one step more and you die

Rumination on evil and good

2011-08-18T19:34:00.000-07:00

What, when I am the villain of my own nightmares?

Give pause to the thought that, outside of comic books and blockbuster films, bona fide evildoers, legitimate psycho-maniacs, and the like are not so distinct. The world is not so obvious in this way.

We become the directors of our own misery. This much I can say is clear. It doesn't turn out for that thing in which we invested and so we can become self-loathing masochists. In this way, each is the villain of his own story. The director of his nightmare, if you like.

The question arises, How does one come to terms with one's desires? The question, I think, is located in the same sphere as the aforementioned self-contempt. We are still responsible when our desires turn out unfavorably (usually), as the gardener whose soil produces bad vegetables (in the act becoming the master not of his wants, but of the opposite). Who is the enemy of his situation?

This example of the gardener and his regrettable plot of land, while a common motif in our lives, does not cover the breadth of misfortune that we are adjusted to experiencing. Precisely, it misses the complexity of many common situations, most notably when the sought are intertwined with the unsought. Imagine the success of the gardener's tomatoes being predicated on the annihilation of his peppers, and vice versa. (Aside, this expanded scenario adds a hierarchy of choices to be made, most obviously which vegetable is most important.) By granting his circumstance, the farmer commits to receiving both everything he desires and everything he has worked to prevent: the "fate" of his crops.

The self-loathing comes when one accepts the desires and the demons at once. It is a capitulation to the self in all of its miseries (and thereby the circumstance that one has brought about) on which laziness and masochism are based. How to come to terms with a scene in which what one seeks to cherish and what one seeks to defy are collected into one figure?

The gardener in the example looks to compromise some of his ego in order to get what he wants. This, I argue, is as close a definition to the central characteristic of a villain as I am willing to perpetuate. On the other hand, the hero will sacrifice his desires to maintain integrity, honesty, and image--to maintain a sense of justice and loyalty--thereby delaying his own interests for some sort of bigger cause.

This self-inflicted delay in gratification necessary to the hero icon is not unlike the masochistic quality in the villain, who sustains undesired consequences to augment his fascinations. Note that the hero insists that his choices are pristine and justified, that he alone makes upright decisions. It's necessitated hypocrisy. Both the hero and the villain make submissions to their character traits in this way.

vices, conversation

2011-08-14T13:22:00.000-07:00

2011-08-06T16:01:00.000-07:00

“Man is the Only Animal that blushes. Or needs to.

-Twain

2011-07-30T00:52:00.001-07:00

my last day in Germany and it's going to rain, rain, rain.

2011-07-24T04:13:00.000-07:00

“It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.

-Dostoevsky

2011-07-21T14:10:00.000-07:00

Costello: "How's your mother?"
Man: "Oh... I'm afraid she's on her way out."
Costello: "We all are. Act accordingly."

2011-07-21T05:03:00.000-07:00

"Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting."

-Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

i got a new idea for a story

2011-07-14T14:47:00.000-07:00

Two dreamers step into an elevator hovering on the nineteenth floor and are instantly struck by the loveliness of the other. Aware of the immediacy and ephemeral nature of the circumstance, their love is exhausted in a shrunken amount of time so that they may fully express themselves before arriving on the first floor.

Imagine for a moment how this might appear to the outsider: not as an appendage truncated at the forearm, but the full picture minimized in all of its splendid details. The whole thing is there, burning brightly as the ground comes closer, and the elevator doors open, and their eyes are alight with precipitation.



2010-11-01T20:32:00.001-07:00

I like sending letters as much as receiving them.

\

2010-05-22T23:11:00.000-07:00

god failed us & so we shaved his horn.

look what we did

2010-05-19T12:34:00.001-07:00

spill

capital g

2010-05-17T07:46:00.000-07:00

good grief

better than bad grief.

//

2010-05-05T23:49:00.000-07:00

Bethany looks into his turning black circles, suppressing a sigh. They didn't seem so dark now as they held their gift. Not opaque, but something worthy of conquering, and she would try.

#

2010-05-03T23:46:00.000-07:00

the future comes like a stampede, and we are its trampled victims.

7500 light years away

2010-04-29T02:16:00.000-07:00

behind the dust, more stars.

carina nebula

2010-04-27T17:13:00.000-07:00

star birth/death

excerpt

2010-04-11T18:24:00.000-07:00

I worry those nights that he sits, hours, turning the key over in his hands. He treats the end of the key like the overbite on a child. Gnarly overhanging teeth and the jaw that wasn't there.

200 deaf boys in Wisconsin

2010-03-31T10:04:00.000-07:00

Pope's out of control, but above it
Once and for all
200 deaf boys in Wisconsin
can't be wrong

Jaykub

2010-03-07T19:21:00.000-08:00

his mother crawled from out of the sea. his father emerged from volcanic ash. Jaykub hatched his egg one morning while the folks were watching television. he screamed as all infants did then, bursting the walls of their economical home. his mother tended him with a bottle. she had read breastfeeding was good for babies but gave Jaykub gasoline formula instead so that he would grow up big and strong.

1996

2010-02-21T19:26:00.000-08:00

A long look in the mirror. Since their separation, he has gained weight. From his memories, Jack constructs an image of Bethany as best he can. Her body stands nude next to him in the dressing booth, flexible as grass, pink and free and nothing like the women in Jack's magazines. The left hip sets just so, letting for a stance like a Greek statue. In times of doubt, he would place the crux of his palm there. It was somewhere for him to go.

meet me in the past, remember me in the future

2010-02-12T22:35:00.001-08:00

whiskey's all gone and it's too cold in this house. something i've been working on.

"I'm all out of ideas, Beth." Their eyes come together on a grid in space, not between them but above both their heads, and Jack understands before she says
"Nobody cares about philosophy anymore."
It's a punch in the chest but Jack knows better than to take it personal. The way he sees this, it is an invitation by Bethany to resist the future. This must be the real reason why she's had him meet her for dinner.

permission to come aboard?

2010-01-29T20:59:00.000-08:00

welcome, cadet, to what some call the internet and others call home. here, you'll be able to fulfill your most vehement digressions via usb and lcd and keys and keys of letters. it's a love affair, so bring your heart and mean it.

prime time
the newscaster pulls out a compact
from below her desk
and opens it like a smile.

as she stipples her chin,
the camera rolls on.

behind the scene,
crew watch at the mercy
of her seductive faux posture

and big, fake breasts.

discreetly, she shuts the mirror
out of sight and crosses her fingers.