something like…while i’m doing a bit of this
you can just hit “random post” up under “manoftheword”
and visit stuff i can’t remember
something new will (hopefully) arise
in my journeys
and hopefully
you will find it interesting
but for now…
you guys keep working
so i stay inspired
upon return
What Occurs : What Prompts : Whatever
I’m prepared to admit that I am moody…(significant others would readily attest this). My range of expression is evolving. Formerly I drank vodka so as to physically present a Zen-like kindness and placidity. My family didn’t fall for it. Many other medications have been recommended me wherewith to alter my individual chemistry and be a finer, better human. Different. Okay. It’s almost two years now since I’ve drank with regularity for balance. (Imbalance). Almost two months since I’ve managed on a braid of nicotine and tar. I’m at the mercy of the winds. In me.
I’m moving, frighteningly, toward “what you see is what you get” – some reckless combination of a voracious and highly informed neurotic intellect, strange aesthetically, theory-laden embodiment, and a high-voltage bundle of emotional attachment needs…a kind of human specimen to myself…and whatever literature I imbibe and an incredibly courageous family that somehow stays around me, thusfar regardless of…
If pressed, I would say I survive by language. By art. Whether visual, musical, or literary, I always feel (believe?) that there’s some place for me, some haven to inhabit, in the tremendous world of frivolous human invention/concoction/creation. Though there is overwhelming evidence from my spouse, children and immediate/extended family and friends that I’m safe and accepted as the crazy creature I am, that’s a slow-growth root for relative paranoia (or shame).
All that, to highlight a miniscule moment that accentuated an obvious stimulant to my own commitments to compositions in whatever media or form.
A mood obtains. Like clothing, I often feel surrounded and represented by my emotional states. When this occurs, I look for “matches.” Things in the world to mirror or affirm me – that I might maintain some sense of individuality and worth – i.e., “self.”
Something happens that I don’t pretend to understand, shifting my contextual fabric of existence into a new whereabouts/whatabouts/howabouts, and I look at the literatures that I saturate my living spaces with, the sounds I ensure are in queue, and images / persons / environments (etc.) arranged so as to secure or anchor me, and I ask for resonance, reflection, validation.
That isn’t fair.
I see that.
Thus I relate, to what’s around me.
Not so subtly (as my whomabouts can attest) I seek what mates with my singular in-sperience.
Not fair.
I see that.
It’s what I do.
Often there is very little in my surround “feeling WITH me.” I.e. identical to myself. Therefore, bigotedly, I feel alone. And seek.
Today – in some combination of emptiness (moving away from four children and ‘home’ to be with two other children and beautiful mountains) and rich anticipation (my beloved ONLY flying back to me from another country – my spouse, my dearest deepest friend, my survivor); grief (two years of self-directed study and creation drawing to a close); irritation (growing consecutivity of 3-digit temperatures and a scalded environment – these Midwestern plains); an only partially confirmed/verified confidence (in mental avarice and aptitude, linguistic and theoretical comprehensions and abilities); excitement (of movement, vacation, escape, in-drawal with significant others); terror (maturing independence of children, un-necessity as parent, annoyance, superfluity, archaism); erotic desire (days spent apart from spouse + discipline + commitment + theory + desire); hope (renewed relationships, devotion to integrity, celebration of fidelities); melancholy (death is always the next thing); pride (I’ve managed thusfar); luck and sorrow (the ridiculous imperilments of tragedies)…
I’m realizing as I write that this list is a quick abyss of connections and trajectories. Life is endlessly sourced and indiscriminately smeared…
In this molten, cumulative state I perused my essential companions – literary, musical, and visual…and…NO MATCHES!!! All so far beyond me in each of their strengths – stretching, compelling, inductive… but not “mating”/”conflating”/”reflecting” to my own present presence…
and so…
…I write…
…seeking what I need…
…to create it…
And one day?
To find?
“He opens Nothing, with a nothing key” (Macedonio Fernandez)
(Arkadii Dragomoschenko) “Everything begins as an error of vision…”
Time. How it fluctuates. The excruciating and seemingly eternal wait…and that which occurs suddenly. Whether it exists or not, we live on its terms. Experienced, as with everything, to varying intensities.
Interruption.
Arrival.
Topical, temporal, terms.
Age-old commonplace: does movement (spatial) fragment a continuum (temporal)? or does some urge toward continuance (temporal) spawn diverse actions (spatial)? Chicken or egg? Or chicken in egg withwhile an egg in the chicken? Choose your poisons. Or not. The terms preside.
When are we most apt to accede to the passage (spatial) that is (of) time? Alternately referred to as “aging,” “progress,” “growth,” “erosion,” “deterioration,” “process” and so on. Some quote/unquote “motion” variously rendered (perspectivally perceived).
Serial designations. Arbitrarily “first,” “second,” “third,” “last.” “Beginning,” “middling,” “end” (-ing). Sounds and rhythms (consonant-verb syllables) tick-tock du-thrum heartbeat breath clock gesture
Everything marking something. But what?
“Signs kill things” (Fernandez).
I hold a nothing key.
It’s a sign.
It unlocks the mysteries.
The secret heart of being.
All those questions.
If you’d like to know, I can begin writing them down for you. For my duration here. Or find them yourself (the keys, the mysteries, the secrets at the heart of existing) – simply add a question mark to every thought, dream, emotion, hunch, word, sight, sound, sense or reason that occurs to you.
Which will leave you with. In.
Smackdab in the center of it all. Ever-presently. At always.
WITH/IN will synonym you, so that you will be. Always.
– ? –
The wise are correct when they say that everyone has access to the (nothing) key. The slender cracks in the thresholds doors, available indiscriminately. Received the same way you take language. Inbreathed. Freely (you have been given) freely (you receive).
From knee-crease tracing the calf to the fine-pointed ankle bones is a passage, preferably a smooth and easy one, knowing age and growth.
As she departs, time stretches into space; when she arrives all compresses. Only machines are regulated (for a time). Heart’s skip, muscles seize, organs expand and contract. Movement is erratic. Composed. Fluid. Harmony and dissonance make melody. A sentence. A phrase. Selah. Gaps. Seams. A nothing key.
– ? –
Do you get my meaning? Meaning is an interrogative juncture. Is all. The nothing key to open it.
We tell by our surroundings, i.e. specific spaces at particular times (or vice-versa), i.e. contexts and structures that hold us…allow us recognition, description, difference.
In other words, hiking in the Rockies is not taking dictation at an office desk. But both mark something, at varying tempos.
There are no true clocks.
Or standard times, any more than we all may inhabit the same location.
Or enter the same stream.
Only meaning to say I am hoping to open a door with my simple key. A possibly operative threshold.
Into the secret heart of things…
– ? –
“why does an intense mental state happen? Why does it pass on to others?
These ‘whys’ do not exist: this is how it happens, and that’s all.”
-Macedonio Fernandez-
An Epic in 79 words
In the beginning was the word, and the word was god and became human in the dialogue between, imagining; imagination becoming the domain of the humangodword – that subject/object constituting between or the recognition of being – that is, difference, fluctuate identities, change-charting actions of passing marks reanimated with each kenosis and subsequent in-dwelling, in other words, words began the perceiving that learned us something like self, necessitating others to be being, i.e. recognizable in varying contexts, backdrop origin…language.
N Filbert 2012
The Results in 79 words
The brothers knew it wasn’t right, what they had done. Though Alfred had thought it was, before. Not now, though, no one would argue the results. Were bad. Were harmful. Would be difficult to live away, if ever. Ends were so unlike their means, and either could be culpable. The boys knew that now, blaming as they did each other, by which I mean, themselves. Stuck with it, the consequences, are also new beginnings. Arden took the cue.
N Filbert 2012
Check out Gypsy Wall!
http://gypsywall.wordpress.com/2012/07/17/taking-note-rememory/
Survival in 79 words
He composes within the disaster. Step one is to mention his life. As it goes. For the record. Just in case. Reassembling rubble is only one form of resist. But not timing, nor space. Step two is to edit. To search what remains. To look for a memorable trinket. One rarely finds something precious, or treasure, but one man’s junk…because there aren’t any rules of the game. Evaluation, correction, such fickle appraisals, are the process of finding step three…
N Filbert 2012
The Temptress in 78 words
Her words taste pomegranate – the tart – bitter, erotic, and sweet. I tickle them over my teeth with my tongue, trying to untie them. I like the way the air glides over them, whispering cool and moist into my ears. I swallow. She speaks without using her mouth. I listen hard. So this is what it tastes like? Is difficult to digest, it vaguely turns the stomach, and I want more. Addicted as I am to the showers of seeds.
N Filbert 2012
So a new formal challenge emerges. Tipped off by Duotrope, I stumbled on this interesting competition sponsored by the Aspen Writers Foundatino and Esquire magazine: A short short story of exactly 79 words, judged 25% plot, 25% characterization, 25% theme and 25% originality. Why not, right? I mean many of us compose 100-word stories (rarely EXACTLY 100, but) for Madison Woods “Friday Fictioneers” photo-prompts…so why not give 79 a shot, eh? So as a little side project over the next month or so I’ll be delivering various aborted attempts…I’d love feedback, but they’ll probably keep appearing anyway! Thanks all.
1. A 79-word story in 78 words
I slipped there, on my way out. I cried.
Someone held me, shaping me thus. That’s what I heard, but never quite believed. So they told me other things, and showed me pictures. It began to sound like music, that I’d made. I played. And continued to study. Soon it was all words and experience and me stumbling away. Or sailing back, on rough waters with a rowdy entourage, and fear. And love. In either direction, I’m here.
N Filbert 2012
Interviewing Correspondence (-ts)
Composing letters is good exercise for writing. Imagined audience and relation, fitting language to a function with a purpose.
Dear WordPress Users:
I regret to inform you. I’d like to congratulate you. It has come to our attention. In the matter regarding. Allow me to introduce myself.
The address sets a tone. There is little to waste. Readers can be lost in a matter of moments, of letters, of marks.
Sex. Hate. Cookies. Pups. Nudity. Self-loathing or injuries sustained. Rants. Cuss. Sexual organs. Deviant tastes or behaviors. Righteousness.
These terms as keywords capture the bulk of contemporary humanity. Money, sugar, self-sustenance/survival/success, fame. Beauty, distress, the hideous, tragedy and laughs work as well. Also superlatives. And challenges.
You’ve never seen a _____ this size! Fires burn out of control, lives lost… Wowza! She’s got _____!! You have no idea _____! Did you ever imagine _____ could be so good?!
Direct-ion. Scan billboards and headlines, logos and slogans – these things are devised to capture attention, activate interest. Use imagery and images – somehow we’ve evolved into a very visual culture – we taste, hear, touch and listen – with our eyes! Watch a video with the sound turned off. Gaze at some pictures of food. Read poems. I challenge you (smiley-face) – what are you unable to sense…just using your eyes? (Whatever it is will cause you to act).
Action works. Activate. Stimulate. Request. Invite. Offer. Command. Insult.
You really have no concept of what you’re doing here, do you? I mean, reading this? Hoping for some pleasurable payoff of insight or delight! Something succulent or soothing, entertaining or erotic, secrets or solutions. You selfish bastards! Give a little! It’s all ‘what’s in it for ME!?’ Sucking the world dry like these pages…
Give people something to find that they’ll consider “wrong” – people LOVE to feel “right.” Scapegoating works well – and it can be anything – people will follow: bottled water, big government, Christianity, children, homosexuals, genres, stupidity…the lemmings will leap.
Dear WordPress Users:
I regret to inform you that the following letters are not art.
“Works of art represent webs of sounds, movements and ideas… Human beings are contradictory… Freedom is the law of human nature…At the basis of every artistic work, every stage in artistic construction, lie similar principles of revealing the contradictions… artistic compositions show the fallacy of simple solutions… one can do anything, but there is no purpose…”
(all Viktor Shklovsky, from “On the Dissimilarity of the Similar”)
Dear WordPress Users:
I urge you: exercise freedom and complexity!
Utilize everything!
Sincerely,
da Man-O’-Word(s)
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