Stephanie and I have decided to have a negativity fast. Thus, I have stopped perusing imdb message boards and only visit the site for trivia, news, and basic information. I avoid rottentomatoes.com entirely. I've curbed my reading of cinematical.com (at least the many bitchfests they have). This new decision is just another way I've decided to avoid spirally into meloncholy like I frequently did last year. It started with my obtainable resolutions and less stringent reading list. (Last year's looked like the reading lists of several college courses smushed together.)
Interestingly enough, our fast coincided with that of the Forths from the syndicated comic strip Sally Forth. The current storyline revolves around the family being snowed in and Sally deciding that 2009 will be a positive year. Today's strip referenced Eeyore and Norman Vincent Peale, and the punchline pointed out that no one will get the references. I got both references positively and without looking anything up so I was pleased at my cultural literacy. Thus, the whole experience of reading the daily comic strips proved positive. Mission accomplished! (Now, where the hell has that banner gotten to.)
This week I ate tripe and tendon for the first time. Both were in a noodle soup that I ordered at a local Korean restaurant. Tripe is one of the jokes of the Food Network and usually works it's way into every competition show. Naturally, I was curious and ordered the soup. It was interesting, chewy with a rough texture. It had taken on the flavors of the broth, garlic, and herbs of the soup. The tendon was a bit more disturbing with an almost gelatinous quality. I get real pleasure out of exploring or sampling something new. Every time something new is introduced to me, my frame of reference widens and I feel more like I'm a part of the world. (I think this is part of being a Four.) Now, I realize that eating tripe and learning about physics or joining the Green Belt movement aren't quite the same thing, but I'm still pleased.
I also learned about "prose poetry" after I inadvertently wrote a prose poem. (At least that's the conclusion Stephanie and I drew.) One of my resolutions for 2009 is to write more than I did in 2008. While I haven't written as much as I would have liked, I'm already ahead of where I was this time last year. I've written four poems and started three others. I've also written down ideas for three more.
At this point, I'm really focusing on exploring what I think poetry is. I haven't given it much thought, and truthfully, I haven't read much of it that wasn't specifically assigned in a class. So I read a book of Thomas Lynch's poems last week and feel extremely inspired. (This is why I have three ideas written down.) Lynch's poems are largely narrative and deal with death and the moments of everyday life. Much of my poetry is self-referential and deals with things that I feel or am going through. This year I'm branching out and toying with fictional situations and feelings that I don't have. I'm not going to venture into abstraction just yet. The first few poems that I wrote after I decided that writing poetry is something I should do were laden with imagery and pontification. Now, my poems don't feel so written and deliberate. Somehow, this feels a bit lazy, but I don't really care at the moment.
Eatin' Pho and Writin' Poetry at the Marble Collegiate Church
Posted by Jeremiah Goodman at 10:50 PM Labels: culinary, personal, poetry, unpopular culture
On my desk at work, there is exactly one item that distinguishes it as my desk. There is a little figure made out of red yarn with green pipe cleaner arms and those freaky craft eyes. However, these were made for the student workers for Christmas 2007 and quite a few were commandeered by various librarians and staff members to decorate their desks so this mark of distinction isn't the most original.
I keep meaning to bring personal effects to decorate with or at least a trendy calendar that points out one of my interests. But anything that I could use is packed away in boxes in my parents’ storage building, and I don’t really use non-electronic calendars. So my desk is bare except for work projects and a usually empty, forlorn inbox. Like Ryan in The Office, I could clean out my desk in five seconds.
My room at home is not much better. Yes, it would take me more time than five seconds to pack and move out, but it’s not really mine. It’s furnished with bulky wooden pieces picked out by someone else and painted a garish blue. I’ve crowded it will books and movies and art projects that are painfully disorganized. And I need organization, now more than ever. As a child I couldn’t think or function if my room or the house were in disarray. Recently, I’m exhibiting these same idiosyncrasies. I know that being flustered by a mess is normal for most people, but I’m not exaggerating when I say I couldn’t function. I couldn’t concentrate on anything until I had cleaned up and put everything away.
Living with my grandparents is usually fun, but it’s also a place closely connected to my childhood so I feel emotionally stunted sometimes. It’s as if I never fully grew up or developed that self-reliance all the books talk about.
Back to the point: my life seems so transitory at the moment, and transitory living has always made me uneasy. When I go to my brother’s apartment, I’m always slightly off balance. He only wants the apartment for the space of time before he moves to go back to college so the walls are bare and everything feels tentative. It’s definitely a space built for people to inhabit for small amounts of time.
Unfortunately, my period of transition has drug on for almost three years during which I’ve had two jobs I really disliked, have not lived on my own, and have been relatively reclusive.
All of this is starting to get to me, and my writing has recently suffered. I never work on a single poem or idea anymore. I always have at least three poems open when I write and jump for one to another with no clear purpose. I’m nervous while I write and hypersensitive to the fact that I’ve no real direction beyond “I want to write and write well” which is the chorus of an entire subset of humanity who are usually in overly stark or artistic independent films that also deal with disaffection and/or addiction. However, I’m not disaffected and have no addiction.
Sometimes I have the urge to withdraw all my money, pack some books, my cat, and my clothes into my car and just drive away as if I were a movie character, one of those terribly romantic, impulsive people that probably doesn’t exist in the real world. Of course, if they did exist on a massive scale, the market economy would probably crash, making it impossible to live. So I suppose I’ll stay put.
Due to inclement weather, I’ve been off for two days and sequestered in the house. Since I’ve been more active this month than I usually am, this has been more of an inconvenience than it would otherwise be. So to stave off boredom, I decided to use this unexpected opportunity to watch a few Oscar nominated films, do some reading, and finally dive in and follow my friends to Blogspot from the less flashy LiveJournal.
In addition to the social reasons, the move will also give me a blog that has positive feelings connected to it. In the past year whenever I decided to update my former blog, I would immediately berate myself for neglecting it and not fulfilling my 2008 New Year’s resolution to journal and blog. This year I decided against explicitly mentioning journaling among my resolutions and just keep this ambition in my head to do with what I would.
I want to journal for numerous reasons. My completion is based on my need to write and my need for organization. Forgoing my romantic perceptions of legacy, I really need a forum to order my thoughts. Looking back at the inconsistent journal entries fascinates me; I’ve evolved so much in my thought processes, likes and dislikes, and worldview. Of course, there is a core of personality traits that largely remains intact but the particulars are always in flux. I’m really interested in keeping my changing thoughts and interests documented.
Of course, I realize that a journal and a blog are different entities and in many ways. A journal is a personal thing, kept and guarded to chronicle thoughts and feelings. (I know this is a generalization. Every member of the last royal family of Russia kept a journal, and these differed greatly in content and use. For example, Tsarina Alexandra’s was used to chronicle her fears and hopes while Tsar Nicholas’s simply outlined the things he did during the course of a day.) I would endeavor to keep both a blog and a personal journal, but keeping just one has been difficult for me in the past.