shopping bags

I'm pretty much addiced to prose poems. It's actually kind of pathetic actually to see how infatuated I've become with the genre over the past six months or so. I don't know why... I mean, I do. But I can't really describe it. For me to like a piece or a writer or genre or period or anything and really mean it, there has to be somthing extra there. Somthing that draws me in, implants itself upon my psyche and refuses to let go.

I think more than anything though, I'm enticed by the concept of prose poetry. Essentially a hybrid between short story and poetry, David Lehmen in the introduction to Great American Prose Poems (fantastic anthology, by the way) states that, "it is a form that sets store by its use of the demotic, its willingness to locate the sources of poetry definatly far from the spring on Mount Helicon sacred to the muses. It is an insistently modern form." More than that though, it is a literary rebellion of sort from the traditional poetic stylistic norms. Maybe I'm really into prose poetry because when I write, I mean like really write, regardless of its for school or myself, I agonize over the language...to the point where the placement of the most miniscule "and" becomes the most operose task imaginable. I love the idea of using the axioms of prose to create pieces so alluring that they cannot be called anything other than poetry.

Moving on...my brain has felt like complete mush the past few days. Not to hate on my friends at Coyote who I absolutly adore, but they aren't exactly the most intellectually stimulating people to surround one's self with. I don't know if it's that or if my disgust over being home and the person I am here has consumed what was left of my brain or somthing entirely different...but that's irrellevent. The point is, I feel so unlike myself and it's really disconcerning.

Earlier I went to the Memorial Day parade in Westfield. Of course I had to put on the "Look at me, I'm so happy and so perfect and everybody loves me" (gag) face, just to avoid the awkward questions. And it sucked. Every little old lady, next door neighbour, elementary school teacher, mother of someone on my grade-school soccer team asked the same question, "How are you, dear?" and I forced myself to gloss over how I really am. It's such an act, "I'm wonderful Mrs. So and So. I just finished my first year at Hood College. Oh you haven't heard of it? It's a charming liberal arts college in Western Maryland, not too far from Washington. Such lovely people there, but I still miss home. Of couse I'm still planning on majoring in Political Science.". Every time, I gave the same little spiel while inside I wanted to say somthing completely outragious, my real thoughts, just to see their reaction. Can you imagine: "I'm tired. It's 9 in the morning and I haven't slept in days. I'm over college, but that doesn't mean I'm doing well at all. Yeah I'm still a crappy student but that isnt stopping me from taking 18 credits this summer just to I can get out of there faster. This summer? Oh I'm working at Coyote where I pour drinks and dance on a bar just to make enough money so I'm not going absolutly insane next semester at school"? They would faint. But I'm not one to break the stepford cycle Westfield High graduates have going. Suburbia's dirty little secret, I guess.

Plus, I don't really even know where I am right now. Mentally or emotionally, that is. In Shadow- A Parable (yay prose poetry!), Poe writes, "There were things around us and about of which I can render no distinct account-- things material and spiritual-- heaviness in the atmosphere-- a sense of suffocation-- anxiety-- and, above all, that terrible state of existence which the nervous experience when the senses are keenly living and awake, and meanwhile the powers of thought lie dorment." Yup. If anything, that is how to best begin when trying to ascertain my current state. I don't know how to even begin describing how I feel. It is as if my level of disassociation has boiled over and left me completly numb. Not empty, because I am far further from the Goddesses than I have ever been, just unable to feel. Anything.

Maybe...maybe we're too intense for this world. I'm all for diversity but what I wouldn't give sometimes to seperate the real people-- the thinkers, artists, writers, teachers, those craving somthing...anything..., those who aren't bound to an emotionless state-- from everyone else. I think for the real people, those who know and embrace pain, dealing with everyone else has become the next Sisyphean challenge. We're eternally doomed to interact with the bland masses who are perfectly content with bathing in nothing but pure imbecility.

The mere thought alone makes me nauseous.