Powering Out of the Funk

Powering out of the funk for the first time in weeks for some reason this is happening at three a.m. but it's been so oppressive I'm not going to question it. I wanted to say getting a chance to study absurd plays like The Balcony by Jean Genet with Michael Quinn eventually gives one some balance and grounding to find one's feet when absurd things like what we've all just witnessed happen. In one semester I read Ionescu and Beckett and Genet and got a chance to spend hours discussing them with a man who knew his stuff. All these years later it helps me find my bearings at three a.m. and soon it will help me sleep the coma sleep of an existentialist who knows these things come, these things go.

Knowing that people have been dealing with the absurdity of the human condition and writing about it from the beginning helps one put crazy times and events in perspective. Waves of insanity come, they go. When they come it always feels at first as if this is the first time this has ever happened, but except for the first time it ever happened it never is. Take some comfort in reading how the Greeks, the French, the Romans, and every culture that ever existed dealt with it. Sometimes a sense of humor is essential. Sure, it's not funny that a lot of people are probably going to get hurt because of the miscalculation many have made in either voting for Donald Trump, or not encouraging others not to, but we'll get through it. We always have. Pin It

The Hell of These Modern Times

What needs to be said? What is meaningful? Among all the noise what signal needs to be heard? What isn't being said, or isn't being said enough, clearly enough, frequently enough, or reaching the ears of those who need to hear it?

It's like Hell, but without the interesting people

I'm not sure anymore. As someone who considers himself primarily a poet I never really thought about such things in the past. My one goal was to write a poem I found entertaining. End of discussion.

But these days so much information gets flung around. Almost all of it useless, devoid of meaning or fact, or just plain wrong. If the truth is out there it requires so much more effort to get at it. 

I don't have much to say this day. I plod forward no wiser and no more infused with truth than I was yesterday. Maybe slightly wiser for at least knowing that, but only minimally so.

I am so bored I am almost driven to getting out pen and ink and writing on actual paper. Oh, the hell of these modern times.

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