Moving Time (Poem)

I'm playing catch-up with NaPoWriMo. The first prompt is to take the first line of a poem and make your own poem. I am taking the line of a poem I read recently by Charles Bukowski "a smile to remember" from the collection The Pleasures of the Damned.

we had goldfish and they circled around and around
that seemed to be all they did
were they really happy doing that?
how many people circle a place, really?
just staying in the same city, the same town, the same country
stuck in a rut and not knowing how to get out?
I feel trapped at times
by life, by circumstance, by fear
not wanting to move for fear
afraid that things would be different
that things would change if I moved
feeling a comfort for life that's brought on by complacent mediocrity
if it's true that wherever you go there you are
then maybe I should leave for leaving's sake
And find an absence of fear that's been here all along

(Sort of) Live blog of a viewing of Barbarella

My observations as I am watching the 1968 film Barbarella.

Spoilers if you haven’t seen Barbarella, but it’s been out for 40 years.

I'm about seven minutes in and she's been naked for most of it. Not complaining, mind you, just think it's odd. Note: Jane Fonda was pretty hot back then. Also, her spaceship is lined with shag carpeting.

Her outfits are all adorably campy.

15 minutes in and someone’s already tying her up.

And now she’s skiing on a sled of some kind being led by an ice manta ray or something? This is fun so far.

And the walking dolls are scaring the crap out of me.

The ships are pretty cool. P.s. She just had sex with a guy as payment for fixing her ship. Huh.

And now a blind angel. And the blind angel is leading them through anti-hell? That’s what this Labyrinth seems to be: anything not evil banished here.

Saving her life gets the angel sex. And he can fly after the sex, too.

She just told the blind angel to watch out.

A lot of the sets are pretty neat.

“A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.” I can’t make these up.

The Earth sex is…interesting. And pretty funny.

Also, her costume changes are built into the story. A scene I just watched had her ask Dildano (not making that up either) if he has an outfit she can change into. It seems the men are always the ones who provide her clothing after her first change.

Quotes here from IMDB:

Dildano: [radioing instructions to the rebel army] And our password will be... Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

Barbarella: You mean the secret password is Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch?

Dildano: Exactly.

Researching the film, I found out there was a remake in the works (to be directed by Robert Rodriguez) and starring Erica Durance (Lois Lane from Smallville). I’d watch the heck out of that. She’s actually pretty funny and appropriately hot, too, and Rodriguez knows how to make unapologetically gratuitous films.

The Excessive Machine is a good example of the gratuity I mention. The Concierge tries to torture her by overwhelming her with pleasure, but Barbarella breaks the machine with her overwhelming ability to endure pleasure. Huh.

“The nobility of pure evil…”

Chamber of dreams is pretty cool. And the bed the queen sleeps on is awesome. I totally want one.

The Black Knights are as about as intimidating as Stormtroopers, as in not at all.

Barabarella is reduced to watching the movie with us at this point.

Barbarella: “Pygar, why did you save her after all of the horrible things she’s done to you?”

Pygar: “An angel has no memory.”

And those are the last spoken words of the film. An odd little film, but very entertaining. I would watch it again, if just to figure out what the heck actually just happened. 

Seclusion: A Continually Elusive Desire

The noise bothers me still. These thin walls don't allow for much silence. The house seems made for eavesdropping. I need time and more time to read. I need to concentrate more. I would like to focus. I listen to music or Youtube videos to drown out the noises here. My father working from home, taking calls, doing his job from his basement. He gets offended, or lonely I guess, if you don't say something to him everyday. He says I'm withdrawing into myself and becoming distant. The closer truth is that I like being by myself more than around him at times. Withdrawing when conflict looms is not a weakness but a strength.

The coughs of these people, these smokers, still reach my ears. I'm not like them in that I don't smoke, or that I don't know my place. They have jobs and wives and ex-wives, things to do with their days to make ends meet. I'm just here for now, trying to figure out what I want to do. Sometimes it seems these people never have days off. My father is home a lot, but he complains that his job is so hard. I realize he may always be on call, but how hard can a job be that can be done from the garage of his own home?

He doesn't always stay here, but there are days he does. Days I'm off from school, I wish that no one were here. I just want a day to myself. I want a day to be able to think without all their voices and coughs and marital problems and grandkids. Should I have kids now? "Why aren't you married?," someone once asked me. I haven't met anyone willing to marry me who I would rather not just be alone than with them?

Talking still my father. He's solving problems from the basement. Good work if you can get it, I guess. Should I go to graduate school like I want or get a job like some people are telling me to do? The phone is charged. My remedial class phone is nice to stay in touch with people, though there are some I wish didn't have the number. I love texting. It seems so simple and is a nice way to stay in touch without having to talk on the phone. Talking is okay, but texting seems so simple.

Thank goodness, it sounds like a car is starting. Two are here still, but one less soon it seems.

...
Some have left now or are quiet. Another boarder remains: the cougher. He awakes and coughs. Cursing and mumbling to himself, he seems to hold conversations with people who aren't there. "Why doesn't he f-ing answer his phone?," he seems to say to no one in particular. Cursing and mumbling still, he trudges about the house, making more noise. I've manage to finish a bit of a book.

Reflections of Desired Solitude (Blog)

 I sit here on the couch, studying for school, just having listened to her confess, hearing the boarder in the other room, sounding like he's dying, coughing his head off. I can't escape the sounds of other people living here. I come in my room, and I can almost hear everything my Dad and his other friend and boarder are saying. I realize I have it good, but I'd like some solitude.

My dad plans his life financially around his friends living here. He buys as many lottery tickets as he wants. Buys whatever else he wants, because he has extra money, because the other people who live here pay most of his bills. Sure, they are slaves to his emotional will and are pretty much obligated to hang out with him; I kind of think that's why he keeps them around. My dad doesn't keep friends; they don't put up with the way he treats them unless they have to. He expects his friends to be a certain way. You want to tell him that nobody's perfect including himself and to get over it.

I know my friends aren't perfect. They don't approve of everything I do, or don't do; don't approve of the women I have crushes on or pine over. There aren't really that many of them, no matter what you say. Still, now, at 11pm I hear the sounds of someone moving in the other room. I think I'd just like to live on my own a while, or with people I chose to, anyway. This being stuck with a crew of my dad's cronies is becoming tiresome.

My dad lets me live here, pays for things for me, too, I realize. I just need a place that I can make a life that doesn't involve him as much. It's okay for him to be in my life, but I'm surrounded by him, by his friends, by the people he lets leach off him. The cougher I mention is not that bad; I'd almost say he was being taken advantage of more than he was a user. He pays way too much rent to live in a converted den. That's his business, though he does keep it like a pig sty. I went in there before, and there was literally a pile of trash on the bed. No exaggeration: a pile of actual trash on the bed. And his grooming habits leave something to be desired. Once or twice a week he showers, if we're lucky. 

Now the rain falls outside, hitting the window, and I start to get a little peace it seems. I've slept a lot int the middle of the day, and I may not sleep tonight. Snacking on individual packets of cookies, Pringles, Hawaiian Punch bottles. It's not a bad life I know, but I want more. I want to have a car and drive and take a girl to the movies, or better yet a bookstore or museum, not just shenanigans in the back of her friend's car. (Fun though that was.) 

I want to have my own place and be able to invite people over without having to worry about one of the boarders here walking around without a shirt on in just his boxers, chatting up the woman who's spending the night. Or having the cougher drool openly to see an attractive women half his age in the house. I want to be able to entertain on a Saturday night, or have the Super Bowl at my house and not worry about everyone here smoking and not being able to invite friends over who don't. 

Sitting here just short of midnight, reading literary theory. This is what I signed up for, and it's delightful. I really do think I want to go to graduate school. It's a bad reason if it's just because I like school, but maybe it will further my career. Some people say it won't, but how can it hurt. I just need to get the money together and apply and get the right tests taken. I know I'm smart enough and hard-working enough to do it.

Drinking Dr. Peppers, too, in vast quantities, to stay awake, and because they taste good. One of my first girlfriends liked them, too. She still talks to me, sweet girl that she is, sends me a text of "Happy New year" every year, when I have a phone. 

Myself Revisited (Poem)

Inspired by and while listening to Heart's "Alone."

I hear the ticking of the clock
I’m writing a poem for you in the dark

I wonder what you’re thinking about tonight
Don’t want to text you on the telephone.

And my life’s going by so slow

I hope it doesn’t end before I know myself.

‘Til now, I always got by being detached from myself.

I never really thought until I met you.

And now it chills me to the bone.

How do I reconcile my abstract concept of you with the reality?

You don’t know how long I have wished

That someone would think I was a decent and cool person (And then you did).

You don’t know how long I have waited

For someone who would listen to my song (It was probably an Elvis song).

But the secret is still my own (I don’t know what I’m doing.)
And my concept of you is still off the mark.

‘Til now I always got by thinking about myself as unworthy

I never really thought until you made me.

And now it chills me to the bone.

How do my thoughts of you reconvene into a semblance of realistic peace I once held for you?

A Good Day Disguised

On a bad day, on a really bad day

You may wish that it had never happened.

You may lament, you may regret.

"I wish this day had never happened;

I wish I hadn't said that."

Speaking in anger

Told him what you really think, not caring how much it would hurt him.

Messing up your friends' day, when you told him and her you were having a bad day

Bringing them down with you, the ones you told of your pain.

A horrible spiral of bad that wouldn't seem to end.

Also, pretending the world would end, if not just for fun.

Trying to cheer yourself up

Sending love her way.

Pretending you didn't mean what you said

When freed of the fear of caring what she thought

When really you meant it in every case.

At some points that day, it felt the sky was falling and things seemed grim,

But then you think of some good things that happened that day

Reconciliations long time coming

The emotions expressed at the end of the world.

Being wild and unruly is never a bad thing.

The laughs you had on the day you wish never happened

Would disappear, too, if those tears were gone.

You gave in to anger, and not a little, too,

But persevered and banished its influence.

Time it seems has healed the wound a bit

And morning brings the wisdom that even bad days can be good ones.

Speaking one's mind effectively

I will offer some thoughts here about speaking my mind, as it seems that's what you do when you write. I'm taking rhetorical theory this semester in school. It seems to be linked to seduction, in the sense that you are trying to change someone's mind, or alter their thinking, or maybe more specifically, align their own thought pattern s to match your own vibrations. I've read the book The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene and I've even read Neil Strauss' The Game by the Rolling Stone writer turned pick-up artist. I see a lot of rhetoric in their writing even. I took to Green's work more because he uses literary examples. (I've even read Tucker Max's book I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. Max seems pretty classless in his dealings with the opposite sex to me, but he is a good writer. I enjoyed his style at least. There were times when I read it that I didn't really like him, but I kept reading it. I'm digressing...)

The point I want to make about rhetoric involves speaking your mind. Our professor had a discussion one lecture about speaking your mind. She said that there are some people who watch everything they say, because they are concerned about what other people will think of them. As has been the case many times in the semester, I felt like she was speaking directly to me. (The other time was when she said that there are people who get by as English majors by being good writers and tricking a professor into thinking you know what you are writing about.) I am very much that person she described who was concerned about what everyone thinks, or at least I was.

In my personal dealing with people, I tend to over-think everything. I am that guy who is about to send you a message on Facebook, but looks it over before he sends it. Did I spell everything right? Would this joke offend you? How will you interpret that the wrong way? Will you like me less for expressing an opinion that you do not share? The truth of this equation is that people tend to like those individuals who speak their mind better than the ones who watch everything they say. Sure, you don't want to offend everyone, or anyone I suppose, if you can avoid it. But people are going to get offended. People are going to disagree with you. If a person likes you and agrees with you because you watch everything you say, is that person really your friend?

I have tried an experiment over the last few weeks on the recommendation of a friend. She advised me to speak my mind without filters to at least one person that week. I've tried it and I've tried it a few times more as the weeks have gone by. I've yet to have someone tell me they were offended by the specific times that I consciously tried to do this. I was very afraid every time I acted without filters, but it has become easier over time. And I feel so much better.

Speaking my mind to a few select people has been freeing in many ways. (This is not meant in the way of 'telling someone off' at all, only in expressing general opinions.) I like to think that I am an honest person, but maybe I was being more deceptive than I thought that I was being. Speech, and the power of speech, is most effective when it is not filtered. Certainly there are ways to manipulate it, there are ways to mold it, adapt it, and shape it to your purposes, but if you are afraid to say something, you limit yourself and your effectiveness to convince someone to think like you are thinking.

To use an example from popular culture, I give you Raj from Big Bang Theory. If you're not familiar with the television show, Raj has trouble speaking to beautiful women unless he is intoxicated, to the point that he can't say anything to one unless he is drunk. This is mainly because his filters are down when he's drinking. Now I have sent a drunken message or two before in my time. Though mine are never rude, I can come across as a little more forward than I would be if I had not had a few drinks. Why can we not choose to act more in touch with how we really feel without the influence of alcohol? Why am I more willing to tell you that you are one of the coolest women I've ever met when I haven't had five glasses of wine? Raj and I both need to tap into that primal feeling of speaking our minds without resorting to an altered state of consciousness. I feel I can carry a conversation with a beautiful woman without turning into a babbling, stuttering mass of sweaty insecurity (most of the time), but I would strive for a more forward demeanor in specific interactions that has been lacking in my conversations in the past.

This very blog was an attempt to speak my mind. I would like to say I don't care if I've offended anyone, but I would be lying. Take it as it is, friends, and practice speaking your mind, too.