Impromptu

Excuse the fluffy crap about to follow. Perhaps the snow froze my brain.
      I was talking to a student last night, as we all frantically prayed for a snow day (woohoo!), and I clicked on his profile and followed the links to his photography page. Wow. How beautiful. Go there now:
Ted's Photos


      Something about this reminded me that texts can be beautiful. And for just a second, I remembered why it's called a Master of Arts.

      That's not to say that theory isn't good, or that criticism shouldn't be done. Hell, no! Sometimes I just forget to appreciate it for what it is...unfortunately, we even have a theory for that....
      As I am not yet in that elusive writing space, I will not return to the Essay of Doom until I am passionate again. This could happen at any moment, but will most likely occur as I try to sleep after writing my paper for Thursday. Adrenaline must be fettered out. In the meantime, as I read Rhetorical Bodies, I come across an essay written sometime in 1998, which states, "Lately the World Wide Web [note his language here], the most powerful publishing technology ever created to distribute both words and images, has provoked an eruption of jeremiads about how the Web is destroying literacy as we conceive of it in the academy. We hear that critical thinking and reflection, a sense of order, dialectical interaction, logical relations in texts, depth of analysis, trails of sources, and the reform mission of public discourse [we have a mission?] are all going to be lost. Even those who take a more balanced view fear that the multimedia capability of the Web will undermine or overwhelm the power of prose" (Faigley, 175). Please note that five years later, I am quoting this on a web site entirely devoted to prose, and that images are limited on this website. Note that fanfics in all languages make up millions upon millions of webpages. And that even if these are not "ordered" or "logical" or necessarily "literate" (in the sense that it obeys social conventions of the use of English), the power of prose over the power of image is going strong in these websites. So there.

      So here's some beauty and truth (note the lack of capitalization) I did earlier, after anime. A little self-absorbed, the first of these refers to...well, actually, I'm not going to say. I'd hate for people at GBC to find this and blame me for their diminishing numbers. And I'm not promising anything on punctuation or grammar.

Leatherlips

it's at all the "we's" that I'm flinching
it's the feel of the pain under my nails that makes me whole
the cold snow breath smelling like winter leaves degrading
the fire stove baking hot chocolate down to skin
it's the cards damp and woody
it's the humid room and drying clothes
tossed on the floor in tears
it's the dimmed lights, the candle lit nights
the way our faces shaddow when we are most afraid of hell
it's the song master singing his weaknesses
it's the strings of his guitar that make me try to cry
I want to be a part of the weeping
I want to save my soul, but something keeps me back
steeped in the tradition, I note it now, cold
the full metal of the beds, cult-like arrangmenet--
arraignment of the criminal soul.
The lines we await for God in
that we find our turns in
the moist heat of the kitchen not drying our eyes
but normalizing the brightness of the overhead lights
To be transformed is to be in the snow
to join in love as with the football
escape to the cabins that expect grief
Here is the promise of truths told
here is the promise I broke
the black notebook
that they told me to destroy
The singular tension,
not enough breathing
nothing left to free me from the folding chairs.

      I think that was what Wordsworth meant when he did the whole "spontaneous overflow of emotion" thing. Not that I agree with anything of WW's arena. I'm just saying. "Even a broken chonometer gives the correct data twice per solar cycle." (Star Trek--Data)

      Here's another of my post-apocalyptic things. As Sharron said tonight, "Why is it people like you and me are so fascinated with shows about demons?" I know why I am...But I doubt everyone else sat through readings of Revelation as many times as I did. Oh well. Here's another one. Call it a vision. It's in the past tense.

Floor model

when all the feilds flashed cobalt for the last time
the sky opened to reveal
the circular nature of things
a gold ring
a sliver halo
to undo in a holy split
our grounded nickel earth

a certain time has passed again
enough to find what it means to end
and what it is between the beginnings
that ferrets new grasses
that eclipses new suns
that wakes us again
to find only one scar

      It made me feel good. Back to Rhetorical Bodies . This one is about how illiteracy (and illiterate people) have become constructed. There's even mention of the people of Appalachia....