Phew!

Well, that was a nasty 6 weeks I hope never to revisit again. Taught my last 8 am class wed; I gave them thursday as a research day for their papers. Will they take advantage of that? One or two will, but I bet most of them slept in like I did.

I still don't know what "light and wacky" means. Hmm, "light n' wacky" the new salad dressing bottled in a giant pezz dispenser. There's something just a little bit sinister about that phrase, like Kraft branded a tiny piece of my imagination and is using me, unknowingly, to churn out exciting new flavor adventures--another phrase that sounds off. This line of verbiage is givin' me the willies!

I wonder though, in our corporatized democracy--the one that gives corporations all the benefits of bein' an individual--has a certain syntax been staked out? Shakespeare is known for enjambment, blank verse, etc. Tarantino is known for rhythmic profanity. Their style of writing is a finger print (if not them exactly then a contemporary, etc).

Light n' wacky.
flavor adventure.

Phrasing lacking in any substance, nonthreatening, ludicrous.

Crash Burn Slide

Last week of this 8 am death march. That's what I've been like, a stupid sucker on a death march in a trail of tears that is --well, it's a trail of tears for christ's sake.

Actually, tomorrow is the end of this terrible violent cycle of violent intellectual molestation. They can have thursday to work on their paper. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!


Funny enough I've got a back log of material, I just haven't had the patience and brain power to hammer out some edits. Good lord, you know I have material from over a year ago I haven't revised at all? Yikes! My head is going light n' wacky (don't ask me what that means I'm not entirely sure) Will lay down for a few minutes before going to the dojo.

Where Tigr stops whining, abruptly, and meditates on victories.

There should be forward motion in our life together, not inertia. We should be making plans to move in together again. Why aren’t we? Isn’t that the very first thing we should have done? Mariann still doesn’t have her thesis done. When will she defend, December? I’ve got work as an adjunct, but Jesus, I don’t want to a full time position at Backwater Tech, I want an MFA, I want to be writing, I want a degree that will give me more versatility in the leaning tower of ivory.

God, enough with the "shoulds" and the "why nots", and "I wants" my life is not at it's nadir. This isn't heroine sheik(sp?), this isn't a Greek Tragedy, or a Morality Play. On occasion, it may be something out of Satan Says, but those moments are brief, with the lifespan of a single firework; you see that red splash before you've heard the booming shriek.

Let’s not downplay the obvious victories here. One, we won. Doesn’t matter if there wasn’t a verdict, the defendants paid out six figures. Two, hello, we got a six figure settlement! We can lay down the foundation for a spiffy retirement plan. Three, our sex life is workin’ just fine thank you very much. Oddly enough, under all the pressure and strife, our sex life has improved. Four, we beat Super Mario Galaxy two days after the verdict. Yeah I know, talk about a little victory, but we did it together and it felt good, even if the substance of the thing itself is imaginary. Stoppin’ on koopas is fun. (Where were the Hammer Bros. in this installment?) Five, as far as PSTD goes, I think the worst is over for G (I hope). Six, I keep getting’ my ass whipped, but somehow I’m improving in bjj and judo and JKD.

Seven, I will be going to a four day Machado seminar in October providing me with intensive training so that I will improve even more (I think I can get that damn blue belt in under two years). Eight, I’m still writing on this here blog. Nine, I’m still writing poetry and prose. I’m on to something here. I think the superhero inflections of the poetry is slowly shaping into a shrewd cycle at worse and at best a book length collection at best. Nine, I’m living in exciting times for comic books films (and comic books in general) hell, whether I like it or not, I’m living in exciting times (ancient curse/blessing). And ten, that’s right ten, my overall level of conditioning keeps going up.

That’s how it’s done. That’s how you put the focus on the positive. It doesn’t kill the negative, but it puts everything in perspective. When I make alterations to my diet—and I use the term to mean a long term lifestyle choice not a temporary fix’er up’er—I focus on what I want in it, rather than what I take away. I need lots of lean protein, fats, fruit, and water, so I focus on consuming those rather than obsessing over not having pizza (hmm, so there is a context in which I DON’T obsess about things). I need to maintain the same outlook with the rest of my life. I cannot allow myself to navel gaze at the scars and traumas, that (to a certain extent) is what the poetry is for.

Bragging

I used the word "stentorian" in the post below. This pleases me greatly. It's one of those words you really like, but rarely have occasion to use (ex: exponentially, gargantuan)

Dreamless

When I was four I stayed up a solid 24 hours, dragging my poor abuelita past the midnight hour, storming through the blackness of 6 am. As a preschooler I despised nap time. To paraphrase Roger Ebert, I hated nap timed. Hated, hated, hated it. I was wide awake in a room full of alphabet clouds and big bold blues, greens, and whites: summer, winter, fall and spring all at once on the poster boards. The cosmic balance of the universe, the barrier forming order out of chaos, a thin black cross, kept the sun from melting the ice which would have caused an avalanche, killing the roses and the little boy skipping to school in his shorts.
It was me alone in that quiet, motionless sea of young bodies wrapped in corduroy. My classmates floated in dreams, I floated on a red mat firmly rooted to the carpet. My only dreams were of the day variety; they were the only stimulus I had for two hours--those, and the questions. I wondered if the teacher knew she had the most beautiful legs I had ever seen, and if she realized I stared at them when she taught us the days of the week. Would the cafeteria serve the best brownies in the world tomorrow, served up on white paper discs? Is papi coming home with surprises hiding behind his giant mustache which unfolds upon the world like a pair of giant batwings [note to reader: do you know the Spanish word for mustache? I'm looking for a particular term that starts with a "b" it might be slang, or possibly a variation created by a 4 yr old mind]--long, dark, and curly?

I tossed and turned and fiddled, very much like I do now as an adult. Fingers twiddling frantically, a glass ball of lighting in a madman's lab. My legs would open and close, flapping without purpose, rubbing...rubbing. My penis caught in the cleavage of my inner thigh and underoos. In these long waitings I discovered myself accidentally. I do not remember the first time I masturbated, all I know is it was there, and it would become a daily activity (and nightly) as I tried to surf through the boredom. I enjoyed the tingle but desired no one.

I've often wondered if these habits said anything about me specifically. Was my sleeplessness at this age a sign of a specific personality? Did it imply something about my home life? Was it a signifier for a learning disability or worse?(My sister was tested, rigorously, and found to have ADD. Papi has an anxiety disorder. Our grandmother wandered the halls of schizophrenia in an asylum). At the end of the day, was it simply the sign of a stentorian imagination, already cultivating my first superhero myth-life?

One time, I wet myself because I had nothing else to do.

Pan's Hellboy

I saw Hellboy 2 this weekend with Girlfriend. I enjoyed it. It doesn't play like a superhero movie, rather it plays like a fantasy film that just happens to have superheroes in it. One of Del Toro's--who directed Pan's Labyrinth strengths as a director is his ability to create immersive worlds, rather than a pastiche of CGI effects trying passing itself off as an environment. This is one of those movies I would recommend to people who aren't fans of the superhero genre.
Del Toro is a gifted filmmaker who has the ability channel the old school: the golden age of monster movies, the black and white classics. Karloff, Lugosi, Chenney( Sr and Jr.) would all thrive in Del Toro's world; in fact, just writing that makes me a little sad that they aren't around to do just that.

THUMP!

Am back at the homestead. Things have changed drastically, yet there is no feeling of change, I've even started to break down what I'll be doing with a hunk of change, and things still don't feel any different.

My one concern with respect to the money is I fuck it up. I want to invest it, I don't want to do anything risky, but the market is doing a performance piece I like to call "Little Viet Cong Boy trips on land mine, plays hopscotch"