Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Straight shot
Sometimes, in the course of working on something totally unrelated, you come across a poem that just hits you right in the gut, and that's that. Sometimes, as I slog through 300-350 poems (never mind prose), I feel like I might be getting jaded, and far too early. Then, you're working on an interview, and someone drops a name, and in the course of routine research, you look it up, and come across something that just sticks there. And resonates.
Such was the case, this Sunday, when I came across the famed "Bubble Lady" of Berkeley, Julia Vinograd's offering, Ginsberg.
And you remember what the hell you're doing all this for.
I have a barroom analogy for lit: prose is the beer. When you want to get serious, you ask for the stuff behind the bar. That's poetry. This one delivered a gut punch like I haven't received in a loooong time. Good on ya, Julia.
Such was the case, this Sunday, when I came across the famed "Bubble Lady" of Berkeley, Julia Vinograd's offering, Ginsberg.
And you remember what the hell you're doing all this for.
I have a barroom analogy for lit: prose is the beer. When you want to get serious, you ask for the stuff behind the bar. That's poetry. This one delivered a gut punch like I haven't received in a loooong time. Good on ya, Julia.
Friday, April 07, 2006
There is a word for this kind of activity...
and it starts with "t" and rhymes with "reason."
We have been played. Okay, truth be told, not all of us were played. But let's just assume that for the past few elections, the majority of Americans have voted with their eyes open, and their votes have been counted. It's my opinion that, as a people, we should have seen through this story well before November 2004, but hey, let's just assume that's some rabid lefty loonie talking, and that the evidence was not there at that point. I want to know, how much more will it take before more people come to the conclusion that this information is a little more important than cranking up the old TiVo?
Coming home, and soon. I don't intend on being quiet. I don't think my conscience would allow me to be. It's time--well past time--our nation woke up.
Damn it. This news story is going to do me no damn good at this point in my journey. I've felt like I've been riding the storm out for damn near a decade. I want to believe--I do believe--that humans are better than this, just because the alternative is disheartening to a point I don't think I can come back from.
For the past 8 months, more than ever, I have found myself battling with the very notion of hope: I feel like I should be its unreserved advocate, and I try to be. But human events make that very hard to maintain, and I sometimes wonder if I wouldn't be better served if I could just give it up, and accept the notion that justice is a fool's dream that leads the more humane members of our species to a certain and ignoble doom. It doesn't sell, because it isn't about selling. It isn't 'practical' because ideals are never practical--they are to be striven for, even in the near certain knowledge that they cannot be defined and will not be reached. All the practical progress in the world is rendered meaningless without such an aim. It isn't about whether the ideal is real or not: it's about our accepting our capacity to both conceive of and realize it. But when our ideals reach no further into humanity than our own selfish comforts, we are left with an ideal that is not worth having.
Are we willing to accept this as our legacy?
Are we capable of nothing better?
And this story...this story is nothing. And we know it. We only pretend otherwise.
We have been played. Okay, truth be told, not all of us were played. But let's just assume that for the past few elections, the majority of Americans have voted with their eyes open, and their votes have been counted. It's my opinion that, as a people, we should have seen through this story well before November 2004, but hey, let's just assume that's some rabid lefty loonie talking, and that the evidence was not there at that point. I want to know, how much more will it take before more people come to the conclusion that this information is a little more important than cranking up the old TiVo?
Coming home, and soon. I don't intend on being quiet. I don't think my conscience would allow me to be. It's time--well past time--our nation woke up.
Damn it. This news story is going to do me no damn good at this point in my journey. I've felt like I've been riding the storm out for damn near a decade. I want to believe--I do believe--that humans are better than this, just because the alternative is disheartening to a point I don't think I can come back from.
For the past 8 months, more than ever, I have found myself battling with the very notion of hope: I feel like I should be its unreserved advocate, and I try to be. But human events make that very hard to maintain, and I sometimes wonder if I wouldn't be better served if I could just give it up, and accept the notion that justice is a fool's dream that leads the more humane members of our species to a certain and ignoble doom. It doesn't sell, because it isn't about selling. It isn't 'practical' because ideals are never practical--they are to be striven for, even in the near certain knowledge that they cannot be defined and will not be reached. All the practical progress in the world is rendered meaningless without such an aim. It isn't about whether the ideal is real or not: it's about our accepting our capacity to both conceive of and realize it. But when our ideals reach no further into humanity than our own selfish comforts, we are left with an ideal that is not worth having.
Are we willing to accept this as our legacy?
Are we capable of nothing better?
And this story...this story is nothing. And we know it. We only pretend otherwise.
