the bear and salmon show

[For a glossary of the once-nonce, now-minted words used below, refer to their context usage in: "beer foam on terra firma."  Or, skip to the next decipherable word and ignore my nonsense altogether.]

Ether,

It's been a while since our last communication.  I have been busy elsewhere from Elsewhere, namely over at Swallow, Socrates.  It's a long story but I'm sure, given your nature, your Eminent Diaphanousness, your broad-band acceleration through the whole web of Philosterous-Nonesucherol, you could scurry over there and scurry back before I know you're gone.

I'll assume you went.  I know, I know--sob story, isn't it.  But that's there, not here.

Here, Elsewhere, that is, I was updating my publications list on stage left (your right) and decided that I might as well toss some literature your way.  And, I am painfully aware, in the way of the chortlesome crows.  Let them laugh--I'm far less humiliated now by my smallish poetic efforts than when we began our correspondence back on April 12, 2010.  (We're getting old, Ether.)

Preface to the poem:  Now and then, great things surface on that predominantly insipid crust of media--Amorphilacious-Antaginons--which is to say in the parlance of Substantiopetrapopulus, Facebook.  Such a thing was gifted to me by my friend Mary Maxwell.  It was link to a site on which one can watch bears catch salmon in real time.  See for yourself @ explore.org.  

I'll assume you went.

At first, I unabashedly admit to watching this magnificent phenomenon, transfixed, for thirty minutes at a stretch 3 or 4 times a day.  Over the last two weeks, my time and frequency have diminished but I still check-in regularly.  It helps that I adore bears to the point of distraction but I can't imagine not wanting to behold such an ancient and vital display of wildness for at least a minute or two, adoration or not.

Meanwhile, other things have been going on in the world besides the bear and salmon show.  Noxious things.  A man is proven to have wreaked ruination on the lives of young children for the satiation of an aberrant urge while his compatriots abetted for the sake of convenience.  Another man meticulously plots and executes an ambush of terror on a theater full of harmless humans.

These monsters and the usual suspects, as well:  One candidate makes too much money, one candidate takes too much money.  One restauranteur disapproves of your convictions and capitalizes, one restauranteur approves of your convictions and capitalizes.  Oh, and Kristen stepped-out on Robert to hook-up with Rupert and now the whole thing's gone south--lachrymose teens and inappropriately concerned adult women are incredulous, distraught.

The handbasket is woven, the brimstone is molten, and all passengers are boarding at this time.

Out of these conditions and due to my obsession with bears, I wrote the following poem which, in reality, has very little to do with either.  Its about bears and salmon.  And a gull in cameo support.

In Lieu of Human Scandal: Live-Cam at Brooks Falls

Harvest season for the brown bear—

Pink salmon hurtling upstream.

One atop the falls, eyes locked

On the foam; a flying circus,

An urgency of fins, pelt the heron-

Patient beast—portrait of awkward

Majesty.  When now and then

Lucky maws clamp in purchase,

The bear shoulders into the plunge

To eat her catch on the banks,

Trailed by a covetous gull.

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.

yourself as the you

I wanted the moments of my life to follow each other and order themselves like those of a life remembered. I might as well try to catch time by the tail.--Jean Paul Sartre

So I've been undulating on the foamy swells of the Amorphilacious-Antaginons (aka Facebook) for over a week now and despite the occasional vertiginous crests and the stray stomach-sinking lulls, I feel like I might survive the scare. After all, what's a few soul-wrenching, psyche-anguishing, despair-inducing confrontations with yourself as The Other? That is, yourself as the you-that-once-was. That is, the you-that-is breaching the Nothing, reaching through stubbornly unsubstantial time, and faintly touching the you-that-was as a candle-flame might touch the fog.

Believe in ghosts, Ether, believe because they're out there. They resemble you: in the gleam of an eye or in the turn of a lip or in the cross of the legs. They remind you of you. They are you. Even when you're looking at someone-else-as-they-once-were it's just the you-as-The Other still stuck in the Nothingness of what once was but is no more--textbook case of Ghost encounter. Shiver.

To put it another way, all these old pictures of old friends and old mes gives me heebie-jeebie-willies.

Here's a sonnet--apropos of something above, I think. Or feel, rather.

Elementary

One may say that the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

– Albert Einstein

Remember sallow afternoons when we

Would count the passing cars and itemize

By color? Brother, I had open eyes

And gaping ears. I learned lessons for free

That you had bought by sitting in a class.

Who knew that stars were relatively still,

But you? You knew that salt would kill

A slug by shriveling it and that glass

Was made by blowing into glowing sand.

Remember pinching lightning bugs to smear

Our faces green and yellow? We would stand

At neighbors’ windows peering in like ghouls,

(Like what? I asked, secretly cramped with fear.

­Like ghosts, you said) no smarter pair of fools.