Twenty-Ten

The last point I made before the clock struck midnight and the stupid cuckoo popped out and reminded me yet again that I was doing the right thing breaking up with you because you had no sense of class and you would always be a person who thought nothing of it to display a cuckoo clock in the living room and minded not that this type of ornament was - at the least - tacky, but especially a reflection of the demise of a psychological connection between a couple. 

The cuckoo was not the problem so much as the problem was the words we exchanged while it cuckooed.

The last point I tried to make was for you. It was going to happen this time. In four days, we would get the news and the news would be what we want it to be and would change our lives and we would be happy again. The point was to make you believe that the streets we walked through tonight would be paved with gold and honey in four days. The pavement on which we strode this evening was smooth and familiar, but we would not miss it when it turned to gold. I felt myself smile as I thought of your disbelief. I handed you a shovel and asked you to bury that cuckoo clock if the phone didn't ring in four days. 

http://www2.995themountain.com/listen/mountain-homegrown-show-july-20-2010-part-1

Obscure keys may open simple locks, but simple keys obscure locks never.

Is my favorite line from my favorite novel and favorite writer. Samuel Beckett's "Watt" was one of the many novels I had to read in my college Modern Literature class. Modern Lit was much more difficult to master than the class which preceeded it, "Romantic Literature." Romantic Lit was not easy but I adored the class from the first day - I was moved by the passion of my professor, his lectures gave us thoughtful insight and brilliant stories about the pieces and the lives of the writers, the awesomeness of the aesthetic experience (drug-induced or not) and the high art inspired by the Age of Enlightenment of William Blake, Wordsworth, Percy and Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and more - the writers and poets fascinated me with their lifestyles and the influence of the opium hazes in which they painted words and you felt alive and almost Haight Street hippy happiness when you read and studied their work. The class was difficult, but the material, the professor 's love for sharing the writing with us, and the new philosophy we aquired, also aquired an A in the class. That was a rare mark for me my senior year. They make you work hard before they hand you that degree; I don't care if you hear different because you heard wrong. College is hard.

Anyway, I made it through another class English majors must take in order to graduate, I had survived and passed Chaucer and I was beginning to believe I had a fighting chance of actually graduating from college. I knew I still had a long way to go because time goes by very slowly during those college years, and I know I still had a lot of reading, writing, and thinking considerately about the billions of pages of words I still had yet to conquer, but I thought Modern I took Modern Literature the second semester of my senior year at Florida State University and the third semester.

I found the truest love of my academic life right there in that musty, dungy white colored but very well lit classroom in the old Williams Building - that ancient renownedcampus legacy of a building where my heart first beat with the beginning of a new love of a way of thinking I never knew I could be so absolute in its essence.

To be continued.

In the middle we begin

This is the story of the end

And every ending

Begins again.

The power of the meaning of words

I had a walk with my dog and was able to amble along in the full moon and empty dark streets of a Sunday evening in the city.

I thought about social networks.

My girlfriend was always telling me how unsure she was that I was able to perform simple processes - many of which I considered instinctual and second-nature. That meant nothing compared to what I actually knew I was no good at.

Okay, I said, "I can take a joke." I began to shuffle down the opposite direction of the atrium corridor and I began to focus on a new plot, but I needed a new persona first, then the intangible and it's obscurities would be a natural consequence.

In an effort to prove the power of the meaning of words, I will launch my latest metaphysical awareness campaign: Speaking in one-word sentences. And as I waited for my mom to pick me up from school I was reading an essay written by a Hawaiian clown who used to teach French Revolutionary Architecture but decided to write in order to teach and he wrote well for a clown I suppose - as I waited the notion struck me between the lines that this constant quest to transcend the shallow traditional surface of society and judgment, I was not operating inside the function of my mission to master world domination.

The second time I was administered mouth-to-mouth recsessitation was the second time it wasn't necessary, and was the event that spurred me to embark immediately to see a specialist.

I always thought of myself as the dangerous type. Obviously.

But it's like all the times I thought too much about the aforementioned equations. A house and a home are not going to solve my problems. Like, I don't have any problems, and surely I don't need a house and a home to prove that I need something else to think about.

http://www.john-keats.com/

Bright Star

Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

The Elimination of Logical Thinking

Today is the first day of the rest of your series of other first days of your life. You always can be uncertain whether or not you have this particular day to begin again. You always may be certain that you will always be uncertain. You start planning immediately; you have an unmeasured time allotted for this interpretation of the state of your fixation. You sit in front of whatever clever type of technology or paper or sticky-note system which provides you with the encouragement to begin your plan. But after a few scribbles and a change in barometric pressure, you decide that you have accomplished a decent amount of planning, just by the act of starting to think about planning. Then you walk into your backyard to see if there is enough gas in the lawn mower to do a few rows, and your phone rings.

Hello?
The silence on the other end of your line is intolerable, so you utter a short sequence of charming un-thank yous and you realize that you have to call your friend in Chicago who is sick and could be dying; meanwhile your guitar looks like it needs to be played. You cant figure out a chord, so you pick up the remote but nothing is on except your loves favorite show, which you cant watch be cause this is the first day of the rest of your year, and so you think about ordering a pizza but your debit card is downstairs and the cat just puked and the ice has already melted in your class.
Hello?
You walk around in circles until you decide its not worth it and maybe the tag phrase should be today is the last day of your life but that seems psychologically unhealthy and you need to sleep it off.
Any challenges you open your sleepy eyes to are self-imposed. For instance, you must own your own mind. You cant always control it, but you have got to own it. You have to obey or disobey its compulsions, and you have to accept its troubles and randomizations. You cant organize it, but you can know the danger of its capacity to scramble and ramble. You can tell yourself many things you want to believe, but unless you compromise with it, your intentions wont be articulated as obligations. You have to be consistent, impressionistic, reasonable, adjustable, and playful. No one can think for oneself without wandering about some madness, and at times madness may be the purpose, the map, the ambiguity that makes all challenges the exact electricity which makes your minds universe.
So! Before you retrace your steps, either find the nearest exit or forgive yourself for thinking that you are completely capable of withstanding any retrospection. We all have a certain level of faith and love for ourselves, but we hesitate to remember (time after time) that our minds love is unrequited at times.
I found myself today. I found myself yesterday. Dont worry about how or where or why. You need to worry about yourself. I am in good standing with myself. I dont know how you see me, but I need you to look at yourself instead of me. I am lost and found, and the circle will never be unbroken.
Ask yourself questions; but believe nothing you say is universal truth. Again, I dont know how you see me, I only see what I ask of you to see me as, and I ask you to see me without judgment, without pity, without expectations; I will in turn see you just as I see myself. I will see a conjunction of suggestion, a highway overlooking the inexactness which I gander and gather, and I will speak no evil, see no evil, nor hear no evil. I will tell myself to have an open mind, an unspoken heart, and a thousand broken souls unnerving me at every moment I let myself go. I will obey and deceive while I coincide and conflict. I will not hurt you any more or less unless I am hurting. But, thats me. I will listen, confide, retreat, capture, release, stalk, haunt, freak, steal, believe, deny, accuse, refuse, abuse, lose, win, practice, preach, reach, storm, mourn, shock, fall, get up, fall again, risk, gamble, promise, forget, relive, regret, write, ask, answer, explain, walk away, run away, stumble back, call, hang up, create, criticize, speculate, spit it out, move, stay, fear, hope, play, work, tumble, crumble, relive, revive, listen, whisper, break, shake, ache, take, fake, love, shove, test, quiz, examine, graduate, imitate, cringe, cry, die, believe, remind, reconsider, reconsider, reconsider, reconsider, prove, contend, mend, bend, reason, rationalize, agonize, plead, please, smile, agree, follow, lead, rock, roll, and rest. I will be on my own side of my mind, the inside of whats truly only mine, and I will have to be patient until you find me there: for you and I will celebrate your own story.

What are you going to do to make yourself feel real?
2:30 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Beside(s) Myself Current mood: restless Category: Writing and Poetry
Part II
They groan and I acknowledge both nothing and lack thereof; I nudge the steel door open with my shoulder slowly, and instantly entertained the idea of perhaps joining a gym/health-club-type thing when I returned home; I considered this because a ten-year old had pushed this door open earlier with her pinky finger and I felt weak and trapped within wacky Hot Ville. But when I stepped into the night air, all was the same opposite. Two weeks went by in twenty seconds. I opened my eyes outside of every heavy, tedious door which I would ever open. I lost and let go of it all before I know I had ever gained it of kept any of it all I was thinking my thoughts were on you baby. While it was that my thoughts of you were in me; I was surrounded magnificently and I wandered in my soul as I quite possibly encircled my self.
Could have melted right there in this sweltering ocean of humidity, this heavy evening atmosphere seemed, at the moment, that this twilight is what I know; all of my life broken and rebuilt: mended, tailored, and hemmed. My sore eyes sight fell towards the now and I accepted this unfamiliar paradox of being in this place, simultaneously wishing I was anywhere else but here, and I was so beside myself that I was within it all all of the epic epiphanies which I could summon to stomach, ingest, digest; I felt this territory was mine, maybe because you had instilled such insight: within me, without me, about me.
Sometimes I wonder if others mind so much mental chaos as I; I wonder if they possess it, repress it, admit it, avoid it; of it their heads arent as mindful as mine. I think that I think too much, too rapidly, too randomly, too unsequentially, and at times I wish I didnt. But after chaotically analyzing these matters, happily I realize I would not change a thing. Hell, I likely -can't- change a thing.
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Sunday, April 30, 2006
No Stategies Category: Writing and Poetry
Any way you look at it, I had made a bad decision; thus again resulting in the cause of the The mistakes caused more were the cause and effect
Bad choices were becoming a way of life for me. Cody knew me better than anyone, so I blame him for my most recent mistake.
Drought looks like it might be the worst one in years, says he.
Eat your supper and let your brother do the thinking, baby, mom said to me, not looking at me watching Cody suspiciously. Fat chance, I thought, not really sure what that meant, though it was my favorite phrases lately.
Good ideas always came to me in times of trouble, but I didnt have no strategies in the common sense area, as my ma and Cody always told me. Hell with them, I thought. I had remembered thinking I could outwit them in the past so many times, just like this exact situation. Jesus is on my side; I folded my napkin and wiped the beads of sweat off my brow.
Knowing how clever I was, I snuck out into the barn at dusk with my plan, my intellect, a garden hose, and two packs of matches. Lightning was off to the east nearby town, but I knew it was just the dry lightning that didnt bring rain in this heated season. My judgment couldnt be flawed this time; I had thought this through for at least a half an hour after supper.
Now, I could make my way.
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Saturday, April 08, 2006
You. Current mood: sympathetic Category: Yes Games
After speaking to Mel, I decided to quit erasing my entries; this is a repost. Or an unpost that I am reposting....

I am so damn happy.
If you have ever been to Denver, you would know that the altitude changes elements of nature. For instance, water comes to a boil more slowly, beer goes to your head more quickly, taking the stairs is twice as tedious as it would be at sea level, and water becomes a necessary liquid to have on hand all of the time. People seem taller here, there are less lefties, a lot of conservatives, and the occurrence of prostate cancer and multiple sclerosis are the highest in the country. The mountains are 30 minutes away or less, people drive like total idiots, and the laid-back attitude may cause you to get beat up. The weather is static, employment is optional, procrastination pays off.
Sometimes, here in the city, we take to ourselves, laugh at ourselves, find ecstasy in chaos, and give up on giving up.
I am a liar and a thief. I am a beggar and a chooser. I just upgraded myself from Version 1.5 to 100,000,000.00. No need to upgrade till everyone else catches up. Unless I get bored. Unless you get bored. Boredom fades, though.
Do you remember the day your life imploded and you woke up on the side of the sun? Come with me; I will tell you all about it on the way up, kids...
Be true to yourself (Shakespeare). You have all the time in the world. Shock wears off. Sometimes faster than sunscreen. I wouldn't lie to you.
http://www.imho.com/grae/chaos/chaos.html
You have all the time in the world.

1:19 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove
Eric Shiveley's Movie
If you have any love in your heart at all, check out Eric's new movie trailers which he is letting us be a part of:I think I look like a rock star and a semi-tortured artist; this is my newest project - in addition, of course, to my other projected semi-projects.
http://ericshiveley.com/

Posted by Wendy Clark at 12:33 PM Links to this post

Just like today.

Saturday, July 22, 2006

Knowledge is Power by Wendy Clark ©2006

For this discussion, kids, please take notes. Yes, in your notebook. Preferably in your English notebook. No, not your journal. No Billy, not your hey! I am speaking! Okay. Listen up, guys. Guys! Okay. Okay! Take out your journal and write the - - what? Please, dont speak when I am speaking! I do not have a .7 lead, sorry. No, you cant go to the restroom right now the pencil sharpener is next to my computer. No, Susie, not true. I dont know why we have an assembly. All right. So take your journals out and open them. Shhhsorry guys, I mean your NOTEBOOKS yes, I mean no, I am going to explain that in just a sec Kelly! Where are you going? Okay. Let me take attendance. Oh, go see if they have a band-aid in the front office well um are you kidding? Sorry. The front office is located at the front of the school yes.those doors that go to the outside of the school.okay, but only one of you may go, no. No more chocolate. No, but we will watch a movie if we get through the chapter, perhaps next week. Page 427. Open your books, yall. Today is the 17th. Its not? Sorry. Today is the 1st? That is funny, Joe; hey why dont you go talk to the Dean on that cell phone, buddy. Now. Um Um, I think we will just have to have a quiz on the notes we havent taken. Yes. In fact, that is almost ironic, Steve! Wow! Nice application of figurative language! So where was I? Okay. Why do you think that this chapter is so important? Did you just say in deep s- - t? If I cant swear, then neither can you. So on page 427 of your textbook yes, I have extras in the side cabinet, next to the pencil sharpener, right where you put them during detention yesterday. No, the other side. Warmer warmer. Please raise your hand if you have a question. What? Page 427. I will write it on the board GUYS! Quit throwing crap! Now, Rachel, please turn on the overhead projector, and the heading of your notes should be Chapter 5, Language and Thought. Page 247. Sorry, sorry, what page? Hang on, my book is gone. Okay, who can describe what this chapter is trying to tell us? Page 427, Nick. Language what is it okay, you didnt read the chapter did you all? I think that sports is important but so is reading. well, hate is an insulting way to describe a class, especially when I can hear you Thanks. Okay. Does anyone know what the title suggests about the association between language and thought? Did you read? Yes, I did mention it yesterday and it was on the board, right where I always write your homework, eh? Nicely done. Thank you for changing the page number up there. That is just classic humor. If you are the criminal, pat yourself on the back for that one. Great. Super-duper. The stapler? Please dont shoot staples at her! PUT MY STAPLER BACK!
We will wait.
OKAY!!! Barry! Thank you for your input! Excellent: please listen to what Barry has to those staples are expensive; yes, someone could lose an eye. well okay, then
Now please listen to what Barry has to say about this chapter, which is a major component of life and human nature, and no Barry, you cant go to the bathroom I am starting to get angry why is my overhead missing? Of course. Yes, it was just there. FINE! GO TO THE BATHROOM! WASH YOUR HANDS, BARRY! The pencil sharpener is over there. Okay. Does anyone have any clue what this chapter is about? Beth? Sammy? Um, okay then. Look at the title. What kinds of clues do you get? Just share a book then. I think they cost $60 dollars Please, for the love of all pull up your pants, Tim! TIM! Talk to me after school!
We have rules here because we love you. Alright Settle down! Argh! Please listen to this announcement Okay baseball players get the notes from someone because you may use your notes on the quiz tomorrow. Tomorrow is Saturday. Sorry, I mean Monday. I forgot to collect your journals no, if its in your locker you may bring it to me tomorrow Sorry, Monday. Remember how you should have a table of contents in your English notebook? Yes, we have been doing that since the beginning of the semester. You have to learn some more responsibility! No, I am not in a bad mood wait. Yes I am beginning to get angry. Put your IPod away! No cell phones! I will give you the rest of class time to read no Matt! No way! Do you actually think you deserve to watch a movie? No, I havent seen that one. Oh! Does that have Mathew whats-his-name? No, I dont think hes cute
Why did Kevin leave? Im not sure if he is actually on the baseball team. Did they say varsity or JV? Whats so funny? What is that thing? Hey! Is Tina okay? Tina? Why are you crying? No, I didnt know that gosh, I am so sorry that your dog died last night, sweetie
HILARIOUS! Tina, that was not cool. Mind your manners. What? Oh, I forgot. On your feet, guys! Time for prayer.
Lets just have a few moments of silence in our hearts and minds. Jim, please wake Lisa up Dont hit people on the head with your book, Jim! What is the matter with you, today? Is it a full moon? Okay. SILENCE! Thank you. Jill. Jill, please read from the top of page 427. JILL! Anthony? READ! Thank you, Steve. Well, the gh in the word thought is silent. No, you dont have to write that down. Well, sure, write it down if you cant remember that stop throwing Skittles! All right. Let me see Yes, I will. Here is my book. I can go from memory. So write down the title of the chapter in your notebook, yes, my loose-leaf paper is on the shelf where it has always been. No, I dont have .5 lead either. What are you eating? That will make you sick. Of course, I am sure. No I have not but I am pretty sure that I know the difference between toxic and hmmmm. Shannon? Sure, I would love for you to read Whose phone is ringing? Sit down! Well, tell your dad NOT to call you during school hours! Jill? Jill! Get your book from your locker if it is that unpleasant to share! I am out of hall passes just hurry up
Page 427 NO! I wont write the page number on the board. Never mind. Do you all just want to copy the chapter for homework? Thats what I thought. Proceed, Shannon. Thanks.
Simmer down! Single file out the door for fire drills! No, you will have to use the bathroom afterwards please dont use that as a weapon, Kirk
PLEASE READ THE CHAPTER TONIGHT!!!

The Oblique Strategies - http://www.rtqe.net/ObliqueStrategies/Acute.html

"You have to decide to make something out of nothing," the words in my little black notebook were in my handwriting, the notebook is one of a dozen or so that I have filled with words, stories, random and specific to my narrative inquiry and tangled existential self-speculation.

I told you I would break your heart. I had an idea that you would be less fragile, though.

http://www.rtqe.net/ObliqueStrategies/Acute.html

Writing Exercise #117

Today is the first day of the rest of your series of other first days of your life. You always can be uncertain whether or not you have this particular day to begin again. You always may be certain that you will always be uncertain. You start planning immediately; you have an unmeasured time allotted for this interpretation of the state of your fixation. You sit in front of whatever clever type of technology or paper or sticky-note system which provides you with the encouragement to begin your plan. But after a few scribbles and a change in barometric pressure, you decide that you have accomplished a decent amount of planning, just by the act of starting to think about planning. Then you walk into your backyard to see if there is enough gas in the lawn mower to do a few rows, and your phone rings. 
“Hello?” 
The silence on the other end of your line is intolerable, so you utter a short sequence of charming “un-thank yous” and you realize that you have to call your friend in Chicago who is sick and could be dying; meanwhile your guitar looks like it needs to be played. You can’t figure out a chord, so you pick up the remote but nothing is on except your love’s favorite show, which you can’t watch be cause this is the first day of the rest of your year, and so you think about ordering a pizza but your debit card is downstairs and the cat just puked and the ice has already melted in your class.
“Hello?”
You walk around in circles until you decide its not worth it and maybe the tag phrase should be today is the last day of your life but that seems psychologically unhealthy and you need to sleep it off. 
Any challenges you open your sleepy eyes to are self-imposed. For instance, you must own your own mind. You can’t always control it, but you have got to own it. You have to obey or disobey its compulsions, and you have to accept its troubles and randomizations. You can’t organize it, but you can know the danger of its capacity to scramble and ramble. You can tell yourself many things you want to believe, but unless you compromise with it, your intentions won’t be articulated as obligations. You have to be consistent, impressionistic, reasonable, adjustable, and playful. No one can think for oneself without wandering about some madness, and at times madness may be the purpose, the map, the ambiguity that makes all challenges the exact electricity which makes your mind’s universe. 
So! Before you retrace your steps, either find the nearest exit or forgive yourself for thinking that you are completely capable of withstanding any retrospection. We all have a certain level of faith and love for ourselves, but we hesitate to remember (time after time) that our mind’s love is unrequited at times. 
I found myself today. I found myself yesterday. Don’t worry about how or where or why. You need to worry about yourself. I am in good standing with myself. I don’t know how you see me, but I need you to look at yourself instead of me. I am lost and found, and the circle will never be unbroken. 
Ask yourself questions; but believe nothing you say is universal truth. Again, I don’t know how you see me, I only see what I ask of you to see me as, and I ask you to see me without judgment, without pity, without expectations; I will in turn see you just as I see myself. I will see a conjunction of suggestion, a highway overlooking the inexactness which I gander and gather, and I will speak no evil, see no evil, nor hear no evil. I will tell myself to have an open mind, an unspoken heart, and a thousand broken souls unnerving me at every moment I let myself go. I will obey and deceive while I coincide and conflict. I will not hurt you any more or less unless I am hurting. But, that’s me. I will listen, confide, retreat, capture, release, stalk, haunt, freak, steal, believe, deny, accuse, refuse, abuse, lose, win, practice, preach, reach, storm, mourn, shock, fall, get up, fall again, risk, gamble, promise, forget, relive, regret, write, ask, answer, explain, walk away, run away, stumble back, call, hang up, create, criticize, speculate, spit it out, move, stay, fear, hope, play, work, tumble, crumble, relive, revive, listen, whisper, break, shake, ache, take, fake, love, shove, test, quiz, examine, graduate, imitate, cringe, cry, die, believe, remind, reconsider, reconsider, reconsider, reconsider, prove, contend, mend, bend, reason, rationalize, agonize, plead, please, smile, agree, follow, lead, rock, roll, and rest. I will be on my own side of my mind, the inside of what’s truly only mine, and I will have to be patient until you find me there: for you and I will celebrate your own story. 

What are you going to do to make yourself feel real?