Umoja Means Unity

This band is just blowing my mind. I am still in shock that they are local...March 3rd at the Atlantic? I might be there.

A Restless Alchemist

And immediately, I wish to fill the space with things wonderful and rich, passages to be explored and to get lost in. I have no idea if they will come...but I will put a sign on the door, a splash of lamb's blood on the lintel to stave off the last plague, a glass of wine for the prophet, and glass of of milk for Santa. For now, in the year 2007, we should've accrued so much meaning, so many avenues to be referenced, making a weave might not be so hard. The trick is to look beyond the computer-generated static and behind the drawing. If you just relax, they told me, then you will be able to see the dolphin amongst the disjointed palm tree and coconut print.

The hunt for depth continues, like a pyschotic chinese finger trap. And perhaps now, both can be bought wholesale on the internet. Let the bidding begin.

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So, who am I really? Just a nineteen-year-old kid in a Midwestern college.

Or maybe an Ohio stay-at-home mom with a hard-working construction manager as a husband and a retired racing greyhound named Damien, and a hopeful Nascar superstar son named Jacob.

Or a Catholic private school teacher in West Palm, only ten years out of my undergrad, and wondering what I'm doing at Bishop Sullivan High when, during Mass, half of my class looks stoned as they file down the pews and the other half look petrified of the faculty, of God, and of their own flesh.

Actually I'm a closeted transvestite lawyer, working for my fiance's father's law firm in downtown Baltimore, while playing Lisa Monelli's part in "Cabaret" downtown at The Harbor.

Or maybe I'm just a goddamned twentysomething living in ManSHATtan renting a one bedroom apartment and two nice suits while working for PriceWaterhouseCoopers and avoiding my analysis on the across-the-board sector fallout on Russian hedge funds because Vladimir Putin decided to remind the US that Bin Laden and al-Malaki are not the only pieces on the board.

Or maybe I'm a traveller from an antique land, who once saw two vast and trunkless legs of stone, and near them a faded plaque which warned of the fallen kingdoms of the past.

Or maybe I'm an idea, a incorporeal network of a electronic pulses that, when implanted into some watery gray flesh and interpreted by the soul of a man, inspire acts of courage and illogical bravery, or perhaps reveal flashes of unseen connections or lead new and creative deeds. Or perhaps I lead to despair and self-torment, incurring ruminations and reveries inthose who can interpret, but cannot construct--who can see my chemical footprint in the sand, but can only forge castles in the sky.

Or maybe I'm all words, all sentences, all thoughts spoken and thought in any language. Perhaps I am all things that have the capacity to be communicated through writings or oratory, in tongues dead and alive.

Perhaps I am an alchemist. Perhaps I've just turned lead into gold.

Incipit

I am putting, perhaps, too much pressure on this little blog. I want it, right now, to be a salvation and a new beginning, like the Luke Skywalker of my literary galactic history. I woke up this morning not at all intending to start one, nor am I sure that it will last. But I have started this year with ambitious strides towards difference and change. Let's keep it going.

So...who am I? Well, let's make a list.

• My name is not important, but I do not like nicknames. I like my full name.
• I am a frustrated bibliophile.
• I have a huge ego about the insight of my ideas.
• I have an inferiority complex about communicating them.
• I aspire to infinities, big and small.
• I achieve things that are but finite.
• I am on an upswing in life...for now.
• I hoped, as a teenager, to leave this planet and see the rest of the universe.
• I realized, recently, that to leave this planet would be to miss billions of universes.
• I disliked change, as a child and was often fearful of it.
• I have understood change to be the most critical component of existence.
• I am a huge fan of jazz, especially Dave Brubeck.
• I love critical analysis of literature.
• I feel that Pink Floyd's The Wall is one of the defining epic stories of the 20th century.
• I sound, currently, much more serious than I truly am.

That was an incomplete list. There are some other streams of words that might help: black hole enthusiast, supporter of Barack Obama, drinker of Cabernet Sauvignon, fast lover, but slow learner, of romance languages, reader of Borges, Eco, Calvino, et al. Reluctant child of the american revolution, desperate parent to the modern renaissance, and crier and page to a small community that still exists in ancient Babylon, where they speak Indo-European, and where we can trace all western languages back.

I must go. The standards cannot hold themselves, and as do all ideals, my standards will fall. But they must be held, they must go to battle. We must fight for the pax deorum or the gods will not fight for us.