Twenty Nine Worlds

1

Every few miles the suburban wasteland repeats itself. Starbucks. Chipotle. Verizon. Panera. McDonalds. Et cetera. Its insidiousness lies not in its spiritual emptiness, but in its eternal, commercial tautologies.

2

Atop a clock tower the remains of a mechanical existence chime defiance to digital modernity. Do such artifacts exist because bits allow them to? Or aren’t bits mechanical, too?

3

Can we ever know who we are when the world is full of pseudonyms? Perhaps anonymity is not only a safeguard, but also a price. What does identity cost?

4

I fear I have become more abstract as I have gotten older. Poetry is better when it’s visceral, material, physical, real. Abstraction is the hidey hole of faked intelligence.

5

A prophet need not follow his own teachings if he is truly a prophet. Such is the dangerous illogic of faith. Regardless, reinterpretation and rationalization heal all historical wounds.

6

If Eliot’s peach is a metaphor, what is a watermelon? I think sharing one is every bit as sensual, and a good deal less pretentious. And it tastes better.

7

Innuendo – whether verbal or physical – is beautiful but frustratingly problematic, not because it’s silly or childish or immoral, but because it’s too easily misread. Miscommunication is the ultimate anaphrodisiac.

8

I celebrate as much as Whitman, and am trying to relearn how to sing, but one wonders whether he might over assume. You know what they say about assuming.

9

Eventually you understand that beauty really is a matter of heart, mind, and soul, not of body. If she weren’t so beautiful, I wouldn’t love her so damn much.

10

The easy humor and confidence of youth is so readily stifled by the rigors of living in the so-called real world. Imagine laughing like a kid your whole life.

11

Philosophy should never have a definite article. What is a philosophy anyway? It’s an anachronistic way of pretending your narrow, inadequately considered worldview is profound, consistent, and reasonable. Bullshit.

12

The world is not understood; it is interpreted. Blessed are the meaning makers. May they make a thousand meanings and thereby make life interesting enough to warrant the trouble.

13

Popular culture is a tautology. Has there ever been any culture which was not, in some sense, popular? Could it really be called a culture if it weren’t shared?

14

Tristan’s love for Isolde is frustrated, impossible, and unbelievably pure. Isolde’s love for Tristan is selfish, sadistic, and unbelievably sexy. Love is wrapped up in power, desire, and suffering.

15

Perhaps the saddest unintended outcome of a connected world is how it sapped the magic from discovery and the novelty from humor. Keats would never write Chapman’s Homer now.

16

There are still mountains waiting to be climbed, my friends. There are still evergreens and lakes buzzing with dragonflies. There are still leaves of grass serving as journey work.

17

I have surrounded myself with death. The last sacred act of my marriage was to bury my father-in-law. Pluto makes a difficult conversation partner, but his power is undeniable.

18

You ask how I will remember her? I will remember red stripes on the skin of her stomach, raw from leather coils. I will remember her gasping in excitement.

19

To deny astrology is to deny archetype, mythos, and spirituality itself. Astrology does not speak of fate; rather it makes possible an otherwise inarticulate conversation with one’s very soul.

20

In a fragment lives an entire world, but there is only one. No thought is self-contained, no prophecy self-fulfilling. A thing is a thing by virtue of everything else.

21

Remix is also a tautology. We live in an age of tautology, where recursion is virtue and begetting oneself is apotheosis. Beware the bastard sons of techne and logos.

22

There’s something calming about disorder. I cannot clean my desk not because I am lazy, but because its clutter brings me a sense of peace. My entropic security blanket.

23

We debated one night over the proper term for a group of nobles. Geese have their gaggles and crows their murders. We settled on gossip. Paints the right picture.

24

Imagine a truly deviant aesthetics. It has become more and more difficult to find beauty in strangeness, not because strangeness has disappeared but because we no longer acknowledge it.

25

There is something liberating about having a secret. I do not want my friends to know everything about me because I would be just another variable in their equations.

26

How does one claim one’s own space? Anything above the ground floor is an artifact of countless unseen hands conspiring to alter extension itself. Above us not only sky.

27

Am I less playful than I used to be? Or is my playfulness better disguised? I still think of Eden and her scorched eluvium. But I don’t like tattoos.

28

The frequent mutual exclusivity of groove and counterpoint puzzles me. Why can’t music be funky and complex at the same time? Do we forget Joplin so easily as that?

29

I play games, and I play to win. Rhetoric is my game board, emotion my trump card. But my greatest strength is that I also know how to lose.