6 years later and I'm still here...On this planet, on the internet, in this plane of existence...The sea level is rising and soon we will be building giant dams to keep from drowning...a gigantic public works project, ironically may be what creates a more equitable economy for a short time at least...The poor cities may see their populations disappear under walls of water, or perhaps some international coalition will fund their dams... For now I can still walk unimpeded up to the water's edge without fear, I can still gaze out into a roiling ocean at night and feel that I am confronting the infinite...the continuous patterns of the waves, nature still mysterious at it's core, so much for humanity to learn, a species and perhaps a planet in it's infancy... Is this why we romanticize the garden of Eden because we know how deep our own ignorance goes down?
I caught a tv clip of an experiment designed to highlight an aspect of social psychology. In grand central station, a conga line was started and soon a multitude of strangers joined in for many minutes, perhaps 30? When asked why they joined they couldn't say it was just what everyone else was doing. I know for a fact I wouldn't have joined...so what does that say about me? and others who turn almost instinctually away rather than towards the crowd? What does it say about our ability to understand ourselves as a whole?
Being different isn't enough if you don't actually make a difference...do I still have time to prove my worth to this world?

Resistance poem (private don't read:)

In resistance to myself I let the clothes fall where they may
The pots stay sulking, drenched, bleeding tomato sauce that leaves a rust colored scab
Residue in piles and mounds and other, stranger configurations
In resistance to myself I refuse to move, to pick up my hair, to pick up the phone
I watch the seasons change from my perch, I fashion a wing out of dustballs and refuse to affix it to my shoulder blades
I do not leap, instead I slip into the furniture, the stench of unwashed sheets and pillows that are the only soft thing between myself and the world

Dream of Life

Everyone in my family is an artist
Everyone in my family is insane
Don't they sound like lines from a post-punk song? I saw "Dream of life", I always thought Patti Smith's mother was insane because she has a line that goes "holy like my mother in an insane asylum", but it turns out that both her parents are down home nurturers who knew how not to traumatize a highly sensitive child so that she was able to be become both an artist and happy at the same time. If creativity comes from pain is it possible to be creative without pain?
Maybe I can be a punk-rock mom...or maybe I'll just be another mommie dearest,
It's funny how in childhood so much of one's creativity and artistry comes from joy and wonder and how in adulthood so much of it come from suffering, I guess it's just the result of the artist child pushing against the non-artist world...who will win out? What will emerge from the battle? Usually the child gets buried along with the art, but sometimes the child force is too strong and keeps hanging on, fragile, vulnerable, angry, that's the stuff of adult art...
SOmehow Patti Smith managed to be a joyful, grateful, artist, whose child passion, sensitivity and wonder never got buried, who continued to look at the world as a well loved and brilliant child does, with profound emotion, philosophical discontent, and sensual exuberance...
Most artists or artist minded souls aren't so lucky...
I think I liked her better when I thought her mother was insane

monogamy

What happens to a crush when you wind up being monogamous with someone else? Does it drift into the ether of unfulfilled fantasies, subconscious impulses and daydreams? Does a possible connection just get missed, or does every connection that is strong enough somehow get realized, some day? Why do human beings think we are so damn special? Do we forget that we are just one of an extremely large number of species, on one of many planets within one of who knows how many galaxies. We live long, but not any longer than certain kinds of turtles, we talk but our communicaiton is often no more effective than that of insects, certainly no where near as efficient. Our emotions are often a hindrance to productivity and we sabotage our own existence inexplicably both as individuals and as a species. We are clumsy in all possible ways and are often unaware of the most basic processes directing our behavior and that of our fellows. And yet we believe we have some great destiny, oh no, we can't just revert to being inert organic matter after out organs cease to function, there must be some great mystery that transforms into some greatness we couldn't actually achieve or experience when all of our organs were intact. If only one other species engaged in a fraction of the inner anguish we humans are always torturing ourselves with, maybe it would be easier to understand why we all cling to the conviction, that our thoughts and instincts bear some secret meaning... Or maybe that secret is just the influence of some highly advanced species manipulating us and not wanting to be found out, maybe the Greeks and Romans were right and we're just puppets for the deities amusement :0

Sally anonymous

She is sortof like a ghost actually. No photos, nothing online, never spotted around town...I oculd almost believe I had imagined her, like Nabokov's heroine who once inspired me, do any of our friends and lovers really exist, or are they all just figments of our own fantasies?

Audience

In the exchange view of human relationships people give as part of the expectation that they will recieve in kind. This is a sort-of social contract meets market-place economics social theory, (which I always found absurdly reductionist), but the question it brings to mind is what does one give in exchange for getting an audience, how does one convince others to give them attention, how does the star/fan dynamic begin? But I'm not talking about media stars, I'm talking about everyday stars in their own melo-dramas, joke making, poetry. How do you convince your friends to read your writing, and what do you offer them in return? Every artist needs an audience, but audiences for writers are possibly the hardest to come by and yet necessary for the writer to fully practice their art. Of course this blog is just a vain attempt to drum up audience from the seemingly infinite pool of humanity floating along on the wires of the web. And yet it hasn't worked, is there anybody out there?? Well, yes, but not for you. To write in isolation is like doing anything in isolation, for human beings, the most social animal on the planet it just doesn't work. Whether you're a misanthrope, a deviant, a loner, or any other derivative, everybidy needs and audience. And without one, the art just stops

Information

Why is it that there is so much informaiton, yet none of what I need or want to know? When the seconds are creeping by and I odn't know what to do next, where to look or what to say I google people. I google everyone I cna possibly think of with and without quotes, for common names I add in the city I knew them in or a middle name if I can remember. I google myself, always a little scared at what will pop up. Tonight I found out I have unclaimed funds...this only came of light based on a search of my name without quotes...

I guess finding out there's an unknown amount of money just waiting for you to claim it is probaby the very best thing anyone couild find out by googling themselves...

SO I should be ecstatic. but the strange, unkown dimension of it just makes me anxious, worried...I can't think of anything/ one that this money would have come from...

Have I gotten to the age where mystery creates fear rather than excitement?
As I google every old friend, lover, that I cna remember, I wonder what am I really looking for? A key to my past, to the changing of time, of decades, the passing of moments?
One city, then another. One job, then another...One idea that you never thought would change, one love that you thought would last. It is imperceptible, the time in which a persepctive shifts, a friendship sours, a love fades into nothing...SO how do you hold on, how do you convinc eyorusel fot believe in each moment, as if it is eternal, knowing the illusion of time will always have the upper hand?

The human puzzle

Will we ever know how it really works? The group and the individual? Geography, history, genes and genetics? What makes us who we are and what do we mean by "we" anyway? Maybe if I could just understand one thing, eg, the human propensity for violence I would be satisfied...
But that's the problem, these things can't be understood in isolation. in order to understand violence you must understand emotion, compassion, economics, oppression and we're back to society and individuals...Why are the social sciences divided then? Hell why are any subjects divided? Isn't art the closest we've come to understanding any of this? It really is a pzzle, g-d's rubrix cube, and then we have to start asking about the implications of that metaphor...

But the biggest question I really want to answer right now, is with all the giant unanswered questions in the world and history speeding along as if in a race with itself how are we supposed to stay inspired by all the technicalities, the essential minutae that make up all the small, peety moments of life and work? How do we believe that writing the same exact thing in a slightly different way for the 10th time, is really more important than , say staring into space?

How can we be satisfied with small compassion when the world is waiting to be saved and how can be convinced that this moment and this one and this is one is society and history in the making?