My mind is a porn star when you’re on it
Wordplay is a boomerang. If you catch what you are thrown, a pleasurable volley can ensue. Sometimes it’s a bad throw and what you project falls by the wayside in some non-descript pit, never to be remembered again. No matter. You try again.
I have found that when you write from the gut and send it out to the universe, you are never ignored. A stranger happens to raise their arm and catch that throw squarely, and before you know it, that boomerang has come back for you.
Sometimes, if you are lucky it will maim you in the most beautiful way.
Last night, @LeslieHeme said to me, “Come over here so I may tickle you with this feather.” I was not letting an invitation like that go unnoticed. And so it began again.
You have only to say which parts of me you want undressed.
You strip me down to the wire consonant by consonant, undo me one vowel at a time.
My mind is a porn star when you’re on it.
“I’ve drawn the water; it is warm.
Come in. Slip off everything but your voice.
That wears you well.”
This voice is good only for the cloak it throws about your neck with long strokes of a hungering tongue.
She is rhyming now. Rhyme is rhythm with a few misplaced consonants.
“Pull me down, take my pain, and wrap it in the sighs of droplets glistening on the windowpanes.”
“Do you have any tattoos?” | “Only in my head.”
“What about scars? Markings?” | “Same.”
Pain, like butter spread thin is nearly indiscernible. Hand me the breakfast knife.
Let us be done with this morning’s meal.
“A cut drawn from the keen-edge blade of your mouth, sever resonance from sound.
Ache served as the warmth of wound.”
Dispel this night with one sweep of your hand. Eyelids close upon the day.
Your hot beating heart knocks at my chest & waits.
“Though it may not speak in turns and words, know that it beats, knocks as it yearns for the calm pulse of your terrain.”
I lend you my hollow arms. I lend you my bashful glances. I lend you my torrid sleep.
I lend you my stoic, my stanchion.
“I gift you my happenstances;
I gift you persuasion of a dare; in all essences, I gift you the speech life has yet to care.”
Your body lies with silence. Your belly consummate with the weight of the unsaid.
Your lips moving slowly, I will not betray.
Good grammar is really sexytime
Something about the way you use a semi-colon feels like you’ve just grabbed my ass. There’s something about your ellipsis that takes my breath away. That parenthesis is the convex of hips along which your hands run. Your comma, just so. Just there. The pause of locked eyes. The half-breath before you ease into me. That exclamation mark is the taste of your lips, the burn of your fingers scoring my skin. The aching ampersand. Contiguous territories of your hand & lips & eyelids & skin & breath & heat. And heat. And heat. And that dash, the gasp worn by parted lips.
A paragraph ends. Silent spaces. A lazy arm across your breast, fingers stir. Your skin rises in anticipation.
We begin again.
(A collaborative effort with @handshedown)
The heart asks pleasure first or Why I love… Michael Nyman
Read maps like you read love letters – A new cartography
The image you see above is called “The Night Sky”. It is a composite of several drawings linked together, and the stars charted to make the map directly above Boylan Heights, a small North Carolina neighborhood that became something of an obsession for Denis Wood beginning in the ’70s. An obsession that has produced something of a “poetics of cartography”.
Artist, author and cartographer, Denis Wood describes the picture:
“This is what you see at night, in early July, if you’re in Boylan Heights and you look up at the sky . . . if you can get out from under the trees. At the top of the hill, in the middle of Boylan Avenue, we lay on our backs to make this map of the stars above the neighborhood. It was about ten o’clock and the asphalt was still warm with the day’s heat. We had a star finder, a flashlight to read it with, paper and pencil. We made a sketch of the horizon and roughed in the stars we could see and returned the next day to make dozens of detailed drawings. Afterwards we linked these together for a 360º view and used charts to make sure of our stars. With a shrunk-down copy, we went back to the street at night and fiddled with it until we got it right.
During summer in Boylan Heights, when you look up, you mostly see trees. At the right, where the horizon dips toward the north, you can see across the cement factory toward downtown and the cylindrical bulk of what was then the Holiday Inn. The white rectangles at top are the lit windows of a house on the east side of Boylan Avenue. The streetlight’s on the west side. The mass of foliage to the left lead south down Boylan. Above? Vega—one of the night sky’s brightest stars is nearly overhead in the Lyre of Orpheus that the Muses placed in the sky after he died. Zeus put the Ursas in the sky. With the glare and summer humidity, we couldn’t see Ursa Minor at all, and all we could see of Ursa Major was its tail, our Big Dipper.
Where is Boylan Heights? It’s in the United States and North Carolina and Wake County and Raleigh, but first and last it’s in the universe. As William Saroyan said, “Birth is into the world, not into a town.”
In Kirstin Butler’s review, she describes maps as the most intimate infographic of all. She describes them as, “those images that tell of our complicated relationships to place, bounded by time”.
I don’t think I have ever been turned on by maps. I know I have never been turned on by a description of them, until now. I chanced upon her review of Everything Sings: Maps for a Narrative Atlas, and then went on to read more about Denis Wood and his Boylan Heights maps through Ira Glass’s interview on This American Life.
What I discovered was simple: maps have nothing to do with direction and everything to do with where you want to go.
I also tried to see what Denis Wood sees, but I couldn’t. He sees invisible beauties.
All I saw was an innate curiosity and I imagine, the kind of gaze one might attribute to autistic geniuses. An un-shifting focus. Macro vision. The ability to see parts of a picture, and imagine their place in the jigsaw in seamless, tessellated perfection. He possesses a natural sense of wonder, and eyes that collect and collate patterns that have given birth to a gorgeous manifestation of this obsession.
From windchimes to Jack O’ lanterns, paper routes to police calls and absentee landlords, there is a portrait to be found; an almost cartographic lovemaking. There are new routes to be divined and fresh paths forged never seen on any GPRS system.
This is art, science, mathematics, design, poetry. These are not maps. These are pictures in an album. These are secret love notes passed in a classroom. These are neighborhood stories etched, sketched, and narrated through lines, dots, curves and circles.
The poetry of these pictures resounds with experience. What is conveyed is the essence of what life would have been like in Boylan Heights in the ’80s. Each visual suggests an aura of the era. It is, in its entirety, an atlas that investigates the nature of a place and our experience of it.
In the introduction, Ira Glass writes:
Everything Sings is not a book of maps. And it is a book of maps. But maps to where? To what? You’ll find your way. It might be a lark in the face of what is traditional cartography, and yet, as Kirstin Butler says, it meets the objective that all maps must: to see our world, and its many wonders, anew each day.
What to read next: 7 Must-Read books on maps.
What John Waters really said
My dear,
We need to make books cool again. If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t fuck them. Don’t let them explore you until they’ve explored the secret universes of books. Don’t let them connect with you until they’ve walked between the lines on the pages.
Books are cool, if you have to withhold yourself from someone for a bit in order for them to realize this then do so.
Truly yours,
John Samuel Waters
What AV Flox had to say about it:
‘I don’t know whether he did write it, or who he wrote it to, but I like this version better. This version doesn’t suggest we should discard people who are not like us, but to try to show them the joys of things we love. I don’t know that holding back is the way, but to each his own.
In the end, the people who may be the most like us may not make their similarities manifest in the same way as we do and it’s these very differences that have the power to enrich our world, not the similarities.’
Read the whole article here.
*image courtesy http://neverletyouloveme.tumblr.com
Stumbling over Henry
“I want a soul mate who can sit me down, shut me up, tell me ten things I don’t already know, and make me laugh. I don’t care what you look like, just turn me on. And if you can do that, I will follow you on bloody stumps through the snow. I will nibble your mukluks with my own teeth. I will do your windows. I will care about your feelings. Just have something in there.”
- Henry Rollins
You don’t need more jeans. What you need is more poetry.
Annoying Levi’s ad on TV these days. Seen it? Never mind if you haven’t; you’re not missing much. Why am I writing a post about it? Because I find it interesting how retailers are using poetry to sell clothes.
The commercial in question is from Levi’s new campaign – Go Forth. The poem in question is Charles Bukowski’s The Laughing Heart, one of his more optimistic pieces, written in a gentler hand than the standard misanthropic deliveries he is known (and I will say loved) for.
Let’s face it, Charles Bukowski was a dirty old man, but he was everyone’s favorite bastard. Swilling whiskey with one hand, and feeling up a topless starlet with the other, was his idea of a portrait. And Levi’s has chosen his words as the new anthem for today’s denim wearing generation. Frankly, I don’t blame them. It was a great fucking idea.
The poem, is astounding. It simply is a work of staggering beauty and tenderness.
But Levi’s is little more than an industrial workwear brand turned urban fashion weathervane. ”Here’s what jeans need to be doing now,” Levi’s seems to say, “This is what you need to own to be cool now; a pair of jeans that tells the world you buy into Bukowski’s beautiful philosophy of hope for the youth, and their future.”
And if you already own 150 pairs, here is a beautifully shot commercial featuring the gut-twisting words of an American poetic iconoclast, to convince you to walk into their stores and buy another.
Don’t fall for it. Listen to me: You don’t need more jeans. What you need is more poetry.
- The Laughing Heart -
by Charles Bukowski
your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.
Notes for a Young Gentleman, or Why I love… Granta magazine
Toby Litt’s step-by-step guide to how to be a proper, young gentleman.
A gentleman should arrive at his destination, after however arduous a journey, quite as if he had just taken a turn around the rose garden.
A gentleman should never acknowledge a mere fact.
A gentleman should behave no differently in a prison than in a palace – to be affected by place shows lack of character.
A gentleman should never confuse superiority with nobility.
A gentleman – English – should reassure foreigners of his bona fides by appearing to be nothing more than a parody of an English gentleman; this is particularly important with the French.
A gentleman should never be heard to say anything other gentlemen have not said before.
A gentleman should greet physical agony much as if he were greeting his old Latin master.
A gentleman should never pass comment on his latest meal, no more than he would upon his latest evacuation.
A gentleman should smoke, if not for pleasure then to set his companions at their ease.
A gentleman should never condescend to condescend.
A gentleman should, when he is in the country, kill something larger than a squirrel at least once a day.
A gentleman should never evince surprise, except whilst opening Christmas presents from his children.
A gentleman should seem to lack nothing.
A gentleman should never appear utterly entranced by anything other than a horse or his fiancee on the day their engagement is announced.
A gentleman should greet with genuine warmth only the following persons – his sister’s daughters, his maternal aunts and his mortal enemies.
A gentleman should never be seen to handle money, except in a brothel or a casino.
A gentleman should have as deep a familiarity with the great religious texts of the world as is commensurable with not having read them.
A gentleman should never keep a diary – to pay attention to one’s own affairs suggests one may wish to profit thereby.
A gentleman should take domestic politics slightly less seriously than backgammon.
A gentleman should never go beneath ground-level except when, once a year, inspecting the wine cellars.
A gentleman should be as fluent in the little language of love as in le passé composé.
A gentleman should never run, except towards certain death.
A gentleman should walk as if he were being carried and – if ever the circumstance arises – be carried as if he were walking.
A gentleman should quote no one but his nanny, and then only back at her, with fondness, just before she dies.
A gentleman himself should die with an air of mild curiosity.
A gentleman, having once departed, should never return.
*This post is a re-blog from Granta.com. For the original, go here.
How To “Follow Your Heart” or Why I love… www.thoughtcatalog.com
Stand perfectly still.
Wait.
Wait more.
If your heart starts pounding against your chest, this might be an indication that your heart wants to push forward. Take a step forward for every pound of your heart. At this rate, you’ll be across the room by daybreak. But after all, distance makes the heart grow fonder.
* This is an excerpt from an original blog post from Thought Catalog.
Why I love… the poetry of Mark Strand
by Mark Strand
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
This, Too, Shall Pass by Chelsea Fagan
There will be that conversation you’ve been putting off for as long as you’ve known you’ve needed to have it. There will be those words that you’ve rehearsed over and over–in your car, in front of your mirror, in your bed in total darkness while staring at your ceiling–that tumble out of your mouth inelegantly, tripping over each other to make it out just so you can get this over with. There will be that ugly ball of thoughts that hangs in front of you, the thick, opaque cloud of words that formed in between you, through which you cannot breathe. There will be that moment where you try and scoot away, wanting to disown everything you’ve just said, ready to scream at the top of your lungs just to cut the silence.
And there will be that moment, that brutally delayed moment, where they respond with a shrug, a sigh, a casual dismissal of all that you just implied. They will demonstrate with unintentional precision just how uninvolved they are, how little they have emotionally invested, just how very little this has all mattered to them. There will be the moment you struggle to physically scoop up every humiliating statement you made and all their brutal implications and cram them, hurriedly, back in your mouth. You’ll fight back tears as your cheeks fill, blotchy and red, like a veteran alcoholic. You’ll linger on the cusp of wailing, of running in any direction until your lungs ache–but you won’t. You’ll shrug and vaguely shake your head, pitifully mumbling something along the lines of,
“Oh, of course…right. No, no, that’s cool.”
You will awkwardly walk away, feeling the burn on the back of your neck as you know they are watching you with a combination of pity and discomfort. You will play the situation over in your head again and again, physically cringing every time you think of what they must think of you now–what they must be saying, through cruel laughter, to their friends.
But it will pass.
There will be that cutting, cruel thing you heard through the grapevine that stretches and winds relentlessly through your social group–that unfunny, hurtful joke that even friends saw fit to participate in. There will be that moment of domino-like realization that you were being laughed at, not with. There will be an overwhelming feeling of utter injustice–you will forget all the nasty things you might have said about others and know only the searing pain of being on the wrong end of mean-spirited gossip.
And there will be the knowledge that, sometimes, you are entirely alone–that we can all be ugly, mean, jealous creatures that will put another down to step just one rung up the ladder. You will realize that even close friends are not immune to the snake-like charm, the temporary high, of the kind of sentences that start with, “Did you hear…?”.
There will be things about you that others see fit to mock, to laugh at, to talk about in breathless little circles to which you were not invited. There will be a sense of overwhelming insecurity–what am I not included in? What am I not worthy of? What is being said behind my back that cannot be said to my face? The entirety of some friendships, of an acquaintanceship that seemed so utterly benign, will come into question. Gossip will put itself into the brutal clarity it can only achieve when it’s happening to you, and for a moment, you’ll feel the whole world is against you.
But it will pass.
There will be that thing you do–that job you don’t get, that class you fail, that interview you completely blow–that is no one’s fault but yours. There will be a certain amount of effort that you just didn’t put in, that you know you could have, that you were more than capable of. Procrastination, laziness, and insecurity will form a lethal, purpose-sapping elixir that sloshes sloppily through your veins. There will be a distinct sense of missing a target, an almost out-of-body experience that washes over you as you refuse to fully accept that you cheated yourself out of something that you deserved–that you could have had.
There will be a moment when you have to look people in the eye–people who support you, who love you, who believe in you–and tell them that you failed. Perhaps you counted your eggs long before they hatched; perhaps you had begun bragging about things that were never sure, but that your ego was all too happy to let you believe were in your pocket. There will be the uncomfortable, brutal announcement that all you were so sure about had been abruptly pulled, along with the rug, from under your feet.
Worse, far worse, than the angry accusations or cries of frustration that a lesser person might have heaped upon you, there will only be a pitiful shaking of the head. There will be a sense not that you upset them, but that you let them down. You will long to scream, to grab their shoulders and shake them until they hate you the way you hate yourself. But they won’t, they will only stand solemnly in front of you, a silent reminder of how much more you were capable. They believed in you, and you proved them wrong.
There will be a longing to go back in time, to grab the hands of the clock and force them to just a few hours before when you still had the chance to make things go the way they were supposed to. You will feel the need to justify yourself, to prove that you are still worth all that people expect of you, but you will not be able to. You will have to linger in your cloying, static failure as you accept that if you want something, you will have to work harder. And next time, you will. Next time, you will prove yourself. But now, now you have failed, and you must swallow that ugly idea, along with your pride, as you accept the disappointed pats on your shoulder.
But it will pass. 
Dear 16-year old mentalexotica,
Look at what I chanced upon today: Dear Me: a Letter to My Sixteen-Year-Old Self
If you had a chance to write to your 16-year old self, what would you say? In this book, some of the world’s most well-known and most-beloved personalities do just that. I read a few of these missives-to-self, and I was charmed especially by Emma Thompson’s letter. I may be biased; I love Emma, always have. But she makes it so easy. Have a look:
The transcript:
May 29th 2009
Dear Em (16)
I realise that you are young and in love and that nothing much that anyone old says seems relevant, but seeing as it’s me — that is, you; that is, us, I think it’s worth a go.
Two Top Tips from 50 to 16:
1) Don’t EVER EVER EVER bother to go on a diet. I know you’re obsessed and have that awful thing of standing in the 6th form canteen trying to choose between a yoghourt & a breathe of fresh air (whilst wanting chips & a cheese salad). Don’t sweat it. Eat regularly, try & avoid rubbish and never diet. You’ll end up the same size anyway, so drop it girl, & drop it NOW. Believe me — nobody cares. Diets are the best way of confusing your metabolism for the rest of your life. Just be you & get on with it, I cannot tell you how much time & energy you’ll save & how much happier you’ll be.
2) When he says he doesn’t love you, believe him. He doesn’t.
That’s it. All the other mistakes you make are worth their weight in gold.
I love you — Em (50)
Then there was also Elton John’s letter to take note of. The last line is a sureshot smile-maker:
The transcript:
March 8th 2009.
Atlanta,
Dear Reg,
You are a very young 16. you know nothing about sex — you don’t even know what a “queer” is. Trust me when I tell you — you are “queer”; you are a gay boy. I made the mistake of not having sex until I was 23! I loved being with another man and felt relieved that I finally knew who I was. I made the mistake of falling in love too soon because I was naive and romantic. My advice to you is never to chase love — it will find you when you least expect it. Have FUN, have lots of safe sex and enjoy your sexuality. Be proud of who you are and, as you get older and wiser fight for gay rights — I’m 46 years older than you are, and we have a long way to go. In certain countries we are still not treated as equals, especially by the so-called “Christian” Church. I made a lot of mistakes. Stay away from drugs — they’re a waste of time. Stand up for every human being’s rights. Be loving, kind and strong. Set an example. You’re going to have a hell of a life!!
Love you
Elton x
PS. CHANGE YOUR NAME
So, of course I think this is just a terribly cute idea. And of course I now want to write mine. Before I do, I’d like to ask you to write your letters and share them here with me. If that’s okay, of course. For now, here’s mine:
Dear M,
It’s not the end of the world. It’s not the end of your life. It’s not even the end.
I know it seems as though everything keeps changing and that it hurts beyond belief. The thing is, it’s about the most predictable thing about life there is. I won’t promise it gets better, but you will get better at dealing with it and taking it all in your stride. You will. From where I am now, you’ve aced it already. Well, nearly.
You’re not ugly. Your parents should know better than to keep telling you that you are, but they just don’t. In time, that will be okay too. You will learn to forgive them. Seems impossible now, stupid even. But you don’t have the heart to be any other way. I’m proud of this.
Don’t forget to forgive yourself, and love yourself. Set an alarm, if it helps, or get a tattoo. But don’t forget. I can’t stress on this enough.
You will fall in love more times than you can count, and have your heart broken so often you will think life has no meaning but death. The fact is, there is someone meant only for you. I can tell you this for certain from where I am today, and although I can’t say who, I will say that when you see that someone, you will know it immediately.
Slowly learn to stop running after love. Don’t try to make love stay. You don’t need to cling to everything you cherish. Deep inside, you know this already. Imagine what would happen if you just let it all go. It’s a lot like holding onto balloons. One moment you’re clutching at strings, and the next you’re staring up at the sky and watching magic happen.
Know, that I will always be somewhere waiting for you with love, twenty years down the line.
Yours,
M. + 20
Why I love… Jack Gilbert
Who else will give me quiet tears shed for the beauty of words?
Who else will churn the milk of my heart with the tenderness of a down feather?
Who but you, Jack, can reach inside my chest, pull out my heart and replace it with your own?
Rain
- Jack Gilbert
Suddenly this defeat.
This rain.
The blues gone gray
And the browns gone gray
And yellow
A terrible amber.
In the cold streets
Your warm body.
In whatever room
Your warm body.
Among all the people
Your absence
The people who are always
Not you.
I have been easy with trees
Too long.
Too familiar with mountains.
Joy has been a habit.
Now
Suddenly
This rain.
Le Mot Juste
Le Mot Juste. French for ‘the right word at exactly the right time’. There seems to be a LOT of that taking up some serious real estate in my head the past few days. I admit I’ve become a word hoarder overnight. A junkie. Yesterday’s posts gave me such a high. I felt awash with love for words I’d never heard of before. I did a little research and have found plenty more hiding in the infinite corners of the Internet.
Here you go. I hope you enjoy them as I have, and use them in good health.
Dozywocie (Polish)
Many cultures share this concept, but Polish sums it up in a single word. “Parental contract with children guaranteeing lifelong support”
Jung (Korean)
A special feeling that is stronger than mere ‘love’ and can only often be proved by having survived a huge argument with someone.
Toska (Russian)
Vladimir Nabokov describes it best: “No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”
Ubuntu (Bantu languages, South Africa)
“I am what I am because of who we all are.” (from a translation offered by Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee)
“A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.” (Archbishop Desmond Tutu)
Mokusatsu (Japanese)
Mokusatsu is when you bargain and you feel the buyer’s offer is very low. Thus, you keep silent. This makes the buyer understand that his offer is not good enough, while enabling him not to lose face.
This word was used by the Japanese emperor in response to Roosevelt’s ultimatum.
Pena Ajena (Spanish)
Shame experienced on behalf of another person, even though that person may not experience shame.
Gummiservi (Turkish)
What you feel when you see moonlight shining on water.
Qarrtsiluni (Iñupiaq)
“Sitting together in the darkness, waiting for something to burst.”
Vovohe Tahtsenaotse (Cheyenne)
To prepare the mouth before speaking by moving or licking one’s lips.
Komorebi (Japanese)
The sort of scattered, dappled light effect that happens when sunlight shines in through tree leaves.
Hiraeth (Welsh)
A feeling of longing associated with displacement, but not necessarily displacement from one’s original home. An intense yearning to be somewhere you are not.
Firgun (Hebrew)
An act of saying nice things or doing nice things to another person without any other purpose, but to make the other feel good about what he is or what he does.
Mamihlapinatapei
Yagan (indigenous language of Tierra del Fuego) – “the wordless, yet meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something but are both reluctant to start”
Ya’aburnee
Arabic – Both morbid and beautiful at once, this incantatory word means “You bury me,” a declaration of one’s hope that they’ll die before another person because of how difficult it would be to live without them.
Litost
Czech – The closest definition is a state of agony and torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery. Milan Kundera remarked that “As for the meaning of this word, I have looked in vain in other languages for an equivalent, though I find it difficult to imagine how anyone can understand the human soul without it.”
Empalagarse (Spanish)
The sensation your tongue has after eating too many sweets.
Razliubit (Russian)
To fall out of love.
Hanyauku (Rukwangali, Namibia)
The act of walking on tiptoes across warm sand.
Sabsung (Thai)
The thing that brings you back to life or livens up your day. Whatever it is that makes you happy to be alive.
‘Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms…’ – Pablo Neruda
“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”
Ever read Pablo Neruda?
For those who have not, you’re missing something. Here’s something to tide over the, perhaps yet-unknown, yawning chasm in your soul.
I’d like for you to be still… – recited by Glenn Close
and also this
If you forget me… – recited by Madonna
*Image courtesy: http://fadwas-inspirational.blogspot.com
Neruda. What’s not to love?
’And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us.
… and so beneath my mouth you see again the unfulfilled plant of your life putting out its roots toward my heart that was waiting for you.’
*Images Copyright Mahinn Ali Khan
Convention for Those Wounded in Love – Paulo Coelho
General provisions:
A – Whereas the saying “all is fair in love and war” is absolutely correct;
B – Whereas for war we have the Geneva Convention, approved on 22 August 1864, which provides for those wounded in the battle field, but until now no convention has been signed concerning those wounded in love, who are far greater in number;
It is hereby decreed that:
Article 1 – All lovers, of any sex, are alerted that love, besides being a blessing, is also something extremely dangerous, unpredictable and capable of causing serious damage. Consequently, anyone planning to love should be aware that they are exposing their body and soul to various types of wounds, and that they shall not be able to blame their partner at any moment, since the risk is the same for both.
Article 2 – Once struck by a stray arrow fired from Cupid’s bow, they should immediately ask the archer to shoot the same arrow in the opposite direction, so as not to be afflicted by the wound known as “unrequited love”. Should Cupid refuse to perform such a gesture, the Convention now being promulgated demands that the wounded partner remove the arrow from his/her heart and throw it in the garbage. In order to guarantee this, those concerned should avoid telephone calls, messages over the Internet, sending flowers that are always returned, or each and every means of seduction, since these may yield results in the short run but always end up wrong after a while. The Convention decrees that the wounded person should immediately seek the company of other people and try to control the obsessive thought: “this person is worth fighting for”.
Article 3 – If the wound is caused by third parties, in other words if the loved one has become interested in someone not in the script previously drafted, vengeance is expressly forbidden. In this case, it is allowed to use tears until the eyes dry up, to punch walls or pillows, to insult the ex-partner in conversations with friends, to allege his/her complete lack of taste, but without offending their honor. The Convention determines that the rule contained in Article 2 be applied: seek the company of other persons, preferably in places different from those frequented by the other party.
Article 4 – In the case of light wounds, herein classified as small treacheries, fulminating passions that are short-lived, passing sexual disinterest, the medicine called Pardon should be applied generously and quickly. Once this medicine has been applied, one should never reconsider one’s decision, not even once, and the theme must be completely forgotten and never used as an argument in a fight or in a moment of hatred.
Article 5 – In all definitive wounds, also known as “breaking up”, the only medicine capable of having an effect is called Time. It is no use seeking consolation from fortune-tellers (who always say that the lost lover will return), romantic books (which always have a happy ending), soap-operas on the television or other such things. One should suffer intensely, completely avoiding drugs, tranquilizers and praying to saints. Alcohol is only tolerated if kept to a maximum of two glasses of wine a day.
Final determination:
Those wounded in love, unlike those wounded in armed conflict, are neither victims nor torturers. They chose something that is part of life, and so they have to accept both the agony and the ecstasy of their choice.
And those who have never been wounded in love will never be able to say: “I have lived”. Because they haven’t.
Before by Carl Adamshick
I always thought death would be like traveling
in a car, moving through the desert,
the earth a little darker than sky at the horizon,
that your life would settle like the end of a day
and you would think of everyone you ever met,
that you would be the invisible passenger,
quiet in the car, moving through the night,
forever, with the beautiful thought of home.
You Should Date An Illiterate Girl or Why I love… Charles Warnke
You Should Date An Illiterate Girl
Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.
Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi, and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale, or the evenings get long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.
Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.
Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail, frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return, or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.
Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.
Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.
Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.
Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.
‘Date a girl who reads because you deserve it.’ – Rosemarie Urquico
A few months ago, Charles Warnke wrote an online article for the Thought Catalog, which, at first, I described as rich with soppy romantic regret. It’s rather beautifully written, if not unabashedly sexist and it’s called You Should Date an Illiterate Girl.
Now, if you are even remotely a feminist, you will notice the sensation of being ever so slightly rankled by the unimaginative, if not tawdry trajectory of this writing… until you get to the part where he says: ‘… the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion,’
And then, it just proceeds to get better (I’ll come back to this in just a bit). Big sigh of relief. No mud needs to be slung today, ladies. No sharpening claws. Let’s just retire to the top right-hand corner here, click to exit page and get back to life.
But it’s not over – as they say- until it’s over, or until the fat lady sings and somewhere in Baguio City in the Philippines, a writer named Rosemarie Urquico decided to pen a fitting response to Charles’ post. It’s your general feel-good piece of personal writing which ultimately gets re-blogged to death. Snug, sincere, comforting, and convincing, this is her case for why you should Date a Girl Who Reads. Please go read it now and come back to read the rest of my post.*
Done? Great, let’s move on.
I actually read Rosemarie’s piece first. Immediately, you will understand how easy it is to be moved by this writing. It’s simple and straightforward and it’s a positive statement about the geeky bookworms we all secretly have the hots for. The girls with less than 20:20 vision, who may not have looks that kill, but maim for life – which is, in many ways, far more lethal. So yes, I see how this resonates. I get what Rosemarie’s going on about and why. I even like what she has to say in some parts, or maybe I like how she said it. Just like the tens of thousands of others who read what she wrote and went ‘Wow. Nice.’
Then there’s the part of me that’s never satisfied with what is. Who questions incessantly and whose very existence seems driven by the need to uncover the etymology of everything. I was pleased to see that Rosemarie Urquico hadn’t just pulled her sweet little piece out of a top hat one fine morning. It was in response to something, and clearly it was a something worthy of her time and effort.
This is how I arrived at Charles Warnke’s post on Thought Catalog. And I’ve never been more pleased to be pissed off by what at first seemed a slightly perverse, piece of sexist trash, and which later turned out to profess a rare articulacy. Warnke’s profundity goes beyond the pedantic and iconoclastic. As the piece progresses, we are witness to an unravelling of sorts. A man come apart because he cannot measure up to unreasonable icons and larger-than-life heroes. A writer rejecting the written word when it is beloved to his beloved. What we have finally is a raw, almost desperate rejection of the self; a sacrifice of romance at the altar of the erudite female.
You could almost believe him. You would almost choose to not date a well-read woman. You might even turn cold if the object of your affection and ardour were to spend a little too much time lingering at the bookstore. You might almost wish she spent all your money on shoes.
There is something very real, very terrifying about rejection. And about never being enough. This is something I know something about. And this is also why Charles Warnke’s derangement appeals to me. Writing that cuts too close to the bone behoves a respect that is sometimes beyond words. Then again, the best things usually are.
My next post, coming right up, is Charles Warnke’s ‘Why You Should Date An Illiterate Girl’, reproduced in full directly from Thought Catalog, which you should really follow on Twitter.
*Incidentally, Rosemarie no longer has an active blog, but she can be contacted on Facebook.
Last night, a man hand-fed me with a story…
Last night, a man I have never met but known all my life, told me a story. He fed it to me in twenty-five, 140-character bite-sized morsels. There has never been a man who has done that for me before. Fed me with his words, with his own hand.
This is that man.
This is that story.
Thursday 10 March 2011; 00:53
@angadc: may I? what do you want a story about. there is a cat resting on my shoulder, and I can try.
there once was a girl who only lived when she moved through streets that cut through history frozen into buildings, with …
..some joy peering out at her through windows, but many, many frowns. brows would stiffen as she walked – not danced – but
.. through these streets. it did not matter, really, there was the sea; and there were some words stuck between rocks, and
some other words under some carpets. her mother loved her carpets, and kept all her secrets hidden in there …
before i forget, there was an unhappy child. the mother had some many children that she did not know if this one …
…child existed or had been stillborn. there were others, others to feed, and clean, and bather, so this child was not ..
..really a problem. the girl (the girl at the start of our story), the girl who found words, under rocks, under carpets ..
… was hungry one day. she looked at her favourite rock, where the sea blasted words onto the shore, and they knotted into
.. stories under it. it was empty. she took this as a sign (as she had all the time in the world), and walked (not danced)
…back home to check under her mothers new carpet collection.
…she looked under the first set – nothing new. some words had formed a dust cloud that made a story about …
… a grail quest. nothing new. just ordinary. but there was always another room, in this big house. she looked at all her
favourite dust corners. (she even experimented with the places where the maid never cleaned – she was desperate .. )
nothing. nothing. so she decided to do something else. but that is not the end.
walking up to her room, she saw that the staircase was carpeted. she had never noticed this before. so she walked up ..
…and down the staircase looking for a crack into which she could stick her finger, even her tongue, to get the dust story
there was no crack. this was the theme of her day. bored, she picked up a pair of binoculars. she saw a butterfly.
… she said “BUTTERFLY” as this is how butterflies look when seen through binoculars. the creature did something ..
… very curious. she landed on a tiny lump moving under the sofa that she had not seen before.
the lump moved. she though .. oh my god .. dust that moves… it terrified her. a live story. a real live story. she …
… ran through the house, looking for a knife, anything to cut the carpet with. she, as her mother was a superior ..
..house keeper, found it immediately. she began to rip the carpet to shreads, and when the dust cleared she heard a whimper
… A SPEAKING STORY she thought, and waited (impatiently, for once) for the dust to settle.
she saw eyes. she saw fingers. she saw bruised arms. she saw her brother. stillborn. her mothers story.
THE END.
Thursday 10 March 2011; 01:09
What is Theory? by @Rascality
What is Theory? by @Rascality
You know the ritual; you’ve been repeating it since middle school. Someone asks you what “theory” is, and you say, “a way to make sense of (the) data.” They smile, you smile. Beautiful day.
The next time you’re most likely to hear about theory is in an introductory science class in college. There you’ll learn that theory is the primary intellectual instrument of the dispassionate researcher. Beset by an array of data points or “facts,” she chooses among the best available cognitive scaffolds (or fashions one of her own) to organize and present them in their best and most meaningful form.
What’s “best?” You remember. Good theories are clear, parsimonious, empirically valid (i.e., are supported by the data), and above all, useful.
What’s useful? Predicting, controlling, and influencing nature, namely the earth, oceans, sky, stars, and each other.
Now this would be all well and good if the world were a laboratory and we were all researchers. Unfortunately, life sometimes divides by zero. People die, come into our lives, or otherwise just plain old surprise us. Nature too. Things happen all the time that seem to resist our ability to make sense of them.
Of course you could apply the scientific method to your troubles. Many people do.
Some stubborn folks throughout history, however, have insisted on engaging in things like philosophy, literature, the arts, and even (gasp!) religion when nature throws them a curveball.
Let’s get down and dirty with some of these folks right now. It’s time to get etymological (a fancy term for “intellectual perversion of those schooled in the humanities”).
Most of us know most of where the word theory comes from. Its main roots are in the Ancient Greek theorēn (θεωρέω), which means to look at, view, or behold, and theoria (θεωρία), which means a beholding or contemplation. In addition, theorēma (θεώρημα), which gives us theorem, is the Ancient Greek for sight or a spectacle.
You probably knew or could have guessed this already. But that’s not all. I’ll need you to hold on to your socks as you read this next bit.
Ever heard of Theors? If not, I’ll wager it’s because it flies in the face of what our culture needs us to think about theory.
They were sacred envoys sent from one Ancient Greek city-state to another. Their job was to bear sacred witness to the religious festivals of the host city (think the Olympics or festivals in honor of Dionysius). They were much like the dignitaries governments now send to the funerals of foreign leaders or to watch important international sporting events.
Sacred witness? Come on, we know theory has nothing to do with awe, reverence, or mystery – heck, theories are designed to banish mystery!
Aren’t they?
On this view, when we do theory we’re engaging in an act of contemplative worship of the highest order. We’re sending our thoughts, impressions, and passions (yes, our passions) out to meet, greet, and honor something interesting, and waiting for a response.
You’ll love this: know what “interesting” means? It comes from the Latin inter andesse, and means “to be among.”
You heard me: among. Caught in the game, in medias res, knee-deep in the hoopla, up to our ears in the data, up to our necks, rather than viewing them dispassionately from on high.
Based on the etymology, interesting things, people, and events draw us closer to them, compelling the kind of sacred witnessing a former age knew as theory, which our scientistic age has desiccated into a denominator-rationalizing, paradise-pavingpowerhouse.
This view of theory is as fully rigorous (don’t let scientism tell you otherwise) an intellectual approach as the laboratory model. It just doesn’t play Cartesian favorites and split the mental from the physical, observer from observed, dancer from the dance.
I know what you’re saying. “Rascal, can we please have some examples of what you mean?” Sure. Here are just a few for you.
If you insist on being pragmatic, you could just say “right tool for the right job.”
Of course we need science; when we need our distance, or just enough intellectual leverage to move nature. But it’s foolish to model our entire existence on the scientist’s activity. When we want to cultivate, honor, or just stand in the presence of mystery (or it’s reciprocal, the absurd) we simply need a better view of what it means to make sense of the data.
