Chapter II: 6 Months Later

I know.

You ever not know what to write but you do it anyways? Usually I cower away slowly after trying a few times, ideas about the what but not the how. Expression is interesting, so is style. Some stories are vast and penetrating, piecing together a detailed scene filled with layers upon layers of meaning, significance, and the assumption that there is more than just text. Deeply invigorating is the story, what happens, to whom, the when, the why, and how each of these separate instances become a coherent and lively tale. A plethora of thought, character and plot development, believable circumstances, and action. A page-turner. Others, equally as tantalizing, might be just about a man walking across the street, reading a newspaper, and whistling. It’s not so much the story, nor the plot, and the character in himself doesn’t have to be interesting. It’s the actual telling, the descriptions, the emotions and devices the author uses in order to make the ordinary extraordinary.

Reading books. Reading books leads me to believe that I have something to say, but not really. More that I want to be a part of a story, an action, an ordinary occurrence seen and written by someone else. Another perspective, a way of thinking, a genre. Some archetype that I can then apply to what I do presently. A walk with a figment of my imagination born out of the words, the relationships, the significance of my interpretation of someone else’s. A rich yearning for a situation, a place that, although the words are visual, the images tend to locate themselves towards the back of my brain, like a projector. Right at the back near the top of the spine, a source of light, of wonder. I’m curious to know what’s there, biologically that is, what kinds of operations occur on a scientific level, what we can measure in that area and what that might say about ourselves and the ways in which we think.

I’m currently on the 3rd page of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody #2. I’ve read that it’s one of the more difficult songs to perform, and I’m not quite sure if that flatters me or not. It’s fast, this one part, where the right hand has to almost lifelessly twirl, as if it were throwing away a bad idea, and then come back again, stopping and starting at different intervals to fill the measure with enough beats to ensure that the left hand continues its cadence. Just a few weeks ago I was beginning, note after note, so that I could hear them all, and it sounded strange, because in real time I don’t feel I need to hear all the notes, but the collection of a scale or two. Anyways two weeks ago I began the process of vigorously memorizing each note and then playing it up and down and up and down. I’m still not completely comfortable, but now my hand has caught up with my ears.

I’ve also been volunteering at Balboa High School right here in the Excelsior. I sought to experience a part of the city with 22 tenth graders. The topic is stress and balance, and the various ways human beings try to cope with their ultimate and ageless problem: existence. I wanted to do something productive; I wanted to work for free.

Or maybe I was just bored.

I feel like this blog started with something moderately exciting and then turned into a rather melancholy systematical explanation of what I’ve been doing the past 6 months. Going to get my masters in Italian at SF State in the Fall just doesn’t seem interesting, not even to me.

I just finished Fahrenheit 451. I found myself reading it on BART, waiting downtown, on the bus, somewhere with people. It was astounding to watch all the ipods and blank faces, as I myself walked right past people I didn’t know. Seems obvious, contemporary, and I’m sure there’s some explanation as to why it’s part of our human behavior. Or why society permits this relationship as long as there are no immediate desires present.

But I realized something about here and how I interact with myself. I have a lot more toys; I rely a lot more on external stimulants. I can remember in Italy, from all the walking no TV no radio no car no piano no job, that ideas appeared all the time, as long as I sat in a piazza or journeyed across the street. Something was always there, waiting, and it didn’t take much for me to find a computer or a notebook and start writing things down. Four pages in twenty minutes, single-spaced. I’ve heard horror stories of that length the night before a particular paper is due. I guess when you’re writing for fun it doesn’t have to be about anything explicit, still I search for some meaning, some truth, but it might lie in the process of writing and not its manifestations, not the finished product but the thinking behind it. Maybe that’s why I’m not impressed with what’s been going on these last twenty-two minutes.

I like spelling out numbers, they seem longer, seem like they hold a definitive space. One-hundred thirty-five thousand nine-hundred and seventy-two, as opposed to 135,972.

We’ve been writing poetry at Balboa, another means of expression aimed at becoming aware of the self, the senses, and the emotions exhibited. I figured in order to take up space I’d include it here, below these very lines, and so I did, or I will:

I’m from the icy, mud-drizzled depths of a consciousness I
Never knew existed until my imagination manifested itself in Rome.
Tall music, harmonious buildings, and the juxtaposition of rain
In the day’s light.

San Francisco’s breath speaks to empty streets on a cloudy,
Miserable, and summer day such as this one, where not even the
Pigeons are motivated for an adventure.

Art travels short distances over a long period of gestation, mind-
Numbing prodigies sit and write poetry. I look for my reflection
In a mirror and see nothing but an apparition, a fabricated
Hybrid copy of an idea so rich in its implications that it fails
To understand the truth. That there is such a thing, and that
It lives and dies with every thought and desire.

I search for profound things in shallow dreams, wonder what
My dog thinks, and then ask him to explain. The
Genius of a gesture such as this, or this, or this, or even,
This, shines penetration with a glimmer of the awe-inspiring
Realization: we are here, we are now, but that’s it.

The limiting experience of abstraction is difficult to overcome,
For I still can’t remember what day it is. The moon’s still
Following me; I feel it under all this pillow of but a single
Cloud, an explosion of density.

That uniform, annoying, beautiful humming. How dare you.
Traditions fade with new inceptions, forever lingering in tomorrow’s
Reality. A day in the life.

So there you have it. I’ve been turning the TV off more and more these days but haven’t been in my yard as much. The volunteering keeps me busy, but I’m beginning to question that actuality of keeping busy, attacking the assumption that we can be bored. Put another way, I’m starting to believe that it’s not about doing things so much as it is about sharing. A more profound experience is what I’m looking for, without of course forgetting the simple pleasures. An old book, a conversation between friends, a walk.

Going back home. Leaving things ambiguous

-Anthony