Spontaneous Musings

( the cheese stands alone )
***

On the subway ride home, I look up from my book, earphones in place, and catch a young man with spectacles and a goatee drawing me.
( Read more... )
***

Drops of water hit my shoulders on the way home. Kids and their mothers huddle on a patch of grass near an apartment doorway, while a man rolls about in a wheelchair with no legs, and another strums a tune on the guitar behind him. Balding, yet young, the guitar player, not the man with no legs.

***

( Mother broke her nose. )
***

Loneliness slips beneath the cracks
While the world whirls and laughs
Until one feels almost gone
Swallowed whole
Not quite there
At all

This is the second question/assignment of The January Talking Meme. I've gotten seven questions in all. So the next one won't be until the 10th, that is unless someone poses another question in between now and then.

For January 5th - ann1962 asked- What is the hardest thing you've ever had to write, that went against your more spontaneous style?

Hee, besides answering this question? Just joshing. I'm tempted to say the stuff I have to write for a living - but then I'd have to find a way to explain it, without giving away too much about my workplace (a big no-no on a public blog), besides what I have to write for a living - is not that hard. I've had much harder writing assignments, such as that collaborative fanfic that I attempted to write back in the summer of 2002. Granted 75% of the time - was spent smoothing the rumpled feathers of various other writers involved (if you've ever done this - you know what I'm talking about), the other half was attempting to write the next chapter of a story using someone else's ideas, concept, and plot - which I did not necessarily agree with or thought is really stupid. But I can't exactly say that over email to someone I don't know that well, can I? I guess I could...Suffice to say, that wasn't the hardest thing I've had to write, believe it or not. Discovered I was actually better at collaborative writing than I thought, just didn't find it all that enjoyable - way too much drama.

No, the hardest thing I've ever had to write that went against my spontaneous style was oddly enough a poem. I state oddly, because poems are meant to be intuitive, or spontaneous.
And in most cases they are - at least for me. I can write prose poetry rather well. But this wasn't just any old poem, no it was the bane of the English Lit Major's existence...the deadly, insanely difficult...English SONNET!!! And of course, being a SONNET, it must be in iambic pentameter, because otherwise it isn't an English SONNET!

This sort of goes against my general vibe. Because sonnets have a precise rhythmic structure. With not only a specific rhyme scheme, but a specific rhythmic count.

A Shakespearean, or English, sonnet consists of fourteen lines written in iambic pentameter, a pattern in which an unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed syllable five times. The rhyme scheme in a Shakespearean sonnet is a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g; the last two lines are a rhyming couplet.

It's a bit like writing a musical composition or playing an instrument. Or knitting a sweater. You have to count. A lot. Not only do you have to count - you have to keep track of your count. And you have to count in a specific rhythmic pattern.

Keep in mind, I was a English Lit Major, not a math major or a music major or a science major, but an English "LITERATURE" Major, with a minor in cultural anthropology (basically myths, folk narratives, and epics). I was avoiding math. [Or attempting to. God or The universe, who is a bit of comedian, clearly had other plans - because I do a lot of math now for a living. But that's another story. I'm trying to stay on topic here.] There was also the slight issue ...that I don't count well. Never have. Apparently it's genetic and called dyscalculia (in case you are curious). My aunt has it, and I have a form of it, as does my mother. However my mother and I have managed to compensate for it. Obviously, because I do financial analysis at work all the time. But financial analysis isn't the same as writing a sonnet. For one thing - you can use excel and a calculator. For another...there is no counting or crazy rhyme scheme to keep track of.

But my creative writing poetry course required that I write a sonnet. Or at least make an attempt. (I tried to get out of it - or substitute something else.) And...I'm sorry to say, I don't think I pulled it off. Oh I thought I wrote a sonnet. Or at least I hoped that I had, I honestly couldn't tell - which is saying something in of itself. I mean if you can't tell if you wrote one or not - you clearly can't write one. At any rate, from my perspective it was a sonnet. But my professor disagreed, and graded it a B + for effort.

In case you're wildly curious below is my ill-fated attempt to write a sonnet, demonstrating in of itself how this was indeed the hardest writing exercise that I ever tackled.

The English Major

Dreams like half finished sentences
Cloud my mind and spiritus
With paragraphs of weariness
As I start to lust for past tenses
Verbs conquer nouns and adjectives
Grammar fails when you touch me
With arms like parenthesis;
And I wonder how active
They must be to cause an interim -
Blocking me, yet, not making sense
As you part, not end, our sentence
Leaving me with a semicolon;
Hanging in space, dear letter head
What happened to the period?


I was told that it was a very clever poem, but unfortunately, not a sonnet. The exercise did, however, give me a whole new appreciation for Shakespeare. The dude was not only prolific, he was prolific in iambic pentameter. Must have been a great musician or at the very least fiendishly good at knitting.

Netflix has a fun little mechanism where you can rate the movies you've seen - basically state you loved, really liked, liked, didn't like or hated. My ratings are based on whether I'd want to see the movie again and again (loved), wouldn't mind seeing again (really liked), enjoyed it, but once is enough (liked), did not enjoy but watchable (didn't like), barely made it through it or found unwatchable (hated) - with fluctuations based on mood. Not that you care or anything.

At any rate as I was doing it, I realized something, some movies I found myself rating higher not because I liked them but because I felt an odd societal pressure to like them. Personally if I were completely honest with myself, I found the movie dull and uninvolving. While I could appreciate the cinematic tricks and lighting that made it brilliant in someone else's eyes, it did not resonate for me. Same thing is true about books or even tv shows - this sense of societal pressure. Also discovering it in day to day actions, decisions, foods, clothing, everything in ordinary life. To the extent that there are times like today for instance in which I desperately want to turn off the opinions of society, like turning off the TV set. Feeling much like a child starring up at my parents stating, damn it, I don't care if peas are good for me, they are gross or I don't care if all the other kids adore french fries, I can't abide them. (Interesting tid-bit, Kidbro and I hated french fries when we were little, it became an acquired taste for both of us - ie, we learned to like them as adults, but as kids we didn't. I can't help but wonder if that acquired taste was somehow influenced by the people around us? Maybe not, I still despise ketchup on most things. Only thing I'll put it on is hamburgers and hotdogs. Prefer mustard.
As an aside, I miss hamburgers and hotdogs on buns...going gluten-free is not as easy as it looks, you do miss things. And restaurants are killer - went to a mexican one the other day with Wales, we ordered nachos with quacamola. Should be safe, right? Corn chips, right? Even asked the bloody waitress. But guess what, they've made a lighter low-fat chip with wheat flour, it's fluffier. Hard to find by looking. Wales figured it out eating one, so I spent about fifteen minutes sorting through the chips hunting for the heavier ones which must be corn and disregarding the fluffy ones. Annoying to say the least.)


At any rate, societal pressure...( Read more... )

A poem:

i thank you God for this most amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a true blue dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings, and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

e. e. cummings

On september 11, 2005 that's how I feel. A beautiful two days. One spent on the grass in the park with Wales chatting. One spent lounging in my apartment today. Reading, writing, watching, listening to kids playing outside and seeing the broad expanse of blue in the sky. September 11 weather Wales called it yesterday, for it is the same weather we had on that day, weather we felt mocked us. I have more in some ways than I did then.
And less in others. Since the thing about life is you gain and lose a bit with every passing day, the trick I think is knowing what is gained and lost and taking some role and/or responsibility in the choosing.