Abbreviated Language

First of all, it is NOT cute that you shorten the word vacation to "vaca."  "Delish" is a word that seems less likely to describe a tasty treat than to signify a level of socially superior exclusion.  I know, our language is being abbreviated due to the effect of social media on the ways we communicate.  I get it.  We are all so busy nowadays that it is a challenge to utter a word more than a couple of syllables long.  Rushing around, paying bills, working, practicing, studying, eating, sleeping, bathing, all the activities we must include in our daily routines, make the importance of using language properly fall on the level of something like mailing a letter to your great aunt or picking up litter on the side of a highway.  No offense to those who actually write letters to their great aunts, I'm sure your efforts bring comfort.  And forget about the trash.

Language evolves, I get that.  I also understand when Derrida explained how written language, if not completely privileged over oral, is at least AS important.  (I mean, if we all went around saying SMH or LOL in our conversations, we would come across as being one stick away from a boomerang).  That is sort of what he was getting at when he coined the term différance, to show how a word that is read can hold meaning in a way that it cannot if simply heard. Consider "there, they're, their" or "its, it's" or "your, you're" and you'll have an idea of spoken vs. written communication.

There is a reason we shorten our language, and there is a lot to be said for economy.  Only shortening words like "brilliance" to "brills" and "fabulous" to "fabu" does something to our culture that pushes us closer to the abyss of cutesie than towards the realm of substance.  It also means that if you systematically replace whole words with approximations, the odds are that you are a snob.  It is one thing to quickly tweet a message where you say "prof" instead of "professor" or "info" instead of "information" as it shortens the character count and allows your complete idea to be unimpeded.  It is an entirely different matter when you're speaking with your pal and brag about how you picked up some great "merch" when you visited the brewery.

I'm not sure I can explain how "ridic" it is that we abbreviate some words.  When I hear certain shortcuts, I immediately cringe as if someone has inserted a chalkboard into my soul.  I am not opposed to the idea of making our language more fluid and expressive.  Rather, it is an attitude that is attached to the process of shortening. We are so infatuated with our quickness and cleverness when we use such terms, that our self-satisfaction supersedes our good sense.  It is one thing to grow up in a culture where terms are learned and used, quite another to denigrate them intentionally because they sound hip or slick.  It is not going to stop and my disdain will only serve to keep me agitated.  Still, something must be said about how important our language is to our lives, and how by slaughtering it, we slaughter a little bit of ourselves.  Just imagine every time someone says "delish" somewhere in the fabric of space/time, a rupture opens and something like ice cream disappears.  It could happen.

I do wonder why I think it is okay to say "prof" and "info" but not "marvy" or "presh."  It is all a matter of personal taste I suppose.  I can understand why someone would enjoy getting  a "mani-pedi" or goes to the "fridge."  I know that in kitchens, asking what the "temp" is on that steak is commonplace.  There are some words that easily lend themselves to abbreviation.  I feel like I should be composing a defense of all words and how they are used, how it is okay because it follows the line of short attention spans, how language is beautiful no matter how it evolves.  Language is the single most important tool developed by humanity and it serves us in extraordinary ways.  Maybe I should stop right here and rejoice in the fact that I can even communicate at all.  I C it will never change and it comes across as if I'm a H8er.  MayB I M, N this particular context.

Where has Poetry Gone?

As I consider graduate schools, and whether I have what it takes to make it in or not, I return to a consideration that has been bugging me lately.  What has become of poetry?  Is it enough nowadays to have some kind of experience and exalt that experience through word placement in verse?  A lot of poems read like prose and have the feel of narrative.  Because the nature of popular poetry has moved into a realm of self-revelation, there are more and more poems being published that lack any formal use of poetic convention, like simile, metaphor, conceit, personification, metonymy, synechdoche...you get the picture.  Now, it's okay to see a sunrise and talk about how many colors there were on that cold winter morning while you pine over lost love and the emptiness that seems to capture the sky.  Okay, maybe there is a bit of convention involved in some places, but it seems like the craft of poetry has become more concerned with eliminating the use of articles and stumping the speech with jerky lines of sudden images than with developing a sense of poetic interaction with an object.  Maybe it is because our emotions are so limited and shared that poetry has burned out.  Maybe it is because there are only so many ways to approach the big themes, and the smaller ones don't seem to have much weight.

The various poetic movements that have arisen through history had a sense of intentional cohesion.  If you go postmodern, you are accused of attempting to undermine the establishment.  If you mimic other forms, you are accused of being unoriginal.  It is a fine line between breathing and spitting.  Haiku has a simplicity that transcends the simple.  Long modern poetry has a complexity that challenges the ways our minds work.  Too many times I have attended poetry readings where we are offered a slight glimpse into a new world, only to find by the end, that it's the same exact world we've been lumbering through already.  It's not a matter of seeing anything new as much as it is about establishing relationships.  Relationship has replaced technique.  I'd prefer to read a rhyming poem set in iambic pentameter about a snail on a stump than I would to read about another person's failed attempt to make things right in a love affair, only to find it never could have been because it wasn't.  I understand the necessity of capturing a spontaneous moment, and revising it through a process of subtle contemplation and craft.  And if you must reveal your disappointment, please consider something fresh, like conjuring metaphors from stacks of aluminum cans, or how advertising drowns out your voice every time you said "i love you."

I am student of poetry.  I embrace the spirit.  I see the value of the verse form and how effective it can be when exploring the vastness of life.  Yet, the world has filled with self-congratulatory expositions of the creative process.  You get into the right circle, then you're guaranteed an audience that will gush over your witticisms and honesty.  It's so challenging to get out of our own heads that it seems like it may never occur again.  We need a new poetic movement that embraces the passion of the Romantics and slams it into the pastiche of postmodernism.  It is not necessary to create something so abstract that you need an inside tip to decipher the riddle.  Rather it is a necessity that poetry pushes through its current stagnation.  Some people are better teachers of what poetry should be than writers of anything.  Some people are so straight-forward that it's impossible to figure out why a work is a poem and not a broken up paragraph.

Maybe I am bitter because I see young poets giving it their all, seeking recognition and being denied because all the journals are filled by fame.  Once you have a voice in the world of poetry, you can write about dog food drying on a board, and stop right there.  There should be an acknowledgement of something beyond that connects us to other things below.  There should be a recognition that transcends the mundane relationship of "oh yeah I've been there too."  I want poetry to reveal the mystery, and show me so many different aspects of it.  I want poetry to excite me and lead me to an awareness where even the most insignificant event achieves relevance.  I want poetry to lead me into the heart of love without pulling me through sentimental sludge.

We've all imagined another way of life other than our own.  We've all seen something that has startled us and has taken us out of our own sphere of understanding, even if for a brief moment.  We are surrounded by an abundance of potential, and until the voice of mainstream poetry changes, we are going to be stuck with the same old thing about the same old thing.

The Light of Hurricane Katrina

Though I was terrified as the brutal storm slammed the land, I found shelter through many things,

A likeness of Ganesha, a small piece of jade, candles on the mantle, a small battery powered radio and The hiss of AM, and me pacing in circles and talking to God,

I proclaimed my appreciation for the many things of the world, the cracked corporate conspiracies,

The hearts of secretive politicians, all the systems how perfectly intertwined, the laws of nature

As expressed through a furious deluge, everything in sync and acknowledged as I walked and spoke Aloud, grasping the perfection of the world as if it were my last day.

I watched the storm from different vantages, from the window in the living room,

Where outside the rain seemed less like water than sheets of ice slanting onto the asphalt,

Where the wind roared as it bent and snapped tree limbs and trunks throughout the neighborhood.

I stood in the screened-in back porch and gazed at the huge sycamore that stood in the middle

Of the yard.  I watched the planks of the wooden fence shudder under the force of wind,

Certain that at any moment they would dislodge and seek the façade of the house

Like spears chucked by an angry storm as she displayed her power and her fury.

I held the piece of jade tightly in my fist, seeking the symbolic protective force of a stone,

Rubbing it with my thumb as I continued my conversation with eternity. 

I studied the picture of Ganesha with his blue elephant head and regal robes, his broken tusk that

He had hurled at the moon along with the curse of darkness until he was convinced

To restore the light to the celestial sphere.  I meditated about breathing and attempted Zazen

While the crash of objects being forced into direction and movement echoed through the room.

I napped briefly on the couch to conserve my strength and when I awoke,

I was surprised by the flickering candles’ reflections on the surface of water

That had begun to fill the house as I had slept.  Disoriented, when I touched what I imagined

A dream, the ripples extended to the corners of the room and the candlelight distorted. 

I gathered my things, recent journals, a wallet with identification and money,

The hard drive I had removed from my computer, upon which was recorded my recent efforts

At writing a novel, extra clothing, a compact pillow, and a quilt

My conversation melted into silence as I clicked on the black flashlight, found my way

To the attic over the garage, and cowered in fear as the haunting tornadoes sounded

Through the distance. I wrote in my journal by candlelight and sipped from a pint of bourbon,

I noted the sounds, described the way I tripped over a fallen tree limb as I maneuvered

Through the flooded yard, how my clothing was drenched, how the coldness seemed

To wrap around me more out of solace than out of disdain.  When I had exhausted my strength,

I blew out the candles and slipped into the realm of dreams. 

I slept until the storm abated, and climbed down from my sanctuary.

Outside, the night sky opened up and stars thickly filled the distance as if they had all

Been constructed by one sliver of light and interconnected.  I surveyed the yard, the flood water

Three feet high and filled with toxicity.   I looked at the small crepe myrtle bush,

On whose flexible limb I had secured a bright red hummingbird feeder using a small wire tie.

In awe, I noticed it still hung, though scarcely secured against something like a storm,

And it became another symbol that had protected me

From the terror of a life threatening storm, and the possibilities of unwise decisions.

I had been spared through a process of gratitude, superstition, and reverence

As I waded into the neighborhood, certain I was alive.

Overcome Toxicity

The first toxic friendship I can remember occurred when I was in my early teens.  Through the peer pressure of a fearless kid named Randy, I followed his example through many underhanded adventures.  One time we threw eggs at a kid's house and ran like hell.  I liked the kid whose house we bombarded, yet I still persisted in overcoming my personal opinion and pelted the front door with a couple of eggs.  Why did I do it?  Ironically it was because Randy had a vendetta against Will, the kid whose house we egged.  He thought Will was too smart and a show off, though in reality he was just a soft-spoken kid who liked to read.  We also stole beer from our parents, snuck out of the house late at night, spent weekends on Dauphin Island without a word to anyone, stole wood from the neighboring subdivision as it was being constructed, made fun of everyone, skipped school, and performed many acts of mumbo jumbo with toilet paper and eggs.  Most of these activities, I would have never considered had I not been influenced by the encouragement of Randy.  We all do things while growing up that appall us later in life, but most kids manage to behave within some level-headed boundaries.  Randy knew no boundaries, and had I not moved away before my junior year of high school, I may have ended up in junvenile detention with him.

Through the years, I  moved around and met many people.  Most I got along with and enjoyed learning about.  The few I met where I felt no promise of friendship, we simply parted ways and didn't associate anymore.  Occassionally I butted heads with others over whether lamb shanks should be braised or if the Vols had a chance against the Crimson Tide.  Opinionated disagreements usually ended up diffused and at the end of the night  we sat around like old chums, sharing beers and stories from the kitchen line.  We solved our problems by accepting each other's individuality and differences of opinion.  It was simple and effective.  Toxicity was the last thing we wanted in our environment.

I had not even considered the idea of toxic friendships until recently when a friend shared an article with me.  It was one of those "how to clean up your life" type articles, and it made sense.  One of the signs of a toxic relationship is when you lose a sense of confidence when you associate with someone you think is close to you.  Usually it is accentuated by criticism they claim is to help you become a better person.  Another sign is when you acheive something, they are quick to point out how self-centered you must be to revel in your accomplishment.  They accuse you of narcissism, mental illness, lack of empathy, closed-mindedness, or ineptitude.  All of this under the premise that they value your friendship and want to work through issues.  You endure it because you have invested time and energy into the relationship and quite possibly have even developed a level of pseudo-trust to where their words affect your emotional state.  You never consider any of it as a projection of their insecurities.  It all seems like it really is your fault and you must change or else you'll never be successful.  Another sign of toxicity in "friendship" is when you are expected to put someone else's priorities over your own.  If you don't take time out of your busy day to interject your sympathy and indentification into their personal struggles, you are branded as an egotistical child who will never understand the real world because you lack humility, compassion, insight, and depth of character.

I have never claimed to be some transcendent creature forged from the realm of enlightenment, but I do recognize my capacity to love and I work on developing awareness of how I could change to be better at communicating, better at listening, and better at indentifying with others.  I am aware of how I have messed up in life and when my decisions have been selfish and misguided.  I accept responsibility for my actions and I make honest efforts to ensure I am more careful.  Regardless of my shortcomings, a true friend would be more inclined to clue me in to how I am messing up in life by telling me how I have disappointed them, instead of waging a character attack.  A true friend would step up, question my motives, and point out how my actions are self-defeating, instead of attempting to defeat me through criticism and disdain.  Even if a friend only gets in touch once in a while and it comes from a sincere place, it is far more valuable than being bombed by myopic vilification.

The articles all say that it's best to remove those elements from your life if you want to clean house and feel peace of mind.  There are people in our lives who support us and feel a sense of vicarious pride in our achievements.  They nurture us, build us, and do their best to share our burdens.  I choose to focus on those aspects of my life and say goodbye to the voices that always bring me down.  Though I haven't met many Randys in my life, I am able to see the few that I have set me back in egregiously destructive ways.  The next time a voice in your life tells you how worthless you are for whatever reason, kindly snuff it out and focus on where you intend to be.  Don't give too much life to it or it will reverberate in your head every time you must make a clear decision. Even if all those things really are wrong with you,  they can be fixed.  Odds are you are just fine, but fix it all anyway to the point where that voice  has no fuel and grows quiet as it sinks into the deep dark mist of the past.  Disconnect yourself from such toxicity.  You'll feel lighter in your spirit, and then you can spend time with the people who really do care.

Techno-dreams and the Fear of Falling

I remember when I was five-years-old my dad gave me a slide rule.  I was still in the phase of enjoying pursuits like fingerpainting and playing "pretend like" but when I look back on that gesture, I become aware of how necessary it must have seemed for me to learn how to use the device to engage the world with a firm commitment to aviation, finance, or engineering.  It was 1974 and the slide rule was on its way out because the electronic calculator had taken over.  Maybe because I was only sparsely mediocre in mathematics or maybe because I was still caught up in Aesop's Fables, I never developed an interest in the slide rule.  Thank god the world devised electronic calculators.  Now I had another instrument to fascinate me while I neglected to learn its true uses.  It was too much fun punching out 7734 and turning it upside down to reveal "HELL" on the display.

Now, those days are far behind me.  I've forgotten how to use a calculator except for the simplest of tasks.  I've learned how to use a computer well enough to get around in word processing programs or virtual worlds.  I have a deep appreciation for the freedom of mobility that cars grant to us, but I also maintain this deep-seeded fear of the devastation that collisions can cause.  I have always been fascinated by technology yet secretly suspect of the REAL influence it has over consciousness and the way it seems to outpace my comprehension of the world around me.

No longer do we use technology only as a tool to perform a task.  It has become integrated with the center of our existence.  I fly around Second Life without a remote sensation of flying, yet when I stand on a high surface in the virtual environment, I get a bit queazy to my stomach.  The feeling is real and yet I am sitting on a chair, looking at a computer screen.  I feel as if I may fall, and even if i do, I'll just bounce off the ground, dust off my shoulders, and fly away.  Still, the fear of the process of falling is visceral and sharp.  This is what technology does to me.  It tantalizes me with the joy and beauty of freedom and quickness.  Then it sends me into a dramatic tailspin, down, down, down, through the depths of my mind.  I experience the same feelings when I dream.

When we turn away from technology it is like we awaken from a dream.  What we considered the real world during our engagement has slipped away and has been replaced by the other reality.  Only the reality is not the objective reality of things and ideas, it is a reality of introversion and denial.  While engaged with technology, as with dreaming, our minds focus on the images of now.  We are not really worried about how we look or what people will think.  We use the tools to fixate on tasks, we dream images regardless of whether people will find out.  When we wake up from either state of engagement, we are confronted with our notions of reality and become self-critical, competitive and flooded.

Psychological speculation has always intrigued me and I've been sucked into a lot of it from Freud to Jung, Perl to Skinner, Lacan to Zizek.  Each time I read anything psychological, I start looking at my mind as the construct shaped by what others have defined.  I enjoy it.  I like to wake up into my dreams, fully unaware of where I'm going.  The same when I wake up into Second Life and teleport to a poetry reading or art exhibit.  I like how books have shaped my perception of reality, and how the voices of thinkers have influenced me to see the world around me as both fantasy and form.  I imagine I'll continue to redefine my neuroses and contemplate my ego-involvement with the fabricated universe.  We all agree that the ground upon which we stand is REAL as we look to the sky and see forever, God, azure, stars, or ourselves.  All the while, the ground waits to swallow up our bodies, and we only feel that reality when we are unaware of feeling at all.

I've Returned!

It has been a while since I have updated my blog.  Mainly because I've been focusing on school and other projects.  We successfully launched the latest issue of Homespun, Tennessee Tech's literary journal.  I was designated editor-in-chief and we managed to coordinate effectively and launch the journal online this summer.  We have plans to include more multimedia and we will network with other departments to request art like music, videos of theater and open mics, photos, digital art, and anything else that would make Homespun more engaging. 

I have been bellyaching over my novel, American Zen and the Noise of Fusion, for years now.  It doesn't seem right.  I feel like it's a good story and if reworked effectively, it can become a great story.  I printed out a hardcopy to mark-up, so I'll see how it goes.  I am also revising my current collection of poetry, Dragonfly Satori.  I will be uploading the revised version soon, so this one will soon be obsolete.

The last couple of days I have been exploring social networks with more attention than usual.  It's not because I don't trust social media, it's that I don't really understand it.  I know for months I've been getting linkedin requests and haven't even considered how to use it.  Pinterest baffled me for a bit, but one day I found a bunch of beautiful pictures and started clicking away.  I even used twitter for more than test messages today to praise our women's soccer team for their victory over Columbia. 

So, there is news about a possible spoken word collaboration in Second Life between Winston Dufaux and Alexi Ayers.  Alexi runs the Singularity Tribe website and sim and she puts together some amazing music collages.  If you're ever in Second Life, you can catch a show on Saturday nights at 10 SLT, Second Life Time is the Pacific Time Zone.  Here's a glimpse:

A Mountain is a Mountain.

Regardless of which side of the debate you prefer to straddle, there is one constant among all belief systems.  Faith is required in order to pursue any relationship with that which is beyond all comprehension.  We strive to understand the nature of this phenomenon and in the end, the only proof for any of it is what is told to us by that part of our brain we call our heart.  The concept of flux is ever apparent.  Even as I type everything around me changes in subtle yet persistent ways.  Though I cannot see it directly, I am aware of the process.  The idea of having an inherent understanding of things as they are is most apparent before we utilize symbols to express those things.  So we arrive at Zen again:

Mu is a term in Zen that is used to describe "emptiness " or "nothingness." This is what a zen practitioner hopes to attain and realize. The universe is in a constant flux of change. Nothing ever remains unchanged. As long as we continue to desire we will always be suffering. If one wishes not to suffer, desire must be cut-off from one's life. Physically, all sentient beings suffer with birth, illness, old age, and death. The whole body-mind complex is in a state of suffering.

And though desire lies at the root, and dissapointment is the byproduct of expectation, there is professed a systematic movement towards something more. Alleviation from suffering is the goal of enlightenment.  All sentient beings suffer and as a result, the cycle must be transmuted into something else in order for the chain to be broken.   Through realization it is as such:

        Before one studies Zen, a mountain is a mountain.

        Once one attains insights, a mountain is not a mountain.

        When one really understands, a mountain is a mountain.

Winston Dufaux has on display in the Ionic Collective, that postmodern fragment of the metaverse Second Life, a small collection of his short poetry.  Not quite haiku but strangely similar in tone.  When you approach the gallery (which is nestled sweetly underneath a lake, behind the main stage) the lights from within appear to glow as if emanating from luminescent apparitions.  It all depends on how you belief.  The lights could be lights.  They could be virtual representations of what lights could be.  They could be voices as if from dreams, as if who placed them there dreamt them and was inspired.  Again, I would like to mention the band Engrama, because they deserve it.  Winston hopes to read his poems aloud while accompanied by Pupito on guitar.  This may happen tomorrow if the cards fall in the right manner.  Noom, the assertive and helpful sim manager (who actually lives in Portugal) made some nice backdrops for the poetry.  She is the one who will ensure that Winston actually commits to this endeavour. 

In the spirit of Portugal, for not much is spoken of Portuguese cuisine, I would like to direct you to Mize's blog, where you'll find and interesting and diverse collection of recipes.  Of note, there is not always a complicated path on the road to delicious food preparation.  So yes, things connect in a seemingly random fashion, but strip away preconceptions and it all seems like one small chain in the realm of existence.  Isolate the event, and the magic is in the fact that it even occurred in the first place.  Do people really think it is clever to say It seems like Déjà vu all over again.  Oh, I think I had this Déjà vu before!  Shrugs.

So continues this dance between the virtual and the actual, between the imaginative and the concrete.  Winston, a talking mime, and me an omniscient third person narrator.  Depending on perception, maybe I am the mime without a body who only has printed words to convey my performance.  I remember one of my first dreams, I was three years old.  There was a variegated aluminum building.  Slate blue.  At the upper right hand corner there was a circle within which a man and woman sang "It's a Small World."  I have always been a prolific dreamer, and have taught myself to remember more dreams than most people (as far as I've been told) and the other night I dreamt I won $15000.  No biggie, it is because money is always a worry.  Just like seeing a small world when you are three is not a big deal.  Whether my dreams contain some key into reading the nature of reality, I can not readily proclaim.  What I can say is that my mind does present some curious symbolism through dreams, and if i look closely enough, from a heart filled with silence, every once in a while, I see a mountain once more.