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But the only way to renew the World is to repeat what the Immortals did in illo tempore, is to reiterate the creation. ~Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality
Today: The current batch, I'm convinced right now, is either a) by far the best set of poems I've ever written or b) negligible and doomed to eternal obscurity. Maybe both. ~Jeff Gundy
I now hide all fashion magazines, not because I'm against Disney-inspired couture, but because I'm worried Madeleine will think those models are what she is supposed to look like as a woman.
What I mean to say is: I think differently now about everything. . . .
I'm rather a messy shaver. Afraid I might get shaving cream on her dress, I said: "Please keep me company, Madeleine. But don't get too close." Then I laughed, realizing that what I'd said characterizes the nature of my adult relationships. Madeleine smiled up at me, and in my heart, I thought, "Get as close as you like."
Johnny Depp plays successful writer Mort Rainey, who is suffering from writer's block and has retreated to an isolated lakeside cabin in the face of a divorce from his wife, Amy (Maria Bello), following his discovery of his wife cheating on him with Ted Milner (Timothy Hutton, who starred as Thad Beaumont, in the similarly themed Stephen King movie The Dark Half), now her boyfriend. Living alone in the woods, Mort is confronted one day by the mysterious John Shooter (John Turturro) who accuses him of plagiarism. Shooter gives Mort a manuscript he claims to have written.
At first, Mort regards Shooter as mentally ill and throws away the book. But his maid takes it out of the garbage believing it was his and instead of throwing it away again he cannot stop thinking about it, and finally reads it. It is exactly the same word for word. The movie follows Mort's struggles to prove conclusively to Shooter and to himself that he has not plagiarized the story....
From the comments: "The U.S. Department of Agriculture ...had threatened to fine the museum $200 per day per cat about $10,000 saying it didn't have the proper animal exhibition license and couldn't qualify for one, primarily because the animals weren't enclosed. The museum has installed a fence to keep the animals on the one-acre property."
We must not look for poetry in poems.
--Donald Revell
You must not skirt the issue wearing skirts.
You must not duck the bullet using ducks.
You must not face the music with your face.
Headbutting, don't use your head. Or your butt.
You must not use a house to build a home,
and never look for poetry in poems.
In fact, inject giraffes into your poems.
Let loose the circus monkeys in their skirts.
Explain the nest of wood is not a home
at all, but a blind for shooting wild ducks.
Grab the shotgun by its metrical butt;
aim at your Muse's quacking, Pringled face.
It's good we're talking like this, face to face.
There should be more headbutting over poems.
Citing an 80s brand has its cost but
honors the teenage me, always in skirts,
showing my sister how to Be the Duck
with a potato-chip beak. Take me home,
Mr. Revell. Or make yourself at home
in my postbellum, Reconstruction face--
my gray eyes, my rebel ears, all my ducks
in the row of a defeated mouth. Poems
were once civil. But war has torn my skirts
off at the first ruffle, baring my butt
or as termed in verse, my luminous butt.
Whitman once made a hospital his home.
Emily built a prison of her skirts.
Tigers roamed the sad veldt of Stevens's face.
That was the old landscape. All the new poems
map the two dimensions of cartoon ducks.
We're young and green. We're braces of mallards,
not barrels of fish. Shoot if you must but
Donald, we're with you. Trying to save poems,
we settle and frame their ramshackle homes.
What is form? Turning art to artifice,
trading pelts for a more durable skirt.
Even urban ducklings deserve a home.
Make way. In the modern: Make way, Buttface.
A poem is coming through, lifting her skirt.
How to Stop Acting Like Such a Big Baby Obviously, this is a little easier said than done. Complaining is an addiction and a hard habit to break. Like any other habit to break, it will take time....
So the question is: Would you rather complain or be happy?
The two steps to stop whining so much:
1. Make it a priority to notice every time you complain or unnecessarily criticize. This includes judging others. Now, every time you catch yourself complaining, just stop and notice it.
2. After you've noticed yourself complaining, ask yourself this: Is there anything I can do about what I'm complaining about, or it outside of my control? If there is something you can do about it, do it. If there is nothing you can do, let it go.
Is there a middle ground? Can I be productively unhappy at least part of the time? Melancholia is my muse.
From the page: your brain operates on the edge of chaos. Though much of the time it runs in an orderly and stable way, every now and again it suddenly and unpredictably lurches into a blizzard of noise.
Neuroscientists have long suspected as much. Only recently, however, have they come up with proof that brains work this way. Now they are trying to work out why. Some believe that near-chaotic states may be crucial to memory, and could explain why some people are smarter than others.
We do it for the buzz. Like drug addicts. How do we stop the constant craving?
From the page: We're eating, in essence, adult baby food. Twenty years ago the average chews per bite was about 20, now it's two or three. The food goes down in a whoosh and it's very stimulating. It's layered and loaded with fat, sugar and salt. It's as if you have a roller coaster going on in your mouth....
It also depends on what kind of state you're in. Once that old circuitry is laid down, if you stress me, if I'm fatigued, if I feel deprived, and you put that chocolate-chip cookie in front of me, I'm going to eat it.
Other times, if my super cortical control, my frontal lobes are working, I'm not stressed, I'm not fatigued, I'm not deprived, that old circuitry is not going to show its head. It's part of being human....
I like them
Jul 4, 8:47pm
I am vindicated! 
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