Secondhand Muses

So, you meet her. She fascinates you. You must draw/paint/photograph/write a song/story/poem about her. she allows you too, and this moves you, inspires you. The work is magnificent. You are further drawn to her. Time goes on, be it quickly or slowly, and through the cracks in her pedestal, you begin to see that she is human. Mundane humanity is so much less inspiring than the ethereal, and you must move on to other inspiration. What becomes of the muse?
Is she discovered by onther seeker of inspiration? Does her magic fade a little more each time, or is the well bottomless?

What does it mean to be a muse?
Is she the untouchable objet des art? A sort of madonna archetype?
On a pedestal, for certain.
What then happens when she becomes tactile... human?
Will you think less of her then, grow bored of her, or even resent her?
Resent her for her imperfections: a slip, a trip, a sin.
Resent her aspirations: that she would dare struggle and pursue and risk and fail even.
Resent her for walking on two feet, that touch the dirty ground, same as yours.

Art is Potential Life is Kinetic

Pardon me for a moment of trite, if not pretentious philosophy.

The age old question: "Does life reflect art, or does art reflect life?"
I am one who believes they are one and the same. Perhaps that is a bit fluxus? Or not. But at the very least, art and life exist simultaneously on a parallel so close that they are nearly impossible to discern from one another. If the tiniest movement: the near twitch of a smile forming, the smoothing of a stray lock of hair, if captured and pinned down on canvas or emulsion like a preserved butterfly, becomes art, who is to say that every nanosecond uncaptured by lens or brush is not? Simply put, all life is the kinetic form of art, and art is potential life.

Here's to those who eat, sleep, dream, fuck, love, drink, breath art in all it's glorious forms.

Heaviness

This suit of armor is becoming terribly heavy. I want to tear it off and cast myself naked into the sea, to be unafraid, vulnerable, and at the mercy of the elements.

I grow weary of being an island unto myself. I want to be a peninsula- to hold hands with a larger continent while remaining a separate little piece of land. Is that too much to ask?

My Great Depression

(origionally written July 29th)

a microcausm of our economic and emotional downfall.

an emptiness in my belly
an emptiness in my bank account
a rock of tobacco-hardened alveoli in the bottom of my lungs
and a growing personal trend verging on either a great Oscar Wilde style amorality or complete moral bankruptsy.


I become my fears, my hatred.

all those jaded girls I used to envy, with all their worldly wisdom, and cool, untouchable gazes.

Now looking upon the doe-eyed ingenues with a mixture of distainful snobbery and admiration. So innocent and full of hope. I can't go back to that, I don't know how to rekindle the belief in magic and miracles.


I check my online banking and sadly settle on a parliament and a glass of 2 buck chuck for dinner. It's 2 am and I sit on my porch half hoping the boys next door don't emerge to wonder why I'm perched amid a pile of furniture in only an oversized t-shirt I keep having to tuck under my ass... half not caring at all.


Part of me contemplates a trek to Del Taco, but hell, I'm to lazy to put on pants after moving furniture half the night, and I don't want to lose my primo parking spot. so I watch the glow of the butt ashes attract moths and contemplate a leafhopper that has landed on my t-shirt. Feast or famine. Mostly famine.

Less and Less

this is how often I will be seen
this is how often I can be there for anyone
I am going to implode
in on the night sky
and inward on myself
like a black hole
and become anti-matter
losing mass
gaining density
so heavy, so heavy
this non-existence
this lack of substance.

my heart is a vacuum
my mind is a dead star
still emitting light
from it's past glory.
my soul is a lost astronaut
my body a moon
riddled with craters from
kamikaze comets and
careless collisions
caught in the pull
of lifeless celestial bodies

becoming antimatter

Owl Pellets

Dear Mr You-Know-Who,
Your self indulgent pouting, and me -against-all-the-mean,mean-girls-of-the-world attitude is getting you nowhere with me. If all girls suck, maybe the problem lies within yourself, and you need to take a deep, introspective look, and question "what could I be doing wrong here?" and "How could I change my approach to be more appealing?" I'm not asking that you not "be yourself" by all means be who you are. But if who you are is a needy, insecure little boy, then you cannot fault me for maintaining a healthy distance. The only thing you can blame me for is being too hopeful in the beginning, that you would work out for me. But it's not right, so for that, I am sorry I was wrong.
Sincerely,
me


I'm not trying to be a user, or to lead anybody on. I'm subtly searching for someone with quality attributes. Not even searching really. Just investigating any promising lead that falls in my lap as I go along, trying to live and enjoy life. I suppose I approach dating somewhat like a child scientist excavating a pile of little owl pellets. (big former science club nerd? guilty.) I am picking them up one by one, digging through them trying to pick apart the stuff I want from the stuff I don't want... the regurgitated fur and whiny attitudes. What I want is the pellet with the delicate little rodent skull, complete with incisors and buggy little eyesockets, not the lame pellet full of barbie tic-tac toe bones like and a femur like a plastic toothpick. Odd analogy, yes. But, to myself at least, it makes sense.

Smiling at Spirits, Dancing with Ghosts

Everybody knows a dead person. That is, I mean to say, I'm certain everyone must know someone who has "passed on." I always find it odd, when I add up my collection of ghosts, few of whom I was ever very close to. Maybe that's what provides me such a curious, objective point of view on these phantoms that once were. Memories of people I sort of knew, or maybe should have known, scattered about my mind like a dusty box of fading photographs in the attic.

It just hit me today, that a young man who went missing earlier this year and whose body was found under mysterious circumstances was one of those people I sort of knew. I apparently hung out/went out a couple times with a good friend of his a few years back. I remember reading his name on a missing persons bulletin, and thinking, "Sounds familiar." But somehow it just hit me. You meet people, and time goes on. Sometimes you think about the people you've met casually and briefly, and maybe you wonder what's become of them, maybe you don't.

It seems like the only time I ever hear follow up on these random aquaintances, is when they've become deceased. But maybe that's not correct. Maybe death is the only thing jarring enough to burn these chance meetings into my memory for life. This wasn't the first time.

I'll always remember the smile of the janitor who worked at my elementary school, and the photo in the book I was reading when I heard that he'd killed himself will always appear in my head when I hear his name. And I remember a shy, cheerful man I met only once at a coffee shop in long beach, whose beautiful light was extinguished by a hit and run driver in Vegas. But I'm a "what if" person, so I often think on those that I should have known or barely knew, who I will now never know. The point of these memories is not to kick one's self, but be thankful they once touched your soul- if only for an instant- and to appreciate other such people. Life is a delicate mix of wonderful, not so wonderful and interesting characters who weave themselves in and out of the plot of your life. You in turn weave yourself in and out of others' stories. What sort of character will you be? What sort of image will you leave behind when it's your time to be a ghost?