What's the deal with your nickname? How did you get it? If your nickname is self-explanatory, then tell everyone when you first started using the internet, and what was the first thing that made you say "wow, this isn't just a place for freaks after all?" Was it a website? Was it an email from a long-lost friend? Go on, spill it.
The Odyssey, Homer.
see also Alfred, Lord Tennyson:
Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,
Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave
To each, but whoso did receive of them
And taste, to him the gushing of the wave
Far far away did seem to mourn and rave
On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,
His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;
And deep-asleep he seemed, yet all awake,
And music in his ears his beating heart did make.
You may draw your own conclusions about what relevance this has to my username.
fresh ground, french-pressed coffee and hand rolled cigarettes make me happy.
The Oxford English Dictionary is the best [set of] book[s]EVAR. A++++ WOULD RESEARCH AGAIN!!!11
If you were led here from something I said or a link I posted, don't be shy, email me!
I am a poor college student, and I often fantasize about a rich benefactor helping me out; I tried to put a PayPal Donation button in here, but it wouldn't work. If you are a rich philanthropist and/or patron of the Arts, or you just would like to help a brother out, you can access my paypal button on my blog, or just make a donation using my email address. Anything would be deeply and profoundly appreciated.
foolishly, I removed my pic, and mathowie disabled the img tag, so here's a linky to a different one until the issue is resolved
un autre photo
Yeah, I got a blog. noötropia
wish list- if you're feeling philanthropic
I'm sort of looking for my birthmother (~60 something now?) and a birth sibling, who is 38 now. I was born in '73, upstate NY.
I like to write. To wit:
Thoughts upon Julius Caesar’s Last Moment
When Caesar said "Et tu, Brute," in shock
his dying breath contained myriad things:
10
24 atoms; a flock
of tiny birds on 1 million billion billion wings.
And in the time between his death and now
they have flown from Rome and into your mouth!
And I hear you wondering aloud, “How?”
They have circulated North, West, East, South—
Casting these oxygen and carbon seeds
across the world over land and ocean.
You likely inhale one or two of these
as your chest rises and falls; the motion
of every single quiet breath
brings the flavor of Caesar’s Death.
A Neuropathic Villanelle
We all have our crosses to bear
I clench tight my fist, knuckles in white rows—
All I can do is sit and stare.
Spitting and popping, my nerves are flayed bare,
I can’t transcend the pain, and I suppose
we all have our crosses to bear.
The smoldering silent biting Night-mare:
Its fire creeps slowly, as if it knows
All I can do is sit and stare.
Only so much and it begins to wear
me down—wordless passion and twisted pose:
We all have our crosses to bear.
When I’m stressed it comes as a white-hot flare,
and when relaxed, sparks as it comes and goes—
all I can do is sit and stare.
Sometimes, I forget I have a hand there—
It’s a little loss of self, and God knows
we all have our crosses to bear.
All I can do is sit and stare.
A Poorly-Composed Pseudo-Abcedarian Mnemonic Metapoem of Prosodic and Literary Terminology for Your Education and Pleasure.
An Anacoluthon is—what is Ananym for?
Boustrophedon in write could I or
a Chiasmus—the music of syntax.
Finger-joint Dactyls cut off by an axe.
Epanaleptic repetition where repetition is the norm—
this poem is not in Free Verse nor is it a Fixed Form.
Not really Gnomic, avoiding much judgment,
a Hapax Legomenon—“noncelet” or “nudgement.”
I can add an Ictus to show you the stress
or Jameswords || runningtogethera || Joyceanmess.
A Chorus of Kenemes: and, the, at, thus
messing with text in (Lunulæ): a Logodaedalus.
I could have used Litotes, a sort of Meiosis
or a Neologism, a Nonce-word: “Noöpoesis.”
Eviscerated with Onomatopoetic Obeli ,† † †,
with a ZIP and a SPLASH I open, sacrificed to Prosody.
Not “Quotation Marks,” but Inverted Commas, on
the Recto, the Verso, wait—this ain’t a Roman!
Ain’t is a Solecism, see also Syncope:
a Contraction, Elision, redundant Tautology.
Unvoiced Alveolar Lateral Fricative, the IPA’s curse,
Metrical writing with Stanzas are Verse.
Wit is from
Witan: “to know” what is clever,
Xenophanic means witty, but this poem? whatever.
Yoking a phrase with Zeugma to end it,
the poem ends in wisdom—and the last couplet.
Ulster Pastoral
Stepping out into coolwet morning air, unlock the bike,
tighten my knapsack straps, my breath trailing behind me.
Out onto the street and up, muted clicking of the chain through derailleur,
the rapid bump of tire-nub and the rush of passing cars.
Up the long hill, my legs pumping, warming,
through the town and up, deep breaths and up,
this long slow hill and all my muscles humming;
then, leveling out, and a slow glide across the overpass,
the breeze climbing down my shirt, my jacket flapping.
Over my shoulder, the ridge reclines, bluegreen and wrapped in fog, not quite awake.
Ahead, rolling foothills and low curling mist easing through the treetops, soft puffs of smoke.
The wheel crunches on the shoulder, ploughing through gravel.
Garlic mustard and wild onion sweeten the air. Robins alight in meadows
hopping and pecking. Occasional rabbits
panic and freeze, panic and freeze.
The hawks watch and wheel, waiting for the sun to break through and warm their wings.
Skirting the edges of culverts, the sluggish seep of runoff nourishing mallows and lilies,
the lime carpet of algae rimmed with froth,
the shale piles in thousands of weathered arrowpoints, mounds of slategrey cloven rock,
my legs moving up and down, up and down in tight circles, breathing in time.
Leaning barns with quiet ghosts and rough rust-red tractors watch over fields lain fallow,
The deer flick their tails and dip their heads down as I pass;
Heading east, the sun is a vague corona above the trees;
it pushes through the clouds, guiding me upward,
onward.
***It creeps up on you, that sense of having felt this way before. It kind of seeps through you, like water drawing up into a plant-stem, quiet and slow. You feel it in your spine, capillary action from the root up to your neck. It is the sense that you can never go back to the way it was before, even as you realize that it probably wasn't the way you remember it was anyhow. Memory is a shady place, with images moving in and out of the periphery, faces changing, metamorphosing amalgams of emotions and the pattern recognition of a multitude of faces, seen and felt.
You are sitting in a small restaurant, and you pinch a lemon over a piece of trout, the butter pooling underneath, the lemon cracking and spitting, so you have to guide the juice down and over your finger, using it as a dropper. You pick up a piece of fish and put it into your mouth- it is soft and it yields to your teeth, falling apart on your tongue. You are eating fish and feeling something that is sparked by the taste and yet not at all to do with the trout sitting on your plate. You were seven the first time you fished, you had one of those little kiddie-rods, with a reel housed in a dark green casing and one big white button that you pushed to release the line and cast, and it clicked when you turned the crank. A satisfying pop, and the clicking reel and the pull of the lead sinker off of the silty bottom. Sitting on a lichen-covered boulder, sun-dappled under a green summer canopy of oaks, the sunlight scattered and blinding at times, the little white and red bobber bouncing on smooth wavelets. Your father sat next to you, with a bigger rod, and an open tacklebox filled with dangerous and intimidating hooks, glinting lures and an assortment of smaller knickknacks of arcane origin and mysterious use. There is a bag underneath the top tray, and in it are sandworms, monstrous and alien, writhing against each other and a piece of wet seaweed. Your father baits your hook- you want to, somehow, but forcing the hook in through the squirming sandworms' mouth and out the side is too much for you. He understands this, and so he does it for you, but in such a way so you will learn the method and eventually you will be able to do it, too. You learn patience, and you also learn to be present in the moment. You don't know what that means, but you feel like there is something special and maybe sacred about sitting, waiting in silence with your father. Waiting for a tug on the line, not even knowing what the tug will feel like until it happens the first time, and then, then you know. You know as if the fish had come right up to the surface and told you to your face,
I'm grabbing the hook now. And you jerk-- maybe a little too hard-- and there's nothing there, but you know, for the next time, exactly what to listen for. You listen with every cell in your body, at once relaxed and coiled, a small steel spring waiting to release the load, waiting to set the hook, but not as hard this time, just a quick tug like your father does.
This memory sits along with others, shrouded furniture gathering a shell of dust in an echoing house. The fish melts in your mouth, smooth butter and lemon, the rattle and clink of flatware on tables around you.***
me:
thunderstorms. having my hair played with. cats. dark green. full moons. redheads. candlelight. jasmine. vanilla. freckles. watercolors. billiards. sushi. cobblestones. a good sweat and then a shower, and then another good sweat. blown glass. sunsets. mockingbirds. ballet. sailing. zen. a freshly made bed. kiwifruit. miso soup. sleeping spoon-style naked. ben-and-jerrys' new york super fudge chunk ice cream. haiku. autumn. confident women. silver. japanese gardens. otters. honesty. sensuality. incense. fireplaces. smell of freshly mown grass. crickets. fireflies. butterflies. frank lloyd wright. towels warm and fluffy from the dryer. a well-cut three button suit. afternoon naps. crushed velvet. leather. violets. gentle kisses. sloppy kisses. kissing. speeding. tiramisu. pagan holidays. waking up next to someone you care about. summer rain. fall rain. rain. scotch bonnets. garlic and ginger. red-tailed hawks. crows. stained-glass windows. stars on a clear night in the mountains. a good fountain pen. postcards from old friends. masala. seeing your breath in the winter. the smell of wood burning. military surplus. panty lines. dostoyevsky. low-cut backs on dresses. crashing surf. lapping surf. surf. punctuality. celtic knotwork. violins. being clean. people who accept me for who I am. neatly pressed pants. well-broken-in blue jeans. t'ai chi. freeform jazz. waterfalls. pico de gallo. soft lips. dante's inferno. philosophy. being naked and un-selfconscious. knowing that people care about me. openmindedness. flirting. mechanical things. cedar. laughing. hugs. four-post beds. unconditional love. plaid skirts. calligraphy. being whispered to. warm fresh bread. long-island diners.
My first deck
64k, and an external direct-connect modem with a big red button. That got me onto bbs's in the eighties.
Thanks
pb and
ericost for the help resolving the flickr "issue."
