Pulling 30 Eight

am I to rate myself
better than Melville,
Clooney, or Grant Morrison?

not all of us
can be Buddy Holly
or Mozart
(thank god!);

some of us just get
to wait our turn
in history

Pulling 30 Seven

I can think of nothing
that bugs me more than
the idea of IQ.

It's bullshit,
to put it bluntly.

I mean, have you ever
actually seen those
tests they administer
to gage that shit?

It's bullshit.

Only people who
actually think
that way
would actually
think that's
a good way
to measure
intelligence.

In other words,
it doesn't take
a genius to know
that IQ is a crock
of shit.

What are all these
Mensa fools even
doing, anyway?

Yeah, yeah, I know,
the whole point
of the IQ test is
to prove that there're
very few people who
actually qualify
for Mensa,
but still, when
has a genius
who has been
certified
actually gone off
to do anything
significant?

True genius
is rarely
acknowledged;
in fact, it
is more often
shunned and ignored,
even condemned
and villified,
because it's
not an easy thing
to understand
(I mean, right?).

I have never taken
an IQ test, and I
refuse to do that
in the same way
I refuse to accept
that everyone who
can has to drive
an automobile.

It's a twisted
concept of confirmity
that begs the question,
what's the real point?

And that's the real
problem, because
all these geniuses
are busy looking
for each other,
I dunno, to have
a drink together,
and ignoring anyone
who could actually
teach them something.

I'm not saying
I'm a genius, but
I know I think
a lot different
than most people,
and that's not
something that's
going to be measured
on some damn IQ test.

And because of that,
I'm pulled here and there,
but mostly apart.

Pulling 30 Five

Living in the age of film
where even those who enjoy movies
still think "books are better"
(another acceptable prejudice)
or "they don't make them like they used to"
is an incredibly frustrating experience.

How to legitimately find kindred spirits
in such a time? That's another example
of what it's like to be me, to know
there are others like me, but all the ones
I come across are on different
vibrational fields, like trying to be
a Star Trek fan when most fans hate
most Star Trek; how the franchise could
go from dead in 2005 to new heights in 2009;

or how Batman and Robin
could kill all public interest in 1997,
to box office records for The Dark Knight
in 2008. It's hard to surf this kind
of wave; even experts would tell you
that, but then, I don't abide
experts. I don't like experts,
and I don't like casual fans.

Why can't there be
more people
like me?

Pulling 30 Four

I played no organized sports
growing up (until ill-coached
efforts in my freshman and
senior high school years
on the track), so the closest
I got was the admittedly
extensive, five-child family
experience, highlighted
by the neighborhood
wiffleball games we used
to play all summer long.

I remember being invited,
once, to join a bambino league
(it was weird at the time,
and I'm still not sure to
this day if someone was
just being nice - which
would have been rare even
then - or if the offer
was genuine), but I was
routinely excluded even
from kickball games,
unless they were
organized by the school
itself, although I was
part of a rousing
dodgeball league and
seemed to do pretty well
on the playground,
at least for a while.

But I feel today
almost as if I'm still
participating in
wiffleball games
in the street, or
pretending to be
Dennis Eckersley,
waiting for the bus,
having a good time
but not being
"official" by any
recognizable standard.

Really, is that
so wrong?

Is it really just
my ego that needs more?

Or a desire to escape
employment traps
with an answer that
would be acceptable?

Pulling,
pulling,
pulling...

Pulling 30 Three

Three decades,
I think, is a nice
honest period,
a long enough time,
to look back
and see what has
been done with a life.

It is also, naturally,
a terrific opportunity
to continue fretting
about the future,
to wonder if that
many years have already
passed, what're you
gonna be able to do
that you haven't
already been able
to accomplish?

It's a great and awful time,
with your life tugging
both ways, and you're left
in the middle, not
really sure anymore
if you're still right.

Pulling 30 Two

As Marie Phillips
might observe,
part of anyone's
problem is the lack
of faith that can
get in the way.

It makes it that
much more difficult
to do the things
you know you're
perfectly capable
of doing, and it
only gets worse
the longer you
know and have
it demonstrated
for you that
there is precious
little faith
in your abilities,
whether passive
...or really passive.

If people weren't so
interested in their
selfish and self-defeating
games, maybe this
could change
for everyone?

Pulling 30

Like Jacob Marley or Atlas,
I'm pulling the weight,
all the weight,
pulling the weight of
my history.

It ain't easy.