Proliferation Theory

If you do enough, something is bound to stick favorably.  For a time I approached writing with an arrogance.  I thought, because it was the only thing I got decent marks in, I must be good at it.  And then I got bad grades.  Still got good grades from time to time, but bad grades just as often, usually related to the technical composition and not the ideas.  And then I got good technical marks and bad ones on the formation of ideas.  Sometimes I did well with both.

It was a strange time.  I transitioned from writing on my own time and going to class and writing instead of doing homework to higher grades where writing was my only homework and all I did in classes.  The arrogance of perceived innate talent faded quite a bit with one failed attempt to win awards after another and I blamed closed communities and the like, the department was exceptionally cliquey.  I believed the profs liked what they liked and you liked what you liked and it was your job to jump the gap, not theirs.

I don't know what my problem is exactly, but I do believe it is that the people that I idolize make it look so effortless and what they make feels like hit after hit after God damn hit.  Maybe proliferation theory is failing me.  It's difficult to say either way.  Maybe I am genuinely no good.  It's tough to digest.  Without some kind of schedule.  I rolled up a dollar bill.  It's just strange, I guess.  Proliferation theory.  Asking when is good enough for me good enough for someone else.

The theory begs a lower standard, but how much is compromised in terms of value and personal expansion? Is the cost appropriate to the value of the product, the life time stamp I put my name to?  I don't know.  I do it predominantly for myself, at least that's what I've convinced myself of.  I don't know.  Would I kill to go back to school?  How many people?  Could I plea bargain my way out of life sentences and would the offer still be good when I got out?  I'd have to think about it.  Hypotheticals.

Yeah, it drives me crazy.  A little bit.  I try to think about what else I would be doing, could be doing.  None of it appeals to me the same way.  Everyone, including myself, well maybe not everyone, many people talk about being their harshest critic.  I may be my most passionate lover.  Delusions of grandeur coming with the territory, but I don't always see it so clearly.  The Fantha.  Losing focus on the mission.  I just want to die knowing I was good as I could possibly be, not knowing I was good as I was going to be.  Who wants that?

I think believing that I'm great keeps my engine running.  Keeps the clutch down and a hand on the shift knob for when I come running.  Beyond that, I don't know how much credence I give it.  I butcher language and muddle image on a weekly basis.  I talk like broke nosed sailor all too often and argue like a fifteen time concussed politico's son.  Pretty sure my mental dictionary has "turn to page 345"s on it and on page 345 there is a crayon hand drawn hairy dick in the corner.

Purpose is a fine commodity.  Take a digger.  Fire off the magazine, discharge, and throw it as far as you can.  Sometimes panic can be beautiful.  Never outwardly.  Did I tell you that I was you?  Don't be silly.  Don't be silly little king with your crown.  Let me polish that for you; you dropped it skipping puddles in gutters without your galoshes.  You know the ones with He-Man and Skeletor printed all over?  I'll remember for you.

Just behave, okay?

The project was, the final project was, to make a visual that encompassed everything you believed poetry to be.  Everything you believed poetry to be and the purpose it served.  They came in with their power points and dream catchers and God's eyes and a diorama of a village and someone made a painting and someone made a collage from printed magazines and there were a handful of abstract sculptures and even a figurine, but you made a life sized naval mine with trigger switches and detonators and wires out of empty wine bottles and paint brush handles and spray painted it black.  That was a fun walk across campus with that hugged to your chest.  Cutting across the grass, because the people on the sidewalk could go f--- themselves that early in the morning.  You worked on it all night after thinking about it for a week.  Everyone talked about their things and you talked about yours.  And that's where it ended.

Officially.  I suppose, the project is ongoing.  I hate myself.  I love myself.  I hate myself.  I'm sorry to drag you into it.  I don't know how else anything changes.  Contemplating the validity of ProT.


///Starkey - "Spacewalk" infolatice diver with a bad respirator.  the city is so vast and so uninhabitable so far beneath the waves

from a similar born year and different circumstance, but very little I haven't enjoyed while there: alicja-w-krainie-czarow