As I Read On And On About Slavery

Quote from somewhere in the Internets …

Shouldn’t “African Americans” be apologizing for slavery as well, being their ancestors in Africa sold one another to the white slave traders? As for me, none of my ancestors owned slaves so I am offended by this apology cr**! And instead of whining about the past, people should be thankful they were born in and live in this country…they could be in Africa had it not been for slavery, and some of them wouldn’t have even been born had their ancestors not been brought over here. Think about it….the only people in this country who have a right to complain are the American Indians. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it!

When I can find the time, I will try to put together my particular views on individualism, multiculturalism, and the American creed (or ethos).

Fields

“Energy propagating in a fluctuating way,” I hear, “It moves, feels,” no I mishear, “in fields.”

The girl in front of me is taking notes. She has the chapter highlighted already. Her penmanship is girly, but it has a precision, a fixed dedication. There is a persistence in her writing, she is fervently managing to ignore the lecture.

“Electromagnetic waves; the speed is constant is equal to c, three times ten to the what is it class? Eight. To the eighth meters per second. One and a half seconds to get to the moon, one and a half to get back.”

I think about synaptic transmission and how it pales in comparison to light speed. I think about her penmanship, the curls and swirls, and I imagine that the distance to the moon might one day not be so great.

A prose-poem below:

A Story,

I want to turn this relationship inside out, I want to make it all end, break your heart into pieces on the floor.

Why

Because it’s been months

Of this, of constant bickering, but I’m fine, I’m happy – I love you and you want it to go away.

Currently working on a short-story about a girl named Deborah

An Ice Fisher

The river’s iced and yes we slide about thinking about who we used to be. There is something in her voice that makes me remember when we used to kiss, but I try like I promised her to ignore it because she is married for the moment. She is thinking about how the Charles River is an accurate rendition of the human condition with its trivialities pressed cold onto the surface while life and some multitudinous currents scatter about beneath, diverse as the day itself but hidden until someone pokes through. How poetic. Her cheeks turn red and I can only think about how she used to blush at the sight of me; how I’d tease her for being embarrassed to see me, of course she wasn’t actually embarrassed then. I begin to wonder what it means to love.

“Gené, what does love mean to you?”
“Oh, do we have to have these philosophical questions? Can’t you just come out here sliding around with me?”
“What if the ice breaks?”
“What if you die right then? What if, Jean, you suddenly find yourself in heaven and you’re laughing about it?”
“Well suppose I die, suppose…” She dragged me out on the ice.
“…And worse,” Gené continued, “what if heaven is just like what everyone imagines it to be; wouldn’t that be a treat? I mean,” she throws on a pouty face, “that would be terrible, that would mean my Jean was wrong.”
“If I die right now then it’s all over, no kids, no books written, no lives saved or mended. I live my life because I pursue these things, I want to make life better for those near me, those dear to -”
“Who matters to you?”

I don’t answer the question. I’m not really sure why; part of me is doing it to admit to her that I like her or maybe it’s to make her think I’m interested. I run over to her intending to grab her hand, but I thought about it and maybe she’d take that the wrong way. I want to ask her out on a date.

We kiss, passionately, and I forget everything, I forget about the ice that isn’t beneath our feet, about dying. There is no ring on her finger anymore, or burden upon my mind, I am nothing but a visceral puddle slowly taking shape like a wave that wishes it could freeze. I reach out and grab us two drinks pouring them into the glasses on the table; the liquid burns as it goes down, more than usual today. The fire inside spreads out over my chest, starts to blacken my vision. I know that I had not drunk that much, I knew somewhere that I was probably dying, I know that the ice water was paralytically cold, but even as it was happening I thought to kiss Gené because in this dream this delusion I was not alone not crying in my bed, no I was holding my Gené again and her brown hair was flowing against my face and I was suddenly tired, and I fall forward. I think she may have caught me.

A Good Conversation

Last night at about this time of night a man chose to end his life in a way Tolstoy might have envisioned; he flung his body into or under an oncoming Red Line train. The man, probably middle-aged probably depressed, found some reason surely for it, and committed himself. Above the Harvard T stop was a crowd of police and frustrated subway riders who found themselves confused as to why the trains (for some surely pedestrian reason) were being turned around at Harvard.

Today I sat down to dinner and next to me was certainly a surreal conversation emerging between two freshmen, a boy and a girl. The conversation was more or less:

Boy: “Men are the worst beings imaginable. Their actions constitute the vast majority of suffering throughout history, being a particularly aggressive and irrational race.”

Girl: “I agree.”

Boy: “Furthermore, women did so much for the human race. They were the ones who developed language. While men think about sex 97% of the time, women are more balanced.”

Girl: “The thing is I’ve never met a guy who doesn’t think about sex. Quite honestly, if I could meet a guy who was sensitive, and such”

Boy: “They’re out there yes, but that three percent completely blur the larger problem. While there are a few good men, most are by design imperfect subject to the confusions of the male gender. These inadequacies or deficiencies or what-have-you is subverted today into discussions of the id, or in saying that a superego transcends our society, or that some unconscious tendencies are the sum causal explanations to atrocities in our time.”

From atrocities he shifted to genocide, first Rwanda and then to how Holocaust survivors should counsel the Rwandan survivors. Then he shifted to commiting mass genocide on, quite logically, the male gender as a sort of compensatory gesture for what has happened in the course of human history.

Boy: “Women could, with the technology today, harvest men for their sperm and kill them, continuing genetic diversity but reducing the amount of hatred and violence in the world.”

This is Where I’ve Lost My Phone

This is Where I’ve Lost My Phone

Originally uploaded by Kevin V.

I went from Annenberg to Lowell to a Science Center Lecture Hall where I am currently typing this.

I am trying so hard to stay calm.
If you can call, please do as I’m sure if 1) someone picked it up then great you can talk to them or 2) I will hear it in one of the three auditoriums I’ve been in.

Of course, it is on vibrate.

A Painting

I completely didn’t see this for what it was initially, but Brooke (Maddy’s cousin) painted this picture of a deer for me – for a five-year-old, it seemed perfect.

Poems

[ A Salted Sea ]

The stones we throw into the air come down on our heads
Splitting us open, a make-believe sea
Of blood and misery, let’s not make this worse
By binding ourselves, girl, this is no story for the children
Oh, bitter companion, don’t quote me a line
Too many tries, too many flexible lies …
Time will come and pardon you surely
Imagine what you might have done
If you could have loved, or if I’d gotten lost
A blind animal captured and struck.

Born to see everything as love, you were a girl
Promising what lives beyond our reach,
Bury your head under your shroud,
Keep those eyes averted because
The world does not give in for a dime
Some fraction of life, this is a last kiss girl,
Go forth through the land and be someone’s bride

[ Throw Stones ]

I’m only an animal crawling through the world
I don’t pretend to love anymore, such a lie, you see
Should not be made so arbitrarily

[ On my small wooden craft ]

i could not, for all the seas around me, find you
until of course, it was too late

[ Intro to Social Analysis ]

I was a dream and you were a part of me,
And when you left, there was nothing
And I could not help but wake up.

[ Like grains of sand ]

I was once capable of writing
And writing well.

It seems I have lost my skill
And instead turned to age,
To watch talent erode
And love aglow
Such is the suffering
Of the once-talented.

A beautiful self-pitying lament,
Just to moan about
The loss of what I’d got
A cry about being talented.

[ a petal dancer ]

A petal falls to die
Wither, crumple like me,
An impression upon a day
To pass under your sight
Quietly like a depression
Or a burdened girl’s lies
That I might paint lavender
If I only cared as much,
While that petal turns to the ground,
To dance or cry upon her beaten shore,
Blossomed once.

So This is the New Year

While over the last year I’ve developed a sort of habit of writing essays, poems, and most notably (at least in my opinion) short stories, I’ve decided to pursue a more even bent between that and the standard “this-is-life” blog. In short, this is going to get a lot less literary, a lot less formal.

Nonetheless, I would like to maintain somewhat of a professional veneer; rather than babble on like a schoolboy with candy about the iPhone, I’ll critique it saying I like its style, elegance, but due to screen limitations won’t work as an internet device and because of its small memory capacity (4gb) isn’t enough to replace my iPod. My senior-English teacher Mr. Clemmons wrote about this previously.

Okay, so first, we do have some poems and such, uh to be posted later.

And music, too.

And a music video.

:)