Poem 1

these words did not stake
the object at rest
and so could not lighten
a sustaining duress

so broken between this slant and stanza
is an imperfection beyond mere word
that fills this chasm in one surreptitious act
and sunders an ache into worth

but rather than name and therefore negate it
the poet left it be to stay on one side of the dialectic
for never could he stand if it became three
lo and behold the contradiction in this stylistic

and so he could not resist pointing in its direction
as if to identify the solution to his affliction
but everyone around him could not understand
why he broke all rhythm and reason to say-- its in the onion

---

A couple things about this poem. I did write it, and I intend for there to be no capitalization. I know its confusing and it does involve a mention of Hegel which many people only know the basics of. My familiarity of Hegel is often secondary... and primarily through Derrida. See what you can get from it.

Honesty in a box

Growing up, I had to make several synthetic distinctions that would protect me from myself. What was public would have to undergo extreme scrutiny... and I found myself privatizing not only my thoughts, but also my emotions as well as my physical idiosyncrasies. But the most important distinction I had to make those I considered my guy friends from those I liked. By no means could those two intersect. It was simple to follow through because it never happened that these two things did intersect... never did I feel like they were intersecting.

And now...I hate to say it... but those things are starting to intersect. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with it (I understand that), but the defenses I set up early on (years before I started dating) compel me to think any such thoughts are extreme sins... that I am doing something wrong when the two cross my mind. I've formed an aversion to any conception of a male friend in a sexual way.

In some ways, I blame the friend (though not completely in a serious way) for passing advances in the first place. It was never a question before a couple days ago our relationship... there was no place in my head for the two to meet up. And now, after being given the thought of such a thing occurring... I don't know... I can't help but think of it... to have it pass through my head.

And in no way am I happy about this... I hate this precisely because I have no way of coping with such weird relations. I'm at a loss of what to really think... because this has never happened before. Here's the thing that extremely bothers me about the situation:

1.) I already have established relations with this person. I know what I can do and can't do in such relations and it is perfectly okay for me to think of such things in this way. If something were to happen, I face a risk of losing a friend.

2.) I have a tendency to become attracted to people who pass advances my way first. But there has been more than one occasion where one kiss wises me up. I get the feeling, "What the fuck was I thinking?" I don't know if I'm really genuinely attracted to this person or just enjoying the flirtatious advances... and it friggin' bothers me that I can't tell the difference beforehand.

3.) I feel relatively neutral around this person in any given occasion... I don't feel obligated to leap on them or touch them or be close to them... doesn't that mean I'm just not attracted?

4.) I just broke up with the first person I've ever fallen in love with about a month ago. I miss them dearly, and if this is to happen, isn't it fair to the other person to actually have someone who's completely moved past his past relationship especially if he's my friend.

So I felt jealous at the party when someone else started to hit on this person at the party tonight... so I make calls to this person for flirtatious gesture. These things do not mean I should go for it. I have a friend... a friend that I would hate to lose because of a bout of naive articulation or understanding of personal emotion. Its not worth that much uncertainty to give up something already certain.

Friends it must be... and friends it shall be...

Please let this be the right decision... please.

Weed 3- Mike 0

Shucks

Kierkegaard's Reflective Sorrow

I want to write something to those who've been burned... I will start out with a quote from a philosopher I've been reading and relate it back to love/ reflective sorrow.

"If someone possessed a letter which he knew or believed contained information concerning what he had to consider his life's blessedness, but the written characters were thin and faded, the handwriting almost illegible, he would read it and reread it, with anxiety and disquiet certainly, but with passion. At one moment he would get one meaning out of it, the next another. When he was quite sure he had managed to read a word, he would interpret everything in the light of that word. But he would never pass beyond the same uncertainty with which he began. He would stare, more and more anxiously, but the more he stared the less he saw; sometimes his eyes filled with tears, but the more that happened, again the less he saw. In due course the writing became weaker and less distinct; finally the paper itself crumbled away and he had nothing left but eyes blinded with tears" (Either/Or, 187)

For Kierkegaard, this is the perfect analogy for uncertainty that comes from love. The moment a person falls in love, they've gained meaning... but the moment they start to question whether this love is wholly reciprocated, this meaning can wane. Think of a time where you've had a crush, but they ignored your hints.... if a person meant everything to you, but they told you they could never be with you...

At first, its easiest to channel pain into hatred. Hatred that they deceived you in the love... to hell with them. And it might be the reaction that your friends try and create even if the situation is ambiguous. Why? Because you're in pain... the ambiguity is torture, and so instead of reassuring you in this pain, they condemn this person as a despicable... telling you that you're better than them, that you don't need them.

But this reassurance is the facade you must stand by. You have to be strong around your friends because that's what they've come to expect you are. You're doing okay... you're having fun with them, so you must have moved on, and forgotten whoever you may have loved.

However, ambiguity never leaves you internally, no matter what facade you have on externally. As Kierkegaard would say, "When a possibility is broken off, the instantaneous pain may not be... great, but then it often leaves one or another small ligament whole and unharmed, which becomes a constant source of continued suffering" (179). What you constantly entertain is every single new possibility... every account that this person could actually love you... every account that they never loved you in the first place. Every verdict is given on each side, but no case is decided on...

Sorrow is left in the ambiguity that reflection perpetuates... and continually perpetuates... The first stance held... the liberation from the very thought of this person (the deceit for this person that was first entertained) is lost in this reflection... in the ambiguity that will never comfort. And the more that it is emoted... the more that it is felt, the less a person is reminded of why they are in sorrow in the first place. For the man who desperately wanted to configure the contents of that letter initially found that the "...writing became weaker and less distinct" until "...finally the paper itself crumbled away and he had nothing left but eyes blinded with tears" The very object of what perpetuated the sorrow disappears.. and before you know it, you are pained by what you can't name... an object that you will continually search for.

...

Have you ever been in internal anguish without any sight of what could cause it? Its binding... because people expect you to be all right... to be a person they recognize... but internally, you're in pain and you have no idea why. You can't name the object of your sorrows... just that you are bound to the sorrow. And so you entertain every idea of why you might be sad. You're neurotic... you're having a bad day... No one understands you/ is pressuring you... there has to be an answer! But, what I get from Kierkegaard in these few lines... is that in entertaining these ideas, you're only blinding yourself from something that never had a clear answer in the first place.

But this isn't something that by will a person can stop... this isn't mediated reflection... it is an emotion that conflates these ideas... and so you form a spiral... a spiral that can last for years (for me it lasted three years up until midway through my freshmen year of college)... mine wasn't about love but it produced the same bind that ambiguous love can create. I would have mental as well as physical breakdowns where I would drop to the ground and bawl without any idea of why I was bawling. And just as I couldn't figure out what caused these breakdowns, I also couldn't figure out how I got over them.

One day... I got up... and I was okay again.

I guess I type this not as a biographical sketch but more as a reflective and therapeutic philosophy. Maybe if I had read Kierkegaard earlier, I would have at least understood myself a bit better. Anyways, I can't really say whether this entry would be helpful to anyone (or rather, if anyone would actually read this) but I just wanted to give it a try.

Commiserating ye ole' rumpled man

All I can think about is poor Tom Tit Tot who couldn't do without the possession of another. He had to go for the necklace... for the ring... for possessions he could have gotten himself if he had thought for a moment to spin his own hay into gold. But poor ugly sprite had to take from the daughter of merchant whose own importance was worth more than life itself.

That old rumpled man was pretty brilliant come to think about it. To challenge that woman to figure out the one thing no one ever cared to know about him... the one thing he would need to share only with one other person in his lifetime.

But no, that haggard woman wouldn't give him that. The moment she gave him an identity, she took it away... never would he be able to share it with another. Destined to be alone, the weight of this burden took Rumpelstiltskin downwards to his death.
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Downward on

Bereft and in nostalgia listening to a rebroadcasting of every possible sound bit and beat that struck accord with the world for the two minutes it gave us immediacy and presence, I've finally lifted myself onto my keyboard and off the floor away from the pointless task of looking upwards for the weight of my eyes acting downwards. I've realized its a hefty task searching for nothing. Maybe its that burden that weighs downwards or at least... maybe it ought to cause the weight in my head(if I could make that burden more than a figurative expression). At least maybe this would give me a more satisfying feeling than meaningless action potentials firing inside my head.
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