The Writer's Poke

To my loyal readers: I'm not blogged out, but I am shifting my energies to other writing endeavors. That's why I haven't posted much lately. At the moment, I'm working on a new novel. And like Hemingway, I believe it's best that I don't write or say too much about it while "in process." Some time soon, I will also begin the process of revising the "pokes." Please do keep checking back. I might not have new pokes for you, but the blog will continue, I promise.

I like poetry, although I think about 99% of it is probably crap. To me, poetry must marry the beauty of language with the power of story. Poetry that simply hides meaning behind complexities... who needs it? People love language, of this I am convinced. So why don't more people read poetry? Simple: most poetry is written by poets for other poets. In other words, most poets have purposely limited their audience. Those poets that wrote for a general audience, Robert Frost and Maya Angelou come to mind, are not considered to be among the "elite poets," at least by poetry snobs. Real poems evoke real emotions. Take Theordore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" or Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" or Sylvia Plath's "Daddy." If you've taken an English class or two in high school or college, I'm sure you've read these poems; but even if you have, why not go back and read them again? Do you ever write in a w...

Some people in my neighborhood have one of those invisible fences for their dog; I'd probably never have noticed the "fence" if it weren't for the accompanying "Dog in Training" sign. Dog in training, I thought. What an interesting concept. It reminded me of the old fashioned finishing schools for young debutantes. Do puppies really need to learn how to become dogs? Doesn't the process happen naturally? And then I thought: What does it mean to be a certified dog? Drawing connections from the sign, it would indicate that a dog learns its territory. It learns to accept a fence that it cannot see. It conforms to what its master wants it to be: well-mannered and restrained. In other words, it learns to become something other than its nature. How has the influence of family, friends, or society "trained" you? Do you have any idea who you might be without outside influence? In other words, has your "essence" been altered? "We are stran...

Compromise isn't a dirty word. And as I've noted in a previous poke, sometimes "good" is good enough. So perhaps it's a sign of maturity to accept a life that doesn't meet all of your dreams? Perhaps settling is a sign that you've accepted the reality of life's "wake up call." And perhaps settling is one of those psychological stages of life. It's been a while since I've studied psychology in any regimented way, but I do recall a stage called "acceptance," and maybe acceptance is a synonym for settle? Acceptance also indicates an acknowledgment that we're powerless to change our circumstance. It's the last stage before death, for example -- and not just physical, but also mental and spiritual. But damn it all to hell, I'm not dead yet. How can you avoid settling for less than what you need? "Once we accept our limitations, we go beyond them." -- Brendan Francis

I suppose it's inevitable. When you go over the same ideas again and again, they become rather cliched. Their meaning and value, assumed, never questioned. In the forward to The Best American Spiritual Writing 2008 , editor Philip Zaleski claims, "Everyone recognizes the figure of the religious hypocrite, mouthing prayers or offering devotions with no attention to inner meaning." Is it fair to call such people hypocrites? I would prefer to call them victims. When you've been told your whole life that the Son of God (who is actually God -- or a part of God -- himself) gave up his human life to forgive the sins of humanity, is it hypocritical to act as though you possibly can understand what this means? A few lines later, Zaleski seems to acknowledge that even the "average schlep in the pews, ignorant of theology and innocent of mysticism, praying with half his mind on his girlfriend or his gold game, has nevertheless amassed, week by week and year by year, a bank...

We walked into the shop and were overcome by the intense smell of incense. Dragon statues, pentagrams, herbs, and other stereotypically-wiccan paraphernalia were visible wherever the eye landed. But visible only in dim shadows as the outer windows of the store were covered with thick black drapes, and there weren't any florescent bulbs being used inside. The light seemed somehow organic, as though not coming from any discernible source. My friends quickly tired of this store, but I found it compulsively fascinating. When they left to explore the next shop down the street, I stayed to talk to the shop mistress working behind the counter. She looked 16, but I'm sure she was in her mid-twenties. Her hair was jet black, her skin was pale, and the the inverted star necklace she wore around her neck was not an accessory common seen in central Illinois. Around the corner and mostly out of sight was a man much older than her. I could sense that he was keeping watch over his "prope...

Hard to believe, but it's been 25 years since I made my one and only pilgrimage to the Mecca for Chicago Cubs fans, Wrigley Field. To this day, I can still name more Cubbies from that season's squad than I can for all subsequent squads combined. The Cubs have had good teams since 1984, but perhaps this team stands out in my memory because it was the first good Cubs team in my lifetime. As yet another baseball season begins, I doubt that I'll much care after opening day. Something about the first game of the season seems so vitally important, for about a second. Then, the realization soon kicks in that these guys will be playing another 160 games over the next six months. How much importance can any one game have in such a long season? Some time in July, right around All-Star Break, I'll probably check in to see how the Cubs are doing. As long as they are ahead of the St. Louis Cardinals, I won't much care if they're in first- or next-to-last place. If they someh...

The speaker (white, male, and past the prime of his life) moved from the shadows to the podium and began his talk. He wanted to impress upon his audience how important faith is. Faith, he told those still awake, is what keeps us going. It is the belief that there is an ultimate answer. Doubt, on the other hand, is the opposite of faith. Doubt causes us to needlessly question what those with faith believe to be true. How dare they. According to the speaker, faith and doubt cannot inhabit the mind simultaneously . You can have faith, or you can have doubt, but you simply cannot have both. One ends up consuming the other. Oh really? Can the mind only sustain faith or doubt, or is this a classic "either/or fallacy"? Assuming you can only have faith or doubt, which would you choose and why? "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. " -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

I just noticed that Quentin and Mariah share a birthday today; note that the woman next to Quentin in the above picture is not Mariah . As far as I can tell, Mariah and Quentin live in parallel universes. Quentin celebrates year 46, and Mariah remains the same: eternally 12.

Stultify and Stupefy are two perfectly good verbs that have life only in song lyrics. I've never uttered them in a real conversation, nor do I know anyone that has. Nevertheless, fans of Lisa Loeb and Disturbed (and yes, you can be a fan of both), recognize these words -- although they might not have an exact definition for them if asked what they mean. I always assumed that "to stultify" meant basically to cause mental stagnation. As it turns out, this is the approximate second definition , but the first definition actually means "to make, or cause to appear foolish or ridiculous." Stupefy sounds like it could refer to the word stupid, but the exact definition is more closely related to the word "stupor," as in to "put into a stupor." Would you rather be stultified or stupefied? Take some time to develop and justify your response. "The so-called clergy stupefy the masses....They befog the people and keep them in an eternal condition o...

Students in my Advanced Composition classes write argumentative essays; I tell them that I won't grade them on the position that they take, but I also remind that that not all positions are equal. Some have difficulty taking a position at all. And when I remind them that they need to acknowledge and refute opposing points of view, sometimes they simply acknowledge all points of view without clearly staking their claim to one. Not all positions are equally valid, however; this might sound rather subjective, but arguing, for example, that sweatshops are "good" is not really a defensible position to take. One student attempted to take that position, though, citing that it beat the alternatives. Sweatshops, for example, allowed the economies in third world countries to grow, gave the workers a living wage of $1 per day, and kept children from even worse fates, such as the sex trade. He thought he was making a strong case. How does being an American color ideas of right and w...

My dad and I were talking about the Great Depression not too long ago; I expressed the idea that President Hoover's ideological views made him inflexible. This inflexibility made it impossible for him to act when action was necessary. Dad insisted that the Great Depression was part of a world-wide phenomena, and that Hoover had little control over what happened. Then Dad played his trump card. He had lived during most of the Great Depression; therefore, his view was more accurate than mine. So it brings to mind a question: Does lived experience matter? If you were alive, even say, just as a child in a small, isolated community, does that make you more of an expert than, say, someone that didn't "live it"? All of us see life through our minds; some of us have memories of events to draw from, but memories are subjective; memories can be misinterpreted . Perhaps it takes someone that hasn't "lived it" to be able to "know it" more objectively? How ...

Most scientists believe that the universe is expanding -- at rates that most people cannot comprehend. The current edge of the known universe can only be measured in billions of light years, which is something that I personally cannot wrap my head around. Equally frustrating, the stars we see in the sky may or may not be there, may or may not still exist. By the time their light reaches Earth, all we're really witnessing is a twinkle to a distant (in both space and time) past. We live in a vastness that most people acknowledge but never study. We perceive a reality that only exists in hindsight. Most of what is "real" cannot be known, cannot be seen. Whereas Socrates premised that prisoners in his Allegory of the Cave could somehow be freed from staring at shadows that they mistook for reality, none of us will be able to escape the illusion of the Universe. What role or function do you serve in the bigger picture? "The universe is an intelligence test." -- Timot...

"Friend" is one of those words that people use rather liberally. How many friends do you actually have? On Facebook, for example, I currently have over 150 friends; most of the people on the list mean something to me, but I'm not sure "friend" is the correct term. Perhaps "connection" would be more accurate, although that doesn't feel entirely right either. In Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, author Chuck Klosterman notes that we barely know most people we call "friends." Most people, he claims, we could sum up in a sentence. That's a scary thought, and one worth seriously pondering. How many people do you know that you couldn't "summarize in a sentence"? What makes these people different from "one sentence friends"? "Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive." -- Anais Nin

I'm sure a comic genius like George Carlin or Steve Martin has already made a joke about this, but if so, I'm not aware of it. So let me share this semi-original thought with you: Imagine you're in a courtroom, and a clown has just taken the stand. A lawyer walks up to the clown, asking him to speak honestly, "in your own words." "Booga sentri sooma sah," says the clown. Okay, the point is this: none of us has our "own words." Those of us that speak English use a common language, but that doesn't necessarily make communication that much easier. The meaning of words change. Think, for example, of how older folks sometimes complain that "words don't mean the same thing that they used to." This isn't a new phenomena, by the way. Take a look at the Oxford English Dictionary sometime, and you'll discover the origin and evolution of any word you care to explore. And as Bill Clinton showed us in the 1990s, even the most simpl...

When you learn something, you stop thinking. And that's a problem. Take this rather innocuous example: Your 3rd grade teacher tells you that you cannot start a sentence with "And." And from that point on, you might never start a sentence with "and" for the rest of your life. You have "learned" that it's wrong to start a sentence with "and," and you simply never question it. Why should you? After all, you learned it, right? I use this silly example to illustrate a much greater point. Throughout our lives, we "learn" things all the time, and what we learn affects everything else that we might think we know. But consider this: if you're working on a math problem, it's important that you are using the correct formula. You'll never obtain the correct "answer" without an equation that's probably developed. And yet, many people go through life working under faulty assumptions. Even more dangerous: some of us e...

Call me polite, but when I address a male who is my elder, I like to use the word “sir.” Mr. John Hershberger would have none of my politeness. When I was a senior in high school, he was my Economics instructor. This was an “honors” level class, and I only mention that as a way of suggesting that the students in the class sometimes used their brains, and sometimes read a textbook, and sometimes did their homework assignments. In other words, we weren’t the typical mindless zombies that you might find in a basic Consumer Math class. But at some point prior to my matriculation into this class, Mr. Hershberger decided that I was a sarcastic hooligan, and that my number one goal in life was to undermine his authority. He probably came to this dramatic conclusion after he substituted once for Mr. Parker, the chess coach. He saw how rowdy the chess team could get, and he knew I was the ringleader of that amazingly unpredictable and chaotic group. So it should have come as no surprise when Mr...

Perhaps the best thing about Type O Negative’s Dead Again is the album’s title. Actually, sometimes I’m a bit slow, and it took me more than a couple of years to realize that the title is probably a play on the phrase “Born Again.” To be born again means something different to an evangelical Christian than it does, say, to a Hindu. But captured in the idea is the concept of a second chance. Both are, in fact, different ways of being “reincarnated,” if I can use the term rather loosely. The concept of being dead again, however, is somewhat more obscure. Sure, people that are reincarnated must theoretically die over and over again, or do they? I don’t know much about the actual belief, but as I imagine it, when a person dies, their reincarnated essence automatically and simultaneously “zaps” into another body at the same moment. Therefore, the death is little more than illusionary. It’s a matter of simple physics, right? This is all getting rather deep. TON’s pun, simplified, most likel...

By the age of seventeen months, Octavia knows the word “poopy.” “Did you go poopy?” I can ask her. And if she has, she’ll say, “No?” It’s important here to translate. “No” to Octavia, and I’m sure to most babies, has a variety of meanings, and the meaning depends solely on the inflection or emphasis used. “No!” means no; but “No?” has one of at least three distinct meanings – yes, maybe, or no. But in Octavia's case, “No?” generally takes the first definition – that is, it mostly means yes. So, when she says“No?” to "Did you go poopy?" she usually heads down the hallway to the bathroom that contains the changing table. This system worked great for about one week. Then Tavi realized that she could lead her unsuspecting parents to the bathroom just by saying “No?” She could be completely dry, completely poop-free, and technically, she wasn’t lying when she said “No?” But you just knew that she relished her new-found ability to make us follow her. And as someone that doesn’t...