Friends, or the people who ruined facebook

I originally signed up on facebook because it seemed a clever little time-suck. Over time, I've kept it because it provides a useful way for me to keep up with friends/family, and it still helps me kill time. I'm generally not one to post inflammatory statuses, or to make critical comments (I don't do it nearly as much as I could). But recently, I've been utterly disgusted by it.

It started last month, when I saw the "change your profile pic to a cartoon" thing start popping up on friends' statuses. The idea was that by changing your pic to some cartoon from your youth, you were helping in the fight against child abuse. This bothered me for a few reasons. First, the ridiculous idea that changing your picture to a cartoon will, by itself, raise awareness of child abuse. Second, the meme's obvious lack of connection to any organization, which is likely because it didn't begin as any kind of movement, but just someone asking their friends to change their profile pictures for no reason, like congress passing a boring bill by attaching it to something noone can disagree with. The most important reason it irked me, is that it caught on among my friends very quickly, which suggests that they didn't think the whole thing through as thoroughly or as quickly as I did. In the long run, I suppose that this was not an entirely unexpected course of action, as I tend to take a more critical approach to life than most people, but still it was just so silly, that it made me reevaluate the nature of facebook, and my relationship with it.

Facebook is by nature, a place for people to show you who they are, with all that that entails. If a person is somewhat private, then their profile will be somewhat sparse. Now, I have never been a normal person. I hold on to somewhat obscure interests, I tend to analyze things long past the point where most people stop, and because of this I tend to expect people to be more accountable for their actions than they are usually willing to be. So, I am newly aware that my friends are not like me for the most part, and that Facebook is not made for me. I'm very measured in my speech, and I don't deign to think that my opinion is of great portent to anyone, (strange, since I have a blog) so I am planning to simply use it less in favor of Twitter, a place where I can rain down my ponderings on an expanding darkness of cyberspace. I wish there was a better way to wrap that all up but it's winter break and I don't write well when I don't have school, so that is all.

The impressive e.e. cummings

One of the things I really like about poetry is that it allows you to use words in a way that shouldn't make sense. By nature, this is a huge departure from my incredibly logical brain, so I occasionally have a considerable bit of difficulty with the practice of it. However, I still love to read it, (which is probably one of the reasons I didn't mind reading the first chapter of The Sound and the Fury, one of the most bizarre snippets of writing on the planet) which is why I thoroughly enjoy e.e. cummings(for the uninitiated, the name is not supposed to be capitalized). He had a way of playing with language that I find amazing, because he put words together that shouldn't logically belong and made them make sense in my head. In a way, his writing serves as a clinic on how the structure of a poem is as important as the diction, because his line breaks add to the message as does his syntax, (or lack thereof). Anyway, enough of my useless jawing about how awesome he was, see for yourself:

ITEM

this man is o so

Waiter  

this;woman is

please shut that

the pout And affectionate leer

interminable pyramidal, napkins

(this man is oh so tired of this

a door opens by itself

woman.)they so to speak were in

Love once?

now

                                           her mouth opens too far

and:she attacks her Lobster without

feet mingle under the

mercy.

                                              (exit the hors d'oeuvres)

Now, I have my own interpretation of this whole thing, but I would like to hear what you guys think this means. Don't worry, it's not an assignment, I just wanna know what you think.

I'm a failure...

..or at least, I have failed. This month I was planning to participate in National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo), in an effort to push myself to explore non-poetic avenues. Things were going swimmingly, in spite of an oddly busy month of school/work/preparing for my first semester at Cal, I had a word count of about 13,000, and was planning to kick it up a notch, as I had felt like I was hitting my stride...
   ...Until about ten days ago, when I tried to open the file with my manuscript on it, and could not find the file. Regardless of the circumstances, my book was gone, every single, divinely-inspired word had disappeared. As things happened to fall, I needed to install a new version of Office on my computer, and that was a job that would cost me at least a day,(I had to find the torrent and whatnot). I then looked to see what my new pace needed to be, as I would not be defeated so easily, and discovered it was a healthy 2700+ words, tough but not impossible.
   Alas, I sat down to begin again (three days later, due to the busy month), and I was completely uninspired. Worse, actually, as I was repulsed by the idea of having to retread all the brilliance I spewed during the first ten days at a less leisurely pace. So, here I sit telling you that I quit. Not writing, or even that particular story, I still want to tell it, and I plan to finish it before next November, when I plan to participate again, I'm just admitting that life and November have beaten me this time. But rest assured, that next year, I shall wreak a fiery vengeance, the likes of which they have never seen!!! Though I have no idea how I would attack a month, but in a world where the Jersey Shore "kids" are famous anything's possible.

Entrance

Whoever you are: in the evening step out
of your room, where you know everything;
yours is the last house before the far-off:
whoever you are.
With your eyes, which in their weariness
barely free themselves from the worn-out threshold,
you lift very slowly one black tree
and place it against the sky: slender, alone.
And you have made the world. And it is huge
and like a word which grows ripe in silence.
And as your will seizes on its meaning,
tenderly your eyes let go. . . .

                   -Rainer Maria Rilke

Whimper, Pt. 1

The following is a short story I wrote a few months ago. 

I saw a magician end the world once.  That sounds like it’s going to be a weird story to tell, and it kind of is. I should clarify that when I say magician I mean someone who was capable of doing something which defies my knowledge of natural laws. According to him, it was science, but I couldn’t tell the difference. Now, when I say ‘end the world’, the question comes up, “How are you and I here then?” The answer to that is that I didn’t mean apocalyptic, I just meant such a significant change, that no one can say anything is the same. Like, imagine an ice age instead of a giant comet crashing into Earth. So that’s what happened, a scientist started an ice age, metaphorically of course.

                It was about a month ago, and I was walking downtown to get some donuts. I was listening to my iPod in an effort to avoid all the havoc around me, the occasional ramblings of crazy people strewn in the air like so much confetti, the usual hum of a city’s commerce, plus all the visual flotsam of men and women in suits trying to get somewhere warm like mice in a flood. I heard a woman, whom I had dismissed as being schizophrenic or on some terrible drug, singing, “In the city is a great biggening beast, be afraid for when it wakes from sleep.” I heard this because my iPod had stopped playing for some reason. Amid all the havoc I looked down at my iPod and accidentally bumped smack into a guy.

                I apologized profusely, though I could tell I had taken the worst of the hit, he had continued to look at the device he was looking at which I thought must be some new kind of phone. Ordinarily, I would not be prompted to ask questions, but something about the way he stood transfixed to that spot made me curious. It was in stark contrast with the bustling fluid animal of the downtown which surrounded him, and it seemed for a moment, as though he were a skyscraper and all else was a field of grass brushed by the wind. To be clear, it is not that he was an especially handsome man, or that he had any other grand physical characteristic, but that he was possessed of a unique amount of focus.

                I asked him what he was doing, and he answered me thusly: “I am looking for the heart of the city; I believe I have found it”. Slightly perplexed, I told him that the exact middle of the city was somewhere in the city hall, having discovered this fact some years prior on a class trip. “Ah, I see where you are mistaken, you misunderstand me. You see, I am not looking for the center of the city, I was looking for its heart, and I have found it.” At this point, I was too intrigued not to follow up. “It is relatively simple,” he said, still not looking up, “Just as you and I have a muscle which pumps blood through our bodies and keeps us alive, so do cities.” Not willing to believe such a ridiculous statement, I posited a few reasons why he was wrong. “I don’t see why it is so difficult to believe, after all, Rio de Janeiro feels different from San Francisco, which feels different than London, et cetera.” I agreed. “Would it be a stretch then to believe that these are different beings?” I remembered a few things I had read, from Shakespeare to Neil Gaiman, realized that I might see something amazing, and pressed him for more information. “The answer to your earlier questions, and the reason I am here, is that the cities of the Earth have been asleep, this is why they do not respond to us in any way we would understand, though we have felt their nightmares and recorded the deaths of more than a few of them, Carthage, Pompeii, Hiroshima. I and the people I work with are trying to wake them from their sleep, and what better way than to- move to the left please- shock them in the heart?”