In matters of self-education and scholarly pursuit, I can be honest and say for the most part, there has always been motivation enough to make me wise and willing to learn. In matters of the heart however, I have been remiss with myself and sorry. And, in looking back all I can say is: Man am I a sap and a moron.
I almost never listen to mainstream pop or country so this song is new to me. ..and it’s coming at a time when I could use a reminder of what really happens after having let yourself be stupid to the point of laying face up on the floor like a golden retriever: here ya go, trample my guts and eat my heart out.
And sad songs are OK when you want to cry, but if you want to get angry and get over it so you can get on with it. ..I think Reba says it best.
Watch this one. Even if you have to click the link and wait for the advertising. It will be worth it!
So in reading my facebook feed this morning, I came across a teaching colleague’s post expressing that he’d more or less had his fill of reading about this sideshow that has been going on in politics. That we need to start finding something else to talk about, to just get back to the business of lifting ourselves out of this mess and muck and outright insanity. So I guess I am posting this short blog with a bit of art that speaks volumes about what gives us hope over despair.
Peace.
“Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,) You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self. “ –Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself“
Henry Tanner, "The Annunciation"
“As we go marching, marching, we bring the greater days,The rising of the women means the rising of the race.No more the drudge and idler, ten that toil where one reposes,But a sharing of life’s glories: Bread and roses, bread and roses.Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;Hearts starve as well as bodies; bread and roses, bread and roses.” –James Oppenheim
this arlo guthrie video is so beautiful. ..the embedding doesn’t work, but if you click through, you won’t be sorry. so inspiring. thanks, woody and arlo.
Recently in the English 101 Class I cUrrently teech, I came across one of my favorite challenges so far this year. You see it’s poetry week there and I have decided to write this blog in the interest of education as the process will serve 2 purposes:
one as a place to store material for teaching poetry to computer techs in the class
(peephole who by virtue of an oppressive no child left behind except for poets education. . .have been so sadly and desperately deprived of the critical thinking beauty in poems!)
2. second as a place to show my students what a bad first drafter I can be)
aND writing these thingis on the spur of the moment. AS such, I will reZIst any and all urges to write another draft before I push that there publish button to the right of my screen. So here it is.
FIRST I think I will share this sweet little gem from youtube, that is sure to please the nerd person in your life. ..so don’t worry
and here is a math word that has been used by poet friends, but to me, it’s a bit confusing. Something to do with numbers and counting stuff, which I never could master at:
fibonacci
edit: I am adding this one from another student, the girl who recommended my class to him:
this one is solid and tight and cosmic, kids so SO DO NOT SKIP IT!
Now that you have seen the appetizer, here is a salad:
more inane babbling from me about how amazing those both were and then
the big bang guy love:
and some of this action perhaps:
a dinner poem from this awesome computer creative writing for techies website:
Here’s an easy game to play. Here’s an easy thing to say.
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port, And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort. And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort, Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report!
If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash, And the doubleclicking icon puts your window in the trash, And your data is corrupted ’cause the index doesn’t hash. Then your situation’s hopeless and your system’s gonna crash!
You can’t say this? What a shame, sir! We’ll find you another game, sir!
If the label on the cable on the table at your house Says the network is connected to the button on the mouse, But your packets want to tunnel on another protocol, That’s repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall, And your screen is all distorted by the side affects of Gauss, So your icons in the windows are as wavy as a souse, Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang, ‘Cause as sure as I’m a poet, the sucker’s gonna hang!
When the copy of your floppy’s getting sloppy on the disk, And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary RISC. Then you have to flash your memory and you’ll want to RAM your ROM. Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your mom!
The Tao of error haiku
(Johne Cook) (Error messages as they might appear if Bill Gates were Japanese)
A file that big? It might be very useful. But now it is gone.You seek a Web site. It cannot be located. Countless more exist.Chaos reigns within. Reflect, repent, and reboot. Order shall return.Yesterday it worked Today it is not working Windows is like that.First snow, then silence. This thousand dollar screen dies So beautifully.With searching comes loss. The presence of absence. “June Sales.doc” not found.The Tao that is seen Is not the true Tao Until you bring fresh toner.Windows NT crashed.I am The Blue Screen of Death.No one hears your screams.Stay the patient course.Of little worth is your ire.The network is down.
A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
To a simple stone.
*************
Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.
You step in the stream But the water has moved on. Page not found.Out of memory. We wish to hold the whole sky, But we never will.Having been erased, The document you are seeking Must now be retyped.Serious error. All shortcuts have disappeared. Screen. Mind. Both are blank.Seeing my great fault Through darkening blue windows I begin again.Printer not ready Could be a fatal error. Have a pen handy?Errors have occurred We won’t tell you where or why. Lazy programmers.Login incorrect. Only perfect spellers may enter this system.This site have been moved We’d tell you where, but then we’d have to delete you.To have no errors Would be life without meaning No struggle, no joy.There is a chasm of carbon and silicon the software can’t bridge.
Cheap Spell-Checker
Eye halve a spelling chequer
and then I believe it is time to say goodnight, gracie (with a blooper too which will drive the first draft point right on home. .. and a wish from me to have an extra fabulousness day in the morning too. xoxo:
oh and by the way, i tooootally covered my plagiriasm bases already by saying this is only to be used for education and entertainment purposes. No poets were harmed by getting paid in the process.
After much anticipation and excitement, Dylan meets the Beatles for the first time. . .his jealousy over their “bubble gum” success almost palpable. . .
As the story goes, the unwashed phenomenon offers the fab four their first marijuana cigarette and bam, music is changed forever.
At least that is what they say anyway. It was the drugs that did it.
Fine. I will grant you that one in theory. No doubt the sloshing and slowdown of brain function had an impact. . .there’s zero denying that. Love minus zero denying the altered state and how it changes things. And if you want to go to that altar and worship the gods of creativity, you can use drugs to do it. . .
Or you can just let the awkardly emo chips fall where they may.
There is a price to pay for imbibing. . .no denying that either. And speaking strictly for me, I would have to admit that my own delicate physiological state can’t absorb the shock of it so I choose to abstain. . . not out of any kind of moral high ground choice. . .it’s just simply a result of cause, effect and lesson learned. I simply cannot handle the crash that follows a high. It feeds these suicidal tendencies, ones that I already have a hard enough time with, minus any other kind of input from unprescribed chemistry. But there is also a price to pay for sobriety, especially when it comes to friends and fitting in, having something significant to offer in a situation wherein many of the participants are saying things you really can’t relate to. . .
It’s not hip to open that can of worms, I know. And I await the backlash to come. But whatever. (I still say that 40 minutes of meditation does a kickass job at calming the nerves and relieving social anxiety, without the accompanying slowdown of actual awareness followed by a significant chemistry crash and paranoia. And people forget to mention it. ..especially in a culture dominated by a consumer mindset, one that says if you are lacking something, especially charisma, creativity, self-confidence, there’s an app for that.)
Again, you get screwed up for turning it down too. . .you spend a lot of artist time alone for being such a square that way. . . That’s life, I guess.
So anyway, back to the Beatles vs. Bob and August 1964.
And a question for you to ponder. Just suspend your belief system for a minute with me here, and then let go of everything you know about music and drugs. Then consider this question and proposal if you will:
What happens when strong emotional input follows intellectual stimulation, mixed with a bit of jealous venom from the guy who could/would smash the competition in a single strum?
And there is just no denying it. Something happened that day. ..something that had a massive impact on the fab four plus one. So here we go again. ..which one had the most impact that day? The weed or the seed? Maybe a bit of both; you decide.
No doubt it had to hurt the first time the boys heard Bob’s unabashedly sneering parody of Norwegian Wood. . .
Enough for them to have wanted to break free of that kind of scrutiny, looking for the cracks in the floor, lettin the shortcomings slip into them. . .
And what ARE you really saying with your art when all you do is sit in a room and pencil dream about some girl who’s got you by the short and curly:
Image via Wikipedia
And then enter Yoko, who was undeservingly designated as breakup scapegoat for a lot of years. . .I guess if you forget about Bob, you might want to grab a club and go after that, but think about it. That moment when Dylan saunters out of the room after having been introduced to the newest Lennon/McCartney collaboration.
Think of it again. Hard. Imagine half of that creative team walking away that much more determined in his resolve to writing “Silly Love Songs,” and the other just feeling crushed and stuck to the bottom of Bob’s bootheel.
And now to drive it home and see if I can get there without anybody getting hurt by this rant. ..(with apologies to Doors fans as well as anybody who has to deal with the insanity of the prison industrial complex, one that punishes us all for just trying to escape this ratrace and make some art. Love to you all. xoxo)
Be careful what you wish for, people tell us from the moment we begin to reach and dream, you just might get it. And at times, that kind of warning may even sound like encouragement, ironically, and perhaps that’s where the trouble begins. . .we like the unpredictable uncertainty of longing too. . .the escapist notion of “if only”. . . ”as soon as”. . .”at which time”
