hold your tongue

You might have ten thousand clever responses. 
It is heartbreaking when you realize that
keeping your mouth shut is the best of them.

I am an artist.

I used to say it with pride.  Maybe too much pride.  But, whatever.  I now say it as a statement of fact: I am an artist.  It is something that I have learned about myself over the years.  

Whether you know it or not, I am an artist. Whether anyone in the world pays me for my art or not, I am an artist.  Whether I am or am not introduced as a poet who writes music and plays a little guitar and even has a few paintings and drawings, I am an artist.  I am that poet.  Heck, in my mind, I am also that poem, that song, those paintings and drawings.  I am those things, too.

Whether I tell you or not; whether you see it in my eyes or can tell after a little while or not; whether you believe it, acknowledge me as such or not, guess what?

That's totally cool.  It's not on you to tell me who or what I am, or to care.  But, I'm just saying, because it finally sunk in and feels kind of good: I'm an artist.

I'm an artist, I'm an artist.  

It's fucking beautiful, I'm gonna go write a song about it.

meu lar no futuro

Eu, no meio de um campo
numa casa rodeada por
coisas verdes, montanhas

um forno à lenha
café e pão integral que compro
da avó do Zé
porque o dela é o melhor
que eu já experimentei na minha vida.

Tudo tem que ficar
no alcance da internet
ou, seja o que for quando chegar
neste futuro.

As vezes, vinho,
visitantes, amantes
deitados na escuridão
especulando sobre a possibilidade
de vida lá no além,
nosso lugar no universo,
perguntas sem respostas
uma desculpa para conversar até o sol nascer.

O vácuo meu teto
brilhando com dúvidas
e propósitos
todos dos quais morrerão

está tudo bem
pois, é meu lar,
meu próprio lar.

It Has Been Raining for Days

Headrocked.
Spirit stoned off the gray sky
rain rain rain.

I don't want to take that next step
toward the solution
to my laziness today.

I will stare out the window
and imagine I am a monk....

But the shit that needs to be done
is like the gnat that needs to be killed
in order for you to be able to sleep fearlessly
and not wake up with an itchy hand
cheek or eyebrow.

Vacation isn't a vacation when you have to organize
organize organize everything.
When long plane rides are involved.
Layovers. Adjusting to different time zones.

My body is a shell
and somewhere in there is
atman, I, One
the place from which each of my fibers
emanate
the place from which divisions
and groups divide and group
and things become things
until the entire cycle
envelops the imagination,
surpasses the mind that intuits it
and becomes entirely unintelligible
but somehow knowable
at the same time.

Get back to work.

10.6.2011

Writing, at this moment, is a meditation.  It has no rules regarding clarity, form, or the structure I've learned (and, God willing, teach, one day).  Structure is not bad, but it contributes to a specific type of purpose, which is, in part, clarity, which, as I've already mentioned, is not a goal presently.  The goal is relaxation, release, the large balloon floating toward a vista I cannot see but can believe I imagine, there is where whatever is there will be as sheets, full, feathered, soft, and perfect, will cover me. 

My power is not what is written or how, but what is infused in each word and what is between each word.  The words are places for sounds to fill absence and make space seem knowable.  It is not.  It is imaginable.  It is describable, to a degree, to a limited and wonderfully reflective degree, where honesty is.

Silence is an art woven here.  Syllables are a craft, the stones, the filling of space for form and purpose.  They are left and remain, outliving the hearts, hands and lone spread-wide toes, bare because it was so long ago that we began to walk on our own land.

I am not smart.  Not as smart as I sometimes think.  But belief, there is something to it.  It shan't be abused nor carted about in excess so long as you follow rules.  Rules are secondary.  They have not crafted, they are crafted.

They shape not man as in his form to the eye but the proportions desirable, which change.

They shape man in the same way that words shape the silence in the mind of a reader, laying tracks for the thinker to get from one thought to another where, perhaps, she has not yet visited despite being there, well within the reach of her understanding.  Not that it is useful to know anything that cannot be used in the future, but to walk around, to wander, even without a destination in mind is said to do wonders for, if nothing else, one's health.

Outer Limit

Come find me
on the other side of your stars
where your equations don't work
and nothing makes sense
at all

I'll be there to catch you
so you don't fall

so you don't quit walking
the path you were meant to walk.

Philosophy and Fiction

Philosophizing leads to conclusions, and if the philosophizing is done well, the conclusions approximate Truth to the degree that they are, at least, reasonable, believable. The philosopher, however, must and will learn to see his creations for what they are: approximations, models of Truth or truths, humbly accept that they are neither, in essence. In essence, his models are an adoration, whereas the essence of Truth is, to say the least, the object of his adoration.

His completed philosophy is a city of concepts and ideas, organized well enough to visit with the intellect; general enough, in an intangible aspect, to resemble the known world, as if a child of it. The philosophy will necessarily amount to portraiture; one man's rendition of The World, accenting certain features here, diminishing or ignoring other features elsewhere. Because the philosophy is ultimately a comment on The World, it will be imperfect, incomplete, precisely because commentary seeks to add to the reality being commented on, which implies that the commenter considers the reality in question incomplete, in one way or another. This, of course, is an incredibly general statement, for "incomplete" connotes, to some minds, a negative. Without digressing into that topic too thoroughly, I'll simply ask that the reader not limit his interpretation of "incomplete" to its connotations, and consider the word more creatively, so as to include all that "incomplete" can imply.

Philosophy as Commentary:
The philosopher is motivated by something, so he contemplates and so he writes. I would not say that there is one something that is the source of his motivation. Perhaps that something, be it unique to each philosopher or the very same to all of us, has certain common features. I would guess it must. Among the commonalities is the act of documentation which produces essays, articles, books and journal entries. All of this, whether shared or not, is a contribution to the body of literature that is philosophy. What is written, though diverse in topic and more, necessarily adds to what has already been written. And despite variety of topic, all that is written is, ultimately, a product of the way the author regards reality, life, existence, and their parts.

To write of this topic (I lump them all together as they are used interchagably) requires selection, discrimination. Philosophy itself is a most encompassing subject. No wonder that it has, over time, become attached to specific subjects of inquiry and turned into another study, entirely distinguished from philosophy.

I return to the since abandoned subjects of philosophy because I see where our course of inquiry has arrived. I see what was ignored and, in some cases, doubt our reasons for doing so. Despite the existential discomfort during some occasions of inquiry, I believe this not only worthwhile, but my best.

Philosophy as commentary assumes that reflections of a certain sort are philosophical in nature. That is, they regard the topics listed above. A lot of philosophical commentary occurs in conversation, colloquially, as well as in art. As such, relatively little is documented and that which is documented is often general as a catch phrase. Thorough passages through intellect are, to me, rare. Or more precisely, rarely documented. If and when they are, it seems they are always contextualized as fiction; or, controversially precise, commodified as fiction.

Monday, October 31st 2011