Like I said last week, instead of creating a third sector partitioned into three segments for Healing, I decided to make it one clip with steadier, brighter and longer shots. The stability of the ending is supposed to symbolize the stability of being healed and de-framing the pain. I chose the hectic breakdown from The Great Destroyer because though it may not seem like a serene, healed soundtrack, it symbolizes how effortless and limitless being free of pain is.

The Healing poem is more of a prose poem; it's free-flowing and less structured compared to the first six poems. Since pain is a debilitating frame, its heft is represented by the structure of the first poems and the quicker cuts of the film.

Most of the footage is representative of the type of pain or healing that it accompanies. I tried to show running themes of the hospital and entrapment during the first six parts, while adding a few things in here and there (ex. the circular motion of the relationships part was supposed to symbolize how we'd go in circles arguing). Journeys were prevalent as well, with many being unending or having an ending that isn't desired (back to the hospital). Hope you enjoy!

Isn't it all implied?
I strove to widen my mind -
Enhance and rewind.
Decisions remind me why
Not one intended emotion can fly.

Buried in lies,
What a surprise;
I can't chastise, or even decide.
I never fit; I never will.

I've been smothered, not built.
Then bruised, they get their fill.

But "egocentric" is pity enough;
I only worry about me.
My life shall be sacrificed.
Martyrdom's tough -
I take off in the unknown sea.

Back to my island
Where no one will wonder
What one cancer patient,
Soaked in too much emotion,
And misunderstood,

Did with his fragmented future,
His tormented night.
They claim I isolate them
But the backwards is right.

-

Falls, she falls.
I see her fall.
While others leap and physically crawl,
Aloof to proof that there's no hope at all,
She's stalled; she falls.

Unfocus here.
Don't tread on hurt.
Welcome the wonder of a life uncertain,
Yet sustained through laughs,
Happiness, and the breadth of living.

The health will come and crush the hurt.
If mental strings unravel
To welcome in the rush -
Living outside of framed pain,
A tale to death's dark hush.

The physical will cover
The necessary ground.
All exits open,
Bound become boundless
And fly without hitting the ground.
Fly without -
Hitting -
the ground.
Fly
Without (hitting the...)
... Falling.

-

Prompt: There is something that happens in imagination that can defy the parameters we set in our 3D realities. The imagination is difficult to document, to control; hallucinogenic drugs can alter landscapes, perceptions, reality. In the hospital, in my cell, I'm in my own imagination and in my own reality. I'm safer there, yet more dangerous at the same time. I'm... in... control.

The Imagined World is as valid as any other reality, and imagined realities have the ability to be subversive because they counteract anything that can happen and all the laws that govern 3D realities. I live in my dreams - SS. The reality of dreams. Imagination is real. My mind imagined my health. Music was my guide. I let music guide my dreams, guide my mind. I made all of this.

I
made
my
own

cure.

-

The face - what does it mean to see a face. They were faceless, those in Bengal fighting weaponless, verbal for what they saw was a bad idea creating more bad ideas. They wanted out, but before they could even fully articulate that thought, their bodies lined the banks of their rivers, the streets of their hometowns, the beds of their homes. AN UPRISING CAN'T AND NEVER WILL EXIST barked Pakistanis in power - their goal has almost been fully realized to this day. Yet, the fighting goes back and forth - so fuck em, right? They're all crazy and none of them like us, like... us, like the us that is us, like THE U.S., that place that sends (the I that is writing this) right back into a painful state. The chastising Some that KNOW no extra m exists in that previous word, when not all are referenced. And how many viewpoints exist in this stream of thought?

I guess it just popped up.

-

Thoughtless Break - Go to p. 31 of Supervision. Apparently The Strokes like smashing subatomic particles.

-

And now (more Supervision, p. 78), the Dancing Hell-Devils in the Eyes of All... perhaps the reason why I'm being sent so far away from those that I fear to lose, or maybe just a cool picture that gives my mind reasons to wander deeper into my PAIN [IN PROGRESS]:

Argument ended at another embarrassing flounder.
Abrupt disagreements breed long-winded encounters
Which ultimately end just as quick as they start.
It's happened here and at outcome, apart.

I slide into - while my 'peers' glide over - derision.

No moment mended,
I cannot sigh out this stubborn pride.
Smiles exchange while I swallow
My emotions,
Emptied to a hostile inside.

Then -

In the depths of my eyes, they lie in wait.
They're ocular, borne of fire and hate.
They spite what I write, since they're vilified.
Because they fester and thrive in what I hide.
I hunch; they want out now.

My guard caught down,
A few flitter from one ear;
Curious to touch,
Decrepit to hear.

Their hair all yellow and queer as they dance.
Rapid in motion, a vindictive trance.

The Dancing Hell-Devils aligned just so.
Ambition for eyes, my lies in their throes.
For when I chastise, they realize they can't go
To places uncouth to the truth of my foes.

And their fury is quelled.

But still inside burns these despised.
They push my pride to tatters and mess.
I subside; all what's right that I hide
Starts bleeding forth, in order to rest.

While I sit here, sick, surreptitiously(8) eating Easter candy I stole from my sister, I question my sanity since this interface isn't mine and I'm without my music. Silence surrounds my slipping senses. The door creaks open and closed every fifteen minutes on the dot. I've officially been abandoned in the game of grocery gathering. Yet, I plod on.

Alright, nine websites now. I kind of caved and went back to youtube - my third trip, you'll see - in order to get some background music going. And since I was having trouble starting with Prof. Moss's post, I will start here. Well, in a way I guess it does start with Tines Drive(5)... so there.

-

Long ago, amidst the dying embers of what was once a spectacular, fiery relationship on many levels, the initial prong of the forthcoming fork was FOUND. Its relevance to pain may seem obvious to most, but my numbed emotions will likely shield it and say otherwise.

Anyway, one surface of my love for her was through the frame of music, which is comprised of many windows itself, sort of like its own strand of endless beads. My overall knowledge may have been greater, but in a geological excavation metaphor(10) for music (ten pages open) the few gemstones she found by far exceeded my many layers of sedimentary rock. She found Street Spirit(9). How I'd overlooked it is beyond me without a doubt.

More on that later, however. These connections need more development. The significance of Street Spirit(9), despite it's first word being a synonym with the idea of Tines(5), direction, etc., is twofold: first, it was the bud of my project way back when I spat out these lines one morning after awaking from a dream in which my right leg was healed again:

He’s suffered a life of physical misery.
He wakes up to the auburn leaves falling off the trees.
His leg is completely healed.
Street Spirit is on repeat in his head.

It was more of an idea for a scene than anything, not really a polished stanza of poetry. But continuing on, not only did I have Street Spirit(9) in mind when I discussed the usage of copyrighted music with Prof. Moss way back in the semester, it also happens to be one of my favorite songs to drive to. Yesterday when I came home for Easter weekend, I had The Bends in my car and was nearing my house when Sulk(3) came on, the preceding song on the album. I skipped Sulk(3) for Street Spirit(9), though Sulk(3) is also a terrific song.

This is where it gets kind of tricky to keep things in line. The whole idea behind Tines(5) got me to thinking about my journey today, mapped out by my father's astute directional notes:

In reference to this journey, which was in my car, where I ALWAYS listen to music, exactly like my previous-day experience with Street Spirit(9), I now turn to Professor Moss's questions, as supplied so dutifully by Taylor(11) which I guess I can make my unofficial 11th opened page:

You’re at a road sign…what determines which direction you will take…and if you take a certain direction, what went into that decision? In this case, my father's notes determined the direction, and my directional choices were influenced by: a) my general knowledge of the location of my uncle's house in regards to my house and b) my trust in my father that he will provide me a clear, defined map for the places I'm unclear on.
If you decide to take that direction and follow through, will you ever approach that intersection in the same way again? That is to say, once you have traveled from one place to another, is it possible to return to that initial point and retrace that movement? Well, this question is pretty interesting, since the response given to me when I asked how I got back to the freeway at the time of my departure was "go back the way you came." In that case, I was stuck retracing the entirety of my steps under the delusion that this completely opposite and backwards world I was experiencing was the same one I'd experienced on the way there. Intersections seemed to hit me at different times and even the appearance of my speed limits weren't conversant to the original ones I'd encountered.

Alright, but getting back to the initial bead-strand of thought, my original prong in the matter [Street Spirit(9)] compiled with the directional idea and Tines(5), not to mention the encouragement to seek out influence from others' blogs(5) sent me to Lauren's Blog(1), in which I watched her traveling videos, noticing the Radiohead soundtrack. Immediately I thought the song could be Sulk(3), so I went here(2) to listen to a sample of Sulk(3), since my damned computer is broken and this one has none of my music. The sample didn't prove to be enough, so I went onto trusty-rusty youtube and found this:

I couldn't get over how even this, in itself, is another POAM. So, after hearing the entirety of the song, I realized it wasn't Sulk(3) in Lauren's video(1) and I caught a few lyrics, so I typed them into google search(4) and found that it was actually The Tourist from OK Computer, which is interesting because many see OK Computer as Radiohead's best work, while I see The Bends as (long sentence).

Regardless, Sulk(3) can be seen as the Blues(5) and the Blues(5) often deal with different forms of PAIN (there is blue in Street Spirit(9) as well). It's a way to frame PAIN - a form of musical therapy (which will definitely be in my project and I'll fight non-believers of musical therapy).

So where the hell am I? Well, I continued coasting fellow blogs in order to find any more connections, when I came across Katie's Blog(7) with the link to the end of American Beauty. In reference to pain and my life, I adore American Beauty for the way it attacks middle-America, kind of like the - beware, sound comes - film I saw last night(oh shit, 12 now). This will be another part of my project, the pain that I suffered while growing up in that facade of suburbia, and I can also possibly relate the Funny Games experience as well.

The trout is an example of this. In our dreams we fly, we swirl, we flounder. We experience a range of emotions similar to those of our waking life, except we envision situations where it is our duty to retain and relive these situations, to add life to them. The trout freely roaming and posing and exploring in a dry-land, non-aqueous situation is an example of how our dreams must fly. Imagination as a framework - assigning reality to it. THERE IS EVIDENCE THAT THIS HAPPENED.

Regarding other topics, the poem LFMK exists in singular print form in order to create a continuity of it’s existence and the experience of others receiving it since it remains open to alteration and updating, in my opinion. Anyone can pick it up, interpret it, and change it based upon what their interpretations are. The poem then becomes a map of interpretations – its progress is charted.

After experiencing a few unsettling interactions in/around this and other classes, I know realize that I’m at a distance; they are quarantining me. I’m their example, not their support or even friend. That’s my perception. However, though I feel alone, it may only be because I choose to be. Gabrielle is not alone. She never chose it. She refuses to choose it. We all have a choice and she has taken the better path. This is part of my mind working against my self-pity, but I sincerely feel truth lies in both interpretations.

What does that mean exactly? Well, where does blindness come from? Spike claimed his lost eye sees the past. Our minds, attitudes, memories, outlooks, interactions – where we stand, how we cope. Whether we move forward or wallow. Which is somewhere around the place I’m currently at. Now, more on my project, which will help remove me from this mindstate:

What is lost? Consider this idea as a possible location for my project to travel to. On my island, I distance myself when I encounter setbacks, such as this. Yes, it happens, and I usually let it erode my confidence and certainty. Such as what I was pledging above. FOG – that will be the basis for this segment, if it lasts into the final project. I can see it now.

Well, about which landscape has more possibility to it - the paradox is in the infinity of the blank sheet... though I have created a (word much better than) broad spectrum of possibility with my original landscape and folds, the answer is either the blank sheet or both. Let me explain:

First, the blank sheet could, in fact, be manipulated in the exact methods the first was - the only variable would be the response of my brain to the presentation of similar ideas in whatever situation I am in when the second opportunity is presented to me. So could it be exactly the same - yes - would it - probably not.

Fold One: My Mind

Next, we must move into the idea of connectivity of creativity and the potential for what I created to expand not only within it's own realm, but also has diffused into other realms and sparked new fires. In my mind, the possibilities even there are endless - before the landscape is forked.

Disrupting the landscape? Ripping the memory fold? If it doesn't create even more connections, windows, conversions, it simply resets the process to fork off in a different direction... ALTHOUGH [she almost got me with this one] the shadows are indefinitely altered with the action of the rip. The essence & necessity of the shadow, however, is one that exists beyond the grasp of my current mental field regarding the subject. The broken matter is meaningless in the more important realm of the ideas that have been presented.

Fold Two: Dirty Mind - Unstable

Regarding longevity - I don't feel that a physical ending is appropriate, only the way the poam ripples and continues it's existence through response, reflection and alteration. A poam is never simply finished, it continues, updates, changes, whether it's physical, perceptual, or conceptual (or just a small grammar update). It will live on, always change and even mutate with responses in time.

I was almost lost on the beads - thought overload - until we got into the memory. The memory is in the perception, the mind, the experience of experiencing the intersection. When the intersection is documented through other methods (a video, a photograph), two memories now exist creating a plethora of new directions in the discussion. With the fallibility of the personal perception, the document can refine, disprove, and even constrict the memory. The refinement and disproving are pretty self-explanatory, but the constriction is created regarding that very moment when the memory is created in the mind. The mind latches onto emotions, sensual perception, thoughts linking other thoughts, and these aren't attached onto the documentation of the memory, only in the mind. In fact, if the documentation refines the mind's perception of the memory too much, then the original memory constricts... which creates that t h r e a d to my project.

PAIN is in memories! It links! Consider Duncan's poem, Often I Am Permitted To Return To A Meadow, the emotional impact of the meadow to the speaker is there, just as I discussed:

Often I am permitted to return to a meadow
as if it were a given property of the mind
that certain bounds hold against chaos,

that is a place of first permission,
everlasting omen of what is.

The scene in the speaker's mind relates to the PAIN of a loss, "as if it were a scene made-up by the mind." The speaker's emotional attachment to the meadow is what deforms his perception of the meadow and what the meadow presents to him. I'm getting warmer regarding a point that relates to my project.

There's a profound difference in how I deal with internalized pain from how I deal with externalized pain. I've become well-coached (with all my previous practice) to deal with externalized pain, but internalized pain can still displace itself rather grotesquely inside me. My attempt to frame pain is aimed at all, yet I will become the personal guinea pig for the project.

This is all relatively fresh and new in my head, so I need more time to refine still, but here is a 'preview' for my project (if my textual explanation hasn't appropriately whetted your appetite):

(I don't know why it bogs down at 1:16, but the last bit is a list of thank yous that go to Thylias Moss, Trent Reznor, English 340 and Everyone who watches)

The goal then, is a systematic approach to pain. First, it needs to be located - whether external or internal - then it needs to be shifted from the focal point. If the systematic method of decentralizing pain is effective, pain will lose its focality (Krista told me I could use this word) and become just one area in another life system. It no longer distracts or torments, it merely exists (credit to Prof. Moss). That, in a nutshell, is the process of framing pain and in effect, making it effortless.

Style, however, embodies its trueness only when it isn't limited to the page. By not limiting style to a form of product (ie. imprisoning it in written text), it reigns effortlessly inside the mind. At it's purest form, style needs no system, or, the existence of style outside of a limiting system keeps it from: a) contaminating the very ideas it embosses b) becoming weighted down by the constraints of the system it's entering into.

Pain is quite possibly one of the most fluid and difficult aspects of life to understand. Like style, pain is evasive of frames, but unlike style, pain is bound by systems, whereas style only conforms to (and becomes capable of destroying) a system. In Neremov's poem, the correlation of pain and style is immense. Pain is required - a different kind of pain - to access the style of the unwritten works, which, by remaining unwritten, are not bound and deformed. The frame of the pain is internalized, where when style's damaging fingers are drawn across creation, the pain of the loss is externalized. Libraries, documents, artifacts, unmeasured importance lost. The style has not only limited the interpretation of the piece, the very existence (and subsequent destruction) of the documented ideas has pushed the pain to an external frame, one that cannot be reduced effortlessly. I thank Flaubert, indeed.

Until that day
When something may
Prudently come along.

In that way
To my dismay
She offered me her song.

A gesture so simple,
A heft; she knows.
Pounds down,
Stability erodes.
Her purpose: on purpose.

The time comes
When children eventually put their toys away.
Unfortunately for me
She’s unaware that time has passed.

So I listen,
Heart held heavy with her… heft.
This burden won’t leave,
It simply retires in moments.

My head clears,
I think I’m on my feet.
Then, in a swift, malicious feat
She’s kicked me to the floor,
Her burden back on top.

My first love
My eternal muse
My desolate waste
A mere child

One that cannot bear to let me be
Because I'm unable to forget her.

Will she forget me?
Well, as they say:
Nothing is more pure and cruel than the innocence of a child.
And when I see the joy flicker from her dark, devious eyes,
Knowing she plays past playtime’s end,

I’d say she’s just begun to sing.

My initial opinion of boundaries was their necessity - that is, to safeguard, to reinforce, to structure. To further explain this idea, and in a desperate attempt to tie everything to Kubrick, I will digress with an example: In order to film the extremely important point-of-view shot of Alex's descent from the window towards the end of A Clockwork Orange, Stanley built a boundary for the camera - a box padded many times over - so that it would be able to endure the process it would need to go through in order to accurately capture the shot. It was a safeguard, it reinforced the camera and it provided a structured approach to something as chaotic as throwing an expensive piece of equipment out a second story window. Kubrick executed the process several times before he got a desirable shot.

Getting back on track, I (at the permission of Prof. Moss) went to a poetry reading of Li-Young Lee in place of class this week. Though Mr. Lee presents boundary-related ideas in his work (one poem was on how lonely being in love is because there is a boundary between an accurate portrayal of your feelings towards your significant other), the very presentation Mr. Lee gave of himself and his poetry influenced me to begin thinking about boundaries.

Li-Young Lee modestly creates and presents text poams that methodically elicit intense emotions. In fact, more intense than if he used an obtrusive vocabulary and animatedly performed the poems. Mr. Lee made a comment during the reading about how he has to "scour" his poems because his past will seep in some way or another. In essence, he is creating a boundary in order to structure his poems and reinforce his intentions. Here is an example of his style:

Regarding snowmen, one portion of The Culture of Snowmen struck a chord in me:

Snow also fills gaps, ground extends whitely
to the windows, pitched roof covered with uneven blank pages

I always hated roofs during the winter for this very reason. Jumping back from the topical past to the topical present (in hopes that I can link the two), the lack of symmetry in a snow-covered roof bothered me to no end (this picture actually shows symmetrical patterns, but the roof itself isn't completely covered):

Yup, I was the kid that would sit on the bus with my head plastered to the window, thinking of things such as the symmetry of snow-covered roofs, or (in the summer) why some yards were greener than others. I also paid close attention to the differences in the seven or eight models of houses that lined the streets of my sub.

Alright, to begin, we discussed the allure of falsity in class the other day. Well, my first thought was once something is established, falsity doesn't exist. Damn, that is pretty all-encompassing. More on that later, however.

The real issue here, for me and symmetry, is ambition and anesthesia - the puzzle that's in all this. Like a mosaic. That's where the point of entry comes into play regarding flatness and falsity. The puzzle was a point of entry to the exploration of falsity and mosaics. The puzzle itself, like the words on the page, were flat. Coincidence? The very words are alliterated as well. Ambition and anesthesia. Falsity and Flatness. Coincidence is an act of symmetry. An echo is an act of symmetry. Rhyming, alliteration, and textual poatry are symmetry in words.

And before I really lose you, let me add a coherent thought or two on symmetry. When I think of symmetry, I think to film (the area where my mind loves to wander). I think to Kubrick, the man who when you call him "the man," Nicholson takes it as an insult to Stanley's greatness. Well, Nicholson's crazy anyways. But, here is a very rough example of Stanley's symmetry. I apologize ahead of time for the lack of being able to find a better clip to exhibit Kubrick Symmetry. For those of you who've seen his films, you already know what it is anyway:

The further madness is behind the link.

Let me back up. I always have questioned my intelligence, creativity and originality. There are reasons for this other that the one I will focus on now (such as self-esteem issues), but the main source of my doubts typically was the way in which I created. I constantly felt unoriginal.

Example - I loved Goosebumps as an adolescent (who didn't). My teachers loved to praise my written work. The reason why I juxtapose these two seemingly insignificant issues is because I would adopt my writing style from the way R.L. Stine constructed his. Case in point, my adolescent mind was unable to discern whether I really was a good writer, or whether I was a cheating bastard.

Obviously, that isn't the case. I lived in fear for so long - until I discovered how creation is obsessed with influence. They are like clown fish and anemone: unable to exist without each other. No, really... apart from the ridiculous attempts at metaphor, people can't create based off of doorways. Everything we experience and create - they are all windows. Creation is a series of windows that see into each other and continue on - like when you hold two mirrors against one another - it creates an endless strain of new creations.

This post is a work in progress, but if you can continue reading to view Lawrence Weschler and his theory of convergences that ties in with the whole idea of creation and art as a series of influences and connections. Prof. Weschler's ideology is more concrete and basic (I resist saying 'small scale' since he possesses more knowledge than I ever will), but the argument that it sheds light on is intriguing to say the least.

I do, however, feel an allure to pain, particularly that which is felt by me every day at many different levels. On a more condensed level, I have my everyday physical pain which triggers memories of the other types of pain I deal/dealt with. This is a piece about that daily physical pain I wrote a while back:

The more enchanting question, however, may regard the surface's relationship with the volume - whether the volume actually exists. If it is possible for the surface to maintain a fluidity where it can encompass the different aspects of an individual, then the volume may purely be a conglomeration of the many possible surfaces. In this case, mapping a surface will only reveal whatever portion the maker wishes to reveal. The surface can make the first impression, but can never fully become the volume of the maker.

In which case, it is extremely important not to confine written commentary to the surface. Like the explanation of surface-based rendering stated, the images can help pinpoint problems on the surface, but are useless when searching for problems in the volume (mass of hidden surfaces). If written commentary is confined to the surface, any emotion or opinion carried underneath will not become exposed. In other words, written commentary restricted to the surface will be empty and incomplete.

In physical terms, surface-based rendering is definitely appropriate as a function of print poams, however. While the creation should not be limited strictly to the surface, the importance of the surface is such that a surface-based rendering can function as that first impression. Regardless of whether its a poam, an initial interaction, or something completely unrelated, the surface acts as the starting point. The starting point is reached by finding the surface, which in this case, is the surface-based rendering.