My hair is getting to the point where it’s insufferably unruly. It’s at this point in its growing cycle where I have to either cut it ASAP or commit to growing it out. So I gotta get it cut soon.
I remember a year ago it was the last thing I wanted to do: cut my hair. For some reason I used my locks as something to identify with. I didn’t wear a cape like a superhero, people recognized me by my hair. I cut it last October to satisfy the job requirement to work at Green River College. What a farce that turned out to be. But it did one thing, which was crushed my mentality towards my long hair.
Google my name and I’m sure photos will come up that’s got my hair halfway down my chest. It was really really long. And I think all guys with long hair enjoy it until they cut it. Given a sense of perspective, I miss the days when my long hair looked fantastic, but that was a true rarity.
Now that it’s short again it’s easier to manage, and overall I definitely see the difference in aesthetic. I’d rather have it shortish than have it be longer.
Yet still it’s getting heavy on my head again and it needs a good cutting.
In news that isn’t about my hair, I’m trying to pick up on learning Japanese again! I took two years of it in high school to satisfy diploma requirements, doing myself a disservice by not actually learning much. So I’m trying to get back into it, and get conversational with Nihongo again.
So far I know how to say “I used to study Japanese, and I’m trying to again. I’m not good at it”.
All my bases are covered, going forward!
In news about writing (what everyone’s been waiting for, to be sure), I’ve put down another notebook as of this morning. My summerbook started on 6/1/17 has finally been able to rest on 9/18/17.
Just as well, as yesterday was the first day that Fall has socked in to the Pacific Northwest. Leaves are falling, there’s a slight breeze in the air, and it’s raining for the first time in months. I love it.
If you haven’t noticed by my content so far, autumn is my season. I’ve staked a claim to it and it doesn’t let up, comprising the bulk of my experiences and also being generally beautiful all the while.
Watashi wa ame o hai suke desu!
It’s also always raining in Radio Reality City. As cliched as that is a lot of my attempts of writing about rain are about making it a unique thing to me.
A long while back I wrote a journal that tackled some cliches, and that with things like them you need to personalize them for the piece of art their featured in. Such as with sex and death, the context surrounding them makes them mean more. This poem I’m currently working on is about grinding. You know, dirty dancing. Yeah, that. I’m trying to make that mean something different than what it is put, bluntly speaking. Can it be romantic? The moment’s personality is in the details just like when a storm is overhead.
Every instance of rain means something different than the one before. So many engrams in me turn out to have featured rain in some way. Mostly because it’s also always raining in Western Washington, except for summer when it’s not, which is why I dislike summer. I thrive in cold weather. Cold can be a cliche, too, and everything surrounding it. Winter, rain, snow, night, all need some personality to be effective in writing.
So what about writing, then? Where’s this excerpt coming from? No excerpt this journal. I’m still planning a feature to do where I deconstruct a poem bit by bit and maybe making those articles their own feature on RR.C. We’ll see!
But for now, talking about writing is doing some good. Lately I’m picking up and reading dictionaries again. Also this newfound interest in learning Japanese again is somewhat rooted in me wanting to extend my linguistics. I try to pepper in foreign words in some work, without really understanding what they mean.
Take for instance Sturm und Drang. An exotic and legendary weapon set in Destinty 2, but the root of their meaning lies in German poetry. Sturm and Drang, “Storm and Stress”, is characterized by greed, revenge, and taking action in the names of those things. Darker works, no doubt. But how could you apply it without knowing it?
It irritated me in my most recent writing class that everyone else effectively used literary terminology to describe things I was doing in my poems. Was my use of those things strategic and intentional if I didn’t know what they meant? They can’t be, right?
You can’t write what you don’t know, but the unuse of those things is interpreted by others to be a succussful usage. That seems to make a profound statement about the nature of art.
Thus, I’m addicted to knowing. A part of me thrives off of knowing there is something next to understand. When I’m given a ruleset, I want to know why the rules exist. Hell, I remember pre-college schooling sometimes the teacher would punish a whole class for one student’s actions. “If someone doesn’t so-and-so, you won’t be able to such-and-such anymore”. To me, that didn’t seem like the student doing something wrong, it seemed like the teacher punishing everyone.
One of the many things that’s happened that doesn’t make sense to me. This world is so concerned with being right that nothing is right at all. You won’t be able to please anyone, and I think a lot of people concerned with identity reject that they might be an outsider.
Self-awareness and knowledge go hand in hand. I like to think I’m a bit less up myself as I used to be two or three years ago, but how would I know? Is it still uppity of me to think that? Who knows.
Sometimes inaction can be the best action. Not thinking about it. Doing what’s next. That’s what I always say, but everything becomes greyer as I age. More things are relative to perspective than they are to me personally.
Today I feel like I’m stressed out for no reason. Good wake up, good everything, good dreams, good clothing, fine looking, just a storm and stress to make me feel like I’m not the best, which always sucks. I’m a firm believer that I’m the only person who would ever tell me that, so when I get compliments I tend to deflect them.
There’s a cold comfort in the thought that you can trust no one, but at the same time it’s rather immature to think that. You have to rely on people, otherwise you become the one concerned with identity, and then you’re an outsider to yourself.
Here’s to talking through an echo chamber once again. Been a weird day for me. A set of weird days. I hope this gets better soon.
Coming from Radio Reality City, the quencher and arbiter of Sturm und Drang. Thank you for tuning in, once again!
If you’d like to support my work, my poetry collection Olympia Nights is coming out on 9/21/17 for e-books on Amazon! Check it out!
And coming soon is news about Radio Reality City: Red Men, a collection about identify and autumn I’m submitting to Copper Canyon Press! Beta readers are enjoying it so far!
Have a lovely Monday, and once again, I thank you much for tuning in! Art is important! My hope is that Radio Reality City spreads some around to dissipate all the bad stuff!
Consume Reality! 