The Dude who forgot his coffee

He sat and typed

focused, unlike me,

on a little squashed

computer

He waited in line

pondered, then spent

4 bucks and a dime

worth every cent

cappuccino

now it sits and cools

foam bubbles pop

he searches office tools

listing numbers, stop

calculating

A sudden thought!

he looks up and coughs,

My coffee is hot!

he reaches and gingerly sips

Satisfaction

love?

The other day I was questioning something. Is love a constant process of hurting? Is it in the nature of love to feel torment? A favorite song of mine ends "Love's an excuse to get hurt, And to hurt, Do you like to hurt? I do, I do Then hurt me". It isn't until now that I am realizing how true that seems to be. No, I am not in an emotionally or physically abusive relationship, yet love seems to be my great delight and torment.

Rilke wrote a poem titled "Love Song" that seems to capture the delight and torment I now relate to love.

Love Song
How shall I hold on to my soul, so that
it does not touch yours? How shall I lift
it gently up over you on to other things?
I would so very much like to tuck it away
among long lost objects in the dark
in some quiet unknown place, somewhere
which remains motionless when your depths resound.
And yet everything which touches us, you and me,
takes us together like a single bow,
drawing out from two strings but one voice.
On which instrument are we strung?
And which violinist holds us in the hand?
O sweetest of songs.
Rainer Maria Rilke
New Poems: c. 1907

Rilke starts this poem with the imagery of two souls - two infinite beings- each holding him/her self so that they do not rest on the other and move beyond - lift up - to higher individual "other" things.

This self inflicted demand, he then follows by saying is counter to desire: "I would so very much like to tuck it away among long lost objects in the dark in some quiet unknown place, somewhere which remains motionless when your depths resound". His soul does not want to move beyond, it does not want to lift up gently above this other soul, it wants to find a home where it is not conscious of the movement of this other being. This is the torment of love. This is where the demand of love, to be loving (in the most radical and rarely understood sense of the term) and move above is necessary to stop the desire to pull away or break off and feel the release of the dark alone. This is torment.

Continuing in his work Rilke captures the great delight of love, the oneness which is felt by the harmonization of two separate strings which form together a united being. The infinite space between two lovers, the god-like being which is formed between the love of two people this is the sound, the chord that is played/created when is aroused.

At the base of all of this delight in the deepest fear of love, is the question of its absurdity. People in love play the "what if" game* to understand and embrace the absurdity of love, yet the question still exists. Why is it that these feeling exists, what is it that makes two people feel this way? Or, as Rilke worded it, "On which instrument are we strung? And which violinist holds us in the hand?"

In another of his poems (Phallic Poem VI) he continues this question:

To what are we near? To death, or that display

Which is not yet? For what would be clay to clay

Had not the god feelingly formed the figure

Which grows between us.

To answer the question of the absurd is to turn to, what for many, is the most extreme absurdity - a belief in God. Rilke was not a religious man, yet to understand how love exists pushed him to God.So yes, love hurts yet if we hold to love as what is best in us and makes us more than clay we can succeed in love.

*as in "what if I had not gone to this school" or "what if I had not gotten on that train" etc

The end of Sunflower Sutra by Allen Ginsberg

We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread

bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all

beautiful golden sunflowers inside, we're blessed 

by our own seed & golden hairy naked

accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black

formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our

eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotice

riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening

sitdown vision.

Allen Ginsberg 

Berkeley, 1955

Masculinity

"Why my dear, he is not good looking at all, but extremely masculine." (The Fountainhead)

Masculinity is the most attractive characteristic that a man can have. This is extremely obvious yet society does not actually understand what true masculinity is.

Masculinity is not something I can outline for you. It is not external, it is not purely chivalry and importantly it is not disposable, thus it can not be material even just material expression of chivalry. It is not pretty language, it is not rough language, more than anything I believe masculinity is sincerity. Sincerity does not come from an acceptance of "who you are" by what you conform to. It is not an identity that just "goes with the flow", it is something that is cherished and searched out and chiseled and formed by an identity that knows not who he is but knows to discover who he is. Life is not in the being, it is in the becoming - in the projecting of who you are in every moment.

One of the most masculine men I know is a paraplegic over his healthy BMI yet someone who demanded respect with the atmosphere which his identity brought to every situation - an atmosphere of searching. He has humbly embraced his identity as a thinker, because living in the realm of the mind requires nothing more or less than humility. He did not appear to me for an instant as his body, his freedom was absolute because he was sincere in all that he said, and honest to all of his thoughts demanding them to be the highest quality. This man is, honestly, one of the most attractive men I have met.

"Why my dear, he is not good looking at all, but extremely masculine."

Letters to my classmates #4

Dear Blond Blond Girl,

You are very pretty and have fantastic style.  I loved your brown Dior purse in the fall and now, with the new cold winter season, the arrival of your new designer black leather bag fills me with envy.  I peer at it every day in class trying to figure out who makes it but alas, the angle is never quite right... So I sit in anticipation for the moment when you reveal the beautiful designer who sculpted your gorgeous purse.  I love the gold hardware and the soft muted leather finish.  I imagine if I am ever close enough to it then I would smell the cool musk of expertly worked leather that identifies it as a truly worthy bag.

Okay, now I hate to turn to more negative things after admiring such a beautiful bag, but yet I just have to ask... What possessed you to mutilate your hair like that!??

Darling, judging by your eyebrows either you are a natural blond, or you go all the way with your dye job and got your eyebrows done to complete the golden facade. So please, explain to me-- WHY have you bleached a platinum cap onto the top half of your beautiful banana blond head??  The yellowy waves which fall over your shoulders are expertly ironed, so clearly you have some skills in the grooming department.  So again, why is your skull area practically white?  Did your hairdresser go crazy when touching up your roots?  Or was this an intentional diversion from consistency?  I think I would understand better if you had various blond highlights, but this is almost a straight line dividing your two shades of blond.

Perhaps this is a new high class fashion that my lowly brunette head hasn't been privy too. Or maybe it is a blonds only style... I cant imagine a ginger dumping a cup of bleach on her skull, why would you?

well, until next time BBG-

-Plain Jane Brunette who stole your purse