finger-filters and the unconceived next

Is frustration a necessary offspring of writer's block? Or, differently posed, what do you call a cessation of creative output that is not accompanied by the maddening anxiety spurred by the prospect of never being able to write again?

If it is what it is, regardless of the quantity or quality of concomitant emotions, then I have writer's block. If it merely describes a lack of production, then yes I am afflicted by the Great Bane.

But there's this: I feel no dread. I fear no depletion of soul. The once maddening anxiety is now only a simpering nag--little pin-prick-pokes sufficient at best to pester-out this Nothingworld admission:

For what seems to be the life of me, I cannot tell a story of my own invention; but, even if it means the death of me, I am quite content resting on my withered and dry-bone laurel--that penniless symbol of my tiny contribution to the world of letters.

Let there be a moral here. A larger-than-me application to my few and dear readers. Let it have something to do with satisfaction and patience. Let it stand in lieu of the myth of lost time. Because there is always time for our next great thing. Because great things can happen in an instant--a wisp in the blue sky to be snatched for a second, admired, spoken of, then let to filter through fingers back into the blue, back into the wider world to dissipate and never gather again.

And let that be OK; let it be enough to keep us eager, not anxious, for the next stunning sentence of our stories.

It will come. Or not. Something may or may not surely come. I am ready for it all. Or nothing. Either way. I'll be OK.

shake the shadow

Ether, I am old. Not ancient, not on my death bed, but old. Too old, more specifically, to continually fashion myself after the manner and modes of my mentors and betters. As I lay in bed last night editing a recent poem in my head (my most frequent and, unfortunately, most ineffectual sort of editing), it occurred to me that it was not J. H. Scott's voice warning about this cliche or his mental pen scratching out that hokey rhyme--it was the voice and pen of my mentors and betters. My little Obi Wan Kenobis speaking to me from your very own Nothingworld, dear Ether. And this was no isolated incident. I realized how pervasive are the voices of these Others in my editing process and, more discomfiting to me, how ultimately persuasive those voices are. I tossed, I turned, I got up to pee. Eventually, my own voice squeaked through, "You're getting too old for this."

Because at some point we have to let ourselves be ourselves. Authenticity. Actors on our own authority. Authorship. Not only good writing but so much of good living derives from the quality of our distinctions--even if it means we are doomed (no such thing but it I love the sound of that word) to being "inferior" or "marginal" in relation to the Others.

Can I evade the influence of my predecessors? No. On some level, no matter how I might protest, I will never even be able to shake the shadow of Shakespeare. How much less so my immediate influences? My thesis director to whom I owe the largest share of my development as a poet, my favorite contemporary poet, Andrew Hudgins, whose deft lines are at once flowing and formal, those of my peers I admire and envy? No, all of these and the many to come can not be avoided and should not be ignored. We are what we eat and we eat all the time--gobble what seems most delectable and too often glut on what we could really have done without--we require the nourishment of our surroundings for our sustenance as creative, authentic individuals.

That poem I was working on--well, it kinda sucked. To finish it, I decided, would be a waste of time. It just didn't jive with . . . wait . . . with what? On second thought, no . . . it's a mighty fine poem. Oh yes, it jove and it jives. With my mentors and betters? Not really. With me? Yeah, with me. I took a chance, stepped out of my mold, and proceeded in good faith. And it still kinda sucks. But I like it. And besides, I'm far too old to change it now.

Next poem.

ground gears and crammed craws

Ether, good morning, how are you? I am well. You will be proud, I have borrowed from your Nothingworld. Copied and pasted from Amorphilacious-Antaginons. Facebook, as we call it. It happened like this: a Facsimilarion (FB friend in this case, real friend in all others. Thanks, Mark.) posted a link which got stuck in my craw, whatever that means, though I suspect it's related to grinding one's gears. I commented as is my wont when craw-crammed; and, being lazy by nature and indolent by nurture, I have used the exchange as a post below. How does it feel to plagiarize myself verbatim, you ask? It feels good, real good.

First things first . . . homework. Read this article.

Seriously, you have to read the article first.

Well, I suppose I can't make you read the article so here was my comment in response: [Commence potential alienation]

"Grrr. I would rather kids read something else than have nonesuched-knuckleheads tweak works of art like so much play-dough. He talks as if he's translating a foreign language into English--advisedly using updated parlance over outmoded idiom. ... But he's not. He's translating English into English--absurd in most cases, harmful in this one. The TBS example is questionable. The inoculation of strong language in The Godfather was not, I'd warrant, a function of a will to proliferate the appreciation of art to a broader audience; it was a function of TBS's subjugation to the FCC and obligation to squeamish advertisers.

"Let us read the "n" word in context. If in context, it's use is still objectionable--let us be offended. Let us put the book down or press on, suspending our distaste, pending the outcome, and make our value-judgments as mature, capable readers. Let's not revise our literary history for the sake of our guilt. Let us feel our guilt in all of its reddening force. or just read Berenstain Bears and call it a day."

Now, Ether, that I have killed two platforms with one grumpy stone, I hope I don't change my opinion on this subject. The redaction process is an arduous one--not the least bit hospitable to my lethargic noggin. May I be as stubborn as usual. That being said, I would love to consider an argument less brittle than the Godfather one.

I don't mind changing my mind, it's the effort that irritates me.

dam that i am

I taught myself a writing lesson today. A lonely poet without mentor will resort to such measures, I suppose. At any rate, I thought I would share it with you, Ether, unsure as I am how much or little you might care. And even if you don't, it is conceivable that through your Eminent Diaphanousness, through your sheer veneer to the Nothingworld, some one or another might find my self-tutelage useful now or someday.

It has to do with poetry so I will whisper against discovery by the elsewhere crows. Ha-haw-haw-haw. I can hear them already. Jerks.

So . . . this morning I was reading poems by Jeremy Lespi (a poet too soon gone). While engaged with one on the left side of the page, my med-induced attention deficit had my eye wandering to the right side of the page where in the middle of a different poem, I latched on to this phrase:

"I will kneel on/ some obscure gossiping Wednesday, more/
slowly one wild goose of a year from now . . ."

I did not read the rest of the poem. Did not follow the phrase's thread back to the beginning or continue to unspool it to the end. I simply hovered there. Just above those lines. And it was enough. Enough for the osmotic nature of poetry to infiltrate my mind, to move me deeply even though I was only in the shallows, only ankle-deep and yet . . . and yet absorbed through and through.

The moment, as most will, passed. I went back to the other poem on the left side and finished reading it.

More time passes. I scroll through the Amorphilacious-Antaginons (Facebook). I eat a couple of Toast Chee Crackers, wash down with Vitamin Water, check my email. At this point in my days, I know that I am usually done with being productive creativity-wise. I begin to think of lunch. Of dinner, for that matter. Will I take a nap today or bully myself into practicing my German? Denn ich bin müde aber ich will auf deutsch sprechen.

Then something peculiar happens. Today is Wednesday, I think. I should write. No, I MUST write. But why? Because it's raining. So what? Well, because I saw the word "Wednesday" a bit ago, and for reasons unqualified I felt the whole world sog my soul, the mere hint of years spent chasing things like rumor and whimsy. All that when there are prayers to pray--genuflections to be made. Other days of the week to hold back--creaking, twiggy dam that I am.

So I wrote, without rewinding or unspooling:

I will write on raining Wednesdays

The wide world notwithstanding,

Though all else speak

More truly.

Today is Wednesday.

Cold and wet.

The gray we’ve invented

To describe the salted blue

Skies.

Eyes too can be blue,

Salted and grayed,

Mine, for instance, on days

Like today. Skies

Burdened, earthen—

An invisible clay. No,

Not invisible—

Gray.

Lies.

I will write them today.

And every Wednesday after

When it rains.

Nothing spectacular. Nothing destined for the chic, slick pages of the New Yorker. Nothing much at all. Except, and here is the lesson, an obedience to the unqualified, a readiness to skip the obvious and write from the oblique, from the opposite page, from the impertinent viscera.
Sometimes, to have hovered is enough. Despite the seeming detachment of the hovering object from the entity behovered (nonce-word), there is that osmotic force, so precious in poetry, that does not require one's absolute attention, that will, given proper gravity, draw one in, suffuse one's unthinking mind, and absorb one in the shallows.

That is all, Ether. That's the lesson I taught myself today. Spread the word in many places. You are good for that, my cosmopolitan friend.

Wait . . . one more thing. I shall call my poem "Barometer." For today, at least.

beer foam on terra firma

There was nothing particularly striking about them except they were artists of the kind that talk. Everyone knows of the talking artists. Throughout all of the known history of the world they have gathered in rooms and talked. They talk of art and are passionately, almost feverisly, in earnest about it. They think it matters much more than it does. -- Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio.

So, let's talk about that.

First of all . . . ouch. Second of all . . . AW-kward. Third of all . . .

I am glad to have these reminders from time to time. Especially since I started this blog which is essentially devoted to my art, such as it is, of writing. As you know, I was wary of starting the blog in the first place--the main (and petulantly disclaimed) reason being the export of my soul to the Philosterous-Nonesucherol (Internet), flung into the Nothinworld (Domain of incorporeal Being) in conversation with your Eminent Diaphanousness (that's you, Ether) as if my difficulties with those snide, chortling crows here on Substantiopetrapopulus (Terra Firma) were not enough.

But there was another reason for my wariness at the outset: Loth am i to write of the arts/ as if some ligature imparts/ wisdom where blank pages but fart/ and spoil the air of artsy-smarts.

Which is to say, less ironically and less reliant on flatulence, that aesthetics, like most other branches of philosophy, very nearly bores me to tears after years of growing hoarse in the extrapolation of its fundamental characteristics and the vituperative defense of its sublime essence.

Which is to say, less blowhardily, art, as with the Tao, is ineffable and, as with God, needs my advocacy like a nudist needs a bra.

Yet, I spend so much of my day thinking on the nature of art and discussing it over the Amorphilacious-Antaginons (Facebook) and with whosoever, in their apparent eagerness to be saturated in the driveling drool of my lifelong obsession with poetry, asks a simple question.

So I ask myself Why? [This is not one of the simple questions. Annoying, yes. Pervasive, yes. Infinitely unanswerable down to a mathematical singularity, it would seem. Simple, no.]

Not only does Poetry not need me to write poems much less explain why I do, it is also, at the end of the day, nothing near so lovely as things in themselves. Not nearly so beautiful as The Great Smokey Mountains adorned in autumn. Not nearly so gorgeous as the moss draped live oak. Not nearly so entertaining as we people in our baseball hats or with our dripping ice-cream cones or at the beach chasing frisbees with our border collies or after a hard day's work with beer foam on our lips.

Yet still I talk of art. Yet still it makes my day. Yet still my un-flung soul feeds on its morsels to fatten up for the sacrifice--knowing full well how snapply and crackly and popply the fire gets--full well how the noisome, black birds will peck its flambéed heart.

Oh art, if we break up can we still be friends? Will you still call now and then? Can we still talk? And talk and and talk and talk . . .

Which is to say . . .

iMbecelic iDentity

There are two kinds of people in the world--those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't. If, like me, you are in the latter group, feel free to move along to the Nothingworld, or Amorphilacious-Antaginons, or wither-soever thou please. After all, as a member of the latter group, you are at least moderately aware of your autonomy and therefore capable of directing yourself elsewhere. (If you see any crows, tell them to bugger off . . . just not this way. . . matter of fact, leave them be--I have work to do.) If you are in the former group, stick around, because I'm only going to say this once.

First some benign examples:

There are two kinds of people in the world--those who like World Cup Soccer and those who don't. Well and good. No real harm there (outside of being fallacious on at least two levels but no harm there either because everything, including this statement, is fallacious on at least two levels--call it a push.)

I'll go local:

There are two kinds of people in Alabama--those who root for Auburn University and those who root for the University of Alabama. Now, things are getting shakier. Still no harm (outside of being annoying) but one can begin to see a problem. To wit: obviously there are people in Alabama who don't really give a care, ya'll. To those who give mucho care, such a position is inconceivable and therefore, as we treat all things beyond our scope, the position is ridiculed and pressed until one randomly picks a team or simply leaves the room.

Now national:

Democrat or Republican

Now international:

Conservative or Liberal

Now galactic:

Matter or Dark Matter

Now (and here is my tipping point) the absurd:

Mac or PC.

So there I am at Best Buy a while back, checking out computers to replace the paleolithic one at home, when, as if from a trapdoor, a guy in a blue shirt appears, leans into my personal space, and asks, in the tone of voice I assign to sexual predators in my mind, "So, you must be a Mac-Guy."

I immediately dismissed the possibility that he had mistaken me for Richard Dean Anderson, for I look nothing like him. (My loss.) But still, the statement did not register. Three awkward seconds go by. He'd recently had onions and less recently showered, that much I did know. Then, my mind caught up with my situation and I realized what was going on. I was being labeled. And to make matters worse, I was being labeled an i. As in iPhone, iPad, iPod, iCarly, etc.

I shrugged him off and left him to his diametrical view of life, the universe, and everything. (props to Mr. Adams.) So, whatevs. No big biggies, I chalked it up to my metro-sexual eye-wear and post-modern (read unkempt) hair-do and went home with a PC. Not because I AM a PC or that I was beholden to Windows 7 as it was, after all, my idea. In fact, being a PC- guy or a Mac-Guy had as little to do with the decision as being a Bama fan or not. The primary aspect of my person-hood at play in the decision was me being a Poor-Guy--an actually measurable fact.

Since that fateful day, my ears have been a'keened and my eyes have been a'widened-- full of these instances of soul-smooshing, mind-cinching cubbies into which we flop the societally-bundled but otherwise variegated aspects of our Being like so many Buzz Lightyear and Tinkerbell tennies at the neighborhood Chik-fil-A play palace.

So, what's the big deal, J. Scott? Well, Kierkegaard puts it this way: "Once you label me, you negate me." That is, I am not such a thing as can be called a thing by you because to you such a thing is X and to me such a thing is Y. Or any other algebraic unknown as long as the value of the one can never equal the other because each are devised then deciphered by independent consciousnesses that cannot, by virtue of the universal rule of subjectivity in matters of mind, communicate perfectly with each other in perfect terms. Which is to say, to label me is to take a formula of your own devising, applicable only to you and fundamentally meaningless to others, and try to plug me in where I won't fit.

Aren't you exaggerating, Jonny? It's just a computer. True, until it isn't. And it isn't when not only am I not a Mac I am also the bundle of prejudices associated with my non-Mac-essence . So now what else am I? I am unsophisticated, boorish, crude. I am a relic, a lag-behind, a nitwit. And not for being any of these things in particular but for being one thing in general.

And that's just the superficial crud--objectification of a lower order. Technology, sports, interstellar matter.

But what about . . .

Politics. You are what your party is. Straight ticket, toe the line, no deviation or find yourself aisle-less, buddy.

No thanks, Madame President.

Race. You are what racists think you are. And not just regarding one aspect of your personality. Personality? What personality? You are your race. It's one thing, one object; it is all and you are it.

I'll pass, Cracker.

And the list of irrational anathemata goes ever on. But leave me out of it, please. And take a shower, Blue Shirt, you're giving all Blue Shirts a bad name. Don't sell me you, sell me a computer . . .

Because I am iNexplicable, iNeffable, iNdeterminate, and, above all, iNdividual.

Because I'm cool like that.

Roll Tide! Go Blazers! War Eagle! Whatevs. No biggies.

old friend, new friend

Occasionally, I scour the contents of my poetry catalog hunting down old ones like lichen-matted tombstones, seeing what dead thoughts warrant brief resurrection. These are interesting excursions, typically. Like looking at photographs and coming to terms with distance--pyscho and physio--from then to now. Sometimes I can hardly recognize the me I find; other times I laugh at how little I've changed.

Unfortunately, I never dated any of my poems. Which is not to say I never thought about it just that, at the end of the day, out of laziness or a romantic sense of timelessness, I have hundreds of poems divvied alphabetically with no real time stamp. So, the trick is to remember the circumstances surrounding a given poem and try to conjure a memory, howsoever whispery, and breathe it in, try to sniff out its vintage. It can be fun. It can be frustrating. But it's always enlightening. Sometimes to read old stuff is to cringe at what used to pass for good poetry. On the other hand, sometimes it is to wince at what now passes for creativity. So it can be lose/ lose, but most times I find something worth the resurrection. Maybe in the idea, maybe in the language, maybe in the very act of exhumation.

I brushed the dust of this one a little while ago. It's a little bulkier than I presently prefer and easily too talkative; but I found myself thinking specifically of you, Ether. You and the Nothingworld and your cousin Amorphilacious-Antaginons. This particular poem was written when you were just a baby and that ubiquitous cousin of yours wasn't even a sparkle in the Philosterous-Nonesucherol's eye. And I, prophet and erstwhile grillcook, descried your coming and decried its value.

We are friends now, I know. Cautious friends. But I have been keeping other friends a secret. Friends you may know and may dislike. I hope we can all get along. Meet this old friend, new friend. He could really use your help.

Interview with a Speechless Library

How, in modern clangor of cells, synthetic bells,

Furor of digitalization, electronic condensation

Of words not written with aching wrists but pounded

On keyboards ergonomic and software intuitive,

Are you still here, relic, museum of dead trees, yellowing

Testament of the gospel according to effort?

When layer by layer the odorous flavor of pages

Stained by coffee mishaps and evidence of trespass,

Whorls of Cheetos fingertips, after years of fallowing

Finally disappears with pandas and seals and Kantian

Ideals, what fashionable meteor, what Wellesian wrecking

Ball will make a dinosaur or a remnant rubble of your halls?

Where, in the surfeit of halogen and neon, will I go

To watch the stuttering flicker of dying fluorescents

Like candles fighting wind and wax, sputtering on fumes,

Or to run a finger along the spines, full spectrum of faded

Color, and hear the putter as I lose count of title and volume,

Lost in the hearkening of my child-self hiding in other aisles?

Who, amid backtracking primates relearning the robotic

Forces of primal nature disguised as a furtherance of man

In his ascendancy to the barcalounger throne, dark scepter

Keeping satellite channels enthralled while myriad dragons belch

Microwaves across his kingdom of Hollywood philosophers

And movie-going serfs, will stand and fight for your silence?

What, of all the words enseamed in your hoary, creaking tomes,

Or the pictures valued at a thousand more, in the oceanic store

Of knowledge and poetry, every alphabet that ever withstood

The tinkering hands of imagination or the meddlesome erasers

Of censorial clergy in loose robes hiding their private arousal,

Say, what, from all this, should we chisel as permanent epitaph?

when the eyes blur

Oh Ether, how the mind reels when the eyes blur. I have been hard at work re-reading this absurd novel of mine. As you probably know from your cousin, Amorphilacious-Antaginons, I lost some revisions. Oh how the heart breaks when mind the reels. But I only have three chapters left to go over, then some formatting, then off it goes to a prospective publisher--first thing tomorrow morning with apologies for the late response. Do you have the luck to wish me, new friend? Is the Nothingworld's air even fresh enough for such a thing as luck? Is there air at all? A good question as I seem to lose my breath every time I visit its Vacuosity.

And now, despite the blur, break, and reel, here is the bird of the week. The mocking bird. A choice suited for my current state of mind because I feel as if the capricious muses have been prancing about, pointing and giggling, as I suffer through the tedium of revision after revision.

I have a poem with a mockingbird in it. It's called "Morning Beer." But i don't have the energy to hunt it down, fit it in, and suffer the laughter of crows. MAybe another time. Until then . . . see about that luck thing, though I won't hold my breath.

something like dread

A couple of days ago, I wrote a poem entitled “Losing Hair.” Just the fact that I had written it at all was something of a breakthrough. After all, since completing my thesis in poetry (essentially sapping the old creative juices in process), I think I have written a grand total of three poems—“Losing Hair” being the third. That’s one poem every two months! And it’s not like I’m spending the in-between time fretting over them word by word in pursuit of perfection—the writer’s elusive grail. (Vanity—like chasing the wind as old King Solomon said.) No, I just clack them out, give them the twice over, and paste them in their appropriate folder, alphabet-wise.

Every once in a while I will hear my thesis director’s voice over my shoulder like some holographic Obi Wan Kenobi—“Use the mouse, Jonathan. Find the poem’s soul and there you will find your own.” By which the bygone mentor means—trim the fat in most cases, but in other cases means explore the possibilities. When I hear that voice, my pathetic (poetic?) sensibilities suffer compunction and I revisit the toddler poem with something like dread. Something exactly like dread. (Do similes lose their likening powers when the comparison becomes exact? Help me Obi Wan, you’re my only hope.)

Point being (surprise!), I wrote “Losing Hair” and plopped it in the “F-M” folder, planning to let it marinate for the usual eternity; but yesterday I got this photograph through the Amorphilacious-Antaginons (i.e., Facebook) from my old and dear friend Billie. As you can see, fifteen years ago, of all the things I may have been worried about, hair-loss was not one of them. After the shimmer of nostalgia wore off— that deep, slow radiation half-comprised of warmth and half-comprised of grins—I realized that I needed to revisit my poem, use the mouse, trim the fat, explore the possibilities.

Because losing hair is more than a physiological phenomenon brought on, in my case, by the once-faded-now-resurgent effects of radiation these several years distant. (Funny how when I lost my hair the first time it was also the least of my worries. As in my goldilocks-youth so also at my point of crisis—other cares prevailed.) Because physiology, though pressing and crucial, only represents a portion of the significance riddling any given circumstance. And so, in this poem the fact of thinning hair is only a metaphorical stand-in for the horse-powered passage of time and the misspent worries of aging.

So here, into the Nothingworld, I fling this freshly-mown poem. I would not expect too many offerings so young as this, so savor its tenderness.

Losing Hair

It happens, as most things do, at night
When curtains are drawn against
The sure-fire sun that comes
In the morning when the discovery
Happens, as most often it will,
In the boring light of day.

At night, the elves and goblins skitter
Making things like shoes and mayhem.

Also at night, as thread by thread
The glory comes undone,
Dreams of foregone dreams
Make the waking that much balder.

regarding the periphery

Good Morning. Have I missed you, gone these three days? Seems like it but it's too soon to tell. But I will tell you this. I went to Six Flags yesterday. Not to ride anything (my mutinous brain disallows frenetic mobility. Perhaps, I will talk about my brain some day--its acts of sedition, its pill addled neurons) but to spend time with my family and watch my nieces and nephews while the grown-ups played. More fun for me than it sounds--the kids are wonderful, beautiful, and HI-larious!

However, regarding the periphery, I have contention. To wit: For the sake of Pete, heaven, and goodness and for the love of God, nature, country, decency, medium-rare rib-eye, anything sacred, I'll even accept the thoughtfully profane; but geez-loise and hells bells--put some clothes on people! If the most nauseating thing at an amusement park full of loop-the-loops, centrifugal swings, and body odor is actually the pair of shorts on the lady in front of you in line--no, not pair of shorts, call it the pair of miniscules--those bursting gourds of fabric, those flesh-enfolded fig-leaves, those mustard-stained swatches plaid-ish denim, then we have a problem. Rule of thumb, if it would be a tight fit on your three year old daughter, leave it at home. Better yet, give it to said daughter for the comfortable coverage of her dolly's derriere.

Oh Ether, how enviable your Nothingworld now.

I believe, as I try to recover, I will leave you with this soothing poem. Short though it is, by the time you finish reading it, I will be in the shower futilely scrubbing my eyes with battery acid.

Mid-Morning Well-Spent

If I tried (and I have)
To enumerate
The songs
Of the mockingbird
On the guttered eave,
He would fly (and he has)
To another house
And sing
His song of songs.
If I wait (and I will)
For him to forget
I am here, he will
(and he does)
come back.