Tangled Up In Blue

I've got one ongoing
relationship, and that's
with depression.

Oh, it's off and on,
but yeah, it's always there;
I belong with Pooh and
his friends, probably.

I guess it's anxiety
more than anything,
an inability to match
reality with my
expectations, which
I don't think are really
so impossible.

But for some people,
even simple things
are hard to find.

Jovo Redux

Maybe this is just fate
declaring itself or
the words of a coward,
or accepting coincidences
when I shouldn't, but
I gotta say, Jovo, it
really does feel
as if we just aren't
meant to be together.

Maybe I'm just saying it
because that's how it felt
yesterday...

This Rolling Stone Gathers Moss

I may be wrong, but
if you want to be an
authority about
something, you probably
ought to be able to see
beyond your preconceived
prejudices about the 500
best songs.

Or you know, I may
simply be upset
because you ignored
so many of my favorites,
so you could cover
some fairly familiar
territory, which, still,
just feels wrong...

Twilight of the Old Morality

There comes a time
when all things
must fail.

There comes a time
when the inevitable
becomes, well...

There comes a time
when all the old barriers
fall apart and reassemble,
back to the forms they
once held, but better.

There comes a time
when the things that
begin come to an end.

There comes a time
when endings produce
new beginnings.

There comes a time
when, yeah, even time
doesn't seem so important.

There comes a time.

Book Terrors...! VII: The Advanced Genius Theory

If anyone I've encountered
recently would qualify
as the antithesis of DFW,
it would be Jason Hartley,
co-founder of the
Advanced Genius Theory.

Anyone familiar with my poetry
over the past four idylls
will recognize a certain amount
of similarities between this
theory and my own thoughts,
but suffice it to say,
Mr. Hartley figures it's
about time to stop
worrying about reasons
to hate something and
start figuring out why
you can probably like it.

So it was pretty awesome
to read his thoughts,
discover another Stossel,
a kindred soul made of rubber
(making it easier to
bounce around, naturally).

It makes me want to write
a lot more about
all the things I like,
and all the reasons
to like them, no matter
what other people say,
how many reasons
there are to think
anything but what
I've been for some
thirty years now
(yes, being my own
kind of genius,
I was formulating
my interests straight
from the womb).

I would like to refine
Hartley's theory,
broaden it past just
those recognized geniuses
and consider those never
given their due, but who
still deserve it, or maybe
I'll just carve a tree
so as to guarantee
that I will make your library
at some point.

...What was I saying?

Book Terrors...! VI: Continuum

It's funny to hear
DFW describe
entertainment as
filling a void like
an addiction, and
certainly how he
talks about his own
habits, because he
truly doesn't seem
to have any reason
or interest in his,
and so certainly
for him, his reasoning
is sound; for some
points of view, maybe
I could be seen as
similar, but I would
disagree.

I don't use it to substitute
social interaction, or
to glut on it (even when
I was at my "worst," I
never just watched
for the sake of
watching, but because
I was legitimately being
entertained, and this
is not even to count
all the hours I have
spent reading any
number of a thousand
things, in print and
online).

I am not inherently
someone who will
benefit a great deal
from extended
interactions with
other people, and
that has little to
do with "shyness"
or social anxiety,
so much as a lack
of basic common
demonitators that are
anything less than,
well, entertainment.

It just so happens
that I benefit more
from experiencing
what other creative
voices have to say,
and if I happen to
be entertained along
the way, then so much
is the better, and really,
why should I complain
about that? Where
would it improve my
circumstances to belittle
the results of what I
think is a perfect
culmination of mankind's
potential, when all the petty
differences are truly set aside
(like every two years
at the Olympics)?

Particularly as an American,
where it has become our
national drive to engage
in these activities?

Louis Hartz apparently
thought to note that
Americans tend to
avoid extremes, which
I would say is exactly
what helped forge
our country in the first
place, and no matter
how many examples
you can think of
that would contradict
this, just within
the counterculture
and the void it's left
us for the past forty years,
I would still argue that
we're still driven by it,
and the only way the
American Dream will
ever truly be broken,
when we trade
bread and circuses
for coliseums and empire,
is when we change that.

Yet I don't see that happening;
where would be the fun in that?

Natural Selection

Of all the rational ways
to express oneself,
I believe the majority
of us choose to do
so in irrational ways.

I think it's why nature
has a way of avoiding us,
not because we're
the top of the food chain
(because I hardly believe
anyone really wants
to boast about that,
whether or not it's
even true, so much as
easy to assume, because
we have so many more
ways to kill things
in abundance)
but because nature
is inherently rational,
even all the weather
we find so inconvenient.

Our greatest form of
expression is irrationality,
the ability to know what
the right thing is and decide
not to do it.

I wouldn't particularly call it
evolution, and in that way,
I've never subscribed
to "survival of the fittest,"
because any fool can survive,
and any fool can make
a considerable collection
of things (even trash, and
not just metaphorically,
counts, I might add, and that
shit is free), but it's how
we treat each other, how
we refuse to accept
that our lack of rationality
impedes us, and I say
this from the perspective
of a considerably irrational
mind, because that's
the only way I know to
confront the irrationality
around me.

Yeah, that really doesn't make
any sense, and yet, that's what
I do, out of sheer frustration,
because I keep hoping
and expecting that people
will learn to be less selfish,
and I'm not talking by way
of symptoms, of material things,
but in the way they approach
others, about knowing that
they can't just assume the world
will accept every ill-considered
thought they have.

That's what school ought to do,
if parents won't, instead of
cramming "knowledge" only
intended to act as an example
(and yet graded as though
life depended on it), try
and see what wisdom,
a little common sense,
can accomplish.

I'm not saying people
are stupid, but they
sure like to act like it.

Predictably
irrationally.