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A Body of Work vs. An Autobiography

Might I still argue that these are one
in the same?  Looking specifically at
artists.  Art isn’t history.  It might hold
up a mirror, several mirrors, to a few

realities.  Some might be conniving,
like those you’d find in old traveling
amusement parks, they’re made to
distort.  But what is it that can be

seen within the glass, all out of
proportion, a movement away
from whatever is real?  Perhaps
the only way to really know some

one, to know a person as much as
one can, is by way of those distortions,
through analyzing an artist’s intentional
diversions and purposeful sleight of hand,

not to mention their own misperceptions of
the world and of themselves as presented in
earnest.  Even lifting a spyglass to someone’s
every move might provide much less than, say,

a caricature, a myth, an ideal.  When one is
known more for their so-called flaws, or when
one goes down in books resoundingly a hero,
how far off we all must be.  And yet, to know

a person.  To accept what is impossible to know,
but to bathe in the knowing, to spend a lifetime
just to get at something of who one is, that
person closer to you than anyone will ever be.

mmmmdccclxxv

The New Authenticity

He looked at me as if he knew me,
so I gave him a run for his money.
Or was it my money?  Maybe the
truth of the matter is that I barely
even know myself.  If we all say
that in unison which of us would
be comforted and which would
find ourselves frighteningly on
the outer edge of reality.  Tell
me what you really think, neigh
bor.  What kinds of hungry have
you known?  Now I’m getting snide,
the sniveling victim of unregulated
pride, which might better be lumped
in with those other emotions that I
personally find useless: guilt, stub
bornness, jealousy, vengefulness.
Perhaps they were once important,
like the appendix, thousands of years
ago, for various reasons – created with
in humans experiencing such dizziness
a will to survive and maybe the necessary
adrenaline to sometimes do so.  But they’re
not me.  Not that I know of, really.  And
that’s who I try to be, relentlessly.  Nobody
but me.  Sure, it gets confusing.  But what’s
worse, I go long stretches really believing
strongly in certain things, what we might
call values.  I’ve learned not to bang loudly
upon them, to try to thrust them upon others.
Most of them, anyway.  If you can’t find some
thing important enough to stand your ground
protecting, though....  But the worst is when,
doing my best to go about expressing myself,
of making a big production of performing with
some clarity that which is me, wearing my own
face and being forward about it, around people
I’m comfortable enough to do so regularly, and
finding that those people, my people, find it all
but impossible to express in any detail who
I am, get all the salient facts rearranged,
misnamed, absurdly incorrect, well, does it
invalidate who I think you am, make me
realize what a chore it is to literally perform
my self authentically or does it just make
me question further that you are, that I am,
that we are anything but a big heap of illogic
al mess?  Or does it make me try harder to

find that authenticity of me and be clearer

about it?

mmmmdccclxxiv

Career Delusions

To think sometimes of how unfair
wherever it is that I am gets
ridiculous.  I can enjoy a day for
whatever it is that I can do with it,

whatever the limitations.  Spanked
for 30 solid years into submission
in multiple jobs with the same title,
always proud; always loud.  When

one knows just enough to understand
that they are doing a damned fine job,
then it’s time to move to the next one.
Screwing in the bright bulbs of the 

office lamps, the ones that sit on the
desks beneath a cavalry of fluorescents.

mmmmdccclxxiii

Exploring One’s Vulnerabilities

I have decided that the problem with
most of my previous relationships is
that they were with millennials.  This
may sound rather harsh, but for the

six years of being attached rather to
someone from a newer generation,
Z, I have been reflecting on this.  I
recall a ladder on the cover of a rather

popular book with a title that essentially
proclaimed when someone you’re with
seems stuck on a rung, when they’ve
outlasted their usefulness to you (dear

reader), then it’s time to ditch them
and move yourself up a rung.  Perhaps
not every millennial owns this book, but
it seems awfully indicative of how things

went at the end of my times with those
who’d be considered millennials.  Further

more, loyalty and commitment feel excluded
from a lengthy, generation-sized beat on

the timeline of modern life.  That’s a pretty
broad stroke I’ve just painted, granted, but
I do think it one worthy to contemplate.  If
you’d ever like to discuss this further, I would

welcome the opportunity to do so at your leisure.