Beauty Inebriating Reality

Courtesy of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, I have been reading from my old blog (late-'03-'04). I just now found a poem I wrote in May 2001, a few days after my high school graduation.  I remember the moment I wrote it pretty well; it was shortly after the last of my out-of-town relatives left here, who'd come in town for the Big Party.  It definitely represents the emotions I was going through at the time: the changes which were to ensue given the fact of graduation; the frustration of making a huge "to-do" about the graduation, which was, frankly, an excuse for everybody to have a family reunion (i.e., I was the poster-boy for something which wasn't really about me but about them -- if I'd had my way, I wouldn't have walked at graduation, and I wouldn't have had a party); and I'm sure there were other things on my mind at the time, but the hitherto reasons were most certainly present in the mix. This was posted on the Old Blog, Catharsis, on 18 Sept 2003.  I have, just now, made a couple edits, but the substance remains the same.  It is admittedly a work of adolescent amateurdom, but I stand by it just the same.
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"Beauty Inebriating Reality"

Nostalgia over an event that never occurred;
Homesickness for a home that never was.
Music is a soundtrack to a movie reeling in my mind;
A 1980's melodrama starring your favorite actor when first starting out.

And the theme makes me feel thus:
"Driving home at dusk,
I realize how I long for last summer with her."
Then I remember that there is no such thing as summer;
Only Spring, Fall, and Winter—
long, cold winter.
And she was never there; it was always my imagination
Making life more interesting.

It seems then that I write songs about other people's lives;
I borrow their hearts for a moment;
And yet, they are more so my life than anything else:
A continuous oxymoronic paradox—
Or perhaps it is an ignorant paradise.

Life is an endless circle of events that never occur;
An ongoing daydream of mellow colors coming out through my fingertips.

And it is strange: if I had you, I would most likely forget what life is;
The song would be over,
The credits roll, the curtains drop,
The sun will set,
Existence cease:
For all that Romance is not located in possession, but in Desire.

Punks and Poets sit drinking coffee,
Discussing the demise of one who sought true love over
Glory and fame—
And the blissful dagger in my heart spills joy all around . . .

The thought of never experiencing what we all love the most.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

James Ellroy on Dashiell Hammett

"Ridiculous coincidence and buffoonish contrivance cohere behind its force. Hammett's male-speak is the gab of the grift, the scam, the dime hustle. It's the poke, the probe, the veiled query, the grab for advantage. It's the threat, the dim sanction, the offer of friendship cloaked in betrayal. Plot holes pop through Hammett's stories like speed bumps. The body count accretes with no more horror than pratfalls in farce. It doesn't matter. The language is always there. The talk is richly textured and more than richly male, and the counterbalance renders it all real.

"It's the language of suspicion, alienation, and the big grasp for survival. It's a constant jolt of physical movement and conversation. Hammett's heroes move and talk, move and talk, move and talk. They are professional followers, entrappers, and interlocutors. They flourish in a context of continuous mendacity. They pride themselves on their lie-detection prowess. They go at professional liars with great zeal and find their own dissembling skills in no way disconcerting. It is a harrowing workday context. They have placed themselves in it consciously. It's an antidote to the squarejohn life and a daily gauntlet of stimulation. Hammett's workday men risk peril for trifling remuneration and never question the choice. They are lab rats in perpetual reaction to stimuli. They are ascetics tamping down emotional turbulence and willing it flatlined in the name of the job. The great satisfactions of the job are the mastery of danger and the culling of facts to form a concluding physical truth. These facts comprise the closing of the case and thus the story. Hammett's men stand hollowly proud in their constant case conclusions. They are in no way affirmed or redeemed. They have survived."

"plot holes"

I don't believe in the existence of "plot holes." For me the nature of imagination and "suspension of disbelief" preclude the possibility of plot holes, just as they make it possible for poetry to be written without Meter. Whenever one encounters an alleged "plot hole," one should consider that the writer(s) might have intended to give the story a shape different from what you've come to expect. Do "impressionistic" painters simply lack the skill to make images in one-point perspective? Most likely not. Rather, they are painting in a style -- and appealing to a taste -- which differs from that which insists that pictures must reflect sensate reality.

my genre

For fiction I think I have found my "genre."  Literally:  my genre.  I envision it to be a sort of hybrid between Dashiell Hammett and
H. P. Lovecraft.  Perhaps this conception has come to me insofar as (1) I do not want to write pure "detective" stories; and (2) I do not want to write pure "supernatural horror" thrillers.  What I want to do is create a protagonist with a kind of Indy Jones persona, but with emphasis on the latter's scholarly side; i.e., there won't be exotic "adventures", but there will be an antiquarian element, and, as per Sam Spade, "a reasonable amount of trouble."  As I've more or less indicated before, I think the best thing to write will be of people doing precisely the sort of things I would do if I could please myself.  So I might write of professors of architectural history; private detectives of a century ago; men who live a gentleman's life of leisure; marshals of old Northwestern mining towns; saloon proprietors; thieves, grifters and gangsters; et cetera ad infinitum.  And, of course, at some point, Elves.  In any case what I really like is the idea of a very street smart, old Pinkerton type coming up against mysterious artifacts which harbor ancient secrets and unleash preternatural menace. What, for example, would happen if Jack Bauer came into possession of the Philosophers' Stone?

The Dovetail

"Despite the general trend of modern philosophy toward idealism, salvation lies in a return to wisdom, that is, in recognizing the primacy of being, from which proceed all intelligibility, creativity and, along with the beings born of its intelligent and free fecundity, their truth and their beauty.  In order to do so, philosophy must transcend the immobility of being and the mobility of becoming in the pure actuality of the act whereby being is.  For that act transcends being, upon which it confers the existence proper to becoming.

"This is why the philosophical implications of art are a necessary complement to a philosophy of being; indeed, to meditate on the paradox of art -- an analogical image of what true creation might be -- may prepare the mind for the notion, so important to a genuine metaphysics, that all is not said by asserting that being (esse, das Sein) is, and is itself; for this is true, but it is also true of that which is (das Seinde), whereas only of the act of being itself is it right to say that it is that whereby that thing is a being, is that which it is and never ceases to change in order to become more fully that which it can be.  What a careful study of art helps us to understand -- if we do not think it unworthy of a philosopher's attention -- is that despite its inferior ontological status, becoming results in an increase of reality."

+ Etienne Gilson (The Arts of the Beautiful, p. 140)

Dearest M.,

I don't know when you'll read this but I figured since we won't be talking regularly anymore I'd say some things I might ought to say.  This transition back to normalcy for you is, I gather, kind of analogous to a friend "moving" to a new city or state for me; but in another sense, it's not any different than two school friends who by default lose touch after one or both of them leaves school.

I don't blame you for wanting to leave school.  As you know, I myself have had more ambivalence about formalized education than anyone. My position about it in many ways resembles the position of agnostics concerning what they call "organized religion."  They think "spirituality" -- if pursued at all -- ought to be explored as a personal endeavor.  Well, I think "intellectuality" (as it were) ought to be explored as a personal endeavor.

I must say I'm happy to have helped you see this; it's nice to know I can be a positive influence in some way at least.  It seems that I have changed you more than you have changed me; indeed, I'm not the type that is easily "budged."  But I agree that your influence over me will be concerning deeper matters and over the longer haul, and will be of much more long-term -- indeed, eternal -- importance.

As letter-writing is not something I do nor am likely to start doing, I hope that I can, from time to time, create more "Dearest M." posts here; perhaps they can serve as my occasional "letters."  Aside from that, I hope you'll check back here from time to time to check other things as well, in which case such e-letters shouldn't escape your notice.  Certainly this method is far more transparent than e- or paper-mail, for anyone else in the world can read here if they choose to.  In any case, as you can see from my recent posts, I'll be keeping the world (and myself) abreast here of my Progress As A Professional Writer.  I don't believe I'll be making that Big Bad Blog any time soon, though I may do some renovations around this place; it could use some cornice-work, and a new roof, perhaps some stronger foundations, a few gargoyles...

Anyway, ciao for now,
Gaius Iohannes Caesar Trevorianus, Esq.

re:

I don't want people to see me:  I want them to see what I see.

lines & tales

I've decided that I simply mustn't write "novels."  Aside from the fact that they're a dime a dozen nowadays, it has occurred to me that they don't particularly interest me.  The only stories I've ever read are what are called "short stories."  All the authors of fiction that I like are short story writers; moreover, I read these works over and over again.  And being that I'm more inclined to linguistic felicity and improvisation in art, it makes more sense for me to write "short works of profound meaning" (which are, incidentally, my favorite kind of books) than to attempt these prose epics which are called novels.  I don't believe, for that matter, that I could maintain interest in the same subject for the length of time it takes to write even the first draft of a novel.  If I'm going to write something long at all, it's most likely going to be something I'm deeply interested in, and if I'm deeply interested in it, I'd rather write a monograph, a serious and scholarly study, than follow in the footsteps of Ayn Rand.

In sum:  poems, yes; short stories, yes; "flash" fiction, sure; monographs, yes; novels, no, no, and also -- no.  No is for Novel.

manifolds

One of the great things about Robert Sokolowski is that -- true to traditional phenomenology -- he describes things, rather than arguing them (most of the time).  He sticks to talking about themes and things that no one with five senses and "common"-sense can rationally deny without looking a fool. Not coincidentally, Husserl originally said -- in the very early days -- that phenomenology is "descriptive psychology."  I think these descriptive analyses are great tools for the metaphysician, for, by employing them, he can generate a richer expository of the Existing Thing.  Classically, metaphysics is so concerned with demonstrating that a thing exists (rather than not existing, or not existing in a certain respect) that it unfortunately overlooks how the thing appears to the metaphysician, how it is noematically displayed -- the object "in the How of its givenness."

What 'Knowing' Means

"What is contained in the intellect, as an interior word, is by common usage said to be a conception of the intellect.  A being is said to be conceived in a corporeal way if it is formed in the womb of a living animal by a life-giving energy, in virtue of the active function of the male and the passive function of the female in whom the conception takes place.  The being thus conceived shares in the nature of both parents and resembles them in species.

"In a similar manner, what the intellect comprehends is formed in the intellect, the intelligible object being, as it were, the active principle, and the intellect the passive principle.  That which is thus comprehended by the intellect, existing as it does within the intellect, is conformed both to the moving intelligible object (of which it is a certain likeness) and to the quasi-passive intellect (which confers on it intelligible existence).  Hence what is comprehended by the intellect is not unfittingly called the conception of the intellect."

+ St. Thomas Aquinas (Compendium Theologiae)