Expecting

I'm not quite sure what I am doing with this blog post.  Just going to write until something makes sense, I guess.  But that doesn't seem quite as easy as it is to type.  My thoughts are strewn about, my feelings verging on a melancholy edge, my cares for the world slowly depleting.  I guess I can say I bring these things on myself, though really fuck that shit.  I have little control as to how people react to me, nor no immediate control as to my own reactions/feelings to those people.  What do you want me to do? 

I don't understand myself.  I find small revelations, increments of self-knowledge, as I live through life.  I try to find the capacity to reason with myself, with my impulses, with my sometimes headstrong and stubborn feelings -- this is not easy stuff to work out.  How things build up is very complex.  Drifting towards whatever I am, I don't know. 

One of my favorite films - 8 1/2 - has a very good quote.  "My dears...  Happiness consists of being able to tell the truth without hurting anyone."  I can't do this, and quite frankly, I'm not sure I can think of anyone who can.  Happiness becomes unobtainable in this instance.  We all have the right to live, and as long as we live that life without inflicting harm on others, we supposed retain that right.  But emotional harm is something we can't objectively measure and we can't really help.

Because the truth fucking hurts doesn't it?  It's this maddening whale of a beast and it eats up all the little krill.  White lies, ha!  Lies in general?  Haha!  Nothing compared to the harm TRUTH can do.  Truth is a term with a lot of weight, and a lot of debate, and absolute truth in any sense is philosophically not possible.  We create truths, illusory little ones.  These truths we create, through no intentional plan of our own, are equal to webs of deceit.  The reason truth hurts so much is because it destroys those webs.  Leaves us bare.  The spider has lost its home, ladies and gentlemen!


So I ask you again, what the hell am I to do?  Why don't you try and deign to place some more positive directions for me to go, with your truths, however much they may clash with mine.  Because I'll tell you something that Bob Dylan once said, and it seems a bit obvious of me to quote him, but this(along with 3-4 other quotes) is one of the few strings of words I've committed to memory based deeply on how well they fit with my self-conscious, too aware, overly insecure, analytical fuck-up of a mind:  All I can do is be me, whoever that is.

Now if I don't know, how can you expect to?

My Final Essay for English 102

The Secretary Chant

My hips are a desk,
From my ears hang
chains of paper clips.
Rubber bands form my hair.
My breasts are quills of
mimeograph ink.
My feet bear casters,
Buzz. Click.
My head is a badly organized file.
My head is a switchboard
where crossed lines crackle.
Press my fingers
and in my eyes appear
credit and debit.
Zing. Tinkle.
My navel is a reject button.
From my mouth issue canceled reams.
Swollen, heavy, rectangular
I am about to be delivered
of a baby
Xerox machine.
File me under W
because I wonce
was
a woman.

Small note before you read this: Going into this essay I had been up over 24 hours and 30 minutes before class was about to die of exhaustion, so I bought a cup of coffee and headed into class and got really hyper. I had no idea what poem I was going to write on, no idea what I was going to write about. That's why the title is so simple. We were supposed to bring an outline and thesis into class but since I didn't know or care what I was going to write about I didn't have these things. I just read this shitty poem and then started writing and got an idea of what I wanted to say about it in the process.

"Reader Response to "The Secretary Chant"

The Secretary Chant, published by Marge Piercy, is a poem composed with a simple point and idea that manages to be both humorous and incisive. It comes out as an evocative statement and commentary of women in the position that the title holds namesake to. It does this by using imagery and onomatopoeia to illustrate how they may be regarded merely as functionaries for their assigned tasks. While it may do this in an entertaining fashion, one could muse over whether or not this is actually a negative, or rather, uncommon enough occurrence to warrant such a critical approach or image.

The poem jumps right into its spiel and instantly one is placed within the world of this nameless ant. "My hips are a desk." It's jarring, monotone, and succinct. This secretary is right off the bat informing the reader that her body parts do not feel like organic, natural set-pieces. They have transformed into the objects around which her occupation is focused. Instead of her being the one who uses these tools, she is now a tool herself. "From my ears hang chains of paperclips. Rubber bands form my hair." The objects she initially describes are normal enough in what they're replacing. Parts of the body that all human's share. At this point the reader could just as easily assume this poem could relate to anyone or any sex. It could be retitled as "The Assistant's Chant" and make the same impression. But then, like a rising tide, the speaker's sex and femininity overwhelms in what is the longest single line of the poem. "My breasts are wells of mimeograph ink." The length and juxtaposition make it clear that the speaker being a lady is of utmost importance. She is a woman. Or, as the poem later informs us, was a woman.

As the author of this knows nothing of Piercy or her views he must use the poem as the only clear idea of her standing in regards to women's role in society. The poem, working almost as just one large analogy with a diverse amount of comparisons, makes it clear how the speaker feels. She feels dehumanized. More than that though, she feels a loss of identity in regards to her gender and sex. She is no longer looked upon as a female but as a secretary. An interesting viewpoint to be certain but one should wonder why this idea plagues our speaker so. If one considers the poem's content and overall message they can come to the interpretation that she doesn't like being only perceived as the secretary.

So she faces dehumanization and a loss of gender identity. So clearly she is being too selfish, or more likely, self-conscious. Given that it is merely her occupation and this idea about her is something that could only occur at the work place, this author begins to question the relevance and importance of the poem's themes. Surely one cannot be deluded into thinking that only secretaries face this loss of identity. It's a job. It is not the person, it's the tasks they perform for the money to pay bills an for groceries. Every occupation turns one into a function for their employer. Would the speaker really want to be perceived as more when that could lead to more pressing problems for a female? A more urgent and well-known problem is harassment of women in work places as objects of mere desire and inferiority beyond that.

The final point is that the ending line, "File me under W for I wonce was a woman," should be a sigh of relief in regards to the workplace. Save your humanity and gender for a more appropriate environment. If one's main problem is how they are not viewed as a person at work, this author suggests getting a life.

Simple Musings

Why does simplicity seem so difficult to obtain? Do the basic desires of human instinct and will really hold so much weight that they can make you want things that you have reasoned you clearly do not want? Does time erode away your senses of logic and understanding along with absence?

I'm trying to ask this on a much more theoretical/metaphysical level but the core question is are humans supposed to be complex creatures? Are we naturally supposed to function in an inherently intricate way? Is this just how we are? And is it a revolt against human nature to try and grasp for simple things?

Or am I merely missing the fact that this may be a case by case thing? Because some people get by with seemingly simple lives..but perhaps it requires a complex conditioning to reach that simplicity that all parties involved are unaware of?

To be normal after all is to lead a simple life with a simple career with a simple personality and simple friends. But then you have to factor in the intricacies of the relationships, the consciousness of each individual, and the usefulness of these career driven people as nuts and bolts in a machine. We humans seems to be a species that build complex structures around simple blocks. We're the bricks to a building.

So then perhaps one is stuck wallowing in introverted agony if they pass a certain level of awareness and intelligence. Perhaps they become too obsessed with the idea that they are pillars and start to try and accommodate their relationships by making them as simple as possible. But given our very nature as human beings to build complex things on simple blocks, we are doomed to make a myriad of mistakes and miscalculations. All for the sake of being "smart." So then are we tortured for our higher thoughts instead of rewarded? Is insanity our subconscious goal instead of our fear?

So then this lack of grasping simplicity leads us to go back and forth on things. All our reasoned excuses and opinions become susceptible to things that don't fit into the mold of all this complexity. So in a reach for simple things we are doomed BY simple things. These things lead to contradictions and inconsistency.

Ah, inconsistency; I don't think it's okay to have inconsistency with thoughts and feelings. One should stick on a singular opinion and go with it. Find your one true thought and then evaluate it, challenge it, and then get it cemented until a Good Point forces the process over again. One should not just randomly do the opposite without good reasoning. But then again...

What if inconsistency is the only true and universal human characteristic?

here's a bulletin

while riding a bullet train!

zooming ever faster just going and going

what to post what to say what to do

thinking racing going being there

or headed there


almost there

bang like that and it's kind of

not really

but it could have been

and that's all i really want you to think about it.

IT COULD HAVE BEEN

Dear My Friend

Okay so yeah I have to tell you something and that is this: man my blog sucks and you knew this whole time didn't you? You really did. I guess I was trying to conform to some standard of writing and I don't think that has panned out for me very well. I tried to be introspective and give glimpses of my emotions and life and feelings and thoughts and it ended up sinking in like a puddle or something.

You see my thoughts are about as shallow as a puddle it's funny. Don't you get it?

Well anyways I'm starting on a new slate I'm going to delete all my previous posts. Yes every single one they are going bye and there's no point in feeling nostalgic. Now all my posts that I make are going to be addressed solely to YOU. I don't even have to answer the question of "who you are" or make any sort of attempt to convey what kind of person you are.

Because if you're reading this you already know who you are. You're the person who shares my same kind of interests, my same kind of search for understanding and knowledge, my same kind of brutal honesty. You're a person who will actually respond and talk about what I have to say and give counter-points and your own ideas. Me and you we're like a river man. Y'know? Our thoughts and ideas just flow together and we give them to another person and they keep the river going. It's a really long river and there are lots of snakes and fish and maybe even alligators too.

But we survive the nastiness and the poisonous animals and we dissuade each other from doing bad things. Maybe sometimes you and I we don't always agree and there are rocks in the river and the water crashes against them but hey that's okay because the water goes around those rocks and it keeps flowing because all we need to keep going is openness and imagination.

So I'm going to tell you this: you're not real. You're an abstraction and an idea. Maybe to yourself you're solid and tangential but to me you're not. And I'm not real to you either. We just channel each other. But that's fine because that's life.

So if you feel like it keep coming here and I'll have new things to tell you because I don't stop thinking I keep going and if you don't like what I have to say then you're not who you think you are: you're not you. Because only you would feel like reading this. So read.

Your friend,
Meeeeeeeeeee!