If I dial the right
number and you're home, you'll answer.
Why else have a phone?
So I keep writing, thinking,
why else have a language.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Friday, June 16, 2006
On the subject of metaphors (as being essential to poetry and as having both advantages and drawbacks):
Many of my favorite poems are devoid of metaphor. It is seldom used in haiku, for example. It would swamp them and overwhelm their simplicity. But nearly all poems make associations. Metaphor is simply a way to indicate likeness. The spectrum from identity through association to differentiation applies. In an engram, any datum can equal any datum, represented often as A=A=A. The dog is the man is the car is the tree is the sky is the smell of gasoline is the pain of a concussion is the voice of the man yelling something, etc. Along that spectrum, one could place metaphor, simile, allegory, symbol, juxtaposition and other devices that indicate some sort of likeness or degree of identity. In a way a simile is closer to differentiation than a metaphor, since it explicitly says that two things are similar, not the same.
In haiku, usually juxtaposition is used rather than metaphor. More is left for the reader to contribute. In some cases the juxtaposition is mainly between stillness and motion or what's perceived and a sense of the perceiver. That's pretty obvious in the poem usually considered the first haiku (old pond, frog jumps in, splash). I use no metaphor in the following:
It's even sadder than you think:
They were ALL good people.
I think it's one of my best poems. You may not care for it, of course. The poem does use devices, chief among them irony. And a vast omission that only becomes clear on rereading.
Use of metaphor is a two-edged sword: It allows compactness, multiple meanings interrelated with minimal baggage. It also invites reactivity. As Dr. Szasz points out, most of the illogic (and insanity) of psychiatry stems from the failure of psychiatrists to understand that "mental illness" is a metaphor, a way of saying that certain conditions are similar to diseases (illnesses). When one forgets that it is merely a metaphor, one gets in trouble. Similarly, Bush doesn't understand that "War on Terror" is a metaphor. He actually believes one can declare war on a level of the tone scale or an idea. Much metaphor-fraught poetry is similarly reactive. Sometimes the reactivity is the subject (getting us into a reactive viewpoint to gain insight), but just as often, the poetry itself is reactive. Metaphor is also the language of bigotry: Jewish swine, Commie pigs, etc.
So to me a metaphor is a responsibility. It's not something that makes a poem a better poem. It's something that may improve a poem or may ruin a poem. It's just another tool to be used wisely or unwisely.
by Dean Blehert, posted with slight corrections by his wife Pam
In haiku, usually juxtaposition is used rather than metaphor. More is left for the reader to contribute. In some cases the juxtaposition is mainly between stillness and motion or what's perceived and a sense of the perceiver. That's pretty obvious in the poem usually considered the first haiku (old pond, frog jumps in, splash). I use no metaphor in the following:
It's even sadder than you think:
They were ALL good people.
I think it's one of my best poems. You may not care for it, of course. The poem does use devices, chief among them irony. And a vast omission that only becomes clear on rereading.
Use of metaphor is a two-edged sword: It allows compactness, multiple meanings interrelated with minimal baggage. It also invites reactivity. As Dr. Szasz points out, most of the illogic (and insanity) of psychiatry stems from the failure of psychiatrists to understand that "mental illness" is a metaphor, a way of saying that certain conditions are similar to diseases (illnesses). When one forgets that it is merely a metaphor, one gets in trouble. Similarly, Bush doesn't understand that "War on Terror" is a metaphor. He actually believes one can declare war on a level of the tone scale or an idea. Much metaphor-fraught poetry is similarly reactive. Sometimes the reactivity is the subject (getting us into a reactive viewpoint to gain insight), but just as often, the poetry itself is reactive. Metaphor is also the language of bigotry: Jewish swine, Commie pigs, etc.
So to me a metaphor is a responsibility. It's not something that makes a poem a better poem. It's something that may improve a poem or may ruin a poem. It's just another tool to be used wisely or unwisely.
by Dean Blehert, posted with slight corrections by his wife Pam
Monday, March 27, 2006
On Placebos and Poetry
The following was an email-letter to close friends of the poet, Dean Blehert, and is being posted here for Dean by his wife Pam as Dean is on an extensive and intensive study cycle and I thought there might be some out there in the wide world who would like this "essay."
(original date: 3/25/1999)
On placebos, not to put down any specific poet, but it seems to me that when one sits through readings of fairly well-written poems (or reads them in a book) and feels increasingly dull and sleepy and bored, there are only a few explanations: One is that one has gone past words one doesn't fully understand -- or the words don't make sense, so that they CAN'T be understood, because their use in the poem doesn't fit the definitions you (and the dictionary) know. In reading, one has a better chance to look back and clear up the connections that don't connect, look up words, etc. But even there, many poems disperse attention, and large sections of them slip past most readers.
The second explanation is that we've been taking placebos. Why else would we listen and think, yes, good poetry, even though we feel bored and sleepy, not enthusiastic, inspired, amused, instructed?
The thing is, if, on a program of poetry, no one really gets in communication with the audience and says things TO that audience that are really interesting to that audience, that (in very old-fashioned terms) amuse and instruct, or (in my own sense of how poetry works) evoke both surprise and recognition -- in the absense of any of it really reaching us or being anywhere near as interesting as the average TV sit. com., then what can it mean when we say afterwards that some of it was very good or very well written?
I've seen people in poetry groups with bored faces say to another poet who's just read a poem, "That was very good" and "That was great." It's obvious that the person saying this has not been changed in any way by the poem. No one in the room is moved by it, not one emotion in the room has been stirred, no one has a new idea of anything in his/her life, and yet people chime in about how good or even how great the poem is. What "That's an excellent poem" means in such cases is, "That's the sort of poem that a prestigious magazine accepts" or "That's what a poem is supposed to be."
If, in such a group or at such a reading, someone reads or performs a LIVE poem, the difference is immediately obvious. The poem won't necessarily be LIKED as much as some of the dead poems, but you can SEE the effects it creates. (I've seen very live poems -- mine and others -- lose at slams to poems that caused FAR less effect on the audience, but agreed more with what the audience and/or judge thought a winning slam poem was supposed to be.)
One of the tricks in testing is to use a placebo that causes some obvious effect, so that the people being tested won't know it's a placebo. Recent research showed that when sugar pills were used as placebos, many people KNEW they were getting placebos, because there were no obvious side effects.
[The full significance of this research has not yet been digested by science or made public: Most of the drugs now on the market were tested years ago using sugar-pill placebos. Many of the "miracle" drugs scored only slightly above the placebos, and sometimes that took some statistical tampering: For example, the drug companies or the FDA found excuses not to include studies where the placebos scored BETTER than the drug being tested, and this gave the drug a statistical edge. This applies to some VERY popular medications (e.g., Prozac). (No one even kept the test data on Ritalin, so there's no existing evidence that it's effective, and the FDA hasn't required new versions of it to be fully tested against placebos, only against the original Ritalin. In other words, if it works as well as a drug whose effectiveness is without evidence, it is ruled effective.)
The statistical distortion caused by some of the users KNOWING they're getting a placebo is more than enough to invalidate the effectiveness of many drugs now on the market. (Of course, there are other reasons to doubt their effectiveness: The tests are done by labs paid by the drug manufacturer; excuses are found to deem bad side-effects "not proven to have been caused by the drug" or to ignore them altogether, the drugs are tested for a few weeks, then prescribed for long-term use, etc.)]
Anyway, to get back to poetry, one way to make it harder to spot a placebo is to include ingredients that create obvious side effects (effects that have nothing to do with the purpose of the drug). People expect side effects from a "real" medication. So if the pill makes the mouth dry or creates a tingling or something, the person being tested is less likely to think it's a placebo.
Similarly, we expect poetry to create effects, so people are less likely to think something's a placebo if it creates a big effect, for example, shock. If a poet yells "Fuck!" at an audience loudly enough, many are fooled. And there are lots of other tricks. The idea is to create a SIDE effect and let US, the audience, contribute the poetry. Really, that's all a cliche is: something associated with poetry or that sounds like poetry because it's often used in poetry, in hopes that we'll provide the poetry or, really, the poetic-ness -- much as a dog salivates when hearing Pavlov's bell, even though he's not being fed -- whereas real poetry nourishes. It gets us to contribute to it, but we contribute, not the poetry, but our own real worlds, emotions, hopes, etc. We take the poetry, and use it to illuminate our own lives.
We can go on salivating for years at bell sounds and not realizing we are starving. Then someone actually feeds us and we remember what all that salivation was about, and that could be our salvation.
(original date: 3/25/1999)
On placebos, not to put down any specific poet, but it seems to me that when one sits through readings of fairly well-written poems (or reads them in a book) and feels increasingly dull and sleepy and bored, there are only a few explanations: One is that one has gone past words one doesn't fully understand -- or the words don't make sense, so that they CAN'T be understood, because their use in the poem doesn't fit the definitions you (and the dictionary) know. In reading, one has a better chance to look back and clear up the connections that don't connect, look up words, etc. But even there, many poems disperse attention, and large sections of them slip past most readers.
The second explanation is that we've been taking placebos. Why else would we listen and think, yes, good poetry, even though we feel bored and sleepy, not enthusiastic, inspired, amused, instructed?
The thing is, if, on a program of poetry, no one really gets in communication with the audience and says things TO that audience that are really interesting to that audience, that (in very old-fashioned terms) amuse and instruct, or (in my own sense of how poetry works) evoke both surprise and recognition -- in the absense of any of it really reaching us or being anywhere near as interesting as the average TV sit. com., then what can it mean when we say afterwards that some of it was very good or very well written?
I've seen people in poetry groups with bored faces say to another poet who's just read a poem, "That was very good" and "That was great." It's obvious that the person saying this has not been changed in any way by the poem. No one in the room is moved by it, not one emotion in the room has been stirred, no one has a new idea of anything in his/her life, and yet people chime in about how good or even how great the poem is. What "That's an excellent poem" means in such cases is, "That's the sort of poem that a prestigious magazine accepts" or "That's what a poem is supposed to be."
If, in such a group or at such a reading, someone reads or performs a LIVE poem, the difference is immediately obvious. The poem won't necessarily be LIKED as much as some of the dead poems, but you can SEE the effects it creates. (I've seen very live poems -- mine and others -- lose at slams to poems that caused FAR less effect on the audience, but agreed more with what the audience and/or judge thought a winning slam poem was supposed to be.)
One of the tricks in testing is to use a placebo that causes some obvious effect, so that the people being tested won't know it's a placebo. Recent research showed that when sugar pills were used as placebos, many people KNEW they were getting placebos, because there were no obvious side effects.
[The full significance of this research has not yet been digested by science or made public: Most of the drugs now on the market were tested years ago using sugar-pill placebos. Many of the "miracle" drugs scored only slightly above the placebos, and sometimes that took some statistical tampering: For example, the drug companies or the FDA found excuses not to include studies where the placebos scored BETTER than the drug being tested, and this gave the drug a statistical edge. This applies to some VERY popular medications (e.g., Prozac). (No one even kept the test data on Ritalin, so there's no existing evidence that it's effective, and the FDA hasn't required new versions of it to be fully tested against placebos, only against the original Ritalin. In other words, if it works as well as a drug whose effectiveness is without evidence, it is ruled effective.)
The statistical distortion caused by some of the users KNOWING they're getting a placebo is more than enough to invalidate the effectiveness of many drugs now on the market. (Of course, there are other reasons to doubt their effectiveness: The tests are done by labs paid by the drug manufacturer; excuses are found to deem bad side-effects "not proven to have been caused by the drug" or to ignore them altogether, the drugs are tested for a few weeks, then prescribed for long-term use, etc.)]
Anyway, to get back to poetry, one way to make it harder to spot a placebo is to include ingredients that create obvious side effects (effects that have nothing to do with the purpose of the drug). People expect side effects from a "real" medication. So if the pill makes the mouth dry or creates a tingling or something, the person being tested is less likely to think it's a placebo.
Similarly, we expect poetry to create effects, so people are less likely to think something's a placebo if it creates a big effect, for example, shock. If a poet yells "Fuck!" at an audience loudly enough, many are fooled. And there are lots of other tricks. The idea is to create a SIDE effect and let US, the audience, contribute the poetry. Really, that's all a cliche is: something associated with poetry or that sounds like poetry because it's often used in poetry, in hopes that we'll provide the poetry or, really, the poetic-ness -- much as a dog salivates when hearing Pavlov's bell, even though he's not being fed -- whereas real poetry nourishes. It gets us to contribute to it, but we contribute, not the poetry, but our own real worlds, emotions, hopes, etc. We take the poetry, and use it to illuminate our own lives.
We can go on salivating for years at bell sounds and not realizing we are starving. Then someone actually feeds us and we remember what all that salivation was about, and that could be our salvation.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
It's All One to Me
the West says we are each alone,
and the East says we are all one,
and they say the one same lie,
for you are you
and I am I
and we can communicate.
The dictionary derives "alone" from "All one." "We are all one" -- not a cozy thought. But you are not alone, and we are not all one. These are not alternatives, but the same thing. I am I. You are you. But we can communicate, because I am able to be whatever you are able to be and vice versa -- you can say my words and make them yours, see what I see, even be, for example, Dean Blehert, for I am not these or any things, but I am and you are and we can communicate.
Dean Blehert is a sequence of viewpoints I occupy -- or anyone can occupy. (One head, slightly used, to let.) To be is an ability. To be alone or to be all one is not an ability, but a misunderstanding of the meaning of "alone" and "one" -- to be one WHAT? To be alone with regard to WHAT? We are not alone. We are not one. We cannot be identical who are not our identities.
When we misunderstand each other, a blankness sets in, which we explain to ourselves (we being so accustomed to knowing, that the blankness following misunderstanding is intolerable; so we coat it in explanation) -- we explain it by saying "I am alone." Then we solve our aloneness by saying, "We are all one." But once we are all one thing (one VERY together thing), we are alone again.
We maim and harm and betray each other, and that's OK, because there isn't anyone else, and besides, we are all one. A sin against oneself or another is simply a communication that cannot easily be received because the sender knows the receiver is unwilling to be what is communicated. (Communication includes duplicating; one must be a mirror in the process, willing to accept an image.) No matter, for there IS no sender, no receiver. How can there be a sending (to whom?) if one is all alone or if all is one?
The West says we are each alone, and the East says we are all one, and they say the one same lie, for you are you and I am I and we can communicate.
and the East says we are all one,
and they say the one same lie,
for you are you
and I am I
and we can communicate.
The dictionary derives "alone" from "All one." "We are all one" -- not a cozy thought. But you are not alone, and we are not all one. These are not alternatives, but the same thing. I am I. You are you. But we can communicate, because I am able to be whatever you are able to be and vice versa -- you can say my words and make them yours, see what I see, even be, for example, Dean Blehert, for I am not these or any things, but I am and you are and we can communicate.
Dean Blehert is a sequence of viewpoints I occupy -- or anyone can occupy. (One head, slightly used, to let.) To be is an ability. To be alone or to be all one is not an ability, but a misunderstanding of the meaning of "alone" and "one" -- to be one WHAT? To be alone with regard to WHAT? We are not alone. We are not one. We cannot be identical who are not our identities.
When we misunderstand each other, a blankness sets in, which we explain to ourselves (we being so accustomed to knowing, that the blankness following misunderstanding is intolerable; so we coat it in explanation) -- we explain it by saying "I am alone." Then we solve our aloneness by saying, "We are all one." But once we are all one thing (one VERY together thing), we are alone again.
We maim and harm and betray each other, and that's OK, because there isn't anyone else, and besides, we are all one. A sin against oneself or another is simply a communication that cannot easily be received because the sender knows the receiver is unwilling to be what is communicated. (Communication includes duplicating; one must be a mirror in the process, willing to accept an image.) No matter, for there IS no sender, no receiver. How can there be a sending (to whom?) if one is all alone or if all is one?
The West says we are each alone, and the East says we are all one, and they say the one same lie, for you are you and I am I and we can communicate.
Dwindling Spiral
The physical universe is as eternal as the two-minute race between Achilles and the tortoise. That is, it lasts forever if the speed with which we exhaust lifetimes accelerates proportionately to our approach to its limits. When there are only a billion human years left, we'll become ants and have another trillion ant years left, and so on.
To participate in that eternity, we need only concede that we cannot ourselves create new energy -- an easy concession in a universe so rich with pre-fabricated energy, so solid and agreed-upon.
Once in the game, we operate by using physical universe energy (it's a monopoly, our Standard Oil) to control physical universe energy and bodies and cars and planets (congealed energy -- previously used, but only by a very old God to drive to church on Sundays).
But the more energy is used and reused (as the physical, like a dog, licks up what it spits up), the less controllable it becomes. We cannot make fresh energy. That's in our admission contract, remember? Nobody gets into this universe without first waiving the right to create energy, because those who can create it, can also make it vanish, and that's dangerous, if we want this universe to last. So we chew over the same old ergs for trillennia until it's all amorphous gruel, no use to anyone.
The way out? We'll have to forget about hurling galaxies about, but if we make ourselves real small, within our thin gruel of galaxy, we'll find stars bursting with energy to play with, untapped Niagaras -- and when stars are exhausted, we can shrink again to be overwhelmed by yet more miniaturized explosions.
After a few millennia of bodies in machines creeping over the skin of a pretty blue planet-marble, fuel runs short. We can look forward (unless we remember how to create our own energy) to a 10-second aeon of jockeying electrons and talking in voices much too shrill for ants to hear (Quark Quark!), hoping for our terasecond of fame, hurtling round nucleii, whirled without end, Hallelujah, amen.
To participate in that eternity, we need only concede that we cannot ourselves create new energy -- an easy concession in a universe so rich with pre-fabricated energy, so solid and agreed-upon.
Once in the game, we operate by using physical universe energy (it's a monopoly, our Standard Oil) to control physical universe energy and bodies and cars and planets (congealed energy -- previously used, but only by a very old God to drive to church on Sundays).
But the more energy is used and reused (as the physical, like a dog, licks up what it spits up), the less controllable it becomes. We cannot make fresh energy. That's in our admission contract, remember? Nobody gets into this universe without first waiving the right to create energy, because those who can create it, can also make it vanish, and that's dangerous, if we want this universe to last. So we chew over the same old ergs for trillennia until it's all amorphous gruel, no use to anyone.
The way out? We'll have to forget about hurling galaxies about, but if we make ourselves real small, within our thin gruel of galaxy, we'll find stars bursting with energy to play with, untapped Niagaras -- and when stars are exhausted, we can shrink again to be overwhelmed by yet more miniaturized explosions.
After a few millennia of bodies in machines creeping over the skin of a pretty blue planet-marble, fuel runs short. We can look forward (unless we remember how to create our own energy) to a 10-second aeon of jockeying electrons and talking in voices much too shrill for ants to hear (Quark Quark!), hoping for our terasecond of fame, hurtling round nucleii, whirled without end, Hallelujah, amen.
Monday, February 20, 2006
Memo to the Class of '59
Time stopped in the '50's. I was born in the '40's, which is where the REAL movie stars (Gable, Hepburn, Tracy, Cooper) are from (well, from the 30s, too), but I first noticed I was noticing there was a world in the '50's, which is a time period hard for me to distinguish from an artificially sweetened news magazine ("The Weekly Reader") for kids passed out in school with its photo of "the car of the future," all fins, chrome and cockpits, and articles about America, the good guy.
So I grow old from the 50's, except there's no growing FROM them, because the 50's won't go away, because they were "modern times." They were what the American Dream had been waiting for: cars like space ships and every home agleam with all the modern conveniences, just a few more diseases and racial and political unpleasantnesses to clean up (by explaining to Africa and India how silly and unmodern such things were and showing them the cars, lawns, offices and supermarkets) before we would all be Ozzie and Harriet and not have to feel guilty about it, because everyone else in the world without regard for race, creed or color (as long as it was nothing outlandish) would be Ozzie and Harriet too.
Time had to stop there, because where could you go after "modern." (Yes, now we say "Post-Modern", which is another way of saying "Damn it, it's still the 50's and it pisses me off!")Beyond "modern" lay science fiction, and no one really goes there. People keep struggling to understand the 60's. They find the 60's complex because they assume they already understand the 50's -- the insufferably bland and insular and bovine 50's, that we blame the world for not being like anymore.
But we're still there, even Generation Z or whatever we're up to now -- they're still in it, though they don't remember Marilyn Monroe, cowboy movies, or the Korean War. We make our future, decide it, agree upon it -- or we don't. The 50's was when America stopped creating a future, so we live there -- in the last future America created.
But what of the mad 60's dream? Nah, that's self-conscious stuff, like counting sheep to fall asleep, the effort to out-create the solid, easy 50's agreement that had settled hairdos and everything else in the world forever and to come. The 60s protested too much. The 50s just were/are. We live in an old dream that is falling apart, unless we can bully a bit of future into being with our art.
Maybe someday someone will understand the 50's so that we can stop living in them. I hope so: They're getting mean. Maybe they need our love.
So I grow old from the 50's, except there's no growing FROM them, because the 50's won't go away, because they were "modern times." They were what the American Dream had been waiting for: cars like space ships and every home agleam with all the modern conveniences, just a few more diseases and racial and political unpleasantnesses to clean up (by explaining to Africa and India how silly and unmodern such things were and showing them the cars, lawns, offices and supermarkets) before we would all be Ozzie and Harriet and not have to feel guilty about it, because everyone else in the world without regard for race, creed or color (as long as it was nothing outlandish) would be Ozzie and Harriet too.
Time had to stop there, because where could you go after "modern." (Yes, now we say "Post-Modern", which is another way of saying "Damn it, it's still the 50's and it pisses me off!")Beyond "modern" lay science fiction, and no one really goes there. People keep struggling to understand the 60's. They find the 60's complex because they assume they already understand the 50's -- the insufferably bland and insular and bovine 50's, that we blame the world for not being like anymore.
But we're still there, even Generation Z or whatever we're up to now -- they're still in it, though they don't remember Marilyn Monroe, cowboy movies, or the Korean War. We make our future, decide it, agree upon it -- or we don't. The 50's was when America stopped creating a future, so we live there -- in the last future America created.
But what of the mad 60's dream? Nah, that's self-conscious stuff, like counting sheep to fall asleep, the effort to out-create the solid, easy 50's agreement that had settled hairdos and everything else in the world forever and to come. The 60s protested too much. The 50s just were/are. We live in an old dream that is falling apart, unless we can bully a bit of future into being with our art.
Maybe someday someone will understand the 50's so that we can stop living in them. I hope so: They're getting mean. Maybe they need our love.
If We Outlaw Dreams, Only Outlaws Will Have Dreams
Psychologists and psychiatrists like to warn us of the dangers of "Hero complex," "Delusions of Grandeur" and other delusional states they cannot distinguish from the real thing. Or perhaps, to a psychiatrist, all grandeur, all heroism is a delusion. (They never speak of "Delusions of Expert Testimony" or "Delusions of Glib Cynicism").
No, they warn: Beware the man who dreams himself a hero; of such are the fanatics, the crazed assassins of our day. (And yet, what child does not dream of being a hero?)
These students of the soul they think does not exist (for psychiatry means healing of the soul, and if you have one, they can cure you of it) -- they fear any who dare disagree. Those who dream their own dreams are not well-adjusted, nor do they need our fear to compel agreement with their dreams.
Those who imagine themselves heroes well enough, are heroes. Greatness is one's dream come true for all, all our dreams come true in one.
Beware those who fear dreamers. Beware those who cannot dream.
The real madmen can only borrow the dreams of others, overwhelmed by the agreement called the world, its solidity ever demanding "Just who do you think you are!"
The real madman is what the psychologist and psychiatrist try to mass-produce, with their ideal: The well-adjusted person, someone who craves agreement and dares not dream, not even for himself alone in bed, for to dream one must disagree. Isn't that what dreaming is about? -- disagreeing with what is, putting something else there?
Yet even the madman clings to his last desperate fragment of truth, that he is someone special -- for who is not a hero, having once decided to be? (And I think every child at some point decides to be a hero.)
Therefore, in the only world he recognizes (everyone's), he registers his specialness the only way he can: bombs, bullets, sloguns -- solid dreams prefabricated by others, flung or fired into a mob of gaping flammable faces, eyes wide with terror, pain and guaranteed recognition. No need to think: He gropes for his quick fix, the confirmation of his specialness by a world that swallows dreams and shits headlines.
No, they warn: Beware the man who dreams himself a hero; of such are the fanatics, the crazed assassins of our day. (And yet, what child does not dream of being a hero?)
These students of the soul they think does not exist (for psychiatry means healing of the soul, and if you have one, they can cure you of it) -- they fear any who dare disagree. Those who dream their own dreams are not well-adjusted, nor do they need our fear to compel agreement with their dreams.
Those who imagine themselves heroes well enough, are heroes. Greatness is one's dream come true for all, all our dreams come true in one.
Beware those who fear dreamers. Beware those who cannot dream.
The real madmen can only borrow the dreams of others, overwhelmed by the agreement called the world, its solidity ever demanding "Just who do you think you are!"
The real madman is what the psychologist and psychiatrist try to mass-produce, with their ideal: The well-adjusted person, someone who craves agreement and dares not dream, not even for himself alone in bed, for to dream one must disagree. Isn't that what dreaming is about? -- disagreeing with what is, putting something else there?
Yet even the madman clings to his last desperate fragment of truth, that he is someone special -- for who is not a hero, having once decided to be? (And I think every child at some point decides to be a hero.)
Therefore, in the only world he recognizes (everyone's), he registers his specialness the only way he can: bombs, bullets, sloguns -- solid dreams prefabricated by others, flung or fired into a mob of gaping flammable faces, eyes wide with terror, pain and guaranteed recognition. No need to think: He gropes for his quick fix, the confirmation of his specialness by a world that swallows dreams and shits headlines.
What Became of Baby Doll?
Mama causes things. Little girl gets caused -- ears scrubbed, teeth brushed, dress and shoes put on, shoelaces tied ("...and don't get them muddy!") by Mama. Overwhelming, all that one-way causation, unless little girl is given a littler girl to scold, dress up, take places. Little girl can't be trusted with baby sister, but a doll will do.
At least that's how it used to be when dolls were mostly rubber and porcelain babies or cloth Raggedy Annes (little girls) or furry teddy bears (cuddly -- pets that can be handled, yet won't need to be buried in a shoe box beneath the bushes in the back yard because "I told you not to handle it so much").
Mama caused things to happen to her child, so her child caused things to happen to her mock-child or pet, child becoming mock-Mama. Later, in grade school, big girl snipped out Betty and Veronica from comic books, dressed them (Fold Tab A into Slot B) in cut-out clothes, wanting to be Betty or Veronica, because they could cause things to happen to boys, who specialize in causing things to happen to girls.
That's how it used to be. But tiny hard-plastic bimbo-Barbie (our Betty and Veronica) is all the rage with tots. Who is trying to be what? Who wants whom to be what? The child is mother to the nubile teen-ager? (Babies are, after all, unwanted.)
And Barbie is so small -- an adult doll, yet tiny compared to the long-ago pliable soft baby dolls that sat up and said "Mama!" and lay back and closed their lashed eyes.
Our dolls are aging, and so are our children. If we live again, a newborn baby is, after all, someone who recently died. Perhaps the next generation of dolls will be tiny old people, made of hard slippery plastic designed to be shoved up into the womb to entertain pre-natals and remind them whence they come.
At least that's how it used to be when dolls were mostly rubber and porcelain babies or cloth Raggedy Annes (little girls) or furry teddy bears (cuddly -- pets that can be handled, yet won't need to be buried in a shoe box beneath the bushes in the back yard because "I told you not to handle it so much").
Mama caused things to happen to her child, so her child caused things to happen to her mock-child or pet, child becoming mock-Mama. Later, in grade school, big girl snipped out Betty and Veronica from comic books, dressed them (Fold Tab A into Slot B) in cut-out clothes, wanting to be Betty or Veronica, because they could cause things to happen to boys, who specialize in causing things to happen to girls.
That's how it used to be. But tiny hard-plastic bimbo-Barbie (our Betty and Veronica) is all the rage with tots. Who is trying to be what? Who wants whom to be what? The child is mother to the nubile teen-ager? (Babies are, after all, unwanted.)
And Barbie is so small -- an adult doll, yet tiny compared to the long-ago pliable soft baby dolls that sat up and said "Mama!" and lay back and closed their lashed eyes.
Our dolls are aging, and so are our children. If we live again, a newborn baby is, after all, someone who recently died. Perhaps the next generation of dolls will be tiny old people, made of hard slippery plastic designed to be shoved up into the womb to entertain pre-natals and remind them whence they come.
Can You Feel Fingernails Growing? Whose?
I trim my nails -- they grow back.
But WHEN do they grow? While I sleep? I never catch them at it. Or maybe what I call "my nails", what I feel when I put attention on them, IS their growing -- the quick of my fingers against their slow,but steady; motion against motion, the earth against my feet, all motion: The earth and my body tugging against each other, the earth's slow internal magma convulsions, my body's tiny convulsions, more than one throb each moment; the earth's spin around sun dragging or pushing me along with it, and all that fizz of molecular motion -- motion against motion is what we can perceive, perhaps what we can cause -- Give me your hand.
My motion?...no, my body's motion, for I, feeling motion, must be no motion, stillness. Why? Because I do not change. Once, not long ago,I sat in a crib -- I remember -- and felt all these motions, and then, too, I was me, and before that -- I remember it, better than I remember all the fads of motion of those times -- then, too, I was me and could cause and perceive and mirror motion and remember and re-create it.
Surrounded by motion, the only show in town, I thought I, too, was motion, but when I know who I am and have always been, I see that I do not change, and all the illusory "was-ness" drops out, this succession of me's, beads on a string, becoming the one pearl of who I am only and always, unchanging, unsleeping (it is I who watch over my sleeping), this awareness of the awareness of my toenails growing or of nothing at all, here I am.
But WHEN do they grow? While I sleep? I never catch them at it. Or maybe what I call "my nails", what I feel when I put attention on them, IS their growing -- the quick of my fingers against their slow,but steady; motion against motion, the earth against my feet, all motion: The earth and my body tugging against each other, the earth's slow internal magma convulsions, my body's tiny convulsions, more than one throb each moment; the earth's spin around sun dragging or pushing me along with it, and all that fizz of molecular motion -- motion against motion is what we can perceive, perhaps what we can cause -- Give me your hand.
My motion?...no, my body's motion, for I, feeling motion, must be no motion, stillness. Why? Because I do not change. Once, not long ago,I sat in a crib -- I remember -- and felt all these motions, and then, too, I was me, and before that -- I remember it, better than I remember all the fads of motion of those times -- then, too, I was me and could cause and perceive and mirror motion and remember and re-create it.
Surrounded by motion, the only show in town, I thought I, too, was motion, but when I know who I am and have always been, I see that I do not change, and all the illusory "was-ness" drops out, this succession of me's, beads on a string, becoming the one pearl of who I am only and always, unchanging, unsleeping (it is I who watch over my sleeping), this awareness of the awareness of my toenails growing or of nothing at all, here I am.
Sunday, February 19, 2006
How Fame Happens
What blocks the road to fame also eases the way: You go along, bouncing in your own estimation from "I am someone" to "I am no one," occasionally coming to rest halfway between at "Maybe...who knows? Does it matter?"
You know you are good at what you do, but knowing doesn't make it real -- that takes agreement, and you aren't even sure you agree with yourself. But your being unknown is what wins the day, when, finally, someone whose opinion counts happens to pass over your work and gets yanked back to it and says, "Hey! Who is this? It's terrific!"
To this eminence, you're no one -- the condition you've long cursed -- and that's your gateway to fame: To you you're no one...someone... no one.... To this someone you're simply no one, then someone, suddenly someone, pure someone. You don't arrive with all that baggage, the decades of self-doubt (this eminent fellow wasn't there when you were vascillating through the years), the skin of "small-time", "local", etc., acquired despite (or by) your efforts to resist it.
You are that "bolt from the blue." Your decades of effort got you no recognition worth mention, so you come from nowhere. You aren't even a recognizably "pretty good" or "reliable" poet. The road is wide open. Now you need only remember that fame is mere opinion. Your work is to touch individuals and make them more alive. Fame is only a way to reach individuals, only a way. Aren't you glad fame hid from you until you were able to use it without becoming infatuated with it...well, almost.
You know you are good at what you do, but knowing doesn't make it real -- that takes agreement, and you aren't even sure you agree with yourself. But your being unknown is what wins the day, when, finally, someone whose opinion counts happens to pass over your work and gets yanked back to it and says, "Hey! Who is this? It's terrific!"
To this eminence, you're no one -- the condition you've long cursed -- and that's your gateway to fame: To you you're no one...someone... no one.... To this someone you're simply no one, then someone, suddenly someone, pure someone. You don't arrive with all that baggage, the decades of self-doubt (this eminent fellow wasn't there when you were vascillating through the years), the skin of "small-time", "local", etc., acquired despite (or by) your efforts to resist it.
You are that "bolt from the blue." Your decades of effort got you no recognition worth mention, so you come from nowhere. You aren't even a recognizably "pretty good" or "reliable" poet. The road is wide open. Now you need only remember that fame is mere opinion. Your work is to touch individuals and make them more alive. Fame is only a way to reach individuals, only a way. Aren't you glad fame hid from you until you were able to use it without becoming infatuated with it...well, almost.
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