m duchamp opens a shoe store with u pennybags/ask not what your country can do for you but what story you can tell for it/informal apology part 3,992

now, i only know the summer has started because of how busy this day was.
poetry writing and
folklore of the americas
is on the menu for this session; six credits in one month will tire me but i like what i've seen.
we talked about a war ridden europe whose art had all been destroyed by bombs and bullets. disillusioned, tired and discouraged creative types invented an arbitrary art form which involved connecting randomly picked words of certain parts of speech to the results of the roll of dice. it was making art by not trying. the purity of pure chance. the assertion that the human mind could never make anything as beautiful as the things that existed beyond its understanding. so we made poems this way. by rolling a twelve sided die. it was exciting:

scared and confused polka-dot sisters watched the
woods breathe, contemplating how a
computer's punch
slowly corrodes into
a terrible fire playing the flaw

we talked about folklore as both the story and the act of telling it. about sustaining cultural tradition through family tradition and orature, you know, things you cannot write down on a page or necessarily record. things that really only mean anything because of the strength of the relationships over which they are passed. in a way, folklore is highly individualistic, the professor said, mentioning conversations she'd had with sociologist friends who focus on the populus as a whole and think in generalities.
in folklore, we only care about who we are talking to. not just the story, but why we are telling the story.
folklore is community. it is the tradition and the richness, it is family and the soul of our """society""" which is a big, stupid word. i thought, i like this. when i talk to someone and they tell me about "blah blah the blah in society", i think, this person does not know what they are talking about.
but every discipline has something to offer to the fertile brain. i learned a lot in my sociology class.
i spoke to the radio booth attendant for mason radio, who assured me i could play a demo on the air, and possibly play a show sometime during the fall semester. we will see.
i spoke to an academic advisor and learned that i can graduate next spring if i kick my ass hard enough.
i would like to go to europe this summer for my friend's wedding, but does anybody have about 1500 dollars lying around?
i need a guitar amp, keyboard, pa, new laptop...

---

love makes you cry
family makes you cry. the deafening scream
of sun
burns the hair from your mellow head
uncovered but
it is better than the dark closets with no regret
i did not really feel the cold
collect and settle at the bottom of my
stomach like shavings of greasy metal
until five months after
almost
doing
something
i only now truly regret
for whom the sobriety time and geography offers
has proven to be
as fleeting and forgotten
as the movements of black and white
on a tv screen
and i don't remember the names
behind one hit wonders
neither do you
its
ingredients they are strong like
poison but
they are gone with the sweat i have
shed carrying this statue up
the mountain and giving it
a life of its own

belly button

The Prophet

"And a woman who held a babe against
her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's
longing for itself.
They come through you but not from
you,

You may give them you love but not
your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not
their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of to-
morrow, which you cannot visit, not even
in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek
not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries
with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your chil-
dren as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path
of the infinite, and He bends you with His
might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand
be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable."