"You have 2 things: A Dream, and a Gig"

Graffitios scuttle from the rubble
on beetle's legs.
Each brick a fingerprint,
or a tea leaf portending
our loss of innocence.

I've never squatted in fields,
nor banked on hollowness
or the way the mind reels.
Tried to hold a level hand,
broadcast some silver lining
in this catastrophe.
Knowing this single moment is the last
that may be asked of me.



This second round of college is much more to my liking, despite the lack of social stimulus and hang-overs. It's 90% talking, verbally or electronically, and apparently on these topics I'm quite verbose. A professor has stopped calling on me (my hand shoots up at every question), a classmate sent me a note ("I just want to comment on your responses to everything so far this semester. I think you do a fantastic job of reading between the lines and the meanings of the essays and certain parts. You are very affluent(?) and knowledgeable when it comes to writing."). Juxtapose this with my scholarship two years ago: showing up surreal, keeping a lid on the poems pressing at my scalp, rushing out the door to struggle and spit over dastardly math problems. This is how it should have been all along.

Likewise, I've discovered that my university values their English department. Making strides to become the great literary institution of the Intermountain West (this piece of land between the Cascades and the Rockies). We have some professors of significance (though I won't be in their classes until the fall at the earliest)

I am, however, beginning to see how my job may interfere with this whole thing. Aside from the obvious protraction of my tenure here (I've come to peace with this, moving slowly allows me to absorb), the yuppie calendar conflicts with 2:00pm writing workshops with heads of the department. The sporadic travel means every registered credit may be the roll of the dice. My benevolent and irreproachable colleagues will likely raise eyebrows the next time I register for classes beginning with ENGL. I try my best there, and I've done well. My slightest twinge of pride tempered by the fact that I daydream about escape. Crawling into the ventilation system while ostensibly moving my bowels. Quick jaunts to Taco Bell that become literal runs for the Mexican border. Rappelling from the roof on extension cords or ties. I just hope that after a couple years the whole thing doesn't assimilate me. Everyone I meet subconsciously warns me with their eyes. . .

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"Inside I'm always nervous, but I never look worried. Come for me."

I've redeveloped an interest in Koans (here's an index: http://www.ibiblio.org/zen/cgi-bin/koan-index.pl ) as of late. These are essentially "lessons" in Zen Buddhism consisting of a story, usually involving Zen masters and their students, which cannot be solved rationally or via any moral or emotional compass. The intent is to focus so much concentration and cognitive energy that one's mind stalls. My interest is in the mechanics of how these lessons work, but moreso in the penumbra they expose between emotion and reason. There are flaws in each, of course, and the ability to reside between the two would be extraordinarily useful at times.

I could generally be described as being rational. I put value on the products of science, am not given to believing in gods or superstitions, I tend to specifically not make decisions based on that which makes me cry. Our emotional senses bring great value to our life, it is through these that we enjoy art and each other. However, as a decision-making and problem-solving tool emotions tend to waver. We choose that which is easiest because it allows us to maintain relationships, we put ourselves or our immediate sphere on a pedestal and ignore the world or humanity as a whole, parents force their children to stay close and dependent out of fear, etc etc.

Reason on the other hand is very "useful". It allows us to write laws, build bridges and cure disease. However, I would posit that in some ways mankind's particular manifestation of reason is maladapted to truly understanding ourselves or our universe. It works too hard to deny the emotional aspect of life, it often stifles creativity in the nascent stages of understanding that require temporary lapses in rationality, it can make art seem superfluous. Our particular brand of reason (and I would say its arrogant to assume we've stumbled upon the "one true" reason) has been forged in the evolutionary furnace for eons, shaped for our particular survival in very particular environs.

Koans, and other practices such as psychedelics, meditation, and creating art, force us to marry these two disparate perspectives. I don't fully understand the Koans I have read, but in my attempts to grasp their full meaning I have found myself tempering reason with emotion or vice versa, and the result is something resembling neither. The result is a impossibly momentary self-awareness and a peace with the magnitude of the incomprehensible. Within minutes however, I find myself back to normal. Frustrated, stunted, struggling with happiness, reveling in sorrow, whatever.

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The Suburbs will not save us, nor the Harlots we made famous

"Nothing's ever been right"
and as I settle for the night,
the volume of the trees screaming
like the engorged howls of a prison fight

I'm convinced the world is going to end, have I mentioned that? And at some point I start to feel disconnected from these problems, already taking the attitude that the world has begun to collapse into some chaotic war fueled by resource rivalries and environmental havoc in turn perpetuated by the greed in all our hearts. And yet, it seems perhaps that's all fantasy; my dream of a time without manufactured obligations, without strict definitions, without anything to do but be myself and coalesce into survivalist tribes. Create mythologies from our dim memories.

I still think it will happen, but the psychology of it is becoming clearer. The great yawn of human history, apes descending from trees to White people nuking Persians is peopled by a vast anonymity, an immense silence and innumerable voids. Being alive in that moment, some sharp turning point in our story and evolution, brings some satisfaction. For at least I will have been there when something important happened.

She once told me that the reason I write is because I want to prove that I exist(ed). And there's palpable truth in that statement. I'm terrified by the humanity I am at once thrilled to be consumed by. Because, what matters when you no longer believe in god or, in fact, in anything but this very moment and the cold rush of ecstasy when you're at your best? A rhetorical question that I can only occasionally answer, and I must say that the notion of being some tiny blip within the universe is the only thing that doesn't make me feel empty. Not to be important to people who capitalize the "I", but to at least have made some communion with reality and left something marginally more durable then the 80-some years I will breathe. I hope that's not repulsively vain.

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