ThyPoetSorcerer

Ok so in the span of two years I've dutifully read several books, and have filled a wheelbarrow load worth of writing journals (granted 99.999 % of it is poop, but at least it's kept me in the habit of writing constantly.) A fellow writer, and recently acquired friend, was a bit puzzled as to how I managed this proficiency - and was baffled by the simplicity of my "secret", confiding to me that it totally worked for her.

So here it is... Stand up. Really just stand on you feet while you write/read, preferably having your screen (book) at eye level or a bit higher so you get a good posture. the straighter you stand the better you can breath oxygen into your creative brain; also, who the hell likes annoying neck/back pain? I discovered this during my last undergraduate year. I'd found myself cooling down too much or losing steam when I sat down in front of the puter for too long (besides terribly numb legs)--so I just placed my laptop upon one of my closet's shelves, and plugged my wired keyboard to it -- to keep my arms and shoulders from hunching up. Of course, I'm not the first one to have realized this; there are studies dating back to the 60's that argue it improves alertness and concentration by up to 40%, and you can actually buy yourself a proper, custom-design standing desk - some of them even come with a treadmill for those who don't mind sweat on their keyboards.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work as well with pen to paper writing - and you do need some breaks 'cause feet get tired. You also need a little box or something on the bottom to prop on up one of your feet  - makes you stand better and it's easier on the knees. So there you go, Google it, you'll see I'm onto something. 

The process of nocturnal migration, stumbling blind,
wary of grasslands and predators stalking.
Feelings of being stalked can cause you agoraphobia and
social anxiety, the need to hide or to exercise uncontrollably
until your body-fat dips so low, you’re fainting all over town;
fainting in lectures, in traffic, at the bar, fainting at bookstores
as your body slams into the girl with the long skirt
and the hardcover copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude
you were holding makes a purple ruin of her big toe.
She drinks gross supermarket wine for the pain;
she drinks gross supermarket wine all the time—
and eats nothing but raw hot-dogs after dark.
Feeding during the day is another advantage
nocturnal migrants have—as it is preventing potential overheating,
and you know nothing is hotter than
raw hot-dog flavored kisses in idiotically clichéd places like
the laundromat or the cemetery.
Crows and ravens don’t spend their lives in cemeteries,
they’re actually notable short-distance migrants. Yet the ancient
believed them to be minor deities, holy messengers,
traveling through spiritual realms and the ages of men.
In fact, they do migrate back and forth future and past,
delivering cosmic tidings ensconced  in velvety gloom;
they stop at your window to tell your eight-year-old self
that a food stinking drunk will stomp on your heart ten years later.
Of course you don’t listen, you are too busy cowering
pathetically under the covers.

So this morning I finished reading this french novel called La Vie Dévant Soi by Roman Gary. It's the story of the relationship between an orphan boy and this Jewish woman who is sort of his foster mother. The book is written in first person, from the boy's POV --he happens to be a pretty unreliable narrator. Which imo makes the narrative interesting and funny, though sometimes a bit silly, even to the point where I thought it was somewhat distracting. Just now however, the full weight of the novel hit me like a freaking harpoon through the chest. There is this line that says "on ne peut pas vivre sans quelqu'un à aimer" "one cannot live without someone to love".

I relish and hate these kinda moments. I admit that being bipolar has affected every relationship I've ever had, family, friends, gfs and so on.  But I'm no sociopath despite what people think; on the contrary, my feelings and emotions run very deep, they are just extremely hard to control. What is it to live without someone to love then? To hope against hope it'll work out with the next date? To wonder whether it's an actual sentiment or another chemical imbalance? To ride another manic episode knowing the older you get the fewer chances there are to come out in one piece?

 Curiously, any type of reference to population II stars reminds me of a particular embrace with a particular someone. Our first time going out, standing on her parent's driveway I didn't feel nervous whatsoever. My voice, crystal clear when I told her she was the most beautiful girl I've ever met. No shaky or clammy hands when I gently grabbed her chin and kissed her like it was my darn birth right. I remember hugging her goodbye as if it were the last time we'd see each other; and then looking up to catch a glimpse of the constellation Cetus. Cayrel's star blinked at us, giving the moment a celestial blessing.

OK so mina12310 has this gorgeous plethora of visual art on her gallery, her stuff moved me so much that I couldn't keep myself from wanting to honor such beautiful work.



This pic called "Arches" is the one I'm dedicating this humble tribute to:

Xenon

Wink sky, open crystal blinds,

She

in the nick of time

to catch the city—
and the gleam that mirrors it—

concealing their names
inside a nest
of freshly cast steel
 
where pilgrims fledge
and untether themselves
from ground-bound space
and its weight in grams,

a place for souls
to be sculpted
anew—ablaze with holy
refraction index
down a perfectly straight
line of sight.

Hello

nameless angels,

no more fitting loosely
in the past perfect,
framed impeccably
onto a perfect past;

say goodbye to muted porch lights,
goodbye to dead-end walls
and cast out hopes;

at least wave to your savior.
at least remember the shutter snap.

Wink xenon tube, open magnesium gradient,

if her eyes focus just right,
the whole universe is a utopia. 
 
------------------
Check out Mina's gallery; you could inspired too.


Mass Extinctions_Jul 11 From Letters to thy beloved_In *closet hidden notebooks-Entry 700

VI.
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

From Emily Dickinson's Series One Part I: Life.

Dear Emily:

Your proverbial fainting robin took many forms during my childhood. Stray pets, food-industry innocents massacred, domestic animal cruelty, injured wild life and even the occasional unlucky bug—witnessing it all would always break my young, tender heart; until I realized the weight of that world of woe shouldn't be on my shoulders, that I possessed not the means nor the power to deliver solace to those suffering creatures around me. What's interesting is that I never cared much for distressed people. I mean, I do now because I have a growing knowledge of society's most pressing issues and whatnot; however, as a kid I would've whole-heartedly put my butt on the line for the poor carriage-horse whipped bloody, or for the clueless ladybug taking a nap beneath the school's doorway—something unthinkable for me to do when it came to another human being (unless of course, we were talking about my closest kin.) Wondering about the nature of this so peculiar behavior I developed a few basic theories.

First I thought it might be because I was/am too sensitive...But is it really?I mean, I always thought myself to be a selfish little man with an ultra-perceptive brain and a bad case of OCD, able enough to be ruthless towards another person as to give psychopaths a run for their money. No, sweet Emily I don't experience that all encompassing kind of sensitivity. So then I pondered about a possible cultural heritage; but yet again, I started really giving a dime about people a bit after my late teens and maybe not even. My family are definite a compassionate, generous lot, but they never worried about animals as much as I did, which is why my attempts at vegetarianism proved such a crux at an early age. So then, the only possibility left is genetics. Somewhere encoded in my genes there is an intrinsic and instinctive need to care for other species. it sounds kind of crazy, but the more I researched about it, the more it makes sense.

Emily, if you knew there had been not one, not two, but five major mass-extinction events, where between 60% and over 96%  of the species were totally wiped out off the face of the earth. Colloquially known as "The Big Five". It turns out that we are not the first species to alter the planet in a negative way. In the book Scatter, Adapt and Remember, Annalee Newitz explains how Cyanobacteria, the very first organism to feed itself through photosynthesis, messed up the chemical composition of the atmosphere until the air became poisonous for everything living on or near the surface including Cyanobacteria themselves. This event lasted more than a billion years but still, there's got to be something in our genes reminding us that altering our environment can ultimately lead us to device our own destruction. Therefore our need to preserve that environment by caring about other living things around us. But why is that need stronger in you and me Emily? I want to believe the fainting robin haunting your poems, and the animal cruelty tormenting my childhood are not  another product of out planet's gorgeous but soullessly intricate engineering, that our feelings and intellects will transcend the next mass extinction. Because in the end mother nature will wake up from her slumber, hair rollers sticking up, ready for her next geological shake-and-bake, completely unaware that humans crawled over her skin for a meager couple of hundred-thousand years—just another species on the long list that makes the sixth mass extinction; and that's just sadly nihilistic.