Literary Exercise #10--A Writer's Life: Isolation

Okay, so I just got done talking to a friend on the phone, and an idea struck me. Most writers are lonely people. Take the comic strip writers, they publish their amusements weekly if not daily, but no one wants to invite them to their parties. They are notoriously bitter, whether from life experience or rejections from the A-list, who knows. I suppose they could be one in the same. But take other writers, take their mantra: to write about society you have to be disengaged with it. I don't know if I agree with that statement. Maybe it's because although I'm a writer at a heart, I'm also a human. I have always thought it important to live life...as stupid or abtruse as that sounds. So maybe that makes me a half-breed, a bastard of the art. I can't quite seem to keep myself pure...I always have to dirty my fingers in every interesting little nook and cranny.

Although there is something to be said for observation...I've always felt that the best writers are the introverts...those that notice obscure things most people pass by. It's definitely that way for me. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if the poetry (in the broad sense) of a writer came to life in daily activities. They'd probably be regarded as one of the most beautiful people alive. It's so weird that some people can write so majestically and yet they have the hardest time carrying on a conversation. I mean, it makes sense. Writing is a conversation, but it's a staged one. As a writer, you have the capital to buy any prop you want, make any set you can imagine, and stage you characters wherever your fancy strikes. And you can draft their conversations...and redraft them until their perfect. It's more of a conversation with yourself. In fact, I think the best way to describe writing is the way that the world would be if nothing had gone amiss. I suppose, it's the paradise of that particular person. Some might call it their heaven, their nirvana. And I think, the more people write, the more they write well, the closer we'll all get to that place. If only it was real.

And I think it is.

Literary Exercise # 9--Poetic Diction

I've been on an essay kick for quite a long time now (about a year and a half), but one thing I haven't written for a while is poetry. I find it hard, uncomfortable, like a pair of new shoes, and I haven't figured out how to break them in without blisters. For some reason, my essays just flow. But as soon as the fowl changes, as soon as the seasons shift, as soon as I place myself in my predetermined box, I lose it. What do I really want with poetry? I want to look around the lines, over them and next to them and spiraling between two lines in three-dimensional movements. I want to feel free just like I do with my essays...but really appreciate the unique art that it alone proffers. Thus, poetic diction? Besides being a title copy/righted by Owen Barfield, I think it will also have to be the approach I take. Some of the lines in my essays are already poetic, and if I could keep that free attitude while taking on a more compressed form, that would be awesome (IMO). Although, I think I'll have to revise it. A lot. This is one area that I have neglected. If you saw me muscled by my literary strength, it would be quite comical--strongs arms and legs but a beer belly whose intake could not be confused for any other beverage.

The Trade-Off at Greeley Square:

I fold papers in four directions
directly pointing out the dimensions of this park
and you rise with a start
as if the homeless chairs hold stories to bring out your competition;
where the bark is less than clean and
cheap green laminate peels away to reveal afternoon jaunts
where joints and not jobs (but nut jobs) are the keynote address

You're freckled face tells me one of two things
one, that you are tired, two, that you are leaning down
the spirit of inspiration, so that he speaks, only,
when the mininum of words has the maximum effect.
the rest is intuition.

It's dangerous to fit your thoughts
Between slots of iron-shod bars
When felons take up residence
nightly, with keys that scrape the thin, veneer off luxury cars
and break the skin of lesser-willed pedestrians,
Just outside the public borders of Greeley Square, the fare far from anything you and I would like, but the closest thing to a fair trade

But, maybe, if, and, or when you decide
to care and continue in care
we can laugh this off as one of those buyer-impaired decisions (let the buyer beware)
and chalk it up to careless incisions, the surgeon on hand, trembling ('cause a good scare is all it takes for malpractice, and if your lot was Job and not Abraham, it'd be more than you could bear)
as our smoke remissions and fissions the foggy air
ash settles bare, a cold night passes, age on the rusting square

Literary Exercise #8--A Sunny Day.

I've decided that I don't have to a paragraph intro to every blurb I write. So I'm just gonna jump right in. Yeah. ;)



A sunny day. A summer day. I wonder if it's possible to translate warm breezes and clear sunlight onto blue-lined paper and bic-made pens. Maybe if I leave my notebook out in the sun for a while, let it soak up the rays. Maybe if I take my pen with me, out to the streets, to the beach, to the city, to the clattered multi-lingual communes. There's something about the perfect day that makes you feel better about yourself. I never thought of the weather as an apparatus to absolve my lesser qualities, but when I stepped outside, all my worries turned chaff-like and were whisked away.



And you know everybody's out. Back in Minnesota, on the chop and turf of the lake waves. Out in California, in the mite-free air streaming down onto crags and gulleys and brown and blue creeks. In Texas, but you know that there, in is out, and they don't emerge until the latter-day evenings and nights like shadows. In Maine, though I think the sunlight is their first experience with a liberal sense of joy, neither to the left nor the right. In London, although their perfect experience could easily be exchanged for heavy fog and drizzling rain. In fairy tales, where the princess delights as the first light peers through her blinds and paints patterns on her floor. In Australia, Jamacia, where Fosters and Red Stripe meet together for "Hooray Beer" festivals and the kangaroo long jump. In Paris, where the outdoor cafes are filled to their capacity and they're forced to bring some chairs inside. In blenders, as the strawberries, ice, and tequila lend their juices to the perfect concoction and serve their long line of thirsty patrons. On the internet forums, where laptops are brought outside and bloggers have to squint to see their carefully crafted lines. In the church, where stain-glass windows leave their crystalline bodies and join the twirling, dazzling dance across pews and dark wooden support beams. You see, no one wants to play the guardian on a day like this. Hug a musician, they never get to dance, but watch them throw their pianos and guitars down prematurely and free-verse it on the dance floor. The real encore happens when they lift their tangled mass of strings and splintered carvings to the sun and ask for one more song. In the heavens, where angels frolic with the agility of elves, leaping in softly rounded arcs and stopping mid-air without the awkward recoil home to thirteen-year-old boys armed with safe fire arms and their first hunting experience since the wild west. In a writer of sorts, where sorting through turns of phrases is akin the sun choosing which rays to send down. And the turning of the page breaths softly on the bare skin of the reader until his bones are warmed and soothed. In wedding parties, where the groomsmen arrange the patio furniture with smirking smiles and glistening necks. Like in chess, it's a matter of where you set the pieces, and if you want to take the queen, make sure your table is close to the bridesmaids and the open bar. In concerts, in eminem and dr. dre, filtering through the grid shield of metalic microphones and sounding through the elevated speakers. In everybody's perfect dream, where they don't want to close their eyes because they don't want to miss a thing, and sleeping is waking, until the sun sees that everyone is singing their favorite bar songs and retreats to his own reserved party. In the cosmos, where stars burn bright like young bucks, seeing who can get closest to supernova-ing the moon without turning into a black hole. In the eyes of everything deep and profound, seeing all that is good and and the mystery in the bad, and seeing that all is good. No one walks out without having a party to attend--and no one seeks to amend it--not until the night comes, not until the morning light, and not until the sun ends its sunny days and summertime plans. It's not the day who makes the sun, but the sun who makes the day.