Text and Hubris

Note: This shouldn’t have been posted. Since it was. I will leave it. It needs a serious rework, though.

I wake up and go to work
just like I did yesterday,
just like I will tomorrow.

It’s another in a long line of learned behaviors, programmed rotes, and religious rites designed for my edification, demanding obedience.

And do I obey.

After all, what am I? Another automaton: low on power and slowing as the lights dim.

I sold out. I traded up. I got ground down. And I caved in.

I broke.

So I spend another 12 hour day staring into a screen, talking into microphone, and pressing the same buttons over and over again.

I think, “Holy shit, I’m George Jetson. So where’s my jet car briefcase? “

And I’m not a cog. Cogs are losers.

I’m a sprocket, bought and paid for.

And while I bitch and press my buttons, somewhere across the pond a six year-old plugs poisoned plastiforms into metal and prays it’s only his baby teeth that keep falling out.

In the Jetsons, everyone was the same color and spoke the same language. No one was poor. No one was sick. No one was suffering.

It’s hard to see people suffer and crawl when you’re flying so high.

If only I had my briefcase.

When I was 11, I wrote a story about a dragon, a scorpion, and a young woman. It was awful in that way that all middle school stories seem to be. It was all action, no description, filled with clumsy, silly lines that kept the text from every hitting a decent stride. I loved that story, though.  I worked on it every day. It was mine. Almost twenty-five years later, I am still playing with that story. By now, it is a strange, convoluted fantasy/sci-fi epic that has changed and grown almost as much as its author. Even now, it plays out in my head in those moments before sleep or in those quiet times during the day when my mind has a moment to wander.

I wrote the first part of that story in a yellow notebook my mother bought me. I wrote in the first person and I was proud because I had just learned what first person meant. It was my fantasy journal, a mixture of pretend and creation that suited me so well at the time.

That summer of that year I went to scouting camp and I brought my notebook with me. I was promised some quiet time and I thought that I might have the chance to write. I was dreaming about being an author, someday, and I imagined that this was how they started. I was young, still thinking about options and possibilities. I forgot about the accommodations: small tents and cots with nosy tent-mates.

There was an argument between myself and another boy from my tent. I can’t tell you what we argued over. The topic is lost to me, dead. I forgot it the instant he sneered and mentioned something I had written in my little yellow notebook. It undid me in a way I never expected. They had taken my story. They trashed something that I had built and loved, and I had no clue what to say or do.

I swore at him. I never swore. I grew up in a household where swearing was unimaginable and I swore. I was so angry there were in tears my eyes and I kept swearing. My tent-mates only found this amusing but it was the most damning act I could think of at the time. I stormed off and from that point forward all I wanted to do was go home.

When I got home, I sealed that little notebook away and I never showed it to anyone. It is lost now. A victim of a childhood spent moving. I quit Scouts. I still wrote but in quiet places where my notebooks were safe.

I still fight with that angry little boy, today. He is my biggest critic. His fear and anger sits in my chest. It is an anchor. It is the reason I still do what I do instead of doing what I love. Every day, I get up and I tell the boy that we have to keep going and we do. He rails and screams and swears and the going is slow and agonizing but we keep going. He lists the failures, the falls, and all the mistakes. He mentions that camp and the sneers and I tell him I am so sorry that happened, but I can’t stay there anymore. So I wake up tomorrow and I try again. I am not sure where this ends up, but I still struggle and that must mean something.

At least, I hope that it does.

[nbcite author="justinjfj" title="Le Louvre - Do Not Touch Works of Art" year="2009" city="Paris" publisher="Flickr" month="04" day="29" type="blog" ]

Before entering the gallery, we were stripped of our coats and packs, our notebooks, pens and pencils. Nearby, a man with a golden badge and balding head watched us wearily as we left pieces of ourselves outside the door while a woman who looked like she should have worn large colored glasses spoke in clipped tones that dripped condescension.

“Stay at least two feet away from the art at all times.”
“Do not touch.”
“Do not look too closely.”
“Observe from afar.”
“I will tell you what it all means.”

I knew then that this was no place I wanted to be.

When I was 16, I was nearly kicked out of a museum in London because I could not keep my hands off the scultpures. It only made sense. These were creations of the hand. They all but begged me to reach out and trace their lines, those smoothed edges, the hidden nooks and crannies all carefully crafted by artists now gone but always here, always alive in the form and feel of these creations. How could I not touch them?

We walked through the gallery where the images were set in antiseptic gray and listened to the story of an artist defined through another’s eyes. We could not, dared not, judge the work for ourselves. That was sacrilege.

I reached out a hand.

Thank God for Heresy.

[nbcite print="apa" ]

Heat

We spoke of id and ego while the world burned.
I woke to the heat. I felt it in me.
It was trapped between my skin and bones.
I was solid and melting. My body wept sweat.
And you mentioned Freud as you watched me
bury my head in a pillow, seeking to dry my skin
on the yellowed pillowcase and then defend my actions,
an innocent accused of innuendo.
Outside the silence sat and waited.
The sounds of the day, still muted in the heat,
escaped our attention. I lay back and let my skin
dissolve into the salty liquid that lay beneath.
I heard you laugh, then grow still
until only the silence remained.

Notes:
This is a short, rough, piece that was inspired by our weather today. It needs a lot of polishing but I promised to post more work or works in progress. Keep in mind that anything I post here is probably off-the-cuff and not something I would consider submitting. This is my scratch pad, of sorts, but it does give and idea of my work and my thoughts. Plus, we need more poetry and fiction out there. Preferably, off the web.

But that is my next project!