Cellular Theology

freestyle

2010-05-23T23:17:00.003-04:00

tonight, a friend called me "notorious j. schwartz."

this is what i had to say in return:

they call me norotious j

keep your mind whirlin' every which way

can't tell whether you up, or you down, or you smilin', or you frown

i make you think that the ground is blue, that the sky is brown

keep you mixin up your predicates, your subjects, your verbs and your nouns

you think you're the king of words, but i am wearing the crown

i take you to the royal ball, and you wear a gown

teach you how to step, how to twirl, how to slide, and bow down

i am the city mouse and you're from the town

if my rhymes were a SWAT team, this would be the crackdown

i dance for the touchdown, i land for the splashdown, i am the anchor for the rundown, i throw the lever for the meltdown

i make your mind up so nice, that i give it a turndown

no tip, this is for free

get some talcum powder and rough towels, as i'm giving you a rubdown

~jss, 5/23/10

new poem!

2008-02-28T15:31:00.002-05:00

I can out Kissinger Kissinger!
Yes - I can only speak in secret rumblings,
an esoteric mystical code understood by
the monastic brotherhood of Realpolitik.
My brows are furrowed always,
even in sex, even in the act
of making fierce love while
screaming “do me do me do me fuck my face and eyes
with your hands and desperate need to feel my hands ravage your skin
raze your arm hair and freckles to the ground!”
My glasses can only be thick, and I mean both lenses
and frames, all to keep out your searching eyes.
And when I think of nations, people, persons,
children running wild-eyed, their expressions
reminding me of water boiling over, ovens left on,
bread left in toasters… Yes, when I think of bombing nations,
I can only dream of secret missiles falling - my fingers
steepled as the planes make their soundless runs.
(How can somethings so silent & somethings so unobtrusive,
be so lacking in tenderness?)
Cambodia, a mass imagination ruined in silence.
And.
Somethings that happen to somebodies, becoming nobodies.

Kissinger, with his scheming, was above it all: the only
one not bound up in the unfortunate shambles of Watergate.
But I can only stand next to Richard Nixon,
feeling most comfortable smelling his morning breath
of bad coffee and a bowl of cheerios.
His cool flop sweat soothes my nervous eyebrows.
I feel most at home beside liars,
for I know them better than I have loved truth-tellers.
His fingers are flung into the air, splaying like legs mid-coitus,
and his peace is one I can believe in.
I do believe that “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
Nothing makes me sexier than the fact
that I meet regularly with Mao Zedong. His face
is on posters and t-shirts, but I sit shrouded in mystery.
We walk through doors and enter back rooms together,
and no one may know I was there.
I can slip in and out of your world, and
you won’t know, but I can change it forever.
I stand over you and hold you on the bed,
muffling your mouth with my comforter; I
think of faraway lands and smile.

~jss, 2/24/08
*Thanks go out to Adam Katz, Samantha Kuperberg and Jeana Poindexter.

(x/p to the phlog)

Apocalyptic Talking #4

2008-02-22T10:35:00.001-05:00

here is my new essay, cross-posted on the commentariat and adapted from an essay i composed for university writing in freshman year.

Celebs Galore! (or: how i learned to stop being nervous and love amy winehouse smoking crack)

What is it about the celebrity that tickles the imagination so? So many more human minds are flung into fever over what a certain starlet wore (or didn’t wear! zing!) to dinner than whatever big social cause is supposed to be important to the youth. In absence of cultic holidays, used in ancient times to unify a nation behind a structure presented by the spectacle, our society has substituted events such as the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards. In the aforementioned shows, faces and dresses to which we can all assign our loyalty parade about, like gods from the mass media machine. Declaring one’s allegiance to a specific celebrity is akin to joining the ranks of a deity’s elite devotees. Thereafter, one is quickly able to discover common ground in social interaction by simply turning the conversation to one’s celebrity of choice. Said exchange becomes a sort of social springboard. One gains the knowledge required to move fluidly through society; one acquires cultural capital (the ability to maneuver with ease through society). Social bonds are seemingly immediately formed merely by common knowledge of celebrities. Since, through media, the cult of celebrity is inherently tied to mass appeal, and nearly all members of society seem to utilize it, the idea of fame has widespread social ramifications. The question yet remains: what is the reason behind our society’s eternal obsession with the celebrity? Aficionados of celebrities speak of them as if they are in possession of intimate knowledge only fellow fans may know. They are the initiated. However, in truth, they have no personal knowledge of their icon at all. What possesses us to take hold of these stars and squeeze them for all their radiance is worth?

It seems as though nothing differentiates the celebrity from the average individual with identity issues. After all as Warhol once said, one day everyone will have his fifteen minutes of fame. There are innumerable opportunities to become known in today’s world, that it is difficult to determine why celebrities are special anymore. Celebrities are only special inasmuch as they are special to society, a rare and therefore valued commodity. Their special status in our culture lies less with qualities we attribute to the celebrities that meet certain norms as determined by pop culture and even less with the unique achievements of the stars. Rather, the controlling will is, most paradoxically, held by those supposedly left most powerless in the panoptic schema. In fact, the entire institution of celebrity is born from the desperation of this position of “powerlessness.” This interpretation is hinted at in the discussion regarding the apotheosis and lionizing of convicted murderers. We create gods out of monsters because we need to feel as though we are retaining our sense of self, even as it gradually is eroded away, a sand castle at high tide. The desperation we feel as our veridical self disappears births a similar desire to create a new frame of reference. After all, if we can only exist as we are seen, then it is more than possible to be seen from a new angle, a new perspective. Thus, we create celebrities, the epitome of a public persona lacking even the slightest shred of personal life. When viewing one’s own life in comparison to that of a star, it seems almost private. We moan our “oohs” and our “ahhs” to perhaps drown out the clicking and whirring of the shutters recording our own lives. With our heads buried in People Magazine, we can easily ignore the ubiquitous presence of surveillance equipment. The celebrity is the one entity until now not mentioned in the panoptic schema: the one in power. Or so they believe. For surely, in terms of cultural capital, the celebrity is simply spoiled with wealth and fame. He can easily obtain anything his heart may desire. He sits in the tower, at the heart of the menagerie. Like the Aristotelian god, he is an unmoved mover. He sees himself in a position of incorruptible strength, as he sits above the rest of the world. He is untouchable… until… he leans into the light, and as the grass naturally follows the direction of the wind, all heads turn to him. He has become spectacle, a cross-section of the panopticon, and the people have their revenge.

~jss

Apocalyptic Talking #2

2008-01-30T03:46:00.000-05:00

Odd Things About Smiling

I am in my bathroom at home, the one I share with my brother. Before me, spread out like an altar, lies my sink and counter space. The surfaces are white, and I think Formica, the type, which makes it so you can never quite clean off all the little beard hairs, which drives your latent OCD nuts. Beneath the sink and beside the drawers is a small cabinet, one used to keeping things we no longer use. In it, lie scattered, impractical cups from my childhood. They have holes on the side and the bottom and a spout, and they all have faces.

I am in the bath, and I am six years old. I do my best to palpate the shampoo into my improbable hair, and my father brings the cup to the side of the tub. As soon as he fills the yellow cup with slightly-too-hot water, it descends in streams through the bottom holes of the cup. They continue to descend, in rivulets down my face, carrying away the lovingly applied shampoo from my head and hair. The commercials tell you that it is ok to laugh and giggle and open your eyes wide to the miracle of cranial laundering. But they lie. Even when the “safe” shampoo gets in your eyes, it stings. My father brings the green cup to the side of the tub, the one with a hole where his mouth should be. As soon as it fills with water, the clear liquid flows in a constant, giving stream. My eyes sting and tear, but I persist in smiling nonetheless, marveling at its pure gift.

Above the sink and counters and beside my memories is the mirror. Its galvanized surface is pockmarked with age, like an unlucky teenager, but it still reflects well enough, especially when my brother and I remember to wash the enormous thing before Shabbat. To me, in this house, the bathroom mirror is not merely a tool for hygiene and general upkeep; it is a co-conspirator, an ally, a confidante. All throughout my life, it has silently supported all my poor decisions. It has been nine years since my flirtation with hair gel in the seventh grade, but the mirror has never brought up my attempt to wish my unimaginable hair into an attractive force of follicle might. I would be cool when I left the room, and the mirror let me believe most things.

I think that when we were younger, more things had faces. Girls and boys are swaddled in blankets, cocooned by their stuffed animals and dolls. I had a collection of many, many action figures. We could also see faces - partners in conversation, playmates - amidst most things we found surrounding us. Trees were always old men or young dryads; the gnarls of branches or smoothness of bark or roughness of bark could so easily be reorganized by any number of senses. (Are all children synaesthetic and then later forget?) Seeing faces everywhere, it’s no wonder kids are always smiling or crying or both.

Mirrors are a stage, a nexus with the other world. I, like most young men eagerly exploring my power before myself, frantically wailed about to songs I loved, made muscles, critiqued my self. I performed before myself, bereft of childhood’s ubiquitous audience. Often, I would simply stand and smile, my eyes shifting like sand in the hourglass. Sometimes, they would join in, but at other times my face felt like dusk, slowly fading, painfully beautiful. Tentative at best. Sometimes, I have been hit by the strange urge to have a cold sore at all times, to be forced to smile so it hurts a little. I rejoiced before myself in my childhood home, and the mirror tried to give me my face as a gift. I smiled, but I had nowhere to put it.

~jss, 1/30/08

first blog post for the commentariat

2008-01-23T03:32:00.000-05:00

This is the first of my regular contributions to the commentariat, the Columbia Spectator's second try to have a blog. Hope i don't ruin it...

Two Seemingly Unrelated Vignettes Illuminating the Significance of Our Insignificance

So many have tried and failed, so not to at least attempt to name our generation with a hip catch-phrase would be arrogant, to say the least. So, here we go. I henceforth dub the youth of today “the supernova generation.” We do not cultivate taste, nor do we allow our desire to smolder, crackling embers of longing in our eyes. We are a series of consuming obsessions, of affected hatreds. We want to want; we need to need. We are inundated with so much, that we must drain the ocean to be sated. We suck the juice from life, leaving only pulpy refuse. We’re a generation shrink-wrapped and raised in Styrofoam cribs. We shudder to think we are disposable.

Ever since the last two weeks of the fall semester, I have been living in my room without heat, since the radiator leaked all over the floor, destroying a number of books. To stave off pneumonia, I wear sixth grade socks to bed, ones with white rubber grippers on the feet, now smoothed down to paradoxically allow for better sliding on my tiled floor. I wear sweatpants and a sweatshirt to bed, the sigil of my father’s old pharmaceutical company, faded like an archaeological find, into the mere memory of an ankh. It means life in ancient Egyptian, I think. I hunker down in my covers, not unlike the kids in those safety films from the Atomic Age, shivering my prayers into the night – protect me from the coming apocalypse. I become a hero to my apartment when my inconvenience becomes a holy cause. I turn off all lights when not using them and unplug every appliance. When my roommate returns to New York, I tell him how things are gonna be; a righteous sneer plays on my lips, like Joe Strummer or Johnny Cash.

Leaving my internship in the evenings is the worse thing in the world for my soul. It is not because I love my job so much that I cannot bear to leave (even though I do enjoy it quite a lot), and it is not due to something stupendously amazing that I am missing at home. I exit 330 7th Avenue into a veritable human gulf stream. Why is it that between 42nd st. and 28th (where I work), every single person is in possession of a pressing need to head downtown? It appears as I am the lone northward traveler, with only my wits and Polaris to guide me. [Brief digression: When I was sevenish, my family took a vacation to Cape Cod, and while I was playing in the ocean, a wave knocked me down and the undertow carried me out to sea. My mom saved my life.] As I struggle to move forward, every single individual’s movements, which run counter to my own, are seen as personal affronts and offenses. “They’re on the attack!” In my heart there sprout seeds of hatred for all who bump shoulders or duck into the street at the exact same moment I do, or who walk just too slowly to be tolerable. Midtown makes me the worst person.

In the beginning of this piece, I characterized our generation as that of the “supernova,” but, if you forgive me, I’d like to mix ‘n’ match my metaphors. We are drowning, and the water is rising quickly; or we are sinking (it all depends on your frame of reference). We gasp for air, to fill our lungs with nothing. When the water begins to fill our lungs, we gasp for air. It takes our breath away. (Back to the original image) A supernova is the spectacular creation of empty space. Where once there was a great big star now sits a black hole. I like owning more books than I could ever read. I think about my bookcase tipping over and burying me in words. Only a buried person kicks and scratches and bleeds and slashes and punches in true and furious ecstasy. One used to have to die to experience this. The drowning person gasps for air. The exploding star takes our breath away.

~jss
1/23/08

natural beauty

2008-01-17T15:31:00.000-05:00

Natural Beauty

Walking by, I slid my gaze up, up, up
and there you were,
crouching in the arms of a tree.
Your fingers splayed out on the bark;
your feet were unshod, one in a birds nest,
lazily crushing the shells,
the albumen oozing between your toes.

I looked up, and the sun was glaring, angry,
and you waved to my face, your hands playing
signs with the shadows.
Your smile complemented the hue of midday light;
I could never stay mad at you,
and I hated you for it.

It’s funny how, as the day cooled,
the bluebirds came
and whirled away to the whine of your cell-phone.
You grinned at the beauty,
never realizing it was your fault.

I looked up, and as you
shifted your position,
bits of bark drifted down the breeze
and into my eye. good; I was afraid
that when I ripped off my shoes
and dug my toes into the trunk,
flew my fingers up that tree to meet you
face to face,
to look in your eyes,
all I would see: a blank white orb
that sets off the highlights in your hair.

~jss, 3/07

(x/p to the phlog)

more poetry from high school!

2008-01-16T12:50:00.000-05:00

Pulse

Now
in the forever
Now
spiking crystal spires
tearing armageddon holes in the sky
then
and Now
I press my
fingers to the flesh of my forearm.

Pulse.

dew drops of imagination
fusing in the ionosphere and
when they fall
they shatter just
like dreams, frozen.

Now and Then
I wonder, steal
glimpses of a future forbidden
I ponder stealing
and other glamorous sins
written in the stars.

Pulse.

in the
forever. Now
arrogant towers of purity
and Truth tear apocalypse holes
punching wide and raggedly rending dreams.
Then
and Now.

I gently ponder loving
in the dark.
No one can see me.
I hope
You understand?
I am not a disembodied heartbeat
nor an eidolon, phantom-like ideal
I am pulsating memory & purpose tentatively approaching infinity
forever eternal Now.

~josh schwartz
4/23/02

(x/p to the phlog)

why love is not like poetry

2008-01-15T17:15:00.000-05:00

the key advice to young poets is to show
and not to tell
but you told me how you loved me
and i believed you.

(x/p to the phlog)

the first in a series of meditative poems about skin

2008-01-15T17:04:00.000-05:00

rubbing

while the gray wind swept by your sandy hair,
on the boardwalk, a man with a shabby cap
shaded you into my life.

it's incredible how life moves by in gradations
shades
are the darker bits of your face older? wiser?
your eyes searched me out from the surface of the page
and i don't remember if i liked your nose better
or if it was rounder or sharper
if your nostrils were wide or also sharp.

on the beach, the sea rubs away at the coast.
the memory of you becomes less distinct
but pervades

i was in the process of walking by,
it was a process finely tuned to process through,
when the hairs on the backs of my arms noticed
how the ley lines of the air, they bunched and jostled,
breathed in by you.
the man with the shabby hat smudged
your face into being.

when i reached out my finger and brushed your cheek,
it returned to my eye similarly smudged.
i left our fingerprint on every surface i could find.

1/4/08

(x/p to the phlog)

more poetry!

2008-01-14T18:42:00.000-05:00

here's a poem i (think i) wrote in high school:

lost generation

We are no lost generation
rambling back home to wife or kids or bottle or job
with barbed wire lining our brains
and national anthems resounding in our heads
images of disintegration and madness do not
replay ad infinitum in our young and tender minds
images of friends ripped from this world like vacuums and abortions
or cut in half by machine gun fire
or mashed into the groung in a tire tread pattern
do not haunt our memories or dreams
We are not the Lost Generation

We are no Lost Generation
We have no Hemingway to expose and die for our sins
no one with the courage to plead utter confusion and desperation
to a world wanting answers
No one who can say little and do much.
...
Who feels the shock now of his shotgunned brains in the woods?
We have no Fitzgerald
to help us laugh at where we have gone
terribly
terribly wrong. He sees our empires built on wealth, constructed on sand,
and F. Scott rolls his eyes and hisses through his teeth
like the opening of missile silos.
We have no Ezra Pound to write about the mystery
We are not the lost generation

We are no Lost Generation
We have been breathing war’s odors since we were young
and we have not been betrayed by a world we never had
we are not staring at walls forever at walls forever
staring at walls
We know the intimacy, when screaming ends and waking begins

Death lines our coffee cups and cigarettes
our paints and our automobiles
our sports and entertainment
our dreams
our despairs
Death waits in every corner
and in every doorway . Death thrives in between
here
and
There
Death does not wait for us overseas
Death has encountered us, acculturated and docile
Death has played with our childhood friends
Death hums the same songs on the radio
Death watches our TV
Death enjoys our company. Death works for our boss.
Death would live among us:
His Found Generation.

~jss

(cross-posted to the phlog)

my place-winning kilmer poem!

2007-11-18T21:30:00.000-05:00

the shape of my love
by Joshua Schwartz, GS '08

I would be a harp for you
that you may play your fingers across my strings
send shivering vibrations up my spine, an addictive fever
under the blankets of your warmth.

i would be sharp for you
like a knife, glittering ethereally in the night
like a brilliant question from the mouth of
a promising young student
or a delicious cheddar cheese
mmmmmm... cheddar
how is my love like a cheese?
well, cheddar cheese is hard... and pale yellow to orange,
and: after heating, the curd is cut into cubes
to drain the whey, then stacked and turned.

i would be a B-sharp for you
an impossible note, hovering over the staff...
of possibility.
why not just call me a middle C?
because i love you. that's why.

i would be a tarp for you
to keep you safe from the storm and the wet
to save you from catching a chill
and becoming ill
and while you sleep, i would look over you
while you sleep, all bundled up in your sleeping bag
while you sleep, i am watching you.
while you sleep.

i would be an Arp for you
an alsatian artist and poet who was cofounder of dadaism in zurich
noted for abstract organic sculptures...
and loving you all up on your body.

i would be a carp for you
a proud white fish
with scales gleaming like the rainbow
you could raise me in your bathtub, and
you could grind me up all sexy like
together
we could feed a hungry jewish family
because who doesn't think gefilte fish is hot?
no one doesn't think that. that's who.

I would be a Garp for you
the bastard son of a technical sergeant and a castrating mother
living a life of "lunacy and sorrow"
learning painfully from my sexual relationships
until you.
and the world according to me
would be one of our love.

but i would never LARP for you
because it's for nerds,
and i am one of the cool kids.

argh...

2005-12-11T23:44:00.000-05:00

the more and more time i spend as an "independent individual" on my own, etc etc... the more i find myself making excuses for my less-than-virtuous behavior. it's kind of sad. more on that later.

also: my work ethic may be among the worst in the world, which is also kind of sad.

~invisible

actually, on second thought...

2005-12-07T00:50:00.000-05:00

something else happened to me today that was interesting...

when i spoke up in class, in the middle of my comment, the professor helped me realize a loose part of my thinking. When i spoke up again to clarify/fix what i was saying, i did what i thought to be a humble gesture by deferring to the wisdom of the prof [how unamerican! ;-)] and apologized for my muddled words before...
after the class, when i went to the front to follow up my point with the professor, a gentleman in the class took me aside for a moment and told me (in the manner of helpful and friendly advice) never to apologize in public.
i do not mean to imply that the gentleman who spoke to me was a bad man or anything of the sort. i appreciated that he cared enough for my wellbeing to speak to me. perhaps he was right, but the statement simply took me aback. i tend to be a direct person who will put his ideas out in the open without shame (i hope!), but i am coming to realize more and more that not everyone does that with such casual manner. many people, when they speak, are afraid of admitting culpability or fault. personally, i think i do not have such a problem with that because to me, they are just words, just ideas, and i would rather look a fool that continue to believe falsehoods. also, there are always more ideas where those came from.
word is truth.
peace,
~invisible

Intentions

2005-12-07T00:38:00.001-05:00

Well, folks, i have decided to start trying to post here on this blog fairly regularly, not that anyone's reading anymore...
whatever. come what may, there will be electronic evidence of my transitory conscious existence.

today i got in a lively debate with my buddhism professor, famed scholar of tibetan buddhism robert a f thurman, also known as uma's dad. he was discussing, in the class, the harmful effects religion has had on history and our lives and claimed that the goals of religion were often at odds with ethics. okay fine, no problem there. i, even as a religious person, need to recognize that bad things have happened because of it. however, he then tried to distinguish between "spirituality" and religion, and while they are most definitely not one and the same, i thought that it was incorrect to completely dichotomize them. he said that when figures arose in religion and represented authentic spirituality, they were killed/silenced. while that may be true, one cannot separate these figures from their religious contexts as much as one cannot separate them from their sociological and political ones. the fact is that these people came to noble conclusions through their religions. while religions have been known to harm, i believe those are instances when they are not being "spiritual" or, as i like to think of it, "Godly." in that way, though, spirituality is seen as a component, a function of religion, not its successor.

but i may just as well be wrong.

the dalai lama had a wonderful point, just as reinhold niebuhr did when confronted by a soulsick will herberg, disillusioned with marxism, desiring christianity: each religious individual has a responsibility to explore the depths of one's own religion first and foremost. it is their tradition. i also believe that religion is primarily an end to an end, that is the eschaton, or whatever you call it. but that's another post for another time.

and i may be wrong about that too. or everything.

peace,
~invisible

my non-award winning kilmer poem from this year

2005-12-06T01:47:00.000-05:00

Canadia
Canadia, I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
Canadia, eleventeen dollars and seventy twenty cents, January 17, or whatever heathen calendar you use there
I can't stand all your moose(s)
Canadia, when will you give up the delusion of your sovereignty?
Go fuck yourself with your hockey stick
I don't feel warm. Don't bother me.
I won't write my poem 'til I'm in my right mind.
Canadia, when will you be civilized?
When will you take off your flannel?
When will you look at yourself through the mocking eyes of everyone else?
When will you be worthy of your twelve citizens?
Canadia, why are your libraries full of books?
Canadia, when will you send your Mounties to Iraq?
I'm sick of your inexplicable existence.
When can I go to the black market and buy what I need with my real money
Canadia, after all, it is you and the Dutch who are weird, not the normal world.
Your moose are too much for me.
You made me want to be a hockey star.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
McGill is in Montreal, but I don't think anyone goes there, it's deserted.
Are you being serious, or are you some cosmic practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
Canadia, stop pushing, I know what I'm doing.
Canadia, the pine needles aren't falling (that's why they call them "evergreens!")
I haven't read a newspaper in months, do you even have a written alphabet?
Canadia, I feel sentimental about the moose.
Canadia, I used to be dyslexic as a kid, and I'm not rosy.
I drink maple syrup every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and try to make sense of your existence.
When I go to Montreal I get laid but never in English.
My mind is made up; there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me listening to Alanis Morisette.
Canadia, it's them bad mooses.
Them mooses, them mooses, and them maple syrups. And them mooses.
The mooses want to eat us alive. The mooses are power mad.
Canadia, I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel-eh?

This is my philosophy!

2005-12-06T01:39:00.000-05:00

The only thing i know is that i know nothing...
maybe.

i'm back bitches!!!!!

peace,
~invisible

getting in touch with your inner snob

2005-01-30T16:00:00.000-05:00

oh man, i'll tell you. do you want to hear? i have some thing freakin important for like the world or something. this is quantum, man, esoteric secrets granted to only a select few. this knowledge could shake the foundation of the world. this could end world hunger and war and stuff. yeah??? yeah. i mean DO it, man! i mean: take it it's yours. there is no need to shame this out of me. this was created for you... this could change the world... if they could take it. i mean no one can think like YOU, now can they? not everone can be special. not everyone can understand things that are special.

takeittakeittakeittakeittakeittakeittakeit.

like this.

snobbishness begins concurretly with the genesis of history. in the biblical (quick side note, the word "judeo-christian" is such a fallacy and used by people who can't separate text from context) creation story, God, gives the entire garden of eden to his humans, adam and eve. however, the tree of knowledge/tree of life were not to be touched or sampled. the right to special privileges is born. from then on, we establish cities with their classes and their ruling powers and caste systems. also, especially in the hellenistic times, elite relgious movements claiming ultimate truth are founded, holding special appeal to it members for their salvation. and this trend continues all the way down through history, highlighting in the colonial movements and feeling its first twinges of threat in the advent of the american revolution, arguably the first instance of "post-colonialism." the classless society has been imagined, although a serious consideration must be payed to the advent of the printing press as well, disseminating knowledge to others than the elite. america does indeed adopt the media and it ends up both helping and harming the snobbish cause.
in the democracy, ideally, all have te same rights and privileges. yeah right. capitalism takes care of that, as do deep seeded racial fictions. money creates the new class of the supposed meritocracy, those who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps etc. however, the mass media, with its mind numbing pablum creating powers and exutation of mediocrity, DOES have its positive results of widely disseminating information. and: as unfair as it was, the snob-system DID make people feel quite special and different from others. even the untouchables, as abused as they were, had special bonds that could be connected to no one else. our supposed democracy and freedom atomizes us, separates us from our peers. and if everything is open to everyone, then what makes social interaction effervescent and unexpexted? if everyone reads the same magazines and listens to the same polkas, then how do we learn from each other? how do we differetiate from each other????? oh no.
so: snobbishness does indeed have its value. it's fun to know something cool when no one else does! it's also fun to spread the love to only those you deem to be able to handle it. it's like discovering something about someone/the world that no one else knows or has even known. treasure. snobbishness is why we have gradients of friendship, to claim rights to intimate knowledge of people who should ideally belong to the world. after all, we can't belong to anyone can we? well, if i grok you, then i have something special no one else does, so... there is part of you in me, that is in no one else.
i know this may sound cynical on the surface, but the story is told with a disarming grin and an offering of secret candy to you, the worthy recipinets of my esoteric wisdom. don't tell your friends. just wink knowingly and leave quietly, secretly inscribing your name in the earth, on the sky.

peace,
~josh

In Which Joshua Rekindles Old Friendships and Becomes a Pasionate Revolutionary

2004-12-27T17:07:00.000-05:00

Where do your feelings end, and what people want from you begin?
That came out more bitter than I intended. I m not implying that people around me are demanding and intrusive. What I really mean is that sometimes I don't know whether I really do feeel a certain way or if I am convincing my self I do to fulfill a certain expectation. I am scared it may characterize my dealing with the matter romantic. I can't really recall a time i ever had an unrequited crush. Is the only reason i fall in love that someone loves me, and i do not have the strength of character to resist that kind of affection and affirmation of my personal worth? i hope this is not the case. i feel as though i am progressing closer and closer to a more independent state of emotions every day, though, and especially with every romantic interaction. My current relationship (which i won't blab about here, thank you) is definitely a big step forward for me, as this is the first time i have ever made the "first move." I think that, ideally, if one loves another, he should be willing to express that love in whatever way he can. If his intended is not willing to involve herself romantically with him at a present time, he should be just wanting to spend quality time with her, and for now, that should be enough. Therefore, I promote the idea of maverick emotions! not caring what the world thinks! let us feel what we shall feel, because we feel it!

on a more pragmatic note, i am very happy to be deepening my relationship with my friend Alex. We were friendly before, but we didn't realize how well we got along til we missed each other. it's a nice ending to a weird post.

please discuss this idea, i you feel the pulling at your intellectual groin...
and welcome aboard Mark. your slavic sensibilities and impeccable dressing will be a wonderful asset to this blog.

peace,
~josh

next! getting in touch with your inner snob

My Award Winning Kilmer Poem (Hah!)

2004-12-20T22:20:00.000-05:00

(For Mrs. Henry Mills Alden)
or: deep thoughts on laundry
or: repeating random nouns and then attaching that same noun to some profound emotion is comedic gold, the gold of joy.

Ahhhhh the taste of victory
I always imagined it would taste more like tiramisu
Or a cinnamon rugelach
Or the salty elixir squeezed from the saturated uniforms of the victims
Of my ring of white slaves.

Riding the roller coaster of love creates within my bosom
This pleasant buzz in my
Nether regions (the auxiliary nether regions I keep in my bosom)
Like if one were to sit on a blender
A blender of joy
Set on the puree
of bliss.
In my heart are the sprites of happiness and their laughter
Warms my cockles as only true love can
True love and microwave burritos.
Happy and bright:
Like the sun shining on the faces
Of my ring of white slaves.

While sitting on the dryer, I begin to
Meditate about death and the innate absurdity of life.
There is no hope and love is false, I cry
As I weep into the snuggles,
The snuggles of despair.
Like the despair that gives me joy that makes me curious that bit the dog that ate schroedingers cat
And killed god
when I see it on the faces
Of my ring of white slaves.

In deep thought, I return from the Laundromat of my soul
Where I pick up the blazer of my spirit and the khakis of my heart
And the afghan of despair
I realize:
I hardly knew my soul at all.

And he is Korean.

-jss 11/17/04

THE SENSATIONALIST MANIFESTO

2004-12-16T01:40:00.000-05:00

The Sensationalist Manifesto

We declare that we are multitudinous in approach! We assume the role of many, the mind of the massive. We are tapped into the pulse of planet Earth, and we are only beginning to dig in our fingernails.
We believe in ideas and do not hold by beliefs. We are willing to defend what we believe (for the minute) to the death. We are willing to change any of our minds. We are desirous of having them blown.
We think the world is a macro-organism. We consider the emergence of a super-perspective. We know that brain cells communicate across a gap called a synapse, but nonetheless, they pass on information. We think we are neurons on a global scale.
We believe words only chip away at the truth. We think the truth is asymptotic. We recognize the inherent flaws in verbal and written communication. We consider words to be extensions of the ego. We love them anyway.
We believe in the truth of the singular experience. We think that numbers lie. We search for the kernel at the heart of subjectivity. We believe that everyone can understand anything, but not everything. We are eternally astounded.
We are vigilant for morsels of meaning. We see life as a canvas. We are blind artists with paint
All
Over
Our
Hands.
We see beauty in the fields and in the city. We search and we search and can not find the unnatural. We believe in consistency and artificial authenticity. We think evolution is the only measure of time.
We are becoming more and more convinced that we are nothing and everything all at once.
As above so below.
As above so below.
As above so below.
As above so below.
As above so below.
We think we are right. We know we are wrong.
We will accept the voice of one. We revel in the voices of the many. We resist the voice of the masses. We believe we exist to transcend. We think we are only just beginning.
We believe we can do anything if we try real hard. We inject new meaning if we say it with feeling. We correct punctuation as vigilantly as we check our facts. We think a misplaced comma can destroy the world. We believe it can be created again.
We believe in the energy. We believe in the verve. We believe sincerity is a virtue. We believe in feeling everything until it hurts. We believe we can separate ourselves from anything. We believe the truth is too great to be a weapon. We believe it is like shooting the president with dark matter, the space between stars.
We believe everything until we are proven wrong. We believe in Nothing, as a state of mind. We believe You can change our minds. We believe in You.

country music, self reliance, preacher and other sources on how not to be a bitch

2004-12-14T17:03:00.000-05:00

Listening to so much good country has made me appreciate the cowboy so much more. and the outlaw. so i have been seeking out bill hicks videos/cds (the avenging cowboy of stand-up) and the following:

I recently re-read the excellent comic book series "Preacher" by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. It is a hyperviolent on-the-road book about a preacher who is possessed by the innatural offspring of an angel and a devil. He gains the power of the Word of God, decides he must take the deity to task for all the suffering in the world, and sets out to kill God. The plot is fun and all, but what made this series really hit home for me was the (some would say old-world) philosophy behind the book and the charcters within. Jesse Custer is the protagonist, and he is constantly accompanied by a psychological projection that seems an awful lot like John Wayne, helping him endure. The book exhorts us to stand up for ourselves and be real men as it were. You have to be one of the good guys no matter what cuz there are too too many bad guys around. No matter what. You need to stand by your friends and never indulge in self pity. I realize that all this seems to have been disproved by the advent of the "sensitive man," but the more i look at it, the longer i see that type of guy as a dangerous sham. He is merely an excuse to indulge in one's worst traits, ones that only hurt himself and others. Recently i had this purging session with a friend and realized how freaking stupid and unproductive self-pity is. It is a disease and an alluring suck-hole, drawing us in. It's scarily attratcive to believe you are an eternal victim and not in control of at least a modicum of your destiny. I guess this is why i have this visceral reaction to the idea of a psychiatrist, and i refuse to even consider the idea of therapy, even though so many people do it now. i will solve my own problems or not at all. Being this kind of guy (the cowboy, as i see it) is not synonymous with shutting people out or not being in touch with your feelings or being a misyogynist. "Preacher" deals with this by giving tulip the most gunslinging role in the book and having her ultimately defeat jesse's arch nemesis while jesse lies dead in the dust. And by the end, jesse cries. he is a compleat man, one i want to be. He sees wrong and he combats it no matter if it is him against the world.

Wouldn't have it any other way.

peace,
~josh

here we go!

2004-12-12T20:49:00.000-05:00

Man, no one seems to appreciate country music. I mean i come from the east anyway, and the northeast at that. I go to school now in that most urban of urbanities, thee city of new york, where classes in detached irony and smugness are required. Not only that, but in attending an "ivy league" school (well, kind of...) one must not indulge in such categorically sincere and patriarchal rot. When did it become a crime to mean something through and through? i appreciate irony very much (without i would be even less funny...) but with only irony, life devolves into this husk of semiotic self-referencing and disscociation. Irony has its good points: it's funny and helps us put personal issues into perspective; it leads to a non-triumphalistic perspective, a non-chauvanistic idea structure. But at what cost? why do we stop caring about things? Is it because the afore-mentioned perspective has diminished all issues to miniscule points on our teliological canvas? Why can't we live in a balance of recognizing our possibility of error and gradiose posturing, but still throw in that effort of inserting our emotional involvement into everything we do?

i think we can. and that's why i listen to country music.

more on what i have learned from country music in my next post.

peace,
~josh