Gun Power Treason and Plot

Remember, remember...

30 Before 30 Update: Submit or be Conquered

Goal #15 on my 30 Before 30 is to submit poems to 6 publications. This week, I heard back from locations 2 and 3, both of whom want one of the poems I offered to them.

When I set this goal, I thought that going 0 for 6 was a real possibility, which is why I made my goal submissions and not publications.

It was, frankly, a real possibility. But if I'm 0 for 3 with my remaining submissions, I'll still be ecstatic to have this two poems in print.

*** Helpful advice: the image results for a Google search on "submit or be conquered" are Not Safe For Work. Do not look for an image to accompany your blog post on this topic during your lunch hour.

Happy Friday

“Discipline 'makes' individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise. It is not a triumphant power...it is a modest, suspicious power, which functions as a calculated, but permanent economy.” 

Happy Friday

Happy Friday!

30 Before 30 Update

The full list
2. 70 pages into The Sound and the Fury
16. Went to the gym today with my new workout buddy! Seriously, of all the things I learned in the Boy Scouts, the buddy system seems to be the most important.
17. Board game drafted and board started! I need to buy some beads (to use as tokens) to keep score with.
18. Contacted my local Habitat for Humanity, but haven't heard back yet. It's probably too cold to have a project going.
24. So far, I have listened to 1 hour (and only 1 hour) of commercial radio. In that hour I heard only 9 songs, and this song twice.
27. Notice the widget via LibraryThing.com for books I've reviewed in the right hand column? Why didn't anyone tell me they made a widget sooner?
30. We've got 2 things left to do on our to-do list for January: get a pair of pants hemmed, and sort out our wedding photos.

30 Before 30 Bucket List

1. Read In Search of Lost Time (A Remembrance of Things Past)

In Fun Home, Alison Bechdel writes "It's said, after all, that people reach middle age the day they realize they're never going to read Remembrance of Things Past." That quote struck a nerve with me, and once I decided that 2013 would be my year for Remembrance... the rest of this list started to take shape.

Book Review: Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

from here

When I was younger (which may only mean last January when I started this project to read 52 books in 2012) I divided books into those I love, those I like, those I'm indifferent to, and those I actively dislike.

As this project goes on, I find myself liking fewer books, but also disliking fewer books as well. Instead, I begin to see flaws. The best books I've read this year (Asterios Polyp, Cutting for Stone, Death in the Afternoon, The Imperfectionists) have the fewest flaws, which is not to say they are flawless. But their strengths outweigh their weaknesses by a considerable margin.

Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin started off with several points in the bank: it's set in a city I love (New York City), in a time period I find fascinating (the 1970s, amid the tide of urban blight ready to swallow New York), and in a format I adore (a series of interconnected, only marginally sequential short stories).

McCann builds from there: his stories revolve around Philippe Petit's August 7, 1974, tightrope walk between the Twin Towers. Petit is a reoccurring character, taking a couple chapters for himself, and in some way touching the lives of every other character in the novel.

Rivera and Age

I wrote my farewell to Mariano Rivera over at Pinstripe Alley this morning. The greatest closer of all time twisted his knee, tearing a ligament that will end his season and likely end his career.

Age comes, eventually. The pulse in your wrist is a clock winding down, as though we need more reminders.

But that is why we keep coming back to the game. It grows as we grow old, and the more of the history we have lived, heard of, or read about, the richer the game becomes. That's what makes Derek Jeter's march up the all-time hit list enjoyable- not the number, but the stories revived by each number.

This morning, my heart is breaking for one of the greatest ball players I will ever see. Tonight, there will be a game.

Yeats, Perfection of the Life or of the Work, Happiness, and Play

Being already 4 days behind on my National Poetry Month poem-a-day Challenge (today is the 9th, I've got 4 poems finished and 2 half poems), a week behind on my book a week New Year's resolution, a month behind at work, and a lifetime behind on my become a famous writer life goal, I've been doing a lot of thinking about Yeats lately.

The Choice
The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story's finished, what's the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse. 

 I don't spend much time raging these days. Is it harder to write when my life is in a good place, or is that an excuse I make for myself when I don't have to spend all my time alone with my thoughts? Before Carol and I moved in together I was writing a blog post or two every day, reading a lot and writing plenty of poetry. Not that I mind, but she's a bit of a distraction.

There was a great article in the NYTimes Magazine yesterday about "silly" games (the kind of endless games like Tetris or Angry Birds that can't really be won, demand little skill or creativity, but that absorb a huge chunk of our mental energy). My takeaway was this:

In her book “Reality Is Broken,” Jane McGonigal argues that play is possibly the best, healthiest, most productive activity a human can undertake — a gateway to our ideal psychological state. Games aren’t an escape from reality, McGonigal contends, they are an optimal form of engaging it.

Now, I recognize that I have a limited amount of mental space each day. Every minute I spend playing Pandemic with my wife (or working on my blog post about how addicted we are to Pandemic, stay tuned for that!) is one less minute I have available for poetry. But what would I do differently? I'd change very little right now, just hoping that (like Randall and Dante in Clerks and Clerks II) the non-productive times in my life are really just building towards something.

Why I Like Horoscopes

Actually, I only like one very specific kind of horoscope: the kind written by my friend Jane (Link).

My horoscope this week:

Capricorn (Dec. 23-Jan. 20): Listen to Close to Me by The Cure and think about what closeness really is: the smells and everyday mistakes of intimacy, the song-exchange of friendship, the warmth of breakfast. Get whichever parts of closeness you can.

I like it because it walks that fine line between generic and applicable, in a week when I've felt a little bit lost at sea. It touches both ends of the beautiful, finds a romanticism in the everyday. We all need more of that in our lives. It sidesteps the mysticism and hokeyness of traditional horoscopes.  

It was exactly what I needed to brighten my Friday afternoon.

Fitness, Balance, Limits

My favorite exercise is probably the Russian Twist.

I'm not any good at it. There are plenty of people who are phenomenally strong at their favorite exercise- they started strong in one area, so they excelled at that exercise, so they did it often, so they improved quickly, so they excelled.

The thing I like about the Russian Twist, and about most of the exercises in the Power Hour I've tried to make a part of my weekly routine, is how hard it is.

I find that difficulty inspiring, challenging and rewarding. But the reverse of that is recognizing my limits. I simply can't handle a workout at that level four consecutive days. Instead this semester, I'm trying a couple other fitness classes on my "off" days.

(How strange and surprising and interesting that I enjoy and, to a degree, depend upon the class structure to motivate me. Although I interact with and depend upon a team of colleagues at work, at the end of the day I complete my work alone, dividing and conquering vastly more often than collaborating. I find blogging a solitary sport, despite the encouraging comments left by readers. Reading, perhaps my favorite activity, is distinctly solitary.)

So, on Tuesday I attended my second ever Pilates class. It's a very different kind of workout than the cardio-intensity of Power Hour, and I suspect I'm going to have to learn how to get the most out of it, in a way I didn't have to learn in the fast paced class. The movements were challenging (in a couple cases overwhelmingly so), but I wasn't at the end of class left with the exhaustion and 'burn' feeling that I've come to equate with a successful workout.

Which needs to change? It seems that either I have to learn how to maximize my Pilates workout to get value from this new class, or I have to adjust my definition of what the evening after a workout feels like.

Beaming Away Like Father Christmas

Rose Tyler: Look at you, beaming away like you're Father Christmas!
The Doctor: Who says I'm not, red-bicycle-when-you-were-twelve?

There's a wonderful counterbalance to the horror of socially mandated gift giving: getting a perfect gift.

I got one of those today (on one of my best buddy's blog). I love horoscopes: they're a belief in magic greater than our skeptical cynicism. I'll be happy to share my present with any other capricorns out there (and all you people with other birthdays have a present of your own waiting). Horoscope link!

Happy Friday!

First Friday, plus Chester River Chorale, plus Carol got a job.
Happiest Friday in a long time!

The Muppets (Spoiler Free, I Promise)

I grew up with a certain degree of nonsensical in my life, and I love it.

(This may be the key to the modern condition: we've ceased to expect a rational narrative to our art, our politics, our lives; at the same time, Enlightenment ideals deny any non-rational exploration of the world. The nonsensical is then reduced to the fringes of discourse: humor, children's stories, "modern" art.)

Sometimes, we don't recognize the thing we've been missing until we find it. That's how I felt throughout The Muppets. All the other sources of humor, of joy, of unexpected celebration were just filler as we waited for this. I won't get into the details of the plot for the sake of spoilers, and frankly, I think the details of the plot are secondary to the emotion and the flavor of the movie.

This was a movie with a taste. The last movie that left me feeling like this was Lilo & Stitch, ten years ago. Go see it. I'm going to see it again.

Being Baffled as Route to Hope

I attended a fantastic talk last night (one that will likely lead to another post or two later this week), and I wanted to share one of the central joys of the evening: the discovery of a new meaning to a familiar word.

I love words, both the sounds and the layers of meaning they inhabit.

So today's word is baffle.

I was only familiar with baffle as a verb describing challenges and confusion:

1. to perplex; bewilder; puzzle

2. to frustrate (plans, efforts, etc.)

3. Archaic to cheat or trick

But baffle in fact has another set of connotations in an engineering context:

4. to check, restrain, or regulate (the flow of a fluid or the emission of sound or light)

5. to provide with a baffle

This gives a whole new flavor to "baffled by fate;" life constantly redirects our best laid plans. In the spirit of optimism and my own little quest to maintain the modes of joy in my life, I'll try to remember this word the next time I'm perplexed, frustrated or feel cheated by the many people and obligations around me.