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Showing posts from May, 2014

The Value of Deep Thoughts

I believe that I am a deep thinker.  I suppose most people feel like that they are deep thinkers, that their thoughts have some value to them.  I suspect that if people did not merit their own thoughts, did not believe what they processed through their mind had value, they probably would not like themselves very much.  Most people would believe themselves to be intelligent, or at the least, having average intelligent.  Not many people go around calling themselves stupid, or devalue their own ideas. So it is probably egotistical for me to state that I believe that I am a deeper thinker than most people.  Certainly, I live in no one else’s head but my own.  I do not know what thoughts pass through the brains of others, other than what passes through the filter of their mouth.  So it is very much possible that others have deep thoughts, as deep or deeper than mine.  All I have for making such assessment is the words spoken by others, the ideas thrown out of the mouth while conversing

[internal]

  core cloaked, clouded. meainng being central/inside   peel away, revelation of pulp/ unblossomed petals/ delicate organs.   [internal] covered in a crust. crust giving substance. existence within.   a temptation. remove the skin but expose the insides.   transformation. [internal] now external.   question from morass? can [internal] be known   Heidegger's cat

Story Idea: Body Vacation (draft)

Consciousness slowly dawned on him delivered to him on a beam of sunlight which slipped between the curtains of his bedroom. He had been on a vacation from himself, just arrived back to his body this morning from a three week vacancy. His mouth was dry, sore, raw, like someone had poured sand down it. His limbs, those that were not numbed, were sore, like they had been punched, or that they had received a good work out. The blankets of his bed were in a terrible knot, and, as he tried to readjust himself, he felt the resistance of the blankets holding into place. Beside him, on his right side where his arm lay under a pile of pillows, he felt a great weight. The mattress he was laying felt like it was falling in upon itself, folding along the middle, sucking Paul into the middle of the bed. They had told him that upon returning to his body that he would feel weird sensations, mostly unpleasant, but that they would disappear over the next few hours. Nothing that a good shower wouldn’t f

Sisyphian Feats

I woke up from a dream this morning wherein a case that I have been desperately trying to rid myself of had finally settled.  Its been a highly contentious matter with the ugly motions being filed and a number of shenanigans which should have never been pulled.  I leveled with the other attorney, a female with very weak legal skills but with a power-player boss whose methods of winning cases involves making sure that whatever judge is hearing the case knows that he is one of the attorneys in the case prior to the docket being called.  In the dream, I asked her to put aside the ugliness and bitterness so that this case could be drawn to a close, and she agreed.  And then I woke up, more than a little amused by my dream, whether it was a message sent to me of divine origin, or my own subconscious advising me how to resolve the case, and smile spread across my face, a grin at my own expense, because I knew that, due to the hostile nature of the case, it was never going to be resolved if

Killer Cover of the Week

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  I have to be honest.  I was not overly impressed with Marvel’s Infinity series.  I had large hopes for it based I believe on Marvel’s distribution of a teaser #0 issue during Free Comic Book Day in 2013.  The cover with Thanos forced through the midst of shards of some material and the very stylized and distinct font were both very attractive.  The well put together design suggested an event that was going to be equally put together which revolved around Thanos and the Infinity gems.  Unfortunately, the cover art wrote a check that the story itself could not cover.  Although Thanos played a significant role in the event, he was by no means the central character.  Nor was the Infinity gens as important as the title suggested.  It was no where near the event that the Infinity Gauntlet was, which is sad, because the Mad Titan is such an interesting character, complex and ripe for exploration. That’s what made me a little wary of the new series from Marvel called Original Sin.  It too

A Meta Story

He sat down … sits down ? Should the narrative be written in the present tense? I never really know whether in fact if I should be so immediate in my narrative, so vital. I something gets lost in the present tense, that it fails to carry the necessary weight, isn’t anchored into history so it isn’t quite lore yet. And yet, the past tense has its own baggage which I don’t like either. The –ed suffix like shriveling petal on a flower, the browning leaf suggesting that the story is dead. In the end, I always choose the past, feel more comfortable in the thudding d’s than the hissing s’s. He sat down at the round table… Round? Circular? Café table? Too easy. There’s no bait in it. It’s an ordinary act, lacking anything to draw the reader in. How about… He sits in the stranger’s lap rather than in the available chair next to the café table. Wordy. A lot said. But a little more interesting. Who is this stranger in whose lap our mysterious male sits. I am sitting here at a café table wo

I’m Wearing a Bowtie Now. It’s Going To Be My Thing…

About four weeks ago, I decided that bowties were going to be “my thing.”  And I want to be very clear here that when I say bowties, I don’t mean pre-tied bowties, the kind your parents would buy when you were a kid that came packaged already knotted in a neat bow and only required you to attach a hook to some kind of latch or loop.  I decided that if I was in for a penny, I was in for the full dollar, and that I would not be satisfied with something already completed, already fashioned for me.  Fashion is work, and pre-tied bowties were the antithesis of this.  Pre-tying implicates the reliance on garment workers in some Asian sweatshop paid pennies on the dollar for making the perfect bow, where the sides lined up perfectly and the knot in the center tightened the right amount or perhaps manufactured by a bowtie machine, which when fed on one end the bowtie manipulated the thin scrap of cloth into the ideal form, free from humanistic imperfection and the emotional quality emanating

Why the Kings of Leon are the Best Band Ever (this week)…

I have always subscribed to the theory that music, and more particularly pop music, is a lot like wine.  It might be easy to say that both music and wine require an acquired taste, but this is putting it a little too easy.  Wine connoisseurs, I imagine, can go into a number of qualities of wine which make a really good wine, the consistency, the aroma, and on and on.  I certainly don’t know the ins and outs of wine; I’ll leave that to the wine connoisseurs. I can tell you that for somebody who has never had a sip of wine, a glass of the finest red wine is like placing pearls before swine.  A novice wine drinker likely does not have the ability to distinguish the different aspects of the wine let alone know what they are.  For a novice, one glass of wine is likely indistinguishable from another.  You could place in front of the novice a glass if plunk released this year, and it would taste the same as a fine wine released in a golden year. Recently, I was scrolling through a number of

Waves

Things happen in lots, similar to the way traffic jams work.  Anyone ever stuck in a traffic jam can attest to the sporadic movement one makes in progressing to one’s destination.  It is the symptom of an over crowded city with run-down roads filled with potholes and debris like old mattresses and tire remains littering the road. I recall living in Houston, teaching and residing on the east side, trying to get to central Houston to attend law school, and traveling to the west side to do any real shopping and to visit family and friends.  Rush hour traffic was a nightmare, where in, it was about whether you were going to find yourself stuck between rusted beat-up brown pick-up truck hauling a bunch of gardening equipment loosely thrown in the bed or construction tools or scrap material removed from a job and a long Oldsmobile, a tanker of a car which creak and moaned as it shifted across the pavement. It was a nerve wracking experience in which you learned to have patience, to plan an

A (Today) Thought (Not for Tomorrow)

I am here at the Barnes and Noble, drinking a tall coffee at their café.  The women at the counter knows my order before I even tell her, and she doesn’t tell me how much it is.  She has a face that someone has worn before, long, drawn out into poles.  In north pole is covered by black straw-like hair hidden under a bland khaki baseball cap, the Barnes and Noble logo sewn onto the part right above the lid. I suspect she assumes I remember the cost of the coffee, $1.89, even though today I have forgotten.  I have assumed the practice that so many of the young, and perhaps old, have adopted, turning over a check card, a kind of identity card itself, revealing the only true measure of a man, his wealth.  It sickens me to think that technology has final created a life underneath a life that we live.  It is a life where money transfers hands, where imaginary entities talk and discuss what kind of movies, music, or cell phone apps one might want to try or buy, what books might interest me.

lunch with E. E. CUMMINGS

young(er) the [syn]tax comma two pieces of bread in a langu(age)     sand                              which [sea]son(ed) comma slathered with commas comma periods comma [semi] colons question mark A     tooth         pick     holds the (w)hole [bun]dle to      get                her but I cannot eat it (be)cause it [up]sets my (stom)ach[e] (period)