That elusive vibration
Behind the curtain of words
and song, colors and numbers
names and places
the elusive feling of exploding afterwards, swapping space with space.
Every moment has her own smile, and every moment is mine to find.
Every moment is there to forget
Words tied to strings
When plucked sing tunes
For willing ears
That know harmony
Beyond Violins
Man stands tall with red inside his belly
Man stands before reflections of trees and the sky,
Has never seen his face before
His eyes are owning the light that blankets all that he can’t see
Man runs before power, running across the earth
One day he’ll get tired of chasing
Man stands wide, with his golden pride
He wears it like a crown, ruling the land that take up the space under the soles of his feet
Man stands with a white heart
Like a net, catching the colors of the air between him and the end
Man is born into the mouth a beast with its jaws clenched shut,
grows up in the stomach knowing there’s no way out
Man grows up in the darkness, until he understands that there is no way out
What does it take to be great? Is it destiny, or an innate passion found through everyday life? I know there is no definite answer, but despite this, my curiosity for my future still runs rampant.
I look at all the greats of my time, everyone from Michael Jordan to Lucian Freud, and Einstein. All of those men wore their genius and understanding around their necks. Their fires burned so greatly that everyone around them felt the warmth, be it from their television or the textbooks. Jordan had a piercing look during his ball games, and Lucian’s self-portraits showed an adamant focus. I tell myself every night about how much I want to accomplish as those great men did.
The mystery of the call to greatness keeps me up every night, consequently prying me away from my dreams. It is this irony, which reminds me to keep like the tortoise, and leave the hare to nap in his arrogance, while I cross the same finish line that we will both eventually reach. Some days, I am the hare, and the romantic fantasies of the podium finish obscure my attention from the experience of the competition. I remind myself every day that greatness has nothing to do with glory. I know it’s a long race so I might as well wave back to all the leaves that greet me with the wind. I want so badly to do my best and I know that I have the passion to fuel me to the moon and back. First I must learn to build the rocket.
Abraham Lincoln once said, “Nearly any man could deal with adversity, but if you want to test his true character, give him power.” To be great in any trade is to have power, but to be even greater is to be powerful for others. I don’t know if I’ll ever be an Abraham Lincoln or Van Gogh, but I know that I can work just as hard as them. After I finish my studies, I want to know I did my absolute best, because when it comes down to it, the journey is more important than the destination.
August 30
The hardest part about waking up to work in the juice club is the memory of all of the people who walk up to my little kiosk with their eyes affixed to the menu board above me. Their eyes are opened as wide as their mouths and it looks like they are trying to collect flies. Sometimes while they’re staring up with their starving looking eyes, they lick their lips.
When I stand in the kiosk within the grocery store, serving those gape-mouthed animals of earth, I stand with my false sense of superiority. I am a man among dogs for those few minutes of serving them. I am convinced that I am a demi-god. I stare into their eyes and I can see it. I can see their dog eyes say to me, “Where is my attention?” or “What did I do?” and I serve them promptly. They walk away smiling happily.
September 1
I am livid today. I want to destroy everything in my path. I want to take a watermelon and throw it at the automatic door that squeaks and moves like a bird is jammed into it. I want to knock down the rack of chips at the end of this aisle. I want to go to the back room and ram a forklift into the nearest display case. I’ll lift it up and drop it onto the hot case that has all of the rotisserie chickens. Nobody would care. They seem to be perfectly content right now, trying their damn best to get their own jobs done with the least possible resistance. They’re already daydreaming about their plans after their 9 hours of menial labor. This makes me want to take fresh cut steak and nail it onto the walls. I’ll decorate the whole damn grocery store to cheer everybody up a little. I’ll take a shit in one of the potted plants outside of the floral department and that will be one healthy plant.
I’m looking around and all I can see are gray faces. Their eyes are like coins.
We stand here, getting paid to be tied by strings, and yanked around until we must smoke cigarettes as a clever suicide. It’s easy money. It’s easy to take this money to have a good time, and forget about all those strings turning us purple from the inside out. I’m okay being purple/ I read somewhere once that purple is the royal color of the ancient Romans.
September 2
I am the judge and nobody is safe from my wrath. I am the demi-god of the juice club after all. I judge the guy with the face that says he has more worth than me. I judge the polite mother teaching her kids manners. I judge the teenage girls standing there with their low cut shirts, smiling and giggling. Their eyes are oozing and they’re ready to be fucked. Their tits are ready to grow right out of that cleavage. Nobody is safe from my eyes, not even myself.
I often tell myself that after my shift is over. After I’ve laughed at everything I was mad about. I walk out onto that parking lot with my keys already out and I can’t even see my truck yet. I love the juice club because every day, no matter how hard, I leave with a smile knowing I did my work until the skin on my hands turned into scales. I leave smiling until the juice club challenges it once again, and as I grit my teeth, I tell myself that I am the demi-god of the juice club and I am responsible for my emotions.
After pondering my writing sample prompt and re-writing countless drafts, I could not help but compare myself to those stereotypical descriptions of the pageant queens I see on television. Smiling behind their make-up, displaying the curvature of their ideal bodies behind their sparkling and impressive fitted dresses. “I want to make the world a better place,” answered my first draft. Not to be outdone, my second draft said, “I want to have the opportunity to feed the hungry.” The third rambled on about being empathetic to the state of the world, while using words it didn’t fully understand.
I was too apprehensive of writing something that had me coming off as being too shallow or vain. As much as I wanted to sugar coat my desire, the more I buried myself in denial. The more I noticed, the more defensive my writing became. It was becoming difficult but if there is one thing I am never afraid of, it is a challenge. It is adversity and fear that weigh the chip on my shoulder, mocking me about what I can or cannot do. Newton’s apple dropped on my head so hard that it knocked all the uncertainty out of me. I had been overlooking everything that my children’s books had taught me about staying true to myself.
All I have ever wanted is to be the best that I can be. As an artist, I have a responsibility to share and contribute not only to other artists, but also to everybody. To be able to share so many different types of beauty through art is an unbelievably powerful feeling, and when I can walk away from RISD knowing that I’ve learned all I could possibly learn, then I will feel more confident with teaching and inspiring others at the best of my ability. I have always had an intrinsic desire to try my hardest, and RISD is here to challenge me. When I can say that I’ve done my best, I will be happy, because I know that it’s all that I can control for me and for those I hope to help. Abraham Lincoln once said that nearly any man could deal with adversity, but if you want to test his character, give him power. To be great in any trade is to have power, but it is most important to be powerful for others.
I like when girls cross their arms.
I’ve been told its a bad sign, but I like how it looks when their tits are perched on their forearms like the worlds softest parakeets.
7:15 and I wake up as a piece of meat marinating on my sheets
The morning has prepared me well-done and I’m ready for the thanksgiving dinner table
I pissed out the sun this morning hot, yellow piss. I could feel it tickle my urethra.
I felt my head, my brain moved like a grape under summer
At the mercy of my piss, banana colored piss, I just sighed in relief in rhythm to the throbbing of my brain.
And I sighed in relief and awe, feeling the cold sweat drying under my armpits laughing in my head at the mercy of my hot yellow, sun colored piss.
And all the while, between the head throbbing and the warm pissing, all I could think about was how mother nature is one sick son of a bitch and she doesn’t give a shit about nothing.
Inside me, I am building a fort
A comfortable place with all my favorite things
Inside me all my favorite melodies will be sang by the laziest winds blowing between tints of green
Inside me, the fort I will build will have the most comfortable grass to lay on. I’ll lay under the green of a tree. I’ll lay on top of the different colored green of my grass
I’ll build all my life — I don’t mind, because once the fort is done, I will sit there with my hammer and nails using the tools and wood that I gathered from across the river and valleys that I made already before
