Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Autofun 5.6 - But This is How the Revolution Begins

Wow, so. Life! Geez! What a trip! I mean it! Every minute is so much! Well, in any event, I wanted to touch base. I used to hate that phrase and I told my Mom she wasn't allowed to use it. I also hated it when she referred to my female friends as my "girlfriends." In retrospect, tht may've been partially due to my secret yearnings to make these ladies into my girlfriends, but actually no, it wasn't, though that would've made me unnaturally clever for my age.


Quote:
"But this is how the revolution begins: a few of us start chasing our dreams, breaking our old patterns, embracing what we love (and in the process discovering what we hate), daydreaming, questioning, acting outside the boundaries of routine and regularity. Others see us doing this, see people daring to be more creative and more adventurous, more generous and more ambitious than they had imagined possible, and join us one by one. Once enough people embrace this new way of living, a point of critical mass is finally reached, and society itself begins to change. From that moment, the world will start to undergo a transformation: from the frightening, alien place that it is, into a place ripe with possibility, where our lives are in our own hands and any dream can come true." (crime-think ex-workers collective: "there is a difference between life and survival. ")

Links:
+ What a bizarrely interesting question: I'm a Harvard Grad who can't hold a fast food job (and that's not all). The intriguing answer includes the following: "When I set out in my 20s I understood very little but I understood this much: Any educated white person in America is privileged, and no one is going to allow us to starve. We can't even starve if we want to. People keep inviting us to dinner to talk about Robert Lowell." (@salon)

+ I think I'm gonna do a Top Ten on this topic very soon: At The Morning News, "Devotees of periodicals refuse to give up on their first love. Our READERS AND WRITERS extol their favorite ink-based publications."

+ I have SO MANY FEELINGS about this article: Creative Minds - The Links Between Mental Illness and Creativity (it also goes into comedians w/r/t depression). One of them is "Am I crazy?" and another one is "Were they NOT crazy?" and another one is "reading this makes me feel like everyone and everything is crazy" and another one is "Tinkerbell, eat your pudding."
"It can be difficult for people to reconcile mental illness with the idea that traits may not be disabling. While people accept that there are health benefits to anxiety, they are more wary of schizophrenia and manic depression. There is now a feeling that these traits have survived because they have some adaptive value. To be mildly manic depressive or mildly schizophrenic brings a flexibility of thought, an openness, and risk-taking behaviour, which does have some adaptive value in creativity. The price paid for having those traits is that some will have mental illness."
+ Emily Gould reminds me of me a lot, and so this is from a few weeks ago, I guess that's how long I've been waiting to share it with you: Spring Rude Awakening (@emily magazine)

+ Me & Green read some YA Lesbian Novels and talked about them on Autostraddle you should read it it's really good, we're gonna read more and talk about more too

+ The Future Is Wow (@good)

+ The Glory Days of Online Sex : "I went to chat rooms looking for sex, which is what everyone seemed to be looking for. And the anonymous nature of chat rooms allowed people to completely blow off any pretense of reality. Why tell people you’re 40 when you can tell them you’re 38?" (@the blowfish blog)

+ I put in a request with John Moon at Achtung Baby! to do Night Truths by Stephen Dunn and he did it (@achtung baby)

+ Lady Gaga's Looks: A Retrospective (@missbehave)

+ Why are we always the ones having conspiracies and agendas ? Are we too evil for straightforward smear campaigns, like the one the world consistently wages upon us?

+ It's Get Me Off This Rock Week at Gizmodo! "So get ready for the present and the future of space trips, the design and the function, the science and the fiction, the technology genius and the courage, the quest for intergalactic neighbours, and all the spectacular views ..."

+ Our moral judgement: not so good after all. We all have stumbling blocks on the road to self-righteousness. (@nytimes)

+ Ten Porn Stars gone legit .(@nymag)


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Pirates vs. Ninjas: An Insomnia Poem

-dedicated to team autostraddle interns, who are all autowinners-

our minds buzz like bees minds

is a line from a poem by jim harrison
that i can't get out of my head
this is why i can't get into bed
my shoulder's lead

it's dreams vs. dreams, no game
my dog is silent and it's a shame
i'd wanted to bring her
fame

the first time i wrote an insomnia poem
it was about candy
i wanted it to be really bad
and make my puppy very sad
and inspire my mom to wrap some food using glad.
(that's a brand of saran wrap
wrap it up, rap it out.)

we come demanding
cultural clout

I have a million unmarked dreams in a briefcase
I'll meet you on the corner, bring the girl and

if the internet was someone's boyfriend
i feel like sometimes he'd be a pretty shitty boyfriend

I was trying to remember the first time I said it
and if I meant it,
about changing the world
and i remembered that i did

10 comments:

Bren said...

I loved the Creative Minds article.

In my experience most people worth knowing are at least a little bit crazy.

e. c. said...

I agree with Bren. Crazy people ARE worth knowing.

I love the poem and the last picture. So awesome. Who took it?

MoonKiller said...

I only read this briefly but the bit about comedians w/r/t depression reminded me of this Rorschach quote from Watchmen: Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life is harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world. Doctor says, "Treatment is simple. The great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go see him. That should pick you up." Man bursts into tears. Says, "But doctor... I am Pagliacci."

laura said...

the 2 on teleportation is a serious downer. i just want that to be my superpower so i don't have to hibernate when it gets cold.

i love what bren said, it's so true. this article made me think about this girl i was talking to the other day who's incredibly depressed and thinks trying to get better is selling out somehow. but i don't think you have to sacrifice depth for happiness.

MoonKiller said...

Just realised upon reading the Creative Minds article that they pretty much paraphrased that 'joke', but Rorschach says it better.

Anonymous said...

love the last line of the poem. you continue to be a great writer.

kt

riese said...

Bren - me too. And I agree.

saint modesto - i hope so. as long as they're not too crazy. i am a bad person who doesn't remember who took that photo, maybe the photographer will come to my website and get mad at me for not crediting him or her? and then we will know.

moonkiller - i was waiting for you to see that they talked abut it in the article, and it is fabulous, and now you see.

laura - i wanted teleportation so bad too, and i still do, and i wish there were better things forecasted for that.

i think it's possible to be happy and not lose your edge. it's maybe totally subversive, actually. tell that to your friend.

mk - nice shoulder!

kt - thankssss!!!

a;ex said...

hey.y I saw your v-logs on youube and really liekd them!!. You write werds too? LOL

luv,
anonymous

asher said...

the last 4 stanzas are my favorite.

keep writing. i'll keep reading. and so on, and so forth.

Anonymous said...

My only complaint about the poem is it rhymes in a way that is too much like "I just had to rhyme so I wrote this shitty line"

Sorry if I am being acerbic, but I have been drinking some delicious fizzy apple juice and it turns me into a bit of a Cerberus.

Thank you so much for linking to the Harvard article! It gave me an idea: http://tinyurl.com/ccfufb

I am hiring unemployed Harvard grads to help me take over the world. I can only offer shelter and food however.

I just worked like a dog to take over a government democratically and I totally lost! We now have to organize for four years. Not to mention protecting the sacred headwaters and the coastline from oil drilling!

I think I am one of those crazy people the articles you linked to
that I didn't bother to read were referring to. Oh Well! I am happy and doing good work, so what else matters?

I almost bought Foucault's book on crazy at the book store today but I settled on R. Buckminister Fuller's -Utopia or Oblivion- and Hobbes' -Leviathan- instead.

I also bought PK PAGE's "You are Here" and read most of it on the bus home.

Fantastic! Highly recommended prose from a poet.

Back on topic, I really appreciated you quoting that call to action and I am determined to act on it. (That Crimethinc manifesto...)

I hope you do too. I hope you let yourself do more than skate the surface in your public poetry as well...

That is where those abysmal rhymes are sucking you in, in your refusal, your fear of the authentic.