My God It's Beautiful Outside Right Now

I woke at 4 am with a headache. My stomach is sour. My eyes are killing me. I feel like shite.

But it rained last night through this morning in the city of angels. The sun has risen and golden light is peeking through a smattering of grey clouds and low, lazy, white drifts. It's still soft outside and nothing is brilliant yet.

The air is cool and damp and wonderful. It's the first real chill of the season.

I will always love Autumn. It is the coolth of a gentle cloth on my fevered brow; it is the soothing breath; it is the cleansing balm of my soul.

(EW*): Always, No, Sometimes Think It's Me, But You Know When It's A Dream

I think a no, I mean a yes, but it's all wrong
That is I think I disagree

This song popped in my head and this train of thought left the station before it could be derailed by the later day's events.

Strawberry Fields. As a child I disliked the circular lyrics, the inexplicably monotonous sing-song of the chorus, the wildly vacillating lyrical tempo--I didn't sound right and easy and kind like some of their other songs.

As I grew, my love for the Beatles in their 907 Glorious Forms grew as well. Strawberry Fields seemed like another not-so-secret drug ode. (In my arrogant youth I also dismissed Chicago's 25 or 6 to 4 as pandering. Oh, the assured omnipotence of youth!) I heard there was a plaque somewhere, Times Square? Whatever.

But the lyrics had wormed their way into my personal soundtrack. I owned not only solo John Lennon albums, I owned Julian Lennon albums.  (PS, Julian, it's none of my business, but I can't help but feel that your dad was kind of a tool. I'm glad it didn't stop you from going into music. There's a darkness in the air that seems to guide me.)

And from Papa Lennon, I was grooving to tasty treats like,
 
No one I think is in my tree, I mean it must be high or low
That is you can't you know tune in but it's all right

But it wasn't until today that chanced to look up Strawberry Fields lyrics and stumble across an annotated version. 

I didn't know it was about Lennon's child hood. I didn't know it was about the ineffable sadness of knowing how profoundly different you are from the other kids. I didn't know that the title shared its name with a park Lennon frequented as a youth. I didn't know John Lennon was scared to sing it, as he considered it one of his most personal songs.

To quote Lennon himself:

I was different all my life. The second verse goes, ‘No one I think is in my tree.’ Well, I was too shy and self-doubting. Nobody seems to be as hip as me is what I was saying. Therefore, I must be crazy or a genius — ‘I mean it must be high or low,’ the next line. There was something wrong with me, I thought, because I seemed to see things other people didn’t see

I fully recognized that quote could be interpreted in a grandiose, arrogant way. It certainly seems to lean that way, no? But that's not how I took it. I took it as that terrible and constant feeling that you can't talk about the things you think with your peers--you scare them. You can't use logic or science in this debate, it makes your friends cry. You are different and you know it and if you're lucky some well meaning adult doesn't take a special interest in you because we all know how well that's gonna go, outcome irrelevant. 

Well, shut my mouth wide open: I just made a profoundly emotional connection to John Lennon--somebody I would never consider to have anything in common with me. I'd like to believe I'm like a lot of clever, witty, talented people, but it never occurred to me to be able to relate to Lennon.

So I told you all that just in case it has any bearing on what followed, which followed so very quickly I had no choice but to consider it a Result.

********************************************

It gets harder than it should be. Even though it's probably you making it hard in the first place, you just can't get away from it.

In my objective assessments, I feel like a sponge. In my self pitying moments, I consider myself a sin-eater.

It's just People: there's so many of them and they are all bleeding emotion in every direction and their thoughts are so loud and their sadness and anger is even louder. So many people, so many stories.

And you can't respond to all that. They'd cart you away in the next available straight jacket. Sometimes I wonder if insanity is just the absence of the ability to control all the input. Besides being institutionalized for trying to communicate with Everything All At Once, you also wouldn't then be able to accomplish anything your needed to do. Ever again.

So you fake it. You chant litanies in your head that become magical wards against interloping thoughts. You fall into a meditation and don't let it touch you. You put on armor and remind yourself to keep breathing.

Unfortunately, and perhaps what drives me here today, is the realization that you can put on your armor and shield yourself from Humanity, but you're still going to Witness it. You're Marked. All the defense systems in the world can't save you, there will be a chink here and there and all the back-burnered pain of Humanity will come surging in. 

Maybe it will dissipate in the wisps of uncomfortable dreams you don't remember, but that leave you feeling unrested. Could take the form of one too many beers and subsequent hangover pain that mutes the thoughts, but also serves the urge for penitent self-flagellation. You find a way to distract yourself, you choose a different poison.

But it's killing you all the same. The pills to stop the pain are just as harmful as the pain itself. Slow poisons, bad risks, self loathing, rage--whichever or all, you're going down.

*EW = Experimental Writing

Romantic Poetry

I just read and enjoyed all of these for the first time. bon appetit.



Go, Lovely Rose" by Edmund Waller

Go, lovely Rose,—
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
     That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.

     Tell her that's young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
     That hadst thou sprung
In deserts where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.

     Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retir'd:
     Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desir'd,
And not blush so to be admir'd.

     Then die, that she
The common fate of all things rare
     May read in thee;
How small a part of time they share,
That are so wondrous sweet and fair.


"A Noiseless Patient Spider" by Walt Whitman

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.


"Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae" by Ernest Dowson

"I am not as I was under the reign of the good Cynara"—Horace

Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat,
Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay;
Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
When I awoke and found the dawn was gray:
I have been faithful to you, Cynara! in my fashion.

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, all the time, because the dance was long;
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

The McConnaisance Is Killing Me

And I haven't even seen Dallas Buyers Club yet.

Though it might very well be that my real problem is True Detective.

ETA: I know these pics are oversized. Bear with me as I try to figure the right specs to hard code them. The "Large" option just isn't big enough to do these babies justice.

Got dayum. Got dayum. Got dayum.

There is a lot of Texas in this picture.

A moment of intimate domestic violence, both expressed and implied.

Okay, so the McConnaisance is somewhat a factor.

The South. It's all growth amidst decay.

This on of the intro credit images that strikes me every time.

This one hurts my heart sometimes. I don't know why.

Smartasses of the world, unite.

Fukunaga and his goddamn opulent sparseness.

Many of the most consistent iconographies seem to be Baroque. This could be Catholic, Santeria, or Rock N Roll.

This is just an amazing image.

It was me and my sidecik

He was drunk and I was sick
We were caught up in bar room fight
Till an Indian shot out the light
I'm so tired of being tired
Sure as night will follow day
Most things I worry 'bout
Never happen anyway

Deserving of Its Own Post

The following in an excerpt from a monologue taken from a comedic film:

"I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an Emperor - that's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone, if possible -- Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another; human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there's room for everyone and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

To those who can hear me I say, "Do not despair." The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass and dictators die; and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Soldiers: Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel; who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate; only the unloved hate, the unloved and the unnatural.

Soldiers: Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written, "the kingdom of God is within man" -- not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men, in you, you the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power! Let us all unite!! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie! They do not fulfill their promise; they never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people!! Now, let us fight to fulfill that promise!! Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.

Soldiers: In the name of democracy, let us all unite!!"

--The Great Dictator, 1940

May this holiday season find you well, safe, loved, and with all those same comforts and securities for your beloved.