My poetry received responses, usually rejections, with notes dashed across the page, or atop a line: "searing but unfocused," "radiant if schizophrenic," "apocalyptic without an apocalypse."I understood what THAT meant, for the most part, thanks to context clues.
It was like trying to reign back the temporary lapses in synaptic transmission in favor of some other kind of lapsing. Probably the kind of lapsing that produces a soundproof narrative instead of a handful of phrases that echo against the words of others before effervescing into thin air.
Nobody thinks they can love until they can't, when their heart is broken, and then they realize all their lives they've been loving and loving and loving this world and their families and the black night sky like a jeweler's velvet cloth.Which are beautiful, thought provoking and not overbearing. The last line of the paragraph is also particularly strong.
and if it seems like a stream of consciousness, it's been polluted by my body.This is true.
The moments of transference from my body to theirs, when the story is on their screen or in their shopping bag and yet to be read, is when it finally exists by itself.
My poetry received responses, usually rejections, with notes dashed across the page, [no comma] or atop a line: "searing but unfocused," "radiant if schizophrenic," [and/or] "apocalyptic without an apocalypse."
The comments were, in general, a note that I should concentrate and redouble my efforts at cohesion, and then resubmit them for another read a few months later.
I tried to assimilate them in my practice—the procedure of erecting white space in mourning over the black specks along its flanks in such a way that the mourning weren't also a celebration—but nothing seemed to work.
It was like a dialectic of light and dark, [no comma] so that as soon as I moved towards one, I sacrificed the other.
], but so that is treated like because or since. It gets no comma unless it's phrase is at the beginning of the sentence. In this case, it would make no sense to put the so that phrase in the beginning of the sentence, so just take out the comma. 
[s]Some times[/s] Sometimes it's so thick[,] I can feel myself choking on the dehumidified voices from the past: Hegel, Lorca, Auden, [and/or] Eliot.
Thankfully, I was reborn into this as well: a would-be world where threats hold as much -- if not more -- weight than actions...
Again, I think this is just a small rant [for lack of a better word] branched from the last sentence of the previous paragraph [which I wasn't too fond of either]. It's advice some people should take more time to consider: [semi instead?] after all, [s]a[/s] we only know a thing works when it fails.
Nobody thinks they can love until they can't, [dash instead] when their heart is broken, [dash instead] and then they realize [that] all their lives, they've been loving and loving and loving this world and their families and the black night sky like a jeweler's velvet cloth.
We move from one place to the next, looking for what we don't have, [s]and are[/s] only faintly aware that our searching is the object of our search.
The reader can relate to what you're saying. We say, "Oh, yeah! That's so true!" This is an improvement. Every once in a while, I will rise in the morning and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and I won't recognize myself, so maybe we don't even friend our own bodies.
[That was actually this morning, [no comma] after it had stormed all night.
There is no way of perceiving me in the alethosphere—that area between outer space and atmosphere where sound waves and light can still transpire, and things are recorded for someone's viewing pleasure; earthly life, TiVoed by the sky—but that's okay, [no comma] for the most part.
There goes the humidity.]. [no period]
It was actually this morning that I picked up the phone before it ought to ring, [no comma] which I should have known meant something bad.
If there's a way to not have the brackets take up the entire paragraph, it would be awesome-possum. I wouldn't have stumbled in my sleepy stupor to its obnoxious chirping, but eventually, though. [dash instead] Eventually I would have picked up after bracing myself, after preparing myself for the acid of emptiness that would cauterize my stomach.
I could have eviscerated myself and made a few bucks on the black market. [semi instead?] But I don't believe in signs, and I did answer.
Your choice, though. ^_^When we hung up, the dialectic switched on me, [no comma] without my knowing, [no comma] until I drove my shin into the coffee table.
Not physically, necessarily, but psychically I shift gears as often as my mind will allow:
Ignore this comment; it is no correction whatsoever. xDMy body which, unlike my mind, is not an amalgam of free associations of particles pushed endlessly towards the salt point—where fresh water becomes salty, where the ocean begins and the river ends, and where neither exist for very long.
Good comeback. But despite that, I curled up against the sheets, feeling smaller than before, and closed my eyes, which quickly became an arduous task.
The weight that had rested upon them before was suddenly gone, and holding them down was a miracle in itself.
Your new friends are your colleagues, and more than any personal affections are your professional ones.
Reader, you must know that in that pre-dawn twilight, there was lightning in my stomach...
[That was actually this morning, after it had stormed all night. I pretended not to notice my slight start at seeing another person in the mirror, and I realized my body is always smaller than I imagine it in my head. Compared to the buildings of the city, the baobabs, the music on the radio, I am almost a sleight of light, a trick of perception. There is no way of perceiving me in the alethosphere—that area between outer space and atmosphere where sound waves and light can still transpire, and things are recorded for someone's viewing pleasure; earthly life, TiVoed by the sky—but that's okay, for the most part. Not being perceived means you are not really reading this, which means I'm not writing this; I'm breathing it. There goes the humidity].
It was actually this morning that I picked up the phone before it ought to ring, which I should have known meant something bad.
Incandescence wrote:My poetry received responses, usually rejections, with notes dashed across the page, or atop a line: "searing but unfocused," "radiant if schizophrenic," "apocalyptic without an apocalypse." The comments were in general a note that I should concentrate and redouble my efforts at cohesion, and then resubmit them for another read a few months later. I tried to assimilate them in my practice—the procedure of erecting white space in mourning over the black specks along its flanks in such a way that the mourning weren't also a celebration—but nothing seemed to work. It was like a dialectic of light and dark, so that as soon as I moved towards one, I sacrificed the other. It was like trying to reign back the temporary lapses in synaptic transmission in favor of some other kind of lapsing. Probably the kind of lapsing that produces a soundproof narrative instead of a handful of phrases that echo against the words of others before effervescing into thin air.
**Very colorful. I love how this begins. Understandable and yet full and wordy, in a good way mind you. I loved the very last sentence, but mostly when you said "It was like a dialect of light and dark...."
But then, the air is never really thin here. Some times it's so thick I can feel myself choking on the dehumidified voices from the past: Hegel, Lorca, Auden, Eliot. Some times it's so thick with the sweat of my body and my own idle warmth. Most times it rains before I die, and I can feel the voices and sweat and humidity being pummeled to the soft ground. I am even deaf to those voices that cry out. I thank the liquid bullets that drop from the atmosphere and dissolve upon impact for that. I thank the foundation that supports the storm clouds and purports to bring them here. Thank you, Cherokees. Thank you, Paparuda and Perperuna. Thanks to you, I have only died twice in my life to be reborn as a poet, as this poet. A would-be poet, to be exact. Like our would-be war and our would-be marriages and our would-be families. Thankfully, I was reborn into this as well: a would-be world where threats hold as much if not more weight than actions, where words bear the responsibility of meaning, where language is not just a medium but a message as well.
**Just as colorful. It would be overstimulating to have all of these analogies and metaphors and all over vibrant language...but for some reason it isn't here. I think it's because you narrator is so crazy that it makes it okay? I'm not sure.
My body knows all this, too. It realizes it is both an artifice for life and life itself, and the autonomy scares it. It wishes to be an aphorism or a baobab with a little prince to pull it by the roots. I prefer Beckett's response: No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. It's advice some people should take more time to consider: after all, a we only know a thing works when it fails. Like our hearts, like our bodies. Nobody thinks they can love until they can't, when their heart is broken, and then they realize all their lives they've been loving and loving and loving this world and their families and the black night sky like a jeweler's velvet cloth. The seconds before and behind us; the seconds we take after dinner to get seconds. All of it moves through me. I am a temporary interruption of service, a broken phone line that stretches to connect here to there. It's okay. I'm not alone in my indeterminacy. Thankfully the entire twenty-first century is filled with ghosts like me. We move from one place to the next looking for what we don't have and are only faintly aware that our searching is the object of our search. Nobody even needs to leave the comfort of their homes anymore. I can search the globe in a few minutes on my computer; I can find someone to love me through a website. I can find a best friend and presence is irrelevant. I suppose that's the truth of it all along, though. We don't friend bodies.
**" It's advice some people should take more time to consider: after all, a we only know a thing works when it fails. Like our hearts, like our bodies." I like this line. It makes so much sense. I didn't get it until I read it the second time but, it really is completely true. The ummm....what was I going to say, oh the "a" before the word "we" doesn't belong there I don't think. That was the only error I found in the whole thing. Also, just a thought here, the narrator seems...otherworldly? Not really out of this world but I guess just out of our general mindset and moreso superhuman? I'm guessing this is where the schizoprenia comes in to play. I guess I'm just catching how he talks about himself.
Every once in a while, I will rise in the morning and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and I won't recognize myself, so maybe we don't even friend our own bodies. [That was actually this morning, after it had stormed all night. I pretended not to notice my slight start at seeing another person in the mirror, and I realized my body is always smaller than I imagine it in my head. Compared to the buildings of the city, the baobabs, the music on the radio, I am almost a sleight of light, a trick of perception. There is no way of perceiving me in the alethosphere—that area between outer space and atmosphere where sound waves and light can still transpire, and things are recorded for someone's viewing pleasure; earthly life, TiVoed by the sky—but that's okay, for the most part. Not being perceived means you are not really reading this, which means I'm not writing this; I'm breathing it. There goes the humidity]. It was actually this morning that I picked up the phone before it ought to ring, which I should have known meant something bad.
**My favorite paragraph. I was sitting here thinking for a while, not because I didn't get it but because this brings up a lot of good points. Though, when the narrator is talking about his reflection, is he saying all of this metaphorically or literally? It's a little hard tryhing to defuse the two when the language is so sparkly
If I believed in signs, I wouldn't have answered it. I would have buried my head under pillows and blankets until I couldn't hear it or the voices or the rain. I wouldn't have stumbled in my sleepy stupor to its obnoxious chirping, but eventually, though. Eventually I would have picked up after bracing myself, after preparing myself for the acid of emptiness that would cauterize my stomach. I could have eviscerated myself and made a few bucks on the black market. But I don't believe in signs, and I did answer. As soon as I heard her voice, I knew the words it was carrying. I didn't have to understand every thing she said to hate her. Suddenly, she was not my friend of seven years; her voice was not familiar or loving, but atonal, artificially buoyed by her fatalism for my sake, and insubstantial. It was a thin cover for the raw, animalistic, scathed-by-loss voice people should have. When we hung up, the dialectic switched on me, without my knowing, until I drove my shin into the coffee table. That's what the dialectic was good for: reminding me that I am neither light nor dark but an object in their struggle, a word in a language I don't know.
**I am so incredibly curious about this conversation it kills me 0.0. I want to know what happened toooooo. Tell him to share.
Maybe if I believed in myself more, I would fling myself less to the moment and concern myself less with untoward activities like dialectics. [What, if anything, did Hegel really accomplish besides provoking two centuries of quibbling gentlemen?]. But I don't have content enough in myself for waiting—not even for idling—as Nietzsche would say. So I move around constantly. Not physically, necessarily, but psychically I shift gears as often as my mind will allow: focusing like this for so long, to say so much and so little, is uncommon. I jump from one place to the next without realizing I've made a leap, and if it seems like a stream of consciousness, it's been polluted by my body. My body which, unlike my mind, is not an amalgam of free associations of particles pushed endlessly towards the salt point—where fresh water becomes salty, where the ocean begins and the river ends, and where neither exist for very long. If my writing (or breathing, as it were) is to liberate itself from the weight of my life and my body, then that liberation can only happen with a reader, to whom the story will attach itself forever. The moments of transference from my body to theirs, when the story is on their screen or in their shopping bag and yet to be read, is when it finally exists by itself. That freedom I rank as a miracle in the order of things.
**There was so much I liked out of this paragraph I couldn't list it all.
I wasn't sure what to do afterwards: if I should get my shoes or try returning to sleep. In some sense, I knew before I tried that sleep was no option; it was the way a static charge sat between my mouth and my heart and made my breathing tingle that I should have taken as indicative of my dilemma. But despite that, I curled up against the sheets feeling smaller than before and closed my eyes, which quickly became an arduous task. The weight that had rested upon them before was suddenly gone and holding them down was a miracle in itself. What they sought to see in the darkness of my bedroom, I'll never know. Perhaps they were waiting for him to come through the door, to stumble in and laugh, to signal the incredulity of the whole thing. [Perhaps I should have believed in signs]. It wasn't until I heard the voice of Lorca, or what I imagined Lorca's English voice to be, that I rose from the bed and moved to the living room. It said, "Mother of God, how the street lamp faintly flickered!" and I thought of him. I thought what a strange and exciting thing it must have been to be so genuine and loving as to be a part of the world of light and dark and to understand it, however faint, however flickering. And then I thought of myself, and how without him, I would never see the same again. The world would always be a little darker; my vision would always be a little narrower than before.
**...So...gah I'm insanely curious. I know what I think...but I'll save that for after I find out a little more.
While I know there are men and women out there who shine just as much, I also know it wouldn't work. You see, after a certain age, you have to live with the friends you've made. After that age, which might really be the transition to adulthood, you never make friends the same way. Your new friends are your colleagues, and more than any personal affections are your professional ones. You forget that friendship is more resilient than love because friendship also liberates the body and its actions from our persons, whereas love is such a strong current towards the body. A man can drown in love or be carried far from his home. A friend requires only that you keep in touch and, from time to time, send your love.
**So very true. I guess...well it's almost slightly depressing but, true.
Reader, you must know that in that pre-dawn twilight there was lightning in my stomach as I stood at the window and listened to the lowing train in the distance, the sound like an old dragon just awaking. Reader, you must know that what follows follows only out of fear. Fear for myself, and fear that I will always be a shade or shadow in someone else's dialectic. I wish to acknowledge my reader for his kind support in setting me free. I wish to acknowledge the blood in the kitchen sink as something greater than depression and loneliness. I wish the events that followed were only a fiction.
**Blood...in the kitchen sink...so...I'm connecting things that are perhaps a trap to look too closely at. I need to just read the next one, yes? So...I want the next one.
Keep writing!
~Rieda
Every once in a while, I will rise in the morning and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and I won't recognize myself, so maybe we don't even befriend our own bodies. [That was actually this morning, after it had stormed all night. I pretended not to notice my slight start at seeing another person in the mirror, and I realized my body is always smaller than I imagine it in my head. Compared to the buildings of the city, the baobabs, the music on the radio, I am almost a sleight of light, a trick of perception. There is no way of perceiving me in the alethosphere—that area between outer space and atmosphere where sound waves and light can still transpire, and things are recorded for someone's viewing pleasure; earthly life, TiVoed by the sky—but that's okay, for the most part. Not being perceived means you are not really reading this, which means I'm not writing this; I'm breathing it. There goes the humidity]. It was actually this morning that I picked up the phone before it ought to ring, which I should have known meant something bad.
If I believed in signs, I wouldn't have answered it. I would have buried my head under pillows and blankets until I couldn't hear it or the voices or the rain. I wouldn't have stumbled in my sleepy stupor to its obnoxious chirping, but eventually, though. Eventually I would have picked up after bracing myself, after preparing myself for the acid of emptiness that would cauterize my stomach. I could have eviscerated myself and made a few bucks on the black market. But I don't believe in signs, and I did answer. As soon as I heard her voice, I knew the words it was carrying. I didn't have to understand every thing she said to hate her. Suddenly, she was not my friend of seven years; her voice was not familiar or loving, but atonal, artificially buoyed by her fatalism for my sake, and insubstantial. It was a thin cover for the raw, animalistic, scathed-by-loss voice people should have. When we hung up, the dialectic switched on me, without my knowing, until I drove my shin into the coffee table. That's what the dialectic was good for: reminding me that I am neither light nor dark but an object in their struggle, a word in a language I don't know.
I wasn't sure what to do afterwards: if I should get my shoes or try returning to sleep. In some sense, I knew before I tried that sleep was no option; it was the way a static charge sat between my mouth and my heart and made my breathing tingle that I should have taken as indicative of my dilemma. But despite that, I curled up against the sheets feeling smaller than before and closed my eyes, which quickly became an arduous task. The weight that had rested upon them before was suddenly gone and holding them down was a miracle in itself. What they sought to see in the darkness of my bedroom, I'll never know. Perhaps they were waiting for him to come through the door, to stumble in and laugh, to signal the incredulity of the whole thing. [Perhaps I should have believed in signs]. It wasn't until I heard the voice of Lorca, or what I imagined Lorca's English voice to be, that I rose from the bed and moved to the living room. It said, "Mother of God, how the street lamp faintly flickered!" and I thought of him. I thought what a strange and exciting thing it must have been to be so genuine and loving as to be a part of the world of light and dark and to understand it, however faint, however flickering. And then I thought of myself, and how without him, I would never see the same again. The world would always be a little darker; my vision would always be a little narrower than before.
Not physically, necessarily, but psychically I shift gears as often as my mind will allow: focusing like this for so long, to say so much and so little, is uncommon.
I tried to assimilate them in my practice—the procedure of erecting white space in mourning over the black specks along its flanks in such a way that the mourning weren't also a celebration—but nothing seemed to work.
Every once in a while, I will rise in the morning and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and I won't recognize myself, so maybe we don't even friend our own bodies. [That was actually this morning, after it had stormed all night. I pretended not to notice my slight start at seeing another person in the mirror, and I realized my body is always smaller than I imagine it in my head. Compared to the buildings of the city, the baobabs, the music on the radio, I am almost a sleight of light, a trick of perception. There is no way of perceiving me in the alethosphere—that area between outer space and atmosphere where sound waves and light can still transpire, and things are recorded for someone's viewing pleasure; earthly life, TiVoed by the sky—but that's okay, for the most part. Not being perceived means you are not really reading this, which means I'm not writing this; I'm breathing it. There goes the humidity]. It was actually this morning that I picked up the phone before it ought to ring, which I should have known meant something bad.
My poetry received responses, usually rejections, with notes dashed across the page, or atop a line: "searing but unfocused," "radiant if schizophrenic," "apocalyptic without an apocalypse."
I wouldn't have stumbled in my sleepy stupor to its obnoxious chirping, but eventually, though. Eventually I would have picked up after bracing myself, after preparing myself for the acid of emptiness that would cauterize my stomach.
[What, if anything, did Hegel really accomplish besides provoking two centuries of quibbling gentlemen?]
Not physically, necessarily, but psychically I shift gears as often as my mind will allow
My body which, unlike my mind, is not an amalgam of free associations of particles pushed endlessly towards the salt point—where fresh water becomes salty, where the ocean begins and the river ends, and where neither exist for very long.
If my writing (or breathing, as it were) is to liberate itself from the weight of my life and my body, then that liberation can only happen with a reader, to whom the story will attach itself forever.
seemed far more vulnerable and it was kinda shocking at first and sudden. I didn't dexpect it. First he's this man that's ontop of his language, seems to have an unflawed(or possibly very flawed) view of the world about him and then, he just shut down and the stronger character was Tyler and he didn't come off as "special" I'll say, like your main character. He just seemed so ordinary next to him and so real, making the narrator seem almost...I don't know, crazy isn't the word to describe him, he's just twitchy and different and interesting... Maybe even broken, it's just coming to mind that since he DOES know so much about things, he's lacking in other areas and needs a counterpart *cough* schizophrenia*cough* And I didn't really understand Marie but...I liked how she was described.
I had never truly lost anyone close before.
The sonnet is also a loss, though one we've come to appreciate, which is a shame: its violence goes without note because it is a violence of form and not a violence of function. When forms exhibit violence, we ignore them and look to their function. When states engage in war, they make no topography of desire or offense and, in so doing, retain their ability to quit at any time, to concede, to treatize, to conquer. As if any man can control the forms of geography.
I looked to the ceiling made of glass—glass which, through the 19th century, developed architecturally as a significant material. Despite this development, it was not until the following century that the social demand for it would meet its ability. Today, it is still considered a material with strong associative ties to utopia, to utopian societies, which is why its primary use is in places like this: as fascia fashioned to the roof of a mall, a restaurant, airports, train stations, skyscrapers. It is always omnipresent in places of a transitory nature where the only thing stationary is the structure itself.
In the same way a dog can be trained to find a small child by smell—the eyes are unnecessary, what must be trusted is the invisible. On the other other hand, which also holds my Bible, perhaps I heard her because her voice was forever scratched into my eardrum.
You're not OK.
It's good that I feel emotion for him, but grah. You're good in a cruel way. I had started off so happy, but now I feel bad for him. It was interesting reading the things about the readers. That was really interesting. But poor guy.
125,029 Literary Works • 672,785 Reviews
