Cosmopoetica

[photo by zebra.paperclip]

With depression comes malaise, apathy and torpor. I know the phenomenon well. Over the years I’ve developed somewhat productive ways of dealing with the high-wire unicycling of my psyche. But I can’t help thinking there’s something else going on too, a slowly gathering storm of real dissatisfaction–the first currents of which I felt nearly two years ago. Back then, I eventually made a quiet (and quietly broken) resolution to get out of the education/educational technology game… at least in the form I was playing it. Now I’m back to thinking I was on the right track.

I just don’t care about many of the things I used to… and naturally I care less about talking to people about them. The few issues, topics and themes I retain some connection to in my professional life are at such a remove that I suspect it’s merely a matter of inertia and duty that keeps them on my mind at all. The conversations continue on blogs and Twitter, but I’m slowly drifting away from them. I barely skim blogs. The Twitter conversation mostly makes me think "meh." The email has slowed to a trickle.

The primary reason I shut down Ruminate was because it was taking on the dull flavor of obligation and on-command, on-demand thinking. I was loathe to give it up because I feared (rightly) that in doing so I’d essentially "lose" a passel of friendly colleagues who are/were (again rightly) only interested in Education Chris. But I did. And what I suspected would happen appears to be happening. So I’m left wondering: now what?

Things I used to care about that are slipping away, if they’re not completely gone already: educational technology, social software, social networks, learning communities, educational innovation, edublogging, wikis, personal learning environments… pretty much everything my professional existence is based on.

It’s not that I don’t care about anything. That would surely be my brain chemistry talking. Some of the philosophical aspects remain of abstract concern, such as intellectual property/copyright, but I have nothing new to add to those conversations either. Perhaps I’m suffering from simple transition-sickness. Some of my foundational intellectual, political and personal beliefs, conjectures and principles are being put to the question–from within myself. That’s bound to cause some discomfort.

In the end I guess it’s just disheartening to try to come to terms with the loss of this community because I have no project (in the grand sense) to replace it. I don’t write this looking for answers from anyone, particularly since so few know about this blog in the first place! It just seems right to document who I am, whenever I can. If for no other reason than to leave a small trace of my passage.

Posted in: Art & Life & Politics No Comments »

[image by naccarato]

It was pretty disconcerting to stumble upon, while reading The Guardian, a news story on the suicide–right here in tiny town–of a former faculty member at the small University I work for. And it was even more surprising to learn that the victim (or victor, because I’m honestly not sure that it isn’t a victory of a kind) was Sylvia Plath’s son! I didn’t know Nicholas Hughes at all beyond, I think, perhaps being introduced once or twice in large gatherings… but still this feels personal in a way I associate with the grief following the death of people I knew personally (or intensely and vicariously).

Beyond the abstract debate the suicide of a "celebrity" always sparks–the role mental illness in the arts, the function and effects of suicide, whether such events are relevant to art (or not), etc–it triggers in me a morbid triad of fear, longing and envy. Fear because it makes me wonder how I can make it through the endless black days ahead of me when I’m so much less gifted (equipped) than someone like David Foster Wallace and less accomplished (successful) than someone like Nicholas Hughes; longing because no matter what I do–no matter the pills I swallow, the books and poems I ingest, the art I absorb, the shrinks I talk to, the pep talks and encouragement I receive, the knowledge of the meager and damaging legacy I would leave behind–what I want, every day, and every hour most of those days, is to just mercifully have this damaged existence come to a close with as little fanfare and pain for anyone else as possible; and envy because it’s finally over for these broken souls while time just drags on for me.

Because that’s the truth of me: I was born broken in a fundamental and, I fear, unfixable way. I get so tired of people talking about suicide as the "easy way" as if it’s like turning out a light. Suicide is only slightly easier than the alternative of bearing the days which stretch out until each minute sometimes feels like hours and it’s blackness ahead, behind and all around. If someone builds a 777 jumbo jet and someone else chooses to build a 767, the latter hasn’t taken the easy way out, have they? I’m sure there is some distinctly small minority of people who take their own life without thinking too much, but my experience is that people who are finally driven to that end have exactly the opposite problem– being unable to stop thinking so much.

It’s a miserable way to exist, feeling trapped like an animal in a box by forces beyond your control, while listening to a chorus of well-meaning people explaining how it’s all in your mind or how just learn to stop worrying and it will get better. I feel for those suicides leave behind. I suspect the only reason I’ve not shuffled off this mortal coil is because of my children and what I fear it would do to them… and while I know the effect will never be nil, as they get older and finally become adults of their own I don’t know that those threads of connection will always be able to bear my burdensome weight. Because if there’s another way out of the box, another way to escape from the darkened figure with the bludgeon poised that towers over me and obscures my vision, I don’t know what it is.

Posted in: Art & Life & Politics 1 Comment »

The calendar is about to tick over. I spend this New Year’s Eve like the last– and the one before that– alone with my thoughts, some music, and a drink (flowering oolong tea). At the best of times I’m not good company during this time of year, when introspection inevitably leads to introspection… and spurred on by a hospital visit on Christmas Eve, I hope the friends I’ve essentially blown off for the last few weeks aren’t too offended that I’ve gone to ground. And I still haven’t sent out Christmas gifts!

Given that I have reason to be thankful for simply remaining physically incarnate for these occasions, I won’t spend too much time complaining. I’m thankful for many of the usual things: there’s hope for reconciling writing with the rest of my life and many opportunities for interesting work, I have family and friends that I look forward to spending more time with, and there is always more to read, listen to, watch, and admire.

I made a few resolutions (yeah, I do that), none of which are earth-shattering and almost all of which are online for those who know how to find them. I miss how it used to feel possible– and not just on New Year’s Eve– to really start over in significant ways. Losing that ability is one of the worst things about being an adult (as Ben Folds sings it, “everybody knows it sucks to grow up, but everybody does”). But, despite the litany of things I could recite to show how much starting over is need, I have to count myself fortunate at what I do have.

And maybe this year (it is now officially 2008) a few of the irresolvable problems (such as: how do I reconcile myself with the– as of late very clearly demonstrated and brutal– reality that I will never be able to be close to the one person I most desire and with whom I have an almost unearthly rapport) will sort themselves out or a few of the unknowables (for instance: is there something out there, anything, larger than myself that can provide a context to make my life meaningful) make themselves known. There’s only one way to find out…

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via Link comes this juicy bit by Chief Justice Warren:

Unfortunately, there are some who think that the way to save freedom in this country is to adopt the techniques of tyranny.

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An older, but still interesting, story about detecting black holes in collision with stars in distant galaxies. Apparently the star was pulled apart in just days– or even hours– causing a supernova. It’s always amazing to consider how much is out there beyond our pitifully small awareness…

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Scott Rosenberg draws a connection between a Breughel and a photo taken on 9/11. He also points to one of my favorite Auden poems about the painting: Musee des Beaux Arts. The parallel between my feelings about 9/11 and the poem/painting are clear and raw. 9/11 was a horrific, tragic event. But it, like any event, is subject to perspective. As far away as I was (and am), with no one I am directly connected to lost, the event remains remote.

And I can’t help but think of how many tragedies of this magnitude and even greater befall other countries all the time. Rwanda: 800,000 killed by machete. The India earthquake earlier in 2001: 20,000 lives. The Indian Ocean tsunami: 230,000 lost. Americans dead since Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” is almost as many as we lost in the Twin Towers. The Iraqi body count… no one’s sure, but likely 100,000 or more. What makes 9/11 special other than the happenstance of proximity and the puncturing of our smug “that only happens in other places” superiority?

And the spectacle that 9/11 has become– the television specials and the trotting out of the survivors like prized show horses, the speeches (from both sides) full of empty promises and the once-a-year interest that flashes across most peoples’ minds and is quickly forgotten– that sickens me and I want no part of it.
9/11 was America passing from overarching world power to participatory world citizen. It should have been a wake-up call to many things: an awareness of the immense diversity in our shrinking world, an interest in the truth of other cultures and religions, a commitment to making the world better rather than worse. Unfortunately, the most prominent legacy is needless violence and death. Most of us are disconnected and disaffected while the main event is prosecuted by neocon ringleaders to fulfill wholly external, personal, and profitable agendas.

It’s not Icarus who is scissoring into the water unseen behind us, but our future.

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I came across this phrase today– living intentionally– that had never really registered with me in the past (perhaps because I am allergic to self-help books) but is a perfect summation of what all my recent lifestyle changes are about. Talking too much about such changes invokes a kind of superstition… too often the choice seems to be between those who talk about doing and those who actually do… and I prefer the second.

In a long letter I wrote to a friend recently I described my desire to “be present” in my life. That’s my own way of trying to live with more intention. Everything I am working on in my life– lowering stress, exercise, changing eating habits, memorizing poems, writing regularly– is a part of that effort to be more present.

I’m no good at it. Within minutes of reminding myself of these goals I’ll find myself in a trivial argument with someone online or mindlessly surfing when I should be working. The whole contemporary mode of living with all its technological affordances and entertainments seems to be an invitation to dilute my attention, to procrastinate, to avoid the hard questions… until I am hardly even present in my own life. But the only answer is to keep trying. I assume that staying keenly conscious, like meditation, is a skill that becomes stronger with effort and repetition.

Oddly, a lot of being present and living in an intentional manner has to do with letting go. I had a personal example to help me figure this out: I let go of the television quite a while ago and– until recently– that was the best decision I ever made. Now I work on letting go of my materialism, taming my physical appetites, re-engaging with my body as a properly cared for machine necessary for my soul’s survival.

I don’t know what kind of time I have left, but I want to be there for more of it. I want to multi-task less and engage fully more often. Walking around the campus last night as darkness descended I realized that I have to face up to what I will never be… and what I won’t be again. I’ll never again be an emotional 20-year old angry young writer smoking cigarettes outside the student center. I’ll never be the poet under 25 (or 30, or even 35) that I wanted to be.

I have to figure out how to be comfortable in my own skin with what I know and what I love. So I won’t be writing poems re-arranging Lorca or writing through the dialogue of Fassbinder films. I’ll probably never be accepted as part of the circles of hip poets with their button-ups and messenger bags milling around outside rooms in NYC. It’s highly unlikely I’ll be written up in Silliman’s blog as yet another of the bestest avant poets ever.

Instead I’ll toil in my quietude. I’d like to understand some of these other poetries and I’ll keep trying because the honest striving for empathy and understanding of others and their projects is part of being wholly engaged… hopefully I can learn something from them. But I’m OK with my little poems and poets who speak in languages and perform a magic that I can understand. The post-avant crowd are the string-theorists of my world– very much the big thing, clearly important, and vaguely (and sometimes astonishingly) interesting, but mostly incomprehensible and certainly not something I’m likely to find myself doing.

It’s not a zero-sum game. I don’t need to minimize other art to elevate my own. I’ve spent most of my life conceiving of “rightness” as a binary struggle, us and them, dog eat dog. Someone liking a book or poem I did not– or refusing to acknowledge the quality of those I did– was an affront. A friend not taking my advice may as well have been spitting in my face. Reading a blog that praised a poet whose work appeared to me hardly to be poetry at all was a direct attack. Almost all of it’s been a waste of time. There is a time for productive debate in many arenas, but when it comes to art and being an artist, differences are almost always healthy. Why not just let myself love them and the powerful passion that motivates them?

I appreciate that there are beautiful things in the world I can’t find my way into. They are challenges, not insults. When others miss out on the value of something I see I will just count myself lucky. There doesn’t have to be a point to it, there doesn’t have to be a winner. Looking for the first and trying to be the second is just so much wasted time. Time I don’t have.

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My discovery today (I’d be upset it took me so long except that just means I have a huge archive of wonderful stuff to read through): 37days. You can read about the blog if you want, but “write like hell” pretty much sums it up…

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