Context matters.  Nothing will resonate or reach an audience without context.

Context paints your characters with importance, it pops your language, warming the hard lifeless exterior, all the while subversively fleshing out the flavor and substance until it is digestible and ready for artificial butter topping.

Aristotle said history is a record of the past, while poetry is the universal truth. 

Or something like that  (IX Poetics, Aristotle)

Literature can be beautiful, but it is a chronicle of Words’ ability to push and pull their reader’s thought process into a different stream of conscious. 

When one reads, one must detach himself from present earthly concerns and hope against hope that this universe is still there when the book is closed.  Meanwhile inside the actual process of reading one’s mind is transported into a new meaning between the words, here space is redefined and characters are visualized into a new screen where the story plays out over normal visual information your eyes tell your brain that it’s still seeing.  As the story continues (Plot) one might notice a new facet of your brain is compounding information and examining motivations.  This familiar consciousness is what recognizes form, and makes sense out of grammar, and structure.  Like a reliable motorized rabbit it never slows down and forever companions parallel to this story’s Plot protagonist.   

The under sung comedic relief, it is he, that we will examine today.

We should begin to accept that poetry is a concentrated dosage of literature injected directly into the cerebellum, stimulating the imagination into a higher capacity of understanding.  In other words, the stories that we have Poetry’s Words’ tell us, tie us deeply into the meta narrative and string our consciousness into the deepest parts of Plot and Beauty.  Poetry can do this because it exists in a world of rules and form that any serious student of Poetry must learn and process in order to appreciate the real value and meaning behind its imposing architecture.

With that Said.  I don’t think I get it.  I like shifting perspectives in the middle of my writing, I like writing out what I am thinking I would say as if I were speaking.  I like the ambigiguous unreliable narrator jumping from thought to thought.  I like ignoring advice from Microsoft’s English programmers and I like both personifying my abstract concepts into characters and capitalizing my little regarded concepts into proper nouns against type.  I sometimes love repeating the same verb in a paragraph and I don’t mind telling you that I like breaking the fourth wall whenever possible.  Call it immature, Criticize me all you like.  Just read it and tell me what you think.

When responsibility regularly chokes the life out of you, sometimes nothing can make one feel more alive than ignoring what has to be done altogether and simply taking a breath.  Waiting until the very last moment when life or death feels to be on the line and then swallowing a delicious mouthful of air is sometimes the only way I can remember that those things absolutely never actually determine how alive I really am.  I am young still.  I am physically healthy.  I will get to it in a minute just let me sleep a little bit longer. 

Ugh, but what happens next, now I have to do twice the work, now I have to climb twice as much, and the ever present hands of strangulation around my throat feel tighter than ever.  It’s a vicious cycle of asphyxiation.  Which Google tells me both how to spell and of its erotic dark side (I hope that doesn’t pervert my lonely writings into a desperate cry of shame).

I have been having a hard time thinking lately, I blame the spiders that crawl around my brain spinning impenetrable webs in the tiny space between my brain and my skull whom capture my infant thoughts and ideas and suck their blood of any relative value or content crippling my ability to communicate what probably needs to be said, and stopping me from coming up with what probably needs to be done.

My memory hasn’t fared any better in the aftermath of the earthquake that cracked my psyche a couple of weeks ago.  Some of my regular relationships that I used to gravitate toward to for comfort I feel have fallen into the giant crevices left behind in the streets.   Some of them teeter on the edge of what is probably a never ending abyss and I am paralyzed to do anything to move them away for fear of losing them altogether.  Some are stronger than I feel comfortable with, and the exponentially increasing silence between us betrays that uncomfortable comfort, and reminds me just how messed up everything is getting.

Bah, Whatever.  I still have my default coping mechanisms, and I know I’ll still be breathing when this is all over.  I just hope my blankets are thick enough to protect me from the coming winter, and that my cute little prairie house will survive the storm.

And so what if that was lame.

Who’s got something to say?

Is everyone's personality just a hodgepodge of their friends personalities clumsily combined into a Frankenstein-esque freak of nature, or does that just describe mine?

So, yesterday was just another Wednesday of no actual importance to me.  However a small army of people around campus, who have held onto the beliefs that I abandoned years ago, decided to decorate their foreheads with a small cross made of Ash in order to remind me that I am missing something.

You shouldn't be so hard on yourself Fed. 

I am not really…at least I don’t think so.   I do feel that I am missing something though, whether its Naiveté or Faith, I am not sure, but definitely something.  A couple of weekends ago I went to church with Tim.  I didn't go because I started believing again, I just wanted something to think about, and I didn't have anything else to do.  While sitting through his church service I spent very little time processing/reflecting on the sermons/points that the very educated pastors were trying to make.  Instead, I spent the majority of my time observing them speaking, and observing the congregation listening.  Their words were earnest and seemed to flow out of some unknown part of them.  I am a cynical guy, maybe not the most cynical guy, but I couldn't bring myself to think for a second that these people didn't believe every word that they were saying.  And I think that belief seems to come from something that I don't have anymore, something that for a brief moment while watching them, made me nostalgize long enough to miss.  So I asked a question already, I know.  But I don't expect an answer on that one.  Here's one I'd like to hear some responses to, even if it is cliché.

What do you think is easier to Capital-B Believe, or to not Believe?

Should the winner of an election always be a reflection of who ran the better campaign?  Should 2008 be a repeat performance of 2004 where Karl Rove won the election over John Kerry by politically razzle dazzling the public into doubting Bush's ineptitude and worrying about make believe "flip flops"?  Bill Clinton is turning into this election’s Karl Rove.  He is a consummate politician, and with the political strength of incumbency behind him, he is throwing his weight around in a campaign that is not his to win. 

Bill Clinton is over complicating the realities of what is going on right now on the Democratic primary track, and the sad thing is, it is totally working.  So Obama maybe the inferior politician, but I have NO idea why people perceive this to be a bad thing.   He has proved time and time again that he is the superior statesman.  He lives, breathes, and sweats diplomacy; and with every new speech he is proving why he would be a better president than Hilary or John Edwards.  It is true that politically speaking, all of them are running on similar issues, and on the merits of policy, I actually fall closer on the side of supporting John Edwards, however I guess I too am guilty of voting for the person over the policy. 

In my opinion, if this campaign has taught us anything it is that Obama’s words are not “all talk”.  Barack Obama has resisted the urge to delve into the dirty campaign styles of the Clintons; he is trying to respond to his attacks as dismissively as possible so that he can return to campaigning on the merits of his platform, and paying the price for it.  I fear that Obama is going to lose this primary because he is bleeding potential support by taking the high ground.  Can you believe it?  Now of all times, when all of America is looking for the high ground, they are voting for another 4 years of the incumbent.  Because it worked so great for us last time.

All of this of course, is my reaction to this story where Bill is responding to critics of his campaigning style by accusing the media of being behind Obama. (What media is he watching?)  It’s shocking, he manipulates words like a scrabble champion, and when he gets called out on what he is obviously doing, he plays the victim perfectly.

My prediction:  Once the primary is over, Hilary is going to be hurt by siding with Bill.  I think the Conservatives will tackle them again and take them to task because they play that game better than anyone.  I am sure the Democrats can and will still probably win, but coming off of the worst 8 year presidential administration in history, I would really like to see the land slide mandate that this nation deserves to give our next president, and whether we agree on who to support or not, hopefully you'll agree that this turn in the shape of the democratic primary is burning out the public on politics before the real battle begins.