“Nicotine,” January Sketches, 2012

January 25th, 2012 § 1 Comment

Here is a conceptual poetic sketch I wrote a few nights ago. I haven’t posted any poetry of mine on here for awhile so I’ll liven up the place with this oddity.

“Nicotine,” January Sketches, 2012 

“Moments like these only happen
while smoking cigarettes at midnight”
the man says. we light up.

contemplation and
thoughts.

the pause,
the puff.
fire pours into lungs.
the miasmatic exhale.
fumes curl to disguise our faces.
we squint against the midnight cold –
old weathered men,  gray-faced,
phantoms until a winter
draft diffuses the smoky mask.

ponder among this silence –
but tobacco embers are smoldering,
it is too quiet for us to hear.
the breeze exhales, too,
with our coughing.
we spit in the snow.
then the distant drone of a man
in a pea coat growling along with
music only his plugged-in ears hear.
I salute him, and drag.
and imagine his direction.
he passes back into the solitude of night.

now, in this snow-speckled fantasy,
we substitute the sublime with
bellows of smoke, nerve death
in our ice fingers. we’ll die from
cancer a week before
we reach nirvana.

but the contemplation. It is the
beatitude of now, the thinking
about thinking. the deepest
truth. we smoke again and again.
winter floats about the fleeting,
crippled illusion of youth.

there is no romance in a spell that
shows us there is a way to go on
but never get away.

#Facebook Withdrawals: Day 24

January 13th, 2012 § 4 Comments

As the first month of 2012 edges on, I get closer to a landmark in my daily internet life: nearly one month without any use of or affiliation with the enormous online community and network known as Facebook.

The world of the social network does not seem foreign to me quite yet. I still catch myself sometimes thinking within its terms. For example, I might find something interesting that I previously would have posted to my Facebook profile to share with all of my contacts. But even if those thoughts still exist, they are irrelevant. Not only am I disinterested in sharing such things, I am incapable of doing so. I’m logged off and locked out, for good.

At first the pain and difficulty was obvious. I was experiencing headaches and found myself constantly apprehensive. Generalized anxiety. My mouse searched around for the link to Facebook but could not find it. My settings were wiped and I received nothing. That is still the case, although my anxiety is close to gone. Another feeling has taken its place, though. With no way to participate in the digital community I feel left out, lonely and exiled. So I ask myself: what am I missing? The answer is that I’m not really missing anything. With such a distance from a community that became toxic to me, I don’t have to care about melodramatic issues between friends and all of the other memes flowing through that place. I imagine myself hiking into virgin forest of sorts. Perhaps that metaphor is too strong: I live on rural farms and in the woods, now, rather than the dense metropolis.

So what have I learned in 24 days? I’m not quite sure of that, either. And there is nothing that needs to be said on the subject other than the obvious. For now, I choose to live somewhere else. By doing so the adverts for Facebook stick out everywhere, where as previously they were seamlessly integrated with all forms of media. The television tells me to “‘Like’ us on Facebook” or “Check out our Facebook page” and I recognize this attempt to pull me in and, with pride, say no.

The power to choose is liberating.

The World in Place of Itself

January 10th, 2012 § Leave a Comment

I recently read this book and its excellence deserves a mention here on my blog. I’ll review it in layman’s terms that are easy to understand and not fanciful and gaudy like those pieces you see in the New York Times.

Cover: The World in Plcae of Itself

Cover, "The World in Place of Itself" (2007)

There is a certain feel of poetic enlightenment in this 65-page premiere by Bill Rasmovicz. Rasmovicz’s work has previously appeared in publications such as the Mid American Review, Gulf Coast, and The Cafe Review, among others, wraps itself together into a coherent a moving way in The World in Place of Itself. Organized into five chapters, his poems weave a story contemplative of daily life and curiosities among his lucid imagery, such as the recurring progression of an amorphous poem called “Abberations,” found at least once in every section.

More recurring than the instance of abberations, though, are the patterns in his images that give the reader a hint either to the nature of the speaker or the nature of the world. Crows and blackbirds appear in almost every other poem, calling at or watching the speaker, or lingering in a way that’s more familiar and comfortable than looming. No “quoth the raven” to be found here.

Rasmovicz also proves that he has an extensive and incredible vocabulary, but it’s clear that he doesn’t write in such a complex way just for show. I found myself pausing and thinking about his word choice often, but realizing that he was being as playful and introspective as the crows. He uses words in ways that the reader might not readily expect. It is this quality that gives life to everything. The way that his words jump around follows the way that meaning can jump around. To Rasmovicz, an accordian “prophesizes,”  human lungs are “evaporating” and late at night the stars can drool their light. Most profoundly, though, in his winding way he asks us to truly wonder  “What tethers us to consciousness?” This thought can be ultimately profound and thought provoking but a little bit scary, too.

When I began reading it was difficult to stop. There is a very high re-read value for this book and I expect that I’ll be keeping it close for awhile, referencing its poetic wisdom. Now that he’s told me I am my own “dispossessed muse” and commanded “pretend you are more humble than you are. / Pretend you are a god, that words / don’t matter, / that they are everything” I suspect I’ll be writing a whole lot more for awhile to come.

To learn more about the poet Bill Rasmovicz or the fantastic cooperative press  it was published by, visit the following link. Enjoy!

Bill Rasmovicz, The World in Place of Itself, Alice James Books 

December, Dawn

December 28th, 2011 § 1 Comment

The old golden radiator sputters,
seethes and pops. It whinnies
like the engine of dad’s old Mustang
heating up during the deep freeze.
The furnace groans onward.
I sprawl naked against
the cold stillness atop
the disheveled bed
in the tick-tock silence
of deep December.
A rising, whistling scream
wails from downstairs.
I reach for the warmth of wool.
It’s the time to make coffee or tea,
I must have left the stove on.
I’m not going to turn it off.
Not yet.

#Facebook: Day 6, Physical Withdrawals

December 26th, 2011 § Leave a Comment

It would appear as though my blogging here on Wayfarer as of late has become a journal of my journey away from social networking. Facebook, in particular. You could call me a hypocrite because any internet use at all can link to networks of chatting, forums and blogs. But I’m okay with that. I’m not a purist about this. What I’m telling you is what I’m feeling now that I have little more to do on the web but look things up, read interesting articles, and write here.

So, the title of this post — physical withdrawals? Yes, it’s been six days now and as the days drift along I am beginning to feel physical withdrawals and ramifications because my life is not perpetually interconnected to Facebook.  Perhaps this sounds preposterous — after all, how could a website cause physical changes in the human body? I am no doctor but I can explain this with plenty of clarity.

When I climb in bed at night to rest I find that something has changed. I’m one of those deep sleepers that usually can sleep through an air raid or anything short of a fire alarm close to my head. I sleep long and I sleep deep. My dreams are luminous, vivid and often lucid — I have a great time exploring the surreal landscapes of my resting consciousness. It’s a rare occasion that I wake up even once in the night. Since changing my habits, though, my sleep has changed dramatically, too.

I’ll fall asleep at a regular time for myself and within a few hours I’m wide awake again. Something bumps me out of my dreams. I’ll look at the clock and only a few hours will have gone by. No, not hunger or the need to use the bathroom will have woken me up. Instead I lay in the darkness waiting to drift off again but never seem to find it. My mind is racing. I am a person that, when necessary, can harness incredible focus. When I go to sleep I never have an issue. It takes only a few minutes and I’m gone for the night. Now I am stuck awake, craving sleep, wanting nothing more than to be immersed in dreams once again. But it’s not there. Songs that I have listened to during the day play along in my head. Lines and nuances from television shows distract me to near madness. I want to scream, thrash, and fade into suffocating exhaustion. None of this comes to me.

In an attempt to fight off my mounting craze, I pick up a book of poetry and delve into the deep recesses of its beauty. Sublimity is with me once more. I shiver as I scan and softly speak each delicate line, one after the other, twisting into an immaculate form that surrounds me. My eyes grow heavy, so I put down the book and open myself to the dreaming world again. It fails to come.

This went on for hours last night and for no logical reason. I had been exhausted the entire day. In fact, I’ve been a little bit more than exhausted lately, napping or nearly passing out at inopportune moments. Eventually, desperately, sleep will take me when I need it most.

My struggle to focus and gather myself is troubling. Ever since I sent my Facebook account into oblivion there is a growing stress on my body. I should be sitting in my chair or on my bed, laptop at the ready, browsing through profiles and chatting away. But none of it’s there. Now even more timeless distractions batter me, like the television and its endless drone. I laze around lost, unsure of what to do next. Yet fear not, with sword in hand I will cut through the madness and find wholesomeness in my calm center. I have all the more encouragement to do so, now aware that dropping off the social network can physically bother my body.

On the flip side, I’m plowing through a marvelous book of poetry by Bill Rasmovicz, published by a fine little poetry press I have the honor to be acquainted with. As soon as I’m finished I’ll be posting a review of his work and soon after posting a new piece of my own!

#Facebook Interruptus: Withdrawals & Discoveries

December 24th, 2011 § 1 Comment

Facebook acted as the grand fakebookof my life. As if crowding my bookcases full of untouched volumes in order to make myself look like an intellectual on the surface, so have I spent limitless hours forging an identity that was not true to my own. An identity I proudly broadcast to the world in order to forward one agenda or another. I was proud of the self I saw when I looked over my profile and expanded upon my information. Whether I was conscious of doing this or not is irrelevant. That it happened and fooled others and myself into believing  I was somebody I wasn’t is the weight of this issue. I doubt I am the only one to experience this.

Presently I sit in a quiet room with nothing but this blinking cursor and the need to write to capture my attention. I’m wearing a cozy lambswool sweater, sitting with a mug of water, a phone that’s been silent for almost a week now and a warm halogen lamp beaming yellow light through the winter darkness. Soft voices echo up from downstairs and an old-fashioned alarm clock ticks away in the corner. This moment borders on lovely tranquility yet with this peace I feel a hint of unease. How could a scene so comfortable and still be unable to diffuse my restless mind?

I find myself restless and weary all-over. When I open my browser and look at my speed dial, I don’t see Facebook anymore. How I would race there to check things, to gaze at the endless streaming news feed with excitement, to recapture the enchantment even if for only a minute or two. There I could find live connections to all of my friends. I could see pictures of what they did over the weekend, or pictures of them taking pictures of themselves, and speak to them for hours to come.

ZuckerbergConf

Mark Zuckerburg, CEO and President of Facebook

More, I could send messages to everyone, I could check how everyone was doing, all at once, whenever the time! And to those people I scarcely knew but recognized by face, well, I could add them to my list as a sign of recognition, acceptance and practicality. Perhaps in the future I needed to contact them — or found myself falling for those lovely, mysterious women. If it was attraction I found or curiosity, with this mighty social tool I had unlimited time to review profiles, photo albums, messages, and so many chances to make moves and hope that an internet infatuation could turn into internet romance and romance in real life!

Ah, listen to me. I speak of the virtual realm with the sort of sentimentality that I might give to my loved ones. This Facebook-rooted sentimentality is fleeting, though. After getting rid of my account and purposefully locking myself out so that I can guarantee there is no way I will falter and go back into that way of living and communicating, life has been interrupted. I name this post after the long standing, risky method of birth control called coitus interruptus or, more colloquially, “pulling out“. This is because my attempt to free myself from Facebook has been a great struggle and on many occasions I found convincing evidence on both sides to be in conflict. I wanted to leave, but imagine what I’d be missing — it was just too enjoyable to keep calm, keep thoughtless and keep Facebooking! Yet another side of me yearned for the old days before Facebook was even out when I had no such community holding me back. In the end, I pulled out for my own mental safety and to experience a future filled with less clutter and more free time.

Such has been the result. Without the subconscious/unconscious reliance on a social networking site my days have become almost entirely free. It is difficult to make sense of this without experiencing it for yourself. It is not as if I inhabited Facebook like a second home; some days, yes, I was browsing for hours through my friend’s profiles and recreating my own, chatting along the whole time. The real issue, though, is that Facebook created something I am going to term the “concentration void“.  Whenever I was working on my computer Facebook was a constant companion that, even when closed, could manifest again at any moment. It’s instantaneousness is enchanting. Even if I only checked it for a minute or two (hell, even seconds) those short breaks added up. Eventually dozens of short Facebook breaks amount to hours and each little break causes a void in your concentration. Projects, papers, essays, creative bits of writing, art, everything — it all gets set aside to simmer and Facebook takes centerstage. It becomes drug-like and your dependency is no better. Even those most resistant to its allure often become pulled in at one point or another and stop thinking about how their mind has been lowered into treachery. Focus and concentration, even for the most astute of us, becomes a void of swirling distraction and nonsense.

Now I have nothing. I’ve picked up interest in this blog again, in furthering my musical capacities, and in honest, loving time spent with people forever important in my life. Oblivion has never felt so good.

p.s. If you’re interested in joining me and getting rid if your account once and for all, I wrote a comprehensive tutorial covering just about everything you’ll ever need to know. Safe voyages, traveler!

Bill McKibben Arrested

August 21st, 2011 § Leave a Comment

It is not in my style to link to other blogs nor cover any major news stories. I leave that for other forums and means of discussion. However, famous author and environmental activist Bill McKibben has been arrested for sit-in activity outside of the White House here in “good ‘ole states”. I find this utterly unacceptable. For protesting the construction of an international tar sand pipeline, McKibben and nearly 70 others have found themselves jailed. This must be brought to the attention of the public.

If unaware, McKibben is one of the spear-headers of the 350.org environmental movement that began two years ago. I participated in the first global 350.org day and ran a booth at a conservation fair. Not long afterwards, before a planned rally speech, I personally met Bill McKibben in a private dinner we had with two dozen or so people in my town. Bill is an inspirational and incredible man. I encourage everyone to not only read his literature, but to find out about 350.org as well as the growing issue with tar sands. For more information about his arrest, here is a link to a green blog:

http://www.greendump.net/tag/bill-mckibben-arrested

What is our country coming to? I’ll let you decide.

#Operation: Facebook

August 11th, 2011 § 1 Comment

So it’s about that time again. Like the bountiful harvest nearing its death, so is Facebook — in my life, at least. Like many times before I’m drifting away from that dreadful juggernaut of a website. Sucked in relentlessly I’ve had a difficult time escaping. This time, though, is a little bit different. Rather than deactivating my account — which, in effect, is pointless because you’re still saved on the server and one login from being back — I’m going to just leave it be. Well, I’m going to troll my account and THEN leave it be. We’ll see how it goes. The FB quick-link will be there on my bar and my speed-dial every morning when I first logon to the web. This is a true test in self-control.

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