I tend to write poetry when I am overwhelmed by some great emotion, and it is these moments that have produced my favorite pieces. Consequently, much of my poetry is written from a frustrated point of view, as they revolve around dark topics. I can never write anything when I’m happy; it ends up sounding cliché and annoying.

Thus, the following two poems are what resulted after witnessing a certain event that didn’t quite sit right with me.

Untitled

She stands in the middle

of the pavement

in her neon pink raincoat

The smoke from the cigarette

held between her fragile fingers

obscures her vivid,

crazes blue eyes

She screams one dollar

One dollar

One dollar

She travels to another street,

inflicting her pain

on all who pass

Counting Down

He’s obsessed with death.

In ten years, he says,

I’ll be lying

In a dirt bed

With pallid skin

And unseeing eyes.

It’s accepted in his mind.

He only waits.

He spends his days working

And nights resting

While the patient blackened hand

Threatens to seize him.

I found a really funky website where you can make your own abstract art: http://weavesilk.com/. If you’re in a creative mood I’d suggest trying it out. Or just try it out for the sake of trying new things :).

This was my attempt: http://r.weavesilk.com/?v=4&id=dabfmeynwx

It looks like an angry pug, or maybe a clown. I’m not sure.

Inspiration can happen at any moment! For Visual Artist Ruslan Khasanov, inspiration came to him while cooking with soy sauce.

http://www.behance.net/gallery/Pacific-Light/10037541

I love how the colors swirl, mix and bead together, yet they don’t entirely mix as expected. This creates so many possibilities of images and practically paints itself! Unlike Tauba Auerbach’s book (“The Book of Souls”) with just color, the colors are fluid and moving. I feel like this is could be a representation of souls and how they move through life and interactions with other souls. Live Souls?

The artists page: http://ruskhasanov.com/

I have to say, a lot of this artist’s work is awesome, but very trippy.

Ben Nunery recreates wedding photos with his daughter two years after the death of his wife.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/two-years-after-losing-his-wife-to-cancer-a-man-recreated-hi

This set of photos reminded me a lot of one of the museum presentations we had in class where the exhibits showed how photography allowed people to visually compare the past and the present. All the memories and events on the past are captured in the old photos, while the newly created ones are right beside it.

I’m sure most of us have seen a piece of art and thought “…This…is…art?” There seems to be a fine line between a deep, symbolic and emotional piece and, well, a blank white canvas. It’s hard for people like me who are unfamiliar with art, to see the “essence” of a piece; which is why I really enjoy Sam Noble and Sue Webster’s work.

http://www.thisismarvelous.com/i/4-Amazing-Shadow-Sculptures-by-Tim-Noble-and-Sue-Webster

The two artists take trash (literally: dead birds, cigarettes, metal, wood) and arrange it in a way where if a light is projected onto it, the shadow on the back wall will be a silhouette of people. I love their work because when I first looked at the pictures, I only saw the “trash” side. I thought it would be one of those extremely abstract pieces that only very intelligent people would appreciate. Then I saw the shadow and was shocked. The amount of skill and technique needed to precisely arrange the objects in order to form such accurate silhouettes is amazing. The work was both visually appealing enough to grab my attention, and abstract enough to leave an impression on me.

http://youtu.be/E8rnXMXMfKM

Above is a song, off of Beyonce’s new self-titled album, called “Flawless”. The song is about female empowerment, and includes an excerpt of a Ted Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (a fabulous author and feminist who wrote the beautiful book “Purple Hibiscus”). Critics argue that Beyonce sexualizes herself too much to be considered a feminist. I personally disagree with that statement, and think empowerment shouldn’t come through sacrificing or minimizing the sexual prowess and beauty of women, but rather by showcasing that that is merely one aspect of a woman, and not the defining one. Bellow are some choice lyrics from the song. If you get the chance, take a listen to the song and let me know what you think!

“I know when you were little girls
You dreamt of being in my world…
I took some time to live my life
But don’t think I’m just his little wife
Don’t get it twisted…”

The following is in the song but originally from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Ted Talk:

“We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller
We say to girls: “You can have ambition, but not too much
You should aim to be successful, but not too successful
Otherwise, you will threaten the man”
Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage
I am expected to make my life choices
Always keeping in mind that marriage is most important
Now, marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support
But why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage
And we don’t teach boys the same?
We raise girls to see each other as competitors
Not for jobs or for accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing
But for the attention of men
We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are
Feminist: a person who believes in the social
Political, and economic equality of the sexes…”

As of Wednesday, December 18th, I have been phone-less. My iPhone tragically drowned to death, leaving me isolated from most of my friends. I’m embarrassed to admit that these past few days have been nearly unbearable. I didn’t realize how dependent I was — I had become addicted to the immediate gratification of text messages and social media, and was thrown completely off balance when my constant stream of “socializing” was eliminated. I’m starting to slowly enjoy it though. I feel like my mind has slowed down, I’m a little more focused without the constant pressure of my phone wedged inside my back pocket. The truly important people can still reach me, and I have a lot less white noise in my head. Don’t get me wrong, I can’t wait until I have my own phone so that I can go back to all the clandestine activities that have been on pause since that fateful Wednesday (That was a joke). I guess I just didn’t expect to enjoy the silence so much.

Morals are an interesting topic that we all consider, but is a very difficult idea to define. Even a simple scenario can make you really think about how morals work. If you were on a rampart train and had to make a choice between a path with one person or another path with five people, most people would choose the one person over the five. However, if you were given the choice to sacrifice one person who was going to die (by donating his organs and what not) to save the lives of five other people in need, most people would choose not to give up one man’s life for the sake of five others.

Clearly, there is some moral boundary that separates these two similar, but different cases. But what exactly determines these boundaries? This is a question I always ask myself, but I can’t really get myself to answer it.

Here is a case relating to philosophy that I found to be humorous:

On Twin Earth, a brain in a vat is at the wheel of a runaway trolley. There are only two options that the brain can take: the right side of the fork in the track or the left side of the fork. There is no way in sight of derailing or stopping the trolley and the brain is aware of this, for the brain knows trolleys. The brain is causally hooked up to the trolley such that the brain can determine the course which the trolley will take.

On the right side of the track there is a single railroad worker, Jones, who will definitely be killed if the brain steers the trolley to the right. If the railman on the right lives, he will go on to kill five men for the sake of killing them, but in doing so will inadvertently save the lives of thirty orphans (one of the five men he will kill is planning to destroy a bridge that the orphans’ bus will be crossing later that night). One of the orphans that will be killed would have grown up to become a tyrant who would make good utilitarian men do bad things. Another of the orphans would grow up to become G.E.M. Anscombe, while a third would invent the pop-top can.

If the brain in the vat chooses the left side of the track, the trolley will definitely hit and kill a railman on the left side of the track, “Leftie” and will hit and destroy ten beating hearts on the track that could (and would) have been transplanted into ten patients in the local hospital that will die without donor hearts. These are the only hearts available, and the brain is aware of this, for the brain knows hearts. If the railman on the left side of the track lives, he too will kill five men, in fact the same five that the railman on the right would kill. However, “Leftie” will kill the five as an unintended consequence of saving ten men: he will inadvertently kill the five men rushing the ten hearts to the local hospital for transplantation. A further result of “Leftie’s” act would be that the busload of orphans will be spared. Among the five men killed by “Leftie” are both the man responsible for putting the brain at the controls of the trolley, and the author of this example. If the ten hearts and “Leftie” are killed by the trolley, the ten prospective heart-transplant patients will die and their kidneys will be used to save the lives of twenty kidney-transplant patients, one of whom will grow up to cure cancer, and one of whom will grow up to be Hitler. There are other kidneys and dialysis machines available, however the brain does not know kidneys, and this is not a factor.

Assume that the brain’s choice, whatever it turns out to be, will serve as an example to other brains-in-vats and so the effects of his decision will be amplified. Also assume that if the brain chooses the right side of the fork, an unjust war free of war crimes will ensue, while if the brain chooses the left fork, a just war fraught with war crimes will result. Furthermore, there is an intermittently active Cartesian demon deceiving the brain in such a manner that the brain is never sure if it is being deceived.

QUESTION: What should the brain do?

(http://www.mindspring.com/~mfpatton/Tissues.htm)

And, to round out the giving of words, I’ve been meaning almost all semester to write about this, one of my favorite poems:

the Camrbidge ladies who live in furnished souls

the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls

are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds

(also, with the church’s protestant blessings

daughters,unscented shapeless spirited)

they believe in Christ and Longfellow, both dead,

are invariably interested in so many things—

at the present writing one still finds

delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles?

perhaps. While permanent faces coyly bandy

scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D

…. the Cambridge ladies do not care, above

Cambridge if sometimes in its box of

sky lavender and cornerless, the

moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

As long as I have started for myself this trend of sharing quotations, I thought I would share a poem with you guys.  I’ve been writing on the blog in hints and whispers about how much the arts have meant in my life, and how much writing, in particular, has made me the person I am, but I have not shown you at all what I mean.  Words have been everything to me, though I think I have said that before, and poetry has often been the only way I can struggle through myself toward truth.  So it seems, with the semester officially done, that it’s high time I post a poem I wrote.

The Cacophony of Wonderment

What, in the dark, is all this cacophony of wonderment,

all this gathering-forth of majestic things, rushing out to meet the dawn,

to call like gulls upon the edges of the world, to memorize

in slow arcs and simple dives,

the contours of the thoughts spun out beneath the light and strung starwards?

What, after all, is all this legacy of dawn and daylight,

what mystery to us, who live beneath the hours of night,

transfixed, perhaps, by the starlight strong of afternoon, unknown,

what is any of it but questioning laid to sleep before the loam and atmosphere.

For we are cursed things, cared-for, wearied and riddled with the weight of

all the agonies we cast.

The storm is come, the wind a battered voice against the brightness of the things before,

and all the world is cloaked in cold and salt spray.

We will turn again to tunnels, deep dry places beneath the earth

where we are safe from the menace of the monstrous skies,

beneath the arching of the resting-places made our homes.