Extemporaneous Speaking: MrMary Why Do You Do off the Wall Stuff like take picture of Yourself on the toilet

Ok everyone I have worked a long day and it’s 3:47 in the morning I have to be up soon and I am beyond, so stay with me

One consequence of spending a lot of time alone is that you become familiar with these moments of intersection I like to call them, where that inner voice in your head, that voice that speaks for your heart, and the voice that speaks for your loins, all sound the same. You cannot tell whether you want or need something, you cannot tell whether you are asleep being ever so slowly lulled by the gentle rhythms of emergent images all fantastic just beyond their plain superficial ordinary-ness, you cannot tell whether or not you are moving or stationary because everything whether it is the children playing just beyond the glass of the window or your books, figurine or whatever, passing relic you surround yourself with, right in front of your seems unfairly unreachable.

You dont have the patience to wait, but you dont have a choice, being alone with the experience of alone-ness dictates that you will be forced at some point to that moment afterwards of complete cessation. All the voices go louder and louder till there is nothing to said or a space to say it in, and from that unimaginably lofty position, you know things. You know that that 100lbs or more body that you carry around through the avenues of your life is just that, something you carry around. You also are born into the fact that the face you wear, the personality you have is just an accoutrement, it’s just a decoration, a mark of distinction for whatever it is you are. The right before you are completely taken by the singleness of the moment, you find yourself back here.

And where are you ?

Your in a place where the word on the page are more meaningful than the empty spaces. Where we have titles, were every single action is a transaction bringing us closer to a kind or arrogant solipsism. It’s quite easy to get lost in being called Prof, its even simpler to get lost at someone giving you that kind of smile you always wanted but even received when it happens on the A train heading deeper and deeper into the heart of the city.

It’s not too long before you forgotten that quiet, the singular quietude  you were forced into  however long ago it was.  You’re back to thinking the mask you were and body you drag around are all that there is to you. The Mask and Manteau

I like to remind myself, that this is all a game. I like to remind myself that in enough time, I will be old and peeing in a bag and no one except chicks with gerontic fetishes will want to fuck me. A little while longer after that there will be no trace of my having been here. One of the keenest expressions of mortality is it’s own dismissal.

Maybe there is some meaning in bringing it to the forefront in a conscious way by taking a picture blogging on a toilet in an uncomfortable state of undress.

The last words always belong to someone else, in this case Shakespeare,

Thou hast nor youth nor age,
But, as it were, an after-dinner’s sleep,
Dreaming on both: for all thy blessed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,
To make thy riches pleasant. What’s yet in this
That bears the name of life? Yet in this life
Lie hid more thousand deaths: yet death we fear,
That makes these odds all even.

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

 

Has Anyone done this? If So I need to ask you a few Questions

“When I taught in a boy’s prep school, I used to talk to the boys who were trying to make up their minds as to what their careers were going to be. A boy would come to me and ask, ‘Do you think I can do this? Do you think I can do that? Do you think I can be a writer?’ ‘Oh,’ I would say, ‘I don’t know. Can you endure ten years of disappointment with nobody responding to you, or are you thinking that you are going to write a best seller the first crack? If you have the guts to stay with the thing you really want, no matter what happens, well, go ahead.’”

from Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers

 

Day Jobs of The Poets – & Another side of MrMary

MrMary’s Day Job || MrMary’s Writings

“Graduate Course Instructor / Scientific Researcher “

I have a entire book of poems sitting there waiting for me to finish them. I almost have an interesting book based on interviews I did in 2011-2012, and I have half a novel all sitting there  on my desk gathering dusk. Luckily I am moving from this place and will be in a new apartment where I have my own space and time to finally devote to publishing.  I will be able to make more videos. Ultimately the many aspects of my life that’s are currently on hold wont be any more. This collection is like a Monelle in a  way by Marcel Schwob. I wont get into that too much. My mentor in writing, in particular writing poetry told me that poetry is a private ecstasy made public. There are many aspects to MrMary not all of them I like to share except with a small handful of people. But I felt You have been with me in a way sorta for 930 posts, which means we are in a  relationship we have already gone balls-deep, uhm inside our respect opinions personalities and mind. So yeah that’s it

Dave

Foundations of an Imaginary Separation

The sun’s hanging high in the sky and everyone
feels the warmth of that statement, even we who

walk in the shadows of skyscrapers; man’s impuissance
in front of Nature is a terrible and dear commodity.

It’s the missing element in the story of Eden. Having crafted
feebleness into our hands could we really have been

kicked out of that closeness? Eden is here now sitting with us
but like the sun, we cut ourselves off from the sight of its

majesty in the distance, having built this world on the foundation
of an imaginary separation

Locked out of Living

I awoke 
to the laughter of children
outside my window, hoping to find  
the hidden source of their infectious mirth.

Later on
walking through the listless spaces
of that memory, I saw it was an acorn   
crushed underfoot that gave life to their laughter.

Not every seed finds its way into the earth
some get planted in the terrain of our heart giving our 
laughter a tangible origin, shading our slumbering
from the rays of meaninglessness

Eternal Meetings in Somnolence

Because
I’ve spent so much time alone,
I shake this page into vastness of the night air
releasing its treasure of words, into the thick clouds
of somnolence.

Some
fall into the fertile soil
of your dreams, while others
falling on your roof lull you into a deeper
sleep with that gentle pitter-patter you know so well.

Maybe now
as your eyes have long
reached the end of this page, the sound
of my familiar voice endures.

Complacency

If I ‘bettered’ myself you
wouldn’t be able to love
me so I talk dirty to you
at the dinner table with
family around Your face 
gets red You besiege me
with jabs never too much
and never too hard .

You’ve gotta hit me, You 
have to look back at all  
our fights out in public
to remind you of how
you can’t love  anyone
with no flaws. Flaws
fashions fallible Gods
out of us dry clayfolks

If  perfection  were real
if it were possible we’d
give ourselves to Life to
whittle us down further
to become better people. 
But there already mobs
of these better,cancerous
people grudgingly over_ 
seeing the pious churches
the drab colorless offices,
and the tense silent diners
of the world so much that
cemeteries have  spaces
for only the most mediocre
and complacent

Jessica with one “S”

I miss the day when racism was more overt
not for my sake but for my co-worker who
dives into her bag desperately digging for
a some random item clearly, decidedly lost
whenever I approach her on the subway.

It’s not entirely her fault with her prominent
Scottish last name, anemically pale skin and
her Argentinian Nationality. At most she is
about 2-3 generations removed Europe’s
last ritual blood-letting that littered the
teeming shores of a ‘New World’ with wave
after wave of what must be superior quality
human flotsam, Europe’s wretched refuse.

I miss the day when racism was more overt not
for my sake but for her sake. She’d sit perhaps
in another train car.  She’d have much less to
worry about especially seeing how Jessica
with one ‘S’ leaves the job long before the
janitors arrive to polish the linoleum-white floors.

The Promise of Eternal Sight

We’re so enthralled by beach scenes, especially
the crashing waves that seem to be the only

reminders of the untamed World that waits
for us, just outside our city’s invisible walls.

Yet for all its beauty, we fail to see that
energy animating it, giving it winged sandals

to walk across the face of the sea.

The solution isn’t to extend the power and depth

of our vision with the many cantankerous machinations

we hoist into orbit around the dense sphere of our human
concepts. Rather let’s close our eyes to the moving scenes

of this somnolence, let’s be drawn by the enduring voice
that while animating this dream, tells us also of our life

beyond human shortsightedness and reckoning in an internal
act of seeing.

That Invisible Calligraphy

Today
I gave my pen over to sorrow
so that her tears could live again
as words, so that history could be reborn

From the tale she spun
I saw again scenes of my youth,
Saw how she put bitterness into the milk
so that I no longer went for the bottle.

She was my first taste of beauty
as a nursing infant, and the first woman
to entertain my delusions.

Since she has written every moment
from between the spaces of my personal histories
why not open all these pages to her,

maybe then I will see the faint
outline of that hand, from which an invisible calligraphy
comes binding us all to the vicissitudes of Being.

Related articles

• Marcel Schwob: a Man of the Future (3ammagazine.com)
• MrMary On Blogging: What Would You Do if Your Blog Got Famous ? (aspoonfulofsuga.wordpress.com)
• MrMary’s Take on Poetry Writing Month: Day 2 (aspoonfulofsuga.wordpress.com)
• MrMary’s Take on Poetry Writing Month: Day 1: Turtle Necks and Words (aspoonfulofsuga.wordpress.com)
• Greatest moments in Blogging History Part 3 – MrMary Models & rises above Mortality (aspoonfulofsuga.wordpress.com)
• MrMary on Blogging: How Much of ‘You’ is in your Writing/Blogging/Art? (aspoonfulofsuga.wordpress.com)
• MrMary Reads: Masquerades disclose the reality of souls (aspoonfulofsuga.wordpress.com)
• MrMary & Stendhal on Love: Will He or She love you with passion ? (aspoonfulofsuga.wordpress.com)

MrMary On Blogging: What Would You Do if Your Blog Got Famous ?

What would I do if this blog got famous?

MrMary is prepared for everything. You can rest assured that if my blog got famous I would delete it or  stop writing on it. It’s been a while since I looked at my daily views. You see I write for specific reasons.

I feel that the human voice collectively as well as individually is gradually being silenced. That individual spark that makes us who we are is being replaced by societal political and economic ideologies that we are forced to  espouse in order to live the shattered lives we all lead . Blogging is a means to an end; it allows me to communicate and interact despite the heavy clouds of disillusionment and cynicism. It is a redemptive act because the want to connect with others is sincere. I would sincerely like to connect to people. Fame changes all of that.

The more people are attracted to you the more superficial  their connection to you is  I feel. Then there is this possessiveness and pressure to produce ceaseless because some want to be entertained. Of course the more and more you accede to these demands the more you lose that connection with the inspirations that started you blogging in the first place. The want to connect  sincerely and fame do not follow all the time

You Would Leave Us ?

Not completely, my email will always be mrmarymf.poppins@gmail.com but the real question  or maybe a more involve question is what’s more important to you the reader the writing and stuff that come out of me or  the person behind it. I think I have done a good job of blurring the lines here between MrMary and I.

It has been said that to walk through a garden is to walk through the mind of the Gardener. For the few of you who regularly read this blog, you have walked through my mind, its something raucous humor, it’s absurd  recapitulations of the days events, the sometimes poetic propensities, and some other crazy stuff. I have offended some of you, I have made you laugh, I have opened topic for discussion, and shared with you some of my more human moments. I am more than satisfied with what I have been doing here on ASpoonfulofSuga. I have 2 other blogs and I havent shown them any love. I am drawn to write here so here I continue to do so but every things has its heyday  and then fades. Before I left though I would do leave in an over the top fashion.

Seriously

There is a song in French I remember hearing a lot as a young lad. It told a story of the locksmiths daughter who was a bit strange, she use to hide in a charrette, like a cart if I remember correctly, staring far out into no-where , which used to unsettle the other kids. To add to the strangeness she used to speak aloud – she was in her own little word which made her doll-like voice all the more strange.

One day the other kids in the neighbourhood decided to hide nearby so that they could hear what she was was saying without being detected. and she said some very simple things: ‘Give me some bread to eat tomorrow, Give me eyes to see the blue sky, give me your hand.” It is of course more poignant in French.  Sometimes I feel that these blog post are like that, in the sense that there are moments of levity in my day, brief moment of respite where I am drawn to sit in front of the computer and write. Usually I have no plan, after I write I don’t edit and leave things raw. Actually quite often I come back to these post and read them and they make me laugh and shake my head. I am  writing as much as possible for sincerity and to share the my vision of things as it comes into focus.

I don’t know how compatible that is with fame ?

I would use those 5 minutes of fame before I disappeared to promote other people’s blog and some hum,humanitarian causes I’m passionate about. I had great “conversation” this weekend with some other bloggers, and ran into some new faces. Check these bloggers out:

http://levantwoman.wordpress.com/  I have rarely read a blog as touching and raw
http://tarnishedsophia.wordpress.com – Honest sincere thoughts and comments, I would invite her to starbucks for coffee or some pumpkin spiced over priced bullshit and just talk. She plays PS3 too, which means that she really fucking cool. I might have  to test her skills in MK9
http://www.daanvandenbergh.com/ – Daan is a real person, meaning he isn’t full of shit, he is about something When I make it to the Netherlands we are gonna shoot the shit and drink some beer Heineken first then maybe onto a Dutch Witbier ( thats not a sexual move you do with a Dutch girl named Tess or Lotte, it’s a type of beer)

Anyways

What about You, What would you do if your blog got famous

Dave

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• MrMary on Blogs, Blogging and Bloggers (1) (aspoonfulofsuga.wordpress.com)
• MrMary On Blogs, Blogging and Bloggers: Chatting w/ a Blogger, The Blogger Summitt & What Type of Blogger do you want to be ? (aspoonfulofsuga.wordpress.com)

MrMary & Stendhal on Love: Will He or She love you with passion ?

Deep down inside , like really deep, deeper than balls deep,deep… we are well aware that a day will come where no one in their right mind would want to have sex with us. For some of us that happens not to long after puberty makes itself known in someone’s life, for others of us , the mass majority we oscillate in our minds between moments where we feel completely unattractive and not so bad.   For those among the mass majority, we know that old age makes a mockery of whatever good looks we had so no  while things are going well we try to literally and figuratively cram it all in.

So then, when we are still young enough to not kick our flaccid/worn/droopy genitalia when we walk (which is why I suppose old people wear a lot of tube socks and sandals) we want to have everything on our side to help us decide who to let into our lives in a romantic intimate way. No one wants to waste time luckily MrMary is here for you.

What makes MrMary so special

On what meat doth MrMary feed that he continues to grow so great?

Well Mike Tyson summed it up perfectly when he said:

“I like the hip writers: Fitzgerald, the guy who committed suicide, Hemingway, all those guys. Some of them were alcoholics and drug addicts but they had fun. They were real people. They formed the culture of American literature. Hemingway admired Tolstoy, Tolstoy admired Pushkin, and Mailer admired Hemingway. It all flows down. The greats are all connected. One day I’m gonna write a book myself. The first chapter will be about what a rough deal my momma got. She believed in you guys and your society.”

My style is impetuous, my defense is impregnable, and I’m just ferocious. I want your heart! I want to eat his children! Praise be to Allah!”

I don’t know what that means but can one really encapsulate greatness in words ? I can only allude to it by writing these blog posts.

Getting into It

Although Stendhal wrote this specifically address to women it applies to both sexes I feel. Check it out:

You loving women want to know whether the man you adore loves you with passion-love, study your lover’s early youth. Every sophisticated man was at first, during his excursion into life, either an absurd enthusiast or  very wretched. The man with a calm happy temperament and easy to please is incapable of the passion your heart demands. The Only emotion I call passion is the one tested by long miseries, by those miseries which romantic writers are very careful not to depict and which, moreover they are incapable of depicting.

Imagine if nowadays we believed that the passion a man or women has for life was directly proportional to how much they have suffered by how much their mettle has been tested by extenuating circumstances.

MrMary Comments:

Our society now breed mediocrity. Every time we wake up to go to a job we don’t really like, only to pay money for fleeting possessions that seem to vanish all to quickly, we have to suppress our desire.  We have to bend to the images that society has for us we have to actually as I see it sometimes accept mediocrity  because nowadays we have been conditioned to  like crabs in a pot pull anyone who tries to distinguish themselves or who wants more from life than the gifts that reaching the golden years bring: enlarge prostate, hysterectomy and an endless variety of coupons and lunch specials that all come with fries and an excess of napkins.

I think it is impossible to love passionately anything, life , a woman, a child, an animal while living mired in mediocrity. Without a taste of severe loss, death, illness how can we ever really appreciate a smile, or the ruses your significant other uses sometimes to not directly say they are in the mood to be/get ploughed thoroughly. It’s beautiful  how fragile human beings are, how much love and affection we need.  The people who really love and who really live quite often are the one’s who are willing to risk harm, hell or high water for  a real experience being mediocre is an anathema to them.

I will tell you or share with you some sound advise I got from Flaubert and old friend of MrMary.

“Everyone, either from modesty or egotism, hides away the best and most delicate of his soul’s possessions; to gain the esteem of others, we must only ever show our ugliest sides; this is how we keep ourselves on the common level”

it’s a shame that to function in society we have to hide the best parts of ourselves, and we have done it so for so long that we have collectively forgotten who we are. Let this sink in

“…simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world’s champions…. A moderately gifted person has to keep his or her gifts all bottled up until, in a manner of speaking, he or she gets drunk at a wedding and tap-dances on the coffee table like Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. We have a name for him or her. We call him or her an “exhibitionist.” How do we reward such an exhibitionist? We say to him or her the next morning, “Wow! Were you ever drunk last night!” – Kurt Vonnegut

Ok So what About Relationships

I will make it easy for you. Like attracts like before you wonder if the chick your looking to pack or if the guy you want to pack you will adore you with all the passion your heart feels and needs ask yourself two important questions:

Am I mediocre ? – chances are if you are mediocre he or she is mediocre too like attracts like. Ever see crack head or drug addict couples. They didn’t fill out  a fucking want add looking for someone who has destroyed their life and all bond with their kin for the sake of instantaneous and degrading pleasure. Look at Siegfried and Roy – two gay male lion tamers ? Like attracts like.  If you are honest enough to admit that you are mediocre there is still hope for you

Was the most trying time in my youth that day when you couldn’t get the triple thick McDonalds shake through the free straw? Yeah that might prove to be good for fellatio or whatever these crazy kids do  nowadays, but what about afterwards.  Ok joking aside have you really lived. Have you drawn outside the lines a little bit? If no then even if this other person is truly passionate you wont know what to do with it and will prolly fuck it up.

There are other question a battery of question I personally have created ( have you ever tried to put on your pants two legs at a time?)  but who has time for that ?  My final word of advice: unbuckle youir pants nad look for trouble: hopefully your underwear is clean but if it isnt so what ?

“No, you’re not free,” he said. “The string you’re tied to is perhaps no longer than other people’s. That’s all. You’re on a long piece of string, boss; you come and go, and think you’re free, but you never cut the string in two. And when people don’t cut that string . . .”
“I’ll cut it some day!” I said defiantly, because Zorba’s words had touched an open wound in me and hurt.

“It’s difficult, boss, very difficult. You need a touch of folly to do that; folly, d’you see? You have to risk everything! But you’ve got such a strong head, it’ll always get the better of you. A man’s head is like a grocer; it keeps accounts: I’ve paid so much and earned so much and that means a profit of this much or a loss of that much! The head’s a careful little shopkeeper; it never risks all it has, always keeps something in reserve. It never breaks the string. Ah no! It hangs on tight to it, the bastard! If the string slips out of its grasp, the head, poor devil, is lost, finished! But if a man doesn’t break the string, tell me, what flavor is left in life? The flavor of camomile, weak camomile tea! Nothing like rum-that makes you see life inside out!”

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• Shit I say To My Therapist: Do You Like the View & Kurt Vonnegut (aspoonfulofsuga.wordpress.com)
• I’m Dave aka MrMary & I support Same Sex Marriages ||Plus Random thoughts on Bad Sex Advice from Cosmo Magazine (aspoonfulofsuga.wordpress.com)
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MrMary’s Take on Poetry Writing Month: Day 1: Turtle Necks and Words

Hey People behind a screen who I don’t see and/or know sorta,

Today I learned that it’s national poetry writing month and I am a bit happy and appalled by that. It kind of like my first sexual experience in many ways, that I cannot go into. I’m happy that poetry is being pushed to the masses in such a way as to coerce, inspire communication and shared activity. I’m appalled at the same time because I feel this coercion and inspiration has nothing to do with poetry and is in fact a farce.

Poetry to me, is something that someone doesn’t choose to do. You don’t ,one day after an epic 2 hour pushing session on the toilet decide you’re going to change your life and become a poet, right after you find a cheap fibre supplement. Poetry is something that happens, and it happens without reason.

The Illiad, The odyssey, Beowulf, Baudelaire’s Fleur Du mal, Rimbaud’s Drunken boat, T.S Elliot’s The Wasteland, Dante’s Inferno -all  these great testaments to the human experience didn’t come out of a competition or a national writing month. To me poetry comes from pain, not like pain like anal with only a smattering of lube – not that I would know anything about that, but the mechanics don’t look promising.

To me poetry is born from  an intense experience of living that forever changes someone and cauterizes their eyes to the effluvial substitute for live that we have grown so fond of. That’s the pain

Where do words come from?

by Vénus Khoury-Ghata

Where do words come from?
from what rubbing of sounds are they born
on what flint do they light their wicks
what winds brought them into our mouths

Their past is the rustling of stifled silences
the trumpeting of molten elements
the grunting of stagnant waters

Sometimes
they grip each other with a cry
expand into lamentations
become mist on the windows of dead houses
crystallize into chips of grief on dead lips
attach themselves to a fallen star
dig their hole in nothingness
breathe out strayed souls

Words are rocky tears
the keys to the first doors
they grumble in caverns
lend their ruckus to storms
their silence to bread that’s ovened alive

Not that MrMary is a Poet

Is this the face of a poet

It has been said by Stendhal actually I believe that the more people you attract the more superficial is the connection between them. I wonder if the same holds true for poetry and national poetry writing month ? Some of you may know that MrMary, aside from being a jerk has also been called a poet. I published poems in two magazines in 2012 and between sleeping next to raw sewage, trying to move before i get kicked another home, and the millions things that are   at time and is slowly glacially editing a collection for publication. I thought I would share with you from my notebook 30 poems/observations I have. They are raw non-edited, transcribed from  my weird notebook with a hand drawn picture of boobies on the cover.

I never wanted to be a poet or write poetry,  I used to think it was boring and crazy and that to be a poet would mean I would have to fold turtle necks at the Gap because I would be broke without work, selling bodily fluids to buy lunch and lotion for my hands … ( I can’t seem to be too serious today). I will be video recording these for you. I wasn’t able to do this one because I live with fucking animals , but enjoy. I guess I am a writer tho because I am sensitive about my shit so be nice

Untitled 7

It passes you by;
impactful moments in your life
that you cannot commit to memory.

Other people  can’t see them either
and I’m willing to bet that the very act
of seeking them makes them unattainable.

Somewhere
Trapped is
the best joke we ever
dropped onto waiting friends
suspecting the unexpected. The best meal we had
is still being eaten and the
kindest gesture we ever did, still grows
in the dark, shedding the fruit insignificant
reward.

I witnessed today,
one of these moments

There I was
hand on my chin,
elbow planted on the
inside window ledge, staring
through the living room-window,
counting all the bricks that hid
from my field of vision,
anything worth seeing

A box,
45 bricks across
and 25 bricks down
was all that was holding me
from life or maybe I should
call it Living

and That
made me laugh
for a good 5 minutes.
But no one was their to hear it
not even I.

 

 

MrMary Reads: Masquerades disclose the reality of souls

Masquerades disclose the reality of souls. As long as no one sees who we are, we can tell the most intimate details of our life. I sometimes muse over this sketch of a story about a man afflicted by one of those personal tragedies born of extreme shyness who one day, while wearing a mask I don’t know where, told another mask all the most personal, most secret, most unthinkable things that could be told about his tragic and serene life. And since no outward detail would give him away, he having disguised even his voice, and since he didn’t take careful note of whoever had listened to him, he could enjoy the ample sensation of knowing that somewhere in the world there was someone who knew him as not even his closest and finest friend did. When he walked down the street he would ask himself if this person, or that one, or that person over there might not be the one to whom he’d once, wearing a mask, told his most private life. Thus would be born in him a new interest in each person, since each person might be his only, unknown confidant.”

 

Headfirst into WonderLand with the Lovely Alice (1)

The lovely blogger Ms Alice from the lovely Alice at Wonderland Blog took time from her busy life to sit chill and talk with MrMary. This is what ensued.

I Love language and prepositions especially. Why is the title of your blog Alice at wonderland and not Alice in Wonderland?

I wanted to call it Alice in Wonderland, but of course that was taken.  I started at blogger, which lets you use a @ so it was alice@wonderland there.  But WordPress doesn’t like the @.  I think it messes with their Big Brother thing, maybe.  So it became aliceatwonderland.  And people called me Alice, which is an awesome pseudonym.  I love it.

That change of prepositions almost has philosophical consequences. At implies a temporary sort of experience. For example I am at the library or at the ball park (not the men’s locker room Ball Park as in like Yankee Stadium) carries a slightly difference nuance than I am in the library. I think that within a phantasmagoric ambience like wonderland this becomes even more pronounce creates a little bit of situational irony in a way. uHm yeah I dunno if that’s a question I’m just rambling I guessit. 

 

_________________________

What draws you to the story of Alice in Wonderland ? Who is your favorite character ?

I think the real world is like Wonderland.  We never know where the heck we’re going, and we don’t know where we’ve been.  We’re all mad here.  My favorite character is Alice, of course, but second is the Queen of Hearts because she doesn’t take crap from anybody.

A famous poet, 14^th century poet said something similar:

Sometimes we’re intellectuals sometimes we’re crazy were bewildered…just bewildered headless, footless, nothing in our pockets, worthless drunkards… though sometimes we’re revealed sometimes concealed sometimes earth-like we’re abased and debased sometimes sky like were exalted and transcendent…

See you keep in good company with all your smarts

______________________________

We all know you’re fabulous, especially since you have said so on your blog, but what is it like to life with as I would imagine it to be the gift and curse of being fabulous?

Whew, it is a gift and a curse, how right you are!  It helps that I have lots of readers that share my delusions and think I’m fabulous.  I am not fabulous without them.  Well, not as fabulous.  It’s a gift because I have all these blogger friends and a curse because I want to keep them happy so sometimes I put pressure on myself to create the perfect post.  Then I say, heck with it, and just slap anything up there.

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What character would I be in the Wonderland stories hopefully not the jaber wocky ?

No, not the Jabberwock!  You are not that slithy.  I think you’d be a good Caterpillar – sittin’ up there smokin’ your pipe and sharing bizarre news stories with us.

That’s really cool the Caterpillar is a strange character. He asks Alice a few times Who are you. It is like The opening of Hamlet : “Who’s There”? He is the character of latent transformation , and his interaction with Alice is interesting, he tells her how to change her height and better interact with the challenges she faces. That’s much cooler than the mad hatter. I like the idea of appearing crazy while being grounded in the truth of the reality of things

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What brought you to the blogosphere? I’m glad you are here and I have thoroughly enjoyed your 50 shades recap. What made you want to do so may recaps of the 50 shades of grey.

My therapist brought me to the blogosphere.  You see, I go to counseling sessions (btw I’m slightly “mad”) and when I was going into AliceRage about whatever slights I had suffered that particular day, which I always told in dramatic story form with lots of sarcasm and whatnot, my therapist laughed.  This is what you want in a therapist: someone who laughs at you.  But she said that was a good thing, and that I should really try writing this stuff down, because while she sympathized, my angst was, according to her, quite funny.  So I have a blog.

I decided to recap 50 Shades because it annoyed the hell out of me that any woman would like that crap and I said so and people said well you can’t say it’s bad until you read it.  I thought I was doing well enough to read Speaker 7’s recaps (which are the absolute most hilarious things I have ever read), but I wanted to be able to say I read the stuff.  For some reason.  So I started recapping, which turned out to be a fabulous idea.  I have gotten a ton of readers this way, so I guess I should actually thank E.L. James for writing such stupid books. 

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Big picture question, what is the take away message you would like your blog to say about you the person underneath the blogger ?

Crap, that’s like a philosophical question or something, right?  I think Alice is the part of me I most want to be in real life.  She says whatever the hell she wants and uses lots of curse words.  I’m not as brave in real life, but I am sarcastic and cynical, and I love making people laugh.  If I get to know you, I’ll open up and never shut up, but till then I stay quiet because I’m really introverted.  The Internet and blogging are absolutely perfect for me. 

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What do you think is your most used word on your blog and why?

Crap.  It’s my go-to curse word of choice.  I have kids, so I can’t say “fuck” any time I want (although I might have once or twice when someone cut me off in traffic.) 

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Why did you structure the blog the way you do I’m curious about it actually. Structure carries meaning of course it is an extension of how you see things and I’m curious as to why it is structured as so. When I first go to your page I see the 50 shades recapped and I have to go over to the recently post section ?

I put up the 50 Shades recapped as my homepage because that’s what most people go to my blog for at the moment.  It makes it easier for people to get to your posts to have them linked right there like that.  I saw that Speaker 7 did it that way, and I try to shamelessly copy her whenever I can.  When I’m done with the 50 Shades, I will probably make my homepage something else.  I’m welcome to any other ideas for a homepage. 

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nothing says camaraderie like many pairs of jazz hands

What do you really feel about camaraderie on the blogosphere, how you view your readers. Do you write to them, for them, or at them, or do you just right and through caution and prepositional phrases to the wind

I LOVE the camaraderie on the blogosphere.  I had no idea it was out there all this time.  There are so many people like me with the same crazy, sarcastic sense of humor.  They are awesome people, and willing to let you into the circle of wackiness.  Speaker 7 was the first to mention me on her blog, and bam, I got a lot of people coming over there.  Through her I found Le Clown and his cirque de freaks community.  I commented on their blogs, and I commented on the blogs of their followers (if I found their comments funny, which I so often did) and it just snowballed from there.  Like attracts like, I’ve found, and if someone else thinks a blogger you dig is great, they’re probably great as well. 

The very best part of blogging is truly the friendships I’ve made.  It’s given me a ton of confidence to have people read my writing and enjoy it.  But I’ve always loved to write, so I guess you could say I write for myself and for my readers.  I love the feedback and try to respond to all my comments.  The greatest compliment someone can give me is to tell me I’m funny.  I’ll work my butt off for them after that. 

To Be Continued

Dave

This collaboraton was made possible by Women’s International Month, free-time and blogger good will

MrMary & Ms Tracey Present: The Role of the Feminine in Rumi’s Poetry

DISCLAIMER: This post is an attempt to talk intelligently about some important subjects. It has been treated with the utmost care by myself, MrMary, and my lovely collaborator Ms. Tracey. It is my aim to introduce some topics not to expound in the style of an academic on dense topics. If things are not covered or explained to your particular liking please don’t think that it’s because of cultural disrespect on my part, or our part

Dance when you’re broken open.
Dance when you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance when you’re perfectly free.
Struck, the dancer hears a tambourine inside her,
like a wave that crests into foam at the very top,
Begins.
Maybe you don’t hear that tambourine,
or the tree leaves clapping time.
Close the ears on your head,
that listen mostly to lies and cynical jokes.
There are other things to see, and hear.
Music. Dance.
A brilliant city inside your soul!

–Rumi

From Ms Tracey Published here

Dancing is art, just like painting or writing. It is a form of self-expression; it is used to show emotion. It can express ideas or tell a story. However, in order to dance, you must trust yourself. You cannot be self-conscious and you cannot be embarrassed. No one is more self-conscious than a woman. No one worries more about what other people think, no one struggles more with their body image. I love to dance, but at first I was embarrassed to move, embarrassed to trust my own body’s way of expression. This poem was written for a woman.

It can take months or years to trust your body’s way of expression. You want to enjoy and express yourself, but you’re afraid. You must know your self well enough for this internal struggle to die down. It took time for me to feel the deep joy that I now feel. It takes time and trust. Trust in yourself, trust in your body. Trust in your soul.

Women are some of the strongest creatures ever created. Who cares what others think? Do we really care? Deep down inside, do we really care what others think? Some of us do. That fear swims on the surface, but way deep inside where the soul wants to be free, do we really care? Will that fear of judgement keep us from allowing ourselves to experience the unclouded joy of movement, of revelation, of thankfulness for the gift of being alive?

What about you? Will you dance? Will you express yourself, love yourself, and embrace yourself? Just dance. With music or without, it makes no difference.

Some Thoughts From MrMary

Rumi’s main work is the Masnavi, he opens it with this poem about the reed flute. I will reproduce it here told in a more modern format

A craftsman pulled a reed from the reedbed,
cut holes in it, and called it a human being.

Since then, it has been wailing

a tender agony of parting,

never mentioning the skill

that gave it life as a flute.

No matter what sound comes through the ney, – a kind of flute Rumi refers to, sounds sad. The analogy is that the human being like the flute is cut off from his home, from his origin and as a result no matter what we do we will never find fulfilment we can have all the riches in the world, we can have the most beautiful lover or lovers, the largest mansion but after a while we will tire of all these, and  encounter a real tangible emptiness, and it’s that emptiness inside like the flute that allows the music to come forth from within. Some will choose to ignore the emptiness or mask it with the acquisition of more and more material wealth, however the Sufis believe that if we sit patiently with that emptiness and the subsequent longing that is implicit to emptiness, we can slowly hear that primordial music/call  beckoning us back to our origin. That call or that music if we allow it to play, and if we allow it to inspire us to dance can awaken our consciousness to deeper levels of being and experience. In short a new ways of being, of interacting with the world can be born within us, our race religious persuasion, gender sexuality do not matter at all, this call is something at the heart of the the human condition.

The Mystical Path, there are many Sufism I feel is an umbrella term for a family of techniques and practices, very much is a celebration of the feminine side of creation. What I mean by that is that deep within, as the aspirant continues with his/her practice a new awareness is born within. It’s like in many ways being pregnant. The qualities most needed for the mystic path are that of

Listening -  One of the main practices of the Sufi mystical path is called Sama – the deep listening with the ear of the heart to this call – i think this shows the extent to which listening is important. In the midst of an accompaniment of the right music and poetry being read or sung one can (while practicing a certain meditation technique) experience not only this call but a taste of “Home” our proverbial reedbed

Surrender – One has to surrender to dictates of the growing spiritual awareness, to the manifestation of teh divine – however you or the aspirant chooses to  define that

In short one if I have understood correctly has to be receptive, one has to be nurturing and loving to one’s self, one’s fellow human being, all of creation. All these qualities and action are generally associated with the feminine. It is not so strange to find in mystical poetry, woman elevated in a way that very often we do not see in daily life, women are the symbol of birth, of endurance, of life manifesting life, of changes in time. It’s no surprise that we have the image here of a female dancer attuned to the promptings, to the  music within. We find in world mythology quite often, women as guide for heros like Medea and Ariadne for example.

I think this is a good intro to this series.

Stay tuned for more

Dave

A Friendly Prompt – Shout out to Marj and all my readers

“The crazy ones only laugh when there is no reason to laugh.”
― Charles Bukowski

I used to get in trouble a lot for laughing. I in fact still do. Many times I have no rational reason  to laugh and that itself is a source of laughter. Other times there is a reason but no one finds that reason funny. Let me give you an example:

Friend: Hey Dave, saw a teaching job you might like
Dave: Uhm… I’m guessing prep school
Friend: Yeah, coed prep school in the city
Dave: < Laughter >

Friend: What’s so funny
Dave: If i apply and get hired I will get only half the salary

Friend: Why ? I dont see it
Dave: Well a coed prep school in the city means $$$ …  and a different demographic…. Im going to have to pay brolic looking lesbian to accompany me everywhere
Friend: I don’t get it

Dave: You’re a pasty looking over weight man, prematurely balding. Why don’t you eat your lunches on the benches at the play ground and see how quick everyone thinks you’re a child molester… now imagine you have a very masculine lesbian sitting next to you eating humus and dry bread because she is that tough

Friend: You have a point I guess…. Uhm…so does that mean you wont apply…
Dave: Sure I will just, need to remember to wash my hands after I self-pollute, that way my sperm wont end up on someone’s homework and I get an unsubstantiated rape charge <raucous laughter>

Friend:  … ??? …..

I think we think we have a lot of time on this earth. 60 years seems a long time when you’re experimenting with your sexuality and gag reflexes in college, I wouldn’t know, that’s just what picked up from Cosmo while on line at the grocery. Then of course your mid 30′s hit, some of your classmates have passed on to the great beyond. Your body feel different, etc then 60 or 85 isnt that far off. A human life is not that long I dont feel, and I am not counting the hours we are awake physically and metaphorically. An average human being is awake for maybe an hour in a life time perhaps? Well there is sleeping, eating, post- coital stillness, commuting… most of our life is accounted for before we get a chance to plan to do anything significant.  Don’t forget the time and effort spent hating eat other, discriminating against each other, abuse animals, littering etc.

I was awake today for a minute

I stumbled onto a post about me not written by me or my ex-gfs (court order) but by a blogger: Marj of Bohemian Sentiments.  She said nice things about me and it  roused me from the somnambulism that people mistake for daily life. I got so used to the stares and the awkward silences and the lady’s grabbing their purses when I enter the elevator, and the whole I can’t date you openly because my family wouldn’t approve of your being black  but if you want to.. thing, that I forgot that there are some people, a select few people out there who enjoy my company, and words.

I guess growing up Roman catholic compliments and an unperturbed anus are both frowned upon by the establishment, you know what the priest say: spare the rod spoil the child. Sorry I am being petulant, I do that when I get compliments in a public manner. It takes the heat off me.

Seriously Now

I dont know what to say really, so I will recite a quote:

“They say there is a doorway from heart to heart, but what is the use of a door when there are no walls?”
― Rumi

It’s amazing to look back and see how so many people around the world are connected to so many other people. I really felt for Marj when I learned that her father had passed. I felt moved by the sadness and pain of another person I hadn’t met. Thats the power I think of sincerity of emotion and sincerity in communicating them, if you are open to it, you can be moved. When I look out at the world I see that we all build more and more barriers  to prevent the activities and words of another from moving us. I really feel that we are all connected, not in the hallmark or a limited religious definition of connection, but in something that is much deeper and more profound.

Death is a difficult topic and subject. It forces us to ascertain to what extent are we alive, it also forces us to deal with loss in a real way other than building barrier to better protect ourselves from being drawn in the depths of the human experience.   I don’t think that Marj should be thanking me, we should be thanking her  and everyone that openly shares their pain and grief. Because in doing so they invite us into a deeper experience of being alive if we choose to accept the invitation.

I’ll tell you a secret. I may spoon out the sugar, here on the blog but the secret is that the sugar is given to me from all these nice invitations I get from you guys the reader to enter into a deeper experience of being alive and a human being really.

here is the post just in case you

Showing that Blogger Love: Meet My Homey The PixieChick

I used to think that I had the sexiest blog in the land , that was until I stumbled upon the blog Exploring Pixie I came away looking to bump my blog up and turn up the sexy on here. But for now she clearly has me beat. Check out her recent posts, The Ones that I like a lot are :

1. 3am conversation with a cookie

2. To paraphrase Shakespeare…

I really like the energy of her blog.  She sounds like a funny bowl of sunshine. Other than my blog, where else can you read about Shakespeare shameful masturbation, work and all sorts of things said with panache and style

 

Listen of Songs Elderly Women Shouldn’t Dance to in the Gym

From the Window to the Wall till the sweat drops down my ….. skeet skeet skeet !!!!! (Click it you know u want to listen to Lil John and those futha muckin East Side Boys)

I was in the gym doing some light cardio getting my mind focused before I did my chest exercises for the day. While I am  killing myself on the elliptical I hear “Push it, Push it Harder, cmon now Harder!!!! Yeah that’s it. I thought to myself: “Have I not had it in so long that Im hearing perverted shit now instead of saying it.”

Turns out there was a zumba type of dance exercise class in the gym. The Instructor some blonde lady in her early 40′s  had a microphone  attached to the side of her head. There were a mix of people in the class.  it was mostly women, but from my vantage point I saw mostly old women. You know those grey haired all women named Birdie, Pearl, or Dolores, who save up dollar bills for birthday cards and love to wrap sweets up hermetically in white napkins, yeah those kind of old women.

First off I love old people and never really got to know my grandparents as I wish I could. Its my love of them that forces me to write this post. Imagine if you saw your grandma trying to spastically dance to this song:

It was just a bad image to hear the hook over and over again: How you like it Daddy, over and over again from the song , and from time to time the instructor yelling to her class : Keep it up, cmon, Hold it!!! Push it harder Yeah that’s it !!!

I shook my fucking head and went straight to the weight section and pumped some iron. But please everyone pass this around, maybe it will get to an instructor who because of your effort wont play the following three songs  which in addition to the first, I have had to see old fucking Birdie and Pearl dance along to like they suffer from a combo of  bad neuro- muscular coordination and constipation. It’s all fun and games till you see your grandma twerking it on the gym

 

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