It’s not what you write, it’s how you read it

I feel like my poems are to poets, what gay marriage is to catholics. The discussion quickly turns to what a poem is. It doesn’t rhyme, where are the poetic devices?

The problem is, these conversations only serve to distract from the work itself.

Table tennis table
$89.99
To bring some joy to the living room
Assembly is required
Some screws are falling out already
As I open the box, nothing is quite straight
Some holes are drilled twice
And the legs don’t make right angles
3 hours later half complete realisation
This thing is fucked
I think we have reached the point
When this becomes pointless
When the assembly required costs more than the product is worth
it is past saving?
I’m driving back to the store
55kgs no trolley
Matthews helps walking backwards with thongs
Callum tells me that its not what you write is how you read it
These sentences run on and I am bored
Why am I wasting my life
What does purposefulness look like
It’s not what you say its how you say it
How can one be a full time artist
Expressing on a expressing
All day morning coffees
Why do we need to eat
Waste of life
Life is beautiful
I’m bored
There are so many interesting things
No time
Less motivation
I’m bored
No one cares
stop complaining
This is not stream of consciousness
this is training
But I don’t write poems any more
I don’t know what one is
Waste of life
It’s not what you write
It’s how you read it
It’s not what you write
It’s how you read it
I’ve never believed that

It seems that we take words for granted, a poem is a poem, fun is fun, love is love. But so many people have different definitions for theses words. Yes all these definitions will be similar, and therefore we think that we understand what each other are saying, we think we are communicating effectively, but I think we sometimes forget that the small details that may differ are of great significance. I might miss spelling things or forget a comma, but we are all using words with seemingly subjective meanings.

Take fun for example, you may be a reserved person by nature and due to this hear comments like. ‘why don’t you just let your hair down, have some fun’. For this reason, I have always taken fun to mean child like fun, a sense of freedom and complete presentness to a situation, in which you might stop analysing the situation and enjoy its basic moments. However this strikes a problem for people that might struggle to reach this sort of state, a quieting of the mind, naturally. And therefore some self judgement might follow. My point is who cares, who cares whether you think the guy next to you is subscribing to your ideal of fun. but more importantly who cares what a poem is. Whether you describe the above writing as a poem, a mini story or trash, such a distinction does not really aid in understanding it, or possibly getting something out of it. If indeed there is something to get from it.

Certain words mean much more to some than others. If I describe something as a poem, this could be blasphemous to a poet who has worked his life to hone his craft.

Fun is a word I have always struggled with and I found it interesting when I discovered the words origin:

ORIGIN late 17th cent. (denoting a trick or hoax): from obsolete fun [tocheat or hoax,] dialect variant of late Middle English fon [make a fool of, be a fool,] related to fon [a fool,] of unknown origin. Compare withfond .

The Lawn

I feel that reading books and mowing the lawn are in great opposition. I have never been good at self talk, well not the kind of self talk that works to calm the mind and console myself in the actions that I am under taking. I am know to those around me as an interrogator, constantly asking questions of those around me. Why? Why? Why? But I also ask how.

Back to the lawn?

The question is why?

In this instance because we had a rental inspection coming up

So the question becomes, why should the rental agency care if our lawn is mowed?

I guess its much like wearing certain types of clothing on different occassions, we must keep up appearances, take pride, the state of your lawn speaks to people, it says something of the occupants of the house.

I’m sure our landlord doesn’t want bad tenants. But couldn’t we be excellent tenants, with a bad lawn?

I work to limit these sorts of questions in the mind of the my landlord.

Then question then becomes about aesthetics.

Aesthetics: “Origin: late 18th cent. (in the sense [relating to perception by the senses] ): from Greek aisthētikos, from aisthēta ‘perceptible things,’from aisthesthai ‘perceive'” 

More specifically why is lawn maintenance viewed as a favourable asethetic. Thats easy, and the key word I think is ‘maintenance‘. It looks as though somebody is taking care of the place. Where as a lawn that is left to grow wild, looks like the inhabitiants don’t care and are willing to let nature resume the house.

Why did we do this to ourselves? Why do humans continually create asethetic ideals that take so much time to maintain? It just doesn’t make logical sense that we would do it. It grows back continuously and we must constantly maintain it. Our lawn is full of bindi’s and weeds and I don’t think anybody in my house actually enjoys it. But what would people think if we didnt have a lawn. What would there perception be then? Haters of nature and the environment.

If we truly loved nature and its beauty, wouldn’t we allow it live naturally, save the constant manicuring.

I think maintenance in this case implies that nature needs humans to preserve and take care of it. It’s an interesting sentiment, however I’m not sure that poisoning  and cutting equal preservation of nature, rather they more elude to preservation of the perception that we are civilised tenants. We must not be unruly. Clean your room.

The real estate agent came over
to check if we had tidied our bedrooms
Rinsed dishes on the sink
Washing in the machine
Lawns and hedges cut

It was lunch time
and a manager at work and I were discussing my maturity
She made a comment that she sees her brother as very young
and that I am younger than him
so I asked her what she thought of my maturity
she said your very young
and I asked why.

She brought reference to my part time job
and that i dont have the same level of responsibility as her
as i do not own a house.

The way I see it is that we are both adults
paying for our own existence
not living under the shelter of our parents.
The rest
how much we work
the size of our mortgauges
is all lifestyle choice.
Still no real estate agent
checks if she has cleaned her room.

Mark