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muse_seeker
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Name: benjamin
Location: United States
Gender: Male
Interests: theatre, mainly playwriting, acting and directing, beauty, brokenness, relationship, story, writing, reading, music, poetry, coffee shops, coffee, conversation, good wine, good beer, good food, mixing drinks, language and linguistics, depth, humor, humanities, randomness, allusions, spontaneity, personality, originality, joie de vivre, dry humor, British comedy, Oxford, London, England, most things British, traveling, cooking, learning, social awareness, social justice, feminism, nonconformity, questions, making others think and question, challenging the occasional social norm, playing devil's advocate, cuddling, culture, class, integrity, honesty, forthrightness, wisdom, maturity, and people, especially those who exhibit the above characteristics and interests
Expertise: I'm a veritable treasure trove of random information. Other than that, I guess theatre, literature, movies, and mixing drinks.
Occupation: Bartender
Industry: Food Service
Message: message me
Member Since:
4/19/2004
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| Well, it's official. I have accepted admission to the University of Chicago's Master of the Arts Program in the Humanities. That is where I will be this fall, pretty much as soon as I can head down there. I can't wait.
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| It's snowing yet again in Holland, another fluffy downpour to chill and inconvenience us, yet somehow I can't entirely bring myself to hold it against the weather. I suppose it is what it does.
I don't know. Today didn't start as a pantheon of melancholy and nostalgia, but circumstance seems to push me in that direction. A song on the radio, another song lyric quoted, messages from old friends, old stories, old poems, things going on in old homes (Yes, I mean you Northwestern, with your Terror Texts and all) even an old computer used what seems like ages ago, another lifetime. And the snow keeps falling and keeps on piling up.
I'm still waiting to hear back from grad schools. I should get responses from the first batch at the end of this month and the beginning of next month, then I'll decide what I want to do and where, if anywhere, else I want to apply.
I'm still thinking about/trying/taking some small steps towards mounting Beautiful Broken, though as often as not I feel farther from that goal than before. Part of that is another theatrical possibility, distant, but plausible.
I'm still not really writing, which is still sad. Part of that, though by no means all, is that my computer is being a royal piece of shit. No inanimate object can so inspire tears as a computer on the fritz. It's incredibly frustrating, and a new machine I can't afford is likely to be the outcome. Which is bittersweet. I love new computers, but I really shouldn't spend the money, yet I really do need one, for grad school work, communication, and if I ever hope to get back on that writing horse again. I find a certain pleasure in forced but beneficial inconveniences. Like when your car dies and you have to get it fixed. It's a nuisance and you wish you didn't have to do it, but at the same time now you might as well overhaul the transmission, rotate the tires, and get the oil changed, which you've been meaning to do for months and which it really needed. You wish you didn't have to do it, but you take some delight in how well it drives when you get it back. I don't know, maybe that's just me. So no, still not really writing, not since my statements of purpose for grad school, anyway. I actually liked and felt pretty good about those, and not only because they're the only pieces of writing I've really worked on and honed and been proud of in quite a while. They remind me, at least, of what good writing can be, of what makes something good and somethings in need of further polishing. And they do kindle some desire to continue writing, though not always enough to actually do so.
I am working my through Anna Karenina, the epic and beautiful 800 page novel. Slow but sure, I'm getting through, and enjoying it a lot, far more than I had thought I would. It's less a chore than I might have expected, given it's length and other discriminatory predispositions that sometimes shroud ideas about the classics. And I have been managing to make good headway on my watching of classic movies from the AFI's lists and others. Thanks to wonderful bonuses on DVD's, I am learning even more about these seminal films as well, and trying to approach it almost as a course of study, since I am hoping to do some work in film studies in grad school if possible.
These things, and work, and Grace, and other relationships, make up most of my day to day. Life is going on. And the snow is continuing to fall.
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The city thrives on false pretenses
manic faces going places, stylizing their defenses
time wasting, foul tasting, traffic marches on
everyone going and nobody owning
what their dreams are built upon.
Integrity is an after hours virtue, best
expressed in darkened places, shadows
waltzing on its faces.
Sometimes it hides
behind a couple beers, but it can’t help
but peek out eventually.
That’s the thing, it can’t
stay hidden even if it wants, it is too much
a force, doesn’t do well keeping silent, even if
it never shouts.
Its voice is a thin, persistent whisper
when the lights go out, third cousin to Jiminy Cricket,
the only judge and witness in those dim hours
beneath the sheets.
I have decided, finally, my apathy requires
a rationalization.
My lethargy is lacking a purpose,
and simply meanders meaninglessly. Contrary
as it may seem to some, laziness needs
needs a raison d’etre.
Idleness is boring me, and
indolence seems pointless. Sluggishness brings not
the joy is used to, and slothfulness has lost its fun.
Unless I find an outlet for my boredom, I feel my
malaise will soon turn sour.
The flowers of impending doom
Are sitting in my living room.
Eventually, and maybe soon
These same will decorate my tomb.
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| Okay, so I haven't been the most regular at posting my poems. It was a pretty crazy week, lots of travel and other stuff going on, and I haven't always had access to the internet, or even convenient computer time. I've been trying, though, trying to keep up and doing a pretty good job. I think I've only missed one day, although I actually wrote a little something on that day, i just don't really think it's enough to count. I'm going to make up for it before all is said and done.
The inevitable result (inevitable for me, anyway, at this point and this out of practice and with other stuff to do and, I'll admit it, lazy), is that most of what I've written so far has been pretty crappy. There are a couple nuggets of good or worthwhile things in several of them, but as for a poem as a whole that I am pretty proud of, I don't know. But that's the way it is right now, I've got to start up again somewhere, and when I'm forcing myself to do this, and even that not always wholeheartedly, I'm bound to push the bounds of mediocrity.
That's the downside. The upside is I'm starting to remember, starting to remember what it feels like to write, even to write something good, to be inspired, more, to recognize inspiration and go with it. I've written down a lot of lines and random images, more in the last few days than in the last few months. I'm relishing my fingers on the keys of my computer once more, enjoying the rhythm and product of their efforts. I think part of the reason I've had some really short and forced and lazy poems is that I haven't had or made computer time, and the handwriting is a bit more tedious, especially just before bed, which is the position in which I've found myself on a few occasions in the last week.
Anyway, that's a brief update here at 10 days in. Look, this is even making me write more non-poetry. Onward and upward!
Oh, PS. My friend Ryan Pendell is also writing a poem a day for December, and his are way, way better than mine. He's kind of a genius. If you want to see how someone with more discipline and focus and talent does it, go to
http://decpoems07.blogspot.com/
His other blog(s) are great too. Seriously, he's brilliant. Read whatever you may find of his.
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December jazz is sweetest, though maybe
not for reasons you’d expect. Smoky clubs
with seedy, tattooed waitresses and back-alley
tunes don’t go by seasons. In jazz it’s always
autumn, cool breezes and a constant
rustling that surrounds you, sweeps you up,
caresses you, takes you in, then exhales you
softly, like a
lover’s kiss, back into the abyss.
December
jazz is jazz that covers all the chaos, melting the white
reveries in its smoky embrace, the abyss shrinking at
its tender touch until, at last, the softness of the snow
no longer seems as cold.
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