Bevel?

Are you useless
are you dead
are there words inside your head
that defy form
defy translation
and do you think above your station
or do you think in terms predestined

Are you yawning in the breech
and fingering gnarled, weathered teeth
If you found these letters
would you say
if you found these spaces
could you stay
and stretching - warm, irresolute
in cottons, linens, and silks or furs
should you choose
that the world burn?

Qualifier

It's simple enough to say you'll stop doing what you hate
but you yearn for your blood to burn
So keep on with the charade

1/8

It seems like highly-trained/highly-skilled actors are capable of tossing their eyes in such a way that the portrayed effect of a single sharp glance is similar to that of a recklessly tossed fist. On watching a movie practically stuffed with actors of that type last night, I came to think about the incredibly nuanced ability and particular workmanship that goes into each performance. That's the unspoken difference between a "bad" movie and a "good" movie: whether or not the actors approach their roles with the finesse of a masterly artisan. Oh also whether or not the movie's in 3-D.

However, there are other elements involved - a mass of producers, laborers, and enthusiasts.

Why I (should) watch sports/ Why I (don't) watch sports

I should watch sports because they're examples of epic human achievement writ large enough for anyone with access to a relatively stable internet connection/decent cable contract (with the exception of curling). I should watch sports because being able to discuss teams, games, and the inner-working of franchises knits you into a collective fabric inaccessible to those who don't watch sports. I should watch sports because they combine archetypal human struggle, brow-beating, and near-divine prowess with nachos. I should watch sports because they tend to embrace symmetry, monetize lighthearted conflict, and provide a framework in which less-constructive people can pour their passions and allegiances (really important in a time when the values of national patriotism are becoming more and more unacceptable).

I don't watch sports because of an innate prejudice I harbor (note "less-constructive" used in the paragraph above). I don't watch sports because to do so is almost always a family practice and my family veers more towards variously intellectual/idiotic debates around a spit of lamb. I don't watch sports because I've been raised with a stunted sense of heritage that identifies Football, Hockey, and Baseball as "American" and identifies "American" as quite less than perfect. I occasionally watch Basketball and Soccer because the expatriate Arabic communities in America have infiltrated these two sports and made it acceptable for other displaced identities to enjoy them (albeit not with the same fervor as hip-hop, baklava, and feigning afro-american status). I don't watch sports because for some odd reason I've come to associate it with anti-intellectual activities, which is strange given my eagerness to indulge in certain other anti-intellectual activities. I don't watch sports because I feel I would be entering too late and that the tide of information would be too much to absorb. I don't watch sports because it's another idiosyncratic (in America) character trait I can cling to and exploit (Hey! I'm different! Look at me, damn it!).

I should watch sports because they articulate the typically pathetic search for greatness into visual candy - the criss-crossing of bodies in a space peppered by signs of commercial culture. I don't watch sports because I have a hypocritical disdain for the commercial culture without which mainstream sports would be an impossibility. I should watch sports because I constantly complain of a lack of things-to-do and sports provide one with a plethora of things-to-do: watching games, shooting the shit, joining fantasy leagues, and (if you're in the U.K.) beating the ever-living bowel juice out of rival fans. I don't watch sports because, without exception, something will happen during the game that will confuse me and I despise both being confused and asking for clarification. I should watch sports, but I don't, and I don't watch sports, but c'mon, I really should. 

Post-Script: This pick-and-choose approach to appreciating sports can best be exemplified by my love for highlight videos, which capture all the enormity and rushing vivacity accompanying feats of strength and exclude the monotonous build-up, politicking, and stereotypical ignorance. Loving highlight reels and the concept of modern day warriors vying for champion status are the two focal reasons I dig the movie "Senna" on Netflix. Less than a documentary you typically encounter in the bargain bin that is Netflix's inventory, Senna is more of a mythic tale of shocking success and blistering disappointment made delectable by (what I assume was) careful, precise editing and an enigmatic amount of crisp footage displaying the titular Formula One racer, Brazilian philanthropist, and playboy.

All these aiding factors aside, the soundtrack is subtly suited to the tasks at hand, sometimes throbbing with a heartbreaking blend of Spanish Classical guitar and occasionally breaking into the fast-paced, engaging territory of energetic music overlapping footage of the lightweight car and its zealous driver careening past heaving mounds of dedicated fans and barely tunneling through terrifyingly tight corners. Senna makes darkness out of the mundane and drags forth an epic tale from a murky puddle of jumbled newspaper headlines, skewed opinions, and moneyed interest. I truly dig anything that, in under two hours, can fully interest me in a sport that just recently meant nothing more to me than something to be ignored (the more refined iteration of Nascar, if you will).

I've yet to check out any other thrilling sports documentaries on Netflix, partly because there aren't many and mostly because I earnestly don't think they'll live up to Senna. The production was too finely tuned, the story too compelling, and the package too tragic and relate-able to be easily trumped by the mass of Muhammad Ali chronicles. Disregarding the flaws of the Netflix library, I also haven't seen any other sports documentaries on the site because I hadn't really digested the effect Senna had on me until writing this.

In that vein, I'm pretty excited for the Netflix-exclusive series "Lilyhammer" - partially because the trailer made it look decently entertaining, partially because I love Nordic quirkiness, partially because I enjoy Mafiosos, and partially because I look forward to the effect this business model will have on other streaming sites/television programming. If Netflix becomes capable of churning out hits with the alacrity of HBO at a highly competitive cost and level of convenience, I fully believe they can make a comeback from their recent idiotic setbacks. That being said, the streaming model is still weak-kneed and struggling to carve out its place in a market that's evolving faster than single-celled organisms exposed to geysers of prehistoric, nutritive chemicals. Not only is it suffering from identity-issues, but the creature that gave birth to it (Satellite Television) actively seeks to drain it of life; however, considering the amount of time I spend watching Netflix rather than Dish (excluding Chopped) testifies to my opinion of who will emerge strengthened from that entanglement.

This all probably makes it look like I'm being funded by Netflix. Although it would be awesome to be funded  and even more awesome to be funded by Netflix, that shit's not true. Netflix just happens to be something that absorbs a significant enough portion of my time to deserve semi-constant mention (as it does). Keep in mind this post started while I was talking about reasons I should/don't watch sports, so unless I'm a clandestine, poorly strategic writer bent on tricking you into reading my opinions about Netflix, ulterior motives were not at play. At this exact moment I've just finished posting a snide comment where I needn't, am going to brew an espresso, take a shower, and hang out with Sean at Whataburger, bringing this second rambling of the day to a close. Time will divulge whether a third or fourth sprouts into being, but in light of the volatile swing of my emotions/my ever dwindling motivation, I doubt I'll approach more writing with anything other than false enthusiasm. That is, unless, I can rout out a compelling subject, like the dense sack of intrigue that was the politicking during the Thirty Years' War or the merits of the new black label spicy ketchup at Whataburger. Let's be honest, if anything, it'll be a discussion of the latter. Who, besides John Kerry (with manifold, justifiable reasons), dislikes choice ketchup? 

Try to stop trying, die to stop dying, live to start living

I think that the only realistic way of achieving a semblance of independence - especially in a society at least visibly dominated by credit card culture - is by avoiding debt. Funnily enough I've come to this axiomatic realization at the relative beginning of what I can only expect to be a life-long hemorrhaging of money: higher learning. Better yet, I'm clueless when it comes to the proper handling of money and my best bet of avoiding further damage is either not spending it or amassing such a great deal of it that my only worry will be whether to purchase a fleet of yachts captained by Qaddafi's former bodyguard squad or fund an intensive search for answers regarding the questionable murders of Tupac and Biggie (more notably Tupac but also Biggie for solidarity). Seeing as though I have a genetic tendency to squander any type of currency unlucky enough to burn a hole in my pockets, any option other than complete and utter debt is unlikely.

That's not even a criticism of my dad, his dad, or all our proto-dads who clubbed animals in the Phoenician wilderness only to bend the knee to the stiff-lipped, agricultural constabulary; I literally have an aversion to money so potent that it manifests in a necessity to purchase both things I hardly need and things I'd do better not to collect. This insane, unfounded, and wholly unattractive quality can best be typified by the events of the past week or so.

Starting just shortly before Christmas, I began a personal vendetta against my wallet's contents and the shelves of various bookstores. This fugue of dwindling dollars and mounting reading lists was aided by several circumstances: HPB had a sale from December 26 to January 2 (an attractive selling point for my Mom), a recent influx of money caused by selling a pile of unused books to HPB/thieving bills here and there from unaware druggies, my ability to read slightly more quickly than normal, and the vacuum of time associated with Winter break. Neglected throughout this entire psycho-sexual fiasco was my Kindle, but he'll assuredly make a comeback soon.

That I've groomed, preened, and streamlined a heightened ability to improvise white lies has inadvertently made me what legions of PTOs, PTAs, and small-town minded people would call a "bad person." Sometime in the ~10 day long bill-burning I struck up a whimsy to return to HPB a third time, presumably to spoon together a cobble of classics and New Historicism-inspired tomes. I fulfilled the latter category by nabbing David McCullough's John Adams (you know, the one with Paul Giamatti on the cover) and fulfilled some aberrant, hitherto unmentioned category of young adult fiction penned in Spanish by simultaneously purchasing Harry Potter y el Misterio del Principe (which actually translates to Harry Potter and the Mystery of the Prince).

On reversing in the perilous parking lot, I accidentally knicked a car and fueled with an admixture of adrenaline, genuine fear, and strange lucidity, proceeded to hastily exit. While in the lane attempting to leave, the car in front of me was (of course) attempting a left turn during an excruciatingly slow red light. This was occasion to take several panicked looks at the bystanders in the parking lot, who, witnessing the 'collision,' were either debating the philosophical dilemma of informing the authorities or playing Tetris on their phones. In hindsight the ding was too minor to cause appreciable damage to the back of my car, and as such probably didn't damage the other car; however, drinking pints of pungent fear roundly plugged me back into a reality I've been merely flitting through in recent weeks. That's not to say I've gotten a taste for the proverbial monkey's blood and will start mowing down pedestrians, but rather that for a few guilt-ridden, anxiety-swollen hours I relished in the vigor of a situation entirely out of my hands. Except for the hit-and-run part - that was totally in my hands.

Now that I've successfully deviated from the original topic of this post, I feel comfortable talking about whatever I please. Like: I somehow compartmentalized all my 'first college semester' memories and am having a difficult time placing myself back in the position of a self-destructive, snobbish student. As January 17 steadily and forcefully imposes itself on my mind with greater power, my failure to visualize the second semester matters little. I'll inevitably wander listlessly again in a matter of days, and when I delve into the cardboard box of experiences that was the past few months, I'm glad for this shift. Although the concept of "home" is ideal, actually living here and facing the truth that I'm unnecessary in this context has helped attune my mind for the mythical jaunt back down to the paradoxical university setting. It's only through lacking something that I appreciate it: not just on a mortally flawed, cliche-ridden basis - I legitimately require that something be taken away from me or some opportunity lost on me before I understand how much I actually wanted said thing or opportunity. Oddly enough this self-knowledge has led to several attempts to preemptively acquire objects I assume will be my desire at some point in the not-so-distant future. Hence the book hoarding, game plundering, and nights spent plotting means of getting my way (not by any means necessary, just the least troublesome means).

Clarity - for me - is a rarity. I tend to pounce on the opportunity to express myself when it is presented in a gilded bow and neatly marked in candy red paint. Not to dabble in pop psychology, but my lack of stable communication and inconsistency in matters of writing is probably funded by a sizable wealth of nightmares including but not limited to: failing to please the few readers of this blog, losing whatever whiff of wit I previously had or currently have, disappointing myself, and further shriveling my once cosmic ego.

This ego was built on the foundations of scant, laughable successes. Having inflated to a dangerous size, and still making the occasional appearance when the proper cocktail of brain chemicals permits, this ego simply imploded. It can still be found in trace amounts - strewn among the wreckage of memories, trivia, gobs of syntax, and splintered personality traits that encompass the landfill-of-self I identify as 'Zain'. Essentially my hesitance to commit to any action has led to a cycle of extremes: either crushing disappointment at what I perceive to be abject failures or stale dissatisfaction at successes I deem unfitting for myself (there's that pesky, reanimated ego at play). In light of this duality of being, certain pathways open up and I have no qualms about pursuing them, as I already feel damned and tormented by what monks would call Demons and what Blues-guitarists would call Regret (coincidentally, both monks and Blues-guitarists harbor an appreciation and over-indulgence of alcohol); thus, what occurred outside of HPB, what occurs every waking cycle, and what will continue to occur (albeit in varying states of new-found vigor and temporarily muted tones) are results of a bristling, quaking, briny, and unsurprisingly Semitic self-doubt.

So I've made a cyclical return to the inception of a process I chose and continue to choose. At first (as a chubby, quasi-middle child) I yearned to be doomed, conflicted, or interesting by any measure of the phrase. Now my emotions are so muddled I can't extract a singular entity or goal from the unconscious muck I've brewed. And as a side-effect of this pathetic mental 'affliction', I'm almost incapable of speaking on any subject other than myself. Notice the amount of first person pronouns in this post. Clearly whoever plumbed the depths of his mind and ladled the discovered contents here is so self-obsessed, self-indulgent, and self-deluded, that an identity crisis was inevitable.

Ha! He even refers to his petty, school-boy, tormented, Hamlet, Danish, masturbatory inner-tussle as a "crisis." This is what the mystic Thomas Merton would refer to as "a position sometimes so impossible as to be absurd." A position that necessitates self-obsession but equally obsesses over a means to elevate the self to a position that would permit self-love as opposed to self-infatuation. Self, self, self. The only way I can properly view myself as a person rather than an idol to worship in place of god is to immolate my being and saturate my cells with external personage - the essence of others. I need to embrace the collective: the dents, the incongruousness, each acute failure, each blanching success, and I need to wholeheartedly accept every degree of being. If I can't unconditionally accept others, what chance do I have of shattering this obelisk heaved on my chest?

What faces me is more than a test of faith. Confronting me more than any ancillary life-choice is the difference between transcendence and acquiescence. With the 'knowledge' I've gained through sheer, uppity searching, I foot the precipice. I can leap, abandoning the constructs and monoliths which weaned my feeble mote of existence, or I can turn from the abrasively cold, curiously inviting maw of Nothingness. It's the human condition. It's the repetitive choice between immersion into a familiar, comfortable, sleepy prison and a descent into what could either be an infinitude of stillness, a saving grace, or both. It's the disturbing nostalgia you get when faced with a path you know could easily be your last. It's the plastic chair you spend forty years breaking in, only to collapse breathless surrounded by sun-kissed vineyards and a farcical legacy.

It's what I have coming and knowing nothing I welcome everything.

Das Rheingold

To him silence is an elemental terror
By unburdening the load of distraction
It bears upon him a wholly alien weight
Pounds of ectoplasmic abstraction
Heady, candle-lit, notional greatness
The likes of which was championed by
Cramped intellectuals and chap-knuckled monks
Who, in exhuming the mental tombs
Of their predecessors, resuscitated a pulse
Forgotten in the morose hinterland - the medieval hubris
Your monastic man huddled close to a wick
expunging midnight oil, expounding unoriginal orthodoxy
For the purpose of blinding himself to the blunt
brass that accompanies grand sojourns into text
and perilous pathways into the minds of experiential men
Those enlightened beings - quite another species
Brought crashing down with due brashness
Hobbling, gold-leafed structures; From 800, the Axials
Spanned nationhood and biblical boundaries
To quicken, kindle, foster, and entreat
The word of God - the son of Man
an exhaustive breath from lungs
not completely pure yet nothing less
than perennially human

False staff

Master made a mistress out of a mad maid
a babbling brook of quixotic phrasings
Who prepared for him a fatal feast
pickled herring and wine of Rhine
His final wish - to play an ignoble showing
to the recusant, gilded idol
An over-starched, underfed wastrel
fingering teeth coated in rot
twitching a face caked in Stygian spice
and barking orders to vacant suits of plate wear
She makes her consorts feverish, delirious
With the heat of untold images
With curses - on the cooling bed
of death's referendum; Penny pamphlets
to all accompanying squires and, for the sake
of solidarity, to the shriveling gap of illiterates
For all inconsiderate knights unchivalrous
Dole the lion's share - intensely favored bits