I'm happy with my penis size and yet....

One of my recent personal deveopments since coming to UWI is that hI've begun to see themes everywhere.  Literary themes pop up in real life, in small talk and apparently random behavior.  Everything has a subtext now.  Everything has a socio-political impact.  Especially the proliferation of KFC and the lack of natural, unsweetened chocolate on store shelves.  Normally I'd say I was losing it.  I'm just reading too much into things.  But then, I've been beaten over the head with the idea that if I see it, and I can prove it, then its there.  If you perceive it, then it exists.  I have yet to figure out where that leaves room for illusion, or possibly even delusion.  For the time being, Im a little more concerned with actively addressing the things I've been seeing.

One of these themes is Manhood.  Not adulthood, mind you.  Not male homosapiens of reproductive age.  No, I've been thinking about manhood and masculinity.  Luckily there's a gender studies course on that next semester that I can take as an elective.  In the meantime though, my mind is racing.  I don't know if I can wait that long.  Take, for instance, that thing that just happened in KFC.  That was definitely a threat, right?  Definitely a chest-beating, dick measuring contest, right?  Oh, right.  You weren't there.  Let me break it down for you.

So we're in the food court by KFC.  I'd just had a horrible day of splitting my attention in two different directions and producing mediocre work for both, so as punishment I decided to get a snack-pack.  There I met Scott.  Scott's a pretty cool guy.  He's not a guy's guy by any measure.  He's long and gangly, as if he liked puberty so much he just stuck with it into adolescence.  This doesn't make him bad looking though.  I'm sure some young lady who sincerely values a man with a sense of humor would gladly take strangely angled pictures with their foreheads touching so they can both put on facebook someday.  Scott is in my Drama class, and my Intro to Prose class.  Scott's also in the Intro to Poetry class which I won't be taking until next semester.  Still, with all that reading and writing, Scott is never without a smile or a joke.  In other words, Scott's my kind of people. 

Scott tells me that he's waiting for Gabby, Chelsea, and Nick, who are all also lit majors and classmates of mine.  Since arriving here they are the only Trinis that I don't have to actually try to have fun with in order to have fun with.  Once again, these are my people.  And so, as a matter of course, I decide to wait for the others to arrive.  When they do, we start doing our strange combination of discussing academics along side what we'd call madarass back home.  Both of which I enjoy thoroughly.  Enter, then, The Fellow from North.  Of course he's wearing his traditional Fellow from North garb, a zip up hoody, even though we're in the tropics and coming toward the end of the wet season.  Of course he has the usual north baring.  All they do on north is practice that baring.  Lifting weights and practicing how to fix their jaws and look at people out of the corners of their eyes in the mirror.  No, no.  I'm already letting my personal attitude color this story.  Lets stick to the facts.

Here are the facts: Fellow from north enters.  Fellow from north sees me.  I nod hello.  He may have nodded, but I didn't see one.  Fello from north sees Scott.  Scott does not nod hello.  Scott does not know the fellow from north.  Fellow from North sees Gabby.  Gabby smiles.  Fellow from north walks around the table and sits awfully close to gabby.  Fellow from north drapes a hand over her.  Fellow from north proceeds to flirt openly.  Fellow from north tickles Gabby.  Gabby laughs.  Gabby says 'Please don't do that' and proceeds to explain why.  Mid-explanation, fellow from north tickles her again.  Gabby Laughs.  Gabby says stop.  Fellow from north Tickles Gabby again, thereby initialling a mini wrestling match between the two.  Scott looks at me as if to say 'Is this really happening?'  I look at Scott as if to say 'Yes, this is definitely happening.'  Fellow from north says 'Oh, hey fellas.'  Fella from north walks away.  We've all forgotten what we were talking about when the Fellow from North entered.

To return to my initial question: Was it just me or was that kind of fucked up?  There are certain things that might color my perception of it, of course.  Maybe I'm just not threatened by Scott, but am clearly threatened by The Man From North.  Maybe the Man From North didn't have to do a single thing except be present in order for me to resent him somehow.  Maybe if they did it to Chelsea I wouldn't mind, but because I've taken a bit of a shine to Gabby, I'm feeling territorial. 

From my end the message is clear.  The fellow sat down and basically said, "both of you men are not real men.  Look at what I can do.  I can force her to laugh.  She says no, but because I'm doing it she likes it.  See the way we're touching now?  See the way whatever you boys were talking about no longer matters?  Goodbye losers."  Of course I'm left with the usual question of 'Did that really just happen or am I reading too much into it?"  I'm also left with the realization that I would never do such a thing.  There lies the path of Douchebags.  And then, I think...Douchebags get laid.  So maybe I should be more of a douchebag.  Maybe my lack of douchebaggery represents a direct correlation to my limited number of sexual partners.  I tell myself that its all a matter of quality over quantity.  That if we count by number of instances rather than partners, then I'm right up there with my contemporaries; and that if we count by successful female orgasms, I'm way ahead of the crowd.  A part of me doesn't buy that though.  A part of me wants to have sex with everyone I want to have sex with.  A part of me thinks that each beautiful memorable moment is perpetually overshadowed by the ones that didn't happen.  A part of me wants to know what its like to be a douchebag, and in fact, wonders if that isn't actually the ideal.

And if that is masculinity, then what the fuck am I?

Geoffrey Philp's Blog Spot: Defining Moments...Joanne C. Hillhouse

I thought of how I’ve daydreamed my way through life, always with parallel scenarios running on delay in my head.

I know I am a writer, and, yet, insecurity dogs me; insecurity, and curiousity, and questions, and this tendency to pick at things, and pain so big it feels like it might swallow me sometimes.

I know I am a writer, because, through it all, I write.

Geoffrey Philp's Blog Spot: Defining Moments...Joanne C. Hillhouse

Richness. I'm surrounded by Kings and Queens who don't even know how much I want to dance in their courts. How happy I'd be just being a prince.

Tomorrow is not Promised to Beasts nor Men

4am from Janine Fung on Vimeo.

Muhammad Muwakil (Trinidad & Tobago) -- 4 AM

No Talking on a Sunday Morning

"Morning."  I said.

"Good Morning!" She replied more cheerfully.  Always more cheerfully.

"What are you up to?"

"Watching television.  A show about hoarders.  About to have breakfast.  What are you up to?"

"Reading.  Sleeping.  Rinse & Repeat.  Kind of lonely but I've had my fill of social interaction."

There's something that happens when you're in a serious, long term relationship.  You become...serious.  You become comfortable.  Perhaps too comfortable in some cases, but in most cases its a phenomenon in which only the best of circumstances can lead to; the right alignments of moon and stars, the proper balance of humors, just the ordinate number of clouds in the sky.  And its the things that you can't recreate, of course, that you miss most.  Its those pangs which twist hardest in that chamber of mind and soul where desire is housed.

I do miss her still.  Oh god, do I miss her.  Last week a friend of min, a certain diminutive young lady with curly hair the colour of breathed-upon embers, was in my kitchen.  She was cooking.  Well, she was making macaroni and cheese; apply whichever verb to that you wish.  And, in the process of looking for something she managed to get a fingertip on the bottom of the high locker and, unable to reach any higher, pried the locker open and stepped back, nearly across the room, looking for some spice or the other and muttering curse words to herself.  The likeness; not of the person but the situation; was uncanny.  I nearly wept. 

Days like today would go unscripted, but perfectly orchestrated.  I've already made my omelette.  As usual it was more than any one person should eat in the morning.  If two were to share it...well.  There's no helping that now, is there?  And then, I turned the television on and without even changing the channel, turned it off.  I turned on the radio and, without really listening to anything, turned it off.  At the end of my restlessness I went to fetch the light book. (I've gotten into the habit of reading two books at a time: One heavy; 'The Black Jacobins' in this case, and one light; Diane Setterfield's 'The Thirteenth Tale.)  I'm only a few chapters from the end, the remaining pages gathered together look about the width of a church hymnal.  I began to read, then fell asleep.  When i woke up, I began reading, and fell asleep.  There was no smell of shampoo and body butter to wake me.  No tingle of hair in my nose or on my cheek.  And no warmth.  At around the third bout of waking I went to fetch my heavy sweater, an over-sized hoody, and an extra pillow.  The pillow I held close to me, close to my chest.  The sweater made it seem as though the thing had warm blood flowing through it; had a pulse and a furnace of life somewhere in its center.  If I could have figured out a way to have it rise and fall in a rhythm matching, but not quite in sync, with my own, then perhaps I wouldn't have thought my next thought.

And that thought was: How sad you must look?  A grown man spooning a pillow, burying his face into it in between burying his face in pages, and an equally sad looking dog nestled in the crook of his knees.  If someone were to come bursting through the front door this very second, what would you do?  How would you justify this?  Have you no shame sir?

But I did not have any shame.  Only want and a nerve wracking sort of nostalgia.  The house was quiet, except for the occasional passing traffic, and I was warm.  And comfortable.  But...it was only a pillow.  I was still lonely.  I would have loved to hear someone else gasp when the uncertainty first cropped up.  I would have liked to laugh quietly while I wiped the tears off of someone's face, and they off mine, before we both turned the page.  I would have liked someone to be there.  Not someone to talk to.  Not someone to frolic with.  Just be there.

I suppose I could have called someone.  But then, I suppose I couldn't.  Who would i call? 

"This is really weird." My cousin Delsia would say, to which I would have to agree and wonder how it was I managed to convince her to let me hold her that close to begin with.  Then, invariably, the conversation would turn to something much too practical for a Sunday morning.

"Aw, are you crying because he found his family?" Meghann would say in a tone that made her sound sweet and compassionate.  I'd nod my head meekly and she would frown and reply dryly "That's so gay."

Jamira would never sit still long enough.  Maria would want to talk about her boyfriend.  Anyone else would want to talk.  Talk, talk, talk. 

'I haven't seen you in so long.  Lets catch up!' 

'He broke my heart.  Why couldn't I have found someone like you?'

'Is this all we're going to do today?'

'Where'd you get this sweater?  Can I have it?'

'Its too quiet in here.'

'What is this?  A futon?'

'Something's poking me in my back'

'My feet are cold.'

There's no talking in the serious, long-term relationship.  When your feet get cold, you wrap them among the legs of your partner.  You get comfortable.  You are comfortable.  You are free to simply be there.  There's no need for the chase.  Not today at least.  Not on a Sunday.  You have your mate.  She's gripped close to your ribs.  Her fingers are waiting at the corners of the page because she knows you read slightly slower than she does.  There's no talking.  You kiss her neck, and she turns the page.

There was one I could reach out to, of course.  But...She's still a danger in my mind.  Missing one is bad enough.  Missing two...can that even be done?  Should it?  Perhaps I need to sleep on it.

There's more to this, but I'm not ready to talk about it yet.

Horus is outside.  I call him Horus.  He's really just this crazy guy that walks around in an unbuttoned dress shirt with a bad head and bushy beard. But i call him Horus because he's got this perpetual sunburn And he talks to himself like a man who's been in the desert too long.  Or spends his days staring, naked-eyed, into the sun.

He's downstairs, squinting at my window (Dear god, can he see me?)  twirling his fingers around one another the way the universe circles the earth.  He's muttering his treatise.

This is why I need a camera.

Ginsberg, Pound, and Baudilaire

I've been staring at An Eastern Ballad by Allen Ginsberg.  I received some really interesting reviews on my Writerscafe.org profile over the weekend.  I was compared to Ginsberg, and Pound, and Baudelaire.  I decided it might be a good idea to find out who those people were.

I'm...not like them.   These were real writers, people who weren't afraid to write.  To do little more than write.  To let the craft run their lives.  Or ruin their lives.  I can see how my style is similar though.  And I want to be like them. 

I'm just still too afraid.  Still too secure in my mundane life. 

"Don't let go of the branch you're holding to reach for one you're not sure of." --Dr. Kenrick Leslie  (Who has perhaps forgotten that only half his success has come from hard work.  The other half...from blind luck, and taking risks.)

On crying at work, and other things.

I've been telling everybody I can about my nightmare last night. How I opened my eyes and found myself paralyzed and frightened. I tell them about how It made me angry. How i got up and, with stiff arms and legs tried to walk out of the room to get a glass of water. But then I tripped, and floated in air, changing positions, until I was right back in bed where I'd started.

Only, That's not where the dream ends. What I haven't told anyone is...I called out. Moaned weakly, but it was supposed to be a scream. Only no one answered. There wasn't even anyone there to hear me.

And that's when i woke up.

My supervisor just came in to give me my second talking to for the day. It was the usual turnaround. I nodded and smiled and shrugged and said things like "Yeah, I understand." and "I'll try to do better." She mentioned that I seemed disinterested in the job, like I didn't want to come to work and I jokingly thought 'Oh no, you've caught me.' And then she mentioned loneliness. And then she mentioned disappointment. And she mentioned having no one to turn to, because all m y friends that I once relied upon for support were alcoholics or smokers or womanizers.

And that's when I truly thought. "Oh Jesus. She's caught me." I sat down. And I lasted a good five more minutes before i started to cry.

Leave me on the corner

Its probably not a good habit. I guess its something born of my own survival instincts or coping mechanism. I le go. I give up. I'd rather not have that feeling of the things i love; people, relationships, friendships; taken from me. Or, perhaps more damning and honest, I'd rather not acknowledge the fact that i may be even partially responsible for losing them. So i hold on, but loosely. And when they're finally gone I'm not the one that lost them. They just left.

Save the condemnations. Coward. Fool. Selfish ass. There's not a single one I haven't called myself.

So what's the point of self-analysis if you don't do anything about it, right? I'll have to get back to you with that. It might take me a couple years, though. Years that i'd much rather spend with you. Years that you've convinced me you don't have. I've never had to 'fight' to hold on to something. Someone. I'm not used to it. I don't know how. I've never set out to change myself either. That, I think, will take even more time. And that's part of our problem.

No. My problem shouldn't be your problem. My problem. Mine.

(Written some time around the beginning of 2009. Entry not dated.)

Against the Light

In New York they walk against the light.
There'll be no delay of our daily pursuits
No insincere righteousness to fix us
to someone else's worn, bitter road.

Why should we walk when our goal is flight?
Why should we stop?
For a little thing like danger?
A little thing like fear?
A litle thing like failure?

For a little thing like the loss of life?
Which, until we stand to lose it
we have no idea of its true value.
And what would a life spent be worth
having never walked against the light?

[5:40 PM, watching the sun set from 5th floor window at Filene's Basement across from Columbus Circle. Also inspired by waiting at interections, holding Merri's hand, and wondering....]

Playing the Fool

I don't know if I should be thinking of this as the first day of my vacation or no.  Its a Saturday for one thing.  For another thing I'll likely have to go into work some time next week.  But the truth is yesterday was the last day of work.  I had it in mind when I played video games until I was sick last night.  I had it on my mind when I woke up this morning and wanted nothing more than to go back to bed.

But again...that might just be because it's Saturday.

I think the topper is the fact that I'm constantly reminded that its the holidays.  That makes it real.  The music is all over the radio, the ads are all over the TV, and there's the constant sound of firecrackers in the neighborhood that are liable to drive both the dog and I absolutely batshit.  It is unmistakeably, unavoidably Christmas time.  Free time.  And for me...alone time.  Just what I wanted all year round.  Right?

I should have been travelling by now.  I should have either been on a plane or somewhere waiting for a plane.  I should have ben with the woman i love.  instead i'll be...somewhere.  I don't know yet.  I'll think of something though.  I'll go mad if I spend Christmas in a house on my own.  i'll die if I do the same for New Years.  Maybe I can convince someone to go on a road trip with me.  Maybe I can go to Mexico or Guatemala.  After a dozen trips, I'm still not fed up with Chetumal yet.  And I've never been to Flores.

Flores sounds nice.  Merri would want me to go.

With my mind, I'd do better not to speculate about why I'm spending the holidays by myself.  My doubt and insecurity can only do me harm.  But lets consider this:  People say you can't help who you fall in love with.  I disagree.  You can help it.  You can resist.  You can even ignore the fact that such a thing as love even exists.  When we do fall in love, or more accurately, when we do the things that people who are in love do, we do so by choice.  And we do so knowing that we are taking a huge risk.  That we'll get our hearts broken.  That we'll make fools of ourselves.  That the other person isn't as honest, as sweet, as kind and wonderful as you've percieved them as.  But you take that risk because you love them.  And loving them makes you feel as if you're being loved.  Even if it turns out you're only fooling yourself. 

And its worth it.  Its always worth it.  How wonderful it is to play the fool.  How wonderful it is to pretend you're still by my side, and i by yours, and that nothing; not time or space or the influences of other hearts around you can even begin to touch that.  Afterall, there's no such thing as far away.

Get it out

Yesterday was not my best of days.  And although there was only one thing that really went wrong, it feels something like one of my worst days. 

Merri's back in Trinidad, after her many week trip to Europe.  I saw her online and got so excited I was almost overwhelmed.  What should I do first?  Talk to her, of course.  But what should I say?  There were a million things.  Too many to make sense of, especially since I still wasn't sure it was really her or I'd seen someone else and my desirer it to be her was so strong that it painted my perceptions.  My perceptions are notoriously gullible, you see.  And in particular, when it comes to emotions, it doesn't take much to pull the wool over my eyes. 

But it was her.  Certainly.  And if it wasn't, it was a good enough trick to be worth the embarrasment.  Most of all I had to give her the good news: That ne way or another, i would be seeing her this holiday season.  I would see her, she would see me, we'd both be happy people for it.  For weeks now I'd been playing out the scenario in my mind.  I'd be waiting, perhaps at baggage handling, looking nervously through the crowd of Christmas travelers for a familiar face, and she would weave through, unseen except for the brilliance of her smile, her skin, her radiant hair.  My heart would weaken, but my muscles would have to be ready because here she comes, leaping in to my arms.  I hold her to my chest firmly and we kiss brightly, both of us fighting back tears.

Yeah.  that's the kind of shit I think about.  At least, when i comes to her.  there's a constant soundtrack playing in my mind, mostly passionate strings in notes that reach the heavens.  The things I do or sa are much more mundane.  Much less impressive.  Its much harder to be romantic in practice, I think.  So, I open up the conversation with the most romantic thing I could think of at that moment: 'Hello my Darling.'

For long time there's othing.  An intolerably long time.  Long enough for the same mind that had us swirrling in an airport while the camera pulled away from above, to think the worst.  To see her seeing my message, and before she can respond she's playfully yanked back into bed by her other lover.

I don't take pride in thinking this way.  She'd probably scold me even doubting her.  But that's just what I think.

Eventually she does respond though.  She say 'Hey' and it makes my heart sink.  The conversation that follows is equally troubling.  The fact that there was a perfectly reasonable, acceptable excuse for her being aloof and distracted (She was likely tired having just gotten back home.  Likely frustrated with her mom and dad fighting.  Likely disappointed that I hadn't found some way to get in touch sooner, etc.) doesn't make things any better.  It makes them a bit worse, in fact.  We've become mundane.  Just something that exists in the back of the mind.  The ache in our hearts and the back of our minds has become so common place that we've forgotten about it.  Its probably not true, but its a possibility.

Its also a possibility that I'm the only one who feels this way.  Not knowing is the worst thing of all.

On the Saturday Night Poetry Revival

About a year ago, maybe more, some friends and I got together to form a group called Polymath.  In truth, we just formed a group to put on shows, performances really, that we ourselves would want to see.  We called ourselves Polymath because these three guys; a statistician, a computer technician, and...I don't even know what the other guy does, and we built this show on our own.  We wrangled talent and arranged business proposals and understandings.  We designed sets in a way that put the spotlight on the performers at all angles, and controlled crowds at the same time.  We were on our way to national fame.  Just three guys.  No money.  Doing shit on weekends.

And then we stopped.

The truth; not an excuse but the absolute truth is we were exhausted, and so were our contributing poets.  Too much of a good thing isn't just bad for you, it can completely kill your spirit.  We needed a break, so we took one.  For a year.  People were getting antsy of course, asking when we would have another show. "What happened to the shows?  When are you having another show?"  But no.  We were tired.  Or at least I was tired.

Because, to say that the poetry in Belmopan is an exhaustible resource is a straight up cop out.  There's more out there.  I'm sure of it.  Its just not the quality we'd want.  And that's our fault really.  I've had it in my head for the longest while to sit with these poets and have a long chat about 'performance'.  "You're not just reading your poems', I'd tell them.  "You're performing.  You're expressing how you felt at the time, how you feel each time you read it.  Even if you don't memorize it, at least give it a bit of emotion!"  I'd let them listen to some of the poets I enjoy listening to.  I'd subject them to Saul Williams' rants and have Anis Mojgani make them laugh while they cried.  We'd listen to beat poets synch their poems up to music that only they can hear and that, through their words, the rest of us can feel. 

We want the next one to be a real show.  There was a plan to arrange an outdoors show.  Setting up a stage would only be a small step up from setting up the cafe and backdrop from scratch.  We had everything dreamed out.  What we lacked was the money.  And, perhaps on my part, the propper gumption.

You see, I can't expect people to start writing, to get brave enough to perform again, if I can't do it myself.  And that's the only thing stopping us, really.

What's stopping me?

Its right there.  Its all right there in front of me.  I have two envelopes on my desk.  In those envelopes are four other envelopes, along with a letter thanking the reader for agreeing to write my reccomendation letters for college applications, and requesting they make four copies and seal them in the included envelopes.  I've thought of just about everything.  I'm prepared.  There would be three envelopes on my desk but the third one is in my messenger bag, ready to be delivered.  But it hasn't been, actually.  None of them have been delievered.  The dates on them are two weeks old.

What's wrong with me?  Why do i hesitate with these things?  Why do I tell myself that its what I want so badly, and then do nothing to bring them about?  Why am I so intent on destroying myself?

And then there's just the fact that there's SO much to do, and only one me to do them.  But I can't help but think that I only use this as an excuse really.  Who else would do them anyway?  I guess I have to suck it up, but doing these things without help feels hopeless.  Like I'm doomed without someone else input.  Maybe its a self confidence thing.  maybe its reality.  Maybe I'm just afraid of my own success, and I trick myself into thinking I'm really just afraid of failure.  I wish someone could help me sort this out. 

I wish I was strong enough to sort it out myself.