the soundtrack to this blogpost will be interpol. they just feel good to me, have an aural sensibility that makes me feel, which is difficult for music to do sometimes. i know they’re not that indie anymore, but whatever. the chords and waves of their music can keep rushing over me, and i’ll always be receptive. especially since they just sound like they’re giving it their all, are really investing themselves into their music… and the fact that their lyrics are good enough to steal just makes them that much better for writing to. even if i feel like getting up and just spazzing out, trying to dance in my pajama pants.
first and foremost, i want all yall to welcome one of my best friends in the world and one of the best goddamn artists i know to the vinhhua.com staff… give a hand to geoff ‘sheeptang’ kim. geoff has a new york city hipster sensibility with the heart of a yay area hippie. he has an artistic style and flava that is like almost no one else’s, at once dismorphic and magnetic, transformative and transgressive. in addition to formidable visual talents, he has a unique way of looking at the world that is more often than not just a slight bit slanted. he’s seen the west coast, he lives on the best coast, has tripped from midtown skyscrapers and downtown dormitories, brooklyn dumps and every place in between. he’s a hella valuable edition to the team, and i’m hella grateful to have him on board.
‘but i don’t want to take your heart, and i don’t want a piece of history, no i don’t want to read your thoughts… anymore’ – the heinrich maneuver
kismet. fate. destiny. serendipity. all names for the same phenomenon, that sense that things are the way they are, that events and people come into confluence, not out of some random luck of the cards, but because it was ordained to be such.
hell, we had an entire movie about it recently. if you didn’t get that slumdog millionaire was about a fated love, then you weren’t paying attention… or only paying attention when freida pinto was on screen.
as a poet, it would be easier for me to just say that i believed in it, use it as a piece in my writing and act hella mysterious about the entire thing, but that’s too simple, too reductive. it takes freedom and agency out of the question, because if everything really is fated and pre-scripted, we have no real choice, we are on train tracks. it furthermore takes responsibility out of the equation, because hey, it was meant to be. so if i cheat on this girl, then it wasn’t meant to be, we weren’t meant to be together. if she says she loves another man, and comes back to me later, the pain that i went through, the alcoholism, all of it meant nothing, because in the end, it was ‘sposed to happen that way.
we all know this shit ain’t true. or if it is, it shouldn’t be.
but at the same time though, i’m not lying when i say i’ve felt the occasional nudge in some direction, that moment when everything feels so perfectly right and you just KNOW this is how it is because it should be so. the smile on a lover’s face that makes you feel like this is what was meant to be. the crazy chain of coincidences that created the chance for smiles to touch in midwinter. times when, in desperation for some sense of meaning, you trace back time and realize it could not have but happened this way.
i’m not as quick to dismiss these moments as some people are, because i figure, something that i feel this strongly about has to have some validity in it right? yes… i know it’s a logical fallacy.
but love’s one hell of a logical foul up if you really think about it. and if you haven’t had that feeling of serendipity in your life, that moment where the strands of your life and another’s meets in such a way as to feel inestimably primally right, then i feel sorry for you. because no matter the heartbreak that it brings, no matter the drama it summons, it’s worth it.
then again, i’ve always been the peculiar sort.
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so it’s a snow day, beautifully so. especially because i am sick as heo. i feel it in my nose and my throat and all over, just the weakness of it all.
it’s wack. but hopefully the extra day of rest, away from my long day, will fix me up. at least somewhat, i hope.
it did give me some time to think though… which is always good. actually, probably not in my case, but hey… i’m writing this section after watching tonight’s episode of chuck, which definitely plays into two themes i’ve already been thinking about previous to all this…
‘everybody talks’ and we all fall in love with the most inconvenient people at the most inconvenient time.
‘everybody talks’ is the idea that everyone has their limit, has that point within themselves that says they can’t take it anymore. it’s kind of a scary though, and something i’m not completely able to talk to about right now, because i realize how important it’s been in my life. and not even in the typical emo way that is easiest to interpretation. but hey.
the second one is much more obvious in its meaning, but it’s something i’ve been thinking about hardcore. both because of my ass getting broken up with on valentine’s day. as well as the general run of my relationships with women in general, everything from the girlfriends, to the flings, to the mistakes i’ve made along the way. it’s always the most inconvenient thing to happen to everybody involved… which kind brings this full circle, because it sure as shit makes me believe in fate or kismet. expect to see this theme in a lot of my poetry from now on.
oh and i forgot to say, the chapbook is being worked on hardcore… expect to see it soon.
and even though i spent most of the day asleep, i still managed to get some measure of work done. which is why i have a poem for yall…
ouroboros
a wise man, buddhist without
the belly, robes dyed red
with revolution, told me that he’d lived
a hundred thousand lives before this one,
and you always die
only to return
i gave a bum my last
three quarters today, kissed
my friend on his grimy cheek, he was a little
freaked, manhood threatened
by the obviousness of affection, and ate
three hot dogs on my stoop
to chase away the cold.
i have so many random stories
to give away, like shiny bits
of change.
like how i gave the homeless wino
laid out in front
of the ritzy real estate brokers
what was left of my jameson
to warm him through the night
the girl who stole my heart
and sold it back to me
for the price of a dance
and my harlequin’s mask, our toes
bent and twirling through the twilight
the grandmother who collected
empty bottles and soda cans
rhinestones strewn on the street
and cigarettes, as offerings for the dead
soon to be her companions
moppy headed
and spiked topped boys their
bruised fist metaphysics
who choked back tears
and gave me my name
the fortune teller, or maybe
the doctor, the dreamer
who told me death was but waking
and my body’s premonitions
were but the stirring
to end, life’s a loveable mess and hateable order.
Tags: chapbook, poetry, ramblings, ruminations, women