The Bottom

This is my fourth day in a row writing without truly feeling inspired. Granted, my posts on the 4th and 5th weren't bad, maybe I should say it's my second day writing without inspiration and my fourth day writing without the desire to write. 


I'm thinking I need to shake things up a bit - find a new muse, start reading more, do stuff I don't do very often. Maybe that will help. I plan to start reading A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway tonight after I finish this post. 


This is my attempt to get to the bottom of my writers block, to find its source. 


I think part of the reason I don't want to write, even when I may be inspired, is that I'm tired of my muse. I don't want to write the same things over and over again, so I just don't feel inclined to write. So like I said, I need a new muse.


I should also try banging my head on hard objects, it might help. 

The Purpose of Blogging

I'm gonna be honest with you. I write to express myself in the strongest, if not most lucid, way. I love to write poetry because it is easy to evoke strong feeling. Concrete poems bring images. Ballads tell stories. And it's all done with a flow, in a musical way. 

Someday I'd like to be able to write short stories and novels. If I'm putting this much work into my writing I would want to be working on those things. 

But blog writing? In the past year I have became disinterested with blogging as a medium for sharing life experiences. Blogging is a good way to share your life, but it has no place in the world of art. Single posts can rarely be so good as to bring attention to themselves from a large audience, and although it would be possible to create a book from numerous blog posts, I would feel more inclined to actually write a book. 

In a blog post you can accurately represent an event. But you can't make it more than what it is. If you do, then it will be considered that you are overly dramatizing it. With a poem, short story or novel over dramatization is not a problem, story lines should be dramatic and poems should evoke strong emotion. Where do blog posts fit in?

On a blog, Edgar Allen Poe could have written: "My wife died. I'm sad. Feel sorry for me." If he had made a bigger fuss out of it people would think "Hey, everyone has tragedy in their life. Your a raging lunatic." 

But in poetry he could express his feelings in a way that touched everyone who read them and lasted and will last for centuries. No one complained. No one didn't read it because his problem was immature, they had more serious things to think about like global warming or the deaths of many people. 

What is the purpose of blogging really?

Better

I know that when writing my realizations, it is better if you tell the story behind how I got to thinking about the emotional or philosophical aspect of the matter. I've been told this many times.

However, sometimes it just isn't your story to tell. 

Competition is only fun when both parties win at different times. If one party always wins, it ceases to be fun for the losing party. It results in the winning party feeling superior. 

This behavior pattern is written so deeply in our mind that we tend to compare ourselves to others even when there is no soccer game, we do it all the time subconsciously. 

We compare each other based on actions or choices, hereditary traits, skill obtained by practice, etc. And the problem is there is no right in doing this.

People make choices based on how they've grown as a person. How they have been influenced by their environment and experiences. People make foolish decisions based on negative experiences, being raised in a neglecting environment, a hurtful environment even. People make good decisions based on positive experiences, being raised in a nurturing environment. 

There are people that were given less, and people that were given more by those around them. 

Occasionally there is a person that was able to transcend a negative environment and become a product of their power of will alone. They gave to themselves what others neglected to give them, be it belief, love, hope, courage. 

Even these few people, those who did the psychologically improbable, are still not better than the others. They are stronger but not better. The moment they think they are better, it is sure they are not.

People are given hereditary traits through DNA by their parents. They cannot chose what they look like, their ability to become physically strong, mentally smart. Again, some people are more privileged than others. 

People can only become skilled at so many things, so this is affected by choices and whether or not one is fit for the task based on genes. 

All creatures are created and remain equal in their purest form. It is up to those more able to help those in need. 

The Need for Relationships

It's the Fourth of July. Everyone will be gathering at the Rec Center tonight for fireworks, a party. They'll see their friends, familiar faces with whom they share countless memories. 


I've never gone to public school here. Over the years I have accumulated a few close friends, but when it comes to their friends, friends of friends, acquaintances, I'm lost. 


Because of this I've never been one for big, social events. I just feel out of place. 


Any road that leads away from material entanglement is a lonely one. A poem by Byron Herbert Reece comes to my mind.

I go by ways of rust and flame
Beneath the bent and lonely sky;
Behind me on the ways I came
I see the hedges lying bare,
But neither question nor reply.
A solitary thing am I
Upon the roads of rust and flame
That thin at sunset to the air.
I call upon no word nor name
And neither question nor reply
But walk alone as all men must
Upon the roads of flame and rust.  

Sadhu Sanga is important in Bhakti Yoga for this reason. Spiritual advancement without association of devotees is impersonal. It will not lead to the Goloka Vrindavan, where you will serve with other devotees. If one merely advances spiritually and not personally, emotionally, he will find himself in the impersonal Brahman. And he will fall back down to to earth for the very reason that he craves association, relationship, love. 


Human nature is so conducive for building relationships, that it is extremely difficult to grow in Krishna Consciousness if our natural impulse to build relationships is taking us in the other direction. The answer then is to use the instinct to build relationships for good, and this is done by surrounding oneself with devotees so that one becomes attached to them.

Every learned man knows very well that attachment for the material is the greatest entanglement of the spirit soul. But that same attachment, when applied to the self-realized devotees, opens the door of liberation.

~Srimad Bhagvatam 3.25.20 

Introducing Me

Have we met before? You look familiar. What's that? Who am I?


Often I am asked to describe myself, on paper, on websites, by people. I never know what to say.


"What does it say about me," I always wondered, "that I don't even know who I am well enough to write a paragraph or two?"


My friends and acquaintances know me by my actions, but websites, papers, and strangers don't know me by my actions. They've never met me. Perhaps you've never met me. After you read this you may or may not want to meet me. If I were you, I can't be sure I would want to meet me. But I don't have that choice.


I make mistakes more than I do right. I don't learn from them ninety percent of the time. Im not particularly good with people, but I'm not bad with them either. If people don't like me it's because they see my faults and not my virtues; I can't blame them because I have more faults than virtues. I see peoples faults more than their virtues too.


But I do have virtues; I try to remind myself of them when I'm feeling down. I'm bad at a lot of useless things and I'm good at a few even more useless things. I can say though that I try to be good at the actually important things. My attempts are feeble. Most of the time I don't even want to be good at the useful things, but I want to want to be good at them. I can say that for sure.


I've been given more opportunities than I can thank others for and I've wasted more opportunities than I've been given. I can't remember a time that I was ever doing everything I should, that I couldn't have done better. But that seems to me to be part of life. That there's always room to grow.


There's another part of life that I haven't been able to find a way around. In the process of growing up I've had, and I think we all have, to forge our own path. And in doing so it seems at times that I disrespect those that came before me. That by not following their path, I am not grateful to them for offering it to me. So this is me thanking you all, my parents, mentors, teachers, friends, elders, brothers, sisters. I thank you but I must find my own identity, my own way.


I am not what I should be, and I will never reach the limit for what I can be, but I am who I am.


I would give my life for my ideals, my loved ones, and my God. I can only hope that those people who know me will forgive me for what I've done and what I may do.


But I'm sorry, we haven't been formally introduced yet. My name is Balaram Briant. What's your name?

Melodrama Poem Revealed

How many nights have I stayed awake and
Pondered of my worth do I belong here
Am I different will I ever find love
Shall I never be freed from all this fear
Am I wrong or is there purpose to this
Was I created with destiny will I stay
Lost without reason to find but one kiss
Turning their backs on confidence they stray
To the darkness to hide their faces which
Society deemed not pretty enough
To be another mannequin left in the ditch
Pretty faces are never called in their bluffs
The rest to be said for you is left blank
Live how you like and in death find your rank

~Me


Had a hard time naming this one; the poem doesn't have much of a central theme. In the end I titled it "Melodrama," but I'm not quite satisfied with that.


The first quatrain deals with low self esteem and insomnia, common problems for teens nowadays. 


The next three lines (Am I wrong or is there purpose to this ~ Was I created with destiny will I stay ~ Lost without reason to find but one kiss) talk of wondering about the future, and weather it is already planned out above. 


The next line (Turning their backs on purity they stray) leads into the next quatrain, admittedly a fault of this sonnet. 

Turning their backs on confidence they stray
To the darkness to hide their faces which
Society deemed not pretty enough
To be another mannequin left in the ditch
Pretty faces are never called in their bluffs

These lines begin by narrating how kids who are not up to the standard set by their more popular peers lose hope in themselves, and ends with two lines that tell of the fate of the "in crowd" who build their "good" self esteems on false principles that fade as they age and are no longer good at sports and their faces lose the luster of youth.


The finishing couplet is pretty clear in its meaning.

The rest to be said for you is left blank
Live how you like and in death find your rank

No matter how much good advice you get and no matter who you get it from, it's your life to live. You create your own story. But remember, what you may be able to get away with in life, you can't in death. 




...
I've never done this before, hope you liked it. If you'd be interested in seeing the purports to any of my other poems, let me know which one in the comments below.

Nothing Save Palm Trees and Coconuts

I have to write again? Already? It feels like it was just yester...ohh right. That was yesterday. I have to write everyday. For thirty days.


I thought I'd read a poem I wrote last night for inspiration, a lot of times I find my posts here to be almost like purports to my poems. Unfortunately, I can't find my iPod which I wrote it on. So now I'm stranded on a desert island with nothing but a few palm trees and coconuts in the sand to write about. 


That metaphor brings back memories. Truth or dare? What/who would you have with you if you were to be stuck on a small isnland for the rest of your life? 


Maybe your a musician. You want a piano and some paper on which to write your beautiful symphonies; though they'll be lost and you forgotten, until someone comes along and finds some sheet music and the skeleton of the next Mozart. 


Maybe you'd want a skateboard and a half-pipe, to perfect tricks that will never make YouTube. Maybe a punching bag that you can use to relieve your frustration as well as perfect your boxing. A canvas and some paints? A journal and pen?


None of that sounds appealing, does it? 


Who cares about getting famous after they're dead? Who cares about being Tony Hawk if you can't show it off? Who cares if your Muhammad Ali if you can never beat anybody up?  If your Van Gough and...well that's enough in it's own, he was a pretty depressed guy. And was Anne Frank happy? She's one of the most famous journalists in history because she was killed in the Holocaust. 


No, those aren't the answers you get when you ask that question. 


People would rather have a person to talk to and nothing to show off in front of them than something amazing and no one to see. Everybody always chooses a person.


I once asked a friend if he'd rather lose both his legs and have the girl of his dreams or a fully functioning body but never find love. 


He said he'd rather have no legs than no love. And I think the same goes for most of us.


Being stranded on a desert island hasn't been so bad for this post.