Third Sunday Blog Carnival

http://thirdsundaybc.com/2012/12/16/vol-1-no-12

"He scared," *d*m's student said to her classmates, though she was clearly within earshot of him. And he was. He was scared that his words could never be sufficiently colorful. He was afraid that students who have calculated the world on their phones would have no use for a higher power. He was frightened that their voices would never stop cracking but instead fade into a chorus of spotty faces & screaming minds. It concerned him that he could not experience any of this for them, instead of them, or in spite of them. He was intimidated by the challenge of proving that there was something beyond the horizon.

Questioner: "Why do we laugh when somebody trips and falls?"

Krishnamurti: "It is a form of insensitivity, is it not? Also there is such a thing as sadism. Do you know what that word means? An author called Marquis de Sade once wrote a book about a man who enjoyed hurting people and seeing them suffer. From that comes the word 'sadism,' which means deriving pleasure from the suffering of others. For certain people there is a peculiar satisfaction in seeing others suffer. Watch yourself and see if you have this feeling. It may not be obvious, but if it is there you will find that it expresses itself in the impulse to laugh when somebody falls. You want those who are high to be pulled down; you criticize, gossip thoughtlessly about others, all of which is an expression of insensitivity, a form of wanting to hurt people. One may injure another deliberately, with vengeance, or one may do it unconsciously with a word, with a gesture, with a look; but in either case the urge is to hurt somebody, and there are very few who radically set aside this perverted form of pleasure."

How close can we get to intimacy w/o touching? Cruelty can be intimate. Learning what agitates another person- not just eating w/ your mouth open but saying words that someone will hear in their head incessantly or lose sleep over- can be very intimate. All of the various ways that we provoke one another- through internet postings, taking each other's parking spaces, or fighting for a place in line at the store- are suggestive of a need for intimacy that cannot be avoided. We try to escape one another but can't. We try to thwart & hinder & better one another but only find ourselves constantly looking over our shoulders. W/o the ability to reason, our procreative urge would just produce more & more humans w/o considering why we need one another. W/ it, we sublimate our need for intimacy into all sorts of absurd & inhumane ways of being around one another. Accomodating is an attempt at intimacy. Flirting. Telling someone what you think they want to hear. But to irritate someone, you would have to be familiar enough w/ them to know what buttons to push. Any attempt at shared experience is essentially an articulation of the procreative urge. Whether or not the urge is articulated accurately determines the distance b/w violence & appeasement. Having no interest in mathematics, I have never assigned a value of quantity to the pathology that I must have accrued from 12 yrs of working in retail. Constantly interacting w/ others- answering their questions, solving their problems, scratching their various itches in various ways- yet rarely sharing any words or thoughts of substance & essentially failing to forge a single meaningful connection w/ anyone cannot be healthy. People buy unnecessary things when they are lonely. I cannot embrace my customers or let them cry on my shoulder. & I certainly can't fuck them. I can only sell them stuff. Lew McCreary's Minus Man has similar issues w/ intimacy. He sees himself as "a comet that no one knows is falling." He defines himself only in terms of the effect he has on other people. "For the millionth time I recognize that I don't have an actual life of my own. I enter and leave the lives of others like a virus, coming to know these people in the strangest ways. Who are they?"
McCreary's tragic character only experiences intimacy when he enters the lives of the strangers whom he kills w/ a poisoned flask of liquor kept in the glove compartment of his truck. "The hitchhiker does what anyone would do- what others have already done. He drinks from the flask and slowly becomes the silent thing beside me. He joins my life. We ride down the road together." Had he simply given the man the ride, the hitchhiker would have served himself & then left the Minus Man. Instead, they are a part of the same trajectory. In what may be the most important passage in his book, McCreary attempts a sort of intimacy w/ the reader through his narrator: "Almost anyone can hurt anyone. They just have to know how to wait for the moment, how to be calm, what to use. Everyone's momentum can be trapped and used like electricity, and added to your own." What of this discussion of intimacy, which I may very well be having only w/ myself? Do we have to hurt one another to be close? Is there someone sitting or standing or hovering or lurking near you right now? What would happen if you touched him or her? Would it be inappropriate? Would lines be crossed? Would it get you laid? Slapped? We are creating a world of little or no intimacy whatsoever. I recently wrote a something or other set in the future, when everyone's cellphone services are cut off simultaneously, but it takes us a week to realize it. During that week, we talk to one another, thinking we are on our phones.

"I don't know if
this singularity thing
is gonna work"
I said earlier
to a coworker
comparing myself
to a rickety old machine
in need of duct tape
or maybe
a wad of chewing gum
& later a customer
calling his generation
the greatest
also called
another one
garbage
like duct tape
or maybe
a wad of chewing gum

He was thinking of Z
the kids who have become
singular
w/ their phones
& not X

The rickety
old machines
that got them there
w/ little more
than duct tape
or maybe
a wad of
chewing gum

Though I've accepted
that there is no
intimacy
in pretense

The chipping away
doesn't hurt
too much
as long as
you have
duct tape
or maybe a wad
of chewing gum

(& I won't tell
if it does.)

Failympics (or, Do Not Stare Directly At This Poem)

The people shopping
can't possibly afford
all that they gather

Someone
will have to
clean their mess

Did we get the gold?

Don't we always?

Tactile sensations
w/ no bearing
on the interactions
of atomic particles

Why do you look
when you know
I'm right
behind you?

Can never remember
the high school
History teacher
who confessed
putting sugar on
his Frosted Flakes

Not high enough
fructose corn syrup

Best college memory
big screen TVs
in the now gentrified
University Center
Jerry Springer Show
hootin
hollerin

I didn't put it on

Before that
you could smoke
inside

Still not the same

Is there
no help
for the
ill-fitted?

People put on
weight
when they
have no luck
being inconspicuous

(the unscratched
itch
that a three
legged dog's
twitching stump
can never
reach)

Just as silly
as it is
terrifying
like the slug
that I stepped & slipped on
at the old house
in Frayser
when I was
much smaller
than the darkness
of our backyard
where I had
left a toy

A few years ago
in Northern California
I got to see
a banana slug
which is
much larger
& neon yellow-green

I wondered
if it tasted
like bananas

Albinos
the original hipsters
perpetually wear white
after Labor Day

Failing to win.

viral

"The word is now a virus. The flu virus may once have been a healthy lung cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the lungs. The word may once have been a healthy neural cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the central nervous system. Modern man has lost the option of silence." -William Burroughs The Ticket That Exploded

this has probably been done before

"Hello. Yes. Who is this?" "Ma'am, I am standing right in front of you. I am not on your phone." "Hello?" The woman meandered past scores of hurried bodies and somehow made it across two lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic while remaining focused on something else entirely. If it wasn't for her complete lack of purpose, her aggressive walk could not have qualified as meandering. She took a seat at a nearby bus stop & again spoke into her cellphone, which had lost its charge nearly an hour ago. She never noticed *v* sitting on the bench behind her. "Can we talk?" "I think you have the wrong number." "Can we talk anyway?" "Sure." "You're the only one I feel any connection with. There has to be a reason we're talking." "I'm pretty sure you have the wrong number." "All these people- who do you suppose they're talking to?" "I have no idea." "It's like...you shut everyone out for that one person...then lose that connection eventually." The two went on like this for several more minutes before the woman meandered off, thinking she had another phone call. Her behavior was not entirely insane, all things considered. It had been one week since most Americans had lost their coverage, due to the economic difficulties brought on by the Crisis. People had continued to walk around w/ their phones pressed against their sore ears, typing out text messages w/ calloused fingers, oblivious to their lack of service. They mistook one's another's voices for the voices that should have been on the other end of their phones & everyone conversed entirely by accident.

just open it already

No need for prying eyes
or light
or awareness of time
on the inside
of a box
so a cat pokes
a curious nose
at what may be
its (or his or her)
last experience

I have my blue polo shirt
pulled over my head
& am on my hands & knees
w/ a gun to my temple
in the parking lot
of my apartments
begging to come home
after a long day

Science has shown
that while you remember
clearly
the day she
(or he or it)
left you
you may not remember
what color
shirt
you were wearing
so your mind
will put you
in a blue shirt
to complete
the picture

No need
for prying eyes
inside a box
where not even
the cat
gets to write
its (or his or her)
ending but
everything ends
just the same.

qualia

A**m is in his own backyard, standing on the shore with a tall glass of ice water in his hand, as though he has conquered the vast element that lies before him. His eyes record everything leading up to the line drawn long ago by the Universe. *d*m has a good enough knowledge of the landscape to feel confident in his mental image of everything beyond that line. What he doesn't imagine is **ev* standing on the opposite shore with an even taller glass of ice water, also reckoning everything before him & beyond.

my only election-related post

this