One should avoid profession catering mags

It's difficult to comprehend value that is not attached to the things we are taught it is attached to. It is difficult to see when it is not relected in the mirrors are eyes are trained to find it in.

When I find myself in thse situations, I often want to disprove the one who has judged me valueless. I want to prove the inherent worth of the thing to them. I want to show them.

This cannot be done.
And, I am left frustrated.
So it goes.

Injsutice is really the problem here - in justice of a sorts. The sort that represses those who are more qualified, more adept, more capable, more talented and gives success to those who are cheap and easily persuaded. It gives it to the lowest bidder.

I read in a real article printed in a real magazine intended for business owners that business owners don't need to worry about paying their employees good wages. Instead, just make them feel happy at their job and "Make It Fun".
So they can forget. So they won't notice.

The business needs to stay in business and if the employees are being paid good wages, the business will obviously fail. So, instead, why not put up "Good Job!" stickie notes all over and remind your employees how much you care.

So that they won't blame you when they can't pay their rent, and try to find a better job.

Everything about this situation depresses me.
The only way to live in this world is to be one of the money makers who can oppress the working class. It is to be the royalty, the rich, the well-to-do who look down their noses at those they keep held down with a powerful hand.

Marx is right: the lower class will never ascend toward the others. The middle and the high will exchange hands here and there, once the middle class feels oppressed enough. But the low class wil always be the low class.

Low income will always be low because the rich do not have to pay you well enough to do the jobs they wish for you to do.

Let's break free from this slavery for it is unbearable.
Let's leave this system behind; it is unbearably ugly.

7.17.09 - Coffeehouse & Roastery

One of the joys of being a writer is the chance to get to know an endless number of people - of spirits, if you will - along with the stories they have to tell. I think many "authors" have either forgotten this or never knew it from the beginning.

I find myself forgetting it from time to time.
It's when thoughts like, "Who can I make up" and "what's a good story" crop up. It's when I grab at random description words, cram them together in some sort of semblence, and then smile proudly at myself. It happens when I do the same to character "types" - cliches, stereotypes, just people I know.

That has no art in it, no soul.
It's just collage, not writing.

Don't get me wrong. There is certainly something worth saying for the art of collage as a writing technique. But, as a formula for character aquisition and story developement, it's quite fucking weak.

This all calls to mind the reading we sat through last week. Every offensive, unrealistic character in said reading was just so because he or she refused to contain any reality. The whole lot of characters were pasted together paperdolls of any real person in any real society with any real history to tell. There were no souls on the stage, no breath being breathed. All were vapid, fruitless, aimlessly dramatic about pointless situations contrived for their very existence. As a writer, I was infuriated.

The refreshing part was when I sat down at my own proverbial desk. I have to admit that Wingsong has always had a way of bringing itself together so elloquently, despite my efforts to botch up the telling of it. I can only take credit for what is wrong in Wingsong; nothing that is right or good or real is of my own making. There is a spirit behind it all - behind each player in the scheme - and each spirit is moving some piece of the tale along, telling some section of it that until I sat down, I had not known before.

I suppose in some way, it is my own soul. Or rather, my soul's connection to that ebb and flow of wherever it is this craft originates from. In other ways, the project bears no resemblence. Is is a thing of its own showing itself in light I can merely comprehend.

That is the truth and joy of being a writer. Hearing such whispers from wherever such spirits whisper from, allowing the pen to be the medium - the langugage with which such spirits can form communication where, before my pen, there was none. In truth, it is what has always drawn me to this craft. The pure realness of it, or capacity thereof, when taken in the right way. The chance to know what others could not without my pen, without my hand being their medium, without my reality coming into communion with theirs.

Writing is a strange, inspiring art. I assume other forms of artists: painters, sketchers, scuplters, musicians must feel this way, as well. Art is a beautiful mystery; a strange deep river that we can only but dip our hands and feet into and feel the odd coolness or faint warmth of.

I wonder if the spirits musicians meet are very different - more basic in their forms. I suppose that's true if M-theory is . If ther world is made up of vibrations - of music all humming different parts of the same great composition. If all matter is a song being sung by these spirits, these parts of existence.

Frankly, whether it is the truth or not, I like to believe in it - simply because it is more inspiring and hopeful that way. Sort of like Lewis' warm universe full of wonder and life and sunlight. It might just be better that way - more artistic - more true on some deeper mythological level that our intellects cannot reach.

Music just strikes me deeper than Lewis' warmth. It rings more true to the ways in which I walk, to those spirits which I have come to know. But, it is the same artistic liscence, really.

That's something - art, real in a way very different from the reality of most popular science, has a different sort of truth about it. Like myth: the details may or may not be true, but there is a deeper truth at work - a more essential truth. It is the same of these spirits I have met that drive these characters who tell these tales I am compelled to write. As if I'm a historian of a thousand alternate histories, alternate myths - all just as real as the ones we were raised with. Just as true as the whole of existence singing itself along continuously.

It's strange, though - these spirits. If they can be said to speak, from where or when do they call? Are there other ways of existing or other places to exist in? Is art simply a vein, an undergound fount connecting those who dare to connect to some other form of truth?

I think the latter is probably the most true. It calls, however, into question the whole idea of imperical truth - truth we can obtain through our hands and eyes and ears, our sense that we've set up so high and bowed so low to worship these days.

There is clearly some other force at work here upon us. Clearly, some other way of comprehending all things beyond that which we have said is accurate. Clearly, some other way of living life.

I find it best when we can try to see through both.

Somewhere I have been before

I'm finding, there are too many things to hold my attention. Too many things to simply distract from whatever it was I had meant to do.

So much to entertain and attract and keep our minds from the things we meant them to be upon.

In this society, I am beginning to fail. It is beginning to get the best of me. It is so easy...

I thought I had placed safeguards between me and this culture of ease. Removed myself from the sort of slumbering life most live these days. I'd taken their pictures down and thier images out of my path and I'd refused to take part in their dramas. And yet, their way of life still creeps in, slipping under my door.

It is too easy...

I used to tell myself what my strengths were to remind myself that I was not without them. I used to feel strong and resilient. I used to think of myself as an artist.

I do not think much about it, these days. And I must wonder why. What have I done to cause such apathy? How have I become so empty of the worlds that once filled my mind to the brim? Or have I?

Exhaustion, running deep like a river in a cave, is carving through some part of me. I can feel it hollowing out rooms and spaces where there were once none. And it moves with an energy all its own, allowing me no piece of it.
But it must be harbored. It must be caught. It must be dried up before these spaces make the surface cave, too.

I am making my way toward a decision, toward a cliff edge that I have seen before. It is still just as cold, just as blustery here as it was the last time I stood before this place. I am older now, and I know a few ways down - or perhaps I only know how long the fall is when you jump. But that was years ago, and it is different now. I am different now.

Will you stand here with me and jump if I jump?
That could make all the difference.

revelation of the social kind

Silence is the voice of those who cannot dare to speak. Of the needlessly oppressed, irrationally hated, and unrightfully reviled. It is the language of peoples decimated always by more powerful ones. It is the way of the edge, set upon constantly by the center.

And yet. It can just as easily be the cowering mumbles of the weak. The road to oppression, the way to demise, the avenue of destruction.

Here must exist a careful balance between the two - a slow play with many, many acts in which the weak stand always as the defender, never able to parry. Until, in the very last cue, the throat of the enemy is at hand.

Slaves: you would do well to endure your masters until you can bear their corrupt subjugation no longer.
Silenced: you would do well to walk softly until you can bear this represion of your soul no longer.

Comprehension is beginning to dawn, in strange shapes, about me. There silence stands, but not so weakly. And there meekness sits, but in fear of nothing. We would do well to bear up under these oppressions until our spirit is shaken and can bear up no longer.

In weakness, we show true strength. And through silence, we can learn real character.

May our actions stand as a resonating voice, may our words not withstand to be carefully chosen, and few. For these words are the sword that can cut mortally deep. Yet, only when applied with deftness and skill will the blade be able to strike at the enemy, at all. We must ensure that when the hand draws to strike, its blade will deal in blood. And so, we wait for time to appoint us without wasting heedless time on the meager advance of self in this age.

Such advance moves us ever closer toward stolen success, but patience supplies the final victory. And, when such a moment dawns, it will be shown how silence was our bating.