Poem – “In the Infinite Moment”

Poem.  Mostly free thought.  This is mainly for myself, but…  well, enjoy :)

“In the Infinite Moment”

Curtain the future.
Eclipse your plans with nonsense.

Roll in the mud of life.
Make sticky love.

Run naked through the cold April rain.
I promise we’ll all notice.

Be like the bee.
Bumble through lazy days.

Sing at the top of your lungs.
Sing until your throat burns.

Be a narcissist.
If only before your mirror.

Dance like the firefly.
Shine brief, shine bright.

For today,
in this infinite moment,
you are all that you are
and everything everyone else
never will be.

Russ Legear – May 2008

“Walls”

Tonight I’m going to do something I’ve never done before.  I’m going to write a poem on my blog.  This poem is mostly free-thought; I have a habit of revising until what I’ve originally penned and what actually emerges are totally different things.  I don’t want to do that tonight.  Tonight I’m just going to be me: dark, depressing, and (mostly) unedited.

“Walls”

It somehow seems base that I
would put pen to paper on a topic so abused
as walls.
You’d think they would all be smashed by now,
little more than gravel on sun-starved earth
from the incessant didactic discourse
of every lame-ass poet before me.
But here they are towering in my mind, in my life, in
my soul.
Covered in thorned vines; dark, grey, lifeless,
the walls I put up of morter and clay,
bitter blood and failed fantasies.
And the walls of those close to me,
equally high and intimidating.
After a while I just stare and stare,
my fingernails cracked open, flesh red and raw from
stretching, scrabbling, clawing toward understanding.

In the end,
all I can see are two people, panting,
listening to the endless echoes of their screams
as they try to break free.  Hoping, dreaming
of the day when a torrid howl from the one
they care about will leak through the barrier…
even if but a hint of a whisper.

-Russ Legear, May 2008

My Grandma Emmer

My Grandma Ethel Emmer, born January 21, 1922, died on February 24, 2008.  She was 86 years old.  It took me a long while to come up with the courage and motivation to post this.

Grandma was everything to everyone.  My parents divorced when I was very young.  Since my mom was pretty much a housewife at that point in her life, she had to go back to school to put herself in a position to take care of me.  My Grandpa and Grandma Emmer took care of me in the interim.  In many ways, they raised me.

I was a troubled child, which is probably to be expected when your parents divorce at such a young age.  I threw temper tantrums; I always had to get my way.  Despite this, Grandma was always there.  Granted, it might have been her “being there” with a meter stick in her hand because us kids got into trouble (and we probably deserved it!).

I remember all of her quirks.  Like calling the couch a “davenport”.  How her house was filled with–and surrounded by–plants of all shapes and sizes.  We used to spend long hours pulling weeds in the garden, planting strawberries and carrots and cabbages and potatoes and tomatoes.  She loved to garden, and she was good at it.  I remember most the marigolds and snapdragons.  Us kids (kids = myself and my cousins David and Daniel) would munch on fresh chives from the garden.

When I was little we planted trees out in the back yard.  They were saplings, then.  What a surprise I had when I visited that little shack last year and saw how huge they had become.

She also loved to play video games, which is probably my fault.  I would come for summer break and bring my Nintendo (and, later, my SNES).  She never could beat Super Mario Brothers, but she sure did try.  I can’t really say Grandpa approved, either, which is probably another reason she liked to play.

We would stay up late at night watching M.A.S.H. reruns while playing King’s Corners, or Yahtzee, or Crazy Eights.  She used to give me little cough syrup caps of beer.  We would go for walks in the Waupun cemetary in the summer.  We caught bullheads in the Rock River.

All these memories, these nuggets of nostalgia–they glow like freshly blown glass in a dark room.  She was a nexus, a focal point, the keystone that held us all together.  She gave us everything she had, every day, and never asked for a shred in return.

I miss her.  We all do.

-Russ

The Psychology of Intimate Relationships

Whoa, slow down there chief!  What the hell are you talking about?

That’s a good question.  I’m a big fan of “why” questions, and today I want to ask a few.

Why do we feel the need, as human beings, to form relationships with other human beings?  That’s a very broad question, so let me limit it; why do we humans feel the need to form intimate romantic relationships?

Let’s look at the cause, first.  I think we can all agree that loneliness is a key factor.  Then the question becomes:  Why do we humans get lonely?

I could go over the plethora of papers about human genetics, hormones, etc etc etc.  I don’t care about that.  I think that we as a species are at such a level of meta-humanity that we can begin to transcend something as simple as chemicals rushing through our bodies.  Translation:  You have a brain, so use it.

No, what I’d like to address is the thought processes behind this need to share your life with someone else.  What makes you think that forming an intimate relationship will make your life better?  Better yet, what makes you think that you need an intimate relationship to live a better life?

Part of it, I think, is how we are inundated with emblems of social duality throughout our adolescent and adult lives.  It is a rare TV show that doesn’t have some sort of romantic relationship.  Romance is everywhere.  And if that is the case, are we merely trying to emulate what is socially expected?

I think that is part of it, yes, though more of an effect than the cause.  I personally believe it has more to do with having someone act as a mirror for you.  Despite spiraling populations, we are all so isolated.  We all live in our own heads with our own thoughts.  When we find someone with whom we share something in common, that validates our own thoughts and desires.  This commonality brings couples together and proves to them that they’re not all raging lunatics living a massive delusion.

And sometimes it doesn’t.  Sometimes the reflection isn’t what we want to see, even if it is the truth.  Sometimes the commonalities and differences only highlight flaws in our character.  In which case we can either believe what we see, or not.  There is always an opportunity to learn.

Knowing who you are and where you are in life requires a lot of faith in yourself and your own deductive faculties.  I think intimate relationships tend to lessen the amount of personal faith required to get from point A (the abyss) and point B (enlightenment).  The catch 22 is that, in many cases, the only way you can truly get the most out of a relationship is to have equal faith (and trust, for that matter) in someone else to be by your side through thick or thin.  In addition to equal–if not greater–faith and trust in yourself.

Granted, I’m probably full of crap.  But this is a subject that’s been on my mind a lot lately, and I feel it is a topic that applies to just about anyone.  Of course, whether or not anyone derives wisdom from this block of discourse is entirely circumstantial.

:-)

-Russ

Sounds of the City

I just wanted to say that the thing I love most about Chicago is not the variety of food, or people; not the night life nor the character of the buildings.  Not even the grit in each brick.

It’s falling asleep to the rumbling of the El that seems to bring me back. The ambulance sirens, the buzz of an old stick-shift beater as it plunges through a yellow light. I love the way the city sings to me in its own unique way.

It is as though Chicago wants us all to know that we’re not alone.

-Russ

The Art of Happiness

No, this is not about the book authored by the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler (though you will find much valuable advice in said book).   Also, this is advice only.  I hold no relevent degree, and your mileage may vary.  Etc etc etc.  And so on.  This post is as much for me as it is for my readers.

It has recently come to my attention, mostly through externally initiated self-reflection, that there are many aspects of my life that require scrutiny.  Rather than detail them, effectively transforming this into a Emo post, I want to talk about the concept self improvement itself.

Most folks in Western society think about self improvement at some point in their lives.  Take a walk down the Self Help section of Borders or B&N if you need proof.  I don’t think you need that crap; really, I think you only need a few things to improve your life.

1) The ability to self reflect.  This is not as easy as it sounds; more later.

2) The desire to change.  This is also not as obvious as it sounds.

3) People with whom you can interact.

Let us examine #1: Who here knows how to self-reflect?  I’m not talking about the typical internal monologues… such as “I bought groceries today” or “TV sucks since the writers’ strike”.  I’m talking about being able to identify the key traits that make up who you are.

So few people truly know what it means to be themselves that they spend their entire lives living a lie.  They live the way their parents, their siblings, their life-partners think they should.  They live for the expectations of others because they don’t know who they are and what they want.  I can’t blame them because I’m one of them.  It is difficult to figure out who you are.  J. Krisnamurti wrote an entire book on self discovery and how hard it is to break through your own false expectations of who you are and what you want.  For example, when one tells you to “Be yourself”, and you follow suit, you’re actually trying to be what you think you want to be.  You’re no more that ideological template than a fig tree is a sledgehammer.

Instead, examine what you want out of life.  Think on the things that make you happy.  Do you enjoy writing?  Golfing?  Playing video games?  Helping others?  Are you sure these things make you genuinely happy?

A better question is:  “Can you be happy–euphoric even–all by yourself, in a blank white room, with no stimulation whatsoever?”  Can you claim happiness as a state of mind?

On #2: I can’t fathom how many times I and all of my friends have told me how much they really wanted to do something with their lives, but did not follow through.  The key is not how much you want something, but how much you want to put in the effort to achieve the desired goal.  For example, I would like to be a millionaire; I would not like to put forth the effort to become one.

Ask yourself what you want, and then ask yourself what you’re willing to sacrifice to get it.  If you want to be a “better person”, what steps are you going to take?  What are you willing to trade?  I feel that the more you are willing to sacrifice, the more you truly want whatever it is you want.

Finally, #3 :  You should not have to approach this alone.  Real change is not easy, nor is it instantaneous.  True friends will help you along the way.  Just be wary of becoming dependent upon their help.  As Smokey the Bear once said, “Only you can help prevent forest fires!”

-Russ