The Blog of Disquietude

come with me

2006-01-04T07:34:00.000-08:00

if you enjoy these posts, and care to read some more, you can find me at www.hugodossantos.com/blog

thank you for reading.

All the reasons

2005-08-04T13:03:00.000-07:00

Random late-summer morning, there was a breeze in the air and the sky was clear. Just before nine in the morning, the world stopped as time ticked on. We froze, glued to television sets, wondering what happened, and why. And why.

They flew planes into buildings, or attempted to, but the true wings of their ideology was their opinion of American involvement in international affairs. They thought us nosy. They called us murderers. They felt they were merely vindicating scores of their own dead, made so by our hands and policy.

After 9/11, enlistments into our armed forces sky-rocketed. We felt violated, helpless, with no recourse other than a gun. I mean, how do you reply to acts of that nature, of that magnitude? How can 20 men bring about so much destruction? And yes, in their minds, they had their reasons, tragically forgetting that no reason is reason enough to condone such acts.

At the core of our call to action was the fact that we were attacked on our home soil, not at international bases or buildings like we witnessed in Africa. This wasn’t like the bombing of the USS Cole, this was an act that made victims out of everyday civilians. We were shocked, appalled, and the fire of vengeance burned within us as a nation.

So we joined up. In record numbers, young men and women throughout this country walked to their local office and signed up to serve in our armed forces. It was our duty as Americans to protect our country.

So how can we not understand the plight of our Iraqi brethren? Isn’t their home soil being attacked? Aren’t their civilians dying in record numbers? And perhaps all the more shockingly parallel to what we endured, don’t we, in our own minds, think that we have all the reasons in the world? And aren’t we, by that token, perhaps, if only just a little, tragically forgetting that no reason is reason enough to condone our acts?

Cloudless but gloomy

2004-11-16T09:58:00.000-08:00

I miscarried you. I brought you along until I could do so no longer. Despite all my good intentions I lost you by the wayside and it tore me up. It broke me down. I felt the pieces tear away from me.

And last night I had a dream that the rain poured down so fast the ground disappeared beneath my feet and suddenly I had to swim everywhere because I just couldn't get there any other way. And while the sun shone hard on my back as I made my way through the water, I knew everything covered by this new sea. I knew what streets lay hidden beneath me and I made my way through them just the same; turning right and left and stopping as I would now for a cup of coffee at Modelo.

But then the sun evaporated the sea and everything went back to normal. I was standing outside my house, returned from a crazy ride and dropped again. Left alone. Because in leaving you you left me, too.

Some call it evolution

2004-11-12T10:54:00.000-08:00

We go from friends to lovers and hate each other in between. And now I can't stand the sound of your voice, or the echo of your laugh. I hate your bright teeth shining through a fake smile you carelessly throw people's way. You don't understand what you do, and as such no one can ever understand you either.

There's enough rain outside to make a new lake. And there are enough lakes out there that we're running out of names. But that doesn't matter because the point is that all the water comes from somewhere. There has to be a source, maybe more than one. And the weatherman says it'll turn to snow by nightfall. And you know how I love fresh white snow under the shadow of the moon. I get lost in it like a child. It never took much anyway.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we never really outgrow the people we once were. And so when you look at me I might grow weak for half a breath, because I can't really forget who I was. And as such, I can never truly forget who you were. No matter who you've become. Regardless of anything that's happened since. All those negative thoughts last but half a breath.

Just like every (and any) other morning

2004-11-04T11:16:00.000-08:00

Just like the previous day, just like every (and any) other morning, the sun rises at dawn following the evening of complete darkness. And some wonder where the street lights have gone, and some know but won't divulge, and others are content to go along following from the ground as the lights fly like birds in search of warmer air. But the night is brutal. The chill unforgiving. The darkness a cold sheet. There is no light on my street. Not once the sun goes down.

One dark-colored afternoon I met a man who carried a bag of verse. There were loose sheets, leafs of notebook paper bound together, and even the occasional napkin, scribbled upon, whose once discarded existence was now reborn, reformed, unburied and unmarried to form. And I think of him now because he was something of a seer and in his prophet ways he told me that it'd come to this. His sentences bled into each other and his eyes had the very tint of the night before last; the final seconds of light at night when, like perched birds, the lights hung seemingly in the air. And I saw this in his eyes. I saw it before he uttered a word. He foretold it with his eyes. You just had to know where to look.

The obvious isn't always in what's said. You can know the universe without understanding how you know it.

Is it OK to love someone or something that is evil?

2004-10-27T16:07:00.000-07:00

No one, and nothing, is evil all the time. Evil is a relative term. What's evil for me isn't evil for another person. Someone loved the men who flew a plane into the Twin Towers. Someone loves the murderers and killers behind bars. Not all murderers, but if just one is loved than loving evil is, in fact, possible. Or rather, loving despite the evil is possible.

Even those who are completely evil and solely consumed with killing and destroying can be fortunate enough to find love. First-hand, I don't know anyone who fits this description but the occurrence of this phenomenon is possible as seen through the characters in the stories we tell our children. In the Batman comics, Mr. Freeze had a loving bride. Octavius from the Spider-Man comics also had a loving wife, and while that was before he became Dr. Octopus do we really doubt that despite his rampages and actions she would have continued to see the same man behind those now-evil eyes? I don't mean to trivialize this argument, but characters are figments of humanity's imagination and the curious thing about our imagination is that it is limited by our environments; i.e. we are incapable of creating anything that doesn't already exist before us. Our brain utilizes bridges to get from thought to thought, image to image, creation to creation. The sheer fact that these loves develop and intensify on the page is interesting because if this type of love were not possible then it would seem ridiculous to the readers. The entire thing would seem like too much of a stretch.

The most beautiful characteristic of love, and that which enables it to flourish despite of evil, is that it is not dependant on the object of the emotion but rather on the eyes that look upon it. Despite all the reasons not to exist, love finds a way.

So I began to wonder about love and to doubt whether it was so special after all. I mean, if anyone can be loved, anyone at all, even the crudest of souls, what's so good about it? If anyone can find it, what's so grand about love?

But then I realized that it is for that exact reason that love is as majestic as it is. We can all find it if only someone can find some spark in us. We too can love. And be loved. We just can't control when or how.

Still, before we learn to love, or to accept love, we need to learn compassion. You have to crawl before you can walk.

Because of the promise of the morning

2004-10-25T13:40:00.000-07:00

“My advice to you is run. Run. Do you want to wake up every morning, with all the promise that morning conveys, and come here?”

I’m very self-conscious. It’s not that I think I’m less than others; I’m just very aware of my own imperfections. That’s why when I read particular writers I analyze my words versus theirs. My storytelling next to theirs. I think of how I constructed a work and of how another might have done it, or I look at the other work and think of how I would have done it.

My doubts humble me. Every time my pen kisses the page and the product isn’t the very best poem ever written by a man, I feel doubt. I feel doubt that I will write a line that will change someone’s life. I doubt that someone will fall in love with my poetry. I doubt my books, my verse, my tongue and my pen. I doubt everything except the beauty of the poem, because there is always truth in my verse, and the truth, if nothing else, is beautiful.

Just get me home

2004-10-22T11:51:00.000-07:00

I've taken this route home before. In the dark. With the lights along the highway acting as makeshift stars, I drove a car just like this one. An older model, but the smell on the cushions was exactly the same. And there was a hand clutching mine, too. Just like now.

I've wanted to cry on this road before, while driving home after the battles that came after long, lonely waits, but today's reasons are altogether different. There is no shadow here, I'm very different from those days. Yet at the core I'm a carbon copy of the past. I'm the constant that never changed despite changing. Like the waves coming and going while the coastline remains exactly where it's always been.

I've smelled this hospital before. I've seen these beds. The tiny bathrooms in the outpatients' rooms. The visitors' chairs with bland-colored plastic. Off-white walls, yellowed sheets, barely-there blue on the trim, and the sense of not really being anywhere at that particular point in time.

The hunger, the pain, the disease… all the reasons I hate hospitals. The silent nights broken only by the rushing of the staff in the hallway, running over to a room to give life again before it is too late. Before it is too late.

And the pain. The disease. And most of all, the good byes.

I've taken this road home before. And it seems that just when you're so far from ever going down it again, you're repeating yourself and stepping on the very footprints you have previously made. And you sole digs deeper into the ground every time you do this, because it seems that every time you come back around you have more weight to carry on your shoulders.

Between lost and saved

2004-10-21T16:56:00.000-07:00

I think of the poems of I've lost along the way and damnit, I've lost some good ones. But then I think of it again and realize that I was also lost by some. And suddenly I understand that that's just the way the world is; some people lose things so others can find them. Otherwise, no one would ever come across anything.

But I lost some good poems, I won't lie. And often it was my fault that they were lost. I lost blonde poems, red-haired poems, skinny and chunky, pretty and ugly, nice and rotten, and I lost them in the morning and in the evening sheltered by the sun and the moon, and sometimes both.

I lost poems, I'm not ashamed. A man is who he is not by choice but design. So I admit my inability to hold on to the poetry because I'm no less for it. I'm more for the admission.

I lost good poems, and I lost more than lost me. Because the computer won't act without my command. And because sometimes I forget to hit save when all along, it was the poems that should be saving me.

Silence

2004-10-19T14:22:00.000-07:00

She wanted him, and then she didn't. And just like you'd get rid of a used paper-towel she trashed him. Suddenly distance. Silence. Oh, that ever-piercing silence.

So now the kid isn't himself. Drinks more. Smokes more. Eats little. It's the always-repeating tale of the unrequited. I'll leave it at that without finishing the thought since I don't think the feeling was that intense. It was more like a desire. "I want her." Eventually it transforms and becomes about the chase and the game and it's no longer about how she makes you feel. So it's not love. And it's not even a feeling remotely similar to.

I tried to tell him to move on. I wanted him to understand that dwelling on the situation won't accomplish anything. I tell him that what's gone is gone. And what wasn't there to begin with won't be there now. Because I held on for too long. And because people held on to me for too long.

But she calls his house late at night. And she can still make him feel alive. So he picks up when the phone rings despite recognizing her number on the caller-id. And he listens to her excuses about the distance she needs. And about how she can't break totally free. And sometimes she cries, and sometimes it's just a plain, dry conversation. And I try to tell him to just let it all go. I try to convince him the gamble isn't worth the pain. But he tries anyway. He can't help but to do so.

She wanted him, and then she didn't. And just like that, distance. And silence. How I still remember that silence. How I wish I could make everyone who is still hanging on hear my screams in the darkness of sound.

Growing up is understanding that we're all just people

2004-10-18T17:04:00.000-07:00

To cause others pain; I can think of no greater sin.

I know of very few people who are exactly who they want to be. The rest of us are striving for something more. We're clawing at the mountain, aiming for the apex. But it's all in the journey. It's all in getting there. It's all in learning that we can be more and turning that into a smile on a stranger's face.

On a loved one's face.

We cannot avoid who we are. I've said it before and I believe it still. We are flesh and emotions. We are bones and heartache. It's all part of growing up. What a shame some of us never do.

There are times when I wish I could go back in time to my days as a child; but what I crave is the innocence. All the effort that's gone into my acquired understanding of people and the world is something I would not forfeit. I'm proud of having grown into who I am. And I'm very conscious of causing others pain.

Fantasy

2004-10-14T16:35:00.000-07:00

If you wake up to find the things you desire are yours for the taking, finding them no farther, say, than an arm length away, hanging from a tree in the back-yard, would you take it? Or would you allow the dream to write itself?

The unseen fantasies that play out around us go unannounced because of our inability to see. It's not that they're mute. It's not that they're ghosts. They're real. But we lack the eyes to see. The five senses aren't enough.

But if one day the senses ARE enough, and the dreams are right there, and happiness is an apple in the orchard, should we live out the fantasy or abide by the way it's always been… a dream we can't control?

Who's to guarantee, even if we do grab the apple, that we can control it anyway? How can we shape a reality we've never known when we can't even shape the one that is actually real; our everyday lives?

I guess what I'm trying to understand is can we be the kings of our dreams? And if we could, would we have to rename them?

I have a difficult time remembering my dreams. I like to think that it's because I'm constructing stories in my mind all the time, so much so that when it comes time to rest my mind doesn't want to dream up any more scenarios. I wonder if this is true for other writers. I wonder what I would do if I lost my life to a fantasy.

Colder

2004-10-13T16:02:00.000-07:00

Not so long ago, when I worked here for the first time, it seemed like the cold came sooner. Now, the warm days extend into Indian summers and there doesn't seem to be a real winter anymore. Back then, I'd stand by the window, peering out at the recently-fallen traces of snow on the concrete, and I'd miss a girl. Then I'd sit down and write her poetry. And it'd either be good or bad, but it didn't matter, because I had the cold weather to keep me company. I'd walk to the bakery in the middle of the afternoon. Their coffee tasted like shit, but that was fine. It wasn't the coffee I craved. I wanted the taste of the wind. The feel of the snow. It was company for my pain. And I liked that. Somehow, it made me feel less alone.

Forgotten

2004-10-12T11:17:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, when people are taken from us, we forget. We let go of those once-blissful now painful memories in order to create a life for ourselves. Life goes on, they say, and we understand and comply. We make do with what we have left and try our best to mend the pieces hoping that the glued china will be close enough to the original to allow us to proceed.

And we feel numb. And nothing much makes sense. Time soars by uncontrolled, or rather unannounced. Where before we noticed each day now the fog bends everything into itself as well as into everything else. And since everything becomes everything else, it's all the same thing. It's all the same and it doesn't matter much, because the pain shadows everything. The pain might actually be the fog that bends the world. I don't know.

How long to remember the dead? How long to hold on to the pain, the memories, and all that won't go away on its own? Because sometimes, we can't forget.

'Cause ultimately, it's all about the kids

2004-09-16T11:40:00.000-07:00

Saying nothing at all

2004-09-14T14:07:00.000-07:00

I'm not always ready to write. I'm not always inspired to pen something. But sometimes I'll read a poem, a piece, an article, anything, and I just want to write. The need springs up in me. The itch. In fact, there are times when I come across a written work and wish I'd written it.

There are times when I just see so much beauty in it that I wish I had created it, to know I'm capable of that.

But I'm not always inspired. Plenty of times I have felt too down to write. I just want to sleep the time away, forget the verbs and adverbs and all the letters in the words.

And people run through the world blind to all-around them, in a mad rush to exit the forest. What's to fear about trees?

And the gods go unnoticed more every day. What's to forget?

I just came across both of these notions, and normally I'd write but not today. There is so much I wish I knew how to say I end up saying very little, if not nothing.

If you haven't figured it out yet, this post is about nothing. Nothing at all.

Honestly, this is not the post I wanted to write

2004-09-13T11:50:00.000-07:00

When people come into our lives, seldom do we even consider the fact that one day they will leave us. Everyone you will ever love will one day leave you or die, Tyler Durden told us in Fight Club. Yet we don't think about it. Either because we're caught up in the moment(s) or because we subconsciously choose to forego the mere thought of the end, it's not a typical consideration at the early stages of a relationship. Any relationship.

I don't mean to be apocalyptic, but in the circle of things the universe has a way of reverting back to the way it was. Everything old is new again and in general, things seem to end where they started… ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

And so those we love can go away sometimes. They might return, visit, come to see us. In those moments we may relive that initial feeling as if magically transported through time and space. But even that comes to an end. And then distance sets in. And we miss people and things, feelings and emotions. We feel "saudades."

This is all in reference to how people leave us, or are left by us, in the course of life. I'm feeling it more today because sometimes home can be so very far away. Or at least feel that way. And because you can't go back there. And because of the prodigal son, who is sometimes a daughter, and how one should in fact give to one just as one gives to the other. But yet, out of the two, the prodigal and the one who remained, who is the father, who is sometimes a mother, to have coffee out on the porch with? Who will (s)he choose to spend the quiet moments next to? And is it even a choice, or just another of those subconscious decisions we're not aware we make?

And it also has to do with perception and reality. Who are we, really? Pessoa said, "I am not who you think I am. I am not who I think I am. I am what I think you think I am." We perceive ourselves to be one way when we're really not like that at all. And it is so with those who come into our lives, those same ones who leave us. Are we really loved? If so why? And what about the individual is so worthy of so worthy a feeling?

Often we are left before we ever get to answer that question.

I don't know why I'm loved or even what about certain people I love so much. Sometimes it's beyond words. I can't explain it, or understand it. And somehow, that makes all the sense in the world.

Have a safe trip back.

Hero

2004-09-02T12:20:00.000-07:00

I was a very proper child. I was quiet, keeping to myself; shy, even. I played by myself without making much noise so that you'd hardly even know I was in the room. I had a large miniature car collection that I lined up across the floor in my room, creating endless traffic jams and adding voices to the tiny, invisible people behind the wheel that were just trying to make it home.

Back then I was always the hero of the story. I'd save the girl, my people, and come home to a large feast. But then you grow up and you let go of some of those dreams. You learn to view the world differently and that gives you freedom. No longer burdened by the stereotypes of the hero (doing the right thing) you learn to do things your own way, stand your ground in life, and become yourself.

You grow because you witness, and live, and feel. And sometimes what you witness, and live, and feel, make you bitter. It affects you negatively and you don't like the person you become. I certainly wish I could spend my days playing with my miniature cars. Things were a whole lot simpler back then. I miss that. I don't like the world I live in. The truth isn't true and the lies have been bought and paid for. And I don't know who to believe, the ones who deceive me knowingly or the ones who have come to believe the lies.

The people that have don't need and those who need can't get. The rich get richer and I can't get overtime anymore. And my city is overrun with gangs and wannabe gang-members who wear the colors and throw the signs just to get home from school without getting jumped for their boots. With all the injustice I see, I wonder when I'll grow out of this I-don't-really-give-a-fuck-anymore stage and start caring again.

But I have a good thing now, so I try to steer clear of all that. I just want to lay next to her and smell her hair so I don't fight much. I don't speak as loudly about certain things. I'm going back to that kid who sat in his room, lost in the things he loves. I'm proper again, but I haven't really mellowed out. I'm just biting my time, learning to live with the things that aren't so right. Because I can't fight everyone's battles. I can't fend off all the attacks. But I can make her smile like she does, and that's more than enough right now.

But who knows, maybe one day I'll get to play the hero again.

Price

2004-08-31T13:05:00.000-07:00

Eyes break
like waves
and a blanket of insecurities
suffocating
- the search for air
a reminder
And we don't know
if it's gonna last
if it should
like a tide
Everything that belongs to you
has already been someone else's
even your favorite t-shirt
you paid for it
you bought it from someone
everything has a price
- how much
for your water?

Finding poetry

2004-08-27T11:26:00.000-07:00

I'm learning about love and about not putting every last thing to paper. I'm learning about ceasing my dissecting habits.

Because sometimes you just can't write about what it's like. The words are not enough.

I'm able to narrate, describe, paint a mental picture by laying out all the details. But I don't know how to talk about it. Not in a manner that hints understanding. Because I don't.

I've spoken before about the dangers of dissecting that which we love. Dissection leads to understanding and understanding is scientific in nature and unnaturally against all that which is emotion based. Understanding, then, is finding the truth and love is far from truth; more like a dream.

So I don't write about it and, what is perhaps more curious, I don't feel the need to write about it. Not just in relation to me, but in relation to others. I'm more than content to observe the world otherwise, without alluding to love, without even considering it. I'm still mapping out the details. Showing people the hidden corners of life. But I'm doing it differently. I'm showing them different corners, some that are perhaps even more hidden than the others since I have only seldom written of it.

I find that often I learn to understand things by writing about them. And I think I like writing in part because I get to learn. I feel more complete. And yet by not writing about this I feel just as complete.

Poetry isn't just written, you know.

Watching

2004-08-25T10:19:00.000-07:00

I can't stop watching the Olympics. They're fucken addictive. If I'm home, I'm watching NBC. Period. Except for when Pardon the Interruption is on, because Kornheiser is god.

I can't stop watching the Olympics. I'm a sucker for the underdog. I revel every time Rulon Gardner comes on TV. This man lost a frostbitten toe. Then he broke his arm in a motorcycle accident. He is currently wrestling with pins in his dislocated wrist. It's inspiring. It truly is.

When he lost today, it's almost like hearing news that a friend lost something that important. You relate to these athletes.

The silver-medal winner in the men's 100m reportedly lived in a shipping container with drug feens and prostitutes. He worked construction and used his first paycheck to buy clothes for his brothers. And now he is recognized as the second fastest man in the world.

Now that's a story. That's love of sport.

I play basketball because I love it. I know I'll never get paid for it. I know I even run the risk of injury. But I play it because I get the itch. I feel it coming up and I need to dribble a ball. I want to do a reverse and nail a three to win it all.

The Olympics are a great way to forget the ways in which commercialized sports work in this country. It's true love of sport and nation. Representing your colors, hearing your national anthem play. No money; despite future endorsements, it's a love of sport.

Not that American athletes in the NFL and NBA don't love what they do, but it's different here because it's all about selling jerseys. Unfortunately, that comes first in that business.

So when I watch the Olympics, I watch the guys I play ball with at the gym. I see gym rats who spend entire days at the park playing pick-up games.

I love the Olympics because it reminds me of all the things I love and do for free.

Holy

2004-08-19T10:14:00.000-07:00

Some people find God at the end of a line of coke.

A friend once told me that and he is absolutely right. People find fulfillment in all types of places, some better than others, but random nonetheless. God can be found anywhere because He is everywhere, right?

And yet people will argue against this. They'll tell you about how you should be spiritual, trying to control your religion as if they have some magical method of achieving salvation. People will argue with you, trying to change your mind, thinking they can make it so that you agree with them. Conversion through conversation, if you will.

But I don't think human beings are capable of teaching religion. I don't think human beings are meant to teach it. Human beings are meant to seek out God. But how can one, in all our lack of understanding, amid all the confusion, think that we have found God? How can a human being honestly think that he, or she, has come to understand God?

That is foolery.

We fight wars, we kill, we murder, because we think we found God and the rest of the world hasn't. Isn't that the biggest joke you've ever heard? Is that what Heaven is all about?

Naturally speaking

2004-08-17T11:45:00.000-07:00

Some people are given everything, and some people are dealt a shitty hand. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle. Sometimes we get lucky, sometimes we don't.

There's no rhyme or reason, you can be a great person or a major league asshole, a genius or the village idiot, it bears no influence on where you're born. To whom you're born.

You're a certain way when you're born. And then you experience things and emotions, you go through situations, and you change. You grow. But you never stay the same. You can't.

Between nature and nurture we end up where we are. We begin as a semi-defined clump of clay and mold with the bumps. We're constantly changing. We're ever-evolving, even if we end up being worse off than how we began.

Had I been born in need, would I steal? Would I rob and deal? Would I still feel the craving to write? Would I be anything at all but myself, the self I have come to know?

I immigrated to this country at the age of ten. I had two different childhoods, one there and one here. But if I had never come over, who and how would I be?

I ask myself this question because I think that in finding out the characteristics about myself that would not have changed, no matter where I ended up, I will find out the part of me that is natural. I will know just how much of me is nature. Everything else is nurture. Everything else is the product of the pressures, good and bad, of the world.

Deaf Poetry

2004-08-16T12:01:00.000-07:00

I always think of writing. I think of what makes good writing, I try to break down authors I enjoy and respect in the hopes of finding the secret; the one ingredient that makes their words stand out from the rest.

I think of my own writing. I analyze it for content. I compare it to what I've written in the past in the constant fear that I'm repeating myself. And I think that is the fear that drives me to keep writing. The fear that I'll go to my grave with the ghosts of the poems I should have written haunting me for eternity.

The poetry drives me forth.

Every time I watch HBO's Def Poetry I am torn. I don't know whether to love it or hate it. There's no in-between, this is not the type of program to dabble in soft emotions. I don't know as of yet how I currently feel about it but I continue to tolerate it because there's hope I might fall in love with it. I continue to tune in because I fear if I don't I'll miss out on something special. A poet that can lead the way. A poem that can change the world.

The positive aspects of the show include the notoriety it brings to the art. Def Poetry brings a crowd to a poetry reading, which, if you've ever attended one, you understand is a big deal. The show also showcases young talent, people who want to speak and be heard. That should be commended. For all its shortcomings the show appears to mean well.

But it does come up short, and where it matters most; poetry-wise. In regards to the talent level, there is no denying that there is talent, but it isn't necessarily the type of talent that adds poetry to our days. The performers perform, yes, but is it poetry? There are plenty of 'homies' who want to be down. Being a poet is now considered cool. Reciting rhyming lines to the barely audible beat of their days, they describe what they've seen and what they wish their world were like. They are (seemingly) honest and true and that, I must say, is the ultimate redeeming factor of the show. For better or worse it does have a defined voice.

Yet, for all the guest appearances by noted poets and authors such as Rita Dove and, to a lesser extent, Nikki Giovanni, just to name two, the show seems empty at times. It's often devoid of true poetry. The kind that leaves you gasping for air. The best moment this season was the guest-appearance by Kanye West, who performed a piece about making child support and alimony payments. It wasn't even a poem, but rather a performance driven by the artist's obvious charisma and stage presence.

With all that is going on in the world, with truly meaningful poetry being written everyday, Def Poetry features poetry about nothing and while nothing can make for great subject matter, the show suffers for it. An infatuation with Krispy Kreme donuts doesn't impact me as much as much as some of the pieces I hear at local open-mikes. Rhyming couplets don't necessarily equate poetry. For all their sincerity, the performers are locked into the streets and manage to speak about little else. The poems suffer from tunnel-vision and the show tends to become monotonous.

Unless it evolves, Def Poetry's downfall will be its intense focus on the streets. Yes, it's important to talk about that aspect of American life, but not at the cost of EVERYTHING ELSE that matters. There is too much going on in the world today. Like all creatures, by becoming too specialized the show will create its own downfall. It has begun to lose its power already, as this season is proving to be the weakest yet since the start of the show.

It's a shame that Def Poetry can't speak to the audience like it once did. It can't evoke those feelings anymore. I once heard a man say, "No piece of steel will ever go through me with as much force as a period in the right place." For all the change a show like Def Poetry could make, for all it could mean to a culture, it's sadly coming up very short.

I wonder if it does so because it has stopped thinking about its writing. Perhaps it's stopped comparing itself to what it was.

Fighting the boogey man

2004-08-12T09:45:00.000-07:00

I understand having to worry about the safety of my country. I don't enjoy it, but I understand the circumstances that brought us where we are. There are people all around the world in worse positions; people who can't give their children enough to eat. Right now, as my fat, lazy ass sits here typing, a child is suffering hunger pains and a parent is suffering from a broken heart for knowing it.

So trust me, we're not victims. Not in the large scope of things. Not in the grand scheme of the universe.

People who died in the towers, on those planes, and at the Pentagon were victims. Not us. Having to wait in line at the airport while passengers are screened before boarding the plane does not classify as a major life disappointment.

What does bother me is to hear children worrying about it. To hear a five-year-old ask his mom if he really has to go on the trip because he's afraid "the plane will fall." What does bother me is that our kids don't get to be kids anymore. That's a scary thing.

That's why we're losing the war on terrorism. Not because we can't control uprisings in Iraq. Not because we can't ensure that elections will run smoothly in Afghanistan. But because our children aren't safe and know it. Because our children want to be held extra-tight. The boogey man came out of the closet, and we have no clue how to get him back in there.

The unexpected things we see

2004-08-11T10:46:00.000-07:00

The unexpected is the ultimate impetus for an idle mind. It kicks it into gear. It gives things shape that otherwise we would not bother molding. It's the unexpected, because it storms out of the unseen, that manages to break us free of the shackles of everyday thought.

The unexpected can be as minute and meaningless in nature as you can imagine; and it is, perhaps, in that, its size relative to our ever-expanding universe, that it holds all the power to change us. It is a universe unto itself. It creates the possibility of infinite worlds. These small unexpected things and events are, in and of themselves, infinity.

Sometimes, a movie can change you. It can, in the very least, open your eyes. It should, if it's worth anything at all.

But how can a blind girl open your eyes?

By showing you all she sees. By showing you that there exists a universe in every crack of the sidewalk your superstitious feet avoid. By leading you through a journey by trusting the sounds of the forest, and feeling her way through the trees. By seeing the possibility of infinite worlds in the places our eyes won't go.

Writers have written about this sort of thing before. Nobel Prize winner José Saramago utilized a similar tool in his book, "Blindness." In it, everyone loses their sight except a girl. She leads them through the journey they must take and it is only later in the book that the reader is made aware of just why she hasn't lost her sight; because she is pure of heart and intent.

In M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village," the protagonist is the one who is blind. Or is she? In her 'blindness' she sees things no one else can see, such as the aura around her beloved. She moves around the village with relative ease, waving her walking stick before her as one might use a flashlight in complete darkness. So it's not as if she can't see. Rather, she sees the world differently. She is not hindered by the blindness, but almost blessed with it. She is strong, compassionate, brave.

When she comes to the outside of the woods, when she reaches her destination, something that should appear very wrong to her doesn't because of her blindness. For all her strength and intelligence she is still limited in an all too human way. She can't see what is around her. She is like an innocent child who hears a dirty joke, she can't grasp what is really going on. She lacks the eyes for it.

As scared as she is throughout her journey she understands that she must go on. The man she loves is fighting for his life. She is brave for him.

There is a love story underneath the M. Night style of dark films. And there is a moral; or the questioning of morals in the very least. There's also a twist. But like all things, it works best because it is never forced down the audience's throat. There are many facets to the plot, but they are not fighting for control of the story. Rather, they just exist - much as such things would in real life.

For all that goes on in "The Village," and we know there is much we are not privy to since it is a M. Night film, most of the population is also blind. The much-advertised creatures from the woods are never named, there is no time or location established as a setting, and the list goes on and on. People fear what they don't know and in that the audience is much like the population of the village; we are on the edge of our seats because we truly don't know what's coming next much as they know only not to go in the woods.

But that is where the similarities end. The village is controlled by a fear of the unknown whereas the audience is ushered along to discover the truth. By the end the audience is more informed than the village. We know more; we are aware of the context of every last detail because the director takes great care in laying everything out. But are we better for it? The village retains its innocence; can the same be said of us?

We, too, live in fear, and we don't even have innocence to boast of.

Through the sacrifice of the one who can't see, hope lives on. The ideals the village stands for, whether right or wrong, continue to exist. What the future holds is not certain. Will love survive in the face of physical limitations? Can a miracle prolong love? Can the blind really see so much more than those who are allowed to see? The answer would surprise you. The answer is unexpected. Just like what we encounter when we leave the theater. Our world has not changed and that, given what we just watched, is truly unexpected. We are like the blind girl coming home from the monster-ridden forest. Her return is unexpected.

But for us, who return to our repetitive existence, what is more unexpected than tomorrow?