Critique the Poem

The ocean’s beauty was not meant
to adorn the walls of man.
Is the deadened shell more beautiful
than a living, breathing clam?
Poets adorn the shell with words
forgetting that which lives;
a simple beast, no doubt,
but one that’s meant to give
its life to filtering out the water
and then dissolve to dust
its shell now sand upon the shore
again part of earth’s crust.

Perhaps some would simply argue
a husk displayed inside a set
means glorious remembrance
and fame found after death;
Others feel the pull of beauty
possession sings its siren song
“If it is pretty, I must have it
no matter where it should belong.”


I remember laying in bed last night thinking there were two things I want to talk about on here. One was the fact that crossword puzzles can be used not only to test knowledge but can also sharpen data-acquiring skills using the internet. The other I cannot remember.

I am interested in how we will redistribute the nutrients in our landfills back into the ecosystem and/or our homes.


Poetry has always fascinated me with its blend of symbolic and logical communication. Chelsea's party was lots of fun, as was the Coast meeting. My brother and I went to the beach at his request and I am so tired and have lots of work to do. Peace out?

Progress

Star Trek predicts the 1990s are a time of bloody world war and our first space travel. We may not be colonizing other planets, but this is because we instead "chose" to make scientific, medical, and engineering progress, this choice, of course, being the result of various social and political pressures. The things science is now accomplishing were a dream in the 1960's and are in many ways simply amazing.

I find that, in a way, Star Trek is more of a scientific fairy tale than science fiction. Scenarios may utilize science at times, but this is far outweighed by the number of unscientific and improbable elements involved in many episodes so far. This is not to say that the scenarios have not been clever and interesting to watch. I find that I am really enjoying the show, and am almost finished with the first season. Since every episode is fifty minutes in length I cannot watch more than one per day, and two is stretching things.

People have treated space as the frontier, but what about the internet? We need more novels like this.

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When a significant other is having a difficult experience it is not right to abandon him or her even if the experience is affecting the relationship. Examples of difficult experiences include finding a job or prolonged illness. It is only if the affected partner makes no effort to recover that perhaps action is necessary. Being critical is in fact counter-productive because in addition to the initial stressor the affected partner has to cope with the disapproval of her significant other while the "support group" affect of partnership is negated. If your partner is going through a difficult time, please attempt to put yourself in his or her shoes.
Yes, there is a story behind this paragraph, but I am not willing to share it. No, the inspiration was not Chris.

I dislike it when individuals claim to constantly be "calling people out" as this generally implies a sense of their being superior to the general population. This method is tends to be ineffective due to the extremely blunt and sometimes condescending way in which it is usually used which makes the actual message get lost in communication. People are not generally receptive to profanities or tones which imply they are being talked down to. Furthermore, the general implication is that people are liars or do not know how to analyze their own feelings or minds.

When someone does deserve to be "called out", most of the time he or she is not going to be receptive to the truth and it is better to trust that life and experience will show it to him rather than attempt to win a fruitless battle of words. There are few cases where this is false.

Saying Something

Apparently, Warren Ellis is writing a comic which is free for viewing online.

The latest entry of PLFM features an extremely psychotic man who deserves to have a derisive entry written about him. However, I take offense to this statement:

""I'm just not that into casual sex," he explained. For those women not in the know, that's man-speak for "I can't find anyone who will f*** me." "

That's just untrue, though it may not have been in this man's case.

Speaking of PLFM, Mike/Weasel recently did an interview on another blog. Here is a quote from it:

"And like most writers, I absolutely abhor what I write. I post entries, and I never read them again, because I can’t. I’m my own worst critic. They just seem so fucking awful, so unfunny."

I can completely relate to this. Part of what I try to do while writing this blog is to go back and correct entries a week and a month after they are written in an attempt to improve my writing style. I always get the urge to delete the posts, cobbling together the reasoning that hey, Kafka wanted to burn all of his work, maybe yours is actually good! It seems to be part of the natural torture of being a writer.

One of the reasons that I believe creates the high divorce rate in this country is that people do not know how to communicate with each other. This seems to be a reason that nobody is addressing.

It's kind of saddening that Micheal Jackson's death is the only thing that brought about renewed respect for him. If he was a child molester I don't feel any sympathy for his faith, but he really was never allowed to live a normal life and was damaged in so many ways.

Friender Gender

I will wait to see Terminator on DVD as it only got 33% on Rotten Tomatoes.

I saw "Volver" today. It was not what I expected, though fans of Amadovar's previous work will probably recognize his style. I enjoyed it.

Friends of friends are people who 's lives, stories, and histories you constantly hear about. Sometimes when adding someone on Facebook or Blogger these people are present and active on your friend's page and these individuals have a Blog or Facebook of their own.

But, since technically these people are strangers, it is awkward to friend or talk to them. What if the individual hasn't heard about you?

Friending someone on Facebook isn't a big deal and in fact is probably a good way to start at least an acquaintance ship accompanied by a note such as "Hey, I'm so-and-so's friend and I've heard some cool stories about you!(Don't worry, none of it's gossip.) ". Commenting on someone's blog is much more personal since it implies that a stranger is reading that person's thoughts, which is why I also tend to avoid stranger's personal blogs. While that's the risk taken when posting things on the internet it's creepy to have that fear directly confirmed.

While getting to know someone generally is done on a person-by-person basis, what to you do in situations like this? I have let go several potential friendships myself out of a fear of seeming awkward or strange.

In other news, it's sort of interesting how "them" is becoming the third person singular instead of "he or she". I'm a big believer in there being a third gender and in fact identify greatly with the notion. Should I be putting that on the internet? Probably not.

It's so much easier to write about certain things than it is to talk about them. In a weird way, as much as the tonality of voice helps expression, it hinders some thoughts. Sometimes when I say things that are meant to be written I can hear them wither in the air, bereft of the poetry they would express on paper. As much as I love hanging out with people and talking to them, I also love writing to them,because for some reason deep thoughts that wither in the air can be shared on pieces of paper or computer screens.

Reading About the Delicacy and Subtlety of Japanese Art

I wonder what possible meanings we miss with the standardizations of script in books. Of course, western society does not usually insinuate meanings inside characters themselves.

This is a very thought-provoking and enlightening subject.

The depth of my ignorance in some matters persuades me against traveling too much before imbibing more culture here at home, since the subtleties of life must to some extent be reflected in the viewer before her or she notices them.

I wonder if, given the chance, people would have recorded myths and olden stories in song or in moving images.

Symbols?

So reading the Tale of Genjii got me thinking about how people used to (at least in story) communicate with each other through poetry and picture. As someone who loves the deeper-than-words communication that can be conveyed through these, I feel as though, in part, I miss the days when this was much more commonplace. Of course, part of the reason that we could never communicate this way in the modern day is that for many cultures, symbols had sort of a standard meaning. Now due to the mixing of cultures and experiences, things such as fall and autumn have many different meanings to many different people. I personally think that ultimately this can lead to deeper and richer symbolic communication, though it has also contributed to its disuse and to miscommunication in logical and *normal* communication due to the symbolic nature of language itself.

This also lead me to think about how in the Golden Dawn part of the requirements of the material is to absorb the symbolic aspect and then manipulate the symbols through ritual.
Part of the reason I feel compelled to write this down is how strange the idea of an almost-standardized symbology is to me. Due to human nature fully standardizing symbols is, of course, impossible, but it is just striking when a concept that was extremely commonplace for a long time is completely alien. I guess this is also true of racism, but that I just chalk up to mass ignorance and try not to think about.