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authorCase Duckworth2015-02-27 10:53:56 -0700
committerCase Duckworth2015-02-27 10:53:56 -0700
commitdc5968ed003c08743d0f37ea81caa9a42a286434 (patch)
treefc135c517715f4c14041db990793310d6872af6c /src
parentFix bad commit / other issues (diff)
downloadautocento-dc5968ed003c08743d0f37ea81caa9a42a286434.tar.gz
autocento-dc5968ed003c08743d0f37ea81caa9a42a286434.zip
Add Stark Raving to src/
Diffstat (limited to 'src')
-rw-r--r--src/about-the-author.txt57
-rw-r--r--src/amber-alert.txt31
-rw-r--r--src/and.txt1
-rw-r--r--src/big-dipper.txt45
-rw-r--r--src/boy_bus.txt42
-rw-r--r--src/death-zone.txt54
-rw-r--r--src/exasperated.txt65
-rw-r--r--src/i-think-its-you.txt38
-rw-r--r--src/initial-conditions.txt65
-rw-r--r--src/lappel-du-vide.txt62
-rw-r--r--src/last-bastion.txt50
-rw-r--r--src/love-as-god.txt65
-rw-r--r--src/moon-drowning.txt41
-rw-r--r--src/music-433.txt49
-rw-r--r--src/ouroboros_memory.txt75
-rw-r--r--src/poetry-time.txt65
-rw-r--r--src/riptide_memory.txt31
-rw-r--r--src/sixteenth-chapel.txt73
-rw-r--r--src/table_contents.txt58
-rw-r--r--src/worse-looking-over.txt41
20 files changed, 1008 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/src/about-the-author.txt b/src/about-the-author.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bac03df --- /dev/null +++ b/src/about-the-author.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,57 @@
1---
2title: About the author
3subtitle: (not pictured)
4genre: prose
5
6epigraph:
7 content: The body that surrounds him is his, but his insides are not.
8
9project:
10 title: Stark Raving
11 css: stark
12 order: 19
13 prev:
14 - title:
15 Something about all music being performances of 4'33"
16 in places where other bands happen to be playing
17 link: music-433
18 - title: Riptide of memory
19 link: riptide_memory
20...
21
22------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------
23He was born on a few separate occasions _green traffic ligts at night_
24
25There was the day of his conception \ _a TV in front of a dumpster_
26a wintery affair saved for those involved
27
28The day he wriggled forth \
29from the dark tunnel of nothing \ _surprise photo of you at Walgreen's_
30his mother's womb
31
32The founding of his little city \
33deep inside by the smal builders \ _a pink dress in the alley behind your house_
34alien as they were and still \
35somehow intimately familiar
36
37Like any city it had its ups \
38and downs the fever of 1994 \ _me buying a Reese's peanut butter cup for a child_ \
39was especially devastating \ _[whose family couldn't afford it]_ \
40but they were a hardy folk \ _in front of me in line at Safeway_
41not much given to flight
42
43As all things must pass the \
44little city began slowly to decay \ _trees at night their skeletons_ \
45the old ones claimed the young \ _revealed by a camera flash_
46had no respect for culture anymore
47
48They began to die off slowly \
49more quickly than being born \ _two earthworms on pavement after a rain_
50the end was coming closer
51
52As the last breath was made \
53the last accounts closed in the city _keys tacked to a sign in Buffalo Park_
54
55It was given over to other builders _man flipping a four-wheeler and walking it off_
56
57------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------
diff --git a/src/amber-alert.txt b/src/amber-alert.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fda6ce0 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/amber-alert.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
1---
2title: AMBER alert
3genre: prose
4
5epigraph:
6 content: Apparently it does nothing.
7 link: TODO
8
9project:
10 title: Stark Raving
11 css: stark
12 order: 6
13 next:
14 - title: 5. Exasperated
15 link: exasperated
16 - title: The Death Zone
17 link: death-zone
18 prev:
19 - title: Last bastion
20 link: last-bastion
21 - title: 6. Something about the nature of poetry and time
22 link: poetry-time
23...
24
25![https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/54/Amber_Hagerman.jpg]
26
27Lost things have a way of staying lost.
28They have to want to be found---is that why we tack up signs, hang socks from hooks in the park, have a box for what's been lost but now is found?
29Maybe the lost *want* to be found but we're looking in the wrong places.
30Maybe we speak the wrong language, the language of the found, to call to them.
31Maybe we should try another door.
diff --git a/src/and.txt b/src/and.txt index 645f0c2..ccb1c51 100644 --- a/src/and.txt +++ b/src/and.txt
@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@ genre: verse
5epigraph: 5epigraph:
6 content: | 6 content: |
7 "What is your favorite word?" 7 "What is your favorite word?"
8
8 "And. It is so hopeful." 9 "And. It is so hopeful."
9 attrib: Margaret Atwood 10 attrib: Margaret Atwood
10 link: 'http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/oct/28/margaret-atwood-q-a' 11 link: 'http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/oct/28/margaret-atwood-q-a'
diff --git a/src/big-dipper.txt b/src/big-dipper.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7155ee9 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/big-dipper.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
1---
2title: The Big Dipper
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Stark Raving
7 css: stark
8 order: 2
9 next:
10 - title: The Moon is drowning
11 link: moon-drowning
12 - title: Something about the nature of poetry and time
13 link: poetry-time
14 prev:
15 - title: The Death Zone
16 link: death-zone
17 - title: Table of Contents
18 link: table_contents
19...
20
21After searching for days or even months \
22I finally find it reclining lazily \
23above the peaks above the city as if to ask \
24Did you miss me? Yes very much I reply \
25and rush to embrace it but it smiles \
26and recoils and tells me No no you \
27have to try harder than that it says \
28I do not give myself up so easily
29
30I try a different tack \
31I sing to it bring it flowers nightly \
32I compare its eyes to the morning dew \
33it has not seen the morning dew \
34I say its mouth is the sunset over mountains \
35it knows mountains but the sunset \
36is only a rumor from the Evening Star \
37I tell the Big Dipper that it moves \
38like a quiet river across the earth
39
40Rivers I have seen says the Big Dipper \
41they sparkle in the light from my stars \
42Your stars like eyes I say and it smiles \
43No it says that is too easy \
44It turns its back \
45it walks home along the back of the mountain
diff --git a/src/boy_bus.txt b/src/boy_bus.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e5345ab --- /dev/null +++ b/src/boy_bus.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
1---
2title: Boy on the bus
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Stark Raving
7 css: stark
8 order: 9
9 next:
10 - title: I think it's you (but it's not)
11 link: i-think-its-you
12 - title: Last Bastion
13 link: last-bastion
14 prev:
15 - title: L'appel du vide
16 link: lappel-du-vide
17 - title: 5. Exasperated
18 link: exasperated
19...
20
21When he said Bible I heard his southern accent \
22and he had a face I expect all pastors must have \
23a round open honest face \
24that will always be a boy's face \
25though its owner may rightly call himself a man \
26near my age though I hardly call myself a man
27
28I have seen this face before whether in life or a dream \
29I can't tell \
30I might've seen him on the street once \
31twice who knows and his pastor's moon face \
32reminds me of something \
33some distant light my life used to own
34
35One night on my birthday the moon was so strong it cast shadows \
36I could see to the far hill and back it was all clear to me
37
38The moon hasn't done that in a long time \
39its face has been obscured by clouds for weeks \
40and that boy on the bus his face I've forgotten \
41I thought I recognized a good number of people \
42on that bus who I didn't know at all
diff --git a/src/death-zone.txt b/src/death-zone.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a93ef0a --- /dev/null +++ b/src/death-zone.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
1---
2title: The Death Zone
3genre: verse
4
5epigraph:
6 content: And my life became death.
7 attrib: Philip Gould
8 link: TODO
9
10project:
11 title: Stark Raving
12 css: stark
13 order: 7
14 next:
15 - title: The Big Dipper
16 link: big-dipper
17 - title: Exasperated
18 link: exasperated
19 prev:
20 - title: Exasperated
21 link: exasperated
22 - title: AMBER alert
23 link: amber-alert
24...
25
26![TODO]
27
28When I think of death I think \
29of Peter Falk in _The Princess Bride_ patting \
30his pockets as he leaves the room
31
32Life is a series of doors or so \
33they say but I ask them this \
34where does that last door lead?
35
36For Falk maybe it leads backstage \
37a black-walled catered affair with stage \
38lights slowly baking stale muffins
39
40Sweaty cheese leaking onto dried-out \
41grapes a chocolate fountain clogged \
42by some errant strawberry crown
43
44but this is not where it leads for you or \
45for me that door opens onto darkness marked \
46only by a trellis or the lid of a casket
47
48the door of the earth's womb opening \
49finally to accept us and with us the dirt \
50not to grow more strawberries for Falk
51
52but to pad his feet as he walks overhead \
53to visit someone he certainly cares about \
54but whose name is lost to posterity.
diff --git a/src/exasperated.txt b/src/exasperated.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..493f9f5 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/exasperated.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
1---
2title: Exasperated
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Stark Raving
7 css: stark
8 order: 8
9 next:
10 - title: The Death Zone
11 link: death-zone
12 - title: Boy on the bus
13 link: boy_bus
14 prev:
15 - title: AMBER alert
16 link: amber-alert
17 - title: The Death Zone
18 link: death-zone
19...
20
21I didn't write this sestina yesterday. \
22It's the first time I fell behind in my task \
23and hopefully, the only time it will. \
24This means that today I must write two \
25sestinas. If I don't write them today, I \
26will have to write two later down the line.
27
28Although I feel I'm slogging through each line \
29I think I'm doing better every day, \
30though maybe this is wishful thinking: I \
31showed my friend my just-completed task \
32two days ago (my God, was it two \
33entire days? I've no idea what I'll
34
35do after thirty-nine days. I think I'll \
36feel like Inigo Montoya, who'd been in the line \
37of revenging for so long, he didn't know what to \
38do with the rest of his life), and he deigned \
39to be polite, but I could tell the task \
40was hard for him. He told me finally that I
41
42had made a noble effort, but that ultimately I \
43failed. So my question: when will \
44I be a decent sestina writer? For this is my task. \
45Maybe if I just keep cranking out line after line \
46I'll finally figure it out. Maybe one more day \
47or another week will do it, or maybe I'll need two,
48
49or maybe it'll never happen. Maybe a sestina's too \
50involved, too much weaving of words too fine, and I \
51will never write a good one, even on my best day, \
52even if I employ all my skill and all my will. \
53I'm not used to writing poems with thirty-nine lines, \
54that must be the problem, must be why this task
55
56is Herculean. He only had to finish twelve tasks, \
57and I have one less one thousand, five hundred twenty-two, \
58and it's nothing but complaining lines \
59about how hard it is to be a person. I \
60am getting sick of myself with these poems, and will \
61soon be loathe to get out of bed every day.
62
63But I tasked myself with this, which may be the worst I \
64ever do to myself. I thought a poem NaNoWriMo would \
65be fun, would line my resume, give me something I could publish someday.
diff --git a/src/i-think-its-you.txt b/src/i-think-its-you.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6c8647e --- /dev/null +++ b/src/i-think-its-you.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
1---
2title: I think it's you (but it's not)
3genre: verse
4
5epigraph:
6 content: When you fall in love everyone looks the same.
7 link: i-think-its-you
8
9project:
10 title: Stark Raving
11 css: stark
12 order: 15
13 next:
14 - title: 1. Initial conditions
15 link: initial-conditions
16 - title: Riptide of memory
17 link: riptide_memory
18 prev:
19 - title: Boy on the bus
20 link: boy_bus
21 - title: L'appel du vide
22 link: lappel-du-vide
23...
24
25I thought I saw you walking \
26to the bus stop but it was only \
27a raven. His croaks sounded nothing \
28like your footsteps (as they pound \
29down the hallway toward my bedroom) \
30his wings looked nothing like your \
31legs (running on the wrong side \
32of the road away from my house) \
33I think the one resemblance was the eyes
34
35But that's too easy \
36It's just that I was thinking \
37of you and a raven flew by \
38(maybe it was a crow)
diff --git a/src/initial-conditions.txt b/src/initial-conditions.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..786c37c --- /dev/null +++ b/src/initial-conditions.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
1---
2title: 1. Initial conditions
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Stark Raving
7 css: stark
8 order: 11
9 next:
10 - title: 3. Love as God
11 link: love-as-god
12 - title: 2. Ouroboros of memory
13 link: ouroboros_memory
14 prev:
15 - title: I think it's you (but it's not)
16 link: i-think-its-you
17 - title: Last Bastion
18 link: last-bastion
19...
20
21There is a theory which states the Universe \
22if it began with the same initial conditions \
23( same gravity same strong weak nuclear force same \
24size and shape ) would unfold in exactly \
25the way it has : with the same planets orbiting suns \
26same people making same mistakes : like this morning
27
28( It's actually past two but I will call it morning ) \
29while turning on the shower : I as the Universe \
30intended ( although I was expecting the heat of suns ) \
31had the ice of inner space : those pre existing conditions \
32before the Big Bang : the shower was almost exactly \
33freezing for a split second : every day it's the same :
34
35I turn on the tap hop in pull the knob have the same \
36moment of utter panic then pain then a relaxing morning \
37shower where I spend between five to ten ( I'm not sure exactly ) \
38minutes : I have good thoughts : this poem about the Universe \
39for example : I had the idea while I was conditioning \
40my hair : it came to me like accidentally looking at the sun :
41
42the pain and the wonder that something as large as suns \
43could appear so small and yet so hot all at the same \
44time : so hot in the summer we require air conditioning \
45( although now in the winter it's cold in the morning ) \
46and I can't wait to hop in the shower that tiny universe \
47of water and steam and soap and body : that and only that exactly
48
49or rather exclusively ( it's hard to get the words exactly \
50right : the meanings bleed into each other like the sun's \
51shadows on pavement ) ready for me to dream another universe \
52into it on top of it again and again until they all look the same : \
53I can't tell whether it's my morning or the shower's morning \
54or where I put the conditioner or what the initial conditions
55
56could have been that decided I would misplace my conditioner \
57today : and why and how much planning was involved exactly \
58that would cause so far down the production line of this morning \
59\: me to wake up so long after the rising of the sun \
60\: me to stay inside all day even after showering to look at the same \
61computer screen : to give up the actual universe to the universe
62
63in there with its conditions : where the screen serves as sickly sun : \
64where there is apparently exactly what I need : no more : the same \
65three sites I visited this morning comprising my entire Universe
diff --git a/src/lappel-du-vide.txt b/src/lappel-du-vide.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..03591b4 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/lappel-du-vide.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,62 @@
1---
2title: L'appel du vide
3genre: verse
4
5epigraph:
6 content: You can never go home again.
7 attrib: Thomas Wolfe
8 link: 'http://books.google.com/books?id=yybDMC0TRIwC&pg=PR12&lpg=PR12#v=onepage&q&f=false'
9
10project:
11 title: Stark Raving
12 css: stark
13 order: 14
14 next:
15 - title: Boy on the bus
16 link: boy_bus
17 - title: I think it's you (but it's not)
18 link: i-think-its-you
19 prev:
20 - title: Ouroboros of memory
21 link: ouroboros_memory
22 - title: 3. Love as God
23 link: love-as-god
24...
25
26# I. Walter
27
28Walter rides the bus into work on Wednesday morning when he realizes, with the force and surprise of a rogue current, that he is in the home-for-death phase of life.
29That era in which the next time he goes under, to the fields of seaweed waving gently, the anemones slowly filtering seawater, it will most likely be for a death in the family.
30
31He is able to idly speculate on who it might be, and this surprises him.
32Not much does surprise him after these few months above the waves, because so many things did surprise him those first few months: the plants standing still, the quickness of the fluid these creatures walk in, the lack of pressure that still makes him feel so alone and cold---as if all of his life he had been in an embrace by the ocean, and now for some reason it's pulled away from him, and it doesn't love him anymore.
33
34His speculations lead him to picture his grandmother, small and frail and forgetful.
35He always assumed she'd be next, since last year when the other one died and Gina said,
36"I wonder who'll be next."
37She said what they'd both been thinking.
38
39Soon after that he'd come up to land, to the mountains of all places, the most land-like land, and started a job with an [accounting firm][].
40While it was challenging to adjust to the change in pressure and movement, to people staring at him on the bus, in the supermarket, at the job, him with his scales and fins and breathing machine, he'd always made a point to make the best out of a situation.
41The problem was that the best wasn't good enough.
42
43[accounting firm]: telemarketer.html
44
45# II. L'appel du vide
46
47And I'll get in my car and drive \
48and I'll want to keep driving \
49straight into the next state \
50or even the next country \
51or even even the ocean
52
53and go down deeper \
54keep exploring forever \
55find out what's down there \
56go to the Marianas trench \
57miss the air world and \
58come back up \
59itself a kind of unknown \
60the homecoming after
61
62What happened to the home I was?
diff --git a/src/last-bastion.txt b/src/last-bastion.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7cff39f --- /dev/null +++ b/src/last-bastion.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
1---
2title: Last bastion
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Stark Raving
7 css: stark
8 order: 10
9 next:
10 - title: AMBER alert
11 link: amber-alert
12 - title: 1. Initial conditions
13 link: initial-conditions
14 prev:
15 - title: 4. The Sixteenth Chapel
16 link: sixteenth-chapel.txt
17 - title: Boy on the bus
18 link: boy_bus
19...
20
21Dimly remembered celebrity chefs shuffle \
22down the cold and darkened highways of the heart. \
23They are the last personality left. They are the meek \
24who inherited the heart, what was left of it. \
25Without food to cook in new or exciting ways \
26nor audience to gasp and cackle, the chefs \
27of the heart quietly waste away while staring \
28doe-eyed into now-empty Safeway windows \
29checking under the dusty produce shelves \
30for something they pray the rats haven't found yet.
31
32Years ago, the economy of the heart boomed \
33and there was food everywhere. Produce \
34piled high in pyramids of devotion, meat in \
35gilded glass cases opulent under fluorescence, \
36dairy which ran like the mythical river toward \
37cereals hot and cold. Under it all, thrumming \
38like great stone wheels on sand under a hot sun \
39near a river where reeds sang in the wind \
40the heart produced and gave reward for hard labor.
41
42No one knows when it all ended. No one can say \
43if it was the heart that dried up or the heart's supply. \
44Either way, food of the heart became scarcer and scarcer. \
45People began dying, not of starvation \
46but of a certain facial expression that could only \
47be described as desperation. Now \
48all that are left are the celebrity chefs, last bastion \
49of a once mighty empire of the heart \
50are reduced to husks blown dry by wind.
diff --git a/src/love-as-god.txt b/src/love-as-god.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e906813 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/love-as-god.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
1---
2title: 3. Love as God
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Stark Raving
7 css: stark
8 order: 13
9 next:
10 - title: Worse looking over
11 link: worse-looking-over
12 - title: L'appel du vide
13 link: lappel-du-vide
14 prev:
15 - title: 1. Initial conditions
16 link: initial-conditions
17 - title: 2. Ouroboros of memory
18 link: ouroboros_memory
19...
20
21God is love, they say, but there is \
22no god. Therefore, how can there be love? \
23And if there is no love, how can there be God? \
24There are things in life, I suppose, \
25that are simply unanswerable mysteries \
26of existence. Maybe this God and love are one.
27
28Maybe there are many loves, instead of one. \
29The difference between what isn't and what is \
30could merely be one of scope. The mystery \
31is how we speak only of one love -- \
32to act as though we know we are supposed \
33to love only one other, or that one other and God.
34
35But supposing that one other is God? \
36What then? Is the God-lover to walk alone, \
37supported by God only when He feels He is supposed \
38to support her? What kind of love is \
39this? I would argue in fact this isn't love, \
40this one-set-of-footprints-in-the-sand mystery.
41
42How to define two loves as one is the mystery. \
43It's obvious to many there is a thing called God, \
44and just as obvious that there is one called love. \
45Maybe we fool ourselves, we who can't be alone; \
46maybe we don't know what either God or love is. \
47Maybe, and perhaps; but I for one propose
48
49that we as only humans are not supposed \
50to know or understand capital-L Life, that mystery. \
51Isn't it enough to know that God is \
52love, and love is God, \
53no matter which one \
54does or does not exist? What is life, if no love,
55
56if no God? Maybe this saying, "God is love," \
57is less a definition of God what what love is supposed \
58to be. Of these two terms, maybe the one \
59we should capitalize is Love, that great mystery \
60of chemistry and longing. Maybe "Love is god" \
61is a more fitting epigraph for what life is
62
63made of: Love, that most delicate, most misty \
64of all emotions, is supposed to be their god, \
65as the one that binds us, that was, that will be, that is.
diff --git a/src/moon-drowning.txt b/src/moon-drowning.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6bb7a8d --- /dev/null +++ b/src/moon-drowning.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
1---
2title: The Moon is drowning
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Stark Raving
7 css: stark
8 order: 3
9 next:
10 - title: |
11 Something about all music being performances of *4'33"* in places
12 where other bands happen to be playing
13 link: music-443
14 - title: Worse looking over
15 link: worse-looking-over
16 prev:
17 - title: Something about the nature of poetry and time
18 link: poetry-time
19 - title: The Big Dipper
20 link: big-dipper
21...
22
23The moon is drowning the stars it pushes them \
24under into the darkness they cannot breathe \
25they are flailing the moon boasts to my shadow \
26how powerful is the moon how great its light
27
28My shadow nods and calls the moon father though \
29it acknowledges also the existence of others \
30headlights are like little moons father my shadow says \
31they pass like waves in a dark ocean
32
33Father moon becomes angry and threatens \
34I can maroon you shadow I can trap you in darkness \
35your strength comes from my own the little moons \
36are fleeting like foam on a darkened sea
37
38My shadow fears the night as it fears death \
39but it remembers the moon's strength is from another \
40my shadow wants the headlights like an ocean \
41might want the moon as a seducer as a lover
diff --git a/src/music-433.txt b/src/music-433.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b86098d --- /dev/null +++ b/src/music-433.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
1---
2title: |
3 Something about all music being performances of _4'33"_
4 in places where other bands happen to be playing
5genre: verse
6
7dedication: |
8 [Randall](TODO-xkcd-comic)
9
10project:
11 title: Stark Raving
12 css: stark
13 order: 18
14 next:
15 - title: Riptide of memory
16 link: riptide_memory
17 - title: About the author
18 link: about-the-author
19 prev:
20 - title: The Moon is drowning
21 link: moon-drowning
22 - title: The Sixteenth Chapel
23 link: sixteenth-chapel
24...
25
26Silence lies underneath us all in the same way \
27the Nile has a river underneath ten times as large \
28(although this is an urban legend, apparently).
29
30So underneath truth or legend, flowing by \
31the feel of their own silence, move the stars: \
32silence lies underneath us all in the same way.
33
34John Cage, I think, understood this: the way \
35that, in a silent room, one still hears the nerves \
36(although this is an urban legend, apparently),
37
38or the heart, which I find more easily \
39believable: there simply is no way that, by and large, \
40silence lies underneath us all in the same way.
41
42There must be different silences, because we \
43have different songs to drown them out, different gods \
44(although these are urban legends, apparently).
45
46But is not all sound one sound? You and I \
47are two faces to the same head, the same body. \
48Silence lies underneath us all in the same way--- \
49although this is an urban legend, apparently.
diff --git a/src/ouroboros_memory.txt b/src/ouroboros_memory.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dd0f4e6 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/ouroboros_memory.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,75 @@
1---
2title: 2. Ouroboros of Memory
3genre: prose
4
5epigraph:
6 content: |
7 He used his body to remember
8 his body, but in the end could only
9 remember the string.
10 attrib: Jonathan Safran Foer
11 link: 'http://www.bet-tal.com/index.aspx?id=2315'
12
13project:
14 title: Stark Raving
15 css: stark
16 order: 12
17 next:
18 - title: L'appel du vide
19 link: lappel-du-vide
20 - title: 3. Love as God
21 link: love-as-god
22 prev:
23 - title: Table of contents
24 link: table_contents
25 - title: 1. Initial Conditions
26 link: initial-conditions
27...
28
29[He said][] at the beginning, "It's like rolling yarn into a too-small ball.
30Sure, you can roll the memories around for a while, and maybe even use some of them.
31Eventually, though, you'll wind them all the way out and you'll be left with nothing but a small loop.
32You can tie this loop around your finger, and start wrapping your body, but this is an extension of the same problem.
33You'll turn into a mummy of memory.
34There'll be nothing left underneath but a dead body.
35
36"But what does it mean, _To remember the body with the body?_
37I imagine a creature made of memory, putting its feet in its mouth, turning into a ball.
38In this way, it could roll all around the landscape of its memory.
39I've tried explaining this to other people, but it doesn't make any sense to them.
40The task of eating one's feet is, to them, an unsolvable problem.
41They seem to forgotten that, as babies, they were able to make themselves into loops.
42
43"So I increase the count to two: two snakes eating each other's tales, forming a loop.
44In this way they are able to put two heads on one body.
45This doubles the number of memories, which really only exacerbates the problem.
46It's like trying to roll two different materials up into a ball.
47The people I tell this to don't understand this either, they say using two animals makes sense to them.
48They say there must be different types of memory.
49
50"I disagree with this theory of memory.
51I think there is, at bottom, only one type of anything, with subtypes grouped together along the edge of a loop.
52Color becomes a good metaphor: look how many of them!
53yet they are all consumed by the same part of the body.
54Maybe two different materials are still made of material, and maybe they can be rolled into a ball.
55Maybe there actually never was a problem.
56
57"Or maybe, and this is more likely, I need to restate the problem.
58I think it all boils down to the fact that I have a truly lousy memory.
59I've tried different mnemonic devices, like imagining each thing I need to remember being visited by a bouncing ball.
60I've tried trying string into finger-loops.
61I've even tried writing the things I need to remember on my body.
62If you asked me, 'Do any of these work,' I would have to answer, 'None of them.'
63
64"Sometimes in the morning I realize dumbly I've forgotten my words, all of them.
65They generally come back by around ten o'clock, but the frequency with which this is occurring is becoming a problem.
66I feel that my brain is being separated from my body.
67Is there a place in the universe for a misplaced memory?
68Does it eat its own tail and roll around the universe as it loops?
69Does it shrink down and become lost as a tiny ball?
70
71No matter what happens, eventually _I_ will become _them_ as I lose the last of my memory.
72I won't be able to solve the problem of my being, and my being will become my problem, in an eternal loop.
73I will roll my body into a prenatal ball.
74
75[He said]: joke.html
diff --git a/src/poetry-time.txt b/src/poetry-time.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a4d8344 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/poetry-time.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
1---
2title: Something about the nature of poetry and time
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Stark Raving
7 css: stark
8 order: 5
9 next:
10 - title: The Moon is drowning
11 link: moon-drowning
12 - title: AMBER alert
13 link: amber-alert
14 prev:
15 - title: The Big Dipper
16 link: big-dipper
17 - title: Worse looking over
18 link: worse-looking-over
19...
20
21I'm writing this now because I have to. \
22Not in some "my soul yearns for this and \
23I can't help it" way, but in the way that this \
24moment is structured as such, that it is \
25crystallized this way, me writing this, and later \
26you reading it, now for you, later for me,
27
28and this tenuous connection mates me \
29and you forever, combined with each other, two \
30electrons momentarily entwined. Later, \
31when I'm dead or far too famous for you, and \
32you're in school, reading my words because it is \
33required reading, I want you to remember this
34
35connection we've always had, this \
36spider's thread hanging between you and me. \
37Which of us is the spider and which is \
38the fly still remains to be seen. To \
39eat, perchance to fly: all of that and \
40more. We can settle all of this later.
41
42Yes, it is you I'm thinking of in your later \
43time: you specifically, not another. This \
44is true for all _x_ such that _x_ > 0 and \
45_x_ is a real person, though it doesn't bother me \
46to write to a fictional figure or to \
47a figment, maybe, of my imagination. This is
48
49what you are right now, anyway, dear Reader, is \
50it not? I'm talking about my now, of course, not later, \
51which is your now. Later will be my now too, \
52and maybe I'm ultimately writing to a future part of this \
53self: you could very well be me. \
54In fact, you probably are me, some other version, and
55
56I am you in the past, or what you could've been, and \
57at the same time, this isn't true. Everything is, \
58and nothing isn't. The difference between "you" and "me" \
59is in name only. Maybe you'll get this later, \
60when you're older, when I'm older, when all of this \
61is something we'll look fondly back to,
62
63because I do hope to meet you, although much later, \
64and I hope your feeling is the same. All this \
65talk on me and you and you and me we'll keep between us two.
diff --git a/src/riptide_memory.txt b/src/riptide_memory.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..17b3929 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/riptide_memory.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
1---
2title: Riptide of memory
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Stark Raving
7 css: stark
8 order: 16
9 next:
10 - title: About the author
11 link: about-the-author
12 - title: The Sixteenth Chapel
13 link: sixteenth-chapel
14 prev:
15 - title: |
16 Something about all music being performances of 4'33"
17 in places where other bands happen to be playing
18 link: music-433
19 - title: I think it's you (but it's not)
20 link: i-think-its-you
21...
22
23Inside of my memory, the poem is another memory.
24The air up here is thin, but the wind blows harder
25than anywhere else I know. It threatens to rip
26my body away, like an angel of death, to the stars.
27
28In Arizona, I thought I would forget the rain,
29forget its sound on a roof like a hard wind, forget
30its smell like a far away ocean. Luckily for me
31it rains here. Luckily because I forget too easily.
diff --git a/src/sixteenth-chapel.txt b/src/sixteenth-chapel.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8267cb0 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/sixteenth-chapel.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,73 @@
1---
2title: 4. The Sixteenth Chapel
3genre: verse
4
5epigraph:
6 content: "Canadian High School!"
7 link: 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI_pwLyeoqk'
8
9dedication: Max
10
11project:
12 title: Stark Raving
13 css: stark
14 order: 17
15 next:
16 - title: Last bastion
17 link: last-bastion
18 - title: |
19 Something about all music being performances of *4'33"*
20 in places where other bands happen to be playing
21 link: music-433
22 prev:
23 - title: Worse looking over
24 link: worse-looking-over
25 - title: Riptide of memory
26 link: riptide_memory
27...
28
29If Justin Bieber isn't going for the sixteenth \
30chapel, I'm not either. I admit he is my role \
31model. He's so current, so fresh and so new, \
32and Michelangelo is so old, his art so dated. \
33Where is the love in those old paintings? All \
34I see is creation, judgment, and death---
35
36and I don't get the preoccupation with death. \
37I'm about life! Ever since my sixteenth \
38birthday, when me and my two sisters all \
39nearly died when the car I was driving rolled \
40into a creek. Even though I've forgotten the date, \
41I think it keeps me thinking on the new,
42
43something Biebs would be proud of if he knew. \
44I look at him, and see the opposite of death \
45in his eyes, his youthful smile: though someday \
46he may be a father, and later host a Sweet Sixteen \
47for his daughter (who I know he'll buy a Rolls), \
48death will never find him. Living will be all
49
50he'll ever do, because it will be all \
51he'll ever need to do. He is the eternal new, \
52the forever youth: this is the simple role \
53of every celebrity, to let us forget death. \
54Bieber didn't make a mistake on the Sistine \
55Chapel's name. He merely showed that someday
56
57all old names must go, that on some day \
58a name must die so that the thing, which is all \
59that matters, can stay as it was in the sixteenth \
60century: fresh, ostentatious, and brand new. \
61In a way, the name becomes a Christ, experiencing death \
62so the world doesn't have to. But I am wary of this role
63
64for a name. It seems a name gives meaning, rolls \
65the general idea together with the concrete, daily \
66toil of the mundane. Are not life and death \
67intertwined? Is not everything tied up all \
68with everything? I guess I'm saying the new \
69necessarily comes from the old, as every sixteen-
70
71year-old has a parent. Life rolls to death, and all \
72is tied together. Each day is born of night, and dies so new \
73morning can occur. Even the sixteenth chapel holds death.
diff --git a/src/table_contents.txt b/src/table_contents.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c8f64a8 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/table_contents.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
1---
2title: Table of contents
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Stark Raving
7 css: stark
8 order: 1
9 next:
10 - title: Ouroboros of memory
11 link: ouroboros_memory
12 - title: The Big Dipper
13 link: big-dipper
14...
15
16--------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------
174. The look she gave me 4. Half-hours in heaven are three times
18 that in hell
19
205. Not out of anger 5. Pay the toll, mister, or nothing can
21 get done
22
236. A desire to understand 6. Misattributed
24
257. Seven syllables amble 7. Disassociated
26
278. To drink at the pond 8. Advice from a cereal box
28
299. Two fall in and drown 9. The challenges of a modern life
30
3110. Odd-numbered ponies 10. Probability and the American Dream
32
3311. Buck and Whinny in the moonlight 11. Two friends throw dice
34
3512. To die tomorrow 12. Fears of death
36
3713. To be everywhere 13. The solipsist talks to God
38
3914. All at one time: my motto 14. A phone conversation following
40 receipt of an ill-timed love letter
41
4215. Of a perfect world 15. Woody Allen at the horse races
43
4416. This morning the sun 16. Whether you say good morning or
45 good night
46
4717. Wandering through the window 17. A traveler waiting on the mountain
48
4918. Alights on my shoulder 18. The impenetrable object falls in
50 love
51
52 1. Liquid messenger
53
54 2. After a gate closes, dogs bark
55
56 3. Finding old men at dusk
57
58--------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------
diff --git a/src/worse-looking-over.txt b/src/worse-looking-over.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2b698e0 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/worse-looking-over.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
1---
2title: Worse looking over
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Stark Raving
7 css: stark
8 order: 4
9 next:
10 - title: 4. The Sixteenth Chapel
11 link: sixteenth-chapel
12 - title: 6. Something about the nature of poetry and time
13 link: poetry-time
14 prev:
15 - title: 3. Love as God
16 link: love-as-god
17 - title: The moon is drowning
18 link: moon-drowning
19...
20
21The radio is screaming the man \
22on the radio will not be quiet he is \
23pushed far into the background \
24while some NPR talkers murmur over \
25his screaming he lost something \
26very important. He says it over \
27and over but they do not listen \
28they think of their children at home \
29lying in bed dreaming sweet \
30childhood one of them is staying over \
31at a friend’s house they are staying \
32up late they never want it to be over \
33not like the man. His life on the radio \
34will be the only one he ever has \
35his life it is wasted he’s being spoken over \
36such pain is in his voice. I wish you \
37could hear it. It’s something never over. \
38Suffering everywhere always and over it \
39the same serene murmur of the comfortable \
40distracted or worse looking over \
41the shoulder and quietly looking away.