This Week's Laughter #23
An archive of raucous-bringing
Iāve recently begun something of a new project and with it means a new source of generative language. You see, most times when I write something, I find I work best in collaboration with some archival substance. For instance, my bear book (Tentatively On Bearing) sourced a lot of language from research articles read from the international association of bear research and management. For instance, my second poetry manuscript began under the persona of Atlas (titan), and as such I sourced language from some sixty texts (either re-telling the myth of Atlas or discussing its philosophical importance). Even when Iām not writing within a framework (with a project in mind) I love having a building block. These are often standalone words or phrases I wouldnāt normally encounter. Todayās new source is an encyclopedia of moss and from it I get phrases like, āremains upright and rarely flops, even after flowering.ā
Scientific language is absolutely fascinating me mostly because it tends to try so very desperately to avoid unclear or abstract language while missing that language by its very construction is an abstraction. In that way it thinks constructing rigid sentences that allow for minimal alternative interpretations it can be construed as a more accurate or depictive language. I donāt think this is wrong or bad, just that it is fun to use this language for its unintended purpose. In that way I am become brat, destroyer of meaning.
These last few weeks I am slingshotting something fierce. I am distant pebble shot and I am hand that pulls the string taut and I am structure bearing the tension. In other words, I am in a very euphoric idea-generation time of my life. I tend to get this way a few times a year. Ideas are ecstasy for me, and so this time tends to be short-lived, burning brightly and dampening to a charcoal and ash that crackles in the slow cooling of consistent ethic. I look forward to what I can lock in for as the year progresses because I find with each additional age of my life I take more action into cultivating dreams into some achievable reality. Not that I donāt keep my share of impossibilities too, but that when younger, I think these periods of intense idea generation would scare me into inaction: here are all of these things I know are possible but can I make them possible?
Preamble by means of acknowledging: I will loudly cry against the evils that rail against my loves and do all that I can to create and support community that provides peace and comfort, and I am distracting myself from the utter horseshit of a world we reside in by choosing to witness yet again the small, possible beauties we are all capable of. This has been and continues to be the purpose of these archives of laughter.
Compulsion! In yet more narrations from the adventures of my D&D party, one of my favorite spells to use, Compulsion, came into play for more mischief with my dead-talker spirit-cat Bard-warlock. My party was arguing over who was going to do some gruntwork after a long dayās journey and while Cody is quite the mediator in these situations, D&D is very obviously an escapist game wherein you may entreat yourself to alternative roles. So, I chose a side and I committed to winning the argument for this side. I cast Compulsion on two of my party members which charms anyone who is within its radius into obeying my direction and to spend all of their movement each turn into walking in the direction of my choice in the safest way possible. So as they were mid-argument attempting to pawn off some work, I simply made it so they walked like two broken NPCs into a cliff-face for a minute. Truly I wish I could pawn off work I didnāt want to do by making people just walk elsewhere more often. I think giving me magic would be a tremendous error on the part of the universe. Yet I write poems.
Very recently I read an interview of Michael Shannon by Rachel Martin in which there are a swathe of open-ended questions on reminiscing. What stuck to me was this one question: What does age teach you about love? To which Michael Shannon responded with the following:
They're very linked, obviously, age - you - I think, you know, when you're young, love is very self - can be very self-serving. You're like, you want love from other people. You want to have love. It's something you want for yourself because it feels, you know, wonderful to feel like you're loved and - or to have, you know, a relationship. And then as you get older, you realize that it's probably ultimately more important to love others regardless of what you get in return. It becomes, hopefully, less transactional and more just a state of being... ...You know? Which is - can be hard to accept.
This note strikes me in a way that is close to laughter. You know how when, as an adult, you ever simply frolic and you canāt help but laugh even those thereās nothing particularly funny about the situation? Thinking of love and aging intertwining to develop each other is something of a frolic for me. And so I found myself smiling goofily and laughing with these lines ā that it is more important to love others regardless of what you get in return.
Speaking of love, let me speak of the heart-sized chestnut that is Other Peopleās Poems. As always, this is a home of whole intimacies and this past weekendās OPP was no different ā we even had a primary mode of transportation to Open Books (the Link Light Rail! Bless Seattle subway system) ā down for the night of our event and still managed to keep some sixty-five people entertained through the evening. Ally and I are growing more comfortable with hosting and the ebb-and-flow of the event each time; this time I was admittedly poorly slept and so had very little restraint when it came to my admirations and adorations. Little restraint in general, and only admirations and adorations to share at the event. Each OPP is split into halves ā a public open mic with some dozen readers sharing some of their favorite poems, followed by our featured and invited readers to perform a catalogue of their own making. As we transitioned between sets, I felt obliged to remind and teach anyone who hops onto the mic of the beauty of adjusting a microphone ā spinning a little wheel to settle its height and make it so you donāt have to discomfort yourself in order to use its amplifying purpose. I think love, among many other ways, is a giving of permission to care. I had to laugh at how embarrassing I was during this demonstration ā I couldnāt give an instruction without preface-and-postfacing it with explicit, āI am not telling you this to judge or chastise you, but that I donāt want you all to feel like you have to squat or arch or awkwardly bend or shout in order to read a poem you love. This is said with the utmost love.ā Is it odd to tell a group of some sixty-odd strangers you love them, and you want them to care for themselves? Or is this the mark of a state of being. Regardless of what I get in return.
As I walked without need for anything quick
On the ground I spotted the universeās reproach
For there lay an implement that read āIckā
As though the world itself had gone abroach.
Sometimes Iāll share moments where I think I am quite funny. Trademark video game of toxic socialization League of Legends has recently taken a hold of friend Keegan. I saw him online one evening and creeped upon his match history to my surprise finding a great number of ranked games played in the last few weeks (meaning he was intentionally putting himself in the cesspit of competitive toxicity). This spawned a wellness check-in to which he replied that yes, he was alright. But because Iām not a purely kind individual and do engage in a little of that toxic competitiveness at times I had to follow this check-in with the following question. Reader: I did check this with Heather first to make sure I wasnāt being too mean. Reader: I was giggling mischievously for some time afterwards.
Two of my darling friends came to Other Peopleās Poems for me and, after-words (heh), we grabbed a few drinks at the cocktail-lounge near our apartment. Jacinda and Andrew entreated us to a few hours of delight wherein there was a not-insignificant conversation about the desire for both Heather and Jacinda to treat me as a doll, finding prints and patterns and clothes that I would delight in wearing. Heather is a tremendous fan of Friends and as such now I have seen most if not every episode several dozen times, so I reference the arc where Rachel is working as a personal-shopper and, when she meets her love-interest shoppee Joshua, her and the rest of the cast describes her as āhaving found a new doll to play dress-up with.ā And this is how I felt in that moment, but in a very seen and comforted and loved way.
I discovered something called Lenticular Clouds lately! What a beautiful phenomenon to learn about. It brought me back to grade-school when we had science units on weather phenomenon and classifications of clouds. I was taught there were really only four(?) types of clouds - cumulus, altocumulus, cumulonimbus, and stratus. Which Iāve learned is horrifically wrong, since. But I try not to go out of my way to learn all the types of clouds in the universe because of moments exactly like this. Lenticular! What a wonderful name. Reminds me of lentils ā what a wonderful food. If only we could eat the clouds and excrete from our being yet more clouds. I guess in a way we do.
Self-Portrait as Oil Spill by Ariana Benson is one of those poems I thought was so miraculously well-composed and lyrically captivating that I had to share and marvel at it. Join me in reading it, and I hope it strikes you as it did me. So I will end with this poem for you.
Thank you so much for reading, and as always, please share or subscribe to my work if you wish to support or continue supporting me in these endeavors to make something beautiful.