(no subject)

[proximoception]

I'm starting to forget things, bang into things, drop things. Not a lot, but these were things I never did until a couple years ago, and now do almost daily. I mean, I was absent-minded, but the Google Within never fed me blanks. Not sure how much of this is just me getting older and how much is my having gone to seed--(caused in turn by happy lovenest living? or by eye worries). I also feel very stupid, but I think I remember feeling that way in prior Septembers also, something about the transition from lazy summer hedonism to uneasy autumn intellection.

Are my poems any good? They're all composed straight onto the journal; inspiration turns to consternation fast with me, transforming in turn to that bizarre, vast self-disgust around the twentieth minute, where ideas curl up and words get terse and random. Looking back at one I tend to like it, remembering the idea I had and the reason that idea matters; but am ignorant of how much of these are in the words themselves, distinct from the memories of writing them.

You have some idea, some interesting mental phantom you want to share, but to get it to the next person-planet you need to hurl it through outer space, where, having insufficient physical integrity, it invariably slumps and twists and arrives frozen in some monstrous meaningless form you yourself wouldn't recognize.

Comments

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

I think your poems are "any good" and you should work on them. They're in a form that it probably takes some courage to attempt in this day and age, and perhaps the carapace for that courage is the lj-direct composition mode which exempts them from the significance of deep, considered, heart-meditated expression. Spontaneity allows deniability. So the hard part will be working on them. Which I never do. But you should.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

That's what I feared, that the disavowal was plain from the lines themselves. Sort of the opposite problem to what I described above, where it's a case of too much making it through space, too much slimy organic packing material.

Deep, considered, heart-meditated expression and/or work can really make a man flee and/or vomit, can't they. Thank you for your words.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

PS Heartily jealous of your Proustwatch.

[phronesis.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how old you are, I'm twenty-three and am already feeling (or imagine I feel) the effects of aging on my mind. I feel like when I was younger I had a certain perspicacity the acuteness of which had been slowly diminishing not to mention my retention level is at an all time low - I certainly have failed to retain as many brain cells as I could have/can with the destructive effects of alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine, but I think at least some of the effects are from aging...

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

I didn't notice even the tiniest memory slippage till maybe 25, so four years ago, though I'm told it peaks around 11. For you it's almost certainly alcohol that's doing it (nicotine's effects on the brain are overall beneficial, in fact; and I think all prolonged overuse of caffeine does to the mind is make it more resistant to caffeine effects). My best friend, about a year older, massacred his memory over his late teens and 20s with the bottle's help. Hard to even talk to him now.

[phronesis.livejournal.com]

I've been told the peak is six or seven, then you start losing those precious cells. Happy to hear about the nicotine - in general it seems that everything causes the lost of brain cells, so many preservatives, hormones, etc. - I try to eat organic/whole foods for this reason, but sometimes it seems silly given other habits. I don't drink very much anymore, but sometime I worry damage has been done. I don't particularly feel like a genius anymore, but I think some of it also has to do with being out of school for a couple of years - not having the rigorous course load and constant mental activity which lubricates the gears and allows the hamster to run a bit more smoothly.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

I took summer off just now so I know what you mean. But the reason I took it was school was becoming mind-deadening too! My kindergarten-like "Modernism" teacher had us make a timeline together Monday, herself contributing the Crimean and Algerian Wars to the 1890s segment. Also my partner thought the printing press was from c. 1900.

[phronesis.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who is finishing up his PhD in philosophy who seems to have drank/might still drink like a fish and has the most astounding memory of anyone I have met. The art of memory is enigmatic to me. There are people who can belt out poems at any given occasion (something I have never developed) and it has always astounded me. I. however, have always been excellent at memorizing paradigms and vocabulary words for foreign language study - for some reason it is the grouping of words that won't stick.

[phronesis.livejournal.com]

Also, have you chanced upon the new Anne Carson - I took a cursory glance but haven't really read any - a couple of weeks ago I sped through the rest of her works with my lady love, but still haven't read Economy of the Unlost as I have not read any Celan. I was a little disapointed with The Beauty of the Husband until my girlfriend pointed out some interesting pacing elements (we are still confused about why they are called tangos, any insights?) and Autobiography of Red took a bit for me to warm up to - definitely favor Glass, Irony, and God and Plainwater.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

It's amazon-ing in with a couple textbooks. I haven't read the two essay works yet either, the Celan/Simonides (Semonides? I get them confused) one sounds like the kind of stretch only Carson could pull off. Beauty probably shouldn't be book-length, it's what, thirty pages of actual work; as presented it's tree-murdering and seems to promise a booklike completeness it isn't trying for. What I thought she was going for with the Tango conceit was two people coming out of the dark and joining, walking sideways for a while in half-painful ritualized movements, then going apart into darkness again. Lovelife as a series of collisions, at least for the unlucky.

[phronesis.livejournal.com]

We were wondering if there were any formal, rhythmic elements that were tango-like. But you make an excellent point.