Madame, here's how it'll go down. I, clutching a mug of green tea close to my chest like the bulletproof idea of open skies, will take you down to the sea, and there you will meet a mermaid. The mermaid, unlike her more vicious cousins, will not devour your soul with a glance and reduce you to a painting of pure lust and suffering. Instead she will breathe the life of the apocalypse through your lips and your eyes will explode into transient candles.
Sir, dear sir, I must protest. For I do not want to go to the ocean and I do not want to meet a meek mermaid there and I don't want the life of the apocalypse breathed into me and I do not want my eyes to explode into transient candles!
Madame, why not? All you will lose is your earthly sight. You'll light the passages of time. You'll be the solitary flame so delicate and wonderful striking soul into sacred verse of star-crossed maniacs behind candy cane prison bars. You'll burn out. What is more noble and romantic than that?
Sir, please, I would rather retain my eyes. I would miss the earthly sensation far too much. I would miss watching the moon rise over red brick buildings. I would miss staring into the jellyfish tank at the zoo. I would miss glancing over my shoulder at the stranger walking too close behind me in the bad part of town. I would miss my eyes so much, sir, I would miss the Earth.
I like how I wrote this piece, I was running around my apartment, yelling about definitions and wordplay, then I rushed back to my typewriter and clacked down a few more words and then ran around again to get some tea and it was good. It felt right, it felt natural. And I like what came out. I like the diction, the words, how it looks on a page, and I hope it worked out well. I personally think it did. I personally hope it did.
I think things are going to get a little bit pretentious here on out, so be warned. Of course, the opening piece is kind of pretentious, too, so I figured if you stuck through that, then you have a pretty good resistance to it. Please don't judge me, I only want to do good.
The act of creation, which is what I do, I was going to try to be humble and say I'm not creating anything, but I am. I'm not sure if it's good, or pure, or worthy of the word creation. But creation is a strange word, because really everyone creates everything. It's not hard. Make a pot of coffee? Creation. Sharpened a pencil? Creation. Almost all acts are acts of creation. Anyways, the act of creation, and especially the creation of art, which I guess is what I do? I don't know, art is such a stupid word, I don't know what it means, and if people consider my work art then more power to them, but for now I'll use the word because I don't know what the hell else to call it. The act of creating art has really, really, goddamn blurry boundaries. The line between the creator and the creation isn't always noticeable. There are so many pieces that don't make sense unless you know the creator, unless you understand the creator. At the same time, the line between the creator and the world at large is so goddamn blurry. I constantly fluctuate between considering myself a unique snowflake, a social pariah, and part of humanity as a whole because I am here and you are here and he is here and we are all here and if we're all here we're all together and we're altogether humanity and how could I consider myself apart from that? What I do and what you do are the same thing, really, because they are human acts.
My point is, which has been buried under all this bullshit, is that I honestly am starting to lose the thread where the world ends and I begin and where I end and my writing begins. Does the poem begin when I look at the flower, or did it begin before that in me and the flower just brought it out, like triggering a memory, or does the poem only begin when it exists outside of me, on the page or in my voice or whatever. It is not hard for me to actually, visually see myself as one with the world. I am my chair I am my gloves I am this cup of coffee I am this pavement. This all feels so connected. I feel like I am in a constant flux between the world, myself and poetry. And it's weird, and maybe I'm making too big of a deal of all this, and maybe I'm making too big of a deal about myself but this feels important, this feels significant.
I can feel walls being torn down. I can feel communication floating in the air. Everything's getting blurry. This feels significant. It all does. It's scary, yeah, it's terrifying. But I can throw in any word there, and holy shit you'll just have to take my word for it. Man am I lying this whole time. I don't think I am, I don't feel I am, but you can't really believe that. You can't really believe me. You can either trust me or you can't. That's all there is. You can trust me when I say I'm happy, I'm sad, I'm in love, I'm angry. There is so much trust here, how could I compromise that? I don't understand how people can commit libel. I don't understand lying. I don't understand hate. I never want to lie. I never want to.
I'm getting out of here before I get too ridiculous. God bless. Sorry about this.
2 comments:
Is it weird to say that I am laughing with pride, with joy, from a continent away at this! I mean, dude, yes, yes, yes! I was thinking about how I was going to tell you that in Hebrew (or at least in Biblical Hebrew... and I can't say for sure that I'm not making this up), but there are different words for making and creation. What I mean is there is a word for making something out of something, and for creating something out of nothing, and the latter word can only be used in conjunction with God, because only he created the universe out of nothing. But then I thought, did He actually create something out of nothing, or did He create the universe from Himself, from within or of Himself? Is God a seperate entity outside the universe who molded the world with no pre-thought, or did He imbue the universe with something of Himself, or is He merely (which is the understatment of all time) the underlying principle of the universe without which it could not exist? I love how you talk of things that biblical prophets talked of.
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What I'm trying to say is, I think I love you, and I want to be in MOntreal with you right now so we could go for a long walk and talk of thought, and the world, and the things we see, and life and love and feeling and pretension, and get attacked by red-winged black birds, and, you know, like we did this summer.
*Sigh*
P.S. My word verification was exestio... what does that even mean?
Yes. Ben you said it. I can hardly believe that you are millions of some sort of distance away in Denmark (you are there right?) and yet we all meet in this one unchartable place. Fuck. "I KNOW THIS DANISH MAN" is what is going through my head right now. ANYWAYS. I just wanted Super Lee to know that this really really is sticking with me. IT is the literary parallel to the question of all time that Ben addresses:
"Does the poem begin when I look at the flower, or did it begin before that in me and the flower just brought it out, like triggering a memory, or does the poem only begin when it exists outside of me, on the page or in my voice or whatever." Good god. That had to be asked so hard.
Thank you SUper Lee. TO quote the song I am listenning to right now: 'I think "your beauty must be rubbin' off on me."'
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