What I learned at the library today

I learned that being a professional writer is actually two quite different jobs. One is the actual writing process, which you have to do all the time. The second job is selling your writing, which is almost as spirit-crushing as a regular day job, like how I used to sell kitchen knives.

The New Star Trek Sucks

This will be my attempt at a movie review. I've never written a decent movie review before.

It's all too easy to point out a movie's flaws, so as I am inexperienced at writing reviews, I will resort to being negative. But before I do that, I just want to say that I did enjoy the new Star Trek. It had some really good scenes, and it was really funny in parts. Unfortunately, it also had some really stupid scenes, and too many for my taste.

Let me try and pick out a few elements that stood out to me. For one, I think all the actors did a good job at reinventing the characters. All except Karl Urban, who played Dr. McCoy. Urban didn't reinvent the character so much as produce a "carbon copy" (his own words) of DeForest Kelly's version of the character. Part of it was the writing. Everything bout Urban's performance screamed "I'm trying to be DeForest Kelly". I actually thought this was really cool at first. "Hey, he sounds exactly like Dr. McCoy," I said. But then none of the other characters sounded anything like their previous versions. It was either one bright spot in a sea of poor imitations, or one try-too-hard in a film that was about forgetting the old versions. Either way, he didn't fit in the movie.

Another problem I have with the movie is the ridiculous position that Kirk is placed in. Throughout the first half of the movie, Kirk is nothing but a screw-up. He doesn't do a single heroic thing. The old James T. Kirk was the hero par excellence; not so with Chris Pine. He reminded me a lot of Hayden Christensen in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. All hype, and no substance. Perhaps this is a common symptom of seeing your heroes (or villains) in the light of growing up and making mistakes. They're really impressive once they grow up, and it is clear that they have an interesting story that got them there, but once you see that interesting story on film, you lose some respect for their awesomeness. In Kirk's case though, I also blame the way the writers took the plot of the movie.

Actually, in Star Trek, Kirk's lack of heroism is explained by the plot: according to the story, he never becomes the hero he was destined to be, because he grew up without a father. His father was never supposed to die, and a well-adjusted Kirk grows up to be captain of the Enterprise. The orphaned Kirk turns out to be a total screw-up, and there's no reason given why he just "fails upwards" into the captain's chair, when Spock and several others are clearly better qualified for the position. Abrams said that this film wasn't made for the fans, but if that's true, then why bother with Kirk at all? I can't see how anyone who isn't already a fan would give two hoots about this ridiculous character.

Now, about the "moral" about needing a father, the movie sends out mixed messages. First, we discover that fatherless Kirk is a loser, and he fails at everything he does. So I guess having a father-figure is important. But then, magically when he meets the future Spock, Kirk transforms into the starship captain that he was always meant to be, father or no father. So it turns out it was his "friends", none of whom particularly like him anyways, that allow him to succeed. I'm actually fine with either message, friends or father, we all need someone to support us if we're going to take on such an important responsibility as a starship captain; I just would have preferred a consistent message, or a message that took me from A to B.

Next on my list of quibbles is Sulu. I think Sulu is a completely useless character in the movie. (unlike in the original series, in which he was awesome.) He has two moments: first, he fails to get the ship started. So he basically looks like an idiot and an incompetent pilot. Whatever. I don't mind that so much. But then there's the scene where he whips out a folding sword from nowhere. I guess it's supposed to be a homage to the original Sulu, who was an expert swordsman. But in the context of the movie, it makes no sense.

And then there's the red-suited guy that accompanies Kirk and Sulu on the skydive down to the drilling platform. As soon as the guy shows up in a red suit, if you're a Trekkie, you know exactly what his destiny is. He's going to bite it. He's gonna die. And for one happy moment, I was hoping that the writers would throw the fans a bone, and maybe toy with him a bit. Like maybe he wouldn't die right away, but something funny would get him. But no, he pretty much jumps straight into the blast of fire, no tension at all. I suppose to be honest, that really is true to the original series, because the writing was that bad there too. But the red-suited guy dying is a homage to bad writing that I could have done without. Or at least, they could have done it in a smarter way. As in "no no, guys, I'm okay, the fire didn't burn me. Let me just ... AAAAGH!" and then something unsuspected kills him.

Chekov was one character that I semi-enjoyed in this film. I laughed when the computer couldn't understand his Russian accent, but I would have thought by the 23rd century, computers would be able to compensate for things like accents.

Speaking of Chekov and him being a genius and everything, I sort of liked how the film gave out that each of the crew members were experts in their field. That said, I didn't like how it was presented. Rather than showing what they could do, each character was basically introduced as, for example "This is Uhura. She's really good at languages and communications stuff. She's a xenolinguist." (I actually love that word). It's all telling, and very little effort put into showing. So when an alien language issue comes up, there's no tension there either. It's just, "okay, we have an alien language problem. Do we have an expert for that? Yes? Uhura? Good. Problem solved."

And then "okay, we have a transporter problem. Do we have an expert for that? What? Chekov? But he's not in the transporter room! Have him run down the corridor really fast and then instantly solve the problem as soon as he gets in there."

I don't know how much I want to say about the aliens in the film. Except, in Star Wars, for example, the background is absolutely teeming with weird monsters and aliens. In Star Wars, you couldn't throw a rock without hitting someone in a rubber suit. In this film, the new Star Trek, every alien makes a statement. Every alien means something, although what that is, I can't really understand. For example, there's the beautiful green woman alien. She's green. And beautiful. And that's it. That's why she's in the movie. Because she's green.

And Kirk lands on a deserted ice planet, only to discover two alien creatures, both of which immediately try to eat him. There are two monsters on the entire planet, and Kirk manages to tick them both off.

And Scotty has a little alien sidekick that does nothing and says nothing. He just sits on things, and Scotty yells at him. And he's not inconspicuous. You always want to think, "ok, that little alien is going to come in handy somehow, I'm just waiting to find out his significance." But there is no significance. The alien sidekick is just there to be an alien.

I really don't know what I'm asking for here. I guess in a proper sci-fi movie, aliens and monsters are either part of the background, or they're somehow important to the plot. But every single alien in this Star Trek film, is somewhere in between. I think it's a case of the background intent, but the director is too proud of the aliens to let them sort of fade into the background. He wants them to stand out so that everyone can see how much money they spent on rubber suits and CGI.

Overall, maybe I was expecting too much from this film. Everybody said it was good, so I went in expecting a good story. What I got was some fun action sequences, a few chuckles, and a whole bunch of plot waving. (Eg. "we really need Sulu to do a sword-fight, so just before we have him pull out a sword, we'll have him say that he knows how to fence.") The science fiction part of the film was typical Star Trek fare, which is to say, often outright wrong scientifically speaking, especially when dealing with temporal paradoxes, but I can't complain too much about that.

On "Spoken Word" Poetry

The following post sounds worse than I mean it to. I actually really do enjoy spoken word poetry, but this is a bit of a rant. Another time I'll talk about all the good things.

Here's what so-called "spoken word" poets (including me, when I read out loud) are doing. One, reading a written work. Two, being a character (in other words, acting). Three, going for a laugh (being a comedian). Four, making weird sounds (using their voice and words as a musical instrument).

None of these are an accurate translation of what written poetry is to me. Written poetry is dense. It is infused with meaning. A single word can mean so much to a poem.

So what is a performer supposed to do with a powerful word or image? In a written work, a powerful word might appear exactly like every other word in the poem. Very rarely is a single word

emphasized.

In performance poetry, if you (I) let an important word slip by without special emphasis, you risk the audience missing it. But if you emphasize it too much, you sound like an idiot. Or worse, you sound like you think your audience consists of idiots.

Maybe it's just me, but too often when I listen to poetry out loud, the part of my brain that understands things shuts down, and in my head, it sounds like this:

"poetry, poetry, poetry, poetry
poetry poetry poetry poetry
words words words words
words words words words."

Am I the only one? I find the same thing often with music lyrics. So many songs are virtually unintelligible to me. The only way I can comprehend a song or a poem performed is to read the lyrics while I'm listening.

Note to Myself on Writing Novels

I'm just typing this out so I can organize my thoughts a little better on the subject before I go ahead with writing. Hopefully I can come back to this later in life, and maybe someday it will be useful to a random person on the internet.

Last night as I was trying to get to sleep, I had the following insight on writing. Not that it's revolutionary or new. I've heard it before, but only now does it seem to make sense.

The narrative voice is as much a character in a work of writing as any other explicit actor in the story. I have read novels in which the narrative voice changes from chapter to chapter. For one example, take _Last Orders_, by Graham Swift. There are several characters in the novel that take turns telling the story. I've read reviews, and one from my mom, that expressed annoyance at this shiftiness in the narrative.

There is a certain kind of reader, perhaps the majority of them, that prefers to be led through a story by a consistent voice. The kind of reader who doesn't mind being left to his or her own devices, probably doesn't even read novels. They're probably more a fan of poetry.

At the same time, I think the English language's two greatest storytellers, Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare, spoke exclusively with conjured voices. Shakespeare necessarily, as he wrote dramas in which every line had to be spoken by a performer. But Chaucer, I'm less sure about how his work was performed (was it sung?). The Canterbury Tales are stories told with specific narrative flavour, even if the narrator rarely speaks of himself or herself.

How often do we see this in modern literature? How many writers today can turn themselves into ten writers, or as many as are needed? Today's writers are often told to develop their own voice. This is reasonable advice, I think, because the temptation for writers starting out is to try to be universal. They are doomed to fail at that particular goal, because their conception of the universal is limited to the works they've read. So their "voice" is an imitation of those they've read.

I think the best path for a writer is to develop multiple voices. Start with one, your strongest voice. I suppose this might be the voice of argumentation. It's the voice you might use to convince someone of a political point, a robust, sharp, powerful voice. Maybe with a hint of irony, sarcasm, and satire. But move on from there and develop a range, and hone it to the point where entire novels can be written as if you were another person.

And here I am talking as if I know anything. Hopefully I'll read this again in 10 years, after I've published 10 novels and countless poetry. Will I see this as baby steps? The most obvious thing in the world? Or will I have become so engrossed with my own voice that I forget this tactic entirely. I think this is the problem that many authors have, which is not so much a problem if you have an audience who loves your developed voice, but it doesn't work for the majority of writers who are limited as to how far they can grow.

New Poetry Method "One Word at a Time"

So I was reading "The Best Poems of the English Language" edited and selected by Harold Bloom, and I came on a new strategy to writing poetry. Here it is:

"one word at a time"

You'd think it was kind of simple. I'll use this blog post to try and explain. See, prose is written in thoughts, or sentences at a time. You think your thought, and then you write it down. At least, that's how I tend to write prose. Prose is a record of what has been thought. It can be edited, of course, to become essentially a script for what the writer wants the reader to think. Either way, it's a record of thought.

Poetry, on the other hand, doesn't necessarily contain the tracks of thought. Poetry has a similar function to prose, but not every thought is written down. What I mean by "one word at a time", is that after each individual word is written, the poet pauses, considers the word he or she just wrote, sees whether it fits into the poem, and whether an alternative would do the job better. Only when satisfied with that particular word, often having crossed out several alternatives, or at least rejected alternatives in her head, does she continue on to the next word.

Under this method, every word counts. Every word must be full of meaning, except maybe connecting words (like "of" and "to" and "the"), but even then, the connecting words must be analyzed, and it must be determined if they can be cut out. The only essential elements of a thought are one noun and one verb.

Now, different critics will come up with their own ideas for what makes great poetry, but Harold Bloom seems to believe that great poetry should be rich in ideas. It should be dense with thought. Every word should be suffused with meaning.

In addition, Bloom asks that poets always bring something new to a word when it is used. The English language has books full of overused words. After all, there isn't much difference between a cliche and an expression or idiom. Words are gradually worn out by so much use. And you don't have to have a huge literary background to know that a word is overused. It is simply enough that you know the expression you're using, to know that it is an existing part of the language. Any word used in exactly the way that you were given it, is probably a worn-out piece of language.

Remember, this is just one way to look at poetry, and other approaches will embrace the standard meanings of words. But in order to make every word count, you have to give it a slightly different meaning.

Unfortunately, what sometimes happens to words used novelly, is that they get broken. I really don't know the limit of how far you can stretch the meaning of a word before it snaps and becomes syntactically useless, that is, incapable of conveying any information beyond random syllables to increase the foot-count of a line of poetry.

So as you're considering each word, ask if you're using it exactly the way it has been handed down to you, or if you've managed to put a slight new twist on its meaning. And if you find that the word means exactly what convention dictates that it should mean, perhaps there is another word slightly less obvious that could take its place.

I have a theory regarding rhyme and rhythm, too. See, poets occasionally write with rhyme and rhythm in mind, and this can sometimes make them make strange choices in the words they use. The words often wouldn't be a prose-writer's first choice to convey the intended meaning, but instead are chosen more for their sound. The result is indeed a word used in a slightly new way, and the genesis was the rhymed poem. This might actually explain, partly, the popularity of rhymed poetry through the ages, as poets have found rhyme to be a useful way to find new meanings for old words.

Over My Head in Math

Among other books, I got in the mail yesterday, "The Fractal Geometry of Nature", by Benoit B. Mandelbrot. So far I've only been able to flip through it, but it has become quite clear that the mathematical language is over my head, and it might as well be written in German (ie. I have minimal experience with it, and it bears a passing resemblance to English, but not enough to make things intelligible to me.)

However, the book does contain lots of pretty pictures, and I am able to comprehend enough to be amazed that all of the pictures in the book are generated not by an artist [arguable], but by a computer program, or more precisely stated, by a mathematical algorithm that looks nothing like the final result.

The other amazing thing about fractal math is that people have been using it for the past thirty years in computer applications, and we simply wouldn't have as many of the modern technologies that we take for granted if it weren't for fractals. It may be over my head, but enough people in the world do understand it that it can be put to all kinds of practical uses.

One Day Visitors

One day visitors will take sideways steps
shuffle single-file through my flat
Like Walden Pond and Zarathustra's cave
and Emily Dickinson's attic.
They'll whisper: such a great mind
was in this space, confined?

Who Needs Goals?

Here's something revolutionary.

Why should I do anything? Why should I be anything? Why should I have an end in mind? Isn't it enough to just hang out and live, be, experience life, and generally do the things that make me happy?

I know society depends on people wanting to accomplish great deeds, but not everybody has to be that person. Can't I just be happy being me? Maybe that's the lesson that I was meant to learn all along.

This is the problem though. I've never met anyone who is willing to admit they're fine with not going anywhere.

Me, I absolutely cannot bear the thought of being a service and entertainment industry worker. I hate that identity. But why do I have to be that? Why does that have to define me? Why did it take me this long to figure this out? I can work there, but it doesn't make it who I am.

I am what I enjoy doing. Sometimes that's just watching television. Sometimes it's writing poetry and short stories. Often it's reading. Sometimes it's writing in a blog. Sometimes it's drawing pictures. Sometimes it's playing Dungeons & Dragons. These are the things that really define me. And I don't have to be paid to do any one of them in order to have a fulfilling life.

Job one is to live the good life. Job two is to get paid for doing something involved in the good life. Job two is optional.

How (not) to Start a Novel

This came to me while I was sleeping. Never start a novel or story with an abstraction. I'm already losing the words I was reading, but it was a novel someone had given me in my dream to edit and evaluate. They had started this way:

"Spring is a season that never reflects."

Or something like that. I think they used a bigger synonym for "reflects", but so much of my dream was trying to come up with a better word that I forgot the original.

I'll start with the obvious, and change to

"Spring never reflects."

losing some of the rhythmic weight of the sentence, but to be honest, that was dead
weight to start, and anything it did for the sentence was artificial.

I tried many times to rework the sentence into a concept that would be a suitable start for a novel, but in the end, the concept itself is simply a weak way to start.

Here are a few ideas I had for better starts for a novel:

"I have red hair and freckles."

"Fred stood in front of a door marked Sprinkler and Winkler Attorneys at Law."

"The petunias were blooming early that spring." (Do petunias bloom in the spring? who cares.)

I'm even thinking a novel could do without a verb in its opening. You see this a lot in stage directions and screenplays:

"A man on the edge of a precipice, a rope just out of his reach."

These are just some ideas from someone who actually has never written novels, but this came to me in my sleep, so I can't consciously be held responsible if there is or is not any wisdom in the idea. At the same time, what I could do now if I was a responsible person, would be to go do some research on novelistic beginnings, which wouldn't take long at all, and determine what the "great novelists" do. Thing is, even the greats don't necessarily have a great first sentence.

Still, the first sentence is probably the part of the novel that every published novel actually gets right, because so much attention is paid to it, and it's where the first readers (editors) are at their freshest and most ready to make decisions.

Anyways, my rule of thumb is therefore "never start a novel with an abstraction." "No, not even once. There are no exceptions, as there are in the usual prohibition about abstractions throughout written art. Absolutely never start a novel or a short story with an abstraction."

Now, plays are different, because you do have a captive audience. No one is going to walk out of the play based on the first line of dialogue. But it would still be odd to start a play with a character saying "Spring is a season that never reflects." You'd have to concretize it pretty quickly, or else leave it as an unexplained throw-away postmodern line, possibly delivered by a crazy person.

Success and Passion

I think we've reached the point in our society, many years before I was born, when success lost its specialness. The truth is, in this North American world, to be successful, all you have to do is get born. Success is so prevalent, you're pretty much tripping over it.

Now, people start to cry foul when they see celebrities becoming successful for no reason. The truth is, anyone can be that person. Anyone can do that thing that gets so much attention and success that they never really have to work in their life, except to hone whatever craft they've fallen into. We'll take acting as the example.

Now, I'm not saying that actors don't have talent. A lot of actors do work really hard to become good at what they do. However, what I will say is that talent in a lot of cases really isn't relevant. For one thing, there are opportunities constantly in North America to get a job as an actor. We still live in the age where a young person can say to themselves at age 18, "I really liked that one play I was in, so I think I'll try and do it as a living." It's really not that different from saying to yourself "Hey, a lot of people seem to need their yards raked, so why don't I go ahead and do that for them." The opportunities are just lying there in front of you.

And it's not an issue of money. This is something I should have learned a long time ago, because I read it so many times, but worrying about how you're going to get by is no way to get by. No matter what you do, the world is laid out so that you are destined for success. That is, as long as you actually do it. And this is why it's so important to pick a direction that you enjoy.

I have to admit, I have big problems with the word Passion. I don't really feel like a have a passion. But if you choose to set out in a direction you don't enjoy, you will find that the tasks you are supposed to do, you just don't do. And that is the recipe for failure. The recipe for failure is not attempting. As long as you attempt a thing, I promise you will succeed at it.

Now, maybe that's somewhat of a tautology. That is, I sort of define success as merely attempting to do something. And this is a convenient way for me to blame people for not trying if they don't succeed. So if you aren't successful, well you must not have wanted it that bad. I don't know if I believe that all the way, but I am willing to stand by it for now. I also don't mind applying this self-blame to my own life, because its positive flip-side is that I do have the power to change things from this point on. And if I "tried" something and didn't succeed at it, then that's evidence that my heart was never really into it, and it's time to try something new.

What usually ends up happening for me though, is I try to start a project, like an epic poem, for example, and I give up very quickly. I don't throw it away, but I tell myself that I'll pick it up again later. Consequently, I have a million project starts, but no finished projects, and hence no real heart-felt attempts at success. Well then, maybe epic poetry isn't for me, but I always do find myself starting new projects and having new ideas for epic poems. It's not a bad thing to just keep them all in a file, I guess.

One thing I seem to have a problem with when starting a project, is almost in 100% of cases, I get a really good start going on a project, work pretty hard at it for several hours, and then when my first session is over, and I have to go to my day job, or go to sleep, then after that one cycle, I never feel like going back to the project again. Maybe I ran up against a wall, and I just have to be aware, and watch for the cues. Usually I don't even realize that I'm up against a wall, but I just get a hungry feeling in my stomach, or I feel sleepy, and I chalk the whole thing up to that. "I guess I'm just too tired to write now," I say, and then that's the end of it. In almost all cases, I never pick up the project again. Well, I can work on that.

So for me, deciding to be a poet is as simple as deciding that I want to be a house-painter or a mover. I simply have to see a need, and start writing to fill it, and success will come.

That is how our society works. I could go into the whole thing about productivity and hours, which I think I've talked about before, but basically we've reached the point in our society such that only an hour or two of work per week is enough to grant us the standard of living that our ancestors had. Of course, one problem is our standard of living keeps increasing, so our sense of what's normal kind of keeps us thinking we're poor. But in our society there really is no need for anyone who doesn't want to work, to work.

People who don't work have a psychological blockage. This is a sickness, and it needs to be treated as such.

There is no need for anyone in our society to work. However, work is a fundamental psychological need of the individual. Even the people who don't work obviously keep themselves occupied. Working is something that human beings automatically do. It's just our modern world puts a price on productivity, and whether anyone is willing to pay you for the activities you perform in your daily life.

This is what I mean by success is inevitable. Pick up any tool and start working with it, and you are being productive. Whether it's a pen, a paintbrush, a computer keyboard, a musical instrument, or a paint roller, or a delivery van. It's just a question of getting someone to give you something in exchange for your work. And that part should come naturally.

Now, there is the question of watching too much television, being sedentary, playing video solitaire, or chain smoking, or excessive gambling. These are time-wasters, and at least one of these things or something like it, is psychologically necessary for every individual in North America. Yes, I said they are necessary, and they can be healthy diversions. That's right, I said smoking, in moderation, is healthy. I don't know of too many people who agree with me, even smokers, but I'll stick by it. The problem only comes in when these things are done at the expense of the activities that you really love.

I've never heard anyone ever say "I have a real passion for video solitaire." Or "if I could do anything I wanted, I would sit in front of a slot machine all day." No, the function of these things is a release. No one has a passion for these things, but they're things we need to do just like going to the bathroom and eating. I've also never met a person who claimed to have a passion for going to the bathroom. I've heard of a few people who have a passion for eating, but I think these people are in the minority, and they may be taking poetic license with what they call a passion, or with what part of eating they actually feel passionate about. For example, if a person is passionate about eating, are they going to eat oatmeal every chance they get, or are they more passionate about the different taste sensations they can experience. In fact, show me a person who is passionate about eating, and I'll show you someone who is more willing to try new things than someone who isn't.

So is that it? Do what you love and success will follow? Well, I can't say that it has worked in my life, because I'm doing a job I hate, and I rarely get to do the things I love. When I do get some free time off work, I find myself playing computer games, watching television, and doing other things that sort of waste my time. I can justify them because I do think I need to watch television and play video games in order to stay sane.

The problem comes in rationing out my time in activities that I love and activities that are simply comfortable. When I ask myself if I want to take up a project that I started the day before, my answer is always "well, would that be more fun than what I'm doing right now (playing video games)?" Usually the answer is no, because I left my project at a difficult or frustrating moment. And so I stay in my computer chair. I know I would be incredibly rewarded if I worked on my project, but I choose to avoid the problem of the day. So in this way I end up playing video games until it's time to go to my day job or go to sleep.

Again, there's nothing wrong with video games, but they're just more comfortable to do in the moment than pick up my project at a difficult or frustrating moment.

Now, I have to go clean the cat's litter box, because I was just on my way to do that, when I got distracted by this insight and thought I had to get it down on the computer.

Economics of Biofuel

Here's something I'm quite sick of hearing from all kinds of people who really should know better, but I have to admit I've made the same mistake. Anyways, here it is:

The argument goes that biofuel, specifically grain-based ethanol, is a Bad Thing for developing countries because it hikes the price of food, causing people to starve.

That was pretty simple. Now, I don't believe in biofuel as an answer to global warming or foreign dependence on oil, or really for any such solution. But the argument that it raises food prices is wrong. At least, in the very short run, it is wrong. This is something I learned in first year economics. So let's see if I can get this right. When prices go up, they don't just stay up. When prices go up due to an increase in demand, suppliers benefit. Suppliers make more dollars per unit sold in a market with increasing prices. So what do they do with the extra money? They invest it (What if they choose not to invest the extra gains? They get out-competed by producers who do go ahead and make those smart investments), and they develop cheaper and more efficient ways to grow crops. They buy new machines, or develop new land, or invest in biotechnology such as disease-resistant crops. The result of this is more supply at lower cost to the suppliers, which results in a downward pressure on prices.

Now, the only negative thing I could think of would be that volatility in the price of fuel will have an effect on the price of food. Because things like global turbulence and wars and stuff tend to throw things like fuel prices into wild fluctuations of peaks and troughs of demand. However, the principle of risk management has taught me that amalgamating the food and fuel markets should actually have a mediating effect on the volatility of both markets, resulting in an amalgamated market that is more stable than either of the two component markets. Thus, food prices should actually remain more stable than before the advent of biofuel. Of course, wars and other international crises could, in some special cases, have an amplifying effect on the volatility of both markets, creating super-waves and super-troughs, but I don't see this as an argument against biofuel, but as something for national governments to watch out for and create contingency plans for, just as they currently have contingency plans in case of food or fuel shortages.

The Cosmic Poem, or My Fear of Plagiarism

I don't know if this should be one post or two, because the first idea I have had for a while, and I've been meaning to write it down somewhere I can access it again. And that place is here:

The Cosmic Poem

This is a new approach (for me) to writing poetry, and it has something to do with Plato, but I'm not going to explain that connection except that it means I draw my poems from the ideal realm, the realm of pure thought and ideas. When I say I want to write the cosmic poem, or that I want all my poems to be Cosmic (with a capital "C"), I'm saying that my poems ought to be the physical manifestation, on paper or on the screen, taking the form of letters in the English language, of some greater poem that exists in the Platonic realm of ideals.

Part of my inspiration comes from the various attempts throughout history of generating the cosmic religious text. This includes the Bible in English, most pertinently, because there seems to be an ongoing attempt to match the earthly published version of the Bible with some perfect, ideal version that Gleebzod has in his library in Heaven. It is not even certain whether the original written version of the books of the Bible in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek are the correct versions either. They do contain some spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, stylistic errors. So over the years, and into the modern age, it has been incumbent on Bible translators to make decisions as to the most correct version of the Bible.

This is how I feel it is with every poem that I write. I feel that I am writing down cosmic ideas onto an English page. Like the Bible translators, I do this with two states of mind held in suspension in my head as I write. I have hope that I can correct it to the point of perfection, otherwise why would I try? But at the same time I am utterly hopeless that the task will ever be completed. Let's be realistic, the Bible changes from year to year, and so will my poems as long as I allow myself to be obsessed by them. Do you see how I have two diametrically opposed ideas in my head, and yet I require both of them in order to be a Cosmic Poet?

Let me give you an example. A while back I was thinking about haikus, and I had been reading about haikus. And as I was thinking, a cosmic haiku just sort of popped into my head. The problem was, it was so perfect and so alien to me that I was sure I must have read it somewhere and just forgot I read it. Well, maybe this did happen, but I have not been able to find the original poem anywhere. In case you're curious, here is the haiku:

So many coins lie
at the bottom of the pool;
one is made of gold.

Pretty standard imagistic haiku, if you ask me. I do tend to leave out season words from my haikus, but that's my own stylistic choice. The point is, as soon as I wrote this poem down, I was sure I had read it elsewhere. It was just too perfect. It was alien. It was cosmic.

And this is where my fear of plagiarism comes in. What if I did read this poem somewhere and simply internalized it? It really feels like someone else's poem, but as far as I can remember, I wrote it.

Anyways, if it is indeed my own poem, this is actually an effect I feel sort of good about, because it would indicate that I have reached a cosmic level with my poetry. I have come across a combination of words that the universe intended to be together, and I was merely the person who figured it out. This is my definition of Cosmic Poetry. And even if it does turn out that this really was someone else's poem that I happened to remember, I can still see the experience as something to look for in writing future poems.

Marriage as Slavery

Our modern Western concept of "marriage" is an aberration. Christians claim that marriage is ordained by God to be between a man and a woman. One man, one woman. But our modern concept of marriage doesn't really have much relationship to the concept of marriage as given in the Bible, especially when we consider how accepting we are of divorce as a fact of life. Even Christian sects who are ostensibly anti-divorce are forced to accept members who have been divorced, because it's just one of those unavoidable facts of life in our modern world.

I started to get a picture of what marriage really is when I was listening to a broadcast talking about the minimum legal age of marriage in various Middle Eastern countries. In some of those countries, not too long ago, the minimum age of marriage was as young as 9 years old. I don't know how old the grooms have to be, but I'm assuming that they have to be older. I do know that in the Prophet Muhammad's case, he was a middle-aged man when he took his youngest wife, who was 9 years old at the time of their marriage. So regardless of whether or not they consummated their marriage, there remained about a 30-year difference in ages, and the child bride, if held to our standards, would not have had the capacity to make the kind of decision as choosing a husband. We would not have granted her that legal capacity.

So it was in the Bible times, from whence we get our ideas of what the definition of marriage is. And this is where I want to declare that marriage is slavery. The Bible didn't have anything bad to say about the institution of slavery, nor does it have anything bad to say about the institution of marriage. In the Bible times, marriage was a transfer of property. In our times, marriage is still symbolic of a transfer of property, even if that's not the legal reality.

In the modern age, we began to assign rights to all people, or rather, after 10,000 years of barbarism, we finally decided to recognize the inherent human rights and dignity of every individual human being. So it became immoral to be able to own another human being, which is to say, to control every aspect of their lives. So slavery fell out of favor. Except that in some places, slavery was an entrenched part of the economic way of life. Slavery was the foundation of the economy of the Southern United States of America, for example. They (possibly partly rightly) argued that removing the institution of slavery would disrupt the economy of the South. So it took a war to decide the issue. And it did hurt the South. Of course, the ending of slavery was a relatively insignificant factor next to the devastation of the civil war, but the abolition of slavery did destroy a way of life. An extremely flawed way of life, but it did function on some level.

Now, looking at marriage as analogous to slavery, it is also apparent that marriage is taken as a part of the foundation of a way of life. Our modern society is (or was, but I would contend that it still is) based on the nuclear family. Like slavery, the origins of marriage would have the woman function as an item of property. Over the years, women's movements have softened the "slave" aspect of the role of the wife, but the root remains in property, in one person owning another person.

Unlike slavery, there was never a state or country that was able to build an economic base without relying on the marriage unit. (that I am aware of) So marriage has always remained. It has been twisted over the years, almost re-invented, really, as a contract between consenting adults. Divorce became acceptable when marriage was seen as a contract between the man and the woman, rather than a transaction between the groom and the bride's father.

And yet, despite the contractual changes of marriage, the ritualistic aspects of it somehow remained a part of our society, which is why I say that marriage today is an aberration. In today's marriage ceremonies, the bride gets dressed up like some kind of object of desire. The father still gives away the bride, even though he has no legal say in the matter. In essence, the legal aspect of a marriage in the modern world is a partnership between two equal, rational, consenting human beings. But the ritualistic aspect remains a kind of transfer of property.

Unlike the American South, there is no crusading nation that can come and enforce the abolition of marriage on our society, because all nations in the world today are built on the nuclear family. The Christian right argues that society will fall if marriage falls. And for the most part, women seem to be accepting of their symbolic role as objects and property. At least, they accept it in certain contexts.

Until the marriage ceremony is altered to look like a partnership between equal parties, we will never have a psychological attitude of equality toward women, no matter how much we change the laws.

The whole institution of marriage is corrupt and out-dated, just like slavery. Admirable attempts have been made to salvage marriage as a partnership between equals, but all of these attempts are doomed to failure, because these people don't realize that the core concept of marriage is the ownership and power over another human being.

That said, there is something of value in what people have tried to turn marriage into. That is, partnerships between two equal parties, for the purpose of taking care of each other and creating a stable home in which to raise children. Just lose the marriage part.

But I'd also like to speak in favor of religious marriage for a moment. That is, because it seems to have worked so well for thousands of years, maybe it's not such a bad thing for a woman to be owned by a man. Maybe marriage really should be more like slavery. But in that case, I'd say quit pretending to be modern about it. Admit that marriage is a transaction of property, and make the bride feel psychologically elated at the prospect. Obviously marriage as a transfer of property would not be legally enforceable in a country that recognizes the human rights of women, but I say if a man wants to pretend to take a woman from her father, let him do so.

New Tarot Suits

I set myself a task the other day, to try and come up with possible new suits for the Tarot. This was not an easy task, because the way I see the Tarot, is that it is by definition iconic and universal. But I think it is a useful exercise for understanding the tarot, and it is also a good way to tease more meaning out of the existing suits.

Every thing that exists in the universe ought to be able to be expressed in some way by one or more concepts of the tarot. In the case of the "suits" every iconic concept you can think of should be able to be finessed into the four existing tarot suits. Any dichotomy you can think of, should be expressible in terms of the suits of tarots.

What I noticed about the tarot, however, was that there are sometimes trinities that seem marginalized. That is to say, I wanted to see if I could imagine how a pseudo-Hindu worldview might be expressed, specifically the Hindu trinity: Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Creator, Sustainer, and Destroyer. Of course, I have no background in Hinduism, but that hasn't stopped me from attempting to conceptualize how such a trinity might function in a variety of contexts, one of which is the Tarot. I am not ashamed that I take elements of a religion I know little about as seeds for my own ideas.

And here's how that relates to the Tarot. I see in the tarot the creative aspect expressed in the suits of cups and pentacles, while I see a destructive aspect in the suits of swords and wands. This idea is probably strongest in the suit of cups, which is associated with water and creation. Cups are also often expressed as hearts, and the secret meaning of the suit is the womb, and other female reproductive organs. So in this light, we can interpret the other suits as creative or not, and a pattern does seem to emerge. The "red suits" are creative, while the "black suits" are destructive. (Keep in mind that individual cards and individual cases can be reversed, so while the card might be a creative card, in context, its meaning is not always creative, or can be creative in a negative way.) Pentacles are a symbol of industry and production, so while they don't spontaneously generate spiritual matter, they are just as much about creation and growth as the suit of cups, because they take existing matter and add value and meaning to it.

Meanwhile, its not hard to make the connection between swords and destruction (though swords can have other, positive meanings in certain contexts). So I won't say anything more about swords.

Wands are less clearly about destruction, except that they are expressed as clubs, which suggests that they are another kind of weapon used for subjugation and/or destruction. A club is a weapon born of inequality, used by a superior knight against his unarmed servant; or used by a peasant mob that cannot afford or is not legally permitted to use edged weapons. Wands are also sometimes interpreted as torches, especially when the tarot suits are compared to the elements, since wands seem to be stuck with fire. And wands are sometimes represented as a shepherd's staff or crook, implying a connection to the pastoral life. Of the four suits, wands are probably the closest to being associated with the Sustaining power of Vishnu. So if my goal was to express the creative, sustaining, and destroying aspects in the tarot, perhaps I have my answer in this:

cups create

wands sustain

swords destroy

But what about pentacles? If I throw pentacles onto the creative side of the scale, doesn't that leave the tarot unbalanced? Well here's the thing about the tarot. To be useful, the tarot must be balanced so that whatever you input into it, you will receive a meaningful answer. So pentacles can be placed in either the creative or the sustaining category, and it depends on the context of the reading whether they are tipped into one or the other. Likewise, wands can be destructive in some cases, but their primary function is to sustain. If we place both pentacles and wands into the Sustaining category, then we have a system that is balanced at first, but can react to the inputs of the reading. So wands, normally sustaining, can become destructive (fire, club, weapon), while pentacles, also normally sustaining (stability, posterity, equilibrium, trade, barter, system, bureaucracy), can become productive (building, creating, buying, adding value, growing, earning interest, aging as wine or cheese). So we end up with something like this:

cups create

pentacles sustain (or create)

wands sustain (or destroy)

swords destroy

All of this is just one aspect through which to view the tarot, and there are many others. But now that I've established this pattern of creation and destruction, I start to wonder how I might go about adding purely sustaining suits. That is, I want to create suits that can be taken as unambiguously sustaining, with no suggestion of creation or destruction. Unfortunately, I really don't think this is possible. What ends up happening when I try to create new sustaining suits, is that I design alternatives for wands and pentacles. And maybe this is not a bad thing. Maybe alternate tarot decks could be created in which pentacles and wands are much more likely to be taken as Sustaining suits.

For example, I came up with the suit of Bands. The suit of bands is supposed to represent a binding together. It includes the idea of ropes and strings, and even textiles and clothing. It might appear in a modern-style playing card deck as Ribbons, or possibly Knots. Bands can represent defense, in that they are equated with clothing, which can be equated with armor. Some cultures in history even made armor out of tightly wound rope or twine. The problem with Bands as a suit is that it starts to overlap with Pentacles. Pentacles include discs, which can be interpreted as shields, which is a similar concept to the armor of Bands. Pentacles also include signs warding against spirits, which is once again reflected in Bands. Pentacles can be used to bind and control elemental spirits, and so can Bands. Finally, pentacles have been interpreted as Rings, and what is a ring except for a metal band?

So I'm throwing out Bands as a brand-new suit, but keeping it as a useful alternate reading for Pentacles.

I still want to see if I can't create entirely new suits to add to the tarot, though, whether to make it five or six suits, I don't know if I can say.

My next thought was whether I could create a hybrid between two of the suits. First I thought of the black suits, and how they are both weapons: swords and staves. So what other kind of weapon would make for a decent new suit? How about an axe? An axe is made of both wood and metal. But an axe is pretty warlike, not exactly fitting as a sustaining suit. So what if I go with hatchets instead? In fact, what if I go with cross-hatches, or just plain crosses? Hatchets represent the woodsman, but could also represent some kind of wood-carving tool.

As a profession, here's how the woodcutter might fit into the tarot:

swords = spears = nomads and hunter-gatherers

(hatches = hatchets = woodcutters, guides, hermits)

wands = crooks = shepherds and ranchers

cups = bushels = farmers

pentacles = coins = city-dwellers and merchants

So this is a possible method of creating new suits out of hybrids of existing suits, but I feel like a bit of a fraud using this method, since I really haven't created anything new in terms of meaning. A hatchet reading could just as easily come up by having a sword and a wand card come up in succession.

My Favorite Sound

What's your favorite sound, someone asked once. This is not a question that I was able to answer easily, but I heard it again today, and that's when I realized: that's my favorite sound. I don't know how to embed audio files in a blog yet, and I don't know of any sounds on the web that I have permission to use, so I won't do that. I'll simply have to describe it for you.

It's the sound of a bite. The moment of my favor begins with the very rapid intake of breath, barely audible, as the mouth is opened. There's probably also a very small moistening noise as the lips part. Then, the teeth come down on the item in question, which should be somewhat brittle, but not too brittle. Think oatmeal chocolate chip cookie. Apples are too moist. Chips/nachos are too crunchy. As the mouth is closed, some air is forced out of the mouth, and the back of the palette vibrates at a low frequency. I don't know why the palette is vibrating the way it does, but I think it has something to do with the change in moistness due to the proximity of food. Like Pavlov's dog, if you know you're biting into a cookie, your mouth automatically salivates. Once the teeth make contact, a crunching noise begins as the slightly brittle morsel is broken up into large chunks with regions of crumbs and smaller chunks in the areas of separation, especially where the hard teeth have gone to work. The first part of the crunch is audible directly through the air, but the majority of the sound is heard through the medium of the fleshy face and cavity of the mouth as well as other acoustical properties of the human head. This transition is very pleasing to me. I should mention here that I most favor this sound when it comes from an external source. I actually find it less pleasing to hear from within my own head. I don't think the acoustics are quite right. Also, when it's me doing the crunching, there are other senses competing with the audible sound, so I think it clutters my perception. Now, the reason I prefer something like a cookie to an apple or a chip, is that I favor a certain degree of complexity in the sound of the morsel breaking up. I don't want to hear too many crackles and pops, as with a chip, but I do need a bare minimum of crunches. Maybe this has to do with my brain's ability to process distinct crunches. When there's a lot going on, it just sort of all gets jumbled up in my brain, and it becomes "noise." But when there are fewer, clearer, crunches, my brain can sort them out. That's not to say "the fewer the better," because there have to be a lot of crunches present just to make the sound interesting. I don't particularly like the sound of subsequent chewing. The second bite might be of interest, but beyond that, my interest drops off rather rapidly. I'm really only interested in the initial bite. However, if you can fit in a swallowing sound almost immediately after the initial crunch, I find that quite satisfying also. I like to imagine the cookie being pulverized almost immediately, mixed with saliva, turned into a sludge, and washed down, all in one smooth motion.

So for an example, this is a sound often made by characters in The Simpsons, particularly Homer. My favorite Homer moments are when Homer is eating a number of items in rapid succession. At the beginning of this post, I mentioned that I heard it recently, and that's where it was. Cookie monster also makes this sound. This sound also comes up in television commercials, especially for crunchy snacks, and especially with kids in mind. Kids seem to especially enjoy this sort of sound. I guess it's taught to them by their moms very early on, when they're learning to eat. It's pretty natural to use this noise when trying to entice them to eat their dinner. But that could just be my family.

What I find interesting about this sound is that it's almost a word, and there are a number of words trying to get at the concept.

Crunch
Munch
Nom
Om nom nom
Num
Yummy
Yum
Chomp

I could even make reference to the sacred sound of Hindus, which is "Ohm," but maybe that would be going too far?

Do you have a favorite sound?

No Applause Please

One thing I'm getting really tired of hearing is the constant applause of people in the United States whenever someone they agree with speaks, or whenever someone says something patriotic. Maybe I'm just watching the wrong kind of television, but it's starting to get really annoying.

My main example is the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. At the beginning of every show, and before and after commercial breaks, the crowd cheers. Once upon a time, people cheered with "Rah" or "Hooray". Also hurrah, huzzah. Today, people almost universally as far as I have heard, cheer with "Woo!" If the men are cheering, it's in falsetto. And every once in a while in the audience of a show like the Daily Show, there's one person who just screams or shrieks above the rest:

"aaaaaaaaaaa!" (deep breath) "breeyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

Sometimes it sounds like the people in the audience are riding a roller coaster. Other times it sounds to me like the screams of the damned in hell. I get what the intent is, though, and that is that such a show is supposed to imitate a rock concert, in which the audience is intentionally whipped into a frenzy of emotion, and that's what people go to a rock concert to experience. But it's the screams of the damned that get to me, and I hope that people would start to imagine the tortured damned every time they hear a crowd screaming, and realize how ridiculous this is.

I've been emotional too, so I don't blame people for getting caught up in it. And when it's in a studio/arena setting, there's something thrilling about being in a mob, and all the time knowing that the environment is quite safe. What I don't really understand is why the content of the show should elicit such a response. Basically the audience of a rock concert or a television show are people with houses, families, and jobs, or at least they go to school. A rock concert becomes a mini-riot, the way these people are shrieking and carrying on, and they have no real reason to do it. The issues discussed on the Daily Show are not really worth freaking out so much about, and even if you do freak out in the audience, what are you really doing about the issue? Nothing. If anything, you're blowing off steam about real issues, and you leave that night with a feeling of accomplishment and catharsis. It is clearly and certainly artificial, but the psychological effect is that you feel as if you've done your part. And so you are less compelled to perform other acts in order to fix the things that you screamed about last night.

Of course, that is what the Daily Show is. It's part comedy, part rock concert, and just designed to make you feel good about yourself, so that you watch the advertisements and keep coming back for more. The issues discussed in the show are just designed to make you feel morally superior for watching this kind of show instead of something less edgy, whether it's news or entertainment.

But the problem is not just limited to the Daily Show, as I often see this kind of behavior in college or university settings, like when a school invites a celebrity pseudo-intellectual to speak or debate. Here the crowd is used to being entertained by rock stars, and then they're placed into this format where there's a serious debate going on. They act strangely, and they can either turn on the speaker or misconstrue his words in a strange, populist way.

In some ways, I'd prefer a crowd that says "Boo!" to a crowd that cheers. But the problem with that kind of crowd is that it contains no individuals. I guess what I want from a crowd is confusion. I want some people cheering, some people booing, and the majority thoughtfully contemplating. I guess that makes for a pretty boring performance.

It's such a strange phenomenon when someone goes against a crowd, so you hardly ever have a divided crowd that can simultaneously boo and cheer. When Lincoln said "a house divided against itself cannot stand," I imagine him saying it in the literal sense, in the sense of a theater house. I suppose there's an intentional irony in my using it in this sense, since Lincoln was killed in a theater.

A single heckler can disrupt the entire room; even if the whole room disagrees with him, chaos erupts, because other people might try to shout down the heckler. The entertainer has lots of tricks to drown out hecklers though, especially in a musical setting.

Christian children?

Richard Dawkins argues that children ought not to be labeled with their parents' faith until they are old enough to decide for themselves whether they want to be a part of that faith. Dawkins objects to a child, for example, being called a

Muslim boy
Muslim girl
Christian boy
Christian girl
Jewish boy
Jewish girl
Catholic boy
Catholic girl
Anglican boy
Anglican girl
Protestant boy
Protestant girl

It's fair enough, I'd say, when it comes to issues of belief. How can you tell a child, "because you are born into this family, you must believe that a man can come back from the dead." A reasonable person wouldn't say such a thing, but I'd have to say I don't necessarily object to it. I can see Dawkins' point here though. We are an enlightened society, and we privilege reason, empiricism, logic, and science. So it doesn't matter what our parents tell us in the course of the stories they read to us out of the Bible. Until they are tested scientifically, it is essentially meaningless to say "I believe this" or "I don't believe that."

So what we're left with, is children who say they believe something because it's a part of their identity, not because they have examined it and found it to be true or false.

It reminds me of the debate teams we had in school. Here's how my grade 11 English teacher handled the topic (in a British Columbia state secondary school). We would be given a controversial topic to debate; in one case it was abortion. Before the teacher split the class into two groups, he would ask for the class to put up their hands if they thought abortion was wrong.

"Put up your hand if you think abortion is wrong, and leave your hand up for a minute," he said. I don't know how it worked out so well, but just about exactly half the class was pro-life, and half the class was pro-choice. (30 kids in the class, 15 pro-life and 15 pro-choice or undecided.) My teacher then pointed to each student in turn, while the pro-lifers had their hands raised, and placed them into team 1 or team 2. He didn't say which team would be debating which side, but it became clear at the end of this exercise that most of the pro-lifers were in one group, while the other group was mostly pro-choicers. There was evidently some cross-over, which I assume was also deliberate. I think maybe you can see where I'm going with this, so you won't be surprised to learn that the teacher then assigned a side of the debate to each team. The pro-lifers were assigned the side of the debate that argued in favor of a mother's right to choose. The pro-choicers were assigned to argue that human life begins at conception and thus has rights that ought to be protected. As far as I know, no student protested. We all performed our assignments according to our academic proficiency or lack thereof. None of the students took the opportunity to parody the other side; everyone took the assignment seriously.

Now, we were probably old enough by that time to be considered adults, and those of us who were Christians could probably call ourselves Christians and not be objectionable to Richard Dawkins. But what this illustrates is the difference between being able to hold a belief and being able to evaluate it from an objective point of reference.

That covers the issue of belief, I think. By analogy, I'd say that calling a child a Christian child is the equivalent of putting them on the Christian side of the debate team before they have learned all the facts. Just like my teacher put half the class on the pro-choice side even though they might not have been informed of all the facts surrounding the issue, and they would have to do some reading in order to perform their debating duties. People can change their mind when they get older, and children can decide that they don't like the label they've been given, and change it.

It's not always the easiest thing for a person to do, to change their label and deny some of the things their parents believe, but it's pretty much always been a part of growing up, and even if it doesn't happen with regard to religion, it will at least happen with regard to some other facet of a person's life, which could include sexuality, politics, choice of career, or anything else.

Now, about Richard Dawkins' objection, the other thing I think he fails to mention are the rituals and prohibitions of religion. For one example, what about the Jewish or Muslim student in a school in Europe or America, who doesn't eat pork? How is this supposed to be explained? If children cannot be labeled as Christian or Muslim, then how does one go about explaining to the other students that little Muhammed can't have bacon? Or how does Muhammed explain it? If his parents have been good Muslim parents, then they have explained to him that "you are a Muslim, and we Muslims do not eat pork, and we pray five times a day . . ." etc. Any normal kid is going to say to his classmates "I am a Muslim, so I don't eat ham." And a typical teacher in the modern West is going to understand that Muslims and Jews don't eat pork, and that that's okay. Just don't give that particular kid a ham sandwich.

Problems will naturally arise if either the Muslims or the Christians start using terms like "filthy" to describe the others' eating habits. However, the solution is reasoned explanation and intervention by the teacher, who should explain to the students that "here at school, we don't call each other filthy, dirty, or smelly. Children of different religions have different habits."

Is my picture of the world too rosy? Is this too much to ask of teachers? Or is this too much to ask of teachers to ask of students?

See, I'm not in agreement with Richard Dawkins on his idea that children should not be labeled. I don't believe that it is possible to extinguish labels, and they're going to come up whether you want them to or not. And how hard is it to accept that children of different faiths have different customs and beliefs?

I guess in a way, I am nearer to Dawkins' ideal world. The world he rails against is a world in which even the teachers are complicit in the denigration of minority children. The world Dawkins wants to change is the world in which Christian prayer is mandated every morning, and children pray to Jesus, sing songs about Jesus, and are taught that the Bible is the best and only true book.

I'd actually agree with the latter statement, but I believe that what needs to be taught in schools is that there are other people in the world who have their own scriptures. And maybe the teacher believes that the Bible is the best one, but as a teacher, shklis job is to present the alternatives. After all, you can't know that the Bible is the best and most true book unless you are able to compare it to other examples. And anyways, school is not necessarily in the business of telling you what is best and most true, but of teaching you how to think and communicate using examples drawn from literature, religion, and culture, including both what is thought best and most true, and what is thought poor of, and why does there need to be a value judgment anyways, on a piece meant to illustrate a concept?

The Imbalance of Protest

This is a fairly new concept to me, since I'm only on the brink of possibly entering into an administrative or managerial role in some company or other.

Let's look at a protest from both points of view involved.

From the point of view of the authority, the people being disrupted, a protest is an inconvenience, an annoyance. And there are a couple of options you have, none of which involve a special level of effort.

If you are holding an event or a meeting, or some kind of ceremony, one of the things you can do is postpone it to a later date, or move it to a new location, away from the disrupting influence. This is effective because protesters, by definition, have less organizational resources than the "legitimate" authority. You can almost always out-organize protesters.

The other option you have is to remove the protesters, and you can do this in advance or on location. When I say you can remove the protesters, I'm not talking about activeness here, because you can call the police in to do this for you. You don't really have to lift a finger. The only problems that could arise are when your event becomes so large that it attracts such a large group of protesters, that the normal police force of your host community cannot effectively remove the protesters. You have to either hold it in a bigger community, or give the police advance warning, if you know that a protest is possible or likely.

So when a protest happens, you are justifiably annoyed, but it might as well be like calling a ball game on account of rain. It might as well be as if someone forgot some key paperwork, and you have to reconvene at a later date.

Now, to switch things around, we can begin to look at things from the point of view of the protesters. To a protester, a protest is a big deal. To some of them, it means the world, and they are willing to possibly be arrested for their protest. A protester's whole life is put on hold by a protest, and their entire psychology is based in whatever issue they are protesting. To them, nothing else matters. They also tend to perceive their effect as rather large. To them, a victory is to make the rich and powerful, the decision-makers to take notice.

Unfortunately, many protests don't even get that much attention from the powerful. The protesters' only allies are the media. The media are able to make a story out of "we managed to annoy this big corporation/this government."

So for the protester, it is a matter of life and death, but for the authority, it's merely an inconvenience. Often though, the authority is willing to dignify the protest with indignation that it probably doesn't really deserve. I was walking along the sidewalk the other day, and it was flooded with ice-melt. I felt a burning anger in my heart at the inconvenience of having to go a few feet out of my way, and if there had been someone to lash out at, I would have. Authorities tend to do this with minor inconveniences like having to reschedule meetings. This is because it is the bureaucratic mentality that any little change in procedure is unthinkable, unacceptable, and needs to be corrected, loudly. Possibly with police intervention. But these bureaucrats are going to go to sleep in their own homes that night, wake up with the same job the next day, and get pissed off to the same degree that the photocopier still isn't working. They'll deal with it.

The protesters won't necessarily deal. They might wake up in jail. They might lose their jobs. They certainly don't have a corporate juggernaut to keep them rolling along in their fight against the system. They have the media, but the media can only do so much, and (as I've mentioned before) the media cannot be trusted. Not by the protesters, not by the powerful, and not by the consumers. The protesters are the ultimate underdogs in any such contest.

There Are No Accidents in Poetry

There are no accidents in poetry.

I'd say this goes all the way back to the book of Job, whenever that was written. In the book of Job, all kinds of bad things happen to Job, and as far as he knows, there's no reason for them. But it takes the whole book for him to realize this. Each of the speeches of his friends seems to posit a reasonable explanation for what has befallen him.

I recently read a poem by a fellow student, and in this poem, what happens is a woman does a strip-tease in a hotel room, throws an article of clothing on top of a lamp, it catches on fire, and it burns the apartment up, including her. An accident, right?

As the title of this post suggests, there are no accidents in poetry. I could equally say that there are no accidents in dreams. There are no accidents in fantasies. There are no accidents in daydreams. There are no accidents in wishing.

That is to say, if something happens in a poem, it is because some part of the poet wished for it to happen. Shall I add murder to the list of crimes of poets? I think I might, especially when there is no poetic justification for the death. (Incidentally, I have been guilty of destroying the entire world in a poem, just for the sake of destruction.)

Tragic loss plays a few key roles in poetry and fiction. Often, it is something for the protagonist and other characters to rail against. "My friend is dead! Why did God/the universe inflict this on me?" Other times it is a lesson for the reader to avoid circumstances. "Oh he knew that if he ate the fruit of the Tree of Certain Death that he would die! And so he has! Alas, but we cannot grieve, for the universe is just! It rewards stupidity with pain, and immorality with vengeance!"

I guess my problem with the poet as murderer is that sometimes the poet sends the wrong message with the death of a character. My friend's poem is an example of this, I think. We are given very few details of the dancer, except a few about what her lifestyle might have been like, the fact that she's in a hotel, the fact that she's willing to do a striptease, and we begin to get the picture that some folks might consider that she's almost deserving of a fate approximating what she got. It was her who threw the camisole on the lamp, after all. She accidentally killed herself.

And yet, there are no accidents in poetry. The lesson in the poem is that the dancer has transgressed against the law of the universe, and the universe has seen fit to extinguish her.

So, if I had the chance, I would re-write the poem, and include enough details to take the blame off the dancer. I would make her more like Job, even though she might still have a lifestyle filled with drugs, sex, and lies. I would be left with a very different portrait of a person, I suppose. But the fact is, I don't believe that anyone deserves to die. The closest I could get would be that those who deliberately commit suicide might deserve it, and yet I can't quite bring myself even to that point.

The problem with my friend's poem is that it is almost comical. The reader is almost brought to laugh at the self-inflicted plight of this pathetic, worthless creature. We're not sorry to see her go. We cheer the flames on. And no, I don't think this idea is coming from within me. I think it is implicit in the work of art whenever a person dies accidentally by their own hand, in a poem or work of fiction.

Poem in Progress

The following is a rough extract from a poem I'm working on as part of a larger project for my creative writing project. I imagine it will look quite different when it is done, and it will be a lot longer. I post it here merely as an example of the kind of work I'm trying to take seriously at the moment, since most of what this blog is is a break from seriousness, and a place to put things that I don't really care about. I'm sort of going against that in this post, but not really, because this poem is by no means complete, nor am I entirely certain whether it will end up in the final compilation. Anyways, might as well give you the poem.

In one dream, we explored the sea,
played in its shallows, scoured its depths
Humbobs, makers of ropes
designed fleets of fortresses
so big that we could cover the edge of the world
just like the entrances of our houseboats.
Young jorns climbed the ropes
up into the sun and down into the abyss
We ate the airy fruit, swallowed the dense bread,
and danced to the scrolls of all-is-oneness.
Six vectors belonged to the kings of us
but scant record of the seventh remains.

Now we are a valley people,
though we still wander, the seventh vector is our anchor.
I don’t know if we ever had hearts
when we were being born in the sea.
And the entrance to the abyss is not known,
even though the Scurbdads strung their guidestrings.
The leading twines are cut, the supporting lines are tangled,
and we don’t know the way to heaven or hell.
We call out in the voices of birds,
and we have learned how the echoes answer:
“Go back. I am a solid wall.”
“Turn around. I’m just the ground.”

Commas and Poetry

I think commas have been very lucky in today's poetry. It seems that other punctuation has been either abandoned or severely reduced. Yet the comma remains.

The period is often omitted due to its ominous finality. Language with periods is neither nuanced nor particularly intelligent. Language with commas is open to interpretation. Language with commas can hold multiple ideas in the same thought. We don't often speak out loud in periods anymore.

Capitalization has also received a major blow in that it is no longer really quite comfortable to include capital letters in a familiar or politically undersurging poetry. Language with capital letters almost seems authoritarian. Language without them is inviting the reader to decide which words are the most important. The little I is indicative of a non-threatening author. An entire line of little letters is aesthetically more pleasing than a line with the occasional mutant capital.

On the internet a string of all capital letters indicate shouting. By the inverse logic a passage neglecting to capitalize anything could almost be construed as a whisper.

If You Should Stumble Upon This Blog Accidentally

Up until now, I have purposefully not promoted this blog, not to my friends, family, colleagues, or anybody. But I have written it with the belief that eventually they all might see parts of it.

It's like standing in the middle of a prairie where no roads are, and stripping naked, waiting to see if someone comes along.

Anyways, if you do happen to see something that I've written that strikes you, please give a link to your friends. You have my permission. This is not a secret blog.

If you see nothing of value, that's fine too. Just move along, and I wish you the best.

Young Writer? Inexperienced Writer?

I just wanted to point out that I've been writing since 1991, so I guess that makes it 18 years I've been a writer (out of 27). I wrote stories before that date, even books, including comic books, and some of them were at least stapled, but I don't consider any of those my first actual story. My first actual story was titled "A Home Run Adventure" and I made four copies of it. I think that I will consider my first literary work by that criteria: that is--that I purposefully created more than just one copy.

The whole story behind that story was that it was an entry into a short story contest held at an academic convention between the ACE schools of Vancouver Island. I would have been in grade 4, if my memory is correct, and 9 years old, and the year was 1991. I have no recollection of the plot of the story, except that I can assume the protagonist hits a home run. The contest required three copies of the short story, and I remember printing out the story on horrendous, yellow printer paper, with the perforations running up and down both edges. The poor quality of the paper, combined with the fact that some of the ends of the words ran off the edge of the page, and that the toner was running low, meant that the whole thing was barely legible. I didn't win any prizes for that story that year, but I'd say it was the actual start of my literary career. I doubt that any copy of that story survives; maybe someday a historian will lament that it was lost, but I'm not too shaken up about it.

The next year, my mom had got an electronic type-writer, and she was nice enough to let me use it to type out that year's entry into the short story contest. I used crisp, white paper, and the toner was dark enough to actually read. The electronic typewriter gave my work a really professional look. It had to help that I was a meticulous speller and competent with grammar at that age, which was a somewhat rare thing in our small circle of small schools. Content-wise, I switched tacks, and instead of writing about baseball that year, I wrote a kind of moralizing tale about a 10-year-old kid who invites his new neighbour to church with him, and ends up evangelizing the whole neighbour's family. This story actually won second prize in the short story contest. If I remember the details correctly, it was my cousin who won first prize. I remember reading her story and thinking it was pretty good, but that my story was better, but to this day, I can't remember the topic of her story. Anyways, it was this second story that first gave me the idea that I could one day grow up to be a writer.

If you publically recognize a 10-year-old for doing something well, you will have an impact on what shklee believes he can do for the rest of his life. I know, because throughout my teenage years and college years, that Second Prize was always lurking in my subconscious, urging me on to be literary. Not that this was the only pressure. Of course I was also a voracious reader, and it was also at this time that my grandma published her first book, Nicola and Granny, which I also devoured. My brother and I were naturally excited to read that "the author lives in Victoria, BC, and has four children and two grandsons [!]" and it was this that led me to the feeling that I've always held deep down that writing is in my blood.

However, it would be many years before I entered any more contests or submitted any material for publication. The next thing I would count is my journalistic work for the highschool yearbook in 1998, 1999, and 2000, which included some editing and judging poetry submissions. Other than that, I was busy being a kid and doing other things. Not that I didn't write, because I certainly did write, and I dreamed of publishing, but I didn't understand how to go about getting something published. I still don't really understand publishing very well, but I believe I will get somewhere within the next year or two.

So it's been a long eighteen years, and sometimes I feel that I have very little to show for it. I remember my dad sometimes finding me reading or writing in my room, and exhorting me to play outside (at younger years), do some chores (a little older), or go out and get a job (in my teenage years and between semesters at university). It's kind of odd though, my dad always trying to instill on me this desire to be productive, yet not understanding that what I was doing was exactly that. At least, in my mind that's how it was and still is. I think reading, creating imaginary worlds, messing around on the computer, whether it's reading or writing, or watching YouTube videos, or playing video games, or blogging, are all a part of producing a literary human being, and it's the only way I know how to "be productive." So even though he might not have thought I was listening to him, I really was. I was just internalizing his messages, making them my own.

Unfortunately, I still lacked the knowledge and opportunities to publish and get paid for my work, and there were always distractions. So even though I was being "productive" it wasn't the kind of productivity that pays the rent.

I think if I ever have kids, I will try and encourage them to publish their work as early and as often as possible. Not too long ago I read about Christopher Paolini, who wrote Eragon. I remember thinking "why couldn't I have publishers and authors for parents?" Because even though I haven't read Eragon, and therefore cannot judge that it is not a work of genius, I suspect that many many kids are gifted in the same way, but never get the chance to get their work out into the world. There just aren't mechanisms designed to pluck meaningful writing out of the minds of the masses.

Are You a Writer?

"Are you a writer?" she asked.
"A bad one," he said.

"Are you a writer?" she asked.
"A poor one," he said.

"Are you a writer?" she asked.
"Not a very good one," he said.

"Are you a writer?" she asked.
"A young one," he replied.

"Are you a writer?" she asked.
"An inexperienced one," he replied.

"Are you a writer?" she asked.
"An insecure one," he replied.

"Are you a writer?" she asked.
"One who needs affirmation," he replied.

"Are you a writer?" she asked.
"You tell me," he said.

"Are you a writer?" she asked.
"An unknown one," he said.

"Are you a writer?" she asked.
"An undiscovered one," he said.

"Are you a writer?" she asked.

The right answer is always just plain "Yes."

Tagging

I'm not sure how this is going to work, but I'm going to go through as many of my old posts as I can, and actually begin to put tags on them. Now that I've got a body of work that exists, I can categorize some of it.

Dogma is Fun! (on vegetarianism)

When asked last by a friend last night, "what kind of vegetarian are you?" I admit I felt empowered at that moment. I'm only a vegetarian for 40 days, and I can eat seafood if I want. I felt empowered because I'm the one who makes the rules, not any church, not the Catholic/Mormon/Anglican church, not the book of Leviticus, nor the Qur'an. Not PETA. Me. If I so chose, I could only give up meats ending in "n". Or I could just keep on eating meat when I feel like it.

There's a risk though, of becoming dogmatic when discussing the issue with other vegetarians/vegans. They might get their rules from other places, and they might question where you get your ideas. And you might be tempted to believe that your set of rules for what may and may not be eaten is better than theirs. Meanwhile, they're thinking the same thing about you. Obviously, I do think my method is best, and to an extent, it is also everyone else's method. No one can force anyone else to abstain from certain kinds of meat.

The poet is a translator

A poet is always a translator, whether or not there is something physically sitting in front of him to translate. He translates the essence of the universe into a readable format. Some of my favorite poems are the ones I look back at and think "I couldn't have written that, it's too obvious, too perfect." In those cases, I think these poems already existed in the universe, and I just took them out of the ether. In some cases though, maybe I'm just remembering a long-forgotten strain of somebody else's poem, perhaps a misreading, or an unconscious re-working, but the reason it achieves perfection in my mind is because of its familiarity, the echoing of a previous time. Many times, when I come across such a perfect poem or a perfect line that I think is unique, I will actually discard it because of the fear of plagiarism, that perhaps it is someone else's line that I internalized.

poem

Poetry is like
the art of the simile

Knowing Too Much

As a young writer, I spend a lot of time worrying about all the things I don't know. I'm constantly reading to learn, and lamenting all the subjects on which I know very little. For example, I only speak one language fluently. I can read French and Spanish as long as I have a dictionary at hand, but I could not dream of writing in either of those languages. I have virtually no education in the classics in Greek or Latin. I've only read a few of Shakespeare's plays, and forgotten most of what I read. I've read the Bible, but only in the NIV, which I've learned is the least beautiful, least accurate, most heretical, least reliable, version of the Bible going. I once had an opportunity to study Greek and Hebrew through Sunday School, but I didn't stick with either of these. I lost my Bible software a long time ago, and I'm pretty sure it was illegal anyways. Can you imagine, pirated Bible software?! Of all the things to pirate!

I know how to play practically no musical instruments, and reading music for me is like doing a crossword puzzle. Heck, I didn't even learn how to read a clock properly until just this past year (I had relied on digital displays my entire life until I forced myself to get rid of all of them in my house). I still have trouble with my right and left. I've forgotten most of what I ever knew of songs on the piano, the orchestra bells, and the xylophone. I never did learn how to properly tune the timpani drums. Luckily, I can still remember most of what I learned on the snare drum, but I seem to have lost what little sense of rhythm I ever had. I can't remember the few chords I learned on the guitar, and I can't remember what the strings are: E - A - D - ? - E.

I know virtually nothing about law or medicine, and even if I did, I can't see how either of these things would serve me in the real world, since I don't have any job prospects that would see me using any of this knowledge. I don't know the geography of my own province beyond the basics. I don't know the names of all our representatives at all our levels of government. I don't know much about military strategy, except what I might have picked up playing chess or Dungeons & Dragons, which I doubt is useful in the real world.

I don't know how most of the things in my house are made, or how to repair them. I willfully know nothing about cars, and less willfully almost nothing about bicycles. I still don't know how to make a samosa, even though I've been meaning to teach myself for years.

I can't defend myself in a fight, because I know nothing about martial arts.

Anyways, you can see how I agonize, but the next problem for a writer comes from knowing too much, or from over-researching. I mean, not all characters know everything, and a lot of people just make up answers for things they don't know. It's all well and good for a writer to strive for perfect accuracy in all things, but the more realistic approach would be to somehow get in the head of your character and think like they do, flaws and all. This is a major part of what makes us each unique. We all have our deficiencies, and often we aren't even aware of the places in our knowledge where we're plainly wrong.

It's fair enough for me to agonize over how they do things in a certain area of the world, or a certain era of history, but sometimes I have to realize that just because people are located in the same place, time, and even social class and gender, doesn't mean that they all think alike and believe the same things about the universe. And not just the universe, though that can be important too, but just the expectations that characters place on the way the real world reacts to actions taken upon it. Is a person healthier if they take lots of baths, or if they let a protective layer of dirt accumulate? Is a shaven head a sign of boldness or humility?

The Most Noble Profession

I once said that there are two professions which are noblest of all professions. The farmer, who fills man's stomach, and the priest, who fills his soul.

Now, I'm not so sure I believe that. I believe there is one most noble profession, which is commonly split into two. The soldier, who fights and destroys other men, and the governor, who arranges men into units so that they will not fight amongst themselves.

Why do I believe this? Because I believe that it is natural for men to produce. This is to take men for granted, but I believe that it is acceptable. Men will always produce food, and priests will always produce religion. Or if the second is not sufficient for you, the intellectuals will always produce knowledge. This is our human nature, and it takes no nobility to be that which one already is.

To truly be noble, one must be transformed, molded, and changed beyond what is one's nature. A blessed few are born with noble spirits; by lacking the essential human qualities of empathy, they are equipped to transcend the productive nature of the human spirit, and emerge on the destructive side.

This author speaks from a position on the productive side, as intelligent readers should deduce from the fact that it is in writing, which is a productive act.

Time and Me

I sometimes wonder if my relationship with time is different from everyone else's. I mean, basically I got up at 8:00 this morning, since I didn't have anywhere to go, and I didn't get anything done all day. I mucked around for a couple hours on the computer, saying to myself that I was just going to do a few things before breakfast. But breakfast didn't come until noon. Then, I thought I'd do a few things between then and dinner, so I did a little reading, more messing around on the computer, and before I knew it it was 3:00 PM, and I was getting sleepy. So I laid down in bed, then got up again, read a little bit, listened to some podcasts, and slept until 8:00 PM. Then, I decided that I should call my mom, so I did, talked to my mom and my brother for a little less than an hour, then did some more messing around on the computer, and now it's 11:00 PM, and I haven't accomplished anything all day today. I had planned on doing the dishes and cleaning out the cat's litter box, but now I think I'll leave those things till tomorrow, since I only have a couple of hours before I have to be at work again. All of this on my day off. I didn't even really catch up on my sleep, though I do feel well enough rested. And I never got those lentils cooking, so I'll have to leave them for another day once again, and I'll have to buy something for lunch tonight.

I guess part of the reason why I feel like I have no time at all for anything is that the computer just eats up my time. If it's not World of Warcraft, it's YouTube; if it's not YouTube, it's reading blogs; if it's not reading blogs, it's listening to podcasts; if it's not listening to podcasts, it's watching television programming like Corner Gas, the Daily Show, Stargate, and miscellaneous programs.

But on another level, I think maybe I just live more slowly than other people. Getting up in the morning, I might say I want to have breakfast right away, but it takes me at least two hours to get going to the point where I get out the milk and cereal and actually eat. After breakfast, I say to myself, I'm going to get some work done, but once again, it takes me several hours to get to the point where I get out my work materials and start working. By then, I'm either sleepy or only have a couple of hours before I have to go to work, so essentially no work gets done.

Either I operate on a different schedule than everyone else, or I'm just incredibly bad at time management, but I just feel like the day goes by way too quickly. It basically just leaves me behind. When I try to savour moments, they turn from moments into hours. A moment seems not even worth savouring sometimes, because it's gone as soon as it comes.

Why a Man Might Want to Wear a Skirt

A couple weeks back, I went into Value Village and bought two skirts. The women's kind. I guess there's a lot to say about this simple act, psychologically, but I'll try to keep this post brief.

There are a couple reasons for buying a skirt initially. First of all, I have only ever seen one or two men wear skirts, as a fashion piece, as opposed to dresses. One of these was in the movie Rent, in which the character Angel wears a skirt. Angels, according to Jesus Christ, are sexless, so the name and the skirt and the sexuality all kind of go together. I hope somewhere out there someone is doing a more thorough analysis of that whole movie, because I sense that it's pretty rich in symbolism and stuff.

The other context was that a kid in my high school came to the prom in a kilt. Now, this is not unusual. I've seen lots of men in kilts. And almost universally, they have protested: "It's not a skirt, it's a kilt!" as if that makes it any more manly. "It's tradition!" as if that is the sole factor that makes it cool for a man to wear a female fashion. A kilt is pretty much a skirt. This got me thinking, why can't a heterosexual, masculine man wear an honest-to-goodness skirt.

The third thing that got me wondering about skirts was that I am constantly seeing women around the university campus, as well as elsewhere, taking the skirt to interesting conceptual places. I mean, I've seen the long skirt come back, for example, paired with a standard blouse, or even a men's shirt. Sometimes a long skirt is combined with a flannel coat, like the lumberjacks wear. And universally, skirts at my school are worn with black tights underneath. No one has bare legs, not in the winter anyways. Also, lots of women have taken to wearing denim skirts, which can almost seem masculine, but you think to yourself "no, that's clearly feminine, even though it's denim, because it's in the shape of a skirt."

So women have all these options when it comes to skirts, and men seem to have not so many when it comes to pants. You can wear jeans, cords, khakis, dress pants, cargo pants, and that's about it. You can't wear track pants unless you're actually at the track. You certainly can't wear shorts in the winter, because you can't wear black tights under them.

Now, the thing about a man wearing a skirt that's unambiguously a skirt, while not wearing any other feminine accessories, is that it should, in theory, trigger a similar thought process in everyone that you encounter. If women can wear a skirt that's kind of manly, then surely a man should be able to wear a skirt that's kind of manly.

And that was the sum of my thought process up until the day I actually went into Value Village and bought a pair of skirts. Of course, even that was not so simple, and it took me a few trips to work up the courage to even enter the women's clothing section of the store. I told myself that I could say to anyone who asked that I was just shopping for my girlfriend, or my sister, but what kind of man buys cheap skirts for a woman? I guess it would have to be a really clueless one, which is what I was going to have to pretend to be, though I wasn't quite up to chatting about which skirt my pretend girlfriend would look best in.

Still, as far as I know, there's no law that says a man can't shop in the women's clothing section of a store, and no one asked me to leave. I couldn't say if they gave me strange looks, because I wouldn't make eye contact with anyone as long as I was in that section. Which must have looked strange in itself. Here's a man, smiling, saying hello, and chatting to everyone in all the other sections of the store: books, men's clothing, housewares, furniture, but as soon as he gets into the women's clothing section, he turns completely inward.

After I picked out my skirts, I had no idea what size I am in women's clothing, so I decided I had to try these on. So I went back to the men's section, grabbed a couple pairs of pants, loaded them on top of the skirts, and headed for the change rooms with this big bundle of inidentifiable clothing.

The change room was uneventful. One more awkward moment came when I went to pay at the checkout. I had bought a number of other items, and put them on top of the skirts, and I must have been nervous. At the moment the cashier noticed I was buying skirts, her friend made a joke, which wasn't particularly funny, but I burst out in one big, unbracketed "ha!" The two of them just looked at me, and then went back to their work, one bagging the skirts, the other handling the debit machine.

So now I have these two skirts, and I haven't yet worn them in public. I wear them around the house to get used to the feel of them, and I've worn them to walk down and up the stairs of my apartment building to do my laundry.

I realize that one of the reasons I like to wear skirts, is that I like to imagine a woman might have also worn them at some time. It has little to do with sexiness or femininity, but I guess I just like to try to imagine what that one small part of being a woman is like. That's not at all the reason that I initially set out to wear skirts. My original reason was to question the simple fact that men don't wear skirts, which are essentially neutral pieces of fabric. I wanted to test that barrier, and see if I could break through it. But now, a whole bunch of other factors want to seep in, and I do find myself wondering about the erotic aspect of it all.