Just a heads-up

I am considering changing the name of the blog, mainly because I've been feeling like it is a bit of an impediment, and not entirely reflective of my blogging goals, whatever they may be. When (or if) I decide on a new name, I'll be sure to announce it. That is all.

Complementarity Pt. 9

Whose voices are these rising from the sea?

Are they refractions of the words we throw?

Are they new voices from new horizons?

Are they ancient sunken kingdoms?

Whose voice is this, coming forth without accent?

Is it an émigré who sings in this catholic timbre?

A new savage with utterly new eyes?

Is it an unsuspected familiar?

Knowing notes which were not learned in classrooms?

Whoever he is, he is loved briefly

All men take him into themselves

Even you let his spirit wash you

You welcome him from his curious journey

And hope for his tales to impart society to you

This voice is the same with which I at times speak

Not American, not of Niger, not of Samarkand

  of the universe, of real

Some school stuff

I just started the final semester of my juco career,(did I mention that I’m going to UC Berkeley next spring? I should have taped the dance I did when I found out, it was epic). As such I am tempted to post a few of the tiny little things of which I am reminded every time a new school year begins:

• Riding the bus sucks: In high school, I never rode the school bus to school, because I didn’t live in my district. I rode public transit every day which was easily the most terrifying thing about high school for me. At any moment, a fight could break out in the back, (or the front), a mentally handicapped person could try to hit on you (true story), some random person could ask you to sing (also a true story), or various other odd occurrences, which would be funny if they weren’t happening to you. Anyway, as an older, taller, more sarcastic person than I was in high school, the bus still sucks, but for different reasons. Mainly now that I’m in my 20’s and trying to be a responsible adult, my problem is teenagers, and the fact that kids today are just idiots. Now I should probably qualify that by saying that I know quite a few teenagers who are pretty smart, respectful individuals, but they are definitely the minority, and now that I’m not one I just wish that they would stop being so obnoxious. They talk too loud, don’t have any self-awareness, and seem obsessed with writing on the bus(seriously?! no one knows who you are, nor will they care that you were at some point on this bus, if nothing else this should serve as a sad reminder that the youth of today are our future)
• People at the juco level just don’t care: Sadly I’m not just talking about the teenagers, who clearly don’t care, or they would probably be at a four year institution. I’m also talking about the adults, both those of us in our 20’s who haven’t finished and those who for whatever reason have decided to come back to school, though the system is decidedly worse than it was when they were school-aged. Anyway, it strikes me that these people should definitely be attentive, since they have less aptitude for learning new things (that’s just science) and yet without fail, there is a whole row of people of all ages that insists on showing up late for no good reason, and either having full-volume conversations during lectures, or monopolizing the class time with a series of mind-bogglingly stupid/ irrelevant questions. I hope desperately that this spring will bring a different experience for me, but I doubt that more each day.

Seriously, why even show up?

• School Sucks: Not the idea of it, but the current system is absolutely useless. I know it seems odd that I say this despite wanting to be a teacher, but I firmly believe that the problem is not insurmountable, it just takes good teachers. However I’m not going to get all preachy on this one, as I’ve clearly done that above. Instead, I’ll let someone else do it…

Overall, I think that that’s mostly what I’ve been reminded of over the past week, although I’m sure I’ll have more to say at some other time.

Pretty true, so I’ll share with you

A professor at UC Berkeley (Go Bears!!) gave the following letter to his students. I think it’s a brilliant example of social responsibility, and I totally want to take a class from this guy now:

Welcome to Berkeley, probably still the best public university in the world. Meet your classmates, the best group of partners you can find anywhere.  The percentages for grades on exams, papers, etc. in my courses always add up to 110% because that’s what I’ve learned to expect from you, over twenty years in the best job in the world.

That’s the good news.  The bad news is that you have been the victims of a terrible swindle, denied an inheritance you deserve by contract and by your merits.  And you aren’t the only ones; victims of this ripoff include the students who were on your left and on your right in high school but didn’t get into Cal, a whole generation stiffed by mine.  This letter is an apology, and more usefully, perhaps a signal to start demanding what’s been taken from you so you can pass it on with interest.

Swindle–what happened? Well, before you were born, Californians now dead or in nursing homes made a remarkable deal with the future.  (Not from California? Keep reading, lots of this applies to you, with variations.) They agreed to invest money they could have spent on bigger houses, vacations, clothes, and cars into the world’s greatest educational system, and into building and operating water systems, roads, parks, and other public facilities, an infrastructure that was the envy of the world. They didn’t get everything right: too much highway and not enough public transportation. But they did a pretty good job.

Young people who enjoyed these ‘loans’ grew up smarter, healthier, and richer than they otherwise would have, and understood that they were supposed to “pay it forward” to future generations, for example by keeping the educational system staffed with lots of dedicated, well-trained teachers, in good buildings and in small classes, with college counselors and up-to-date books.  California schools had physical education, art for everyone, music and theater, buildings that looked as though people cared about them, modern languages and ancient languages, advanced science courses with labs where the equipment worked, and more. They were the envy of the world, and they paid off better than Microsoft stock. Same with our parks, coastal zone protection, and social services.

This deal held until about thirty years ago, when for a variety of reasons, California voters realized that while they had done very well from the existing contract, they could do even better by walking away from their obligations and spending what they had inherited on themselves.  “My kids are finished with school; why should I pay taxes for someone else’s?  Posterity never did anything for me!”  An army of fake ‘leaders’ sprang up to pull the moral and fiscal wool over their eyes, and again and again, your parents and their parents lashed out at government (as though there were something else that could replace it) with tax limits, term limits, safe districts, throw-away-the-key imprisonment no matter the cost, smoke-and-mirrors budgeting, and a rule never to use the words taxes and services in the same paragraph.

Now, your infrastructure is falling to pieces under your feet, and as citizens you are responsible for crudities like closing parks, and inhumanities like closing battered women’s shelters. It’s outrageous, inexcusable, that you can’t get into the courses you need, but much worse that Oakland police have stopped taking 911 calls for burglaries and runaway children. If you read what your elected officials say about the state today, you’ll see things like “California can’t afford” this or that basic government function, and that “we need to make hard choices” to shut down one or another public service, or starve it even more (like your university). Can’t afford? The budget deficit that’s paralyzing Sacramento is about $500 per person; add another $500 to get back to a public sector we don’t have to be ashamed of, and our average income is almost forty times that.  Of course we can afford a government that actually works: the fact is that your parents have simply chosen not to have it.

I’m writing this to you because you are the victims of this enormous cheat (though your children will be even worse off if you don’t take charge of this ship and steer it). Your education was trashed as California fell to the bottom of US states in school spending, and the art classes, AP courses, physical education, working toilets, and teaching generally went by the board. Every year I come upon more and more of you who have obviously never had the chance to learn to write plain, clear, English.  Every year, fewer and fewer of you read newspapers, speak a foreign language, understand the basics of how government and business actually work, or have the energy to push back intellectually against me or against each other. Or know enough about history, literature, and science to do it effectively!  You spent your school years with teachers paid less and less, trained worse and worse, loaded up with more and more mindless administrative duties, and given less and less real support from administrators and staff.

Many of your parents took a hike as well, somehow getting the idea that the schools had taken over their duties to keep you learning, or so beat-up working two jobs each and commuting two hours a day to put food on the table that they couldn’t be there for you. A quarter of your classmates didn’t finish high school, discouraged and defeated; but they didn’t leave the planet, even if you don’t run into them in the gated community you will be tempted to hide out in.  They have to eat just like you, and they aren’t equipped to do their share of the work, so you will have to support them.

You need to have a very tough talk with your parents, who are still voting; you can’t save your children by yourselves.  Equally important, you need to start talking to each other.  It’s not fair, and you have every reason (except a good one) to keep what you can for yourselves with another couple of decades of mean-spirited tax-cutting and public sector decline. You’re my heroes just for surviving what we put you through and making it into my classroom, but I’m asking for more: you can be better than my generation. Take back your state for your kids and start the contract again.  There are lots of places you can start, for example, building a transportation system that won’t enslave you for two decades as their chauffeur, instead of raising fares and cutting routes in a deadly helix of mediocrity.  Lots. Get to work.  See you in class!

I got this here, and I think he’s right about the onus now being on our generation to change the sorry state of California (and everywhere else). what do you think?

Complementarity Pt. 8

I am far from you
And am fully contained
Somewhere in the periphery of your heart
 
Under the sea, life whirls
In the calming algae blue
I know the fishes here and there, I know them all
They began long hours before the sunrise
They struggle like you in the ever-illuminated sea
The sea which is always dark and filled with weight
The weight gives me form and flesh
The weight of the hammerhead smashing its meal
On the abyssal plain
Or of the brain coral slowly building from the detritus
Of the rich sea
 
Each man dying on the lips
Of his erstwhile friends
Loses first this weight of the waters
Then his own name
Then is no more found in heaven
And is at last banished from the heart of his loved on earth
 
You have walked under the sea with me
You have known what is my volume here
Perhaps this then will make me lasting as I die
As I continue to live
I am under the spell of this!
As the sunrise over the sea
 
And where have you learned to speak of death?
And where have you reckoned the end of things to come‽
How sudden and how far off‽
Do not equivocate the miles under the sea
For days or years, they are instant
At once alive and sustaining
At once murderous and inert

How to be Alone

I generally don’t plan on posting other people’s poems on here, but I couldn’t resist this awesome video from Tanya Davis. I love that the rhyme scheme is sneaky like an Eliot poem

Perspective

It is rapidly
occurring to me that I
am quite far from old

Patmos

Summer crept away quietly,

as though it had another engagement

I had forbidden it.

 

 

Autumn opens its mouth,

blinking its expressive eyes,

and I begin to court it slowly

to draw it out of its guarded hours.

 

Now begins the patient continuance

the waiting in shadows

and adjustment of myself

in syllabic mirrors.

Now the peeling away of self

the apocalypse of one’s own soul

begins. As though the rest had been

a prologue to my real life.

Now I venture guesses

Now I sally forth into the lonely rivers

of my former tears

Now I examine my sadness and joys with equanimity

as a scientist with a quantifiable phenomenon

and approach

the intangible fruit of a million hours, burning

Complementarity Pt. 7

At length I am obliged to offer help

And so I take the train at evening

  and the gentleman next to me

Into my confidence

He is a teacher heading home to his wife

He loves her greatly and is buoyed by the prospect of rest

I engage him to unburden his ended day upon me

I am free and can carry the load while we pass under the cityscape

It is his passion which obliges him to unload

After he leaves the train we continue to converse

I go with him too

To his home on a quiet street

I am filled with peace as he enters the nattily attired cul-de-sac

You should have been there when I left the station!

How you would have loved the company of the workers at the docks

The salty stories told in the barely lit breakroom

I journeyed from there up by a lilac field

Where I briefly luxuriated with a friend

From which I wandered woefully towards

A park, watching the day rise with a vagrant

He watched me warily until at length I had coaxed him

I shared with him poetry and he

Shared the weary sensation of the cold nights

We sat comparing despair

As his retriever rested lazily on the dew

Some odd observations

A few things I've noticed while tumbling through the blogosphere:

• Misuse of the term quarter-life crisis: The average American lifespan is 77.9 years (according to the CDC), if you divide that by four you get ~19. This seems to mean that a quarter-life crisis should not be applied after say 22, as that's a pretty ambitious lifespan. I think my real problem with the term is that people have this strange desire to give a name to the confusion and paralyzing freedom that comes after high school/college, but that already has a name: your 20's. Plus it's not really a crisis, I doubt that anyone has ever faced serious consequences because they were debating whether they wanted to completely ignore their degree in Super Accounting to become a bohemian performance artist. Slightly odd side-note: the quarter-life crisis label maybe especially misused if you believe, like some, that people will soon live to be 1000

This is Jack Kerouac, I doubt he would've said "quarter-life crisis",

• An abundance of poetry, and unfortunately Poetry: As an aspiring poet, I obviously spend a great amount of time looking for poetry, partially in order to refine my own skill and partially because I just like the stuff. That said, I find that the percentage of good poetry in existence on the blogscape is, in my opinion, about 35%. Now, that doesn't seem so bad, but if you consider the amount of bad poetry that one must read to find it (and I'm being generous with that number), it's a bit disconcerting. Part of the problem, I think is that people are taught loosely about poetry in school, meaning that everyone attempts it, and as American Idol has proven, there are plenty of people who are never made aware of their deficiencies. The result of this is a lot of people who write what a Creative Writing teacher of mine called "Poetry". In other words, the formally rigid and now-pretentious styles that were genuine products of their own time, but just come off forced and wrong when written by people who don't properly comprehend rhythm and such. I also find that I'm limited by my influences when it comes to writing 'contemporary' poetry. I might not find it terribly difficult to imp Whitman's free-flowing love for the universe, or Neruda's intimacy but the currently prevailing, off the cuff, informal styles which I have seen done very well in many places, baffles me, at least for now. Give me six months and we'll see how I feel about it.

• Am I in Iraq?: I like to learn new things, and since I don't have school for at least another two weeks, I turn to the 'net to slake my thirst. I've recently been looking at my dashboard and checking out Blogger's Blogs of Note. After I decide I'm not interested in yet another QLC blog (yeah, I just did that, and yeah, I abbreviated it), I decide to hit what strikes me as the equivalent of my iPod's Shuffle feature: the next blog button on my blogger toolbar. Occasionally, I find something cool (all but one of the blogs I currently follow came as an eventual result of this) but most of the time, I find that my search is stopped because I can't read Arabic, yes that's right Arabic. Invariably, the next blog in line is in this rich but unknown to me language, and when I click next blog, I get more Arabic. So I click yet again, and it goes back to the first illegible page, rendering it impossible for me to do any more searching, thus limiting the number of blogs on my Google Reader. It strikes me that I should almost never see a blog in a language that I likely don't understand, and that the next blog feature should be smart enough to know that I can't read an Arabic blog, since it knows where I'm from, and should definitely know what language I type in. Plus there's the whole "getting stuck between two pages" issue, especially since it's always the same two. I can only hope that by chance someone from Blogger reads this and decides to address the issue, though with my current following, that's a very slim chance. (That's your call to action folks, shill for me, and I shall reward you handsomely, with knickknacks and gewgaws aplenty when I rule the blogoverse)

Image via Wikipedia

I don't live in any of these nations, and Blogger knows this

So anyway, that's all I could think of for now. I apologize for making all of this one post, but my focus on the blog is still mainly poetry, so I wanted to take up as few archive listings as possible. Some of these will probably still be expanded on as ideas for individual posts. Though I'm still uncomfortable with the right length for a blog post, so I could have my scale all wrong. Whatevs.

Complementarity Pt. 6

In the morning I begin an education

When at length I am awoken

After basking unfettered

I, Homo Naturalis

Against the stark moon

Am all alone

Companion of the stars

Likewise oscillating, differing slightly in luminance

Greatly in ancientness

And the wood whispers a vague rumor

 about the city

and the city creates a susurrus about the wood

and I alone under the night sky hear them all

and see the stars with ancient, wizened faces

as they chuckle softly at the ignorance of such temporary things

Complementarity Pt. 5

The following is the fifth part of Complementarity. Enjoy and comment:

Is my poem too long?

Then my poem is too long

The journey from me to you

Is immense and filled with freshly shifted eyes

Have you left your body behind yet?

Have you outgrown its conceits and melancholia yet?

Have you dug into my poems to dig me out into your mind’s eye?

I am imponderable there, loose in the rapidly bloviating forest