Do you hear what I'm saying?

So there are many things bubbling up in the old mud puddle of Hope. Therefore, I suspect this post will probably not be entirely linear or even coherent. This is somewhat appropriate due to recent discoveries.

I went to Vermont. It was good.

My new Adviser made me realize a few things within fifteen minutes that I think were a long time coming. For this I am grateful and have warm hopeful feelings toward this semester. She forced me to see how much energy I have been putting into not making mistakes. This energy seems so necessary due to the large number of financial, relationshippy, and duty-wise blunders I have made this year. However, this energy is helping no one. It is a waste. I still mess up. Yes, even I make mistakes. I am sure you all are shocked and awed to hear that. And that is draining me of the energy I need to be using in order to "succeed." So, no more. Once again I will relearn what I learned just a few short years ago, I will put more energy into actually being a worthwhile person than into worrying if people are finding me worth their time. I will put more energy into the things that most interest me, than into not forgetting anything. What I am doing now is not working, so it is time to move on.

As far as art goes, and obscurity, and modernism, and avant-garde, and all that jazz. It interests me. I am reclaiming the roots of why I even became involved in this whole poetry mess, and especially why I decided to pursue it to this extent. I am admitting to myself, that despite the flaws I see in it, my sympathies are toward the avant-garde. I want to change the future. I write to change the future. Despite my many misgivings, my persistent doubt that anything can get better, that I could figure out how to make it better, or that I am one who is capable of having such an effect on the world. Yes, writing, I was recently reminded and eventually had to admit, is about Hope. But, how to proceed. Unlike the avant-garde I do not want to destroy, I want to build. I admit that destruction is a part of creation, and I admit that to build a new building one must often destroy the one that is there. However, I usually just focus on the creation aspect of life and let the destruction aspect take care of itself. I think I am not so radical in believing that the act of art is the act of creation. So where do I go from there?

According to the book I am reading the avant-garde artist today is suicidal. This, according to the book, is not surprising due to the following traits of the avant-garde artist "intellectual playfulness, iconoclasm, a cult of unseriousness, mystification, disgraceful practical jokes, deliberately stupid humor" which are "keeping with the death-of-art aesthetics [avant-garde] has been practicing all along." Well, fuck. This is the stuff of my art. And I am left either feeling like I am selling out and trying to make a rebellious piece of poetry into an inviting puppy dog. Or I am continuously barking and growling and biting anybody who comes along to learn from me. Come to think, this does not apply just to my art but to my personality as well.

But, I refuse to abandon my intellectual playfulness and mystification. I refuse to stop rebelling against "order, intelligibility, and even success" not only in my art but in my self. My ultimate art piece is, after all, my Self. Of course, I mean "order" in the sense of the order imposed on me. I mean "intelligibility" in the sense of things having to make sense to others. And I mean "success" as all those ways life is supposedly "supposed" to be lived; the things that are "supposed" to make me happy. Those never work. Truth is, I don't see my life as linear in the slightest, and I rarely have throughout my life. I see connections, but I recognize them as unconscious connections not conscious or logical ones. Life is a series of moments, and more often than not the current moment does not line up with my previous one or even ones. It might connect to a moment I had ten years ago or five years ago or it might not connect at all. I am not the "Self" I was a moment ago, and it isn't just a matter of "I changed" or "I added on more" my complete function and being has changed. There is a different thought in my head, and my body feels a different way. If I am not the thought in my head or the way I feel right now, then what am I? But aha, is there anything to be rebelling against, I often counter my Self. Maybe not. Maybe there is no enemy. But things are bad just the same. Not that I believe "bad" to be anything more than a very general term used to gain power. However, I do see things I consider "bad" and I think I am not living a truthful life if I do not fight against these things. What are these things? Specifically I oppose "order" that is meant to keep people in their place or lead them to believe there is only one way to live or is merely a confusion disguised. Relationships, love, art... big words that encompass so many opposing and for the most part futile philosophies. That is what I oppose. And my Poems have known that all along. My poems fight against any idea that says there is a way to perceive things, there is a way to organize my life, there is a thing called "Self" (a way to be a woman and American or a Good Person, as opposed to the reality of a complex and individual series of perceptions, needs, wants, ideas, feelings), there is a thing called "Love" (as opposed to a complex feeling manifesting itself in multiple ways and being placed into various mental categories based largely on the opposing philosophies behind the concept as well as the perpetuation of those opposing ideas under the same label via every type of art, medium, commercial-thing possible). These are the things I fight. Now the main problems I see with the avant-garde is that extremism will be seen as extremism, by fighting too broad of an enemy and trying to fight your way into change you are going to encounter unnecessary resistance, and yes even abandon the main purpose of Poetry which is in my opinion Beauty (whatever that means to the Individual). And yet, I am not suggesting sleeping with or selling out to the enemy. How to balance both... I am working on a solution. I am trying different combinations. I will some day, by trial and error, figure out what I need to do and how. But aha, then I will "need" to follow a certain "order."

Therefore, that is what I think life is in the end. I think it is a series of rebellions. I think it means constant creation and therefore constant destruction. I think it means Hope that there is a solution despite a general understanding that we can not even conceive of a possible solution. It means creation for the sake of creation and for the Hope of something (anything?) being accomplished, with little or no emphasis on working toward a specific solution or figuring out what that solution could be.

This is where I am right now.