Wednesday, May 05, 2004
(12:09 AM) | Anonymous:
Checking in
Hello and Hey Again,
How are things with the people?
I've been around and about. Down and out, even, to risk a rhyme. For starters, let me read you some Steinbeck, and we'll jump into this thing called Weblog.
Mary Talbot, Mrs. Tom Talbot, that is, was lovely. She had red hair with green lights in it. Her skin was golden with a green under cast and her eyes were green with little golden spots. Her face was triangular, with wide cheekbones, wide-set eyes, and her chin was pointed. She had long dancer's legs and dancer's feet and she seemed never to touch the ground when she walked. When she was excited, and she was excited a good deal of the time, her face flushed with gold. Her great-great-great-great-great-grandmother had been burned as a witch.
For comparison, let me recite the lyrics to an excellent song off of one of last year's best albums, Give Up, put out by The Postal Service. [Note: Album is a little old, so I don't know how active that website is going to be.] The song is Such Great Heights, and the lyrics are beautifully so:
I am thinking it's a sign that the freckles
in our eyes are mirror images and when
we kiss they're perfectly aligned
and I have to speculate that God himself
did make us into corresponding shapes like
puzzle pieces from the clay
[...]
they will see us waving from such great
heights, "come down now," they'll say
but everything looks perfect from far away,
"come down now," but we'll stay...
[...]
I have to admit, having a lady on the board does change the dynamic of the Weblog significantly. Let me say that I am happy for the change, and that casual sex, while not the furthest thing from my mind, will not taint my rhetoric around the female form. Which is to say, my rhetoric's taintedness must then be blamed on something else. For example, my lack of brain-meats.
I have a couple of strengths and weaknesses that are well displayed by Weblog writing. This is the number one reason I find myself reticent when faced with the opportunity to display my thoughts. Namely, I know that I tend to have very strong Beliefs, Beliefs that tend to get ahead of their Reasons. Now, in my defense, at least I realize my weakness and thus avoid overly religious thought. However, that means that when I happen upon some kind of faux fundamental truth, like "The Tire Industry is the Number One Cause of Pollution in the World Today," I approach it with the Conviction of the Christ denouncing the Pharisees. It's really quite a show. Funny and educational.
Still, for lack of restraint, let me step into the light here and suggest that instead of finding fault with our political leaders and our political world, why don't we do the Catholic thing and figure out what's wrong with ourselves first? Now, you don't have to be Catholic to exercise this kind of guilt complex, but the practice helps.
Seriously, though - mayhaps we should stop caring about the world outside and how much it doesn't listen to reason, and try reasoning out our own lives. We could give away our extraneous possessions, feed the poor, and stop carrying about the poor, rich, and others we'll never see.
Don't think that I'm advocating isolationism. I would much rather we all pack up our bags and try to help the lowest of the low, which implies going overseas, over borders, or an adventurous combination of the two. If I seem asinine, magnanimous, or annoying in some other way, that's ok. It's the Belief thing I warned you about. It'll pass.
My ridiculous belief, not the feeling that I'm asinine. That's here to stay.
Love,
Michael.
P.S. Written to the strains of the Postal Service, for the sake of consistency.
