To build on what I am.

"Poetry" is a big mistake, but especially when it's only a cover for lack of clarity. Irresolution is irresolution; sublimation by obfuscation, or obfuscation by sublimation, can only appear to bear a deeper meaning, and it's sometimes easy to confuse or convince yourself by rendering "meaning" at all. To have a meaning and to affect a meaning are not the same. Some ideas are only bad. Maybe you could blame the pretense of poets and publishers and the gullability of the public in its voracity for novelty--or just Modernism, foisting senseless blather upon us as high art borne of some oracle of visionary genius (it's the same in painting: the mysticism of self-expression validates a mindless aestheticism)--for us so fooling ourselves, but it's not important, frankness and sincerity are compelling in themselves, as is truth, and a compelling image lends gravity and dimension, even life, to expression, but it can do nothing for confusion. That said, let's clear up some confusion. I cannot account for my life, but here's what I see: what planted a rotten spike in the heart and what took root; how rot grows too in a wounded tree, but it's growth is decay, flourishing into absence, and when what looks sound is proved proves lacking, never to reach full stature or the perfection of form.
Another thing: a poet plays with words, it doesn't make him anything, certainly not a mystic, even if you can't tell from hell what he says.

4:59 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

hello again... it's that time

Aside from feeling a bit foolish and regretful over misjudgements and mistakes I've made, I feel remarkably well.  I missed some valuable opportunities to win a special girl's heart, but I don't think I've lost a friend... at least not irretrievably.  I do have to be careful, and I intend to be.  I was afraid to lose her and anxious to be more than I am--or thinking I had to be other than I am... that's a fatal mistake.  I wish I could do it over or be given further opportunities, which, ironically, I am now prepared for, but I don't think they are forthcoming.  She changed her number.  I would still make every effort to resolve things and work them out--I am not afraid to get a little messy--if I knew she wanted it.  But I can also step aside and show her the respect she deserves.  I can't force her to choose me, especially now that I don't appear to be one she has in mind to choose.  I had my chance, I gave as much as I could without imposing myself, I was found wanting in a few critical respects--being at ease with myself and saying what I had to say.  She threw up plenty of barriers and obstacles, and wasn't altogether forthright herself, mind you, but when she began flaunting the fact that she was seeing someone else I think I lost my nerve... she robbed me of a certain right to expect accountability.  I was torn between leaving her to her decisions and trying to figure out what she wanted from me and how I could give it.  She played with me in a very reckless and unkind way, but I have no hard feelings--I know it's just because she had wanted more from me than I was able to give at the time she was making herself available to me.  I made her feel rejected, I now see, even though I was merely anxious to meet her expectations.  I hope she understands... and I hope she understands that I gladly endured the punishment for an opportunity to let her know that I really do care and that I never didn't want her.  Also, we shared some very real things and some very intimate moments... I always wanted her to trust me enough to expose her vulnerabilities, and at times she did.  I still value that.  Her trusting me gave me confidence, but her doubting put me ill at ease...  It seems so tragic, but I am grateful for her, and I'll always make myself available to her.  But if I am not a perfect gentleman, I am gentle, and I will hope she thinks well of me and can forgive my shortcomings, and I must step back and give her the security to pursue her life without interjecting my forlorn wishes.  It's the best that love can do.

11:30 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Sanctity.

I want to be a saint.  Not for any glory, nor for the abstract fear of eternal punishments, but because the burden of self is too much.  I am of no value in need, but only in the needs of others.  I want to give, expecting nothing and not attaching any value to myself for what I offer, but only to communicate the value of the love I've known.  But I am in conflict, I do want to be valued and wanted.  I cherish myself, I try to meet expectations, but the love I have--which I believe is good--is yet imperfect, it withholds for fear of rejection, it substitutes misuse for acceptance, it is tempted to despair.  My needs are a deficit, a debt I owe to all who would look to me for the satisfaction of their own debts, and who would give to have them met.

7:52 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Listlessness, abstraction, melancholy... vocabulary.

I know well the origin of my habit of despondency.  I won't bore you with it.  Leave it to be said that it involves the protracted disappointment of childhood expectations, most reasonable ones. 

(In as much as I am bound to these habits, I am yet a child.)

Overcoming.  In a moment of profound revelation, at 21 years old, I was made aware of the insignificance of my existence and the pettiness of my complaints.  The gift of life, I became aware, itself is worthy of the profoundest gratitude.  The need for the validation of others and for the satisfaction of mortal desires rightly vanished.  Mysterious and improbable, prolific and fleeting, occupying a microscopic place within the merest fragment of eternity, creatures, each one on its own, inspired the deepest sympathy and charity; birds, bugs, toads, and trees, but especially other people, with whom I shared the anxieties and melancholy of life.  I became truly a man.  It was a towering and regal awareness, the source and summit of virtue, and the meaning of nobility.  It seemed unshakable, but it required perseverance and cultivation, and the discipline of obedience.  I squandered it.  ...details...  It's left me with a deeper sense of loss than any I may have felt from betrayal, abandonment, death, or failure.  It too has become a source of despondency, and the truly defining one. 

Now, I just wish others could endure my saturnine disposition.  I want so much to give of myself, but this is a defect, a need for validation, childish.

(unrevised, unfinished, inadequate... but there you have it.)

6:51 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

I will always take the blame.

I like to think that I am brutally honest with myself.  I like to think that's a good thing.  Often, it's just brutal.  That's ok, I am also hopeful and resilient.  I believe in perfection, good quality, and loyalty.  If I make mistakes or come up short, I will be the first to admit it as a promise to make it up.  I won't put the burden on you to just "deal with it," nor will I blame you. If I do, it's weakness or I'm at a loss or I've been given to doubt the trust I've put in you.  Even then, your trust in me is important enough to punish myself for it; I make allowance for anything short of outright malice.  You can't let me down except to deny me the chance to prove my sincerity and to prove my faith in you.  I won't hide or run from responsibility.  I will exhaust myself for you, if it's wanted.  This is the firmest resolution of my will.  Give me your trust and loyalty, and I will give you everything I have.

8:49 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

What a mistake!

What you've witnessed is the reason I've never faithfully kept a journal.  When given to self-examination, I am a brutal critic.  It's ugly and unproductive, unfair to me and, since I've exposed it, also to you.  Man is an ancient and complex creature, and it makes no sense that he should have a calling to fulfill some economic or social role fitting neatly into the narrow constructs defined by the modern world and the logic of its imperatives.  We are still creatures of love and sacrifice, not born of ourselves or unto ourselves, but to a purpose that must transcend the mortal futility of our own ambitions to have any meaning.  Only then is there profit to our life and gifts.  I've given alot of thought to culture, and what's lacking in ours.  I believe, properly understood, it's a stretch to call the (nevertheless prodigious) activity of our society culture.  If anything, it's an anti-culture of diversion and exploitation.  Subculture, counterculture... what have you... seem to me driven by a principle of negation to these disorders with little themselves to offer.  Not to say there isn't much impressive and beautiful in what's created, but it lacks subsumption to a nobler idea of what it means to struggle with life and to be human.  At its source is a reaction to a sense that something's wrong, and with that I am in full sympathy, but without an affirmation of being, or cultivated reactions to the problems of being (and human weakness), I'm left unsatisfied.  Perhaps seeking an affirmative answer to life is wrong in the last analysis, but I am no nihilist.  Yet this anomie has been the source of my dilemma.  What's left but the image of the artist as outsider, recluse and critic, oracle of impending disasters or prophet of a higher calling?  But I am none of these, and want none.  I want integrity, dignity, action, and consequence.  And I want to love and to be loved.  That's all.

8:18 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Who cares what other people think.

I should go ahead and admit, if it wasn't clear already, that having the approval of my peers has always been important to me.  That most common and perplexing statement by way of advice, "who cares what other people think," never made a whole lot of sense to me.  It seemed obvious enough to me that the most successful people had the good opinion of others in their favor.  Of course, there are many situations where it's appropriate to disregard pettiness, for example, but it's equally true that you can learn alot about your own flaws and shortcomings from the reactions people have to your person, your appearance, your habits, your opinions... what have you.  It will prove what in you you believe in, even if it puts you at some distance, and standing for it might possibly shake the confidence of even the most dictatorial enforcer of "the way things (and people) ought to be." 

7:39 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Magister Artibus Universitas Meae...

By no means have I diverted all my intellectual energy into curiosities and pointless distractions, as my previous post might indicate-- and there are many who know this.  But this is no apology for what I said before.  I still find myself woefully disengaged.  I've done enough study to have obtained a master's degree, or to have prepared for a dissertation, but I haven't formally proven the quality or relevance of that work.  I've found no outlet for it in the people I've known, or places I've been, and I've been too lazy and abstracted to write a book-- besides, it's a daunting task.  Many years ago I liked to say "I've succumbed to dissipation"-- that, having no object for the focus and discipline I had cultivated, I began to pursue distractions: easy ones, like smoking ( I always liked calling it an easy distraction) and going to parties and clubs and coffee shops-- whatever people were doing which gave me the illusion of engagement or allowed me to pass the time or maybe provided the opportunity to meet some girl.  It wasn't a feeling of belonging I was looking for, because I never wanted it on the basis that brought people to those places anyway-- though undoubtedly there was confusion of purposes.  Besides simple curiosity into other people's interests, it provided the cover of plausible excuses for squandering my time, gifts, and opportunities, and it never brought me satisfaction.  I have to admit this.  Still, all my explanations and self-flagellation are only a sign that I'm prepared to live with integrity to my own purposes whatever it takes.

8:11 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment