Scribble ... A Life Less Written12/31/2017 SCRIBBLE
A LIFE LESS WRITTEN There is almost nothing in life that reveals more clearly that one is not doing it, than writing does. Not just writing, but also editing of the writing. It doesn’t matter how much a wish to write is had, if the body has no inclination to writing, it just simply: Does not happen. It is the same with editing, which has been rather frustrating this week, because The Corridor was submitted for Copyright … which is something that happened quite out of the blue. Actually a few things happened out of the blue. An email came in from the Willamette Writer’s group about a contest for short story and I found myself submitting: Big Top Circus As an entry. However I read in the instructions that it is wise or recommended to copyright the piece before sending it … when looking into copyright it said that if it is a compilation you will want to submit it that way and not each one separately, even though Big Top Circus was being submitted to the contest as a stand alone short story … that is not how it actually is, it is part of the collection. So then I went through The Corridor and realized that it never was edited … slightly but really not much at all and there were typos and then the “tense” was all wrong and certain consistencies were missing. I got as much as I could done that night before submitting … I actually wanted to wait a day but inside was saying: “No, no, no another day will not come … you must do this now.” And when there is that type of inner talk that is riding on the energy to do it … one sort of just sits back and watches it all unfold. However … it was right … as it usually is because that energy has not come back again. The Corridor was submitted for copyright approval and Big Top Circus was entered into the contest but there has been absolutely no ability to continue since. I have 23 more stories to edit and there is a push to have it done before Christmas, but I can’t get the body to do it. I try. I sit down and start editing and get a paragraph in and the eyes blur … or the mind will wander in such a way that I cannot get it back. It just makes one see that you cannot do anything … you have no control. You can think all you want to, that you do, but you absolutely do not. Plus if I push it, it makes me hate the writing. Sometimes I will love the stories that are written but if I am trying to force myself to read or edit when the energy to do so is not around, I end up hating the story. I hate the writing that comes through. It looks and sounds horrible. It is such a strange thing. I am struggling to get through: Teacher And have been attempting to rework it for over a week and just can’t get it done. *** Funny and interesting, writing the above seemed to have sparked some energy (mebe) to get the editing done, because “Teacher” is now finished and it was interesting to read and good … where all week it seems horrible and poorly written and not interesting at all. Very strange. Very strange indeed. *** F - G S - G S - till 3 - G / 3-9 - B / 10+ G *** Anne Sexton writes: “Writers are such phonies; they sometimes have wise insights but they don’t live by them at all. That’s what writers are like. When you read what they write, whether its their poems or their letters, you think they know something, but usually they are just messes.” (pg. 160, Autobiography) Look up Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King (Sexton Fav) (pg. 161) *** Both the angst and beauty of the Holiday Season is upon me. It is as if one’s chest begins to be pulled in two completely different directions: One in Joy; the other in Sadness/melancholy. It is the strangest of sensations and only seems to come about this time of year. It’s not depression. It is much different. There are triggers, scents of nostalgia and longing for something that has never happened. It is the same longing that comes every time of year at this time. *** Not sure what is going on, but my person has turned very sour.:o( *** Look up Steinbeck’s Dissonant Symphony. *** Steinbeck writes: “You know the big pine tree beside this house? I planted it when it and I were very little; I’ve watched it grow. It has always been known as “John’s tree.” Years ago, in mental playfulness I used to think of it as my brother and then later, still playfully, I thought of it as something rather closer, a kind of repository of my destiny. This was all an amusing fancy, mind you. Now the lower limbs should be cut off because they endure the house. I must cut them soon, and I have a very powerful reluctance to do it, such a reluctance as I would have toward cutting live flesh. Furthermore, if the tree should die, I am pretty sure I should be ill. This feeling I have planted in myself and quite deliberately I guess, but it is nonetheless strong for all that.” (Pg. 31, Life in Letters) It is strange that some writers … especially in this instance, notice their great and deep relationship with Trees and yet still print. I get it because I have printed and still use paper, as little as possible, but still do. But we are so connected to Trees in ways that even I don’t currently understand, I just know. When Steinbeck writes that it would be like cutting into live flesh … I know it on that level and yet he and I have chopped down trees. Is it just the “killer” in everyone … there is a killer in me. I know this. I watch it. I have the capacity to kill. Sometimes it seems everything that is done is in exact opposite of nature. And yet nature is a killing machine. Maybe it is just my backwards thoughts or maybe it is just thought (period). Maybe if one just stopped being concerned about anything and everything then it would all just be what it is … which it is anyway. *** Help me not to be so opinionated and to write without such criticism. To write things worth writing. This has been a request for years. Please help. *** Steinbeck also writes so sweetly about his wife, finally an answer to a Prayer. I really have wanted to read a man that is in love with his wife and finally I have; am. You can hear it so clearly the love his words ride on: “Carol’s business is growing nicely. She gets prettier all the time. I’m more in love with her than I ever was. Sometimes I waken in the night with the horrible feeling that she is gone. I shouldn’t want to live is she were.” (pg. 37, Life in Letters) As the above was being typed, Mark came to mind, as if he were momentarily here and saying: “This is how I love you." My heart still breaks. My heart still breaks. Do you know love is True when your heart still breaks after 15 years of separation? When you still feel that one as close as if they have their mouth gently breathing on the back of your neck and you like it? There is no time in love. Maybe it is why you can say: “I will love you forever.” And it is True because the moment you are in when it is said, is forever. I would have never known … would I have ever known … how deep love is without Mark? No, probably not. You don’t know what you are in when you are in it. If you could only see what you are in things might be so different, each moment so much more precious. Someone recently read a piece I’d written on Academia for an Art class at SOU, it was about failure or something like that or maybe it was perfection, but what was written about was on being as mother. It was a decent enough piece, but I didn’t hear it. I didn’t hear a word of the words that came out of these fingertips for if I had I would have done something! I knew and yet I still just kept on walking past. It is if one’s own (not really) words come back and haunt them. But it probably is better to see, even if there is nothing you can do … it is still best to see. I feel this with Tyler. I want so badly to be in his life but not as a hinderance, and I am. I don’t bring “joy” into his life … how strange that you would name someone something they are so completely far from. I almost taste how completely joyful our life could be together if I could just be someone else. Tyler and I have so much in common … so very much that we are nearly the same person and yet I don’t have any relationship with him at all. *** It is not that I would wish this upon Steinbeck or anyone, but so very much appreciate that he does: “You see the haunting thought comes that perhaps I have been kidding myself all these years, myself and other people—that I have nothing to say or no art in saying nothing.” (pg. 39, Letters) *** Lately, suicide has been rearing its head again, the mind is looking for an out. There wouldn’t be a care in the world if one just didn’t wake up into this world again. It’s the main draw or pull towards alcohol … that momentary break from who one thinks they are … nothing does it like alcohol but with such high penalties. All through “Grant,” they talk about it, which, by the way, is an amazingly written book. Thank you, thank you Ron Chernow who is one of, if not my favorite living writer, him, Richard Bach and Neal Donald Walsh are my favorite living ones. Neal because he wrote and published what I was actually going through at the time with Conversations with God, so he is still ranked very highly in my book for doing so … it takes balls to share things, intimate things that can make you look bonkers. And Richard Bach because he is able to word something in a way that I still struggle so much with … and he words it so simply and beautifully and in such great stories that the masses can hear it, maybe not completely, but they get a taste of something that is very hard to word. Interesting that after writing the above about alcohol, which seems to be something that many writers struggle with, Steinbeck writes: “Last night we went berserk and bought a quarter of a pound of wonderful jasmine tea. It is the grandest stuff I have ever tasted, and I have fully made up my mind to give up liquor in all forms in its favor.” (p.40, Letters) The only reason alcohol is so hard to let go of in my person is that it is so easy to get. Pot on the other hand is easy to get but it just isn’t like alcohol, it puts me to sleep like it most times but not until after it rocks my whole world and I don’t always want to have my world rocked. Pot has one take responsibility (at least the kind I smoke) where alcohol eliminates it. Will have to try some Jasmine tea … haven’t had much luck with teas … don’t like them very much. Am down to hot lemon water as of late. *** I am going blind. It is very strange to watch happen. Each day the vision gets worse not better. Even in nature now, things have lost their sharp edges and people are blurs whizzing by in the streets … rarely can I see a face clearly anymore and its strange how little I care. I should care that I am going blind and I actually don’t … it’s just surprising and interesting to watch. *** I have only two long sleeve wearable shirts left that I rotate by washing as soon as they come off. One of them is now see-thru from washing it so much. They are both still very comfortable, cotton and long sleeve … I rarely can find a shirt that I like, that fits well and that is comfortable … those three things are hard to come by and is why I have been wearing the same two shirts for three or more years now. No one ever sees me so it doesn’t matter. I do have other shirts, I just don’t like them very much. I don’t even know why I keep the other shirts around. *** Word of the Day: Doleful THE DOLEFUL DAZE He picks up the magazine flipping through a few pages, his eyes fall upon a story about a building that has burnt to the ground with twenty-five people trapped inside. He momentarily ponders why the tragedy of others somehow appeases a restlessness in his person. Is it that things could always be worse or that there actually is an end insight? He doesn’t ponder it long, but he doesn’t get an answer either. He is in the waiting room ten minutes too early to see his therapist. He doesn’t know why he keeps going; he doesn’t even like her. She’s fat, which annoys him and over-the-top with cosmetics, so much so that she nearly looks fake, but it’s also part of the draw, because reality is flimsy and he loves what he hates. Seeing her makes him want to rip her face off and he is just relived that finally there is someone else’s face, besides his own that he would want to do that to. The best part of his therapy he has discovered; is hating his therapist. Normally, he doesn’t hate people, at least not in general, but he does’t often like them either. He used to have hope for humanity; but it died early on in life. Life progressively confirmed his worst fears about humans years ago, that they are shallow, selfish, vindictive (at the very best), creatures that are to be avoided at all costs. However, there are a select few he does not feel this way about, yet so few; that all hope in humanity has been lost. He masters conformity and uses it as a skill for avoidance. His doleful face. He wore dolefulness on his face like a shroud. His daze were doleful. There is an air of dolefulness about his person. The many happy faces only confirmed his doleful state. *** It is such a pain, but for whatever reason my person often writes fiction in past tense so then after it is done one has to go back through the entire thing and change the tense. It happened with The Corridor and was/is maddening. *** It is so strange and yet warming to read things by great writers such as Steinbeck that you have written yourself. He says in a letter: “Where then are the masterpieces?” (p. 51, Letters) This came out in a poem recently … sometime this year. It’s not that they are my words … that is especially obvious in Poetry, but that the same words come through the Writer … whoever the writer is and that they came through Steinbeck as well is warming. *** THE CORRIDOR Is up on Scribd and the website: http://www.joysters.org/the-corridor.html *** FIRST SNOW!!!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY JORGE! *** It didn’t last long, but it was a much needed treat as the whole body has been in an agitated slumbering state … not sure what it is about the first snow that gets the spirits so high, but once out in it, everything shifts and the body had so much energy and was bouncing all around. *** THE MOUNTAIN TOP Made it to the top of the Mountain … had left with the sun shining and thoughts of not bringing a scarf or even a coat it seemed so warm, but something inside sort of yelled: “Just go!” So the scarf and coat were left on and thank god because about half way up the sky started to cover over with dark clouds and then it started raining and the trees were all blowing around like crazy. It was quite a spectacular thing! Got to the top completely fatigued, the body has had very little sleep lately, it’s starting to get scary and things aren’t functioning quite right but, insomnia, it is what it is. At the top it was raining but sat down between two very large trees and was leaning the back up against one and was surprised to find how much flexibility is in a tree of that size and stature. It felt so good, like a child being rocked back and forth. The wind was really whipping it all about and the rain was not coming down too hard and it was cold but not freezing. Had thought the first snow might come then. Waited for it … but finally gave up and headed back down. The whole thing was a bit of an adventure and there has been very little adventure around these parts lately, so it was an extra special treat. Am surprised the legs have anything left in them today, but from all the bouncing around they just did in the snow, it seems they do.
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An Unwritten Life (Continued)12/30/2017 AN UNWRITTEN LIFE
2017 12.04 - The other day the most amazing and beautiful thing happened. It has taken a few days to allow for it to soak in and to be able to write it down because, if this is ever read by anyone other than the one that experienced it, it probably will not sound, or come through as amazing and beautiful as it is, mainly, because that is not how people seem to “think” or “hear” words pertaining to masturbation and orgasm. However, it is what occurred. There was nothing planned about it, there hadn’t been one in a long time, masturbation that is. There had been no masturbation in quite some time, not even a slight inkling to touch the body in the sexual domain and there wasn’t much of one at the time that this transpired. There had been some slight thoughts of a sexual nature and images that had a sexual charge that showed up, which hadn’t appeared in quite sometime, but it wasn’t creating sexual friction and the blood was almost over, so there wasn’t really anything making a want for touching the body. However, the coconut oil was grabbed and the body laid down and the hands went in the pants and immediately the body was turned on. It all happened rather quickly. Much quicker than things of this nature usually do and possibly it is due to the Kegel's, which have been done with much more consistency than ever before, or maybe it’s because this body is almost never touched, or that it has been years since the last sexual activity, or the images and sounds that were flashing through the mind’s eye, or the pressure and touch of the hand, or the Full Moon outside or all of it! Which is probably the most accurate. It was so warm and full and intense, nearly from the first instant the hands went in the pants. The interesting thing is that even though it was all very intense, in the beginning, there was no foresight or sign for what was to come, it all seemed very normal, but then in what lasted maybe all of five minutes of build-up … the intensity of an orgasm arrived and it was even said internally: “I’m going to cum.” And then did … with the words: “Oh my god I love you so much!” Reverberating as energy throughout of my person! This was so beautiful. That is the only word, words ... that came to mind both then and now, and I have never called sex or any orgasm beautiful; but this was: It was so fucking beautiful. And it lasted longer than any before! It was like laying there in warm wonderful, beautiful, thick and comforting fluid. But even that is not true because there is nothing, no word that represents what happened. It was just so beautiful. And I cried. Sobbed really. And even through the sobbing the sensations continued as if the orgasm was not going to stop or fade. But then it did. And although I have said this on numerous occasions, it keeps getting topped every time because this was/is as of now: The best orgasm ever! And left no desire or want to touch again after laying there, which seemed quite a long time; just basking in these amazing feeling and sensations as I had never known you could feel so good in the body, that it is capable of such amazing sensations of pleasure. And it felt wrong (bad word but the only one coming up right now) it felt wrong to write about … as if it would dirty or pornographify something that was the most beautiful, gentle, tenderest of experiences. It seemed there is no way to write about this without it sounding “dirty” but there was nothing dirty about any of it. It was so PURE. It was as if one were an innocent child … not being touched by an adult … but how an innocent child can feel things so intensely because there is nothing to compare it to. The Purity of Innocence. *** There was a tiny little pudgy bird hopping around on the ground yesterday. It let me get very close … even bent down and was surprised by how trusting it was being. Then it hopped a bit away, but let me get real close again … within arms reach. Then he flew up to a tree branch and again let me get real close before he finally flew away. He was the sweetest little thing. With the most technical of movements. I don’t know why birds look so mechanical in movement, as if they aren’t real, while humans look so fluid. When humans turn their heads it seems a smooth functioning, but when a bird does; it seems mechanical. *** 2017 12.06 - Whoever or However it is that landed Anne Sexton in my lap … Thank You … Thank You … Thank You! Talk about a Kindred Spirit! Or she does; she talks about finding a Kindred Spirit in Carolyn Kizer, but I have found one in Anne! “The whole trouble being that my writing has guts; but I do not.” (Page 68, Letters) She is so alive! But no one understands it or her because they are all trying to trap her into being what they want; not what she is! *** Recently, last week or on the 24th of November whenever that was … a short story was started: MASTER OF DREAMS But then there was no energy to stick with it and a day of writing was skipped and a day in this reality is more like a week because, well because it is, to skip a day in this reality is like skipping a week in the “real” world. So a week was skipped and then a reminder came that my Nephew Elijah’s Birthday was coming and so a whole day was dedicated, basically to writing this story and entwining him into it, which was quite easy actually, surprisingly so. It was finished in one day, which is amazing, it is only a 13 page short story but it seemed to come out very well and I thought of him and having a conversation with him while it was being written but I didn’t have the feel that “I” was writing it and for sure it was not the case because I read it the next day, actually I read it that day and thought it good enough to send but then it was read again the next day and it was not remembered, it was more like reading it for the first time again or for the first time ever. It’s good and cute and basically the first children’s story written, it’s actually more pre-teen because he is turning or has now turned eleven. *** Sweet! Anne says: “I am kind of a secret beatnik hiding in the suburbs in my square house on a dull street.” (Page 71) Beatniks! :o) She also writes: “This is a jerky letter, because I am in a lousy mood.” (Pg. 71, Letters) But you can’t tell at all … her writing energy is so good … and often it seems the way or the same with me. No one can tell how fuct up things are. Everything looks and sounds normal when it completely isn’t! The Writer is not the same as the person inside. It is, but it isn’t. Can’t explain it even to myself. I’d always expected people to see how challenging things are inside but they don’t, they can’t and if it is spoken, they over-react because it is so incongruent with what they believe about what they see or “think” they see. She ends the letter: “If this letter is awful, please forgive. I have wrenched it out of a clearly depressed day.” (Pg. 71, Letters) It is not an awful letter at all, she hasn’t written an awful letter yet! And you most surely cannot tell she is depressed. *** Interesting that Anne spent three days in a hospital crying, and then when she got out her father died about three days later. Sensitive people pick up many things that others that are not sensitive cannot bare. Meaning that there is no link in this book that implies that Anne’s hospitalization had anything to do with a pre-cursor to her fathers death but I see it. It is all mentioned in the same letter to Snodgrass (page 81, Letters). She is an orphan now. *** 2017 12.08 - Yesterday I was laying down and the trees that were being looked up at began to dissolve. It was attributed to some discomfort. However, it was a reminder that I used to dissolve all the time as a child. Not actually all the time, but during times of undo-stress the world would dissolve and “I” would be gone for a time and then reappear. As I got older, I forgot that this happened, but it was a clear reminder yesterday that it did happen, that it used to happen, because it was the exact same thing that would happen back then. It wasn’t a complete dissolution because that which was causing the discomfort left and as it left; the world became solid again. *** Writer’s Energy is gone. Simply shut down. It is a strange thing when this happens and one sees the expectation that it will always be here. Without Writer’s Energy, it is a sensation of complete emptiness. Not empty-fullness, but completely hollowed out. No imagination. No imagery. Just endless darkness. Not depressing. There is no emotion at all. *** Yesterday there was a little bird hopping around on the ground. He didn’t seem to notice me, while walking up and I was not that far away when noticing him. He was a plump little thing, looked as if he had swallowed a golf ball or that the egg he would lay would be himself completely. He was that tiny and simultaneously that large. I slowed the pace down and crept towards him, but he did not seem to mind or care. He had a bright White/Red/Black streak on the very top of his head sort of back from the eyes to the back of his head and then beautiful green wings of many different shades of green that shifted, morphed and glisteningly glowed in the snares of the sun. He would hop two or three times and I would creep up on him a bit closer and this went on for about 3-5 minutes until I was so close I could have stepped on him or picked him up, neither of which were attempted. He seemed to either have no fear of my presence or no recognition of it. It was quite a treat! *** The other day there was an attempt made to recreate the most recently incredible masturbation session; with absolutely no success. There was even the thought that one wouldn’t expect to have such an amazing thing happen again, but there certainly was expectation and such huge disappointment with what resulted … which was one of the lamest orgasms ever. Whatever that was the other day was PURE MAGIC! You can’t create or re-create PURE MAGIC … it’s a Gift from Beyond. *** The Darkside of the Moon is here. It comes on so quickly. It’s catches one off-guard every time. Life loses any luster it had. Everyone looks like the enemy. So many synchronistic or coincidental things have been happening that the mind is going a bit nutty. Too much stimulation. An example is of a recent “session” for lack of a better word where promises were made and then almost as soon as the session was over … all the promises were broken. Then I went to take Pete out and there were two young men walking down the road and one of them was yelling at the other something like: “You don’t listen. You look like you hear me, but you don’t hear me. It goes in one ear and looks like you are hearing me, but then I see it goes right out the other!” And the other kid was just walking along listening or not listening and it was sort of a trigger as to what had just happened … I sort of felt as if I were being yelled at as well … but not in a bad way … the kid wasn’t yelling at the kid in a mean-spirited way … but he was really loud about it. Then later in the day on the way back from a walk … in the Foresty area … those two same young men were walking up and I sort of inwardly said to the one: “Still getting yelled at?” And he smiled and I sort of chuckled inside and then they were right up on me and I sort of locked eyes for a second with the kid that had been yelling and he had the Brightness in his eyes and I flashed of MoeDirdee of all people and sort of said an inward: “Hey Moe!” This is only one of things that have been happening all the time with greater and greater frequency and I don’t know if I am going crazy or just losing my mind. I had flashed of a time where Lauren (bio-father) told me or I remember him telling me but it might not be true at all … this was a very strange time for me … it was when I was 12 or 13 and he told me that he had poisoned Easter Dinner. That we were having Lobster because that is what everyone wanted (everyone but him?) and so he was going to poison it and kill them all so don’t eat it and then we can run off and live happily every after? I have no idea if any of that is true. But I do remember being very scared of him after that. No one died and I think he ended up in the hospital shortly after. Hard to say there is no time in the mind that isn’t skewed anymore. But the strange thing is … the very next day after having this flash or vision or whatever it was … there was an advertisement laying on the sidewalk that had a giant lobster on it. It felt very intentional and I got scared. Wayneji once said I am a horror story. Seems so most of the time. *** 2017 12.11: If God needs your belief; it’s not God. *** The sky is so brilliantly beautiful and bright tonight. Saw a shooting/falling/fallen, twisting, twirling Star tonight. It looked like a defective firework coming down. *** “We’re going to Tavern on the Green after the shareholders meeting. I want you there. The limo will be down stairs at 7am tomorrow morning. Be in it.” The towering CEO with a large presence demanded while pressing the button to the elevator. The doors open. He gets in and disappears out of view. She has only been his secretary for four days. She was completely overwhelmed and had no understanding how she had even got this job. It was a type of promotion. She had been working for the Vice President of Benefits and Compensation for the last five years, and when he CEOs secretary had taken ill and they transferred her over to him. They never stated why they chose her and she was baffled by it. She is twenty-three years old with two young children and a long-time-term live in boyfriend who is father of the youngest child. They have been together for two years and have had some bumps in the road, but are held together by a deep abiding love they have for one another. *** PRESSURE Joy A. Sters December 12, 2017 (11pm in The Sacred Space) Pressure, pressure Pressure all around Pushing at the inside Pulling one to the ground Surrender, surrender Give up your game of might You struggle for things You think you want But haven’t got the fight. Plunder, plunder You never will be found The vestiges of a sound mind Will only keep one bound. The world of shadows taunts you Emotions lead you on Entwined in ego boundaries Leave one pressed upon Testing, testing It festers in your womb The life you never lived Has sealed you in a tomb Broken, broken It all just went so fast Before the sail had lifted The flag had donned half-mast (Finished 11:11pm) *** Poem Edits: PRESSURE Joy A. Sters December 12, 2017 Pressure, pressure … Pressure all around Pushing at the inside Pressing one to the ground. Surrender, surrender … Give up your game of might Clawing for the things you want Yet haven’t got the fight. Plunder, plunder … You never will be found The vestiges of a sound mind Will only keep one bound. The world of shadows taunts you Emotions lead you on Entwined in ego boundaries Leave one pressed upon. Testing, testing … It festers in your womb The life you never lived The sealant of your tomb. Broken, broken … It all just went so fast Before the sail had lifted The flag had donned half-mast. *** This might sound a bit sick, but I am so excited. Just found my first Paranoid writer! I haven’t read anything about him just yet except this small blurb in Anne Sexton’s Biography. “Delmore Schwartz, exiled from friends and family alike by paranoia.” (Page 109) Paranoia has been the biggest curse in this life or maybe it is the biggest blessing … one in which has kept things away. You just never know. But there is paranoia here that seems to grow greater all the time … however Stillness does as well so it is a strange thing to have paranoia riding on Stillness. Delmore is handsome. He didn’t age very gracefully. It didn’t end well for him either: Schwartz was unable to repeat or build on his early successes later in life as a result of alcoholism and mental illness, and his last years were spent in reclusion at the Columbia Hotel in New York City. In fact, Schwartz was so isolated from the rest of the world that when he died on July 11, 1966, at age 52, of a heart attack, two days passed before his body was identified at the morgue. This is probably how I will die as well, except I won’t have written anything noteworthy such as he did. He also was friends with Robert Lowell, everyone who was anyone in Writing was. They actually lived together as roommates at one time. Hmmm … it doesn’t speak to anything about Schwartz’s paranoia. :o( This says much more than Wiki did but it’s a blog so who knows how true it is: What was the source of Schwartz's despair? Much of it could be traced to his horrible childhood. Neither parent seemed to care much for the future poet. The father was a philanderer, the mother wildly jealous. It was a very dysfunctional family. One day, with the young Delmore in hand, she discovered her husband in a restaurant with a person she referred to as a whore. She proceeded to scream at her husband, as if Delmore wasn't there. Recalling humiliations of my own childhood, I know exactly how Schwartz must have felt: lost, vulnerable, floating through space with the sign of Cain branded on his forehead. The father abandoned the family when Delmore was ten; the increasingly reduced circumstances of the isolated family, now headed by an increasingly moody mother, must have weighed heavily on both children. Things got much better before they got much worse. As already mentioned, he had become quite famous at an early age. Critics hailed him as a potentially great writer; one referred to him as the "new Chekhov." He studied at various universities; he attended Harvard for several years, but never received a graduate degree. Schwartz became the editor of the renowned Partisan Review. He taught at many prestigious places, but never remained at one of them for long. Inner peace was elusive, however, as this excerpt from his poem, All Night, All Night, indicates: "O your life, your lonely life, What have you ever done with it, And done with the great gift of consciousness What will you ever do with your life before death's knife Provides the answer ultimate and appropriate?" This excerpt gives another good indication of Schwartz's talent; it evinces a perfect marriage of music and meaning, the mark of a true poet. The meaning, however, is hopelessly bleak, another version of "It would have been better if I hadn't been born." Feeling worthless at his core, Schwartz sought fame at the surface. This is a common strategy of those who are both broken and ambitious; it doesn't work. In 1943, Schwartz published what he thought would be his major work. He expected it to rival Eliot's Wasteland as a modern classic. He named the 261-page poem "Genesis, Book One." Was Schwartz playing God in order to silence his inner critic forever? This is what he said of it, "I fear that it is so good, that I, mere I, am not the author, but rather a team of inspired poets." Few agreed. One critic was downright hostile:"Who, except at gunpoint, would read Delmore Schwartz's autobiographical epic, Genesis, Book One--Book One!" Schwartz's tragedy is that he became famous at an early age, and was never able to revisit his early success. After the failure of his second marriage, which, like his first one, ended in divorce, Schwartz deteriorated rapidly. For the last nine years of his life, the once famous poet lived as a recluse. He ended up in a seedy hotel near Times Square. His addiction to alcohol and barbiturates, an attempt to relieve the symptoms of his mental illness, was destroying him. One day, after emptying garbage, he collapsed in the elevator of the hotel. His body lay in the morgue for two days before it was identified. https://thomasdorsett.blogspot.com/2016/04/poetry-and-paranoia-starlights.html No one every talks about paranoia but how can you? You think it’s real: If it didn’t seem real it wouldn’t be paranoia. Why are some thoughts so much stronger, so seemingly real? God knows. The mind is a mean-spirited thing at times. A mean-spirited phantom. And it’s not just thoughts because you have the thought and then there is an energy and sometimes action by yourself or another that validates the thought and pronounces the energy so that the thought becomes more powerful and then it grows and spirals out. It maybe “past” lives stuff. Some of it, but mostly here in me … it is still of being watched. Even though there is a growing ok’ness with being seen, it is when there seems as if there is an intention of an “other” to do something with what is seen that makes for madness. I no longer have the fear of being killed, unless I am walking down the road. I often fear that cars want to hit me. Intentionally run me down. But the more spongey part of this mind feels that it has something to do with “past” lives or “all lives” and sort of being tapped into that because the fears are of things that have seemingly happened and that is why they are so real … so maybe all these things are happening in some kind of parallel “space” right now and so it feel as if it is happening (because it is) but the mind can’t understand it because it can’t actually see it. (Side note: Apple has the most gawd awful spell check program and changes word spellings before you can even finish the word and it’s always a wrong word … it always changes it to something that is nothing like what the word was/is supposed to be.) Oh, ok, I have one paranoid thing I can share. The other day while out and about … I stood up from where I had been sitting and Ryea Paige/TheLittleBindiRock was missing. I had just had it in my hand. I had had it in my hand all day. I had it all along the walk to where I had arrived. I actually had it inside the glove so I knew it couldn’t have been dropped. I no longer had the glove on, but I had been sitting in the same spot since I had arrived and could recall holding it. You must understand that I am very cautious with this Rock because I have misplaced it before. I have thought it was gone, taken, missing quite a few times, one time for months and I can never explain it’s comings or it’s goings. However, because of this I am so careful with it. I know it is missing like one would notice a finger missing. Therefore: I started to lose it … not just the rock, but sanity as well! I don’t mean a tiny bit. I understand that no one will “get” the attachment to Rocks, especially this one because I hardly understand it myself, but there are few things in this world that are as dear and treasured to my person. I have had this Rock in my hand for years. It is the daughter I will never have. It is the one that holds my hand and walks me through life, because most times I can’t even get out the door and somehow this Rock helps. I still mourn “MURock” and it’s been five years since I lost him on TheRanch. I can still see Him in the mind’s eye … I know what he looked and felt like as much as my own son who is no longer alive. They are precious to me. I become very attached and am … so I was completely freaking. There had been a man sitting across from me and I started blaming him. I know these false thoughts from years of torture so I try not to buy into them. However, I was really freaking out I had checked the backpack two times … completely. I had walked up to the counter two times and looked there. There just was no where for it to have disappeared to and then I started thinking that it was “taken” I can’t explain these things either but often when something “bad” happens I think I am being punished by the unSeen. I know things can be taken away this way, as they have before, but I also know that because they have I often think everything is and then I freak about why. What have I done to lose this now! And there are always answers. Millions and trillions of reasons why one would have TheRock taken and I kept blaming that man, that guy who had been next to me. This is the real paranoia because it grows and becomes more and more real. The mind becomes solid in what it believes and then there is no appeasing it in any other way. This all went on for about a half hour and finally I just gave up. Surrendered. Lost. Accepted defeat. Accepted that one of the most valuable things in this life was now gone. Death. You cannot even grok how completely devastating the above was. If I had written it at the time you would get a sense of the “franticness” but this is days later and it’s all resolved now so there is no way to relay the insanity. It was as if one were going to “break in half” and at the same time was “surrendering in defeat.” I finally got up from where I was sitting. People had moved in and were sitting across from me and were talking rather loudly and I was already in a very strange state. I went and sat at a table away from everyone and as I sat down I put my hand to the back of my head, not even sure why, but when I did, I realized what I had done: The head had been hurting when I arrived at the destination and when I sat down I put Ryea Paige/The Little Bindi Rock on the back of the head, under the hat I was wearing. I didn’t think much of it. I know these hands have good energy in them and TheRock for sure as well and I thought or it came up that it would help with the headache and it did because the headache was gone. However the paranoia had now ensued making a disaster of everything. There was such a great release, Release … RELIEF! I sobbed right there in front of the giant picture window looking out onto traffic. I sobbed for once again blaming innocent people for doing things they were not doing. I sobbed because I was so happy and relieved and I sobbed because I am so crazy and I know I am crazy and I can’t help myself. I am near tears now. Because this isn’t an uncommon event. This is every day of this life. People exacerbate it. Being around “others” makes it even more crazy, but even when no one is around: Paranoia is. It is similar to being judged 24 hours a day. The thing is … sometimes, usually things I am not paranoid about, things that should make me paranoid: Don’t. Or maybe because of them I am. Such as when I was about 30 years old I worked for a couple out of their home and they had their niece staying with them. She had two young children. I rarely saw her, however one day they came into where I was working and told me I had to leave and the reason they gave was because their niece wanted to kill me. She had a meth relapse and for some reason voices were telling her to kill me and she was afraid she would. Now that should be enough to make anyone paranoid, although I had been paranoid for about 15-17 years prior to that episode. In so many ways none of this makes any rational sense so a rational person is never going to understand this kind of … well whatever you call it … sickness … mental illness … fear? It’s not fear of death … it is fear of thoughts. It is a fear, a deep seeded fear in a phantom that right now I can say: “Oh paranoia … big deal it’s just phantom thoughts.” But when I am hit with it. You wouldn’t even recognize me. I am not the same person I am right now typing this. A whole other person comes to life. Then on top of that there is depression and mania. Right now there is extreme restlessness, which is probably why all this babble is spewing forth. Anyway, thanks for the trip down memory lane Delmore Schwartz. *** Today’s Spiritual Vitamin is: “Everything that one sees and thinks in this world is Perfect. Nothing is wrong at all - it can’t be wrong and show up. Said another way, everything that shows up is right. Obviously. It can’t show up and be wrong - it’s impossible. Everything that shows up is right but ego mind doesn’t necessarily agree.” http://www.spiritualvitamins.org/december-13th.html You might imagine that knowing this would eliminate paranoia … but it doesn’t. It does however bring a smile when paranoia isn’t present. It is True. Even paranoia is right. See that is where the ego/I/me comes in and says: “Paranoia can’t be right … it sucks too bad.” Sucks for who? It’s all mind. If there is talk, inner/outer it’s all mind. Who speaks over the Still Voice of God? Only mind. Only the ego speaks. *** Rainer Maria Rilke’s: Letters to a Young Poet. *** Had another Dream. This one was sexual in nature, but not in a way I can really understand. Again most of it has been forgotten … the mind is like mush lately it will not retain any information for very long. It feels like mashed potato head. However, there were two men. One was old(er/ish) and the other young and if I am recalling right they were both naked most of the time and I was as well but it didn’t feel like nakedness. It felt very natural. So little is remembered I’m not sure why the attempt to write this down is even being made but it ended with attempts to buy candy … two specific kinds. Now and Laters and also these chewy other kind of the same fashion but flat and long where Now and Laters are short and stubby. *** Have had Bruce Springsteen’s album BORN IN THE USA sitting in a corner of The Sacred Space for over a month, waiting for the perfect moment where the urge, inclination, time to sit down, put the headphones on and let the sounds sink into and out of my person, appeared and it finally did yesterday. It is the first Album purchased thus far and it was the first album I ever purchased when I was 13. Born in the USA was the first album I bought when I was 13 years old. I only ever owned two albums, this one and Michael Jackson’s THRILLER. Not bad choices for a 13 year old eh? So yesterday all the packaging was removed from the record player and the record was placed upon it and the headphones attached and I laid down and let the sound of Bruce’s voice and the musical instruments of the E Street Band play into my person. I never heard any of his music this completely before. I could see myself at thirteen hearing him sing Glory Days and was surprised by how intimately he sings I’M ON FIRE it touched my heart so completely. He is a storyteller! An amazing Artist, Genius and Storyteller and maybe I have always known this, but I didn’t remember it when I sat with him and shared a shot at the CHEERS bar in Long Branch NJ when I was 27, it seemed almost natural at the time to do so. Although I did save the glass the shot was in for years, eventually misplacing it to too many moves. But I never lost the memory. Hillary a girl I worked with had invited me to go and I thought she was a crazy girl and lying about it and have no idea what made me go with her because I hardly knew her at all and never saw her again after or don’t remember ever seeing her again. We were sitting on one corner of the bar, Bruce and I, and Hilary was on the other corner and couldn’t reach us and was clamoring to get over the bar and making quite a scene. Anyway he bought me a shot, we sucked it down, shared a few words that I no longer recall and he took off to be with whoever he was with and Hilary and I left. It was all very casual and strange. Especially Hilary because I have no recollection of why she would invite me or why I would go. Also my best friend in Middle School, Lisa Cancel’s mother went to school with Bruce. So there have been a few links to him all my life but it is not what made me buy the album at 13, nor now. At thirteen I just adored his music, his sound. I can’t even say what it was even after listening to it yesterday, except that True Art attracts the Artist in a person. I have always been an Artist but truly I am the Art. Yes, I know how egoic that sounds but it is not egoic to the one who Knows. I have learned a great deal about what is “heard” and what is “True” these last few years. Almost everything “heard” is not true. Actually everything “heard” is not true. But you know the trick about words. There are words that Point towards what is True. So it has come up a few times to write in here about Kendrick Lamar’s album: DAMN. I have seen it two times now at the record store, but it is $30 so the odds are I won’t get it anytime soon, but I did listen to it again on Spotify and it is so good. So very good. He is a genius. The album DAMN is genius. It ranks as the number one album for me this year. It is a story. It is an album you want to hear all at once, which is what records are for, basically. Records are so you can sit down and really HEAR a good Album. I love the space between songs on a record. You get that short pause before the next song comes on. It’s like a palate cleaning for the ears, for the entire body. Michael Jackson’s THRILLER is next on the list. I never got to meet him, but would have liked to. I had pictures of him on my bedroom wall when I was 13. He had on a yellow, baby yellow outfit and looked so handsome. I would also like to have in the collection WHITNEY HOUSTON, ANITA BAKER and SADE. Just one album of each of their music. Whitney’s first one with SAVING ALL MY LOVE FOR YOU on it and ANITA’s RAPTURE I Think that is what it was called, RAPTURE OF LOVE? And SADE’S the one with SMOOTH OPERATOR on it and then of course KENDRICK LAMAR. Eventually a good one of BOB DYLAN and one PINK FLOYD and of course one from YANNI. Lastly two from FRANK OCEAN both ORANGE and BLONDE. Oh boy the list keeps growing but there is not a want for a large collection. Just one’s of music that has left an imprint and also has a story to tell. Records where when the mood strikes you … you sit down and give it your time. *** Almost passed out tonight. Stood up a bit too fast but not enough to do what it did. It is a bit intimidating because there is nothing going on that would have caused it. There have been some slight heart palpations lately, but nothing that would lead to fainting and it was very close to completely passing out. But didn’t. So that is good. There is food in the body but maybe lack of sleep. I don’t know what to do about it. There is just not good sleep right now. I don’t know if lack of sleep can make you pass out, but I am too tired right now to check and hopefully will get some rest. The body is tired but the mind is so freaking hyper alert grrrrrrr! *** Best movie seen this year: MOONLIGHT (Barry Jenkins) It is a very raw, brilliantly done film on the destruction of innocence. It starts out real slow … you don’t realize the magnificence of the Artistry almost until the very end, which makes you want to immediately rewatch it to see all that is missed while underrating the film. I wish I had seen it on the BIG SCREEN! It’s so casual, that you almost miss that that is the HUGE and amazingly genius of it. It is in the intimate moments, the intimate wordless moments that so much is revealed and said! It’s a movie you will want to watch as if you are sitting down to listen to a good album, a favorite record, because that is what it is … a record of one man’s life and struggle in such a way that it slowly and deliberately breaks your Heart, intimately breaks your heart and offers understanding, a glimpse into what so many, self included, judge without any knowing of what they are judging. It is not a woe-is-me film even though you sit there wanting to rescue, make a change, do something! And Trevante Rhodes … all I can say is D-A-M-N! Yummy … yummy … yummers! What a perfect actor for the part and the younger versions of “Little” and “Black” are so well done by these young men with such depth to them. If you think you need words in life, this movie will reveal how wrong you are. Oh boy Trevante is only 27! He looks so grown! Yum he is right up my alley! If I had an alley! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevante_Rhodes He also was in the following: After graduation, Rhodes moved to Los Angeles and immediately began working as an actor, playing supporting roles in the Terrence Malick film Song to Song, the Nacho Vigalondo film Open Windows opposite Elijah Wood, the Eddie O’Keefe film Shangri-La Suite and the Matt Jones / Dave Hill film The Night Is Young. Trevante played the role of 'Ramsey' in the Tyler Perry / OWN series If Loving You Is Wrong. His television credits include the Fox series Gang Related and the HBO series Westworld. Even Westworld … I don’t remember him from that. A Texas boy too! Oh and that G-R-I-L-L they have him wearing at the end is so damn perfect! Art! What a fucking amazing piece of Art this film is! I so rarely see a good film anymore, not one that really hits hard and on so many levels like this one has that I am probably am a bit over the top on it right now. However there have been some really good ones … not ones that hit the nail on the head like this but: Bridge of Lies (Spielberg) Hated Eight (Tarantino) The Man Who Invented Christmas Are a few that felt like time was not wasted … usually I turn off a film within the first half hour nowadays just not to waste time on garbage or mediocre. *** Am sort of amp’t up right now. These last few months have been some of the worst “happy” times one can recall. I keep writing it off as “that time of year” because usually deep depression sets in around now, but it doesn’t feel like depression … a lot of anger and angst and so much paranoia. I hate staying in and hate going out. It’s awful. An Unwritten Life12/29/2017 AN UNWRITTEN LIFE 2017 11.25 - In THE LAST LION: WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL VOLUME 1: VISONS OF GLORY 1874-1932 his peers at that time were publishing: Virginia Wolf: TO THE LIGHTHOUSE D.H. Lawrence: LADY CHATTERLY’S LOVER Travelone(sp?): HISTORY OF ENGLAND Evelyn War(sp?): DECLINE AND FALL A.A. Milne: WINNEY THE POOH - MOTHER INDIA How strange that there is a book … one that Winston quite liked (seemingly) titled “Mother India” it is probably not strange to you but it is to me because I have always thought of India as my mother … the Mother land … America the Masculine Father and India the Sacred Mother, even wrote a short story titled: My Father (America) is killing my Mother (India) It was a very real seeing at the time. *** 2017 11.26 - It’s rained nearly all night and well into the late morning/afternoon … the wind even howling at times. Mikel … myMikel … I don’t even know if you like the rain or the sound of the wind. I have tried not to make this a day about all the ways I failed you … it’s been quite a challenge in that regard. At around 3-4am the wind really started howling but could not get this body to go outside … which is strange because it is usually around that time that I go out for a walk … it was shortly after that I realized this is the time you were born … 31 years ago … on the east coast … which would have been 6-7am. You were such a beautiful baby … almost all mothers say that but you really were. You changed everything about the world for me with that young life filled body. I couldn’t have loved you more and this is true even now … even after all of the failure it is always Love that makes me see it. It is how deeply and completely I Love/loved you that I see how deeply and completely I failed you. Again I digress. The other night an ad came through for a vintage record player … it was even in turquoise of all colors :o) and the fingers clicked the button and bought it … it seemed so strange because I have had no inclination for a record player … in fact I have not a single record to even play on it. It came in the mail today … your Birthday … how funny and strange that they deliver on a Sunday. I do wonder if it is yours … if you had these hands buy it so you could listen to music you want to hear through these ears now. I don’t know. I went to the record store yesterday and all the vinyl albums are way out of this pocketbooks price range and so many trees must die just to wrap them … but maybe you have something else in store … it kept coming up that “used” would be the way to go … so maybe there is some kind of used album trading thing out there. No matter how often I go over it in the head I can’t see that I would have found a way to “see” you while you were alive … you were so layered with the lies of this mind. There was layer after layer of thought that you were just like me and if you are like me then it is hopeless. I had hope for Tyler … because he escaped me … he wasn’t subject to the mad ups and downs of my person … he was … but not on a daily basis thanks to military school. But you didn’t escape and in fact you were with me at some of the worst and at a time that you really could have used stability. I never gave you any except my Heart … the Heart … I know without a doubt or thought that you knew you were/are Loved. I didn’t not love you because of the way I saw you I just didn’t believe I could help you in anyway without dragging myself down. Things have changed so much since you died and it’s been such a short time but I now know how wrong I was. There have been deep trenches dug in this Heart this year and I sense that there has been Healing between you and I. I don’t feel your anger so strongly … in a sense I feel your compassion for me and mine for you. You were never really a son … you were a best friend and a brother … one that I took for granted and sometimes vice-versa. Erlinda seems to be doing fairly well. Her hair is green again but it looks very good on her. I can see how you fell in Love with her … she seems very easy to fall for. She also seems a lot like you … a RebelYell … which I hope you always heard as a compliment … my calling you RebelYell … I meant it as a compliment. *** You think your rage is justified when your expectations are not met; yet it is the expectations themselves that create the rage. Get away from me. I am sick of your justified anger. *** Anne Sexton on editing one of her poems: “It is kind of like sandpapering a sunburn, but I am doing it.” (Page 57, Letters) :o))) *** From Anne Sexton, page 60: “People who belong together; do not need to be glued together.” That is a beautiful way of saying it. It was supposedly said by Freud while on his death bed. Repeating the repetition here. :o) *** Yesterday two dreams were had, actually there were quite a number of dreams but only two were clearly remembered … one was of coming home to The Decompression Chamber and finding it had been robbed. It was very disappointing. The other was of making out with my first husband Brian. It was noteworthy only in that I don’t recall ever dreaming of him before and also it was Mikel’s actual Birthday and Brian sort of played the fatherly role for Mikel from ages 3 to 7. I didn’t wish to get up and write any of it down yesterday … there was a mental push to do it but no energy or impetus to actually get up. However, it kept coming up today to at least jot it down that they were had. *** 2017 11.29 - Internally or externally:: "Who speaks over The Silent Still Voice of God?" This has been coming up for months, especially after smoking a bowl or eating some oil (which by the way the oil … which had been forgotten about for months … is fucking intense!). About 30-45 minutes after ingesting the whole world changes and it’s like: “What the hell is going on?” And it comes up: “The oil!” And I am utterly surprised because I will think I haven’t taken anything because it doesn’t seem like you do when you eat oil. It is a very strange thing when it comes up: "Who speaks over The Silent Still Voice of God?" It is as if the mind/thoughts go: Eeeeek! Because it is momentarily seen what they are doing, what thoughts or words actually do … they actually speak over: The Silent Still Voice of God. It seems such Arrogance! Bigger than Arrogance. And you want to put a hand over it’s mouth, but there is no hand! No mouth! It is a very strange thing, especially with Cannabis because the sound can be quite deafening. Both the non-sound of Stillness and the massive sound of thought. It also can make for a bit of paranoia but no more or less than what is usually had. The strangest part is not being able to do anything about it. It makes you want to stop thinking, but you can’t you simply see that they are rather obnoxiously blunting out or clouding over or screaming over: The Silent Still Voice of God. About the WriterI am not who I think I am and neither are you. That is the Good News. Archives
February 2018
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