Michigan
November 24, 1997
How can I go about characterization so that the character molds him/herself? I can start out with a philosophy. I can think of what this person’s essense is and revolve all traits that make a persona round this one thing. Ayn Rand used her Objectivism philosophy to mold Howard Roark and Dominique Francon. My theme is circular. I want to make the world seem as small as a grain of sand, within which billions of universes might exist. If you could see a picture of what my story looks like, it would be:
…of course, 3-D, if I were spatially talented, I could probably draw it…
It kind of looks like a veiny eye, but the idea is that all the lines are interconnected somehow. This is bigger and better than 6 degrees of separation. Why? Because it’s modern. It will show how technology can bring people together and some apart.
I need to come up with some clever names. But it seems that most people from my generation - men especially - have the same old boring names: John, Matt, Scott, Brett, Brad, David…and it goes on and on for girls…Jennifer, Michelle, Heather, Amy, Kristen, Shannon…less Biblical, but they are the trendy names nevertheless. So I’ll use those names because they are so generic.
Now how can I decipher and choose who should be who? How can I NOT be their God/creator, and instead just kind of like a guardian angel who guides them into their personalities? Maybe everyone speaks in first person?
First of all, I should probably mix up the ages. Part of this circular experiment involves a generational revolution - pretty much my experience here in Ann Arbor. I live with a 30, 42 and 27 year old. I feel really enriched by their older perspectives. Should I also include children? That could be extremely difficult since most adult authors seem to make their kids’ mentalities more mature than their years. How can they not? It would be difficult to separate one’s own mindset from a child’s. Maybe I can use Nichole and Olivia. How can I make my characters different from each other, yet make each of them have something in common - an underlying essence that makes us all one and the same? That’s what the centerpoint in my illustration is supposed to be - essence of a human.
March 16, 1998
As usual, Ally didn’t disappoint me tonight. My only disdain is at Fox for keeping her away from me for the next three weeks. What am I to do?
Law suit tonight: Fish, the Biscuit and Georgia’s client is a woman who wants to sue her boss, yet she hasn’t ever met the man. Bizarre? Fact is that it is a “given” in this particular office that sexual relations equate promotion. Not that the boss explicitly asks for it, but all the women who were promoted had affairs with the boss. The boss argues that in his high place, he does what any other boss would do to help out his “friends.” The client says she doesn’t think it’s fair that in order to get her boss’s attention, she must throw herself at him.
Fish loves the case because it’s law-pioneering and it is his opportunity to get on his personal soapbox. He declares - in front of the judge - that the purpose of the law is to protect the weak and women are disabled in the workplace because they can’t handle men’s smiles. We all know Fish is a huge jerk, but often in his rapid-fire rambling, he speaks the total, yet painful truth: women can’t play on the men’s field without handicaps.
Which brings us to Ally and her quirky therapist, Tracey Ullman. She calls Ally a typical weak woman for not acting on her impulses toward her doctor client. The therapist says she’s stuck in traditional dating rituals where the man is supposed to act on his animal impulses first and that there’s no way a man could be intimidated by a woman. Ally’s offended, but Tracey sets her straight with a couple of classic lines: “Men pounce when it’s the wrong woman and they fear when it’s the right woman.” Then she gives some piel about a man’s world and she says, “BS! It’s quickly becoming a woman’s world.”
And it’s true. Sex appeal is just as much an asset as brains, talent, confidence. It makes the world seem more feminine than ever before. Men think they have the power, especially when there are so many women stuffing their chests with silocone and raking their faces with makeup everyday (which Fish so smugly points out) - but men are the ones who are weak enought to succumb to…sex appeal. Women own men. And with sexual harrassment laws on our side, the not-so-attractive women can join in the power-brandishing as well.
And the little lawyer - well, he says one of the most intelligent things: “Why can’t it be a child’s world?”
If he wills it, he can have it.
If women will it, they can have it.
—
Voo Doo Heart
My chest is burning fires spears poking
Plucking, sticking, squeezing me hard like a
Relieving stress playing doh silly putty
Compressing print block sizzling branded
Cow moaning livestock chopped into two
I am a nail under hammer striking, beating
Crying with a torture chamber underneath
Ribs, breasts removed
Morphine without,
Tools without,
Hands without,
Surgical steel your invisible fingers blindfolded pain, agony,
Traumatized heart lies screaming ferociously
Bloody mangled and it won’t stop feelling
Pumping clutching at my chest,
Moaning unexplainable for
You’re not here.
—
Alone I am inside particles of sand unsifted.
I float along a sun’s ray brightly between blinds.
Artificial fan’s breezes blow me under boxspring corners.
Meeting millions in tundra darkness paper-doll linked.
Bristling savior cutting up some trash some recycle
Reused repeated yet different particle pieces blowing
Alone I am inside particles of sand sifted.
—
Element
I am in my element.
I am liquid.
I am water.
I am life.
Boiled to the nth degree,
Mystified by an icy stare,
Hailed for a taxi in the rain -
Snowed in
Snowed in and waiting for a meltdown.
Two bombs and an oxygen tank.
I can submerge and breathe.
I can blow bubbles unsoaped.
I can swallow unsoiled.
I can swim up Gulf stream, from lowlands to Rocky Mountain peaks.
Of earth, of flesh, I am the sweat of your brow.
I am the dew droplet of a leaf.
I am the splash of a diver.
I am the nick of an ice sculpture.
Drink me.
Drop me on your bones.
Dip me into a pool of infinity.
Dunk me and tell me my soul is saved.
March 18, 1998
My longing penetrates deeper
Lower into mole hog tunnel depths it burrows
Where pupils grow without teachers.
No guides on this journey, only my hands connected
Fingers running smoothly over earth and rock.
Harder is my place between sunrise and sunset
In the middle of a hole, blindfolded. Waiting.
Stagnant waters enfold me skulling their surface
I see ripples remind me of my body under yours.
Rowing I row but a treadmill leading to nowhere
And my hope along with it into the darkness
But night’s scam is always foiled by day
And bright haloed angels always trump the dampest demons.
Demi-God, knight, sweet prince, gallant Lord
You are my guiding light, the source and the end.
Dead I may feel without love of flesh,
But life I feel
As my longing (for you) penetrates deeper.
—
Miles between us keep me wondering, thus I feel my blood course through my veins, my skin’s surface - I am alive.
Dreams substitute glances. Written words displace kisses. Roses personify passion.
When I laugh I wish you could hear me. An element as crucial as water, my laughter soaks the souls of those around me and returns to myself in the form of warmth and love. It is the energy I absorb and long to invest in one soul, just one.
If you be the one, we could be potential air between paddles of a ping pong table, between the wings of a butterfly touching the buds of wildflower to wildflower.
When I cry I wish you could lick my tears just as they drop on my cheekbone. Not my kleenex you would be, but an instigator. Lay me down on a bed of fluff and hover over me as I shake, tremble, sob, keeping all words of comfort on the other side of our melancholy lair. Fingertips stroke my arm, my skin, my hair. Push my knotted hair from my face so you can watch the saddness flow from me. You receive it, absorb it like a birthday present.
As my lover, it’s the constant exchange of energy that sustains us.
When I come I wish you could look at my eyes brighter than the glare on the TV screen in the afternoon. The pulsating sensations from my abdomen up to my lips and down to my toenails are not invisible to you, just as the taught brownness of my antennas peaked atop the fleshy mounds we call comfort. Their convexity was conceived in an historical yin yang meant to rendezvous with a modern spark of your hand. Together they feel as though all others were water and oil for this more like the devil in hard-boiled eggs.
Taste me like and hors d’eourve daintily; I’m not to be devoured like an entree. Little by little consume me for inspiration. Carboydrated love burns into sweet poetry, must, art. It inspires your freshest cells to emerge from the furthest depths of your essense. Turgor pressured into doing, but always becoming, our love is the energy engineers wish they could bottle and sell.
March 20, 1998
I’ve got to set a goal. I have $349 saved. Nothing for the amount of time I’ve been working. I think I can realistically save $800 more by the end of the summer. Then I’ll be in good shape before taking off for AmeriCorps. The only payment I’ll have will be car insurance. Maybe I should just get rid of the car. Will AmeriCorps stipend be large enough to cover an expense as hefty as a car?
Questions for AmeriCorps:
Will I be able to choose where I go?
How much is biweekly/monthly stipend?
Will I be able to have my car?
Can I defer my consolidated loans?
March 30, 1998
I’m so screwed. I made a promise I can’t keep. I sold my freedom for money — or WAS it mere monetary motives? I can’t figure it out. I wrote a letter asking Mark to pay my airfare to the National Association of Hispanic Journalists convention. He accepted. Got what I wanted, right?
Well, no. Because nothing is free. Mark says he’ll pay but it means that he is investing in me, thus I am required to make more of a commitment to the company. Exactly what I DON’T want.
I could make believe my hotel plans fell through.
But then I’d be encouraged by John to find other means. I could accept the sponsorship, attend the convention and continue with my plans to leave Michigan in August. Unethical? That’s breaking a promise. Essentially, Mark wants me to stay for another winter. And frankly, I can’t imagine that in my wildest nightmares.
I could talk to him and be honest. I can tell him that I made a promise I can’t keep. I can tell him I cherish my freedom and I don’t know enough about what I want to be committed for another year. The distance from my family is always looming over my head. I ask myself: “Is this trip to the NAHJ convention worth another six months to a year of Michigan?”
Forty hours a week I spend inside an office, sitting in front of a computer. But I seem to like it. I love my co-workers. We laugh, slack off, work together. I can wear shorts to the office (when it’s warm). I can whine when I want to. I can have a close relationship with my boss, who happens to be an excellent mentor. I want to leave on a high note with nothing but kudos from my mentor. I respect him so much and I want to work for him.
But is that desire greater than my lonliness?
I spend six hours/week in the pool and 19 hours/week plus weekends in the state of freedom. Is it too much for me to bear? Especially when there are people in other states who are willing to fill that empty time with love?
The future holds so many possibilities, but I have to make it happen. Perhaps a few days to pray, meditate and think will help me make a more solid decision.
May 20, 1998
Once I’ve reached the finish line, I hope I’ll look back at the race feeling like I’ve gained a better sense of the meaning of life. Sure, that’s a lot to ask of one mere year of service, but I hope it would pave the way for a career more meaningful than sitting in front of a computer all day, HTML-ing stories about Leonardo DiCaprio’s favorite dessert.
I have spent the past seven months punching all my creative thoughts into a computer and it has just recently dawned on me that creativity goes beyond writing a catchy headline or designing an eye-pleasing web page. Besides my few faceless readers and some personal satisfaction, I don’t seem to be contributing much to the long-term human experience. Yeah, I know, it sounds cheesy, but I really believe that technology is removing people from their natural habitat. We sleep indoors, we get in our cars to go to our high-rise offices, communicate with other “entities” through email or telephone, exercise on health club treadmills listening to our walkmans and watch TV living vicariously through our favorite sitcom characters.
It’s such an artificial existence, and if one really thinks about it, isn’t it weird that one can get a ticket for walking on the beach after sunset?
I want to get dirty. I want to interact with people old, young, people who didn’t grow up in American suburbia, smart people, stupid people, poor people, divorced and married people…face-to-face. I want to go to work everyday knowing that it will be different from the day before because unlike systematic computers, people are unpredictable.
Whether I work indoors or outdoors, people will be my rain, my sunshine, my snow.——->>>>>>
- Posted in Michigan on June 1st, 1997
