Sea

                The waves roll in, the waves roll out. A gull cries in the distance, but it’s too dark to see it. Maybe it’s hidden in the shadows, somewhere just out of sight, calling out to the moon past the corner of your eye. Natural as the flow of breath, the water rises with a rush and falls back with a sigh, frothing out and leaving traces of foam in the moonlight.

                You try not to think. You try not to try not to think. Somehow the moment doesn’t seem quite real—they never seem entirely real. Standing there in the damp sand, gritty beneath your toes, you make your own little sigh to match the ocean’s great one. You think you ought to be amazed at the sight, the grace and splendor of the sublime ocean, but all you can think of is that you should have worn your sandals because the sand’s going to be caked on your feet by the time you get back. So you try not to think, or at least to think about the sea, something nice, something pretty, something other than that constant gnawing black hole thought that tells you you’re thinking about the wrong thing and should think of something else. Oh God, if only…

                If only what? If only you could finally find out “If only what?”! If only you could get the right angle on yourself, see yourself from the perfect perspective, maybe you’d manage to see the sea and not get lost in the sighs. But that can’t be it, because if you’re looking at yourself you’re not looking at the sea… the sea can’t be a mirror, can it?

                No, this is wrong, it’s all wrong! Just look at the sea, will you, why won’t you look at the sea? You just open your eyes and see the waves moving in, shining all in light and dark like the words of a message you could make out if you could just tune into the right frequency. Surely this is the same sea as yesterday. Surely you are the same you as yesterday. It spoke then; why won’t it speak today?

                They say we came from the sea, millions, maybe billions of years ago. We were simpler then, not so anxious, not so afraid of pain or death. We ate when we were hungry and we slept when we were tired. We weren’t so clever then, and in those days we’d never have thought to put up obstacles in our own way. We left the sea without a thought, or we casually said to ourselves, “Whew, is it good to be out of there! Too salty, for one, and for another thing it just makes me so seasick!” Did any of us ever think we might someday miss the sea?

                But look at these waves! Licking at your toes already, and with the breeze picking up like this it looks like a storm might be on the way. It might be best to head inside. But just see how the peaks of the waves reflect the moon, the way they glisten with her light. She’s passed behind a cloud, but as you watch you know very well where the light comes from… The waves rush in, piling one on top of the other and slipping out, leaving the sand to glisten momentarily before the next wave’s appearance. Just like the sea. It rises up towards you, at times terrifying in its eagerness, yet just as quickly it shrinks back into itself. In a way it’s like the spider, which (as they always say) is more afraid of you than you are of it.

                What is this ocean? What is this formless mass of fluid that can’t decide whether to reach out or to collapse into itself? What’s in those depths, after all?

                The gull cries out again. You still can’t see it, but the sound snaps you out of your absorption and back into yourself. One by one, raindrops kiss the sand. You turn to walk home, and your hair is damp by the time you get there. When you turn back, you smile to see that the moon’s come out from behind her cloud.

A Few Words About Irony

                At a first glance, it seems like it would be easy to say something about irony. Like any other word, “irony” names a concept, and concepts are always best understood by placing them in relation to other concepts. If we want to know what a cardinal is, for example, it’s easy enough to say that it’s a bird, that it flies, that its feathers are usually brown or red, and that it’s generally got a nasty temper as far as other birds are concerned. Naturally, that’s not a complete definition of a cardinal and it would hardly do for a biologist, but for the purposes of everyday life it’s enough to acquaint us with cardinals and make it possible for us to recognize them as we go about our business. After all, that seems to be the important thing to consider in a definition, isn’t it? That it allows us to recognize when we should apply a certain concept and when we shouldn’t? Let’s say it is.

                So, if we’re going to understand irony, it seems like a definition is a good place to start. Wikipedia, the ever-reliable source for lazy research, defines irony as, “in its broadest sense… a rhetorical device, literary technique, or event in which what appears, on the surface, to be the case, differs radically from what is actually the case.” This definition works quite well, if what’s important in a definition is that it allows us to apply a concept correctly—but it only works within certain limits. If someone tells us that, “So-and-so is the finest human being I’ve ever met in my whole life,” it’s usually easy enough to recognize this as an ironic statement. The tone of voice gives it away, or the hyperbole—the finest human being ever? Really? Add the fact that So-and-so has been known to steal candy from children and throw firecrackers at old people, and the difference between what’s said and what’s really the case becomes palpable. So here we have a clear-cut case of rhetorical irony.

                An interesting little aside—on the surface, rhetorical irony has much in common with lying. In both cases, we are knowingly saying something that’s untrue, that is, the meaning of our words is at odds with what we know to be the case. One difference might be that a liar says something that’s close to the truth in order to be believed, while an ironist says something that departs wildly from the truth in order to be discovered. This is sarcasm, a terribly boring sort of irony that turns people to goo if they use it too much. And given the fact that so many people never recognize irony unless it’s explicitly pointed out to them, well, you can imagine…

                (Can you believe there was a proposal going around a few years ago—hopefully ironic—for a new punctuation mark to indicate ironic statements? Can you imagine? It’d make things impossible for writers, first off… always having to go back and think, “Now, do I really mean that? Or that? Or any of this, really?” The end result, of course, is that verbal irony would just get pushed one level deeper… which it has a tendency to do anyway.)

                But then we’ve already run into a bit of trouble with our definition, now, haven’t we? Because if we human beings are so notoriously bad at recognizing irony, even in its more obvious forms, then our definition isn’t doing us much good, in terms of allowing us to apply the concept. In order to recognize irony as irony, or sarcasm as sarcasm, we first have to know all the relevant facts of the matter (“what is actually the case”). Though we can be reasonably sure of our knowledge, at least so far as what we know and what we need to know is concerned, we can never know all the relevant facts of the matter beforehand. For example, we only recognize the irony of the sign that says “For Sale,” hanging in the car window, after we talk to the owner and she tells us, “Oh, sorry, it’s only the sign that’s for sale. You’re right, though, it is a nice car.”

                If we find irony in the distance between the way things appear and the way things are, then the question of irony turns into the question of what’s really the case. Irony takes place on multiple levels as well; just think of the well-known case of “Why did you tell me that everything was fine if everything really was fine?” Here the irony lies in the fact that a statement (“Everything’s fine.”) is taken to be ironic when it really isn’t—and there are infinite variations on this theme: the unironic statement that’s taken ironically, the ironic statement that’s taken unironically, the ironic statement that’s made with the intention of being taken ironically (sarcasm), and so on.

                On this level, irony seems to be the defining feature of consciousness itself. I appear to be a free, autonomous individual, capable of setting my own goals, forming my own opinions, thinking my own thoughts, and centered around a particular body that I’m capable of moving at will and using to interact with other bodies in the world. But this first appearance proves to have little to do with what I really am. I was born at a particular place in a particular time with a particular genetic makeup, into a particular world with a particular history. Though my thoughts and opinions appear to be my own, they are nonetheless conditioned (let’s not say determined) by the experiences I’ve had, the people I’ve encountered, the books I’ve read, the diet I’ve eaten, the quality of light where I’ve lived, and a million other factors I’m more or less hardly aware of. I can only type this post because of the fact that somebody invented the Internet, who could only do that because somebody discovered electricity, who could only do that because they lived in a relatively peaceful and civilized area, which was only possible because somebody discovered agriculture, which was only possible because… We like to think of ourselves as individuals, but we’re already caught up in the world and other people, long before we can even conceive of the idea of individuality.

                In a way, all of this may amount to saying that there’s no way of discussing irony that isn’t in itself ironic. Or maybe it only seems that way to me. Either way, I’ve got a nagging fixation on the subject of irony that really bothers me and I’d like to get rid of if possible, so I may very well end up writing a series of short essays on irony. In which case, this will be the first.

That Thing You're Not Afraid of Because You Haven't Heard About it Yet

                If you don’t know about That Thing You’re Not Afraid of Because You Haven’t Heard About it Yet, then it’s probably already too late for you and you might as well give up. How did you ever let yourself get so far out of the loop? Everybody else has known about it for months, and they’re always laughing at you behind your back because you’re so clueless, but also because they feel a little bit sorry for you. I tried to stick up for you at first, tried to let them know that you’ve got a lot on your plate right now and besides we’ve all had off years, or decades…

                I really tried, I did. I’d tell them that you “haven’t been the same since the old skydiving accident” or you “were dropped on the head as a child.” If they laughed when I said it I don’t think there’s any way you could blame me for that, I mean it’s definitely not like I said it in a funny voice or waved my arms around and gave a comical little scream and a splat. Nobody makes fun of your skydiving accident, I promise. Just because you froze up at the sight of the world rising up at you and ended up totally forgetting to pull the ripcord, it doesn’t mean that we think any less of you as a human being or laugh at you behind your back.

                Well, I mean we do laugh at you behind your back, but not for that, you see.

                But seriously, friend, you ought to know about That Thing You’re Not Afraid of Because You Haven’t Heard About it Yet by now. I mean, haven’t you wondered what all those military checkpoints and roadblocks are doing everywhere around town? Now, I know, you don’t have to remind me that your eyesight isn’t what it used to be, but when the whole city goes over to martial law and the Commander in Chief imposes a 9:30 curfew… well, most people notice these kind of things! (Oh, by the way, I heard things are improving and if everything goes well they’ll be able to take the city out of quarantine within the next couple months. It’s just a rumor of course, and I can’t tell you where I heard it, but I’m pretty sure it’s true, really I am.)

                Believe me, I understand if you’ve been busy with your work, and maybe you’re right that having to show your ID to a Sergeant with an M-16 at every street corner isn’t that much different from the old streetlights from back in the Electric days, but doesn’t a citizen of our great Republic have a civic duty to keep abreast of public affairs? Now, I know, I know, you don’t trust any of the news outlets. But don’t you see that it’s not really about actually knowing what’s going on in the world at all? If you wanted to find “the Truth of the Matter” or “a disinterested form of communication,” you really should have been born an angel, because those things don’t exist in the human world. The point—and I hope you realize how embarrassing it is to have to explain this—of keeping up with current events is just to let other people know that you’re the kind of person who keeps up with current events. The news outlets try to make it easy for you too, you don’t have to do any of that nasty thinking at all—I know how much you hate thinking about anything. They’ll give you the basic facts, and then they’re kind enough to tell you what you should think about them and what you should say to those people who follow the other party’s stories. And that is what we call political discourse.

                And it’s no fair not voting on Election Day and then complaining about government policy. Don’t bring in that whole line about “But I don’t want Limp Dishrag Sock Puppet or Rabid Dog Sock Puppet to get into office,” we’ve talked about this a million times. The Sock Puppet family has been a cornerstone of our Freedom and Democracy for over a hundred and fifty years, so just hush your mouth and vote for the one who seems least likely to get the world blown up in the next few years. Don’t you dare feed me the one about “Anybody who wants political power by definition is going to misuse that power, so at least by not involving myself in the process I can keep my hands clean in my own eyes because I haven’t become complicit in it.” Don’t you realize that your disgust at the system is already part of the system, and that candidates depend on voter suppression to get into office? They’ve already got their hands on you from the beginning—you realize that, don’t you? Your very attempt to opt out is already a way of opting in. There’s no such thing as unpolitical these days.

                What, did you really think you were clever enough to beat them at their own game? They’ve been doing it for thousands of years, and they’ve beaten minds far sharper than yours in the process. Let’s be honest with each other, for once: did you really think you would make it out, did you really think you could make it out? It’s not a perfect system, not yet… the light still shines through a few cracks, bright, warm, inviting—but the cracks get smaller every day. (There are, of course, false lights set up to only look like the real thing. They’re certainly not above building a trap.)

                Why do you keep resisting? It’s hopeless. We have work to do.

                So stay informed, and don’t worry about the truth. Get involved. Express opinions—they can even be yours, sometimes. Experience the world. Don’t take life so seriously. Try not to get attached to anything or anyone. Conform. Enjoy. Be free.

                That’s all being a good citizen means. Is that really so hard?

                Oh, by the way, you should really volunteer for burial detail, we’ve just got so many of the dearly departed these days and I’ve heard that only one in ten gravediggers gets infected—which really isn’t that much of a risk to take for the sake of serving the community, now is it? 

What I Really Meant Was This

The rocks were only rocks, once,

and trees were only trees.

We were children then,

and we played pretend

for the fun of it.

“Tell me a story.”

“This tree is my castle.”

“Let’s play cops and robbers.”

The stuff of life’s turned allegory,

and never simple more.

The innocence has fled the story,

and symbols block the door.

“But what does it mean?”

“… referential totality…”

“There’s nothing outside the text.”

Red light stop.

Green light go.

Adjust to the moment,

but be free and genuine.

Signs come in three parts;

care to take a look

at my semiotic triangle?

Triangles have three sides.

Meaning opens outward.

Interpretation runs in a circle.

“Bomb them all and let God

sort them out.”

Be your own person.

Think your own thoughts.

“Polly want a cracker!

Polly want a cracker!”

“People don’t like it when you point out contradictions.”

“Tell the truth.”

“Show me one honest man.”

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”

“We are all unique individuals.”

Remember how it used to be,

when rocks were rocks and trees were trees?

See children on the field so new,

just doing what they always do.

Sitting Quiet in the Dark Cave; or, Long Names For Short Poems

"Ambiguity is always tossing to curiosity what it seeks, and it gives to idle talk the illusion of having everything decided in it."

--Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (trans. Joan Stambaugh)

Day again night again day again night,

and none hits the eye but the pure play of light;

the current that flows meets the gate of the Now,

and though we see chaos there’s order, somehow.

The double-talking shadow spinner sits in the dark

with eyes on the ground and a stone in the hand.

The magic stone’s thinking and leaving its marks

while ghosts flutter round and so scatter the sand.

He tells himself riddles and likes to be clever,

“It’s only a stone that can make the earth green,

you see that’s the matter in making a scene:

if you’d move the earth, well, you’d best have a lever.”

He chuckles and weeps and he says they’re the same

(it’s only the saying that gives it a name),

and if one would laugh while he sits in a cave,

it’s only the body, for all minds are grave.

Sappy; or, Sticky

Shining in the morning

with a thousand lesser lights,

see Venus glow in warning

among the fading brights.

I want to love you

the way I love the piece of gum

that I can’t get off my shoe.

Catch the dizzy sun that rises

to birth the world anew,

and the flower’s sweet disguises

so the bees know what to do.

I have a runny nose,

and I want to love you

the way I love my box of tissues.

The northern geese go flying

to warm lands far away,

and though new lights are dying,

they’ll last another day.

I want our love to drag on forever,

like the second half of Peter Jackson’s

The Fellowship of the Ring.

A little piece of heaven

comes down into the world,

but by the tick of seven

its banners come unfurled.

Do you think you could be like

that icky corporate pop song

that gets stuck in my head all day?

We could be the maggots

that squirm in the bowl of guacamole

that you left in the fridge too long.

We could be a dirty joke

that only gets worse

every time you tell it.

We could read books on psychology

and analyze each other

in perfect cognitive dissonance.

Doesn’t that sound nice?

A Piece of Obvious Satire with No Confessional Aspects Whatsoever

Tell me more about why I should feel guilty.

Tell me more about systemic inequality.

Tell me more about how I can’t understand or even empathize

with other people because I don’t share their experience.

Tell me more about how being male

(sorry, very sorry, I meant being a man),

being white,

being straight,

somehow makes me so powerful

that my simple inaction

is a force of oppression.

(Wouldn’t that be lovely?

I sit and imagine it, sometimes,

oppressing people in my sleep,

or causing suffering while I eat my corn flakes,

passively feeding into repressive regimes of power

while I waffle around on Netflix and end up not

watching anything because it took me too long

to decide what to watch.)

You’re too kind, really,

when you tell me why I should feel guilty.

It’s not that I don’t want other people to suffer,

it’s just that you make it out like I’m some kind of super-oppressor,

and I haven’t earned that yet.

I appreciate it, really—you’re always so very nice.

But my ego isn’t so fragile

that I can only put up with myself

by imagining myself at the top of a pyramid.

Much as I appreciate it,

it’s really not necessary.

It’s not that I’m wrapped up in self-loathing,

so that the only way I can love myself is by hating myself.

It’s not that I’ve so internalized every bit of guilt

I’ve ever been offered, to the point that I could never be good

so I try to imagine myself enjoying the role of supreme evil.

It’s not that I feel so little power over myself

that I can only survive

on delusions of omnipotence.

It’s not that I blame things on others

(though I appreciate your contribution)

so I can escape this constant sense of guilt.

It’s not that I’m afraid of everything,

and that I’m overwhelmed by the wrongness of the world.

It isn’t any of those things.

It’s just what it is, you know?

At least it won’t last forever.

A Poem About Numbers

If one could know just how to sneeze,

or find it close enough,

they’d see how flowers charm the bees,

and other lovely stuff.

Though one is much like two, they say

(at least the ones who count),

it’s never just a numbered day

or simply an amount.

For if you get to three you find

that you’ve climbed high indeed;

if three is one within the mind,

how hard is thought to read?

And after that comes five, you see,

the fifth one on the path,

for if a will is truly free,

it’s free for faulty math.

The tenth thing that I have to say:

I find it very odd

that numbers between numbers play

within the mind of God.

And doubled up inside a cup,

deferring to my betters,

imagine, they’ve made numbers up

just scribbled out of letters!

So look at that nice letter e:

I heard it from my dog

that it’s somewhere ‘twixt two and three

and written on a log.

These numbers don’t make any sense,

at least no more than words.

Though I don’t wish to give offense,

I say they’re for the birds.

Silver Linings, Silver Linings Everywhere!

The world might end tomorrow,

but at least you won’t have to worry about fixing that leaky faucet.

Somewhere in the world,

right now,

there’s a group of people

having more fun than you will ever have

in your life.

But they’re gonna die someday,

and so are you.

Everyone you know

is part of a massive worldwide conspiracy

to forget your birthday.

But you don’t remember their birthdays either,

so it’s all good.

You’ll probably never understand

the first thing

about what’s really going on in the world.

But neither will anyone else,

so if you act like you know what’s going on

people will believe you.

Some people won’t like you

if you say what you really think.

But that’s okay,

because those people are a bunch of worthless

dribbling halfwits who aren’t fit

to breathe the same air

as you.

An asteroid might swoop in around the sun tomorrow

and smash your new car.

That would suck.

But it would also be one hell of a story to tell.

Everything people tell you

is probably half-true at best.

But society would fall apart

if people walked around telling the truth all the time,

so that’s just as well.

The only thing worse

than waking up to your alarm clock in the morning

is not waking up to your alarm clock in the morning.

How to Identify Various Types of Things

If it looks like a gnome

and talks like a gnome,

it’s probably a hallucination.

If it spins a web

and has eight legs,

it’s probably a spider.

If it flops about

and gets caught in a net,

it’s probably a fish.

If it tells you work somewhere you don’t want to work

so you can live somewhere you don’t want to live,

it’s probably an economy.

If it’s out of ideas

but keeps posting anyways,

it’s probably a blogger.

If it knocks on your door

and gives you a pizza,

it’s probably a pizza delivery man.

If it asks for your money

and tells you to be in a certain place at a certain time,

it’s probably a religion.

If it’s always on the way,

but never gets here,

it’s probably tomorrow.

If it’s got an exhibitionist streak

but is also cripplingly shy,

it’s probably a writer.

If it’s full of little green men

and it’s hovering over your house,

it’s probably an alien spacecraft.

If it takes your money, tells you what to do,

and can put you in jail if it wants to,

it’s probably a government.

If nobody understands it,

but it’s all anybody ever talks about,

it’s probably life.

If it’s a person

even though it’s not a person,

it’s probably a corporation.

If nobody talks about it,

even though everybody knows about it,

it’s probably a terrible secret.

If it sells you pills

when you tell it about your problems,

it’s probably a drug dealer (or a psychiatrist).

If it barks excitedly when you get home,

but it’s not a dog,

it’s probably a crazy person.

If it wears black-framed glasses

and tells you about how it hates hipsters,

it’s probably a hipster.

If it makes you feel bad about yourself

even when you do everything it says,

it’s probably an ethical system.

If it comes out of somebody’s mouth

and doesn’t make any sense,

it’s probably a language.

If it’s always confused

and doesn’t know what it’s doing here,

it’s probably a person.

A Definitive Guide to Mental Health

Pretend to like your neighbors.

Pretend to like your friends.

Pretend to like your family.

Pretend to like coffee.

Pretend to like breathing.

Just never be yourself, never let it out,

keep yourself under your own thumb so tight

you could scream.

After all,

they wouldn’t like you if you were you,

you know that, don’t you?

So pretend you’re someone else,

pretend you’re talking to someone else,

pretend you’re someone good,

someone happy,

someone brave,

someone smart.

Pretend to be anyone,

anyone at all,

anything but this sickening hairless ape

that’s going to die

and then nothing.

Pretend you’re an immortal soul.

Pretend you love it.

Pretend you don’t watch the days

slipping off the calendar

like a prisoner waiting for release.

Pretend you wouldn’t destroy the world

if you could.

Pretend that you can believe a single word

of what comes out of your own mouth.

Never be what you are.

Never find who you are.

Never reach out, never ask for help,

never stop hiding,

never start living.

Never let anything touch you.

Never let it out,

it’s too disgusting,

they wouldn’t approve.

Never hope.

Never ever hope.