Bookish

Bookish

If a woman could write herself,

form herself of crafted words,

make of herself a golem

of grammar and syntax,

metaphor and metonymy;

if she could shape herself

into silent, still, soliloquy;

her cunning sharp and carved of consonance;

her curves soft, sculpted so from sibilance;

her emotions openly evoked in assonance,

if a woman could make herself

into such a thing,

oh, what a book you’d be.

And what a man could do with such a book,

her pages laid out before him.

He might take in her scent

or run a finger down her spine

treasuring the tingle of the title

beneath a cartographer’s wandering fingertips.

For certain he would read her,

once, twice, and then again

til she was as worn from care as he, yet free

from careless dog eared marks

or any annotations desperate to define her.

He’s the kind of man

who remembers where all his favorite parts are

but would read every page again

just to laugh once more at a piece of witty banter,

the same place he’s laughed at

a thousand times before.

If a woman could write herself,

form herself of crafted words,

if a woman could make herself

into such a thing,

oh, what a book you’d be.

The Meaning of Life

Time for another break from The West Wind. 25,768 words since 10/22/2012.

Albert Camus once said, “The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” I can only imagine that Sisyphus took things a step beyond happiness. Forced to roll his boulder up and watch it roll down, I find myself imagining him dubbing the boulder Wilson, (How many centuries he waited for the perfect name!), and making it not his burden, but his fast friend. Like a snowboarder who spends two hours hiking a snow covered peak for the thrill and freedom of a 15 minute ride back down, I picture this supposedly tragic character rolling his stone to its peak then turning and racing it down. Trying to climb on top and ride it to the bottom. What would the gods care, having judged him and left him to his doom? Indeed, would he be any less lost without Wilson than Tom Hanks was in Cast Away? Without his burden, no matter how absurd his struggle, without it he is not Sisyphus. Without Sisyphus, the boulder is inert, nothing worthy of a story. Without the boulder, Sisyphus would be just another cruel king forgotten on the tides of time.

Camus called life, “absurd.” I would argue that perhaps intrinsic is better diction. Life is it’s own meaning. We are defined by whatever Wilson our own has shaped for us, and our Wilson defines us. The logic is circular because most things in our lives are. Western minds have difficulty accepting this; they want stories to have a beginning and an end.

Science has shown us that the intrinsic values of our experiences are the only ones that lead to a sense of well-being and fulfillment. We must first come to terms and gain the means to deal with our burden. We first climb through Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs until we are satisfied that yes, we can roll the boulder up the hill. We claim food and shelter, then reach for the next level. Once there, it has been proven that human beings function and perform below par when their motivations are not intrinsic. In particular this refers to any form of creativity, which encompasses anything from coding an original iPad app to writing a symphony.

It is not so far-fetched then, that existence could be it’s own purpose. Life is not absurd because it lacks meaning. It’s intrinsic, because it is it’s own meaning. Where Western thought has difficulty with this is because it’s been educated to expect a great purpose for all things rather than taught to accept that all things have their purpose. Yet we reach more and more as a population for Eastern philosophies and practices. The popularity of yoga, the advent of Positive Psychology that so closely mirrors Eastern wisdom in its teachings, a generation of adults who are realizing that money never bought them happiness and a generation of young adults who don’t want to go into the corporate work force because they want their lives to have a greater purpose. As a civilization, many of us are seeking meaning, without realizing we already have it.

I propose that Camus was right. Sisyphus must be happy. Not because existence has no meaning, but because he found meaning in the simplest place he could: his own existence.

This is not the answer to the meaning of life. That’s 42. This is just a few thoughts on the subject. Don’t bother to ask what the question is. The Earth will be destroyed before we figure that out. Pack a towel.

A Brief Respite

I am writing to take a short break from writing. On Monday I decided to write a book that I don’t really care about in order to practice. Ironically, compared to the stories I have wanted to tell for years, this one is spilling out like water from a broken dam. If you have read much of my journaling, you might guess the story was a science fiction or fantasy novel. It is, in fact, more akin to a Nicholas Sparks novel than anything else. While my experience with Nicholas Sparks is limited to the very small amount of The Notebook that I managed to make it through before deciding the movie did a better job of telling the story and giving up, I did enjoy the movie, and one of his older films, A Walk to Remember, is one of my favorite romantic movies, hands down.

With the current popularity of trashy literature like Twilight and erotica such as 50 Shades of Grey, I feel like this venture could actually pay off when I manage, for the first time in my life, to finish a novel I start. I feel like there’s a good chance of this happening; I have written 13,399 words in the last three days and I will most likely continue working on it this evening.

As a teaser, let me share a tidbit or two with you. The working title, which will probably stick, is The West Wind. Early in the novel, the male protagonist’s father quotes Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind,” a Romantic poem about new beginnings. While the story is loosely based on another famous poem from a different era, The West Wind seemed appropriate. Xander and his father move to the fictional city of Vista Bay, California from Seattle, Washington after the death of Xander’s mother to a terminal illness. They buy a house on the National Register of Historic Places so they might restore it to its former glory.

The female protagonist is Hero, the only daughter of a rich family who lives on an island at the center of the bay. Hero and Xander meet at a local club that hosts swing dances once a week. Swing is -the- activity in Vista Bay, and Xander’s favorite hobby, thanks to his mother who practically raised him in the not at all fictional Century Ballroom in Seattle. They meet and dance. At the end of the dance, he dips her almost to the ground. They are about to kiss and, attempting to be a gentleman, Xander says, “No, I’m sorry, it’s too easy.” Hero understandably misconstrues this as an insult and slaps him. He’s so surprised that he drops her.

The story continues from there.

I find I’m looking forward to telling the whole story, (and discovering where it goes while the main plot develops). I tend to write in an extremely organic process. One might compare it to a coloring book, in which the main idea forms the borders of the picture and I freely fill in whatever colors I’m inspired to use as I go.

I probably should have started writing such romance novels years ago, since I’m rather obsessed with the subject. Ah well, there’s no time like the present.

I am Orsino, in love with the idea of love.  

Immortal, Ephemeral

I have wanted to be immortal most of my life. Stop for a moment and savor the irony in that statement. I don’t know where this fantasy began, whether it was Heinlein’s three thousand year old Lazarus Long, or Anne Rice’s vampire, Lestat. Maybe it was Rumiko Takahashi’s Mermaid Saga. Perhaps it began earlier than that, with the gods and demigods of a plethora of cultures whose tales I read as often as I could find a new book at the library. There are people who wish they could fly, people who wish they could turn invisible, there are those who wish they could read minds. I have always wished for immortality.

How curious then, that I am endlessly fascinated by the mortal, the ephemeral. I am eternally conscious of no matter what mark we make in the minds of men and on the land, in time it will fade. It will cease to exist. All evidence of that we ever crawled upon the face of the world will eventually be obliterated. Gaia herself is mortal.

The older I get, the less I care about the material; the less I appreciate gifts unless they facilitate my access to the things I do appreciate. A Kindle, for example, simply because I want the books I have purchased on it available everywhere. A library I can carry in my pocket. As much as I love books, I am not married to their physical form.

When people ask what I would like for a gift, I usually tell them to buy me wine. Unless I miraculously quit drinking, I will always need more. It is a great way to explore more vineyards as people purchase a wider variety than one might on one’s own. My sister’s gift to me last Christmas was one bottle of wine a month for a year. It continues to be the perfect gift.

The things I treasure: a full glass of wine in hand while I sit on the couch in front of a wood stove, fire raging against the iron of its cage, licking the transparency of the door; a Monday night rain storm pouring off the roof while I stand on the second story deck, the light from the house turning the streams of water into dancing beams of light; a good dance, a laugh and smile from my partner; that moment when she catches her breath, bites her lip as a thought crosses her mind and she is too caught up in the now of us to realize that she is as open a book as she will ever be. I love these things that do not last. I love the stories that have endings, and no matter how they are retold, are a little different every time.

I prefer the beauty of a rose to a diamond and the beauty of a woman to a rose. In the dark, a diamond is just another rock. In the dark, a rose is still soft, fragrant. In the dark, a woman is soft and hard, fragrant, alive with the in and out of her breath, palpable, yet beautiful to the senses. The joys of a woman are limitless, and still, each as ephemeral as the life of that rose, the ebb and flow of an ocean’s tide.

The world is full of things that come and go. Change is the only constant. The story begins, rises, climaxes, falls. We have our denouement and our epilogue. A new story begins. I am entranced by these tales, fascinated by my part in them, passionate about how each new narrative reshapes a piece of my own. Fact or fiction, rain storm or lover, new road or familiar path, I am constantly rewritten. I end and begin, day after day.
Today is a new beginning. Today is a reason for living.

Immortality seems to me an opportunity to live the ephemeral to its ultimate. To experience the constant change, the endless stories and combinations, forever. I would say yes, given the chance, knowing the world and its terrible, tragic nature, and its joy. Knowing how hard life sometimes, being diagnosed with chronic depression and having lived with it, knowing sometimes how much my mind tells me it would accept death readily (it took me years to not imagine my parents at my funeral), I would accept immortality. I would welcome the chance to learn everything about the world, to become the ultimate Renaissance Man. To learn every instrument, every language, read book after book after book. To watch, fascinated, as the world was born, lived, and died around me. To watch the rain fall, listen to it on the tin of the roof, share the fire and wine with a lover, to sail again and again into the sunset, forever.

It will, however, be rather inconvenient when the sun grows old, gets fat and consumes the planet if we don’t find a way to spread ourselves out among the stars.

-m0rg4n

Humanist? Feminist? Rambler.

A friend asked me recently if I considered myself a male feminist. That’s not a question I have really put any thought into. It seems to be a popular topic this last week. Patrick Rothfuss, author of The Name of the Wind, talked about being a feminist in his blog recently. I told my friend that I’d get back to her after I spent some time ruminating.

I tend to be blissfully ignorant as to how others define most labels. I have a very general idea of what constitutes a liberal, a better idea of what constitutes a conservative, barely understand the differences between Democrat and Republican beyond what I see of their actions and decide for myself. This is my general modus operandi. Think for myself. A part of that "ignorance" is a conscious decision. Labels are fluid things, words that shift meaning with time. A decade ago, Republican didn’t mean conservative Christian intolerant assholes deluded by their representatives into thinking it’s still a party for the people by labeling progressive movements scary things like, “socialist” which does not equal “communist” and so on. At least, my understanding of it was different. It’s only since Bush that I’ve concluded that they’ve come down with some sociological form of rabies.

I digress. Am I a feminist? I was raised by one, but that feminist is also Catholic and I am clearly not one of those. I am not certain of my feministry. I admire, appreciate, and prefer strong, independent intelligent women. I dislike patriarchal societies that treat women as baby factories. It was, in fact, my strongest source of distaste for Japanese culture. My manager quit her job as soon as she got married to become a housewife. My friend with dreams of cutting hair in Hawaii wouldn’t chase her dream because her family was putting so much pressure on her to marry. It is a cultural phenomenon, not simply two cases.

I don’t know if my dislike for that kind of treatment makes me a feminist. I am a humanist and no one should be pressured like that: man, woman, child, adult. As a society, we should all be encouraging each other to follow our dreams and make the most of our lives.

Feminism works toward equal treatment for men and women in the workplace, pay grades, socially, etc. I don’t particularly see any reason why a man should earn more than a woman, unless he performs better. That performance should be based on the numbers, however, not pre-conceived notions of what that performance might be.

Is equality enough? One of my favorite quotes is from Robert A. Heinlein’s Notebooks of Lazarus Long: “Whenever women have insisted on absolute equality with men, they have invariably wound up with the dirty end of the stick. What they are and what they can do makes them superior to men, and their proper tactic is to demand special privileges, all the traffic will bear. They should never settle merely for equality. For women, ‘equality’ is a disaster.” I tend to see the world through Long-colored glasses. Women and children first. Even biologically, it makes sense to protect the young and child-bearer’s of a civilization; it only takes one man to recreate the race. I wouldn’t envy the poor fellow the effort, though.

I have my chauvinistic moments, when I roll my eyes and say to myself, “Women.” When this occurs, it is generally in the presence of other men. Which is somewhat subversive, because I tend to appreciate my gender on an individual level. “Men,” irritate me and I usually avoid their company. One might extend that to people in general, however. I enjoy individuals on an individual basis. There are a lot of reasons for stereotypes out there, however, and I have difficulty connecting with them.

Since in a good argument we must weigh both sides, I’m going to explore my male chauvinist side a little deeper. It has been my experience that women are more likely to listen to what they think I am saying without listening to what I am actually saying than men are. That isn’t a particularly good measurement, however, since I don’t make an effort to spend as much time around men. But I think my male friends are just more likely to not listen at all.

In the spirit of the exploration, a moment of vulnerability: I often find men intimidating, particularly when I don’t know them. I rarely find women intimidating. I do not fear women. I am uncertain how that applies to the discussion at hand.

I suppose I must ask myself if I think that men are better than women. I do not. I think we could argue that my problem is generally that I think I am better than many other people, of either gender. You may call it arrogance, if you so desire.

In my own self-diagnosis, I am not a male chauvinist. I separate myself from those I don’t respect equally. This allows us to revisit the topic at hand.

Am I a male feminist? I support the rights of women to have sex with whomever they choose, whenever they choose. I think she should be able to access birth control without difficulty, and have an abortion. If it is my child, I hope she will consider discussing the decision with me first, however. I would volunteer to be a single father. That has less to do with the abortion argument and more with personal life goals, however. Sorry, got distracted.

A woman should have all the rights and privileges as men. There are undeniable differences however and I don’t agree that they should be ignored. The major feminist example in my life still believes in gender roles. My mother cooked and cleaned most of my childhood (with help), but refuses to do anything with machines. Checking the oil and getting it changed is my dad’s job. I am uncertain, however, that if she were mechanically inclined and my dad a gourmand that things wouldn’t have been organized the other way. Impossible to tell.

I know that in my own experience, I would like to try being a “househusband,” if the opportunity is provided. Depending on the circumstances, I want to home school my future children, though were the future mother of my children a teacher and wished to do so herself, I certainly think the topic open for discussion. I would welcome the opportunity of house husbandry to provide time for writing, raising puppies and children and educating them to be the kind of people I wish their were more of in the world. Would I be satisfied in that role? I don’t know. But I would give it a shot. I am not a career-oriented person. As long as my future significant other knows how to balance work and play, I have no problem with her being the professional, bread earning one.

I don’t know that I have come any closer to an answer. I don’t really think I am a feminist, per se. I am just a humanist. Man, woman, everyone deserves equal opportunity and humane treatment. (Not all men were created equal, except in terms of human rights. It’s an unrealistic statement.) I keep coming back to the quote from the movie, 100 Girls, when at the end of his feminism course, the protagonist says, “There are just too many ‘-ists’ in the world. Feminists, chauvinists, capitalists, communists, racists, sexists… These are all groups that fight one another instead of trying to understand one another. I think the only “-ists” there should be are humanists.”

So, my dear Robin Goodfellow, you tell me. In your words, am I a male feminist?

And a thousand words, goodnight.

-m0rg4n

Jekyll and Hyde

That I am I.

That my soul is a dark forest.

That my known self will never be

more than a little clearing in this forest.

That gods, strange gods, will come forth

into the clearing of my known self, and then go back.

That I must have the courage to let them come and go.

- D.H. Lawrence

I have this quote practically memorized. My memory isn’t quite verbatim, but close. I discovered it when reading an excerpt from Lawrence’s essay criticizing Ben Franklin’s list of virtues that was taped to the walls of the narrow halls in the College of English at my university.

It comes to my mind, often, because it reeks of truth to me. It is true in the way of a Zen koan, an anecdote used to stir the mind into enlightenment. When you understand the meaning, things just click inside you.

After my yoga class yesterday I told my teacher that I don’t understand why my muscles and the rest of my body are so tight when I am almost always relaxing. Masseuses across the years have regularly told me I am too young to be so tense. They said it five years ago and they would say it now. Little has changed.

Saying it aloud made the issue more real and sparked further introspection. I don’t have an answer. I am still searching for one, but I have started to collect an idea here and there. I think part of the answer lies with those strange from the dark forest; I don’t know if I have the courage to let them come and go.

I wrote recently about the poet I keep chained up inside. I don’t think he is alone. There is a monster in the depths with him, a monster I have fought and killed a buried and given new life only to fight again. There is an anger within me that I haven’t voiced, a violence I don’t respect and haven’t accepted. The poet always knew the beast better than I, for the poet often wandered through the dappled shadows cast by the canopy of my soul.

I don’t know this beast and I think I fear him. He is not simply trained, or leashed, but a feral creature caged. He has been slapped, punished, beaten. He has been hidden because I became overly sensitive about what people might think of me as I aged. I locked him away with the poet so that no one would have to taste my darkness.

Without the dark god’s voice lending its rough crystal honey to my own, am I a whole man? Without his animal desires, am I body and mind? Have I striven so hard to be the opposite of the creature that my yin yang is nigh white washed? Am I so far from symbol I value so highly? I am no saint. Am I guilty of trying to be one? I only wish to be a man who stands for what he believes in.

What is this burden I carry in my flesh? Is it the arrogant child who learned early that apathy was safer than caring? The middle school student in velvet pants, long hair, and a beret with milk dripping from his hair, standing straight against the words gay, homo, freak with the entire 8^th grade class as an audience? Is it the lazy, unchallenged teen who drew lines of blood so deep in his shoulder that the scars remain almost 15 years later? I once spent hours in my youth pretending I was myself, sans limits. Who did I become when I was actually trying to be myself under the restraints of life? Not that creature I once imagined I was. Not that potential.

I feel like Promotheus, had he been chained to the stone before he could give fire to the world. I writhe against the face of the rock at the injustice. I feel the weight of it beneath my skin and I cannot name it. My shoulders tense at the thought and the ache and tautness lives like a thing in my brain. Some kind of knot that loops and tangles and constricts slowly around the gravity of what I bear until its load is hidden from sight.

I am ready to name it, to let go, to be as relaxed as I imagine myself being. I think perhaps, to do so, I must be prepared for the gods to come and go from the forest. I must greet them by name, ply them with wine and song, and send them home again content in their doing and being.

I must have the courage to let them come and go.

But I am tentative. 

Holiday Lost (Sorry, Milton)

Now that I have finally caught up on my Open Diary reading, (would you say I ODed? -mischievous grin-), it is time to catch up a little on entry writing. I have been a terrible person. I haven’t written at all in the last ten days, with the exception of three and a half hand written pages of a letter to a friend in the UK, which my puppy promptly decided to eat. -sigh- I am not overly eager to re-write my friend, but I suppose I must, since it is my turn in our epistolary venture.

As my friend would say, I just got back from a work holiday. Or, in my fair country’s vernacular, a vacation. I spent 10 days away from the stagnant pool of proofreading and I enjoyed every minute of it, even the moments in which I found myself in the dentist’s chair twice in two days and on a two-hour trip to spend maybe twenty minutes signing paperwork for the financing of my new Ford Escape. The same vehicle that decided to blow a hole in its EGR valve on Sunday, a quarter of the way to the dance I had intended to attend on Sunday night. I did not make it, obviously. Fortunately it is a relatively minor problem. The vehicle is still drivable; it simply runs poorly, like a martial artist with a crushed larynx and a tracheotomy.

On the last two Saturdays I took Mira down to the local Farmer’s Market for socialization and training. Mostly socialization, of which she received a ton, since she is a puppy. People of both genders and all ages are drawn to puppies like moths to flame, albeit with more pleasant results. We enjoyed the sun, the attention, and the company. I have to admit, I secretly enjoy kneeing people in their assumptions. I realize she is very similar in appearance to a black Labrador, but better to ask if your guess is the right one than to barge on down that road without looking. I think that is just a general rule of thumb, whether we are discussing my dog or anything else. If you do want to go that ass out of u and me route, please do though, I repeat, because it is just fun to say, I secretly enjoy kneeing people in their assumptions.

My vacation was exactly what I needed. On my second day back at work, I can tell you I need more of it. I spent a lot of time relaxing and just as much being active. I finally had the chance to do some things I have been wanting to do all summer, which was great. On Wednesday my friends Ben, Dan, and I hiked up Grouse Creek Falls for about an hour and a half before turning back around. Don’t let the word “hike” give you any illusions, we literally climbed up the waterfalls, up rocks and across pools, finding purchase in a deep pocket in the stone in the middle of the flow and pulling ourselves over to the other side. The bed of the creek is all loose river rocks and mountainside and we went up the creek itself, letting the waterway be our path. Ben and I did this barefoot. It was rather rough, but a lot of fun. This is my third time climbing up the falls, though I had never hiked up so far after getting above the falls. It was, as Dan called it a few times, a bona fide adventure, but hardly as epic as it might sound. The waterfall is a series of short falls, cold, deep pools and easily climbed rock faces.

Ben stayed over and had dinner with my dad and I. The next day we loaded my parent’s sea kayak on top of my Escape and drove it downtown, to a boat launch at a place called Sand Creek. The creek is more of an estuary for the lake and we paddled up it until we came to the actual creek, which is too shallow for a boat of any kind. Round trip, it was also 3 1/2 hours. I drive by the creek regularly as I go in and out of town. It is different now. I know it, I have trailed my fingers across her surface, dipped into her and explored her curves. A river looks different, when you have traveled it. There is an intimacy you never expected. She is no longer some stranger you pass along the way, but someone you meet eyes with, a sparkle hidden in them as if you share a secret, a knowing that no one else will ever understand. No other lover will know her the way you did, whether she has one or a thousand. That time, that intimacy is yours, your conversation, your discourse.

(On a side note, I feel similarly about dancing. In three minutes with our clothes on, I have known strangers better than many of their lovers ever will. When you move someone, move with someone, you transcend the adolescent pawing so many call sex these days and rise toward that oneness we all imagine comes along with physical joining. At the end of that three minutes, in my arrogance I have often returned my partner to her so-called lover and thought to him, “You’re welcome.”)

On Friday, Ben and I went fourwheeling. We took the ATVs, quads, fourwheelers, or whatever you would like to call them up and down a series of trails and logging roads up behind the land my parent’s and I live on. After an hour or so we left one of the vehicles in some brush overlooking what my dad calls “The Cataclysmic Event,” where a cliff of pure clay fell into the river years ago, leaving behind a steep slope down to a flat semi-moonscape. Riding together, we took the other ATV back to my house, where we parked it and hiked up the river that runs past our property until we finally came to the Event again, picked up the other ATV and rode home one last time.

Those were the major activities of my time off. I filled the other hours with Civilization V, a few movies, rereading a couple of the Percy Jackson novels, running a D&D campaign based on a book that I may someday get back to writing, taking walks with the dogs, and all the other bits and pieces that make up a life. I went no where, which was a joy after the last serious vacation I took.

Have I ever told you about the world I live in now? I think not. Tomorrow, then.

And a thousand words, goodnight.

-m0rg4n