Amber Tamblyn, Quick Poem

I saw Ambler Tamblyn's interview on Jay Leno tonight and was very impressed. She's Joan of Arcadia, has a new movie in the theaters (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants), daughter of Russ Tamblyn. Here's her web site: http://www.amtam.com/. She has great advice for would-be actors (5% of screen actor guild members actually work), and has a new book about poetry coming out. Admirable.

In terms of writing, she is light years ahead of me at her age. Reading her poems made me want to write something before I fall asleep. Here goes.



Tadpole


Before you sprout your hind legs
your kicking legs
that will make you jump higher
and faster and farther
you are already ahead of me
because you dove in the water
not knowing why
or how it can drown you
the way I know why
and how it can drown me

and I will reach out
and hold you
and help you stay above water
until your kicking legs grow
until you let go of me
and surpass me

but not until then, I won't let go
you kick, keep kicking
I won't let go
I won't let go.

Batman Begins: Without and Within

Batman Begins might be drowned out by the noise of this summer’s overproduced cookie-cutter blockbusters, but I don’t think it cares. Compared to the previous four Batman films, this one is less flashy, more serious, more focused, more introspective, and more philosophical. It is how Batman is supposed to be. It is the truest, most developed and most complete Batman movie, period.

Christopher Nolan, who also directed Memento, infused the same attitude into Batman Begins. I don’t know how else to describe it, but the movie feels real. It’s the difference between hearing a movie gunshot and a real gunshot. And just like in the real world, when you get hit, it hurts like hell.

The movie dissects the human condition more than it flaunts design. It focuses on keeping the story flowing instead of lingering on wow. It isn't as concerned with how the costumes look, or how the gadgets actually work, or what other tricks the batmobile is capable of. There is a greater agenda, which is creating solid characters to drive a solid plot.


No Heroics

“It is not enough to be a man. You have to become an idea, a terrible thought. A wraith.”

When the wraith, this Batman, destroys its prey, it is horrific. Instead of fighting in the spotlight, the wraith stalks the target in darkness, confuses the target, engages the target before the target can react, kills the target before the target knows what killed it. It is a cold and empty way to die. As one prey dies, the other prey hear the dying and become more fearful. And this makes the killing easier.

Just as a cop doesn’t rejoice when he shoots a criminal, there’s no celebration when the wraith conquers a villain. There is no parade, no adulation from the crowd. It is simply an act of disposing evil.


Posturing is a Four-Letter Word

The fighting suit is painted flat black so it becomes nearly invisible at night. It is made for hiding, reconnaissance, and killing, not posing. After watching the movie, I realized that I didn’t even know what the batsuit looked like. I didn’t really care.

The batarang is a simple piece of raw steel that was shaped on a metal grinder. If you got hit with it, you would probably need a tetanus shot.

The batcave is just that, a cave filled with bats. It is dark and cold and wet and inhospitable to sane minds.

The batmobile is a Lamborghini built like a linebacker. Like the movie, it doesn’t care about posturing or finessing its way around traffic. When in doubt, it punches its way through.

The mob boss, Falcone, is a gray-haired guy in a double-breasted gray suit. There is nothing special about the way he looks. His terror lies in his ability to put a mental chokehold on a city, to make the powerful and rich be so afraid that they are paralyzed into inaction.

The Scarecrow’s costume is nothing but a rag mask. But how each victim’s mind reacts to this mask is a different story.

The batsignal is ambiguous in shape because clouds exist.

And what do you give a billionaire on his birthday? A moment from his childhood.


A Batman for Grownups

This movie is rated PG-13. It is not a cartoon. It is not Tim Burton being colorful with the Joker and the Penguin. It is not George Clooney smirking and ambiguously twitching his head. This movie is made for adults who crave substance, a good script, and enough multi-layered ideas so that we can work our minds while being entertained. The batsuit does not have nipples.

There are no songs by a current pop star or hip-hop band that play when the end credits are rolling. The soundtrack is classical, non-intrusive, becoming a part of the movie’s overall sound. It accentuates the mood, puts exclamation points on the fight sequences. The soundtrack is so pure that each movement is named after a species of bats. No element of this movie is self-serving. Each scene ends before it can linger and its effect is diluted.


Beyond One Man, A City

Christian Bale, the movie’s Bruce Wayne, can act. He can fight too, but more importantly, he can act. So can Liam Neeson, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, even Katie Holmes. There are no stars in this movie, just good characters contributing to a good story. They are each given substantial words to say, words good enough to remember after the movie is long over. They say them like real people would, like we would during a day’s conversation.

They say simple things like, “Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.” and “Justice is about harmony. Revenge is about you making yourself feel better.”

Except for Bruce Wayne, these are everyday people who go to their everyday jobs, drive their used cars, take out the trash at night, have dinner with their families, and lock their doors and windows before going to sleep, because as much as they are hopeful, they are also afraid. They see their city suffering, not as much from a lack of resources but more from a lack of social conscience, from apathy. They see an improper distribution of wealth and attention. They see their city being devoured by the larger machine, controlled by a handful of powerful, influential men. They see their city giving up, giving into less noble ways of living.

“Crime thrives on the indulgences of society…”

What happens when a society falls under the weight of its own success and opulence, when it compromises justice for convenience, when it stops paying attention to its less fortunate citizens, when it loses sight of its own balance?

An idea arrives.

Why I Write

I write to clarify my thoughts and commit them as final. I write to make linear the abstract, segmented, incomprehensible parts of my mind.

I write to play with words, to run them through my fingers and see how they reshape themselves when thrown in a different way.

I write to simplify my convictions. If it packs a strong punch with as few words as possible, I know that I'm getting closer to the mark.

I write to sing along with other writers. I write to join the chorus of beautiful words.

I write because time always seems to have the advantage.

I write because I am lazy but love efficiency.

I write because I am not an alcoholic.

I write to help show that a limited vocabulary cannot stop the truth from being told.

Tom Hanks Commencement Address at Vassar College, May 22, 2005

THE POWER OF FOUR
by Tom Hanks

Not long ago I was reading about the problem of gridlock on the freeways of Southern California -- the traffic jams which cripple the city, stranding millions and laying waste to time, energy, and the environment. Gridlock is as serious and as impenetrable a problem as any we face, a dilemma without cure, without solution, like everything else in the world, it seems.

Some smart folks concocted a computer simulation of gridlock to determine how many cars should be taken off the road to turn a completely jammed and stilled highway into a free-flowing one. How many cars must be removed from that commute until a twenty-mile drive takes twenty-five minutes instead of two hours? The results were startling.

Four cars needed to be removed from that virtually stuck highway to free up that simulated commute -- four cars out of each one hundred. Four cars per one hundred cars, four autos out of every one hundred autos, forty cars from each thousand, four hundred out of ten thousand. Four cars out of one hundred are not that many. Two cars out of every fifty -- one driver out of twenty-five drivers.

Now, if this simulation is correct, it is the most dramatic definition in earthly science and human nature of how a simple choice will make a jaw-dropping difference to our world. Call it the Power of Four. One commuter in your neighborhood could put the rush back into rush hour. So, if merely four people out of a hundred can make gridlock go away by choosing not to use their car, imagine the other changes that can be wrought just by four of us -- four of you -- out of a hundred.

Take a hundred musicians in a depressed port city in Northern England, choose John, Paul, George, and Ringo and you have "Hey Jude". Take a hundred computer geeks in Redmond, Washington, send 96 of them home and the remainder is called Microsoft.

Take the Power of Four and apply it to any and every area of your concern. Politics: Four votes swung from one hundred into another hundred is the difference between gaining control and losing clout. Culture: 2 ticket buyers out of fifty can make a small, odd film profitable. Economics: by boycotting a product 1 consumer out of 25 can move that product to the back of the shelf, and eventually off it altogether.

Four out of 100 is miniscule and yet can be the great lever of the Tipping Point. The Power of Four is the difference between helplessness and help. H-E-L-P: a four-letter word like some others with many meanings.

The graduating class of 2005 can claim, with perhaps more credibility than any other class in history, that during its four years of college the world went crazy. In the fall of 2001, our planet earth and the United States of America were different sorts of places -- in tone, in tolerance, in peace and war, in ideas and in ideals - than they are on this spring day in 2005. These past years have been extraordinary in the express rate of change, well beyond the usual standards of culture, well above the personal watermarks you have stamped as college students. As college graduates, you now live in a brand new world, with new versions of political upheaval, global pandemic, world war and religious polarization, the likes of which have rarely visited our planet all at once -- and thank God for that.

Today's main purpose is to celebrate your entering into society, but the fact is you have all been very much steeped in it already -- Poughkeepsie being the proxy and microcosm of the whole wide world. None of you were untouched by the events in September of your freshman year, none unaffected by the ideological movements of local and geo-politics since. All of you have been staring your individual fate and our collective future right in the eye for the last four years. The common stereotype would have you today, cap in the air, parchment in hand, asking yourself "what do I do now?" You, the class of 2005, have already had many, many moments during your time at Vassar when you asked yourself that question. You might have added the word "Hell", or some such four-letter word to the phrase: "What the HELL do I do now?" In which case, today might not be all that different from other days on campus -- except your parents are here and they might take you out for better food.

On Commencement Day, speechmakers are expected to offer advice -- as though you need any, as though anything said today could aid your making sense of our one-damn-thing-after-another world. Things are too confused, too loud, and too dangerous to make "advice" an option. You need to hear something much more relevant on this day. You need to hear the most important message thus far in the third millennium. You need to hear a maxim so simple, so clear and evocative that no one could misconstrue its meaning or miss its weighty issue.

So, here goes. It's not a statement, but a request. Not a bit of advice, but a plea. It is, in fact, a single four-letter word, a verb and a noun which takes into account the reality of your four years at Vassar as well as the demands of the next four decades you spend beyond this campus.

It's a message, once made familiar by the Beatles - those Northern English lads who embodied The Power of Four.

Help. HELP. HEEEELLLLLLPP!

We need help. Your help. You must help. Please help. Please provide Help. Please be willing to help. Help and you will make a huge impact in the life of the street, the town, the country, and our planet. If only one out of four of each one hundred of you choose to help on any given day, in any given cause -- incredible things will happen in the world you live in.

Help publicly. Help privately. Help in your actions by recycling and conserving and protecting, but help also in your attitude. Help make sense where sense has gone missing. Help bring reason and respect to discourse and debate. Help science to solve and faith to soothe. Help law bring justice, until justice is commonplace. Help and you will abolish apathy -- the void that is so quickly filled by ignorance and evil.

Life outside of college is just like life in it: one nutty thing after another, some of them horrible, but all interspersed with enough beauty and goodness to keep you going. That's your job, to keep going. Your duty is to help -- without ceasing. The art you create can glorify it. The science you pursue can prove its value. The law you practice can pass on its benefits. The faith you embrace will make it the earthly manifestation of your God.

Here at Vassar whatever your discipline, whatever your passion you have already experienced the exhausting reality that there is always something going on and there is always something to do. And most assuredly you have sensed how effective and empowering it can be when more than four out of one hundred make the same choice to help.

You will always be able to help.

So do it. Make peace where it is precious. Help plant trees. Help embrace diversity and celebrate differences. Help stop gridlock.

In other words, help solve every problem we face - every single one of them -- with the Power of Four out of a hundred. Help and we will save the world. If we don't help -- it won't get done.

Congratulations. Good luck. Thank you.


---


I hope the folks at Vassar don't mind my reproducing Tom Hanks' speech here. The original is at:
http://www.vassar.edu/commencement/050522.hanks.html

I Never Heard My Father Say “I Love You” to My Mother

I’ll tell you about my father:

He is a quiet man, too shy for his own good.
Too shy to say out loud what he’s thinking inside.
Too shy to complain, to call attention to himself.
Too shy that he will quietly add the extra buck when settling the dinner tab so the waiter doesn’t get stiffed.
Too shy that he sometimes smiles awkwardly instead of speaking.

And I’ve never heard him say “I Love You” to my mother.

Instead, he will bring his family to America.
Instead, he will work three jobs.
Instead, he won't drink, or raise his voice, or raise his hand.
Instead, he won't join the other husbands when they make fun of their wives when they’re not listening.
Instead, he will put the bigger pieces of chicken on my and my mother’s plates during dinner. Instead, he will pretend that he’s already eaten.
Instead, he will never want a gift during Christmas so everyone else can get a better gift.

And he will be too shy to want to read this poem
but he already knows that I am capable of writing it.
Because I am his son, and he has taught me well.

He taught me that endurance is stronger than force.
He taught me that achievement is stronger than amazement.
He taught me that humility and silence is the best surprise of all.
He taught me all of this without saying a word.

And I’ve never heard him say “I Love You” to my mother.
He never had to.

The Opportunity to Refrain

Now that the last installment of the Star Wars prequels is in the theaters, I’d like to comment on a missed opportunity. Something that was promised in the Empire Strikes Back but never delivered. If you compare Yoda to Gandalf, you might know where I’m going with this.

There’s a scene in Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, where Gandalf and Pippin discuss death, with Sauron’s army on the other side of the gate about to break it down and destroy everything. In my opinion, it’s the defining moment of the trilogy:

“I didn't think it would end this way.”

“End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back and all change to silver glass....and then you see it.”

“What, Gandalf? See what?”

“White shores and beyond. The far green country under a swift sunrise.”

“Well, that isn't so bad.”

“No, no it isn't.”

This scene transcended the swordfights, the flawless CGI, even the dozens of amazing other moments. This scene stopped time, made your eyes open just a bit wider, gave you goosebumps, held your breath so that you would not miss a syllable of it.

This scene transcended the victories, the strife, even the outcome of the movie itself. This scene assured us that everything will be all right at a time when the movie was far from over and the conflicts were far from being resolved. It’s the greatest armor one can have. The scene made the viewer, as well as every noble character in the movie, invincible.

In The Empire Strikes Back, Yoda had a similar scene:

"Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship."

Do you remember the music during this scene?

What an amazing hint that the Force is the strongest element in the universe. That to be “one with the Force” is to literally be invincible, while caring nothing about invincibility.

In Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, although it was neat to see Yoda with a lightsaber, I think a wonderful opportunity was missed. The opportunity to refrain. First of all, just as Yoda never brandished a lightsaber in Empire, Yoda should not have needed a lightsaber in any of the movies. As elegant as it is, it is still a weapon. And doesn’t a lightsaber fall into the same category as “crude matter”?

On a similar note, didn’t those of you who saw Gandalf fighting the Uruk-hai with his staff and sword think that he was beyond that sort of thing? That Gandalf should only use his sword to tackle the really impossible stuff, like fighting the Balrog?

The filmmakers should have made Yoda do the same, avoided obligatory swordfights and trivial decapitations. Yoda’s presence should have been used to help narrate and sculpt the story. Yoda, in these prequels, should have been what Obi-Wan was in the original trilogy: the guiding voice, the overseer, the “one who assures us that everything’s in control, that everything will be all right.” Yoda should have, as Obi-Wan did in the original Star Wars, refrained, retreated, and in the process, become stronger.

Imagine if, instead of somersaulting and lightsabering across the Senate chambers while trying to fend off Palpatine, Yoda’s voice was heard lamenting the Jedi being slaughtered across the galaxy. Yoda’s pained voice as Anakin and Obi-Wan fight on the volcanic world Mustafar. Yoda's voice as Anakin descends and is consumed by the dark side, consumed by the lava and fire. Yoda's voice echoing Obi-Wan’s regret, “You were the chosen one! It was said that you would destroy the Sith, not join them. It was you who would bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness!” And near the end of the movie, after all is said and done, Yoda's voice providing reassurance and hope. Imagine if.

Maybe someday, someone will rewrite and reshoot these prequel Star Wars movies, just as Peter Jackson remade the Lord of the Rings decades after Ralph Bakshi tried to condense it into a cartoon. Maybe years from now, special effects will be so accessibly mundane that the telling of the story will take precedence again. Maybe Yoda won’t have a lightsaber this time. Maybe Yoda won’t need it.

How Buddhism Killed My Ego

It was August 1997 and I was making myself sick. If you’ve ever been around me after feeding me milk chocolate, you know what I’m talking about. I get into a Cornholio-type babbling tirade where my mouth actually runs as fast as my mind. It doesn't get out of control to the point of slap-upside-the-head-to-shut-you-up babble, but almost. When I’m in one of these moments, I will push the limits of anyone’s tolerance using absurd theories and non sequiturs while reciting lines from Tom Hanks movies that never made any money. These episodes last about an hour, and that’s when people usually decide that it’s safe enough to introduce me to their family and friends.

But in 1997, even after my mouth quit, my mind just kept running, tried to think about everything and tried to solve everything all at once. After graduating from college and starting my home business, I thought I shouldn’t be going “duh” anymore, that my theories should have already been proven or disproven, that my sequiturs should have partnered up with other sequiturs already. MY BABBLING NEEDED TO HAVE PURPOSE! In a moment of desperation and surrender, I closed my mouth and stopped talking, then my mind went “pfffttt…” and that red HAL 9000 light that represented my beliefs, my affirmations, my hopes, my direction, my gusto, went out. I collapsed on my bed and stared at the ceiling for six months. And then I got up and decided to vacuum.

While vacuuming, I saw Han Solo’s ship, the Millennium Falcon, shoot across my TV screen.

And this was on PBS?

Turns out it was the documentary The Power of Myth, with Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers. Turns out that George Lucas was a good friend of Joseph Campbell and much of the mythology of Star Wars was based on Joseph Campbell’s work. During the show, Joseph Campbell mentioned a guy named the Dalai Lama, and buddhism, and how Yoda and The Force was patterned after these two.

So I can geek out on Star Wars while learning some spirituality and metaphysics at the same time. In scrabble they call this a triple word bonus score.



(I gotta sleep now, but will continue this after after.)


---


BTW…

- Two people have recommended that I allow comments on this site, so I’m doing it. If there isn't a POST A COMMENT link at the bottom of this page, click on this blog's title on the PREVIOUS POSTS column to the right of this page, and that page should have a comment link.

- I’ve decided to write a funny book about my experience as an immigrant’s son, from the time I stepped foot in America in 1974 to the present. The style will be similar to the stuff you read here, God help us all. It will be a short book, around 150-200 pages, and will hopefully help my parents pay for a hotel room at the Stardust Casino in Vegas for the rest of their lives. The working title is “The Big Mac and Coffee Sack Lunch and Other Stories”. If anyone has any title ideas, send them over. I’m working on other titles in case McDonalds wants to sue me.

Good day, gentle reader.

The Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fail

Some years ago, my friend, after having learned how much I try to avoid work but still manage to make some decent money, told me about Robert Heinlein’s snippet story, The Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fail (it’s in the book Time Enough for Love). I’ve started reading the story but haven’t finished it yet. I keep falling asleep. But from what I’ve read so far, the guy in the story still worked a hell of a lot harder than I did/have/do. The following are some examples. Some are true and some aren’t. If they make you like me better, they’re all true. If you’re one of my clients, they’re all lies, and I was never here.


School

Right around seventh grade, I learned that 80% of the week was unnecessary, that one could learn and do most of the stuff just reading the books and doing the homework. For the most part, teachers were there to make things a bit more entertaining or to light a fire under everyone's asses, but since I was a true geek and my ass was already on fire, I didn't need the encouragement. So when I got sick on a Monday, my instincts would kick in and make me sick for the rest of the week, except for Friday. Friday is usually when they took tests, and those counted more than anything, so I never missed Fridays. During the week, one of my friends would bring my homework, and in exchange I would draw them a picture of Superman or a World War II fighter plane, or bribe them with my mom's cooking. (God bless my friends who brought me homework. Last I checked they were all doing well, having children and making more money than me, so that’s okay.) I would do the homework and bring it in on Friday, take the test and ace it. Except for one class, I got straight A’s in middle and high school, with the lowest attendance record imaginable. When I watched Ferris Bueller for the first time, I thought it was a documentary.

I’ve since learned that it’s the same with work. Most of the work can get done by 2pm, including a 1.5 hour lunch break. So I decided to work at home, saving my potential clients thousands of dollars by billing them hourly, instead of salaried time that I would have spent inventing new ways of not working. By definition, I am good for the economy.



Books

Most of the books I own have a bookmark at about page 30, because that’s usually when I stop reading them. Page 30 is where most people will stop reading most books, but will pretend to know what the whole book is about. The rest of the book is discussed usually on Google or Amazon.com. anyway, so why bother? Instead of reading ten 300-page books (3000 pages), I’ll read one hundred books up to page 30 (3000 pages). That immediately makes me ten times smarter.


More later, I'm falling asleep…

Spirituality books in my bedroom

One nice thing about spirituality books is that they don't have too many pages, so it's easy for me to finish reading them. They're also easy to read before falling asleep. Here are some I highly recommend:

Books by the Dalai Lama:

• The Art of Happiness
• Ethics for the New Millennium
• Live in a Better Way
• The Path to Tranquility
• Imagine All the People
• An Open Heart
• Healing Anger

Call Me By My True Names, Thich Nhat Hanh

Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu

The Tao of Inner Peace, Diane Dreher

The Little Zen Companion

An Open Life, Joseph Campbell

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Sogyal Rinpoche

The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran

The Art of Living, Epictetus

Illusions, Richard Bach

The Dragon Who Never Sleeps, Robert Aitken

Teachings On Love, Thich Nhat Hanh

..

If someone who has never read any of these books were to ask me which to read first, I would recommend The Art of Happiness. In terms of weight, breadth and importance, my vote would be for The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. For balance, I've recently been looking for spirituality books written by westerners. A good one would be The Art of Living, which is an interpretation of Epictetus' writings by Sharon Lebell. Another good one is Letters, Principal Doctrines, and Vatican Sayings from Epicurus.

Kitchen blurbs

I keep a notepad in the kitchen. Here are some blurbs written there:


If it's worth doing, it's worth giving meaning to.

Hold a higher standard for yourself more than anyone holds for you, and you will never be in doubt.

I have reawakened. My art has reawakened.

Achievement overcomes regret.

Quick wit, not temper.

One day may fall but my year remains strong,
my life, invincible.

Faith is prediction with a kind heart.

Life can be easy,
or it can be hard,
or it can be extraordinary.
Or it can be all these things.

Look into her eyes.
Now, close your eyes and look into her heart.
Where do you find more clarity?
Where do you find greater understanding?

What a wonderful thing to be exhausted by laughter and sincere accomplishment.

Go, do the impossible. Then shut up about it.

Success is being humbled while in the company of good children.

Golf is the repeated act of trying to find that singular moment of perfection.

You are either a ship on a straight, steady course, or you are driftwood.

By regarding every action as a commitment, you honor everything, you honor everybody, including yourself.

If nothing else, peace of mind.

Dazzle the world not with mischief or drama, or intrigue
but with accomplishment.

You have caught all the breaths that I've ever held, and you have danced my exhalation.

How can I not be happy and proud of who I am, since I am the product of the best of my family and friends?

A dangerous thing to have is success without full understanding of it.

My greatest victory came when my soul said yes to God and accepted, wholeheartedly, the life that I am now living.

You can copyright the expression of an idea, but you cannot copyright an idea. Ideas are free.

I refrain because God exists. God exists because I refrain.

The best defense is to live an honest life. The best revenge is to live a good life. (Paraphrased from an episode of CSI:Miami)

Each day, I sleep one-half hour less than I should. I would rather have a little bit of suffering each day than a lot of suffering all at once.

You can have this day; I am quite happy with this life.

Without maturity, forty is just a number. With maturity, forty becomes eloquent, beautiful.

Those who cannot take advantage of the wisdom of age have no choice but to rely on the wonder of youth.

the southernmost sea

When you think you have finished
with your family, your quiet but unshifting life
of servitude and patience and predictability
when you are ready to leave

you come to me

and bring your adventurous soul
and zeal for the fantastic
because it is here, what you long for
in rolling waves of icicle sharp water
that lead to broken but impenetrable island floes
that allow neither walking nor sailing nor standing
that will take your heart to its breaking point
and make you feel alive
because you are so close to death

you come to me
and I will soon enough remind you
of a warm bath, a perfect bed,
of boring people who lead boring lives
of availability

you come to me
and I will soon enough remind you
of what you left behind.


---


I wrote this while watching the documentary The Endurance, about Shackleton's journey to the south pole.

It was very difficult to find a tone for this poem, to find a balance in comparing a domesticated life versus an adventurous one. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Because reality has a way of giving judgment simply by being presented, I tried to write in a more journalistic manner, but still wound up siding with the domesticated life, after hearing some of the interviews in the documentary--how men left their families behind, how they never came back. Some of the stories told by their grandchildren who only know of their grandfathers through journals.

As with many of my poems, this one contains allegory.


"It was more than tantalizing. It was maddening." -- Dr. Macklin, The Endurance

soundtrack

there's no soundtrack when you close the door to your office,
when the fluorescent lamp stops buzzing above
when you only notice that it had been buzzing all day
when it finally stops, when it shuts down
along with the copier and the computers
when sunset begins to take over the room
and you're happy to at least go home without needing headlights

just glad that you have an office with a door, with your own key,
with your own little refrigerator in the corner
and enough footspace to complete an afterlunch nap

there's no soundtrack to your forty years of work
your 401k, your spotless attendance record,
the fact that you are the one that your officemates
are least likely to kill

there's no soundtrack when you loosen your twenty-year old tie
while pulling out of your parking space, carefully enough
not to disturb too much of the loose gravel under the tires
as you drive away

as you drive up and into the unfinished garage
as you set your keys on the cluttered counter
as you take your shoes off, right foot first
as you sit in your favorite ugly couch
as you hear your family sounds
as you almost fall asleep
as you hear the television

with the actor going home after a hard day's work
with the soundtrack following.

A Brief History of My Ego

My ego began early, as soon as I was born an only child. Before I could speak, I already knew that there was a mold, it was broken after I was born, the whole town knew about it, and that was that.

Growing up, I could pretty much have everything I wanted, as long as my wishes fell into the parameters of a third world economy, because I grew up in the Philippines. For example, I could have all the rice I wanted, unless it was being rationed that week, and then I couldn't. During those times I would trick myself into wanting powdered milk, because there was an unlimited supply of powdered cows.

Around the age of 6, my ego told me to ask for piano lessons. Without my parents' knowledge, in broken english I had asked the nun on the 6th floor of my elementary school to teach me piano. A week later, I came home with a note pinned to my white uniform shirt that asked my parents to pay for the piano lessons. So they did. And my ego said, "This is cool. Now ask for a piano."

By the time I was 7, my ego was at Batman level. I had gadgets and toys and a third world country piano. But that was shortlived, because I had to leave Batman in the old country to come to the new country, America. My ego knew that in order to blend into the new environment, it had to assume a more docile persona, more like Clark Kent. I had to relearn english because, even though the natives couldn't spell or write very well, their accents sounded as if they knew what they were talking about. They said my name as if there were only twenty letters in the alphabet. And that confused my ego. But as soon as the straight A's arrived, my ego got back on track.

My ego was on an academic, I'm-gonna-be-an-engineer autopilot mode all through grade school and middle school. But halfway through high school, my ego discovered poetry, then girls who liked poetry, then the magic of the rock group Journey. During a creative writing class with Miss Rueweller, a "Tall drink o' water" as my History teacher called her, I wrote a haiku that made some girl in the class go, "ooh." Suddenly, my ego didn't want to be an engineer anymore. It wanted to write songs and poems and draw, and do other many things that have made other egos go poor and become drunks in later years.

My ego didn't want to be an engineer through the rest of high school and the first two years of college, but it went through the motions anyway. My ego didn't care enough to get good grades. My ego hadn't been introduced to bliss yet. And then, during the fall semester of 1990, my ego met bliss. Bliss comprised of four classes: Voice class, Rapid Visualization Drawing, Poetry Writing, and Short Story Writing. I got straight A's in all of them. It was the most effortless semester of my life.

But just like the Batman year, this bliss was quickly gone. After graduating from college, my ego traveled from one path to another, trying to find that one road, trying to find bliss again. And knowing that it didn't want to be pureed into oblivion forever and ever, my ego didn't settle for a well-paying but fluorescent-lit office existence. My ego told me that it wanted to eat creativity and take naps in between meals, that there's actual money to be made by eating creativity and napping in between meals. So I fed it by working at home, with little snacks of consulting jobs and a whole lot of naps.

During a psychedelic episode in 1994, my ego told me to drop everything and design web sites. All the other egos told my ego that it was stupid, what the hell do people need web sites for. My ego didn't listen. Like Van Gogh, my ego is deaf in one ear.

But my ego was right. This "web site" thing was the real deal, and my ego swam in it, reveled in it, rejoiced, napped, cashed checks and bought unecessary trendy objects with it.

Then, in 1997, my ego died. Buddhism killed it.

But I have a feeling it's not really dead. I think my ego wants me to think it's dead, but it's really waiting in the shadows. I can feel it sometimes, whenever I think about an Armani jacket, whenever I stare at a Victoria's Secret commercial, whenever I long for washboard abs. It's there, waiting for me to find bliss. Waiting for me to introduce it again to bliss, waiting for that reunion.