The Theme This Week: Relationships

I have had time to write exactly two poems this semester (last few months). They are as follows:

Missing

Do you want to know what it is like without you here?

It is busy

and black

like Wall Street.

Now there is a void at my side where you used to be,

into which slides all of my understanding

and my longing;

all of my referential humor

and laughter

until I am sliding from a crescendo

into an awkward half-chuckle

off-set by a mumbled guessyouhadtobethere.

I see sexual relations everywhere.

In the room next door.

In the car pool lane.

In spring coming early and couples popping out along the streets.

Especially in the wild, foggy night

driving down Mockingbird,

listening to Joni Mitchell and missing you.

In my dreams,

and yours.

On the refrigerator, even.

And still,

my dear,

I wait for you.

What choice do I have but wait?

Crippled and strange as I am here, now,

with some important piece of me missing:

an arm or a leg,

my heart, maybe.

Missing.

(Conversely...)

I Have Become Frustrated With Our Relationship Again, Dear

My God, America,

you are so beautiful in the night-

all your ridges and curves spread out

before me on the open road,

all bathed in moonlight and my own yearnings.

You have nothing but smiles for me, then.

Smiles and promise

and a thousand tiny triumphs that make me feel

so god-damned human again.

Until it is morning and I am sipping my coffee

in front of CNN and you are yelling at me again.

You want to talk to me about my choices, about my decisions.

You wish I cared more about what you have to say

and why have I been questioning you so much lately, anyway?

Don’t I trust you anymore?

You wish I would lighten my hair and you hint that

I could stand to lose a couple of more pounds

And what, exactly, am I doing with my next paycheck?

But I just smile and sip my coffee.

I kiss you on the cheek before walking out the door.

Have a good day, baby.
I’ll see you tonight.

Dear DJ at the Party I Went to Last Night...

Dude, seriously, what is the number one rule of DJing? Never let the music drop. You let the music drop no less than five times. That's right. I counted.

Also, please learn how to read a room. Here's a tip: if you're playing high-energy mashups of radio songs that everybody knows (GirlTalk, Check it out.) and everybody responds by dancing crazy, singing along, and shouting "wooo!" intermittently, keep playing that kind of music.

If, however, you let the music drop and start playing droll, repetitive trance music and everyone responds by ceasing their dancing and leaving the room altogether, put the other music back on. Don't just keep playing what you like because that's what you and your buds sit around in your herb-infused living room and bob your heads to every other night. I'm sure it's mind blowing after eighty-seven bong hits when you have no intention of moving off your couch, but this is a party dude. We're trying to dance. And you, as a DJ, have a responsibility to your fellow party goers to provide us with beats we can shake our collective groove thangs to.

To be fair, I'm pretty sure you weren't a professional DJ but just some kid who hi-jacked the open Mac on the DJ table, but my complaint still stands.

Special note: I have nothing against trance music or the people who listen to it, or living rooms or bong hits as a general matter of course, it's just it's just that it was not a living room. It was a dance floor. You have to do more than bob your head on a dance floor. Just sayin'.

The Duck

Jeez, I can't believe it's been a month since I updated. Life is, like, flying by man.
Anyway, this is a sort-of non-fiction piece that I wrote for a class this semester. It's short.I hope you like it.
  
The Duck

I close my eyes and walk through a door into a house in my mind. I round the corner into the den and stop. I lay down right there in the floor in between the den and the kitchen, the White Room to my back. I close my inner eye and listen and breathe, trying to see if I can make it real this time. I hear footsteps.

“Lord, Child, what are you doing now?”

I smile. “I’m dreaming, Grammy.”

An exasperated sigh.

“W—what are you dreaming?” Her tone is of one who is flabberghasted. I flabberghasted my grandmother a lot.

“You,” I say. I open my eyes and look up at her. Her face is blurry, but I see her smile.

“Well,” she says, as if gasping for air at the same time. “Well.” She turns and walks back into the kitchen, going, “Mm-mm-mm-mm-mm,” all the way. Soon, though, she is singing.

I turn my head to the right and there is a shiny gray wooden duck. Its bill, which is also gray, is even with my nose. I always thought that was wrong; I wanted it’s bill to be yellow. I’m surprised that I never tried to paint it.

I put my arms around the duck’s neck and I curl in on myself. I start to shrink until I am about the size of a toddler. The duck is heavy again now. I pull against it, and it does not budge. I pull harder, straining my arm muscles, just to be sure. The duck stays stately and resolute. It will not move this way. I am satisfied.

I peer into the duck’s black, fathomless eyes. They are enormous again, shiny, and deep. They seem to move on the inside like water, brimming with the secrets of a world outside these four walls. I talk to the duck. I ask it to tell me its stories. I ask it to fly, to carry me. I jabber endlessly with the duck. Perhaps I believe it answers me.

Eventually, I climb onto its back. I wait. I expect its long, graceful neck to stretch out, for it to ruffle its feathers. I expect it to glide forward gracefully across the carpet, to carry me through the kitchen, through the living room, into the dark hallway. I expect it to move effortlessly. I believe that I will steer it by gripping its neck and turning, this way, that way as I navigate the furniture and doorways of my grandmother’s house. I believe that after we take a test run through the carpet, it will spread its wings and fly us in graceful arcs around the living room. I can hear my grandmother shriek in fear and joy already as the warm wind of her kitchen blows over my face.

 I rock back and forth. It stays still. I push against it, the back of its head digging into my chest. It topples over, onto its bill. Perhaps I say Ow. I pull back and it rights itself. I try to push with my knees, but it is too heavy for me to move in this way. My grandmother comes around the corner.

“You’re going to break it,” she says.

“No, I’m not,” I say. Maybe I smile up at her.

She opens her mouth as if she is going to say something, but doesn’t. She sighs. She makes those humming noises that later I will see other grown-ups imitating and laughing about. There is a general consensus that she is not aware she does it.

She stares down at me and does not tell me to stop, or to get off of the duck, or to do anything other than what I’m doing. Perhaps she knows that I am enveloped in the simple joy of being a child. Perhaps she wants that for me and misses it for herself. Perhaps she recognizes already that I will not break the duck; that it is already a friend to me and I will be careful with it. Perhaps she is simply proud of me for finding a purpose for the otherwise useless decorative item, a use that she never would have dreamed. Perhaps she envies my freedom to not have to care what anyone else thinks yet, that I am free to play, and it doesn’t matter who approves or disapproves.

She turns and walks back into the kitchen, giving me and Duck our playtime alone. 

I fall off of Duck’s back, my arms still hanging around his neck. My body stretches and grows back to the size of a twenty-five year old. I start to cry like a toddler, all noise and snot. I curl around the duck and hold it like it is my grandmother’s memory. I polish it with my tears and secret longings and wonder if she did, too. If she would dust it and all the other curios of her home while dreaming of another world, of another time. I wonder if she is still there, in the ether, looking down with a disapproving frown at some of the things I do, but also with perfect trust that my imagination will not betray me, or her. That I will not leave behind me broken things, but a new life where wooden ducks fly and my grandmother is singing in the next room, forever.

On the Media

I wrote this for a school assignment but was thinking of making a blog about it anyway. Pam is my instructor who came up with the prompt. The prompt was to describe a way in which the media has changed your life. Enjoy!

I wonder sometimes if Pam and I don’t share the same brainwaves, because I was driving in my car the other day thinking about this very subject. Not only has the media changed my life, I think that media is changing the way our brains evolve.

Think about it. What’s the new watchword for parenting, besides autism? ADHD. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. When I was growing up, I never would have said that I have ADHD. Now that I am an adult, I’m pretty certain I’ve developed it. I have a hard time finding focus, especially in my creative endeavors. I am the proverbial plate spinner. I work on one thing for a while, then move on to another. Not only in writing, but in different mediums. I get tired of writing and make a collage. I get tired of collaging and decide I’m going to learn to sew. Things like that.

At work, also. I’ll start one cleaning project, get tired of it halfway through, and start something new. Something New. I would say my entire work ethic revolves around finding Something New.

Istn’t that the very definition of ADHD? Someone who can not focus on one task for long periods of time? Let me do a Google check. Yep. Also included in the definition are a tendency to procrastinate, to not listen when spoken to directly, and excessive daydreaming. I definitely have ADHD. I would say, however, that I am just a writer. Most of us have ADHD, it would seem.

My theory, however (and for what it’s worth), is not that ADHD is a cognitive disorder, it’s cultural evolution. Who can pay attention in this day and age? With the onset of 24-hour cable networks, smartphones, and digital communication, there is always something to occupy, nay, entertain the mind. There is no reason not to be entertained these days. Unless, of course, you have a job. Or schoolwork. And who wants to do those things when you could be surfing the web learning things they don’t teach you in school or texting your friends about what they’re doing right now?

I think that the prevalence of the diagnosis of ADHD is proof of how ill-equipped our society is to accept cultural change. Teaching styles must be adjusted to accommodate this new rise of ever-prevalent media. Teachers must entertain now instead of merely instruct. I believe that this is happening, but not fast enough.

No, it’s so much easier to give kids diluted meth in an attempt to medicate the problem away. But the problem isn’t a problem. It’s just change. It’s evolution. I do not wish to quantify this change into the realms of “good” or “bad,” either. It is neither. It is simply happening.

We’re in a time of transition as a culture, and someday psychologists will laugh at us for thinking that we could “solve” the problem of ADHD. Or that we considered it a problem. I consider it an evolutionary key that will turn the gears of change. Our institutions must change to accommodate a new world, a new attention span, a new way of thinking, even. Not the other way around: developing dangerous chemicals to infuse our children with so that institutions may stay the same.

In the immortal and always relevant words of Bob Dylan: the times they are a’changin’. And we are changing with them. Myself firmly included.