Moving Along (2016Oct23)

Posted by XperDunn on October 24, 2016

Sunday, October 23, 2016 4:45 PM

I’ve been trying to plan what to write about in future—after the election. If there’s an upset, I’ll be too upset to write for quite some time. But if Hillary Clinton wins as expected, I’ll be needing a new topic—I’ve spent over a year raging against the threat of Trump. When I felt that I was seeing something dangerous in him, that seemed to be invisible to others, I was desperate to express my misgivings. I saw our great nation tottering on a precipice.

Now, though, the truth has come to light—Trump is unqualified and unfit for most everything, but most especially unlimited power. The charges made against Secretary Clinton are the sorts of things we’d cheer if they were done on behalf of our own ‘side’—mostly it amounts to her being a juggernaut who gets things done. This is only a problem for people who don’t want the things she’s going to do—I’m more than ready, myself, to see some changes being made to the near-plutocracy the one percent have managed to make of our system.

So, case closed (But don’t forget to vote!) and new topic wanted. The trouble is, these last two years I’ve been consumed with resistance to an approaching disaster. How am I going to find a topic that is equally pressing? In a sense, Hillary’s election will be a ‘happy ever after’. I’m confident she will proceed from victory to victory in making our government better, and hopefully our lives better.

Not that doing so will be quick or easy. Nothing good ever is. But I will have little to say about it. I need to begin a new crusade—I’ve gotten used to trying to convince people of something important that I believe. I’d like to keep doing it—but nothing has ever been so obvious and so dangerous as the threat posed by Trump. And the focus on a single individual made the whole issue a very simple one. If I tried to do the same with, say, the Environment, there are issues upon issues, piles of data, commercial pressures, international pressures, and the whole ‘do no harm’ problem that always arises when we press for change without being too sure of exactly what change we want.

The world is very interconnected. Trade, communication, and transportation have all gone global—making any kind of change a complicated piece of business. What works on the plains doesn’t work in the mountains—what works in the desert doesn’t work in the jungle. Whenever we try to plan for a sensible change, we have to figure out how to insert it into the organic goat-tracks of the existing culture—and no two cultures are the same. Plus, there is a clock on anything environmental—saving biomes and habitats is only feasible if we succeed before they are destroyed.

Many potential environmental fights have already been rendered moot by the disappearance of a species, or a forest, or by rising sea levels. The environmental fight is therefore a heartbreaking commitment—I don’t know if my heart could stand it. If I had the strength, I’d go get myself arrested at that pipeline protest—my god, haven’t we taken advantage of the natives long enough? Not to mention, they have a point—water is life, and no amount of money can change that.

No, life is rarely as simple a question as whether Trump could be trusted with the leadership of our country. Nothing else has ever appeared so blatantly, simply unwise. It will be hard to find something new that fires me up like that. But the problem is not in any dearth of issues—the problem is finding something I know enough about, that I could debate intelligently over.

I was paying a great deal of attention to politics, long before Trump showed up—and I’ve studied American history extensively—I know which people protested and fought and died for the national ideals that Trump is so willing to trash. And I know enough about it to know that Trump doesn’t know any of the important ideas behind the job he’s asked for. I don’t know of any other subject I’m so comfortable with. So I may have to retreat to poetry or some such writing.

Still, it’s better this way. If I can see the whole country about to jump with both feet into the worst mess imaginable—well’s, that’s a pretty sorry state of affairs, regardless of my writing ambitions. I wouldn’t want to become like the media—eager for trouble so that people will pay attention to me. That’s not who I want to be.

And perhaps I will even reach some new understanding through all of this stress and angst—maybe I’ll turn to something completely new, something hopeful—an idea of a new renaissance, even. Who knows? Perhaps all of this pent-up urge to write will come out in fiction, and I will finally write a story that entertains while I bore people with my opinions. It could happen—even if I am sixty already. I’m not too old to try something new—just limited in what I have to choose from.

The election will soon be over. The news channels will soon be seeing a nose-dive in viewership—which is a good thing, as I mentioned above. But they will take a hit, still. The news rarely involves something that touches everyone so closely as their vote—the one time we get involved in government, every couple of years. International news is pretty bloodthirsty stuff: drowning refugees, sex-trafficked girls, besieged cities under heavy bombardment—it’s a shitstorm out there in the big world. And domestic shootings hardly draw viewers as much as outrage. It’s bad news for the news, alright, the end of this election season.

But I will approach it as a positive—a new beginning for my writing efforts—something more about myself than ‘the worst person ever’ running for president. Hmmm… I’ll have to give it some thought.

bye now.

Response to Derek Sivers (2016Sep04)

Posted by XperDunn on September 4, 2016

Sunday, September 04, 2016 6:59 PM

Response to the Derek Sivers Article: Why are you doing?

Goals are for the young. Their goals allow them to push themselves, to experience the ups and downs of life, and to learn who they really are and what they’re capable of. Having achieved a goal, one looks back and sees the entire journey differently for having reached its end. Do that often enough, and one becomes an adult.

Adults come to see life not as an Olympic event, but as a group activity—being a good, supportive family member, being an engaged employee of your workplace, being a contributing member of your community. Goals in this context are what one does with the interstices—diet and exercise, continuing education, workbench projects, artistry, whatever. Thus I find the whole subject of goals difficult to get my arms around.

But exceptions abound—entrepreneurs, visionaries, activists, geniuses of one type or another—such people include disruption in their life plan, while still trying their best also to be the ‘adults’ described above. That’s a tall order—which is why there are not more of such people. Only the truly driven have any reason to make life even more challenging than it already is. The rest of us tend to make a goal of finding something pleasant to do during our leisure time, and making as much of that leisure time as we can.

I thought myself exceptional—until I’d become more familiar with the world and realized that, out of seven billion, exceptional isn’t always automatically ‘rich and famous’. I found my exceptionals to be balanced neatly against my weaknesses. I found ‘rich and famous’ to be a silly goal, because both balance their advantages against their hassles. And I found that personal, private success is hard to enjoy when there are so many people with less comfort, less wealth, and less opportunity.

On the other hand, saving the world is a tall order—and I’m not that ambitious. I would have to satisfy myself with being engaged in my family’s, and my community’s, welfare—but then I became disabled and found myself the target of support, rather than the source. Surprise! Nothing educates like vulnerability. A great chunk of my ego was carved away. A great load of gratitude was grudgingly taken on. I went from dreaming of doing things no one else could do, to wishing I could do what any average person could. I was, as they say, ‘taken down a peg’.

We don’t choose our goals any more than we choose our talents or our failings—goals accommodate themselves to the size of their container, if you will. But I appreciate your advice—whatever the goal, we should all be seeking maximum joy and personal growth—and time is short, so whatever we want to do, we better get busy doing it.

Thus endeth the lesson.

Seriously (2016May31)

Posted by XperDunn on June 1, 2016

Tuesday, May 31, 2016 11:34 PM

I take myself seriously—probably too much so. But it’s all of a piece—there are people that wouldn’t be able to take themselves seriously as a writer or musician, or artist, without some validation or recognition or encouragement. But I do it without any of that good stuff—the taking it seriously makes me take myself seriously, even when there’s no apparent evidence that I should.

See, I don’t worry about whether I’m good or not—I was lucky, as a kid, to be gifted with a pencil and paper—lots of people told me I was good at drawing. But some people weren’t impressed. I noticed that. I wondered ‘how can I please a lot of people, yet fail to please everybody?’ I would come to discuss other peoples’ drawing—and find that I liked some that other people didn’t like, and lots of popular artists didn’t appeal to me.

So I see the whole question of “Am I any good?” as a slippery one. Then I had the bad luck to fall in love with playing the piano—without any ability to play the piano. I was objectively bad. I played anyway, because I wanted to play—and I thought, ‘who knows, maybe I’ll get better.’ Well, I didn’t. I got better than I was, but I never got ‘good’. I felt safer with piano—I knew I could spend the rest of my life practicing and still have plenty of work to do. I enjoyed being challenged by something I was bad at more than being good at something I was talented at.

Then I got sick—and now my hands shake—so I can’t draw good anymore. I don’t really miss it. I miss people asking me to make custom-drawn birthday cards and flyers and stuff like that—I loved being useful—but I don’t miss trying to think up something to do on a blank piece of paper. After a while that became a lot of pressure. One of the things that made me a big draughtsman was I loved attracting an audience—people used to love to watch me draw—for a while, I’d be quite a showman about it—playing to the audience. That made sitting in a room, drawing pictures, to show people only after they were completed, seem unsatisfying.

These days, I see some performance artists do a big painting for an audience, maybe dancing around while they throw paint at the canvas—and I think ‘good for you—you found a way to make it work for you.’ I should have realized, back then, that I enjoyed drawing for spectators—I wouldn’t have gotten so tired of drawing. I stopped doing the ‘performance-drawing’ because I noticed I let the quality of the artwork go, just to score points with the crowd—it’s too bad I couldn’t just have accepted that as a fair trade-off. (If I take myself too seriously now, it’s nothing to how too-serious I was as a kid.) But, spilt milk under the bridge, etc.

Anyhow, the point is, I’ve been doing stuff throughout my life without any serious concern about whether I was good or not. I’ve come to recognize that as a blessing. There are so many people who don’t draw, who don’t play an instrument—because they’re worried about being good at it. To me that’s not the point, at all. It’s the doing, not the judging. If you do something—and you get some good from doing it—you’re done. Whether other people approve or not. I always hear disapproval as encouragement to try harder.

I’m never worried about what other people will think—I’m only concerned with doing my best. And because I’m all about the trying, I take it very seriously. Which turns into taking myself seriously. It’s all of a piece. But I’m sure it makes me insufferable, most of the time. Sorry about that.

But Writing Isn’t Easy (2016Mar20)

Posted by XperDunn on March 21, 2016

Sunday, March 20, 2016 10:12 PM

As with most days, I’ve had images fed into my head through the television all day, some of them entertainment, some news, some political—and I could recount them all for you, as if you hadn’t seen the same stuff—or, if you haven’t seen any of it, I could spare you the trouble—and let me tell you, some of it was troubling—so I won’t upset either of us by doing that. Then I could give you my opinion about it all, after carefully phrasing it so that I had some chance of being interesting or amusing—but there are people that do that for a living. Who am I to try to take the bread out of the mouths of professional pundits?

Most of my political posts, especially the ones about current events, are my version of the ‘primal scream’—do you remember primal scream therapy? Do they still do that? I remember thinking—that’s a great idea—most people could use a good scream every now and then. But I’m not much for screaming, so I blog about things that upset me. The only trouble is—it usually just makes me more upset. Maybe that’s why you don’t hear much about primal scream therapy any more.

I get confused, too. There’s so much—should I debate the logic of a thing, the legality of it, the constitutionality of it, the humanity of it, the practicality of it? Should I cite history? That’s always dangerous—most history doesn’t have a beginning or an end, so if you start talking about one thing, you’re bound to run up against other things that may hurt your argument more than help it. Should I argue the semantics of what’s been said? Should I argue the meaning implied by the words? Should I just call someone an idiot—or is there more to it, something that makes that someone merely ignorant or neurotic? If I write too stridently about the ‘right thing’ will I come off as too goody-two-shoes? And if I soft-peddle the ‘right thing’ will I be consigned to that ninth circle of hell reserved for the uncommitted?

Then there’s my being an atheist—should I bring that up if I think the issue is influenced by religion—or should I avoid it because it’s such a heavy thing to bring to the party? Is it better to avoid the subject for being unpleasant—or will I feel better if I’m painfully honest at all times? As with anything that involves society, there’s a part of writing that assumes you’re writing to be read—if you’re not going to think about the reader, then why are you writing? On the other hand, why are you writing if you’re not going to say what you think? Both good questions—and the question isn’t simplified any by the fact that readers’ brains come in all shapes and sizes.

I used to draw—it taught me something important. One person would look at a drawing and say they thought it great—then that person would look at another drawing and say it was a clunker. Then another person would give me the exact opposite opinions about the same two drawings. Proof positive—you can’t please everybody—there’s no such thing as good—there’s just what someone likes. Sometimes a lot of people will like the same thing—that’s just a coincidence—and there are still going to be people that don’t like a popular thing, anyway.

Well, coincidence is the wrong word—it’s not a coincidence that people like Van Gogh’s paintings or Beethoven’s compositions—but there is something ineffable about ‘great’ art—no one can really say what makes it great. They can tell you why it’s impressive, why it’s well-designed or something—but not why the whole world wakes up one morning and declares a thing great. Still, not everybody likes Beethoven—even if it’s just because they haven’t much listened to his music—and if Ludwig can’t get a 100% approval rating, then neither can you.

That’s why arts teachers are always harping on just pleasing yourself—you’re your own proof-of-concept—if you like what you write or draw or play, then you have at least one person in your audience. However many people might eventually agree with you is something you can’t really do much about.

Still, when I write, I’m inviting someone to spend time on reading me—and I know that I have to capture someone’s interest if I expect the whole thing to be read. You shouldn’t work to please an audience—but your work must have consideration for an audience—a subtle point, but it still makes it all very confusing. Worse still is the question of autobiography—when is TMI TMI? When does a story of my past involving someone I know stop being reminiscence and cross the line into defamation and libel—of them, or myself? Conversely, how much investment can I expect from readers if I’m too shy about my shortcomings or mistakes to tell the real story? If I write about bending the law here and there, am I telling a good story or am I publishing a criminal confession? It’s looks easy—writing isn’t easy.

The Bitch

Posted by XperDunn on September 26, 2013

Thursday, September 26, 2013 1:58 PM

Everybody loves a bitch. The Stones had a big hit in “Bitch” (Sticky Fingers 1971) I think, in large part, because we kids loved to sing along. And it’s just a fun word to say—“bitch, bitch, bitch.” We love them. We go crazy over them—especially the mega-bitch. A mega-bitch is a completely evil, incredibly hot woman, such as Shannon Doherty’s role as Brenda Walsh in the series “Beverly Hills, 90210” (1990). Women are drawn to a bitchy character because she is self-determined and adversarial; men are fascinated by a bitchy character because no matter how evil her mind, heart, or voice—she’s still a woman, and men, by and large, want women.

I’d venture a guess that the proliferation of old witches and crones in our folk stories were a product of male story-tellers who were more comfortable with a bitchy character bereft of any hint of fecundity—but I’m no archeological psychologist, I just know myself.

I’ve just had a rather embarrassing email exchange with a writer friend, whose first serialized on-line novel I’d found instantly engaging and compelling. Some poor schlub’s horror-of-a-girlfriend character was a constant spur to my interest. But when she debuted her new novel’s first chapter, set in a sort of antebellum Edwardian atmosphere, I instantly attacked her for it, saying the whole thing was worthless, a pile of junk. (Jumping the gun is a favorite hobby of mine.)

But when, at her urging, I went back and re-read the chapter, I suddenly found, by focusing on it better, that it was a well-paced, tightly written piece of fiction—so, feeling like a jackass, I sent her my apologies. I was confused—it was well written, yet it repelled me at first—and even having found that it was good, I still lacked any inclination to read more.

But this morning it came to me. There was no bitch. Moreover, there wasn’t a bad-guy or an evil influence in sight. When I had my health, and was a terrible bookworm, I would casually allow myself (and the author) the first 150 pages as a ‘gimme’. I’d had plenty of experience with writers with a slow burn—and they were often the best, if I could ride out the slow start.

Now I have a more modern sensibility—I need a quick fix. I need coercion, I need conflict, I need me a bitch. I truly miss those good old days when I could re-read Robin Hood in that wonderfully drowsy ‘dear reader’ kind of style; I could re-read the Iliad and be charmed by the interplay of human drama and Jovian fate and the symbolism and the repeated phrases that made it as much a chant as a story. I read everything and anything—and fast—I averaged 1.3 books a day—unless they were little things of 300 pages or less. Before I lost my health, I got to where I preferred only 700+ page-books, like King, Follett, Clancy, and Ian Banks. Anything less than that frustrated me—I would hardly get comfortable in the writer’s world when I would find myself reading the exit sign: “The End”.

But today, I mostly do TV. When I do commit to a book, I start reading like I always used to—but then I quickly find my neck aching, or my eyesight blurring, or just a mental inability to follow along as I read. I put it down, wait an hour, try again. In the last half of the book I will become transfixed, and I’ll wonder why I don’t still do this all the time. But the next day, after I finish the book, I’ll have blurry vision most of the day, and little aches and pains and spasms from holding open the heavy book and from focusing my eyesight (through magnifying glasses) on the page for hours at a time.

So, long story short, I don’t read much anymore. When I do, I get impatient of any settling-in type beginnings and intolerant of any slack in a storyline. I prefer to be left wondering to being given more than I need. I’m become the same audience as the illiterate—just show me eye-candy with music, please.

And the end result is a media with a narrow range, stories that introduce conflict from the first sentence and keep it hot right until the big car crash (with explosion) at the end. All the best told stories are the opposite, they build and build a world around you, inserting conflicts at strategic points, adding detail and suspense and character development with the tidal flow of their story’s pace—only with such subtle storytelling can an artist ever build up to a tidal wave far more awesome than a mere car crash—but without the leeway to do this, merely good writers can outperform the great writers, making wam-bam-thank you-ma’am plotlines the industry’s default quality.

Fortunately, the treasure house of the past is still easily accessible to anyone with a library card. But be careful to read the book before you see the movie. I had read “The Lord Of The Rings” three times before Peter Jackson got his green light—so the freeze-dried husk of the CGI version will never mar my memories of the happiness I felt marching along with the Fellowship through Tolkien’s worlds. Or stalking Clancy’s cold-war villains from one end of the Earth to another. Or shivering from my immersion in the horror of King’s nightmare town, Kerry, Maine. How I wish I could still spend whole days there, day after day.

But this isn’t about me. My writer friend has brought into focus a dilemma that all modern writers face—subtle writing is to small audiences as simple writing is to big audiences (and big money). And I’m not suggesting that today’s writer has to ‘dumb-down’ their writing to be popular—I’m saying that the leeway enjoyed by earlier writers has contracted to a fine point—a tightrope that must be walked. Mass audiences actually require intelligence in their entertainment—but it must be a carefully monitored dose, administered with precise timing and dosage, from moment to moment in their favorite tales.

Stephen Spielberg cracked this code, creating movies that blew us away, while not insulting our intelligence. The use of levity is essential is his formula, but he also kept the mayhem and the fear going at all times.

And perhaps most restrictive of all, today’s popular stories must start with high drama—either dread, rage, sublime ecstasy, or just plain explosions. My writer friend, in beginning with a busy, happy family scene, had failed to grasp me by the throat—but was that her failing, or mine?

Bearly Bliss

Posted by XperDunn on August 30, 2013

Bearly Bliss

Every year, on our anniversary, I re-post the link to my old anniversary present, an illustrated book of thirty Bear poems, in celebration of our time together. If you haven’t already seen it, please check it out and let me know how you like it…

“The Years” by Virginia Woolf: A Book Report

Posted by XperDunn on July 16, 2013

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Tuesday, July 16, 2013 5:12 PM

I’ve just finished re-reading Virginia Woolf’s “The Years” and I’m feeling extremely introspective all of a sudden—I wonder why that is? The novel is considered by many to be the crown jewel of her entire opus—and I am certainly not someone who would argue with that—it is a great favorite of mine, as are all of her strange novels, essays—and her biographies!

One is a biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s pet dog, Flush; another is a biography of a creature named Orlando, who lives for centuries and changes sex every time he/she has a fainting spell. But then there is a biography of Roger Eliot Fry (Dec. 14th, 1866 to Sept. 9th, 1934)—a contemporary of Woolf’s and a member of the Bloomsbury Group—which took his sudden death at a young age very much to heart and decided amongst themselves to intrust Virginia with the task of writing his biography. Fry (an English artist and critic who established his reputation as a scholar of ‘Old Masters’ and was an advocate of then-modern trends in French painting, giving it the name ‘Post-Impressionism’) was Woolf’s only non-fiction book. I confess, I haven’t read this biography—or at least I can’t remember reading it, which comes to the same thing.

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The incredible thing about Virginia Woolf is that she successfully dodges all the tripwires of convention and grammar and—while never officially breaking any rules for writing—manages to put down words in the same way that our interior voices do. There is a kind of doom to it—the message seems to be ‘if you want to fully know yourself, be prepared for existentialism’. Self-regard, the hard, ‘objective-ish’ kind (for true objectivity about ourselves is impossible) is a cold end to a lonely journey. Our minds are not such clockworks as we should like to think them; our verbal communications are not so efficient as we would like to think them; our understanding of each other is a worn patch-work of superficial observations, constantly being interrupted by our self-regard.

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Such (partial) truisms are hard won—many levels of self-deception must be breached to even approach such understanding of oneself. Most people have the sense not to go there—but a brutalized and repressed mentality such as the young Virginia Woolf’s is driven by her need to get at the Truth, with that capital ‘T’. Those who should have protected her have attacked her—those who should have been minding her were unconcerned for her—when everything a child has learned is put at odds against a cruel reality, the search for meaning becomes a compulsion.

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Ms. Woolf’s self-awareness was not an achievement per se, it was more like a scar left on her soul by a horrid family. We can comfortably (from seventy-five years after the publication of “The Years”) look back at her amazing artistry as a wordsmith and as an observer of the human race, the community, the family, and the pageant of time’s passing. But she, like Van Gogh, is one of those artists whose tormented life gave rise to supernatural efforts of artistry, yet display through those artistic expressions that horror of real life, that despair over true love and goodness.

I was impressed, as a young man, reading this giant of a novel—as sharp and quick as a dagger, as broad and open as the heavens. As a fifty-seven year-old I can barely enjoy the reading while the knowledge of her suffering hangs so opaquely above every page.

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I Insist On Having A Dragon To Kill by XperDunn (2013July03)

Posted by XperDunn on July 4, 2013

I Insist On Having A Dragon To Kill by XperDunn (2013July03).

via I Insist On Having A Dragon To Kill by XperDunn (2013July03).

Kaleidoscope

Posted by XperDunn on March 30, 2013

Saturday, March 30, 2013 1:54 AM

Oh My God! When I read back some of the crap I’ve written, I could easily puke. There’s something about writing—in trying my hardest to make myself crystal clear, I muddle about worse than if I’d told it plain. But then I re-read my so-called ‘plain speaking’ and I find it full of vacuous nothingness—in avoiding detail and subtlety, I’ve written the equivalent of ‘Life is like an onion’ or some other such fortune-cookie rubbish.

And what indication has the universe given me that what I write is worth the digital disk-space to store—much less a hope that someone else will come round just dying to read it? None whatsoever—trying to kid myself is out of the question—I may not be much of a writer, but I sure as hell know good reading when I read it. In my normal course of reading a book I make allowances for times when I’m not in the mood for that particular story—or not in the mood for reading, as a past-time, generally.

Granted, that was nearly never in my original life. But even then, I’d be sometimes obliged to start a new book, with a different tone or texture than the one I’d not yet finished. Nothing is so well-written that it is always a pleasure to read—even for a dyed-in-the-wool bookworm like ‘me-point-one’ used to be. And now that I’m just slightly living in comparison to those wonderful days, I still enjoy a book—just not without suffering from the sort of neck-cricks and backaches and blurry vision that less-enthusiastic ‘readers’ like to make a point of complaining about.

And this is the problem with writing—even if it’s good (a big if) it still can make my flesh crawl when mine comes at me suddenly. The pomposity, the mawkish pettifogging, the condescension—I sound like a prize jack-ass. And this would be the same bit of writing I had re-read days ago, immediately after writing it, and thinking it superb!

But I am used to this. Does anyone know the worst thing about LSD? It’s the crash. The heady delirium and fascination with all things is replaced with a hollow, worthless reality that is nothing more than what it has always been—the same thing, day after day, year after year. We don’t normally experience the dread stolidity of life—but the LSD, in simulating the altered perceptions and convoluted thought-patterns of a schizophrenic, gives us a glimpse of a world that seems to be hiding behind the ‘same-ol same-old’ of life. It makes us feel exalted and fascinated by all the colors and sounds of the psychedelicized world—we wander like wondering children in a magnificent amusement park.

Then it wears off—and back comes the flat-seeming world we left from. But now it’s shabby, drab, irritating sameness is put into high contrast—it’s almost painful just to exist without the LSD’s magic. That is the worst thing about LSD—it makes reality seem dreary. The funny thing is, that disappointment lasts and lasts—it isn’t a hangover, it isn’t anything—it’s just the world, the way it’s always been—revealed as the grey, unmusical reality that people get hurt in, get sick in, die in, go broke in, and nothing can be done to stop any of it.

No sense of delight I’ve ever gotten from LSD, or any drug, has ever been worth the cost of that crash—the drug wears off, but the crash lingers forever. It is an awareness that behind all our thoughts and feelings and opinions is a world that doesn’t give a damn how we feel or what we believe—it will still gladly mush us like bugs if that’s what’s going on this moment. Good people get punished. Bad people get ahead. Innocent people get hurt and criminals get away with murder. All philosophy evaporates in the presence of hunger or cold or fear. All happiness comes in an instant and is gone before we have the wits to fully realize we are happy.

So I tell myself that I’m too critical of my own writing—that I’m denying myself the same leeway I grant other authors (and, believe me, many an author has taken full advantage of it—the curse of being compulsive about finishing whatever book I’ve started). I tell myself that perception is a shifty bugger, and if I wait until tomorrow I’m just as likely to see some good in the same writing.

So, like all would-be artists, I spend a lot of time listening to my own music, reading my own poems, looking at my own drawings—always asking, “Is it any good? –and if it is, would I be able to tell?” Many of my proudest creations have given me mal de mer from the eternal rising and falling of my opinion of its quality—it’s a good job that I had a habit of giving away all my drawings most of my life—I’d still be checking them every day to see if they looked okay or not. And I’m far too busy listening to my piano recordings to waste time on that. As far as the writing goes, I figure it’s good therapy, like a journal or something, so I should keep it up even if I’m positive that it’s all garbage. And some days, I’m treated to a good opinion of myself for a few hours—I actually enjoy some of my writing on those days.

That still leaves a percentage that I’ll always feel embarrassed to have been the author of—but with those I just tell myself ‘nobody reads my stuff anyway, so no biggie…’ One of the many perks of being an amateur. I don’t know how professionals do it—creativity is such a tightrope—if I had to merge it with making my living, I’d be lost. Plus they have to have patience with the jerks that pay for art—you’d think such people would be gracious patrons of ‘art’, but I gather that’s not quite how it works.

But it’s all conditional—one’s faith, one’s happiness, one’s self-confidence, one’s solvency—they come and go as the wheel of fortune spins. The auction price for a Van Gogh will dip and climb depending on the art market. What started as Matt and Trey making silly, irreverent cartoons has become the toast of Broadway and London—a devastating lampoon of a major faith during which, apparently, no one in the audience can stop laughing. People starve. People text while driving. People grow old. People laugh.

Is it not fitting that our mood should also rise and sink from moment to moment, transforming the jumbled pile of reality as would a kaleidoscope, into seemingly perfect geometries of meaning and fulfillment? Can I ever hope to write down words that would improve the life of any who read them? Or can I only hope to interest myself in that conceit as a means of avoiding my true uselessness? And could I tell the one from the other? Do I want to?

Questions —Xper Dunn January 13th, 2013

Posted by XperDunn on March 12, 2013

This is my second attempt to match this poem to an illustration, using original artwork

Here are the original drawing and designs made from it:

original scan of felt-tip pen drawing

photo-shopped image of original scan

Multiple ‘flipped’ images (4 in 1)

Final iteration (This is the first 4-in-1 made a second 4-in-1)

Two Thread Comments From Today

Posted by XperDunn on September 12, 2012

Late Tuesday (actually early Wednesday, September 12, 2012)

[LinkEds & writers / {LinkedIn} Randy B. -Randy B. H.

Multilingual, multicultural communications specialist

Greater New York City Area

Dear Randy:

I’m terribly sorry.

I didn’t realize that I’d been unclear–but I do now.

I filled out their questionnaire and went through their

spelling/grammar and ‘three styles’ exams, which was

much more ‘temp’-work-application -ish than I’d expected

(I’ve been a temp–it’s actually worse when one

has to spend the day there). But somehow I still thought

I’d be challenged somewhat by the work. By some miracle,

I was deemed good enough to bid on their jobs.

Then I went to their ‘Available Jobs’ page and saw,

as I described in my vague post, jobs that were specific

about the textbook being used, asking for specific numbers

of reference citations–and the dollar amount offers were

ridiculous.

I emailed them to ask if they felt that this work was ethical.

That’s when I got the stuff about ‘helping the students do

for themselves by giving a good example’.

But I thought it over and decided that was a rationalization.

I spent most my life in mail-marketing (junk mail, to you)

and I know a good rationalization for making money when

I hear one.

So all my jumping through their hoops was a waste of time.

I know I wasn’t clear about the details–but I thought it

was obvious I was doing anything BUT promoting them.

Sorry to distract from the thread–I shouldn’t have posted

at all, really–I’ve never been paid for any writing–unless you

count ad copy or copywriting/proofreading.

I may not belong, but I like the group, and your mediation of the thread.

*****

My comment on “The Necklace of Poetry” by (Joe)/(Kenneth) Massingham joemassblog.com (WordPress)

On September twelfth, 2012 2 am

I like the image or concept, a threading together of words, rather than plain speech, but I wonder if we go at this poetry business from the back end–Poetry may be as animalistic an urge as dancing or singing, simply translated as a unique form that occurs within a pack of people who’ve recently adopted a sophisticated form of language, such as Greek and Romans, Persians.and whoever. But those origins are obscured by time and now we see the poem almost less about what the poets are doing and more about what the audience is hearing. It makes much more sense that way, but it may not necessarily be how it began–just a thought. We are a consumerist society, but things weren’t always so.

The fact that bad poetry might not attract an audience may have had no weight in a society in which the leaders and sophisticates saw poetry as something all civilized people did, like getting exercise. You know, clean mind, clean body, but in Latin.

To me it’s become painfully clear–implying that a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g is NOT poetry is just an argument looking for a pal. So I have long ago stopped myself whenever such sentences come to mind–besides, technically, it’s true–that’s where the argument comes from. After that it gets all semantic-al and abstruse.

There are levels of applied poetry and then there’s ‘ideal’ poetry. On one level there is the obvious, published poets (and their nobility, the Nobel-winners and poets laureate). On another level there is academic poetry, which is when serious students of literature sit at the feet of professors and try to satisfy their professors that (a) they’ve understood (and unquestioningly accepted as gospel) the prof’s ideas of good poetry and what makes great poets great and (b) have produced work that the prof accepts as displaying the prof’s teachings, articulated in verse.

On a third level there are jokers like myself, who write poems and share them with their endlessly patient family and acquaintances who are too polite to tell me to get lost. What some may label the ‘failure’ level I think of more as an amateur standing. One of the great advantages of this level is that I’m the best judge of how good my poems are–though I’m not averse to appreciation, when offered, or criticism for that matter (see ‘best judge’ comment).

Theoretically, there is a fourth level wherein a natural-born poet who takes it all very much to heart and whose sensitivity makes the readers’ lips tremble and their eyelids dewy, or stirs the heart of a teenage boy with meter and trochee and ‘on the six-hundred’, or simply suggests the soul of the sight of a bird ascending–that poet goes where destiny takes such people.

Now Ideal poetry is what high-school students write–it has a piquancy all its own, but can seem over-earnest at times. Still, where would love-struck teenagers be without Ideal poetry? And, once one has seen the elephant, they’ll be plenty of time to write more experienced verse.

I try to be honest with my poetry, which makes it deadly dull and often lacking any lyrical quality–in fact, I recently wrote a poem, read it back to myself a couple of times and, on a whim, translated it into an essay, with complete, grammatically-correct sentences. I couldn’t have changed or added more than ten words. I’m usually better than that, but I’m no P.B. Shelley.

I get nervous sometimes, letting a poem become slightly ambiguous, and sometimes end up drawing or painting an illustration as part of the page design or as a ‘companion’ illustration to the poem page. It’s like talking during charades, I know, but I’m not a stickler for poetry rules (of which there ain’t any anyhow).

You know, this is an awfully long ‘comment’ (and I hope I haven’t talked your ear off). And I hope you won’t mind if I cut and paste it onto my blog, seeing as how these are pretty general comments about poetry. Yours is a nice essay, too–thanks for sharing it.

Now to go read your second post….

[NOTE: I pity the fool who invites me into a thread. I’m embarrassed to say that these are only two of three thread comments I posted today. I don’t know who I think I’m talking to–all this unsolicited verbiage…. Be warned!]

Xper Dunn Is Here

Aspera Ad Astra

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