't. It is only special because someone says it is. Any device that spreads information in a slightly tweaked format is the harbinger of a cultural seachange. It is an irony that I cannot stop laughing at. It is all so self-glorifying. Everything is inward and it is no surprise that most new technologies usually serve to isolate and divide rather than foster community. I suddenly have a notion to entirely throw off all amplification of myself beyond that which can come about through my true voice and body. I could stop this blog immediately. I could never use the telephone again because it only allows a sliver of who I am to reach the receiver. Even letter writing is dangerous. Too much amplification. Too wide spread. Any music I play could only broadcast as loud as the unsupplemented instrument can carry itself. That blows considering my primary instrument is the electric bass which is next to impossible to hear without juice. I shall hone my accordian and saxophone chops then. All is not lost. There are too many stringed instruments anyhow. I need people to come closer. Maybe I will just play my bass on the street corner so people have to crane their necks and press their ears right up to the strings to hear anything and then certainly we will know each other better through this interaction. Much better than a mediated conversation could afford. I want to read books aloud to children and speak without microphones.

I want us all to be heard as we are and not as we seem to be through infinitely integrated systems of "communication." John Lennon and Yoko Ono had this "project" they called real communication. It was quite hokey but the sentiment was earnest and provocative. The project was more of a lifestyle of artistic expressions that drew out honesty from yourself, even if it didn't make sense what you were expressing, with the purpose of engendering community and (of course) peace. They did bizarre things like wear only black trashbags or staying in bed for 24 hours (with plenty of media coverage to be sure). Things that I am not sure were not merely ways to express their desire to attract attention but I suppose there were no moral stipulations on their "real communication" so self worship was hardly taboo if it was merely honest self worship.

I don't know. I have no ideas.

pontifical man

I surprised Melissa with a trip to the movies the other day. It wasn't the grand romantic gesture I worked it up in my mind to be but it sure did make her happy and therefore was a success. We saw Enlighten Up about a documentary director making a documentary about a young man she hand picked to be the center of an experiment to find meaning in yoga. It was mentioned in the film how it seems she should have just performed the 6-month experiment herself since it was her own diminishing faith in yoga that prompted her to devise the scheme. But she held that she wanted to see if yoga could have "transformative" effects on the uninitiated. Nick, the subject, said he had never considered yoga or any spiritual endeavor before agreeing to submit to Kate's , the director, plan.

The film seemed to come at yoga from nearly every angle people approach it from except for perhaps someone who would consider yoga offensive, if there is anybody. They did talk a little about how in India, at some point but perhaps not in modern day, people talked of Yogis as demonic wanderers who steal away children and wreak general havoc as opposed to individuals who are merely yoga enthusiasts. Other than that they explored the physical and metaphysical practices associated with yoga. Nick began as a willing skeptic and Kate as the waning believer. By the end they weren't much closer to discovering "true yoga" or a universal transformative power it might hold. The actually ended up nearly right where they began with only a greater sense of the history of yoga and a vocabulary useful in discussing its various forms. Sure it was only six months but I expected a little bit of transformation or perhaps maturing. But perhpaps this is all we can hope for. More knowledge, no wisdom. The two seekers did find they had a deeper desire for the purer things in life: family, health, quiet meditation.

I wonder if their journey's flaw was the fact that they said they were pursuing a means to be happy and fulfilled. They didn't request wisdom or even greater insight into living at peace with others. They kept wanting to find a wholeness in-and-of themselves. I suppose one could spend a lifetime pursuing wholeness in all of its manifestations and never be consumed by it because it seems to me that looking at one's own self constantly gives you the same view consistently. Perhaps if spending ourselves on everyone else and in effect being that magnanimous person of grace before we feel like we have attained what we think is required to live in such a way we will gain a truer perspective of ourselves and see G-d. I think a greater virtue than pursuing inner peace is to make peace.

oceanic

enrich, enrich, ENRICH. Enrich and be enriched. I was going to wait to write this morning until I felt some grand new revelation but after reading my wife's blog I decided that was inspiration enough. She speaks of being peaceful, in love and content. I have dulled my ability to feel these things in the past week. I have let loneliness be my security and I forgot there is no comfort in it. I get more and more eager to hear her voice on the phone and I stare at pictures of her for long stretches of time.

While I was in California with Melissa I was so peaceful, lovely and content. I got to know the full weight of her recovery and I found so much strength in it. I felt stable next to her. I left home and I despaired because even though she will be home soon I can't see it. God has granted me the tremendous grace of being Melissa's husband during this time of her healing and learning. I am just not sure what I am supposed to do with it. I feel the need to take it as love and pour it back into Melissa but since she is still gone and I mostly mope around I don't pour it out anywhere else. And it evaporates. I am getting dry and I need to soak in the ocean.