An Introduction to the following posts

It is nearing the end of yet another journal. It has been a transitional one, however, and I am compelled to share most of it. The majority will be found on Trimble Hollow Junction, my creative/prose blog. The more philosophical stuff is to follow.

Contemplation (1)

Two years ago, this was my turf. This was the home I only wanted to show you - the playground I wanted to bring you to play in, waiting hours for delayed planes and phone calls and times to leave so I'd pick you up on time and not spend half-hours in Carl Jr.'s parking lots, counting down time.

Two years before that, this was a lonely place full of poetry and pineapple stories and waiting on myself to finally break open the something that was locked up, away, deep inside - waiting to mend back together whatever it was that had broken.

Now, as always, the night is over. And tonight, I go to sleep with you.

March, the Second (2)

This is a revision of a post I posted back in March. Both are from the same source. I am keeping both because different times tell us different things about ourselves.
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One day, we are all invited into this adult world that our parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents have all been inhabiting for - it seems - their entire lives. But, instead of being adept, we are confused as we get sucked into this world where everything costs no-one nothing, but really costs everyone everything they've got left. A world where we are no longer compelled to do what we must, but whatever the hell we like - as long as we have enough success under our belts and enough finesse under our lips. A world where every moment we choose our own self-directed destiny. Where bills and weekends determine our days and penned-in schedules determine our lives. This world where we are so confoundedly busy all the time; where no-one knows why or where all of the time is going. A world that, now we're in it, seemed to forever have made sense to no-one, and still remains not to.

The result is a sort of drowning sensation. But I'm beginning to come-to. And it's making me come to some serious decisions - making me come to some dire conclusions.
In short, I don't have to live like this. This is not my resting place.

Things that, as a child, seemed so clichéd, so out-of-place are slowly and suddendly beginning to take shape: this is the time when patterns evolve, when we all get settled into the groove that will determine the rest of our lives.

Right now, we've got a motto we're defining, a pattern we're deciding, a ritual we're designing. We're standing at the start, ready to jump from our places - ready to begin. This is where our adult world gets its designation from. Because, now, we're the ones making the calls.

Our holidays. Our sisters and our brothers making up the aunts and the uncles that we thought had existed all along. It will be our traditions and our words and our lives the younger ones will remember as stone. It will be our past that is their history. It will be us that defines this adult world from here on out.

I recall this same feeling from before. It was frightening, though, and so I edged away from it - backed myself into reverse and stopped growing for four years. Then, I was sixteen and it was the Missouri summer heat that had set me on fire. I wasn't a child in the way I had been, and I felt it. I had seen a glimpse of the world through new eyes. But California cooled my senses and turned me into a pillar of salt just for looking. My eyes closed, and for the next four years I was scared and awkward again. And in four years, I went nowhere.

This year has been similar to that Missouri summer. Hard, pressing, different. But, like then, I knew it was coming. And from the heat and the humidity of life, my eyes are wide open. It has been one of those years, and our hearts are - finally - wide open.

So let's go. Let's get out there and test the world to see how badly we can fail. And when we do, let's start all over again. Because that is just what we humans do.
Let's get off the starting block.
Because from here, we are grown. And from here, we are growing.

June, the Twenty-Second (3)

Not that many peple in our society think much about death these days. It's so far away - in other galaxies, other universes. It doesn't touch us - how dare it! We have perfected life and living, have come so close to immortality that death only dare encroach upon us every once and a while to remind us he still exists. But even when he does, more often than not are we entertained by it - as we sit still and lifeless in front of our television screens observing the millions of numbers of death tolls in our "wars" across the world.

Our society now passes its leisure time with death and fear. We put it on the big screen and laugh or give ourselves chills over the most horrific forms of it.

I suspect it is because the majority of us feel nothing from day to day. We're numbed by our technology and our convenience foods that fill us with everything we believe we need. We don't actually do or consider much of anything anymore. We microwave life and entertain death like a frozen dinner guest. How cozy we are with ourselves.

But I have faith. Not faith in humanity (that was lost long ago), but faith in the natural order of things. Faith in that nature or existence of God will right these sorts of things in due time. Often, we consider that evil and vindictive of nature and existence and God. I think that is because we forget how vindictive humanity is.

I'm not entirely convinced it's on purpose, though. I think most of our problem as humans is wrong focus - self focus. We see the world through very small pinholes, while everything else is a blacked-out unknown. I only know my own thoughts, convictions, visions, nightmares - I only know that my own mind exists for certain. And, with nature and existence and God out to tear that apart, I've got to focus on myself and my own needs. Only I know them, only I regard them with any worth. Only I care about preventing my self-destruction.
It makes sense enough.

What is counter-intuitive is altruism. Is self-denouncement, self-sacrifice, selflessness. In fact, it is so counter-intuitive to the average person that it is almost impossible to accomplish. And, with our self-preservation at the forefront, each of us make it that much harder for everyone else. The more inward we go, the more inward we all must go until no-one notices the world outside of their own head. It is a phenomenon that perpetuates more of itself. It's convenient like that - selfishness replies with more selfishness.

June, Other Thoughts (4)

The other thing I have learned about humanity is a little more obscure: we, for the most part, are pretty polite in this culture. But we aren't real. Politeness rescues us from any feelings or tendancies toward realness.

I started to see this at jobs like mine. For the most part, I am very polite. You can infuriate me, talk down to me, disrespect me - and I'm still polite. And in response, the majority of customers are very polite back. Every once and a while, someone will be real - either you or me. And suddenly, the whole exchange is different. We aren't just going through the motions. We may say this or that, perhaps not even much - but the authenticity of the conversation can still be felt throughout the room.

Politeness severs that, instills in each of us a negative effect: breaking points. Because underneath all of that niceness is the reality, is our fury at the world and at ourselves and at each other. But politeness keeps it hidden away so no-one knows what infuriates us. So we go on being polite, but steaming - all of us walking pressure cookers waiting to explode. And eventually, some small thing will tip the scale - will tap the lid of the cooker. In an instant, we have thrown caution and humanity to the wind, and we are shouting at the top of our lungs above the polite din at someone we haven't known for more than a moment.
Then the fury passes, the pressure resets, and we are polite as pie again.

The problem here is honesty. So many of us go around acting out a multitue of alterior motives that we never tell anyone. Most of those movitves are self-focused, which brings us back to the earlier discussion and really mucks everything up. Which leads to this grim summary:

Humanity is a lot of self-focused liars who layer manners over true motives in attempts to make soeciety work together more peaceably.

But it isn't working. And eventually all of our timebombs will go off. Then, after the desolation, perhaps the right order of things will be restored and humanity will get one more chance to start from the start again.

But we'll probably fuck that up too.
It's inevitable.

July 16, Morning (5)

I have a question: does bad poetry make a bad poet, or does a bad poet make bad poetry?

It is the age-old question of cause and effect, at first glance. What causes one thing and what affects it? At the same time, it is a question of labels. What gives a thing whatever title it acquires?

The discussion came about because I was asked to mentally ponder the greater causalities of labels, or some such. The first label to require attention was the label of "immature". The discussion came up as the result of a flare of the temper, which I decided to - instead of alleviating it upon some poor fool - use the fire to discuss an interesting, and rather fresh topic.

Now, I realize you are probably sitting in your gray armchair right this moment, reclining and thinking to yourself: dear skyscrapers! This is a fresh topic?!
However, perhaps you left off the "skyscrapers" bit - as it is really only a harkening to how much I miss the city. Right, but back to the topic - "immaturity".

Labels are an interesting thing, really. At first sight, they are quite useful: I read his poem, it was badly written; I talked to her, she used bad grammar; I visited them, they were noisy. You may not consider the above labels, persay, but bear with me. They are what I would call "nonchalaunt labels": things we say everyday to describe people or actions in a certain way. And the above can be fine descriptions. The problem comes in when when the simple description takes on new form: he's a bad poet, this book must be full of bad poetry; she uses bad grammar, I cannot communicate with her; they are noisy, I don't want them at my house. And suddenly, the description we imposed as a reaction to an event becomes the label by which we judge.

The same goes for immaturity. "You did (blank), which was immature" becomes "You are immature, so your actions are a symptom of that". And any laugh, any untimely joke, any minor frustration that is expressed becomes a sign of how immature the individual actually is. There is no room for error because the judgement has already been passed and all other actions will now be filtered through the lens of that label. The problem is that, in reality, immaturity is not a set of behaviors - contrary to popular belief. Immaturity is the inability to recognize what is appropriate and inappropriate and behave accordingly. Fun is not immature. It is about a balance of appropriateness at any given time - not whether you wear the right clothes and use the right vocabulary and don't laugh too much or speak too vibrantly.

The same is true of gender. For so long, we have been told endlessly to believe that a male is one way and a female the other. For century upon century each new generation is conditioned to see, encourage, and perpetuate the same gender roles that our parents and grandparents did. We are told that male equals single-mindedness, playfulness, sexuality. We are told that female equals multi-mindedness, propriety, emotionalness. And so, in our children we recognize the patterns and encourage them. We subvert and punish those that don't apply, that we haven't been told to establish. And as our children are fed their gender roles from gender-typed parents, the cycle loops over itself and continues, doubly strong. For now, a new generation in a new time exhibits the same behaviors - and we are proud of our correct labels and our finite judgements.

There is a back-lash against this idea, however. I see in many of my own generation and the generation after us, a tendency to question the labels we have been given. Perhaps it is because we see many who we cannot label within the old limits. The danger, however, is new labels emerging for the "weird ones who won't fit in". And so we hear the emergence of "metrosexual" and the over-tendency to label "gay" or "homosexual". And we see a redoubling of the "tomboy" - labels to label the ones who don't go along with the labels their parents sold them.

But, I have been called a tomboy and un-lady-like for too long. My husband been referred to as "effeminite" and "girlish" too many times. We will, instead, stand strong in our opposition to the labels we have been told to live. And we will stand firm in our belief that the roles humanity establishes are not black and white, are not clean-cut, are not neccessarily true at all.

For our God is neither black nor white, neither young nor old, neither male nor female.

And, the Last (6)

I am beginning to realize two things about myself. The first is that I have become a writer. Now, I relaize that all this time I've thought myself a writer. Most of that was, sadly, desire and pretension more than it was actual fact. In looking back over the past years I have spent at the paper with a pencil, I see now that most of it was just a damn lot of complaining. I had no muse to which I answered; I had awkward teenaged pain. I had no true art; I had misery. I went on a painful lot about myself. My only characters were my crushes, I knew nothing about plot, and anything interesting I ever did conceive of writing went absolutely nowhere but the trash.

Half of my writings were movies I liked and, in my teenaged way, thought were "sexy". My journals were merely a private forum for private, angry thoughts. I was full of too much anger and no comprehension for creation. So I wrote when I was in pain.

I wasn't making a memoir or some unsigned letter to some unknown future, like I had hoped I was. I was writing down my emotions for propriety's sake. I may have had some minor vision of worlds that could have been created - but not much. I may have had some minor inclination of stories that could have been written - but not much. I occassionally saw strands of stories or theories of characters in everyday events - but they were not much.

Even after I began forming my "writing" for the public eye, I only tamed or shaped my angry rantings about a life I didn't really like living into a somewhat palatable form. Those I simply couldn't, I posted private and later decided that who gives a damn and let the world see my fire. But it was no fire of recreation, no phoenix rising from ashes. It was only the charred remains of a forrest that, in my own self-pitying way, I wanted others to know had existed.

It is only now, in the beginning and closing of this last notebook that I find myself faced with the conflict. It had been the dilemma of this notebook all along. So many entries cataloging my failures as an artist. So many angry words directed at my directionlessness. So much frustration over the fact that I had never actually written anything at all. How could I go on writing an angry diatribe about myself when I no longer had any interest in doing so? How could I concentrate on bitter rants when story after story clogged my brainwaves, filtering down into my pen without my wanting them to? How could I go on about the filth when the trash was being sifted for characters I had yet to meet?

And so the form began to change. Catalogs and outlines and formless babblings about progressions through introductions began to fill the lines - page after page after page. Until there was only room for the occassional philosophical treatice. Only room for a snippet here and there of an artist's thoughts on humanity or the state of the world. The others were expressed in voices not my own until the pressing of the muse would become too much to bear and a new world or new life or new set of regulations about a new society would emerge.

So now I see my muse has captured me. And these journals, these notebokks that I have spent my life collecting and hoping to fill will be dedicated to her. And she will sustain the effort. The old way, I see now, had no sustainability; the old way was sure to wear out. This new road is certain and endless. And I will walk it as long as she remains by me.

The other thing, I don't reall.