Gin with Jane
The bottle of Bombay
Sapphire I bought
because I wanted
to impress you, sits
waiting to be finished.
You left early that night,
earlier than I wished
you would have.
You left before I could
stare intently into your
deep brown eyes, and
find the secrets of this
world. No, you left,
abrubtly, after reading
a poem I wrote about you.
In it, you were a small,
scared bird. I think
I had some parts right.
Maybe you are scared.
After all, this is a big world,
with lots to fear. Maybe I
cannot stop all that is
bad in this world, but
we still have the Bombay.
July 8, 2009
Edgar Finds His Purpose
A General Introduction: Edgar Finds His Purpose
And this is the year that fate has chosen to thrust me into the world, which those older than me cleverly call "the real world." It is as if I had not been paying attention for the last four years. No, I have been paying attention. The world has its weaknesses. Men have lamented since the dawn of thought about the innate failings of men and the possible resolutions that could be brought forth. However, how smart the man, the perfect world is seemingly unattainable. As proof, I find that I am not running into philosopher kings on every corner.
There is a reason that Sir Thomas Moore chose the name of Utopia. In translation, it means "no place." That was written hundreds of years ago, in a time where great discoveries happened on an almost daily basis, and if you read the literature, a time when men were more enlightened than any time that had been before and had come since. If hundreds of years ago men were cynical about the fate of the world, how is it that a man in this day and age can make some sort of difference in the fate of the world?
We look up at the sky, and gesture at the futility of such an action. We shake our fists at the cosmos and lament. "I am just one man," you find yourself screaming at the sky, "what can I possibly do?" I know that I am too young, too inexperienced to know the answers to these debates that have been raging since the great minds of Athens were preserved as marble likenesses. However, I am old enough to recognize that I do not know these things. I think attorney general John Ashcroft put it best when he said, "There are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. There are things we know we know, there are things we know we don't know, and then there are things we don't know we know. The things that we don't know we know are the most dangerous."
And that, Hopefully, is the point where I come in. A writer's duty is to expose Truth and Beauty in the world, paying careful attention to the proper noun status of these things. If I can, in my time on the Earth, make some of those unknown unknowns into the known unknowns, the world will be a better place. However, I feel that I need to learn more, and be guided by those who have walked the same path, but are slightly ahead of me. The experience of life is a wonderful education. Men who dropped out of school at sixteen know some things that I might never even fathom to think about. I need to learn more. My heart and my soul yearn for it, and my rational mind would be highly offended if I did not utilize all its powers. I was granted with some great gifts that I never asked for, and it is my duty to humanity to use them.
And use them I will. I feel that I have all the tools; it is just that their uses are alien to me. I fumble around like a child with the tools of my craft, and the guidance that someone older than me can offer is much appreciated. As the flower cannot blossom without the rain, a mind needs cultivation through the process of education. Graduate school is the logical choice for me. I can be no autodidact.
Although I can be no autodidact, I can hope for greatness. This is an abstract, untenable thing, this greatness, but it is what I truly hope for. Someday, I want promising scholars and writers to read my work, and be moved. Maybe they will want to study it, applying it to the theory of the day. More likely, I would hope that some young reader, somewhere, is emboldened to take up the pen and dream lofty dreams as I do today. Graduate school will help me on my way. Someday, some English Department’s headquarters will bear my name. Now, will you open the door for me, in this same building?
And this is the year that fate has chosen to thrust me into the world, which those older than me cleverly call "the real world." It is as if I had not been paying attention for the last four years. No, I have been paying attention. The world has its weaknesses. Men have lamented since the dawn of thought about the innate failings of men and the possible resolutions that could be brought forth. However, how smart the man, the perfect world is seemingly unattainable. As proof, I find that I am not running into philosopher kings on every corner.
There is a reason that Sir Thomas Moore chose the name of Utopia. In translation, it means "no place." That was written hundreds of years ago, in a time where great discoveries happened on an almost daily basis, and if you read the literature, a time when men were more enlightened than any time that had been before and had come since. If hundreds of years ago men were cynical about the fate of the world, how is it that a man in this day and age can make some sort of difference in the fate of the world?
We look up at the sky, and gesture at the futility of such an action. We shake our fists at the cosmos and lament. "I am just one man," you find yourself screaming at the sky, "what can I possibly do?" I know that I am too young, too inexperienced to know the answers to these debates that have been raging since the great minds of Athens were preserved as marble likenesses. However, I am old enough to recognize that I do not know these things. I think attorney general John Ashcroft put it best when he said, "There are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. There are things we know we know, there are things we know we don't know, and then there are things we don't know we know. The things that we don't know we know are the most dangerous."
And that, Hopefully, is the point where I come in. A writer's duty is to expose Truth and Beauty in the world, paying careful attention to the proper noun status of these things. If I can, in my time on the Earth, make some of those unknown unknowns into the known unknowns, the world will be a better place. However, I feel that I need to learn more, and be guided by those who have walked the same path, but are slightly ahead of me. The experience of life is a wonderful education. Men who dropped out of school at sixteen know some things that I might never even fathom to think about. I need to learn more. My heart and my soul yearn for it, and my rational mind would be highly offended if I did not utilize all its powers. I was granted with some great gifts that I never asked for, and it is my duty to humanity to use them.
And use them I will. I feel that I have all the tools; it is just that their uses are alien to me. I fumble around like a child with the tools of my craft, and the guidance that someone older than me can offer is much appreciated. As the flower cannot blossom without the rain, a mind needs cultivation through the process of education. Graduate school is the logical choice for me. I can be no autodidact.
Although I can be no autodidact, I can hope for greatness. This is an abstract, untenable thing, this greatness, but it is what I truly hope for. Someday, I want promising scholars and writers to read my work, and be moved. Maybe they will want to study it, applying it to the theory of the day. More likely, I would hope that some young reader, somewhere, is emboldened to take up the pen and dream lofty dreams as I do today. Graduate school will help me on my way. Someday, some English Department’s headquarters will bear my name. Now, will you open the door for me, in this same building?
June 30, 2009
Fourteens
1.
The first night, I felt a tightness in my chest,
the heart fluttered, and I took a deep breath.
My mind raced, not knowing this alien
sensation. I ignored it, and it went
away. The morning after, sugar spilled
over the counter; pouring down Corn Flakes.
I called my mother, telling her about
the dull pain in my stomach and the night
before. She told me to relax. “Maturity
is a gradual condition of decline.”
I breathe deeper now, every night and watch
the brightening of the east. My hair is
gone, falling out in large clumps. Since then, I
have invested a fortune in Drano.
2.
The doctor holds the X-ray to the light,
pointing at the blurry spots. He frowns as
he turns towards her. “I’m afraid it’s returned,”
he said. I pull her close to me but can’t
speak. “Remission” was the happiest word,
but “relapse” silences all active tongues.
She turned away from science & from me.
Her gaze rested instead on herbalist,
acupuncturist, new-age charlatans
giving her hope where others had failed.
Every day she would pray, and eat bean sprouts.
She grew thinner, and the lines on her face
Illustrated the resignation she
had finally acquiesced to this cold fate.
3.
He wouldn’t go near her casket, wouldn’t
even look at her lying cold and still.
I tried to tell him that plasticine face
amd those waxy hands were not hers, were not
anything but the mortician’s own craft.
“It’s all artifice, you see. She’s still here
with us as long as you hold her in your
heart.” He didn’t listen, or didn’t hear.
Everyone was there, a homecomming no
one asked for. Maybe it helped all of us
move on and accept our fate in the world.
Or maybe we’re all lying to ourselves.
Maybe this fate is impossible to accept;
then we all must cry with empty arms.
The first night, I felt a tightness in my chest,
the heart fluttered, and I took a deep breath.
My mind raced, not knowing this alien
sensation. I ignored it, and it went
away. The morning after, sugar spilled
over the counter; pouring down Corn Flakes.
I called my mother, telling her about
the dull pain in my stomach and the night
before. She told me to relax. “Maturity
is a gradual condition of decline.”
I breathe deeper now, every night and watch
the brightening of the east. My hair is
gone, falling out in large clumps. Since then, I
have invested a fortune in Drano.
2.
The doctor holds the X-ray to the light,
pointing at the blurry spots. He frowns as
he turns towards her. “I’m afraid it’s returned,”
he said. I pull her close to me but can’t
speak. “Remission” was the happiest word,
but “relapse” silences all active tongues.
She turned away from science & from me.
Her gaze rested instead on herbalist,
acupuncturist, new-age charlatans
giving her hope where others had failed.
Every day she would pray, and eat bean sprouts.
She grew thinner, and the lines on her face
Illustrated the resignation she
had finally acquiesced to this cold fate.
3.
He wouldn’t go near her casket, wouldn’t
even look at her lying cold and still.
I tried to tell him that plasticine face
amd those waxy hands were not hers, were not
anything but the mortician’s own craft.
“It’s all artifice, you see. She’s still here
with us as long as you hold her in your
heart.” He didn’t listen, or didn’t hear.
Everyone was there, a homecomming no
one asked for. Maybe it helped all of us
move on and accept our fate in the world.
Or maybe we’re all lying to ourselves.
Maybe this fate is impossible to accept;
then we all must cry with empty arms.
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