The Quiet Singer

I believe poets are the songwriters of silent moments, bringing illusion to either paper or electrical screens. With these letters the poet creates meaning, a song, an essence of life in stillness, a living photograph of life and death equally present in words.

I think I am a quiet singer, a silent singer looking around and finding nothing in everything and backwards, through the world I see the same faces, smiles, angry brows desperate to modify the environment of stillness. I'm not even sure I am speaking here, because with this I seem to seek eternity, something that may last this body more, mindflow, mindstream wherever it goes, so the poet will not die.

But I will die, and everyone will. This I look and see it as play, children playing a game before moving on, but before moving on I believe that children are smarter than adults, because they do not ask themselves if life has ended. This is the impossible play of a man familiar with death. We may look at this, feel the eyes travel from one side to the other, waiting for something to click on us, inside our chest and thymus, as I feel the click of the laptop keyboard until it becomes memory just. Like us, our future is already written, it seems, but each future calls for new artists to repeat what has already been said, the past will become the future, the present will become neither because there is no cause for instants.

Here is a poem I wrote thinking about, and I label, impermanence:

* * *

I am dead, and
Before you read this, you are dead.
But because you have chosen to read
You will be free from disease:
The ignorance which crawls
Under the threshold of the soul immortal
Inmoral, both nazi and homosexual
In harmony without labels
    Or language--
words
Which are also dead.

* * *

And because we are dead in the present, we are more valuable. Because we are dead already (for we are, we have to realize this, and not be cowards who ignore it), we have to realize that there is no difference between a precious diamond and the beggar who always asks for money near the city's avenue.

And this is what I want to sing in silent tones.

My Sun: Walt Whitman

I want to talk now about my two favorite poets: Walter "Walt" Whitman and Thomas Stearns Eliot. They are respectively the sun and the moon to me.

First, let's talk about the sun:

Walt Whitman was an American poet who is regarded at the "father of free verse" and is one of the national poets of the United States (the other one being Emily Dickinson). His most famous collection of poetry is Leaves of Grass. He is considered the bridge between transcendentalism and realism in American Literature. His poem O Captain! My Captain! is taught in schools all over the country.

Why is he the sun? Because his poetry is like a thousand lights that shatter the darkness of human apathy and neglect.

He is the only poet who has made me cry with joy while reading him.

What happens when you look directly at the sun? You get blind or watery-eyed. But when we see the grass we lie down, or the rain that is evaporated by it, or the flowers and men making love without knowing it, we can see all of this thanks to the sun. The sun is more powerful than the whole earth combined, it can burn us or protect us, only we decide. This is the tremendous power Whitman has over me thanks to his poetry.

He taught me to follow my own voice, to question authority, to dare to be bold and sexual, to write my own songs because the world deserves them. To listen to my heart even if it speaks anger, because since anger is also under the sun, how can the sun reject it too? How can God (universe, whatever) reject even a single part of existence?

I cannot complete the list of poems that I love from him. I want to re-read him again one day. For now, I will share you the lines that last made me cry in happiness... from one of his many beautiful songs about death.

* * *

From So Long!

Camerado, this is no book,

Who touches this touches a man,

(Is it night? are we here together alone?)

It is I you hold and who holds you,

I spring from the pages into your arms—decease calls me forth.

O how your fingers drowse me,

Your breath falls around me like dew, your pulse lulls the tympans

      of my ears,

I feel immerged from head to foot,

Delicious, enough.

Enough O deed impromptu and secret,

Enough O gliding present—enough O summ'd-up past.

Dear friend whoever you are take this kiss,

I give it especially to you, do not forget me,

I feel like one who has done work for the day to retire awhile,

I receive now again of my many translations, from my avataras

      ascending, while others doubtless await me,

An unknown sphere more real than I dream'd, more direct, darts

      awakening rays about me, So long!

Remember my words, I may again return,

I love you, I depart from materials,

I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.

...

...I have yet to find another poet who can make me cry while writing my blog.

Confessions From a Sporadic Poet

Wow. I haven't written anything here in more than a year...

I'm not sure whether to apologize or come up with reasonable excuses out of the many my head is just thinking right now.

But because I am human, I must come up with language, in order to logically persuade the reader into accepting my behavior; although I think that's the main problem there.

I'm always depending on the external reassurance of my character.

But I think that the most important fact is:

I am just-- SO-- fucking tired of it!

It's not wrong to want to be accepted and loved. It's only wrong when I fully depend on it. I create an idea of what it means to be "perfect" and if I deviate from it, I consider myself a failure. This thinking is WRONG. And in my life, this WRONG is NOT RELATIVE. I write "in my life" because this may apply to you or not. By NOT RELATIVE I mean that it's not open for interpretation. This is seriously affecting my life in terrible ways. This is seriously WRONG.

I have been told I am very sensitive. A doctor called it "hypersensitivity." This is actually good when you are an artist, because you can write beautiful accounts of the human condition, or see what others overlook (this is why I like being a poet). But sometimes I can get too carried away by what something someone says or does to me, and I sometimes feel extremely hurt, saddened, angry, or happy.

I can travel two roads from here:

1. Thinking I am wrong because I feel that I do wrong. (Yay! vicious circle!)

2. Listen to what others have to say but then weighing down all options and make a choice.

I have been doing #1 most of my life, during those nights when I feel that I am a bad writer because I didn't write on my blog, or a bad poet because I didn't write that many poems (and the one that I did my best on was criticized harshly), or even a bad son because I didn't study physics. Whenever I feel like this, the vicious circle of hate comes along, and with him, all the remorse, depression, self-judgment, and even thoughts about dying (because it's always easier to escape than to face our inner monsters).

People always appear to have been born with inner reassurance of their character, and we as individuals separate ourselves from the ones we label "others." If we do this-- as I have-- we think everybody else is already perfect, while we're not, because our world is so small, perhaps even to the level of being pathetic, that we then believe we are inherently unworthy to breathe the same air as "those triumphant people out there who seem to have everything."

I'm starting to think they are suffering too...

Think about it:
If we isolate ourselves inside our problems, we can easily get lost in this separation of being, thinking we have never really amounted to anything, that we are gonna die someday, so nothing makes sense, and that our lives are simply between two unknown eternities separated by birth and death.

The problem arises when we feel like the only ones who think this way.

No job, hobby, relationship, not even any religion, can take away the fact that we are limited phenomena in a world we barely even understand. Those are simply distractions, in my honest opinion. Yes, there is a necessity to have a job in the world we live in, but this is not the main reason that we are alive.

I am speaking in a Buddhist sense, combined with my sense of philosophy and personal experience. Other people might not be so lucky to have my life, just the same as I'm not so lucky to have other people's lives.

Everybody is different, but we are all brothers in existence.

Knowing this, the comments people make about my life start to be less judgmental and more helpful. Critiques at my poetry become more florid, and less barbed. The power others seem to have over me diminishes considerably. The fact that I don't have a job, rest a lot, cry a lot, live with my parents, none of this makes me a worse or better person. These are just my choices and circumstances. I may not like them sometimes, but I know their solution. What everybody has told me before can only be important to me once I make the choice to listen or ignore. So, in the end, this life is mine.

And I am glad to be writing late, because this is the real me who is speaking.

Why I Am Not A Christian

Today is a good day.

We have finally got rain in this desert, and the climate makes me happy. Clouds give me courage. The sun pushes me away. No, I am not a vampire, but maybe I should have lived in Ireland.

Apart from me stealing Bertrand Russell's famous essay title, I'd like to talk about some of the reasons I do not call myself a Christian.

Before I begin, I'd like to state that I am aware of both sides of the recent mental struggle between Fundamental Christians and Fundamental Atheists (In other words, those who believe the other side should be eliminated). I am also aware there are many Liberal Christians whom I admire, one being philosophy professor Eric Reitan and another one being a fellow creative writer and friend (If you'd like to know what they think, I'm following them at The Piety That Lies Between and The Imaginary Blog, respectively).

I have to be honest: I used to be a fundamental anti-Christian. Every time I looked at an image of Jesus, I imagined the Crusades, the conquistadors, anti-feminism, antisemitism, homophobia, the Dark Ages, pedophilia by the Catholic Church, Fred Phelps and other less-loved characters in contemporary liberal media, etc.

But this aggressive stance brought me much suffering. I felt anger most days and blamed Christianity for almost everything that was wrong with western society. I "changed" my religion many times, trying to find a substitute for the Catholicism I was brought up in... but nothing worked. I was still angry... in fact, I blamed all religions.

Then I studied Philosophy of Religion in my last semester at OSU. In the beginning I kept trouncing those arguments in favor of belief in God, since those philosophies were based on western ideas (Ideas that are centered in duality, or in layman's terms: "Yes or No, no in-between").

I used eastern ideas to say that the world was not divided between those who believe and those who don't. I tried to bring an end to this fight of duality, which was ridiculous to me. I don't remember exactly the kind of arguments I used. I kept scoffing privately at those students who used the Bible as pure evidence for God's existence, rather than opening their minds to other types of philosophy...

...which was exactly what I was doing...

When I realized this, I opened my mind to Christian philosophy. I finally stopped being angry at Christianity, and gave it a chance to convince me. Perhaps being a Christian WAS what I had to do. It might have finally given me a place in American culture; I was going to be like apple pie and homecoming football games...

It never happened, but I finally understood Christianity, and the idea that might have fully convinced me was the following:

God sent himself to the world (as Jesus) in order to experience His own absence, just like we humans seem to experience His own absence everyday.

 ...and then, there was peace.

* * *

I guess this redeemed God's love for humanity, and I think most Liberal Christians will agree that Jesus' philosophy is not about picketing other people's funerals, but about loving others and ourselves in equal measure, so to create a brotherhood of humanity. This is exactly the reason why John 3:16 is the most used biblical quote in order to bring about converts:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16, NIV).

I had made peace with Christianity. I understood why people were Christian, which was something I was seeking in all the wrong places. However, peace does not mean conversion.

But how can you not believe in Jesus if you understand Christianity? you might ask me.

Well, just because I understand something, doesn't mean that I have to believe in it. Understanding is not the same as belief.


Now, I understand WHY people are Christian. You CAN believe in Christianity and be open-minded at the same time. But I do not believe in some aspects that are sometimes central to the Christian doctrine:

• The Bible has no authority on me. It is simply a book written many years ago, that elevated its status from a simple collection of Jewish stories into the greatest best-seller in the world. It is not literary, it is merely symbolic.
• I do not believe that Jesus is the son of God, nor that he died for my sins. I see no reason to purify mankind sending my only son to die for them.
• The trinity is erroneous. I prefer unitarianism, because I believe that God is one, and not three.
• I have never felt truly connected with Christianity, either Protestant or Catholic.

My final answer to Christians is


I understand why you believe. I think it's a beautiful thing that you are dedicating your life to follow Christ's example (and truly follow his philosophy of love). But I do not believe in your ideas, because they have not convinced me. Perhaps they will in the future, but for now I am happier not believing in them.

Thank you for reading. I hope this proved to be a rich philosophical post!

23 years, and something philosophical...

I am finally 23 years-old, which is one of those ages when there's nothing more special than moving forward and trying not to look like a 16-year-old (which, I'm afraid to say I do... I should shave less, but then I'd look like a gang rapist).

You might be wondering what the *insert the place of never-ending suffering here according to Christian doctrine* happened to me. Well, dear reader, I'm afraid to inform that my grandmother passed away last January 15th, and I haven't been feeling disposed. Fear not. Not writing on my blog does not imply not talking to friends. A lot of wonderful people have helped me recover, and I can't thank them enough. The truth is, yes, I deeply miss her, but I was also getting ready for her parting. I do like writing here.

As you may see if you've followed me before, I changed how my blog looks, because to be honest, I hate the color brown, khaki, maroon, and any other type of color that tries to be red, but can't because it's wimpy. My favorite colors are blue and green, and I think these changes reflect my personality more.

There's something I'd like to discuss in here, something philosophical or maybe psychological.

Pleasing.

Whether we work so hard to try and please others, or we force others to please us, is something that I do quite often. I often ask myself questions like:

-Why don't my friends talk to me all the time?
-If my dad yells at me, does it mean that I'm a failure?
-When I don't read enough literary works, will I be an idiot?
-Am I writing this blog for me or for others?

Such is the weight that I let myself carry. I ask myself to please whoever talks to me, whether my own mother or the clerk I just met who works at Wal-Mart. I also ask others to please me in turn, by asking them favors or telling them their "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts." The never-ending quest for perfection...

But people are not poems (that I can work on to reach a level of "perfection"), and friends are not mathematical formulas. In the end, the sole creator of the previous questions is myself. I am responsible for this kind of struggle that I'm in. I let others dictate my actions, as long as they let me dictate theirs. It's like a vicious circle of possession.

It's like saying: "I will do whatever you want me to do, as long as you do whatever I want you to do."

How to change this perception?

Is it: "I will do whatever I want to do, as long as you let me do it."? Doesn't seem like it...

Or: "I will do whatever I want to do, as long as I believe it's reasonable and does not contradict my ethics."

Maybe...

LOLcat, the future of the English language?

I'm finally settled in Monterrey, Mexico. Regardless of some family difficulties which I'd rather not dwell upon, it has been pretty boring down here. I do, however, have the belief that the more we write about something, the more true that phenomenon becomes... Imagine just how Communism spread the more people talked about it, or how Christianity spread in the same way. To put it simply, an idea spreads quickly the more you talk about it. Write about fear and fear appears. Write about love and love appears.

I have decided not to talk about the issues in my city. What good does negativity do to the mind? One time I got so worried that I didn't even want to write... I thought of the power of the mind and how much control it can lose when it lets the media take command of my freedom.

In short, I'm OK and my dad bought a new puppy, a male Bull Mastiff that I just keep calling Dante, thinking about the Divine Comedy. We all love him, and hope that our older male Rottweiler won't feel forgotten.

OK, back to seriousness, hehe...

I think this blog can be about three things: Poetry, English and Philosophy, since these are my three favorite topics. For now, let me address something I found both disturbing and strangely hypnotic concerning the English language:

LOLcats

Yes.

LOLcats

One could say:

it's just a funny internet site with cute kitty pictures and horrible spelling errors. Nobody takes it seriously.

What if I told you that people have written a LOLcat translation of the Bible?

I'm not kidding! Amazon is selling it:

http://www.amazon.com/LOLcat-Bible-beginnin-Ceiling-stuffs/dp/1569757348/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1294727933&sr=8-1

Think about it:

the holiest book in Christianity translated by hundreds (maybe thousands or millions) of anonymous contributors into LOLcat.

Does this mean that LOLcat has become more than a silly internet meme? Is it now part of the American culture? Is it the apotheosis of Postmodern thought and the end of the world as we know it?

...

...naahh

I think LOLcat is a natural phenomenon. The Internet has become almost like a new culture. For example, I chat a lot, and never use punctuation, or uppercase letters unless I'm screaming. I also substitute "you" with "u," while the three characters "its" could mean "it's" or "its" in chat, depending on the context.

I think "right" has been substituted by "fast" in the Internet culture. Fast is easy, but not always the right thing.

Why should I read the LOLcat Bible? I tried reading Genesis 1 and my head hurt a little. I am not used to Internet talk! I'm an English major, for goodness' sake! I'm not supposed to tolerate these kinds of grammar, spelling and whatever-else-may-be mistakes! Why? WHY???

Phonetics, perhaps. I never studied linguistics, but while reading the LOLcat Bible translation, I felt like I was learning a whole new language that may be coexisting in Internet subcultures alongside Modern English. I felt that I was listening more to the sound of something said, rather than how something is written, and I think this is a good training exercise for the brain.

So, is the order now: Old English, Middle English, Modern English and LOLcat? Impossible. I love Modern English too much to let it die completely by LOLcat.

Believe me, I'm no expert in language development... I'm just living life and writing here for the lulz   =^_^=

Poem of the Week - Song (by Allen Ginsberg)

This may be the last post I submit until my final two weeks of classes are over: Dead week (Pre-finals) and Finals week. I have many papers due and study... and these will be my last formal education papers in one or two years, while I study languages and the GRE in Mexico.

Saying this, a question arises in my head:

"If I'm Mexican, what am I doing studying English poetry?"

Well, this is very hard to answer. I don't know why it happened, I just know that it did. I know I'm speaking in very personal terms here, but hey! Poetry is personal, and without the human element, it's simply a computer's try at meaning, shooting words at random and not having soul or anything (Like talking to false computer dates who respond in broken English and say they are from Russia... no, this hasn't happened to me, I read it in an article in Scientific American Psychology).

Yes, I know I drifted...

So why am I studying English poetry? Well, I will make a confession in my blog.

I used to be a Physics major...

... *waits for the "That's such a change!!!" comments*

And I came to the United States mostly because my parents told me the education here is better than in Mexico. I didn't know what to choose or what to follow in my life. I just wanted to please my parents, but after two years of lying to myself, I woke up and changed my major from Physics to English... I honestly felt like I could breathe again... I was born again in my Junior year, Fall 2008.

I don't know why I came to poetry. I don't know why many things happen, actually. They just do. I've been looking for a Claddagh ring online, and suddenly the Claddagh ring came to me in a Stillwater tent, with a lady selling jewelry for both men and women (and my ring size being 7, I was trying to look for not-so-girly apparel).

I wrote poetry before I knew I was going to be a poet.

I spoke English fluently since I was a kid without knowing that I would spend 4 years and a half of my life in the United States. I seem that I don't look for anything, really, but the world seems to open on itself, and the universe arranges everything as it should be.

Maybe I'm being too self-centered, but that;s life, isn't it? We all have individual voices in our writings, and we either drift (like me) or get to the point in a second.

I have faith that I will come to the United States again, but my time is not now. I still need to learn how to drive, and I really want a year off from school.

Ah! I look back at how pretty my apparent stream of consciousness works. This is how I get to know myself, actually.

I want you to leave you guys with a poem that made me cry in a dream. I swear I was dreaming that I was reading it, and tears flowed out of my eyes into the real world... what a beautiful image! The memory can make us cry even when we don't want to.

It's called Song, and it was written by Allen Ginsberg. I just love the sounds and the feeling, and the truth behind it. I wish I could kiss the poem, make it mine, I'm not sure... (hopefully my partner won't be jealous of another man's writing). Here it is!

Song
by Allen Ginsberg


The weight of the world
     is love.
Under the burden
     of solitude,
under the burden
     of dissatisfaction

     the weight,
the weight we carry
     is love.

Who can deny?
     In dreams
it touches
     the body,
in thought
     constructs
a miracle,
     in imagination
anguishes
     till born
in human--
looks out of the heart
     burning with purity--
for the burden of life
     is love,

but we carry the weight
     wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
     at last,
must rest in the arms
     of love.

No rest
     without love,
no sleep
     without dreams
of love--
     be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
     or machines,
the final wish
     is love
--cannot be bitter,
     cannot deny,
cannot withhold
     if denied:

the weight is too heavy

     --must give
for no return
     as thought
is given
     in solitude
in all the excellence
     of its excess.

The warm bodies
     shine together
in the darkness,
     the hand moves
to the center
     of the flesh,
the skin trembles
     in happiness
and the soul comes
     joyful to the eye--

yes, yes,
     that's what
I wanted,
     I always wanted,
I always wanted,
     to return
to the body
     where I was born.

                         San Jose, 1954