It's tough to get a holon...

I am alone in the office. The phone isn't ringing. It is quiet and peaceful. And to get this, I only had to stay until 8pm on a Friday night. One thing I've noticed about the office lately is that all the middle management people are slowly getting weeded out. Basically anybody in the 40-80K salary range. Meanwhile, many low-paid employees are being hired, especially in my area. The word is, top management got sick of always needing to have it explained to them what half of their employees were doing. Of course, no one really understands what I and my co-workers do, but there are enough menial chores (answering phones/filing/customer service calling/mail-outs) being done, and we make such a negligible amount of money compared to what our work grosses, that no one really cares that much. And all at once it hit me, that my office is going the way of all capitalist entities: the middle class is being eradicated, leaving the top level, who drive Jaguars and take their family overseas several times a year, and the lower class, the serfs, who garden and hoe and shovel the proverbial s*** so that the top level people don't have to put down their daiquiris and call up and yell about what isn't going right. Instead, they finish their daiquiris and then call and yell, just to keep us on our toes. We do see them now and again, but are often so entrenched in what we are doing that they pass us by, leaving sometimes the merest ghost of an impression, but nonetheless, it is enough to remind us of the structure, and where we stand within it. It's all very feudal.

On an ironic note, I attended a mandatory 'harassment' meeting the other day. The presentation itself was fine enough, and informative insofar as I've never been a part of a case, and therefore had no idea how the legalities behind it worked. I did, however, get terribly offended at my co-workers during the meeting, and actually had to leave it for about half an hour to clear my head. I don't know if there was rebellion at the mandatory aspect of the meeting, or immaturity in light of the content, or what it was, but I was unimpressed to say the least. Unfortunately, before I left I had gathered enough information to know that there is no legal precedent for a successful harassment case where the perpetrators were simply morons, and so I decided not to document. In fact, I'll be quite glad to forget it.

Which brings me to my final point. Last night I glanced through the first few pages of a book entitled 'A Brief History of Everything' by Ken Wilbur. Amazon only gives you a teaser, but I noticed with this text, they had to throw 20 pages up there, presumably, because even by page 18, any normal person would still be thinking 'what the heck?'. Anyway, I found it interesting that a guy first of all had the sack to title a book that, and secondly, the patience to explain his way through it. Philosophy is weird. For example, if I get a train of thought and want to elaborate on it, I have to chase it around a lot, like a rabbit down a path. The longer I stay on the rabbit's tail, the more I can develop my thoughts about it, but at the same time, it gets more and more taxing. Plus, while I'm chasing, I keep getting distracted by all the things going on in the forest around us. I don't know how many papers I wrote, intending to stick to and shed brilliant light upon the aspects of a particular bunny, where I had weaved on and off the path for so long, that by the time I got to the end of the path, the rabbit was gone, but there was this huge musk ox wearing spandex standing there, and I'm thinking, where did you come from and have you seen the small big-eared fuzzy thing I was writing about 5 pages ago?
Does this make any sense? If not, then you understand my point very well.

Honestly, the only reason I mentioned the book is because I liked the concepts he was beginning to form about being and existence. A cosmology, if you will (although, in his case, a 'Kosmology', because by following the entymology of the term, he realized it was meant to include all spheres of existence--mental, spiritual, physical, emotional, theological--and not just largely the physical, which is what most cosmologies are centered on). Anyway, instead of getting into an elaborate debate of defining the nature of every possible thing that is, he said that every thing has two aspects, or natures: being a 'part' and being a 'whole'. The name that somebody whose name I forget gave to objects occupying this dual nature is 'holon'. Essentially, every thing is both a whole in and of itself, and therefore has preserving its existence as its main function, but is also a part of something else, which gives it a purpose of communion, or coexistence, and the function of preserving the whole of which it is a part.

Short story long, I kind of feel that way, myself. Feel me?

The one person who could ALMOST sell me a bridge...

If you hadn't noticed, I tend to put quotes from my wife on the upper right corner of the blog, around where my picture, I guess, is supposed to go (you can thank me later for that). But lately, the funniest stuff going on over here isn't in the form of quotes, but more like scenarios or vignettes that I keep finding myself in, usually arising from some misunderstanding or just a simple difference in perception. Here's the most recent one:

My wife wanted me to send her friend an email with the poem I wrote a couple entries back attached (not the lesbian poetry one; that one she will likely never see). Anyway, she wrote me down her email address as such (and I have changed her name so that nothing bizarre comes down the pipes at her):

iphigeniaunderscorehepplewhate@hotmail.com

I thought to myself, wow, that's creative. Everybody else just puts the underline between their name. She actually spelled it out. So, I emailed her. A couple seconds later I get a failure message. So I ask my wife if she has seen the address written down, or if that is just what her friend told her. At this point, well over a year into marriage, I learn that my wife doesn't know what an underscore is. It appears that the email address is, in fact, the garden variety 'firstname_lastname@whoohoo.com' email addresses. Not that there is anything wrong with that. I just thought it was funny that I bought it. Reminds me of the time she almost convinced me that Thanksgiving was in September (until I realized that Canada has one, too).

Well, the moral is, if it smells like a rat, it probably is one. Actually, that isn't precisely the moral in this case, but it is a maxim I live by. And beyond that, I can steal the underscore email idea from my wife and be clever and celebrated and the only ones who know will be my wife, myself, and the five of you that read this. (If you're still reading after the last post, that is...)

'She' was a Danish lesbian, and the first woman I ever fell asleep next to...

Did the title catch your attention? I apologize, then, as it's only another poem. You know how big clumps of dust and bottle caps and Hot Wheels and pennies get caught under furniture for years and just sit there until you have occasion to move the piece, and then you get this dirty little garden of incidentals? That's what happens with the poetry I've written--it stacks up and just sits there, stuffed haphazardly into all the corners of my world, waiting to be rediscovered, or at least remembered. Most recently I found 'Stick to Poetry', a passive aggressive response to one conversation I had with a friend somewhere around the winter of 2000. (As a creative writer with a Philosophy degree, I can't seem to deviate from writing stories and lyrics and poems and dialogue that do little more than ask the question 'why' in a panoply of ways. If only I were chums with Clive Barker, I could ask him. He doesn't seem to have that problem. At any rate, here it is, slightly revised...)


Stick to Poetry

(she said)
after I had given her my life story in a nutshell
Stick to poetry, she breathed,
returning curtly from her thoughts
after I had poured my heart into a champagne glass
and offered it to her on 42nd St.,
having lay forth my plans w/ that same boldness and clarity
that often comes to one around 2am
"Stick to Poetry" she sentenced...
And left me, in the meantime,
to pick up my guts, still warm on the
slippery cement

Was it too much?
Sometimes it all just come out of me like
electric elephant droppings:
every word heavy...and charged

I have always understood the love of poetry,
but what about love for the poets?
These poor, introspective auteurs
remembered for the noise they didn't make,
the scenes of normal life they never managed to shoot,
so busy "sticking" to their pens and quills and
dark desks and quiet corners...
Kerouac to concrete
Burroughs to bottle
Dickinson to dementia

"Stick to poetry" she said and headed for the train.
"Great," I called, "thanks".
Hey...maybe if you're lucky,
I'll put you in one

Disposition...

I found out that Rolf, my friend of former post fame, was cremated yesterday. It's a natural thing, ultimately the way I would prefer to be dealt with, but still, that image is largely inconsistent with the other images in my mind. So, in order to reconcile it, in true Rolfian fashion, I decided to learn about the history of cremation. Of course, this comes from a site than is trying to sell us something, but then, we're all trying to sell something aren't we?
Right about now, I'm trying to sell you on how great a guy Rolf was. And so, to assist me, I will include another poem, this one written by myself, because I like it and it makes me think of him the way I think he ought to be thought of. Plus, I put that I include poems in the blog on my header, and I didn't want anybody to think I was being cryptic or forgetful.

TO ROLF: A DEDICATION

A warrior and man of God devout
Whose swords have all been beaten into pens
That stab the bloody heart ‘til it comes out
To dance, free of its armor once again

A son of encouragement you were
Your heart upon your sleeve beneath a grin
You never let a lady face a door
But opened it so she could enter in

You forged through painful living as a knight
Whose spirit shone through darkness dense as clay
You sang of bloody histories at night
You spoke in brutal honesties by day

Your voice had all the thunder of a war
Your eyes were warm and tender in their stare
You leave us with more wisdom than before
And fires burning brightly everywhere

Your feet, no strangers to the road beneath
Never tire’d of your holy quest
Until the pen lay empty in its sheath
And God above had called you to your rest

I’m honored to have known you for my part
To laugh and cry, but most of all to learn
Your words as careful arrows pierced my heart
And in a pile there began to burn

Nowhere in the arc of your brief path
Were angels less than moved, and to applaud
For demons twisted, suff’ring in your wrath
This day delivered to the hands of God

Your Epic lies within the hearts of those
Whose lives you touched and spirits you composed

(And with that, I shall return to work...)

Out, brief candle...

I hear the news last night, oh boy. A great friend of mine from NYC, Rolf Schrieber, has passed away. Nearly 30 years on this planet, and I hadn't lost more than a distant relative or an acqauintence, and here we are. I knew I wanted to write about him today, but now that I'm here, I'm at a loss for words. Let's see if they come.
All right, something I always told him (him and maybe one other person at most) was that I wished I could bring him down here with me (this was when I realized I was moving to Atlanta a couple years back). I told him that several times. And I meant it. I wish I had him around more often. There has to be a cap on the amount of people you're likely to meet in your life that you sincerely want to stick in a suitcase and bring with you wherever you go. He was one of them.
Rolf was a poet. A great, classical poet, whose brilliant mind and romantic heart fused to create some of the best, most majestic language I've ever heard. And I HEARD it. Because he also had the most wonderful booming articulate voice when he read them. And he READ them. I ran an open mic in the East Village for a little over two years, and he was easily one of the founding fathers of that event. I pulled him down there whenever I could. He once told me I kept him writing. I was terribly flattered, but the truth is, something deep within him kept him writing. Whatever force keeps the Arthurian legends, which he loved, close to the heart, whatever energy keeps the ink on the epic events of the Bible's narratives wet, which he also loved, THAT is what kept him writing.
He was a gentlemen. A gentlemen's gentlemen. Hundreds of women walked home with roses because of him. He had a brilliant mind. He could tell anyone more about what they did than they could, and not with a trace of arrogance, just childlike joy at understanding things. He had immense physical challenges that plagued him from his youth, but never conquered his ability to feel for and care for others. He had a great, guttoral laugh, a hilarious dry wit, and an immediacy that, fortunately, allowed MANY people to feel they were great friends of his.
Okay, some stuff came out. This is good. At this point, I would like to put one of his poems in here, one he sent me a few short weeks before he died.

Brief Candle

How poor to be of flame that casts no light,
That brings no warmth or comfort to this earth
For fear it lacks the substance to ignite,
And starves for lack of purpose and of worth.
Stop brooding in your ashes, pining there
For some great day when you might strike a spark;
That day is now! Take heart and leap the air,
And light your quadrant of the lovelorn dark.
You know this world is cold and sad and craves
Encouragement from every dancing flame,
And always, it is lasting love that saves,
For hearts once lit by it can't stay the same.
For love is light, both warming and consuming,
And can burn forever more, without consuming

RES 2004

I am confident that the next time Rolf opens his eyes, he will be in a wonderful place, the place he has always wanted to be, and will waste no time in taking his own advice, doing something he was never really able to do while here: Leap the air!