MisterRoboto

The Seventh Seal
There Will Be Blood
Sunrise
M
The Mirror
Lawrence of Arabia
2001: A Space Odyssey
Battleship Potemkin
Ikiru
Wings of Desire

Trust me, this was all very scientific.

Dear FUCK I am bored!

I am likely going to be transposing this post largely into a new short piece, "Five Fables," with some details and embellishments and fictionalizations. If you've read my spider fragment, that's going to be one of the fables.

I had a dream about Audra last night. It was the final dream I had this morning and the dream preceding it was about trying to cook eggs for myself with my family in Maine. People kept eating my eggs through misunderstandings and before I knew it, it was lunch time.( The Dream. )

All right, so my general course of action is to wake up at 11, waste a bunch of time, go running , eat, and then go to work, come home, maybe write a bit, veg in front of Sportscenter and Adult Swim a bit, waste time/eat if I'm hungry, read, sleep, repeat. When I was briefly unemployed, I ended up waking at the same time, then eating, reading, and writing for a couple hours before evening activities settled in. What was the secret to this?

I feel sure that if I had full days where I could write or not write at leisure, as I did in my most productive college days, I could regain full productivity. I am still able to get writing in at night -- I've been untangling some manifold narrative problems in "At First" as well as adding about a thousand words, and I'll probably be able to edit well poetry and the like at night as well; maybe recopying to suss out particularly entrenched issues -- but not nearly as much as I need to, as my material and I deserve. That will likely remain unchanged.

Over the past couple of weeks, even when I've had a set schedule and not placated my depression by such as getting drunk on Tuesday, I've noticed that I still have trouble getting right up at 11 on Tuesday morning. I had a little issue with that this morning, but it wasn't nearly as late as it often is on Tuesday and was likely more due to me being a little dehydrated/slightly malnourished than anything. A monkeywrench from Diesel with an Odwalla smoothie helped my attitude immeasurably, until I discovered the Red Line was going to be an asshole on this day of days.

So instead of fighting my apparent necessity of sleeping in on Tuesday, I'm going to aid it along. I hate running at night, so I won't be sleeping until the standard 90 minutes before work as is customary throughout society, seemingly regardless of start time, but I will be sleeping later. I will abet this by also sleeping later on Monday. Since Monday is one of my rest days from running even when I'm at my full five-days-a-week schedule, I will sleep right up until 1:30; enough time to shave, shower, hop on the T either eating a sandwich along the way or grabbing one in South Station. That night, instead of turning off the light at 0300, I'll use this time to write with a feeling of open-endedness that I felt when I was staying at Josef's. Or read more extensively. Or edit more extensively. Or anything writing-related that I feel I need to get done.

I immediately realize that there will be a few hurtles in this that are schedule-based. I'm planning on coming home from a weekend with the family on next Monday, so that'll be right out; even if I end up staying late that night, I'd be too exhausted to write effectively. But this week will be the dry test run. Additionally, this upcoming Tuesday I don't have to work, so I'll wake up whenever I damn feel like it, run, eat, then write/read until night-time activies; I think folk are arranging trivia at the Tam. Maybe it's best to ease into this schedule anyway.

My goal is to have a first draft of the full installation of "Scottish Prometheus" by the end of November. It's about a third written on the page, haven't got the central clock, haven't tried to read it as a narrative hyper-text. Saturdays, Monday nights and, hopefully when I get a head of steam, during the days before or after running. Wish me luck.

I slept in today. I did write, but I wanted to run, and I wasn't feeling the writing.

I haven't written nearly enough. 2 and half measly short pieces. Haven't worked on Immortality in months. I feel like a failure.

Looks like I decided too late in the year to go back to school. Should never have even sought after that "promotion" and just stayed in Cambridge. Though it's true that I had reached the breaking point there, that should have been an indication to a) look for a new job and b) start at that point to think about graduate school. That's another four months of my life to add to the "almost complete waste" pile.

I have time to either run or eat. So I guess I should eat. Every interaction of my life with reality is a depressing one.

I have been gainfully employed for WELL OVER a year and haven't bought "The Young Ones" on DVD yet!

GOD

Ok, so for the second elimination challenge, one of the women complained to the camera that she didn't like the "battle of the sexes" motif citing, as her reason, that whichever sex you are [O! O! Way to present that only biological sex matters! Way to rag on all the transgendered people! - ed.] shouldn't matter. FUCK YOU. If you follow the logic instead of regurgitating whatever you learned from some protester's pamphlet ten years ago COMPOUNDED by the fact that in the vast majority of all past elimination challenges, teams are chosen randomly, designation by sex should be regarded as arbitrary as any other biologically-based classification system you can imagine. Unless you also want to side with ageists, heightist, fuckitallist complaint, you should fucking deal. Ok, ok, the producers MAY be sexist, BUT to get a chip on your shoulder over what amounts to as truly arbitrary classification -- IF you recognize that both sexes are equal, then their division and competition shouldn't matter any more than drawing a line in shoe-size -- you need to shut the fuck up.

The desire to finish Ulysses tonight or to drink? Both are strong, the latter will make it more difficult but not impossible to get up and run in ca. 11 hours.

Nabokov and the way he is against the incorporation of theory into one's writing would have me believe that I cannot, through my writing, incorporate my artistic goals? Is it important to have these goals defined? I think that the Irwin book has gotten me too caught up. Irwin had a significant portfolio before he arrived at a way to explore his purely artistic goals within his work rather than the exploration of where those goals may lie. "Goals" is too demonstrative a word, but I know what I mean.

Does all art have an aesthetic principal? Must it?

I need to eat, anyway.

Revision of the poem.

Easy Realism

Find me, find me over outstretched hands,
that official animosity, its persistent vagaries,
the day to day pageant, flung to each man
their collusion, these blistering fallacies
that strike like a match.

Make me stop reading the same words daily
and devouring monotony. No, that’s
what I want you to preserve; I want your every
prominence, your profligacy, your sparrow laugh,
the way you spin your diction to gold –
no, it’s not quite so rough, more hewn, more bold.

The day after we met was catastrophe and bright,
no cloud immense in the same old day to day,
those stolid day-etched shadows, and the sight
of every woman who sat across me on the train
paled to you, wept misery, trembled, was ashamed!

The sun is the black of your hair and your eyes
are every rock and tree and bird in the sky.
Look at me writing this, look over and over me
like you look out from your porch, that deck facing east,
when you tell me the stories of the Boston impenetrable
storms that forge disaster on everything imaginable
then cease.

I’ll act as if none of this matters, but everything
insists this into existence, everything that looms
into remembered starlight and the smell of June
and uncomfortably standing, standing, standing.

I can let you know my bed is completely mismade
and I nightly kick the quilt from my legs and sway
with the whiskey I do my best not to trouble and
perch it on my nightstand outcropping like a pelican,

and that church bells sometimes wake my reverie
and I remember you, hearing you speaking behind
a door, and I flutter like a sparrow disjointedly
sometimes, and I want your other stories sometimes,
and I’ve completely mismade my head, and better,
I sometimes wonder how these supplicant letters
will sound on your mouth, or during bright days
on the train, during storms, in June, while bells chime
distantly, behind a door, through whiskey, as you lay
on my bed, when you speak as a memory, through time.

I am reminded that one of the natures that I am drawn to examine through these actions is the nature of support, as in, how to reconcile how what I do to support my art with what I produce and am. This was most starkly pointed out to myself when I annunciated my progress with the company: a year ago all my requirements were that I was college-educated, nice, and willing to learn -- no concierge experience or even related experience, really, in the slightest -- and now I'm a well-regarded, by my bosses anyway, supervising concierge at a pretty upscale property. What developments are more important? In what ways is it important that I have made this growth as opposed to or instead of other types of growth or growth in other manners? The encompassment of my "professional" (so-quoted as I profess, no quotes, that I am an artist) reality may not have completed its full burgeoning yet. I guess Monday's going to be very exciting for me!

This Irwin book has really energized me. It has energized me in a way I have longed to be eneergized, indeed, in the way that I in my citing my reasons for moving here I listed as among if not the primary. It is not just the demiurgic imprimatur that I discovered and neglected -- avoided or otherwise abdicated the opportunity to, in any sense didn't do -- to explore at Ithaca that was somewhat genitive within me at the end of that long depression, and which remains insufficiently unexplored (though maybe I was too naive, too uneducated and not widely enough read to tackle it, but I could and should have) but the very generative impulse and declination that discussion, thought, and exploration demands as a vine demands water.

(The nature of demand! What a fantastic poetic linguistic impulsion; see it in a poem soon: to demand, it demands, the rain demands, everything. Later.)

Irwin denuded himself intentionally for his demiurgic purposes those trappings of a social environment and behavior that I long for, feel I need. It is not so much a question of the reassessment of this desire or need, though reassessments are abounding, but whether I can make the most of this pit; whether I can implement this ostracization, this exile, for it does feel as one, (though not self-inflicted as was Irwin's if ever unconsciously; is that the clew?) for the same purposes and, much more to the point and more importantly, effect he did his.

Lots of reflections from these sussurrations.

Very glad that this is the time I've decided to reapproach Thomas. There are some key components I should address that I've never before done in this leavening as well: Goethe, Ibsen -- people, help me out with what poetry I haven't read before that I should now do, I'm looking more for 19th century and earlier, but any knockouts I'll examine. e.e. cummings is one, for sure.

My issues with the beginning of the hyper-textual pieces and why I haven't done anything is because I felt uneducated, stupid in terms of their execution. But who else has done this, and from what example, other than horizontal one, can I draw. Learn by doing! (But keep learning too. Need to read up, but what else is new?)

I'll probably never want for a gift suggestion should anyone ask: any well-written biography of any modern artist.

I've been way too emo in how I approach my art -- thank fuck that I didn't become so in what I've produced. It's never been about expression, and how I've hated that some insist that it must and always have! What am I exploring in Immortality? I know it's worthwile, I just need to get to exploring it instead of nancing about like a five-cent tight-jeaned Allston corner jag. This attitude will well-serve "At First," haha!

Lots of other things. The importance is in the thinking. As interesting as the conversations with myself are, I need to find someone with whom to have a conversation. Volunteers, step forward.

Why am I not working on "At First" right now?

I need to find motivation to reengage Immortality or get off the pot. But am I ready to write To the River Its Ashes yet? I don't think so. What about The Estranged? I should reexamine that.

Soooo much opportunity to write coming up. It'll get sorted.

Tonight, the Red Sox became the first team in MLB history to sell out 500 consecutive games. That's a little more than six years, and the only players on the active 25-man roster to have been around before the streak started are Jason Varitek, Tim Wakefield, and David Ortiz. Tonight was also Brad Penny's 100th career win, so congratulations to him as well!

These are as delicate lyricisms on places
we've resigned to never see again, thrown in
memory's collider -- this is the impetus
to commit everything; to write furtive,
inadequate lines and declare them a hero;
to nervously cast a glance at my sketchbook
over there, on that small tavern table,
fearing god knows what. Further
impetus breaks this or that promise,
casts figured shawls on simple strangers
so that I am certain -- committing
downright perjury with three fingers
raised; no doubt, no mistake! --
your face was the face I saw;
damn the impossibility, the irrationality
and become resigned.

But I will diligently rewind
and record these caprices.
I check on my small book again
but wait patiently for beer
and baseball to, bearing each flags
of disaster, engender themselves to me.

Because that which I make vanish I
will see again, and ghosts will
with dire and self-inflated importance
commute themselves, though it all
longs for me to set foot on any outbound
freighter – I may hit Copenhagen and be
stranded before it's all said and done.

There arises occasions where
I imagine I should write this
praise in its corresponding book,
to forget, reshelf, discard and be done.
But who could ever dare define this
starvation?

You know, I've chosen my friends really wisely.

They're all intellectually similar or on par with me, and each of the closer ones offer me something very fulfilling, I hope, for both of us. Claire's and my sense of humor are identical, and I'm not exaggerating. If I find it funny on any level, there's a good chance she not only does as well, but on the same level that I do, and that's rare. Josef and I are intellectual equals, but in different ways; this keeps my ego in check by dint of his differing perspective, and it consistently challenges me in the best ways. That said, we rarely are in direct conflict. Andrea and I seem to think about things in the same way; we have so many running and inside jokes that it would be nearly impossible to easily explain to someone else, and we're curious about many of the same things in largely the same way.

Jackie and I will always be united in the way we understand our respective arts. She is my avatar and I am her weeping wall, things of vital importance to the neurotic class otherwise known as artists. Greg always knows how to put things into perspective for me, because, while Claire and I can commiserate with one another's depression, it's as if Greg and my depressions display themselves in the same way, but rarely at the same time. Also, he's funny as hell.

My other friends fulfill a variety of other functions and I provide, I hope, a variety of functions for them, but the above-mentioned are the people I know the best. My siblings provide a mixture of all of these things (except for Jackie, she's unique!), and, to varying extents, the above-mentioned fill in partly for the things each seems to excel at. Thanks all for being there.

This is in order of when I sort it using Windows by name:( The List )

Have a great weekend everyone!

So I am posting this from my new Blackberry. Nothing like reclining on the couch while watching the Sox game and hollurin atchall. Does this certify me as "cool"?

My car did very well on its first trip post-repair. It drives much better and I think that it's getting better gas miledge now. Plusses all around.

So this Blackberry is pretty rad whether that nakes me cool or not. I haven't really noodled with it very much yet, I just have my work email and gmail accounts connected. It's actually preferable for my work email in some ways as I usually have to log back in and out every time I need to do something.

Ever since that resident told me I should start a baseball blog I've been thinking about it more and more. Hey Claire, want to egg each other on?

Untitled as yet, wrote it mostly on the train and a little bit at work.

Find me, find me over the outstretched hands
the dictated animosity that must through its vagaries
persist; out in that cavalcade of disinheiretence
flung from each day to day, a blistering fallacy
that strikes like a match.

Make me stop reading the same news daily
and rusty disused monotony. No, that's
what I want you to preserve; I want your
prominence, your profligarity, if that's a word,
the way you spin your words like gold --
no, it's not that rough and much more hewn.

The day after we met was disastrously bright,
no cloud immense in the same old day to day
the many bright-cast shadows, and every
woman that sat across me on the train
paled to you, trembled and was ashamed!

The sun is your eyes and your hair is
every rock and tree and bird in the sky.
Look at me writing these lines, look at me
like you look out from your porch, that deck,
when you remember the impenetrable Boston
storms that forge disaster on everything imaginable
and then cease.

And none of that matters, everything compels
this into existence, everything that is made up
of remembering starlight and the smell of June
and uncomfortably standing, standing, standing.

I can let you know that my bed is completely mismade,
and I nightly kick the quilt from my legs
and do my best not to trouble the whiskey
that nightly hovers like a pelican on an outcropping,

and that church bells sometimes wake my lethargy
and I remember hearing you speak from behind
a door, and I am disjointed like a sparrow
sometimes, and I wonder what you remember
sometimes, and I mismade my mind and
sometimes wonder how this mismade letter
will sound on your mouth, during bright days,
on the train, in June, in my bed, with bells chiming
distantly, from behind a door, through whiskey,
as a memory, through time.