Tautological twist--DRAFT 4 with Addendum

[Updated: 06.07.20]

All speech is political. Or, what any expression asks of us.

If we understand speech as "engaging in the creation and advocacy of realities through the invention, elaboration, or imposition of discourse,"* the term political does not constrain us in understanding that all speech is just that, political.

Why discourse and not all expression? Yes, why not, for an in-your-face expression in any form functions the same way. It is as if what one attends to, even if just to notice and move on, shouts: "Look at me, hear me, smell me, taste me, touch me, feel me . . . understand me, don't dismiss me, remember me, act as if you cared. . . ."

Thesis: Once one attends to that which has been expressed and before s/he fully re-cognizes the content or message, the invitation to discourse interaction completes the validity of the claim that all speech, that is expression, is political, having to do with power over an other.

Expression, in the broadest sense, imposes its presence to an attending percipient and at the same time attempts to colonize present awareness with itself and its import, if not more. Making this demand evidences inherent authority and power, even if the effect is the import's dismissal, or is it export's?

Now take the above paragraphs. In asserting what they do, they ask you to consider if not buy the explication. In form (words strung together) and content (meaning), we have a kind of co-incidence. As the meaning of the expression says all speech is political, the utterance by the nature of utterances (expression) at the same time says the same thing, or more accurately, enacts it.

Funny that that seems/is so, is it not? Reading, listening, viewing, etc., self proclaim--Pay Attention (at least).

One could say more about "all speech is political", for example what famous person first uttered this idea, what philosophical development it has had over the centuries, who were its historical or civic champions for belief in its truth or validity, why it should only obtain when matters of politics and government are concerned, and so forth; however, mere existence, ready-at-hand to be attended to, suffices to prove the simple self-evidency of what speech/expression is at the most fundamental, phenomenological level, of or having to do with the exertion of power and persuasion to achieve some effect on the percipient, or audience.

Now all this is a rabbit hole, or performative jumble. If what I assert in form is at the same time an example of what I assert in meaning (content), and such an explanation or description may be universally applied, then this perhaps is some kind of hermeneutic spiral to infinity, or  hall of mirrors with no end to seeing the same image reflected again and again up to and, by extension, beyond the horizon, or fruitless Sisyphusian conundrum. In sum, my thesis is a trivial pursuit most feel unnecessary to say or realize.

On the other hand, having gone to this depth of the reflexivity of expression, I would call this insight(?), an inescapable tautological twist, and as valid and "true" as any other defense of the opening assertion that better and brighter stars have argued.

So be it for now till a lighter, clearer day dawns, if I may speak with authority and do gently impose upon thee.
_____
* Brown, Richard Harvey, _Society as Text: Essays on Rhetoric, Reason, and Reality_, University of Chicago Press, 1987

ADDENDUM (29.07.20)

If you are reading this sentence and trying to take in what it says, you are being manipulated to do something the words intend for you to do.

Words, or any expression put out and available for readers and others to receive or perceive, have a minimum of two reasons for existence. 

+ One, to convey something--an idea, feeling, information, etc.

+ Two (as you are fulfilling the first reason for the words being there before you) the words themselves demand: "Look at me, hear me, smell me, taste me, touch me, feel me . . . understand me, don't dismiss me, remember me, act as if you cared. . . ."

Words (or other expressions (e.g., art installation) calling your attention) are a way "power is achieved and used", power being the core idea in the notion of politics or political.

A word to the wise--DRAFT

Re: free speech/expression

1. Isegoria--saying what's on your mind with a view to engage in discussion with others for a better union.

If you frame what you say in terms of this and thoroughly researched information, not opinion (one-sided "interpretation"), you are safer than otherwise.

2. Parrhesia--"the right" to shoot your mouth off anytime, anywhere, to anyone.

"John Stuart Mill argued that the chief threat to free speech in democracies was not the state, but the 'social tyranny' [or worse] of one's fellow citizens."*

What's a person to do? If you must commit parrhesia, note the above caution and guidelines and:

• Limit yourself to the best medium for expression and influence for a specific audience.
• View opposing views as worthy of hearing and understanding, if not acting upon.
• Act upon the agreed upon after listening, paraphrasing, asking questions, highlighting common ground, and, not leastly, having your brief statements heard, etc.
• View most of any other noise as theater and find there entertainment.

Shut your eyes, ears, and mouth otherwise. Someone or something will fill any void. Hold on tight if this happens and you are still passive but "invested".

_____
* https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/two-concepts-of-freedom-of-speech/546791/

Popcorn for politicos

[The following is in response to a letter I received detailing a bunch of stuff seemingly Republican, right-leaning, Trump pardoning, chaos-embracing, conspiracy-spinning, generalized other bashing . . . you get the idea. Pardon for the repetition of part of an earlier post about guns, but it seemed appropriate to insert for purposes of diverting attention from an argument no one will come to a consensus about in present-day USA.]

I already have my popcorn and I'm enjoying the chaos, er fun. Thanks for your lines nicely delivered in this human drama. (Wait, gotta pop more popcorn.) Very entertaining, if in some places different from my lines and character when I have to deliver on stage. But I'm not going to do that here, or am I?

Okay. You got me. I'm a leftie, have been all my life. You righties have tried to do us in or teach us otherwise, but I still prefer my way of looking at and doing things my sinister way.

Do you know we on my side die earlier than you guys do? because the world is controlled by you bastards! We are at least 12 percent of the population, and yet never acknowledged by the majority--you guys. All lives matter. Of course they do, goes without saying. But so do Black lives, leftists matter, Asian-Americans matter, even though in my case I have never been recognized or accepted for that label which is who I am genetically What about MY identity and rights? In this me-culture, everyone forgot about me!

Hell, All Lives AND Black Lives and My life matter, in spite of white fear of losing the majority (think "superior") view.* I ain't part of no Democratic conspiracy, just one of the humans in a race where whites want now desperately to win ("dominate") and others just want to compete in a fair contest.

Now to be equitable, I do try to understand the right side of the spectrum. I brush my teeth sometimes with my right hand, and I sometimes zip my fly with my right hand; but hey, I draw the line at shaving right-handed. I may be a leftie but not stupid like the white sheep majority.+

Now about those guns. If we give everyone from 5 years of age and up a real gun, what would happen? First, chaos. I agree. Let the show continue.

Well, the never-to-die dream of being a cowboy or cowgirl toting a gun on main street for show or action has never died . . . nor has blowing away instead of achieving consensus with the bad--those other--guys. As I said, I have my popcorn. Citizenship paid for just as have righties, over and over. (Or do they on the right pay taxes? I hear a lot don't.)

Other than the first killings of people who look funny or look different or just look and we can pop 'em off just for fun, what else would happen if we really embraced our inner gun and wild west heritage?

+ A small, mostly passive proportion of the populace would object vocally and then retreat to mumbling and solitary protests in private and out of sight.

+ A large proportion of the populace would embrace the freedom and call it a right not a privilege.

+ A large proportion of these would acquire, or be gifted, guns.

+ The guns and munitions industries would institute a holiday where everyone was encouraged to shoot their guns off to the air above in unison at noon and gather later for a barbecue and gun games. Among these there would be 21-gun salutes, wild random shooting with cries of yippee, and some tears at wounds and casualties perpetrated by the careless and untrained.

+ Annually we would witness more mass shootings but eventually accept them as the cost of freedom. No more tears need be shed. Shit happens.

+ A small proportion of crazies would do crazy things like hold people hostage, snipe at passersby, kill someone because of a verbal disagreement or unjust job termination, etc.

+ A very small proportion of experienced gun owners would see religion and give up their arms and campaign for the repeal of the freedom, without success.

+ Criminals would continue to use guns to get what they wanted, but increase their arsenals to newer technologies to accomplish the same end. To stay competitive, you know.

+ Non-gun owners would be marginalized and deemed impoliticly correct or worse. They would become a new discriminated-against group with appropriate epithets to describe them.

+ Foreign visitors to the country would decrease.

+ TV shows and documentaries and info-docu re-enactments would increase showing us more and more violent scenes to savor before bedtime.

+ Since 5 year olds would be entitled to a gun, they would find new products to badger their parents about--pink or blue pint-sized rifles and pistols made of plastic that shoot real bullets, one at a time, just for safety.

+ Laws would be enacted to prevent carrying firearms into designated places such as the men's room at the local movie theater, the garage of a friend, the desert . . . places where the likelihood of accident or perpetration would be less or more . . .

In short, live and let live, that is unless someone you don't want around shows up . . . and eats his chicken fried steak with his left hand. "Shit! See that? Yikes!" Especially if s/he doesn't use a fork and knife "like we all do hereabouts".

Stay safe _in_ the funny farm and keep those entertaining messages coming.

Oh, and thanks for the movie recommendations. So far can't find 'em on YouTube, 'cause in the good ole US of A, you gotta pay for what you get--no free lunch.

_____

+ For a look at Truth and the heights of American culture, see https://www.facebook.com/thedailyshow/videos/jordan-klepper-vs-trump-supporters/210669160181460/

* The reference for the fear of whites and Asian aspirations, see https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-battle-cry-of-the-white-man/2014/08/05/961858f4-1cd4-11e4-ab7b-696c295ddfd1_story.html

Dustbin treasure?

Cleaning out the dustbin, I found this from 2007; however, the date must be earlier, around 2000, for that is when I was associated with Learnability. I put it here as a reference for myself to check to see if what I thought/did in the past still has relevance in light of today's re-newed need for "distance learning."

Let's see.

Conversion Services

[space reserved for results of assessment]

Why I am not a writer

The answer is complicated of course. In short, I'm a coward. Or perhaps more sensitively stated: I'm a co-operator, a conflict avoider, shy or reticent (either will do), chicken shit (marketing averse), people-pleaser, diaphanous jelly fish without poison to offend or defend, lacking in ego/testosterone and over flavorous edible fodder for alpha-types and competition freaks. Or maybe, just maybe, as one who loves to write and has lots of ideas on the burners or descriptive voyages under sail, too busy to pursue all of what it means to be a writer today, especially disagreement with what or how I have said/written something, which in the end is fluff . . . I don't have time or care.

So much self promotion, at least from my view as an expatriate living abroad, one who observes the pursuit of greed and gold and glory by those who write . . . mostly crap for a populist audience with little attention span beyond 140 characters, or some such byte for like and mis-quotation. Do I sound like a sore loser, or miscreant? I beg, rather claim decidedly not.

Writing first, if you must from some inner devil that won't let you have a complete and fully-satisfying day if no words have been recorded somewhere in or on a notebook, is a thankless pursuit. No one other than you must read you or what you have to say, which is the same thing. Paul Auster got it right--more than once--when he said no one is obligated to pick up and read your stuff. Therefore I write for no audience.

•  What is it like to write for no audience, not even apparently for me? Paradox again--this piece is for some reader, I suspect, although it appears here as one entry in a storage place for almost finished pieces of my puzzle(-ment).
• Writing for no audience is writing what is in consciousness now. Look neither forward nor back. It is a process, a self description--with all the voices, all possible topics--no inhibitions, no intent other than itself, a kind of being through what looks like a doing.
• It could be stream of consciousness, a label. But labels are applied to something after having looked at it, a kind of analytical post scriptum, or description of what we have come to see or know as it is on its own. But writing for no audience is not intended or a purposeful art. It is more like art for art's sake, sans even that label. It may be what is done. But who knows or cares if process-now writing has no audience?
• Writing for an audience is to have something to say to share. Writing for no audience is therapy? recreation? re-creation? an outlet for what un-articulated things may be brewing in the great stew of the soul's manifesting? a way to let me become? the playground of conflicting selves where we can work through and then stop and move beyond. So with nothing but all of that license, there is no audience, no aim I want you--you, you, and you-me--to get.
• Does this writing matter? Silly question. Only to do it when the up-welling needs to have a place to go--and then that purpose may be too Western, too serious, too task driven, obligatory.
• When does it take place? Anytime, anywhere. But empty Chinese restaurants in towns I visit--where I am unknown--are my favored places. (You-other will have to sort out your where.) I like it when the family is eating and talking at their own table before other guests arrive.
• What is it like? It is pleasure. It is affirmingly being, my being alive and here. It is flexing and discovering. It is asking questions and writing to learn the answers. It is filling a notebook, a record of the good times and bad, where I have been and when. For asking and trying to answer why questions.
• Will I read all that stuff? Maybe. When I am old and wear purple and sit in front of the fire, scanning then burning--so no one will have evidence of my having been here--except their memories should they have at some time met me of spent a little time "trying to get to know".
• Writing for no audience with only what flows out as the something-to-say is like touching my self to make sure--to pinch myself and respond. It is for no other--not him or her or them, not for me sometime-when. But for now. Moments to hold before they're all gone. Moments to treasure and count up the riches now. Moments to let go of--after their clear acknowledgment. Moments to hope for should life surprise me with being as I would have it. We are such stuff as dreams are made of--you know the rest.
• And when I put my pen down, I close my notebook and relish that home cooked meal in silence, wondering if the Chinese food is so beloved because of nature or nurture. If my writing for no audience were to speak aloud, s/he would say the answer is like all things--apparently, probably, sometimes, mostly--it is a little of all. And that as answer will have to suffice until the next time I think about and want to sort through the dustbin of my living.
• My writing is about what it says it is about, that as ambiguous as that is and then some. I suspect the sum is a whole, of a piece, and nothing. It is about a life trying to affirm itself as it tries to erase the trace of self which is of little account in the world of measured things. It is every time with every word the flicker of that flame before it goes out, or is given another moment to shine its light for someone, somewhere, somehow . . . if even that. Silence.

Well, well enough said. That, most of the above, was true in 2000. Except the coward part. That has its first articulation here. I'm not sure the rest is as true today. Consider this imperfect draft of things as they are or appear to be, which is the same thing.

The act of writing--your pen moving on paper, fingers performing  QWERTY sonatas--AND all the other stuff, not limited to querying publishers, paying agents, membering in associations, pitching, forcing excretion of hype copy, contracting for cover designs . . . I land on the first side of the equation, all the stuff you do to get to there, I have said it without any interruptions or distractions, most importantly the distractions of getting others to read your stuff. That is not where it is at, for me doing the essential task--producing words in sequence to produce unified and coherent wholes to fix 'em still so's I can contemplate true or not, or to just let them out 'cause the world as participation in physical realities is just too tragic and malevolent to spend much time there, except in a Chinese restaurant with crunchy fortune cookies, at least two, with uplifting bytes you know will never come true but bring smiles or a nod of assent and you say, "Yeah, that one's got it pretty much right."

Now back to work.

Addendum (15.08.20)

Dated 09/01/2014

Honesty in writing.

I write safely. That is, I do not reveal in journals or other places what I truly feel, have thought or done. I steer clear of things that "accidental" readers might judge me for, things like indiscretions, how I really feel about so-called sins or things not in accord with major views, etc. So, what you get, if there is a you, is something akin to how I would like to be seen. There are secrets of the heart and past deeds I would rather people not know about. This might change . . . the nature of a subject might dictate otherwise at some point, or "the truth" might be hidden in fiction's coverlets.

Addendum (15.08.20)

From 28 January 2014

Before this day is done, I note that writing so-called fiction absorbs me--now that I have started from a singular image and then let 'er rip. The other way was to fully visualize the story and scenes and characters, etc., whatever etc. happened to be. This time the story unfolds on its own. I don't know where it is going. The fully conceptualized and visualized was exciting for just these two processes, but then writing it out took away the fun, the involvement. I knew where it all was supposed to go and how. This latter approach has me in the story as if I am reading and discovering the plot, conflicts, characters, and so forth. I seem to have more energy and interest in proceeding, because I don't know what is going to happen or where it will end up. Fascinating. I hope the evolutionary will be revolutionary, to take me to another level and restore my confidence in what is inside and what I can uncover and/or create.

Addendum (15.08.20)

From 03 February 2014

so i will do what i can to put myself in a place where no one can hurt me...into my writing, it is happy and safe there, a different world to live in...that is why i like it, a place to forget the pain

Phenomenon of It--DRAFT

I

Cast thine attention to what is important
to see, not understand, clearly for what it is
in your experience--without bias, your own included.

Choose the words to describe that perception.
Almost clarity's the result, if not comprehension,
comprising the what and how exclusive of all you or others
think, or believed or said about, now, the It.

Phenomenology's the process, not the product.

If you talk about it or It and how others experience,
that's a discussion of a subject or synthesis of views
of it and some how of it. Greater clarity perhaps,
and infused with understandings important about
an elusive object, or subject, of our attention.

Descriptive analysis is not phenomenology.

II

Round and round the circle goes,
up and down till it gives you woes.

Now the gyre with the It I would
narrows and points to see the very what it could.

At its center the still clothed stands
to be unfrocked before my truth can land.

Seeming tall and straight--naked now she sits--
with I along to see everything s/he it fits.

What is ever changes it it stays the same,
as I from inside out the circle game.

A game with rules simple strict, to wit--
to the thing itself no foreign nit.

No conceit conceive except to pre-perceive,
tentative hold, 'sans bias' what we re-ceive.

Take not for granted what now you see,
for it is is and not its elusive be.

I would its essence comprehend,
but to describe? it moveth round the bend.

I would put me first and what I saw,
but now the circle's the great big maw.

Before it eats me my mind all up,
Time for dinner. Better pause and sup.

Or do all else while the wine ferments,
you can your gaze from it 'fore relents,

till all is clear as clear it must,
for in study and reflection I verily trust.

And once the gyre turns and says its said I say,
then another sparkly thing can draw all well away.

Addendum to previous post

We rarely understand what people mean until we ask them. Moreover, they may not know themselves what they mean until they’re asked. This is why, on subjects of any depth and complexity, the dialogue, rather than the sermon, is the model for intellectual engagement. The sermon may preach humility, but only the dialogue puts it into practice. For only the dialogue embodies what Emerson called “the secret of the true scholar,” which is that “[e]very man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.” What the true scholar learns is not just “some point” on which he had been ignorant. He learns from that particular instruction the larger lesson of his own ongoing dependency on others, [and] the limits of his own experience.*

I believe the previous post was an attempt to say just this and about that subject. I am a prisoner of my own experience, and without dialogue, a conversation attempting to go somewhere, why should I be the one to initiate by broadcasting. Some have seen through my sermons or lectures and taken up a point or two and commented, or they have asked for the background, what I meant, etc.

But because of my insignificant voice, I have brought myself up short and said, "Stop it. In form and content you are discouraging people from their rightful place in the world and in your life. Stop disrespecting others. Be quiet. Listen. Ask questions. And so I shall try, harder."

Thus my dialogues appear here and elsewhere.

Of course this blog is a performative contradiction . . . except no one reads this blog. It's just about sorting me out so that I can get straight on some things. Audience of one, no apologies.

_____
* From "The American Scholar: Low Definition In Higher Education - Lyell Asher". 2016. Theamericanscholar.Org. Accessed December 28 2016. https://theamericanscholar.org/low-definition-in-higher-education/#.WGNhSvkrLIV.

I don't believe*

Higgs boson

"Do you think that beyond the edge of the cosmos or the other side of the smallest particle or wave, there we'll discover what many believe is there but has no name, no concept, no evidence thus far other than the absence of all sens-I-able things?"

"Isn't this to say that the micro- and macro- material universes have their ground in non-materiality--see, we don't even have the words."

"Oh, dear. Now we've got a problem. No words to talk about what we don't even know is there, God or nothing."

"That's nonsense. There aren't just two options."

"Whadayamean? There are only those two."

"What about some other reality? Like in string theory. They have quantum explanations and then there are string interpretations, but no one has ever seen a string, not that I know anything about it. Except, a theory is a theory based on ideas. Could be the same for the ends of things as we know them."

"You mean a theory other than the so-called theory of God or the theory of nothing."

"Right. And basically we made all this up. God and nothing. Realities we never dreamed of come into our awareness through science every day. Why not something we've never even dreamed of?"

"I guess that's possible. When you look at it, the god most people talk about looks pretty much like a larger people-like person. Pretty much. And he or she has changed costumes over the years."

"If you want to go crazy with this, then a people-made god all powerful and all of that, well, s/he could be in, around, and through, be the very essence of anything and everything. Doesn't sound so much like a god as a condition of the reality we already know. Look at that beetle there. He's god, and the space between him and you is god, and you are god. I am sure this is heresy to someone."

"You can be sure."

"And that leaves us where? I don't think we know, in spite of testimonies to the contrary from reputable voices throughout the ages."

"Something bothers me. Nothing I get. Like no thing, which is hard to imagine, because you can't even label or describe that for there's nothing there, not even nothing. It's a paradox and I can't hold it in my head, no one can in fact. Then there's the assumption that there is a god or spirit on the other side. We can't by definition--because of omini-everything--imagine him, her, it, other."

"But we have tradition and theologians and people like that. People who contemplate and study . . . "

"Yes, and again, everything is a font from them. Don't tell me about books written in chosen languages by chosen peoples and all of that. What about the rest of us? God prefers one group over another? Doesn't sound like god. We are constrained with who we are, where we come from, our traditions, granted, and all manner of physical things and phenomena. You'd have to step outside of all of that to see what was really there, and no one has done that except one, reportedly, and he didn't stick around long enough to tell us much."

"So why do we study the stars and the Higgs boson and keep on going with all of that?"

"To get more questions to answer. If we had no questions, what'd we do with ourselves."

"Questions about?"

"Nothingness or realities beyond all sensory comprehension. Or, that which we can conceive of as immaterial realities embracing and permeating all of that which can be sensed directly."

_____
* I don't believe I wrote this, but it comes from my working-writings file and is in the style of dialogues  I have written frequently. The piece also reflects some of my thinking and the ways I have expressed myself about such things. But all the same, I have some doubt about how well this is constructed and said. I wrote this?

If I am repeating something someone else has written in whole or in part, please excuse AND inform me.

Her remaining days

Her daytime attendant would arrive early in the morning and help her dress. They then would exit the apartment as her parents felt relief and respite from the fitful night. The attendant would open the car door and she would sit quietly in the back seat. She liked riding in the car. And off they would go to the care center as they did yesterday and all days before since she was two. There her days would each be the same, but from appearances she would experience them as first and new; and the routine, the predictability, would embrace her all the days of her life, as the days embraced her parents and the silent attendant. No one knew what went on inside, or if.

Grandfather sleeps

Grandfather sat on the tree stump on the small rise above the family's sumptuous vegetable garden and looked first at it and then into the distance. His work was done. July's harvest had led to August's, and now September would come in three days. He knew he would not see it, nor the bounty that was always September and early October. Others would reap what he had sown, and that was good. With a hand slowly rising to his heart and lowering his head to look at his chest, he exhaled uttering one word that no one would hear. "Love." Then he slowly listed to the right and fell off the stump and onto the ground. He lay there, lifeless in a fetal position with a modest smile for his family, his eyes closed for eternal sleep.

Whatever could have transpired

The judge took the gavel and smacked it on the sound block resting on the ledge before him. "Court's adjourned," he said, and the assembled as well as the defendant and lawyers, prosecuting and defense, rose and stood in silence. The judge exited left and entered his chambers. All knew he would not return and that the curious drama had come to its end  No one moved, not the bailiff, jailer, nor the court reporter seemingly  knowing and bewildered at the no-decision decision. No one moved. No one had satisfaction. Contrary to everything we expect of such formal and public proceedings, the only option seemed to be to disperse. But all just stood there facing forward.

Temporary assurances

Before the snows arrived that year in late August, Mara and her newborn sans name except for "little one" settled into her aunt's family lodge. It was warm and welcoming on the now brisk mornings, and soon winter as well as homespun sympathies would ensure their home for a time, a time next year when decisions about where to go and what to do next would have to be made. The only thing Mara was relieved about was that he would not come calling, for he was somewhere out there, who knows where and who cares, really? Not so much a new life but one with temporary assurances, and that was enough, more than enough, refuge and shelter from storms of the heart.

Lizzie's mom

"Lizzie, if you're not going to live by the rules of this house, well, you can just find another mother and maid, and cook, by the way."

"You don't mean that."

"Yes, I do. There are things that are just not on. You've crossed that line, again, and I'm sick and tired of it."

"That's three cliches, mom."

"I don't care what that is. You'd better--"

"Better what?"

"Stop. Stop, I say. Where'd you get such sass?"

"From you."

"Out you go."

At that my mom's hands grabbed my shoulders and turned me around. She marched me--my cliche--to the front door and pushed me out onto the porch. She grabbed the wildly swinging screen door and pulled it shut and locked it. She looked out through the screen door, her face now a blur peering out at me.

"You're taking this. . . . Unhinged, you are. Unhinged."

No bearing

Alternate ending, considered to have no bearing on a canonical narrative.

Sissy stormed out of the diner and crossed Highway 50. She stood there and with the feeling of stamping one foot repeatedly in defiance, she signaled to hitch a ride with an oncoming semi. He blew right past and in the wind-wake and dust he created--no, that her so-called partner created, she actually stamped her foot three times.

Meryl looked out the screen door of the diner and called, "You really are deranged. You'll be back straight away." A moment later she added, "The loneliest road in America is not the easiest place to hitchhike."

A white pickup truck slowly approached Sissy and stopped. The next thing Meryl didn't see was Sissy, just the tailgate of that white pickup heading east. "She'll be back," she said to herself, not a doubt in her soul. She turned and stood at the counter waiting to pay the bill for two half-eaten breakfast specials.

The poem that I wrote*

On Sunday, November 24, 2019.

This is the poem I wrote the other evening that you asked about. Before reading, you need to know it is part of a novel or drama I am working on about a character, Johnnie Passnstyle. The writing I am doing is like a novel and like a play.

So there is a cast of characters plus a narrator, a kind of chorus figure, in this case a kind of genderless voice. This person stands apart from the others on stage and tells a story, makes comments, introduces action, etc., like in Greek plays and in Shakespeare. Below the poem in its final form plus a kind of translation of the ideas.

[the poem begins]

Unenviable me--my cry of woe--
a choral voice no words to sow.
Without words direct from others?
S/he, that is me, left with druthers.
No wise insights to impart,
from stories! that'd be their start.
Time has passed and passes now,
like waves wash'd against life's prow.

Seasons come and seasons go:
We know not what we would know.

Enviable I, the Winter's Tale, its choral voice,
could accelerate time anon apace.
I would try such a narrative trick
and eclipse my dear heroine's shtick.
But only she can say what went and passed,
so better that I this ditty leave--at last.
I yield the stage to our only sage.
Johnnie's words let this story wage.

[end of poem]

This is translation, but the poem itself is better and more than this.

Unenviable me--my cry of woe--
[I feel sorry for me. I am complaining.]

a choral voice no words to sow.
[I am like a narrator with no words to say.]

Without words direct from others?
[I ask the question about not having words from other people.]

S/he, that is me, left with druthers.
[Without those words, I, genderless, have only my preferences about what to say.]

No wise insights to impart,
[I have nothing wise to say or teach.]

from stories! that'd be their start.
[It is from experience or stories we hear, that is how one gets something to say.]

Time has passed and passes now,
[Time goes on.]

like waves wash'd against life's prow.
[Life is like a boat at sea with waves that bump against the front of it.]

Seasons come and seasons go:
[More time passes now measured in seasons.]

We know not what we would know.
[And still we have nothing to say, or do not know what to say . . .]

Enviable I, the Winter's Tale, its choral voice,
[I am envious of the narrator (chorus) in Shakespeare's Winter's Tale.]

could accelerate time anon apace.
[He or she could speed up the narrative by summarizing details.]

I would try such a narrative trick
[If I could, I would try the same trick in storytelling.]

and eclipse my dear heroine's shtick.
[I would do this by shortening what my heroine has to say, or summarize what has happened that we didn't see or hear on stage. Her shtick (Yiddish) is her story that is very familiar to her to re-tell.]

'We meet not others along life's way but ourselves.'

But only she can say what went and passed,
[Only she is able to say what happened to her.]

so better that I this ditty leave--at last.
[So I had better stop my little song, this poem--it must be boring for you.]

I yield the stage to our only sage.
[I am stopping, will leave the stage of this play, and will give it to the only one who can speak with authority.]

Johnnie's words let this story wage.
[Let her, Johnnie, use her power to struggle to tell the story in her words.]

At this point the novel-drama of Johnnie Passnstyle continues in the heroine's words and in verbatim conversations that she is able to recall, and report, exactly (a talent she has).

_____
* Also posted on Passnstyle' blog.

Monday, December 17, 2018

He looked at the cashier in a way that said, "Are you from outer space?" To which she replied to the inaudible question, "Indeed." He then looked down, confused. How should he understand this latest ambiguous remark? She held out her hand. Within seconds, he took it, turned it over and kissed it. She blushed and muttered something inaudible and declared, "What will it be, your good looks or cash or credit?" "Credit," he said. She waited a long moment and then said, "This is the only time I can do this." He thanked her and held up one finger in a remember-me (or -this) sort of way, which she took to mean he would--remember her and the favor. He started to go and she asked when would they meet again. "After work," was his reply and he walked away without turning back to see her reaction. She then turned and dropped some no small change into the cash register drawer and said, "Next."

Red waiting room

Cast thine eyes down to see--if sorely sore.
The floor pattern is straight columns and rows.
Then, sameness's face relieves you no more.
Ever this open office, so closed, goes.

See here, and people that go by dot gov,
no matter whether this country or that,
engender no true fondness or dear love.
No help for those who stand, sit or sat.

Red is all a bureaucracy begat:
In that door, the tape's endless before us.
Yer blood will boil hues and brains fry in fat.
Patterns and lines, red tape--there's the end-us.

Now listen to me. The most can be said.
Help from hell here? a polite "Drop you dead."