Words

"A word (sic) is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy."

Words: nootherwordstosay.tumblr

One year at Princeton University: $37,000. One year at a New Jersey state prison: $44,000

What is 6 o'clock?

I dug this up from September 9th, 2007.

"Right now, it's 6:26. Twenty-six minutes after 6 o'clock. What is 6 o'clock anyway? It represents a dimension, the cross-section of which I will not be appearing at certain places, I will not be appearing at yoga. I will not be appearing at the informational meeting for SF State's teaching credential program - my loser back up plan for life that I will most likely end up doing - and late at that.

What is 6 o'clock anyway? It is many steps toward that objective world which, the closer I move toward, the farther I am removed from my self as a determinate individual, according to Kierkegaard. The closer I move towards attempting to gain ideas and knowledge and knowhow of customs about the outside world, or anywhere or anything that is not my own mind and its own inner workings, the more I as a self will dissapear because the perspective I take on is one all the more adapted to what is general, to what has a root in no self, anyway. Nagel, I'm told in my frolickings in the world of objective learned things, calls it "The view from nowhere", also sometimes called "God's Eye view?" Who wants a perspective that's grounded in NOthing anyway?
 
So it's 6 o'clock and I am neglecting to be in one place, yoga, which represents the "normal" person in me, the part yuppy, the part that wants to be healthy and look good, but something that I can consider an extension of myself and at the same time that part that seeks connection with something greater and doing it through means of exercise has proved the anti-self-destruction, self-destruction having once been possibly THE greatest extension of my determinate self into the outside world. 
 
The second place I am neglecting to be, the informational meeting represents my official adult presence, DEEP in that objective world which has its own laws and order that I must remain in keeping with to avoid certain consequences. I would love to remain hulled up in my own brain with nothing but myself to keep me company on that long journey inward, at the end of which supposedly I will meet God, again, according to Kierkegaard. It would be the perfect excuse for the ultimate objective obliviousness, which I carry into my own world quite well sometimes. As for instance now: I was supposed to be somewhere, and I was supposed to be anotherwhere and instead I'm sitting in my home half dressed eating day-old tortilla chips, 'for fear of discovering that [I do] not have proper eyes but glass eyes, and hair made from a floor mat, in short, that [I will be and have already very much become] an artificial product.'
i
n the end, i am just swallowed up in it all
 
There's only one thing that saves me."

Music as always, for the soul

Music providing the medicine that it is meant to in its best moments: comfort, mollifying, nostalgia, softness over harsh feeling. Especially when you're listening to it, dancing an impromptu slow dance with husband feet sliding with such loving inexpertise across the kitchen floor, one headphone in each our ears.

Such an old album, such a dear friend all these songs. Reminding me of growing up, of finding comfort in things that brought me to a gentle place from pain. Like my love does now.

It was a nice break from harsh reality, and a nice break from the goddam quadratic equations, factorials, fourth roots, parabolas which I thought I could leave behind forever. 

Prison, Pythagoras, Persephone

Yesterday evening spent researching employment and housing resources for paroling inmates inside San Quentin State Prison. Like homework, only, someone's life depends on you finishing your assignment and doing it damn well. Think finding a job and a place to live is a pain in the ass? Try and do it with a criminal history, and no access to resources. And some of those guys will fall right back into it, because of that lack of access to resources while they are inside. And it's so sad when you see that so many of them have really tried, and are trying to do good yet judgment of them - official as well as social stigma - is based solely on their wrongs. Our society is so sick. Our justice system is so broken.

Calls to mind one of my favorite quotes of all time: "It is no measure of health to be adjusted to a profoundly sick society" - Krishnamurti



Today and yesterday morning was spent like this:

I hate this shit. It could not be further from my natural way of thinking. But freedom lies behind mastering those numbers, those formulas. Yesterday morning from 9am - 11am I flexed those muscles for the first time in a long time, gently, and it felt good. But the GRE is not gentle.



Luckily, my husband gave me Nightwish, which I just added to the top of my Most Beautiful Albums List. Take me far, far away Beautiful-River-Styx-Siren-Persephone voice. Like Cirque Du Soleil's Alegria, but in a graveyard, in a dream.

Love Utopia

If we reached out we’d almost touch. ‘Almost’ because it was dark, and measurements of distance could only amount to approximations. That’s how far away from each other we were. We’d been much closer many times, farther many more, for we’d spent more of our lives apart than together. But history had been built―stories, blood, and time―and it floated with gentle vigor in the air between us and around us.

Sometimes when we walked into restaurants together, sometimes holding hands, sometimes not, the other people there would turn to look at us, from barstools, booths, from their seats around candle-lit tables. They looked at us in such a way that it was like that air whispered stories about our life together to the strangers around us and they turned to look with surprise, with respect, with motherly endearment, and with a more indescribable feeling of comfort, as if upon looking at us they experienced the comfort we felt with each other, the reconciliatory (air) that never failed to flow over us after everything two people together go through – screaming through the rain at each others’ faces, stopping our car in the middle of the road and yelling at the other to get the fuck out, things that were to be apologized for the next day, or, if we were lucky enough, just a couple hours later.

It was dark but it was still so warm and one thing we’d never lost was our sense of adventure. We’d hopped the fence with a six pack and smokes, to the closed pool to swim alone at night. Adults playing children playing adults. We’d had enough of the water and now we sat. We sat in our bathing suits dripping onto the poolside pavement in the dark. The air was warm and sweet, hotel rooms in July. And my skin was soaked with sun from earlier in the day. It soaked into my bones and I breathed deep breaths all the way to that warmth within. It mixed with another kind of warmth that came from knowing he held this same place of refuge in his own body. A car drove by every once in a while and white lights moved across us, revealing a strip of visible world, the light rounded at its edges. I could make out the outline of his shoulders, and his head tilted sideways, cheek resting on knees curled into his chest, limbs I knew were there but lost in the dark.

He spoke and his voice pulled itself like threads one at a time at first, out of the almost-silence: “Could you hum that chant you sing sometimes, the ‘Gopala’ one? No words, just hum?”

In a lull I reply “…Mhm…” as I pull one of my own knees into my chest, reach out to find my beer and take a sip, the grainy aftertaste thick and smooth I lay in it like a hammock that swings by itself. The thickness rests welcome in the curve of my tongue. I set the beer down then start to hum the chant. I watch him as he sinks into himself, swaying side to side gently to the sound my throat and closed mouth make. He lays in me like a hammock that swings by itself.

The light from a passing car shines on his face as he lifts it and I see the glint of tears. I don’t ask him. We don’t ask each other about crying anymore. If it’s not offered, it’s not to be asked for. People cry sometimes for reasons they don’t know, sometimes for no reason. People seem to understand this when they’re by themselves, don’t need ask why they cry when they cry alone, but all of a sudden when they’re not alone, someone always wants to know “What’s wrong?” “Why are you crying?”  We don’t ask questions like that anymore. Together, we understand the things people only understand when they’re alone.

I feel him move in the darkness as he lifts his head and turn it up to the night sky, impeded upon from all sides by a horizon of buildings, and scattered with a handful of stars. We’ve had that conversation already, about how we city-dwellers trade the spectacular artifice of city lights below for the vast expanse of stars of a country-side night sky above.

I look at him he’s looking out and I see, amidst the lachrymal sheen, something in the outer corner of his right eye.

“There’s something in your eye.” I warn as I lean in to look, breathe in the utterly indescribable, almost impossible warmth and familiarity of the smell of him, mixed with lingering smoke, and with a grace that only comes with a wisdom not of the mind, but of a body that knows another body so well as to anticipate every curve and dip and muscle fragment and the way each one moves or could move, as parts of a language that’s now a part of how we think, I wrap my fingers round the back of his neck and touch a fingertip to his eye, and something sticks to my finger. I pull my finger away, and out comes a tiny, thin strip of letters. I hold it up close to my face in the dark.

“What is it?” He asks, halfway present.

“ ‘Where are you going?’ ”

 “What?” He lifts his head this time, and looks at me in the dark.

I don’t look up from my finger, upon which rests a tiny fragment that I can just barely, but undeniably recognize as a tiny string of letters that read “Where are you going?”

I have his attention.

“It says ‘Where are you going?’”

__________________________________________________________________________

I have written pages, poems, bits of fiction here and there. But never I have I revisited, after years and years, any one like I do this one.
I wrote it when I was with someone. This was not us, but I wanted it to be. It was a fantasy, not for how we could be, but for how someone and I could be.
I try many things, search in many places, dabble in much. I study Philosophy, I teach Philosophy, I paint, I work with inmates at San Quentin State Prison. At the bottom of everything, my soul is that of a writer. And I have never in my life been so far away from that, despite many amazing things happening, things we are working toward, goals, excitements...life...

As a matter of fact, this piece of writing has been, I believe, the single most important that I have carried through. And despite the fact that love, marriage, commitment was not in my plans, what I captured in that piece of writing above, is happening. Not without a price to be sure, but it is...happening...

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Once Upon A Time...

     I am a student in the Master of Arts and Humanities program, with a focus in Philosophy. I would like to take the beginning fiction course because I have always maintained a dedication to fiction and poetry writing, and would like to continue to do so. I have found that I am at my best creatively when simultaneously engaged in deep theoretical work. Bringing philosophical thought to bear in the world of creative writing has always produced interesting and beautiful results for me. While my formal training in fiction writing is limited, I have always been praised for my creative writing and poetry skills, and have just recently had a short story published in the October issue of Pith Magazine. I always bring the highest level of honesty, passion, and energy to my writing, as well as to the consideration of others’ work, and I would love the opportunity to develop this more in the classroom setting.

...

I went to graduate school for Philosophy, and I wanted to take a creative writing class. I had to write this and submit a writing sample just to be considered for the class. I got in, but I didn't take it.