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| oh dear sweet xanga
depository of delicious convolutions
slowly i grow tired as i suckle on your
wonderful butterfat!
you're like a cushioned zebra
or a dog-eared kids book
or a smelly old blanket covered in
kraft dinner and ketchup stains
i could type forever
and listen to infinite echoes
through the pages and pages
filled with infintesimal details
of fallow fields and farmer tans
but the real world calls me back
with claws like a three a.m. bombshell collision
outside of a casino bathroom.
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| I took an afternoon bus ride from Pittsburgh to State College today. At the Pittsburgh terminal, there was a fellow milling about, asking "fellow travelers" for a few bucks to make up for his shortchanged pockets. "I'm going to Johnstown, and I'm only, like, four dollars short," he told me.
I dug into my back pocket and plucked four quarters from the mass of guitar picks and pennies. "This is all I can spare right now, bud," I said. He walked away from me without thanks. "Good luck getting the rest!", I called after him.
There is a note tucked into the back straps of one of the seats on that Greyhound, extolling the virtues of our representatives in harrisburg. I hope someone picks it up and sends it to the right desktop.
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| hi guys
So there was an article in the Beaver County Times the other day which marked the occasion of andy warhol's 80th birthday. i didn't read it on principle (a part of my ongoing boycott of the hometown newspaper), but there was a prominently displayed pullquote culled from an interview with the director of the Warhol museum. "We're living in a more Warholian age than ever," it announced, "what with the Internet being the big scaly beast of socialist entertainment that it is." It's easier than ever to seek your "fifteen minutes" in the modern technological era, and for many that "fifteen minutes" is parlayed into a career (see Perez Hilton, Cody Diablo, etc.)
So I sat and thought about this for a minute while said Internet continued to stream endlessly across my cathode ray altar, the jackhammer of the mind which I have come to love and to loathe.
We, the blogging generation, are slowly beginning to redefine the mechanisms of fame. The Internet makes it possible for ANYONE with talent and get-go to get their voice heard by millions. Millions. As this is redefined and corrected, so are the pathways in our cultural consciousness. Biases and blind spots are annihilated and circumvented. New worlds are opened up to the masses. Value judgements are now discerned with demand. The choices are limitless.
But beyond this soaring rhetoric, the divisions in tangible society remain. The scars of hundreds of years of Self and Other applied to this group and that idea are there, and they won't go away. We are the first generation to see these dichotomous relations for what they are. Deconstructive rhetoric can save the world, but only by tearing down the existing cathedrals brick by stinkin' brick, and using the stones to build a new world; one that does not glorify the past, but respects it for both its successes and its failures. Loves it and loathes it.
So it's not like EVERYONE has access to this new power. But everyone's lives will be shaped by it. And their lives will shape it in years to come. What is the future of this brave new world? Who are these people, such as they are, who dwell within it?
Bringing myself back down...
I marvel at this invention. I am thankful that I have gone away for five and a half months and this little place is still here. I've started up a few other failed blogs, here and there; but few are my secret-keepers. There are still discussions to be had and friends to be made; and I will be the last Xangan to hold on mightily to the old private page (there is such a thing as TOO much functionality), but it's high time to start chatting again. This time, there shall be no stopping when I feel I've said enough!
So it's time to "get Warholian". The world needs what I have to say - what YOU have to say. So let's start saying it!
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| word - "milquetoast", a timid, meek, or unassertive person, according to Merriam-Webster's infinitely languid linguistic imagination
more words
imagination walt whitman unbridled uninterested; sleep fracas insolence, jump; gullet, a slide into darkness, three teeth throb under sinusoidal anarchy. hope; hope much.
roadblock: tire-slashers in the darkness with burning eyes, shortwave radios. hope to get the man before he leaves the state. the moment, filmed in black and white, nighttime makes grimy grainy skin indistinguishable from ghostly streetlight pallor. they are moments, these; evanescent and ghostly.
roar of an engine in the distance; hole in the exhaust from a fallen saguaro. the driver: thirty-three, bad taste in music. the radio is blaring; it covers up distracting thoughts about itchy stubble, remorse. the song is something old and twangy. it rattles the dust from the dashboard, makes the plastic rosary dangling from the RVM tremble. upon it, jesus is indistinguishable, except for his eyes. he colored them with red ballpoint many, many years ago. the beads: dark brown, the color of new lincoln logs, or of woodstain soaked into dad's fingers after long hours over the workbench. rumble, rumble. artificial thunder in the new mexico desert.
the headlights appear on the horizon, if you squint you can see them shimmering, basking in the secret asphalt sunlight. the ambushers rattle their weapons, seek recipes from vampires.
and the music is heard: "there staaaaaaands the glaaaaassssssss" in grainy hi-fi. you can hear the tape-hiss big and warm underneath the deafening eight-cylinder growl. the engine strains - we're going about a hundred and ten - the car rocks on its suspension, a sole hurricane victim.
headlights glance off the gray man, five hundred feet ahead, as he slides a slim grey line across the slim grey road:
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| when can society realign?
will it? does it matter?
the gap between perception and reality has never been wider than today, 2008. the stakes are higher than ever before. and we the american people, the new batch of voters who start out fresh and untainted by the policy mistakes of our previous CiCs, are handed a bucketful of candidates who speak in big terms about big things. we, in our naivete, expect them to follow through on their word, no matter who they are.
the big political machine is running at full blast. and it makes me sick. even beyond the roastbeef and chocolate i ate this evening, only out of respect for she who prepared it -
artful journalism is what i'm attempting to practice here. hell, it's journalism of the soul. i'm merely reporting to you the vociferousness of mind-factions. pure opinion. but is it better than what we have?
oh, all their talk of "objectivity" makes me want to vomit. i don't believe it exists. i don't believe it's right. i do believe in healthy doses of irreverence blended in with the facts and figures. i believe in american soul. and anything with soul, by definition, has to come from a place of provincial interest. (by my definition)
(cause what makes something soulful? i would propose "soul", or "the ability to put a little art into one's feelings", or that stuff that really moves your gut, you know - it comes with experience and reflection, and a little mourning for what's passed away, but combined with a forward-thinking anticipation of the future. make sense? too bad.)
objectivity is what allows the atrocities of the world to rage on unchecked. it is the greatest and most malicious of the evils to be found in the human spirit. and as a prospective gatherer and interpreter of information, i would suggest we use a different paradigm.
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