breakfast with wallace stevens

(i wrote this months ago, and is better fitting to be posted on a sunday, but let's just pretend it is..)

odd, almost as if we’re characters
of this city. breakfast and jazz
on sunday mornings. this green
freedom someone else spoke
to. and i want to do it all
again. the latte, the chess
pieces all falling into place. the book
you wanted to be mine, and i wanted
to be yours.

write? as if the pen had never
left my hand. as if the pen had never
come close to paper. i want to weep,
this windy day. swirling about
like memories, like a cliche.

yet,
i love you just the same
and now it seems as if i’m writing
without connection to the words
at all. or at the very least, their
meaning.

i want the silence without the absence.

exciting forgotten news

so i forgot about this completely - and it's totally newsworthy :) i got to ride (drive?) a segway at the trade show! it was really cool - okay that's it.

manic monday

actually, not that manic ;) quite a chilly fall morning though. so this weekend, all i pretty much did was eat. the cellar, gillie's, spaghetti, coffee, biscotti - you name it. today, in some sort of attempt to atone for this, i've got yogurt, coffee, and a soy smoothie -- of course the coffee is still included - but who didn't see that coming?

and in case anyone is keeping track, ice cream crank STILL doesn't have pumpkin ice cream-- what is this world coming to? i've littered my apartment with harvest spice and pumpkin and carmel scented candles, bought pumpkin spiced coffee, i'm wearing long sleeved shirts - where is my pumpkin ice cream???

this poem

i'm too lazy to actually write something again... so i'm posting poetry ;) hope everyone is having a great weekend -- it's nice and cloudy here in blacksburg --

happy birthday to ian hovey today! (libra extravaganza has yet to come...)

this poem

this poem longs for you
longs for your words-
blue ink scribbled impetuously
into the margin.

i long for you as my poetry
aches for meaning, see you standing
at the top of the staircase unexpectedly
in a bright yellow shirt and torn jeans,
and still, a pull i cannot seem
to capture, your words mingle
with mine as your breath does
and i only want the words more.
how is that? you are the poetry
in my head when i have lost
my pen. your face reflected
in the window, your coat draped
across a chair.

perpetuating thoughts of you
when i am the only one
in the room. in dark rooms
together, we find what
i can’t on paper. it is forced to take shape,
forced to make sense, even without
meaning. and now curiosity will hold me
here, like drowsiness to a bed.

(bri orginial joey ;)

the first poem i fell in love with -- by Gu Cheng

keep in mind this is a translation from chinese- in fact, there are several versions.

A Headstrong Boy

I guess my mother spoiled me –
I'm a headstrong boy. I want every instant
to be as lovely as crayons.
I'd like to draw – on chaste white paper –
a clumsy freedom, eyes that never wept,
a piece of sky, a feather, a leaf,
a pale green evening, and an apple.
I'd like to draw dawn, the smile dew sees,
the earliest tenderest love – an imagined love
who's never seen a mournful cloud,
whose eyes the color of sky will gaze at me
forever, and never turn away.
I'd like to draw distance, a bright horizon,
carefree, rippling rivers, hills sheathed in green furze.
I want the lovers to stand together in silence,
I want each breathless moment to beget a flower.
I want to draw a future I've never seen –
nor ever can – though I'm sure she'll be beautiful.
I'll draw her an autumn coat the color of flame,
and maple leaves, and all the hearts that ever loved her.
I’ll draw her a wedding, an early morning garden party,
swathed in candy-wrappers decked with winter scenes.
I'm a headstrong boy. I want to paint out every sorrow,
to cover the world with colored windows,
let all the eyes accustomed to darkness
be accustomed to light. I want to draw wind,
mountains, each one bigger than the last.
I want to draw the dream of the East,
a fathomless sea, a joyful voice.
Finally, I'd like to draw myself in one corner –
a panda, huddled in a dark victorian forest,
hunkering in the quiet branches, homeless, lost,
not even a heart left behind me, far away,
only teeming dreams of berries
and great wide eyes.
This pining's pointless,
I haven't any crayons,
any breathless moments.
All I have are fingers and pain
I think I'll tear this paper to bits
and let them drift away
hunting for butterflies.

tgif and all that comes with it

it's friday -- (just in case you haven't gotten the memo)

what does that mean exactly? well for me, leaving work early for my seminar class, and then running lots of errands since mike (who i've known since highschool in arizona) is coming to visit tomorrow :)

i edited this post since this morning.. decided my poem about cleo was just a bit too depressing for a friday!

happy friday everyone!

jet-dragged across the country...

well good afternoon! i've just recently arrived at work due to the thunderstorms in detroit lastnight. that's right, our plane, originally scheduled to arrive in roanoke at 10:50 pm never quite got there. in fact, we arrived at noon today. but oh well, i'm back now.

class tonight... applied systems engineering -- really interesting stuff actually, all about looking at the world from a big picture perspective and exploring interrelationships between all things.

joey: all poems posted to date are my own :) glad to hear you like them -- if there's no credit listed, then it's mine -- i'll be posting a few from others this week (i love to share my favorites :)

jeg: how right you were: "It is often the case that the anticipation of knowledge greatly outweighs the knowledge itself." if it has just recently occurred to you after six months that we don't speak, maybe in another six months it will occur to you why.

it's entirely too early in the morning to be up

well in light of my new information- i have only to say this:

Fate into Phenomena

He tells me the world
is collapsing- or possibly expanding. Either way
i can still buy my coffee on the corner
every morning. It all ends up the same. Ignorance,
he says, is bliss, although he’d rather not be ignorant,
bliss or no bliss.
i’ve stopped listening. Bliss
is a funny word the way it rolls off my tongue
like kiss does- or kisses do. He is talking
about the universe again- instead of destiny
he imagines atoms forming again and again
to shape the same molecules. He turns fate
into phenomena in a way I wish
he wouldn’t, as if I’m watching a Monet
come to focus only to find
I dislike the detail.

each lock makes two prisons

i can't credit the subject title to myself, it's a quote from james richardson, a favorite author of mine, i'll keep posting his stuff, it's quite thought provoking.

in fact, here's another, why wait? "we have secrets from others. but our secrets have secrets from us."

i'm headed out to a coil winding trade show tomorrow -- just a quick day trip -- fly out at 6 am, fly back in at 11 pm, but at least i'll only miss one class! a bit of a fest for motor geeks if you will.

today, i recruited at the tech job fair - and calculated myself to be 1/6 hokie at this point - maybe in a year, i'll feel more like one, who knows? i think it's mostly because my loyalties to purdue are so strong that it's hard for me to do it, but when i find room for them both, i'll be fiercely loyal to them both.

also: i tend to disagree with the stated "fact" of how many words are in the english language - even from an opinion's standpoint - there are at least 500,000 in a typical unabridged dictionary- so how can only half that many exist? and how does one count low lowercase words? i'm intrigued.

(how easy it is to disagree with someone when their identity is cloaked-- food for thought.)

low lowercase

ah low lowercase... the source of the reason a lot of people think i'm crazy. actually- survey: do a lot of people think i'm crazy? discuss.

anyway, back to the subject at hand - low lowercase is my own obsession of sorts with words that go neither above or below "the line" -- aceimnorsuvwxz -- are all examples of such. so words like moon, or anemone, or anxious.. it's quite addictive when you start thinking of them actually.. or maybe that's just me.

and as our "anonymous coward" pointed out - low lowercase is not actually low lowercase -- but it doesn't bother me -- it'a paradox of sorts, which in fact, makes me quite pleased about it.

sidenote: congrats to miss celia stakkestad (in arizona) on her new job as a 1st grade teacher :) (it is 1st grade, right cel?)

untitled

i dream about it you know, that green
freedom. unfamiliar streets and faces
i’d never seen. that grey light seemed to tint
the town a color that slowed us to a pace
of memorizing our movements.

i long for it every now and again, a life
that’s reduced to it’s very beginnings, new
dishes in the kitchen, walls empty of frames.
crisp sheets and a dining room that’s filled
only with my fear of this solitude.

i remember walking the streets, in that grey
light. it felt real.

lazy coffee and jazz

it's a gorgeous day outside! getting ready to go to gillie's for a late brunch with a few people, so cleo and i are just hanging out. my mom just called - she spent the weekend in san diego and went sea kayaking through caves! how cool is that? i can't wait until she comes to visit. actually, we had plans to go caving lastnight but after a big dinner at the outback, we were much less motivated. today, i should spend some quality time with a few class books, and run a few errands, but other than that- no plans! i love those kinds of days --

still on the lookout for pumpkin ice cream...

poetry for the day (or weekend)

so i'm at work. and in honor of that, i'm posting the poem i wrote about bearings. (which is only infamous among small circles) sidenote: is it possible to be infamous among small circles or is that contradictory? (oh and for those of you who've never heard of the movie "stepford wives" it's an old creepy horror movie - see it sometime) anyway... here it is:

stepford spheres
27 march 2003

“write a poem about bearings,” he says. my mind
begins to spin. frictionless radii rolling along. inner race
outer race, circling about like an obsession.

chaper 12: bearing life. do they roll
along from club to club each night
while the other components are asleep?
do they dance -frictionless- spinning about
the floor, returning only when dawn breaks
to their load zones, axles, shafts.
motion inside motion. circumference against circumference.

do you suppose they feel oppressed? bound
as they are, forced to a standard of interchangeability,
forced to soundlessly carry the load of another.
do you suppose they ever long for solitude?
time to contemplate life as a sphere? no corners
to hide in, no tolerable rough edges, a stepford sphere.

home sweet home

back from work and class -- the class? ise 5024.. or 5204, i can never remember. regardless- it is the required seminar for all ise grad students and covers all the ABC basics of grad school - to quote a coworker of mine: "it's about as dry as a box of crackers." today we toured the library and then took a quiz. on the library. are you kidding me? :)

i love my other two classes though, the ones with actual content. in fact- i have some work to do on some of those now. happy friday!

interesting fact...

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is that the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by istlef but the wrod as a wlohe.

hurricanes and hurricane lamps

so i'm still at work -- for a few reasons -- which i'll now list:

1. hokie fans. seriously - do they need to take over the ENTIRE town? (just kidding hokie fans i know and love). but really, i'm kind of stranded in radford unless i want to brave football traffic, which i don't.

2. i have work to do - and it's nice when everyone is gone - GONE! (not that i get interrupted a lot or anything- :)

3. i have school work to do - and it's due tomorrow! (or tonight!)

Thought I'd see if this works

Hi there! Not sure if Bri had this in mind. But I thought I'd post to see if it worked. Not much to say and I'm headed for some lunch & to see if it is raining yet...

pumpkin ice cream

so... let's start with pumpkin ice cream. then we can move on to more advanced things like low-lowercase or something of that nature. so yesterday, joey and i went to the ice cream crank in search of the tasty pumpkin ice cream that (for me) is the trademark of fall in blacksburg :) -- but there was none to be found unfortunately, so i had to console myself with a double scoop in a waffle cone - cookies and cream and chocolate peanut butter. needless to say, it was rough going.

more later -- (editor's note: i might actually update this on a regular basis- we'll have to wait and see!)