disruption

I have not done any formal writing in a long time and I am starting to feel the weight of the absence of the practice. I have read to be sure and amassed a small fortune of scraps of paper, receipt backs and tiny notebooks attesting to the fact that my brain hasn't slowed nearly as much as I assumed it would.

"If the landscape reveals one certainty, it is that the extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation. After the one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusions on profligacies with ever-fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames."

Excerpt from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard pp. 16-17

And that is why I am writing this instant. I closed my eyes but the light from the blaze colored the darkness I sought all yellow and orange and left me without peace. The past couple months have seemed too much to chronicle with accuracy yet I was catching fire over the Holidays and I do not wish to be so passive and above-it-all that I doze while it all goes up in smoke.

Not that the last couple months have been anything truly Earth shattering but in my tiny part of the land they have greatly distruptive.

God save Haiti from the ground that seems to seek to devour her. The Voodoo teachings that are prevelant in Haiti say that the nation is a mother. May her own children and the neighborhood kids do everything to heal her. I heard it will most likely take till the end of this century before there is a sense of how things used to be in Haiti before the earthquake. If that is the timeline to get back to that then there is far more than mere restoration that needs to take place. Hopefully Haiti will spring up brand new and hardly be recognizable. No more misery and no more fear.

splendid

The first time I heard about "American Splendor" was when my older brother rented the dvd. I picked up the case and I scowled at it. I couldn't see how a movie about a depressing underground comic writer could possibly keep my socially floundering brother from sliding closer to his impending lackluster life. That was all I wanted for him then. I wanted him to be happy and happy with other people. Harvey Pekar, the focus of "American Splendor" did not seem to be the sort of role model I was hoping my older brother would choose. I also knew nothing abou underground comics and figured they must be more akin to porn than anything else and my disdain was sealed.

My brother would often watch movies alone in the basement in the dark. At the time I wasn't too hurt he never invited me but thinking about it now it really would have been nice just to be asked. Eventually his lone movie watching turned into lone beer drinking in the dark. My brother continually took on Harvey's likeness as he drooped and sagged inside and out. I knew nothing about the movie or the man but I hated them both. In all honesty, I really thought this movie was another nail in my brother's coffin. He would never do anything with his intelligence or creativity if he idolized twice-divorced file clerks with gnarled teeth, jowels, a large stomach and man boobs.

A couple years ago my friend Jeff showed me his comics collection and let me borrow all of the graphic novels he had by Jeffery Brown and one called "Blankets" by Craig Thompson. These autobiographical revelations made comics more important to me than they were even when I was an avid collector as a child. Ever since I have been enamored with the underground comic "scene." Now that I knew about this world it was inevitable that I would come across Harvey Pekar. "American Splendor" was an tremendous acheivement in comics because it was crass, depressing, coarse and true. When I learned about all this I felt a wave of embarrassment because I knew I had shunned something that could have opened up a glorious new world of art that I had to wait several years to come into.

Perhaps I was not ready. I was very sunny as a high schooler and I wasn't quite into irony.

I watched the movie tonight. I cannot remember the last time I have felt so inspired. Seek out the comics and also the movie. Could change your perspective if you let it. I am glad I saw it so young.

brandonpiercegeary