To muse, to dream, to ponder

I like connecting. When I was at Grinnell, I even had a notesboard called Connections, where people would have kind of "personal classifieds". Most posts went under the "looking for friends to do [something]" headings, though once in a while we did get the occasional brave soul who put out a romantic ad.

Language, for me, is my way of connecting with the larger world. I've come to realize that verbalizing, writing, singing... these are direct ways that I interact with the world at large. I've been in love with the English language for quite some time now; one could even say it has been my longest lasting love affair in my entire lifetime. For language, I have an unconditional love. I am a poet; a grammarian; a fretful, perfectionistic speller; an editor; an author; an alto.

My music choices reflected how "non-ordinary" my intellectual pursuits were. Not only did I enjoy the classic '70s black music sound offered by my parents' musical libraries, I sought out new musical choices. For some reason, the epitome of that was my infatuation with Cum on Feel the Noize when I was in third grade. That was my favorite song, and only one radio station in Detroit played it: 96.3 FM. They played a lot of music the stations my family usually to didn't. So I extended my personal musical ear, and in the end (or, rather, the present) I have been rewarded.

Since dating first Corey, and now F, I see now what commonalities exist where "white" music and "black" music intersect. I'd been aware of earlier examples; I was already well-versed in how black gospel music at the turn of the 20th century had influences on many different genres in the '20s, '30s, and '40s. (Let me never say my American Studies major was worthless, or was not worth the price of the education.) But I didn't personally know any modern common points (not simply individual "crossover" songs)... until I allowed myself to listen to the Beatles.

F says that it's only a matter of time until I learn to have an appreciation for Elvis's music. A part of me considers him a con man, because his earliest big hit, "Hound Dog", was a direct cover of a song someone else had already sung. [At the moment, the singer's name has escaped me. But she was a large, black woman, that much I know!] His style had been done before; just not before large numbers of white audiences.

I appreciate Elvis for doing something that blacks alone could not do: make hip gyrations on television be considered not-evil. Like the suffrage and anti-slavery movements in the nineteenth centuries, wider American society was not ready to accept cultural change until someone white and/or male stepped into the fray and was ready to accept condemnation for espousing certain beliefs or behaviors. Who cared that a slave wanted freedom? From the slaveowner's point of view, that's only a natural feeling for a slave to have. No one cared until a white person was willing to sacrifice his or her position in American society in order to advance his or her ideals.

We have scared the revolutionary within us into silence. There are just not enough people who challenge the status quo anymore. We as Americans are scared to question the current order. We accept things as they are given to us. We are instantly patriotic when the occasion calls. We instinctively evoke a sense of duty and pride in nationalistic borders and nationalistic ideas. How do we do this? This is an amazing display of subconscious human will, that we as people are able to do this simply out of the blue, with no conscious effort. But what is patriotism? Why is it desirable? As we focus on our patriotism, what remains in that unavoidable blind spot we've created for ourselves?

(Make no mistake about it; a war on terrorism is a terroristic war in and of itself.)

We as Americans have been taught to ingest daily forms of entertainment (and, as George Carlin said years ago, the news is a form of entertainment), and to not argue when it comes to "big matters". We have been taught to accept it whenever our individual freedoms are incrementally taken away and sold to the government (or whomever else may be occupying a similar position of power). That the Constitution of the United States is now a legal document to "get around" instead of "comply with" shows that the spirit of the country runs counter to the Geist of the American Revolution.

I am an American. Of this, I feel incredibly lucky, blessed, and thankful. At the same time, I feel that I cannot rest of my laurels and enjoy this land while it still has so much further to go before it truly reflects the spirit in which the documents of its founding were written. I am an activist because I am an American. When I protest against war, I am not protesting against the actions of the United States as a country. I am protesting actions that are counter to peace. Violence is inherently counter to peace. I sincerely believe that we could all collectively awaken and agree to global peace. But we, right now, still cling too tightly to the comforts of a border-enforced system. We like nationalism. We like being able to be isolationists. Americans in particular like being the only economic superpower in the world. We are inherently comfort creatures. We know that without the capitalistic system, we would be exponentially less comfortable than we are now.

What do humans require to flourish? Nourishment, security, love; and these concepts' opposites: deprivation, insecurity, fear. These elements of experientialism spark progress in the human creature; these yins and yangs provide him with the dualistic forces of maturation. In return, maturation allows the human to manipulate these elements as the instruments as well as the music they create; the human creature learns to use these six concepts in order to navigate through life. He does this by intuitively effecting dynamic balance, using his being to turn the cyclic spin of each yin/yang.

Necking

from The Wellspring, by Sharon Olds. 1995.

I remember the Arabic numerals on the dashboards,
aquarium green, like the paintbrush tips
the watch-girls licked, licking the radium--
we were there above the Cyclotron,
in the hills, the Rad Lab under us
enclosed in its cyclone fence. The interiors
of the cars were shaped like soft flanks,
the cloth front seats plump as some mothers'
laps. I remember the beauty of the night,
the crisp weightless blackness, the air
that rose up the slope straight from the sea,
from Seal Rock--we slid slowly
along each other. Berkeley, below,
without my glasses, was like a bottom
drawer of smeared light. The rape
and murder of our classmate had happened in these hills,
so the fragrance of the dirt, porous and mineral,
--eucalyptus and redwood humus--
that had buried her body, was there with sex,
and one gleam down there was the doughnut shop
where he had picked her up--as if the intimate
pleasure of eating doughnuts, now,
for all of us, were to bear his mark.
And the easy touch of the four thousand volts,
that was in the car with us
with everything else--the rivets in boys' jeans,
their soldered clothes, the way they carried
the longing of the species, you could not help but pity them
as they set you on stunned fire. I would almost
pass out, my body made of some other
substance, my eyes open in the green darkness
of some other planet. And in some other
car, on some other skirt of the mountain,
a boy I secretly adored. I remember
how it felt, eyes closed, kissing,
streaming through the night, sealed in a capsule
with the wrong person. But the place was right,
mountains on my left hand,
sea on my right, I felt someday I might find him,
proton electron we would hit and stick and
meanwhile there were the stars, and the careful not
looking at or touching the boy's pants,
and my glasses, wings folded, stuck
in a pocket. I can here the loud snap
when we leaned on them and they broke, we drove down the
hill, the porch-lamp blazed, I would enter
below its blurred gem, it seemed
endless then, the apprenticeship to the mortal.

First

from The Wellspring, by Sharon Olds. 1995.

He stood in the sulphur baths, his calves
against the stone rim of the pool
where his half-full glass of scotch stood, his
shins wavering in the water, his torso
looming over me, huge, in the night,
a grown-up man's body, softer and
warmer with the clothes off--I was a sophomore
at college, at the baths with a naked man,
a writer, married, a father, widowed,
remarried, separated, unreadable, and when I
said No, I was sorry, I couldn't,
he had invented this, rising and dipping
in the heavy sodium water, giving me
his body to suck. I had not heard
of this, I was moved by his innocence and daring,
I went to him like a baby who's been crying
for hours for milk. He stood and moaned
and rocked his knees, I felt I knew
what his body wanted me to do, like rubbing
my mother's back, receiving directions
from her want into the nerves of my hands.
In the smell of the trees of seaweed rooted in
ocean trenches just offshore,
and the mineral liquid from inside the mountain,
I gave over to flesh like church music
until he drew out and held himself and
something flew past me like a fresh ghost.
We sank into the water, and lay there, napes
on the rim. I've never done that before,
I said. His eyes not visible
to me, his voice muffled, he said, You've been
sucking cock since you were fourteen,
and fell asleep. I stayed beside him
so he wouldn't go under, he snored like my father, I
tried not to think about what he had said,
but then I saw, in it, the unmeant
gift--that I was good at this
raw mystery I liked. I sat
and rocked, by myself, in the fog, in the smell
of kelp, the night steam like animals' breath,
there where the harsh granite and quartz dropped down
into and under the start of the western sea.

Doppelgangrenous

"For a girl my age
only orgasms offered competition."
The tired slackjawed redhead
leisurely sipped
on her lipsticked Seven and Seven.
Glass against ice recalled windchimes.
She tapped hot fuzz
from her jaundiced menthol.
The second-hand tendrils
wrapped themselves
in bounceless, razor-straight bangs.

"What I didn't figure
was the way a habit
worms its way into a person.
There's a shame, being in the snare
of a high no longer worth
black ash in the back of my throat."
Her raccoon eyes
were testimonials themselves:
collosal rings of black-gray liner,
smears of dead charcoal.
I sensed her astral self
genuflecting to her cigarette,
the ashtray an altar
for her abject burnt offering.
In my peripheral vision,
she could be seen bowing and retreating
unto infinity.

"Part of me is afraid
this stuff will have a hold on me
from beyond the grave."
Click! I finally placed
her North Carolinean accent;
her chipped nails spoke
to the rouge landscape of her youth.
An offhand laugh from her,
as if she'd all at once understood
a redundant Zen koan.
"This puny, puny thrill
still compels me."
Her loose chambray shirt
reeked of bitter sacrifice
with every arm motion.

"Nicotine's not scary anymore."--
the voice of an intensive care patient
resigning the will to live.
My vision clung to her dishwater hands
as she stood and collected her effects.
One last drag, one smash
on the paint-kissed butt.
A last long suck
of her Seagrams and Seven.

I offered psychic ablutions
as she moved past in departure.
For a moment, she turned back;
she eyed me, mid-flight.
The addict in her
found in me a mirror,
a simple innate knowing
what few moments provide sincere peace,
that sense of uncomplication
only abstention lends.

9/20/01