I was very young when i heard on television that a person could create a habit in thirty days or thirty repetitions. I took it to heart. In junior high school, i experimented with handwriting, devising specific e's, g's and a's, maintaining verticals, rounding curves. I built routines and organizational systems in repetitive forms, practiced elocutional speaking, building accents, practiced with weapons and wrote methodically. In thirty days, you can do almost anything.
In the interest of citizenship, i intend to establish a new habit, that of a citizen, e. pluribus unum. In thirty days, i hope to create and become a citizen, establishing principles, standards, criteria and definitions of what is a citizen. I hope to use this body of work as a manifesto, or bible of my personal belief so that anyone considering my credibility has an idea of what i believe, what i mean, what i say and what value it may have.
I expect a more streamlined, highly productive and well-maintained life benefiting myself, my family, my city, nation and world. I hope this to be my beginning of a new phase in my personal life and an assertion of and immersion in my value system.
I remind myself:
Know what you believe.
Make yourself.
Act right.
I've found a new game. I love the security words created for facebook and twitter postings. Each sounds like a word, or a complex affix: pritimbl, grasista, tierdo, menesti. Putud, yopfomi. Guplinta, and upldent. Porducai-- and D O M E T H U!!!
These are no simple randomly generated words, roots and affixes. Consideration of their forms, spelling structures and variance reveals a pattern, Chthulic in appearance, ancient, old. What nefarious purpose do the authors of these services hold for the American People? Like that short story, "Irtnog", where all the writing in the world was daily reduced through a complex mathematical process into a six letter word, allowing every reader and writer to come into balance of supply and demand.
Good thing DOMETHU wasn't called in 1984. Or maybe it wouldn't matter.
I tormented my eighth graders relentlessly by writing these like water goes downhill. So here come three of the the best, worst, and least attractive; you decide which is which.Edit HTML
“Just water,” the devil told me, and he lit a cigarette.
My eyebrow, right one, twitched in question as I polished the bar and set the glass.
“Temptation ain’t what it used to be. Tired. No mood to drink.”
My job traditionally requires a bit of companionable conversation, and though he’d initially made me nervous, Satan had become a regular.
“If it helps, I hope to fuck some bar-bait after my shift.”
He tipped his head, profiling a smooth-pointed ear, the corner of his mouth fluking into a glimmer of appreciative smile.
“You’re too kind.”
His cool grey voice sidled out between even, sharp, white teeth. A few too many for me to stare.
“Hardly a challenge,” he added.
I smiled back, feeling, suddenly, foolish and inadequate.
His eyes scrolled down to the clear glass of water, condensation beading its flutes, and watched one heavy drop slide down and disappear into the orderly white absorbance of barnap.
His slender reddish fingers draped the glass like a caress, stroking lazy curls of steam into the atmosphere between us.
His eyes moued shut and he sat like a sleeping viper.
A moment.
Two.
Swelling discomfort stirred my stomach, diaphragm, and lungs.
“Hey,” I offered, “you okay?”
The red fingers slid their evaporating caress down the fluted glass before him.
“No,” he half whispered, “no, I am not.”
I went home alone that evening, claiming remembered study for non-existent exams, accepting a phone numbered napkin decorated with a suggestive lipstick kiss from a smoky eyed doll who nursed a Sex-on-the-beach for the half hour she sat at the bar.
At home, I opened my laptop, stuffed and lit a bowl, and clicked on “my favorites.” I scanned three or four stories with my hand in my lap, but my heart just wasn’t in it. I think the Devil was giving up. It made me ashamed.
Maybe I’d call that girl— I fished out the napkin; Janice was her name — and invite her for a walk in the park on Sunday afternoon. We could take some bread to feed the ducks and have a coupl’a Hawaiin Snows on a bench under the cypress.
I play grammar like a music
and its standards are my scale,
Puctuation makes percussion
staccato mace and flail.
I'll caress you with a murmur,
I'll seduce and I'll offend.
My license is poetic,
and now you're at the end.
As always in airports, my sketches and associations help wile away time. After reading through some entries during flight, I built this poem with its strict formality reflective of consciousness on the planet.
The language of aliens laid out below
iterate shadowed cloud an interruption
of the glyphs of bird's-eye-view
A fog, a nimbus, white wet snow
far from the sad corruption
of peopled green, its hues
Like spinnered tracks of dominoes
spell natural disruption
of the planet that we use
From savage to savage still we grow
depending on our gumption
and ability to schmooze.
This message, a sign, it's all we know
a humanity eruption
some history's clues.
Twinkle twinkle Oscar stars
We-love A-ca-de-my A-wards
Camera eye and light of God
Graceful acts and graceless clods
Politics and tears good greif
Make your thank yous
Keep 'em brief.
What I refer to as Automatic writing requires the author to dissociate meaning and grammar from sound and to create as pure a collage of sound and rhythm as possible with little or only slight regard for content or subject matter. This collage was written in response to that moment when you realize youve contributed to an antagonistic crowd or a flock of grackles! Hit and miss, but fun to write.
Sher Khan
Peck-a-way
Shhhh! The coven's comin'
Deep drums bassin'
Bumble gumbo drumroll
Pedal back, pedal back, pedal back words
Kings in the yard
Kings in the yard
Kings in the yard
Kings in the yard
Ooo, that's it! I'm crazy
What's a man made any more
So many lost and lazy
with MTV girls dressed like whores
Heroes and morals upsy daisy
And their careless spreading spore
Our role's become so hazy
We play in, die in, war
If we take these as our precis
Men cannot be held much lower
Not I, alright, I'll make a man
Citizen, proud in freedom land
I'll find brothers, loyal band,
No evil will come from my hand
Control temptation in my glands
Have no children unless planned
I'll have to be what makes a man
It's me, I'm lost, no Compass sees my way
A Ship, wrecked wracked and ruined upon the Strand
Alone through cold I'm numb, un-feeling spray
My Grave waits in a strange and foreign land
Remains I know have washed up on this Shore
the Salvage of the ways that I once knew
My Nineveh, my Mission is no more
Revenge will leave me empty, now where to?
These talents spilled in sand, what can they buy?
Don't mourn for me, for that old man must die.
I'm built anew, exotic, fortified
From stuff of Wreckage splintered in my Heart
I'll build a Treehouse high up in my Mind
From broken Days, forgotten Poems and Art
Every super-hero has an origin story. I have never found myself a hero, but I know what they are. I will be no Kick Ass, no Batman. I will be unsung. What kind of hero is that? Doing the rotten jobs anyway; taking responsibility and power; leading Destiny. This will be my chronicle of becoming a citizen. Like it or not, I must accept the world as it is before I can remake it as it should be. Join me in this experiment for the next thirty days of simple journey in an attempt to meet my own standards so I can practice what I preach.
I have picked thirty days to echo Supersize Me, and "Thirty Days", and because anything I do thirty times becomes a habit. My first priority is to establish these habits. To others, they seem mundane, but for me they represent a baseline of behavior I can respect and support. Aside from addressing health, livelihood, chores and personal obligations, I intend to write three to five hundred words here each day, journaling my journeying.
I intend to master these behaviors through systematic repetition and checklisting. I am determined to reduce spending to near zero, to develop web skills, and to pursue writing, painting, creating as an avocation. I don't know what you will think, but I have to begin, so here it is. Come back every few days and see how I have progressed. Maybe I can be a bit of inspiration, as others are to me.
