tiredofvampires

Bah! I was trying to edit that last post/paragraph and got shut off, so here is what I changed/added (excuse the drafting quality):

I'm interested by your experience with the atmosphere of strip clubs. I suppose a lot depends on the type of club and how "posh" it is, but I've been to a few strip clubs in my time (mostly to accompany male friends, and I also knew a few college students using the money to get through school), and I felt a pervasive, all-encompassing contempt, and reduction of human beings was the predominant character of those places. It was a cold, lonely, angry undertow. The women saw the patrons as pigs, and either had hardened themselves to the circus-ification of their sexuality, or took a narcissistic delight in being in the position of power over their pathetic admirers. I remember going into one of the dressing rooms to use a restroom in there, and the looks of scorn, the perfection of self-trained isolation, deep shut-offness and lostness, layered in brusque, jarring body language and crude, unkind talk was overpowering to me. It was sad, depressing, and scary.

So your account (and the way you've managed to have a completely different experience) intrigues me. I've been an artist with a particular passion for figure modelling, and the attitude of those settings is like day and night to strip clubs. One is reverential, the other is debasing. I'm not judging people who strip as bad people, but I saw so many troubled souls there, I can't imagine it being sustainable for that reason alone (but that's just me). Art modelling can be well-paid and if you become a well-known model at various universities and other schools with a good reputation, you can make it into quite a busy career. And it has no shelf life -- you can do it until you're as old as you want, and only get more prized with age and experience. It's hard work that artists appreciate for its difficulty, and the more experience you have, the more you can command (especially if you do private sittings). Maybe think about that as well.

Have you considered bellydancing? I've known women who made a profession out of it and eventually teach classes as well.

It is still, like most types of performing dance, a career limited by age and youthful beauty, but it has more potential to last longer than stripping (though it may not be as instantly lucrative), and teaching is always a good way to supplement once you become a veteran.

I'm interested in your experience with the atmosphere of strip clubs. I suppose a lot depends on the type of club and how "posh" it is, but I've been to a few strip clubs in my time (mostly to accompany male friends, and I also knew a few college students using the money to get through school), and I felt contempt, and reduction of human beings was the predominant sense permeating the airwaves. It was a cold, lonely, angry undertow. The women saw the patrons as pigs, and either had hardened themselves to the circus-ification of their sexuality, or took a narcissistic delight in being in the position of power over their pathetic admirers. I remember going into one of the dressing rooms to use a restroom in there, and the look of scorn, the feeling of coldness, deep shut-offness and lostness, layered in brisk, jarring body language and crude, cold talk was overpowering to me. It was sad and scary.

So your account (and the way you've managed to have a completely different experience) intrigues me.

That's so pathetic what's happening at work. I'm sorry you're having to deal with that. I'm sure whether you stay there or go....you'll take your work ethic with you, though.

I'm looking for that person who I can share with and who will share with me a strong resolve for staying out of the ditch. ha! A lot more than that, but I will not go down a hole with somebody because they stop caring. And I don't mean just about me - I mean about life and what it means to care. Care about people and oneself. Actual caring - not selfish indulgence.

I just wanted to say, I'm right there in that boat with you, sharing that vision. I know, not the one you're thinking of, but still...nonetheless...someone that lives for this anyway, so you got company.

Ruminating on that...apathy is almost worse than anger, isn't it? At least with anger, there's something to work with, it seems.

You write about swimming, JN.

Where do you swim? Lakes? The ocean?

jn...i'm grateful for you presence here...for bringing gratitude to the forefront.

Indeed. I find myself looking through the entries, thinking, "Me too! Me too!" about many of the things you celebrate, JN. I almost think if I started a journal like this, I'd be afraid of leaving anything out.

vampy...i'm grateful for your presence here...in so many ways. and not just here

Likewise, sleepy. Thank you for saying so.

It sounds like you had a really great moment of connection with your mom. You hardly ever speak of your parents and your interactions with them, so this is an interesting and unexpected glimpse. I'm glad you could share these sentiments and what seems to be closeness with her, and that she reciprocally affirmed you in the process.

1) Maurice Sendak

 

2) James Taylor

 

3) Carl Larsson

 

4) Brave creative people who share their light

I love this journal, but I just had to share in the glory of this entry in particular.

Three incredible artists, two of which (Maurice Sendak and Carl Larsson) I've adored since childhood. Carl Larsson is out of this world.

I've found that "gratitude therapy" is sometimes the tincture for the blackest of mindstates. And I DO mean, THERAPY. Because I use gratitude that way, now! I wish this journal could be stickied in the Suicide forum, honestly. Because this is the key.

Unfortunately, it is not accessible to people who are already so cut off from the feeling, that they can't call it up when it's MOST needed. So in that way, it's a paradox.

One must be grateful for being able to have the mental space to feel gratitude.

It took me YEARS to feel that gratitude wasn't some kind of fanciful chant that people who were lucky in life preached as New Age gospel, because they didn't know what it was like to have so much adversity, and therefore were out of touch. And generally, I think most people do not feel helped or appreciate when you point out what they have to be grateful for, when they are stuck in great misery. It almost sounds patronizing and unacknowledging. It also takes a kind of tender humility to enter into gratitude. And there's nothing like feeling one's problems obliterate anything good to also obliterate this tender humility.

So I used to harbor a bit of a grudge around gratitude.

Now I know that it's one of the most potent antidotes to the greatest of sufferings. It's a shift a person can only make through personal discovery of letting gratitude in, and how that feels, instead of treating it with contempt.

Just some reflections from my own life. Once you start something like this and feel its power...there's a new respect for everything around you and a level of blindness that you don't go back to, even when tempted to forget your blessings.

Not taking anything for granted is up there with humor, as best medicines for me.

ToV: You should edit your's now, as I edited it into one line (post #47) after I noticed it looked a little odd, lol.

Well, I don't think it looking "odd" should put anyone off. Look at the format of the last one, hehe.

I don't see the edit...? But I take your word for it! So hopefully this is right now:

Under the purple lemon tree we talk and laugh of many things

The stories are woven and fortunes are told

So honey child, harken to this one which never grows old.

^^ Maybe that should all be in one line....

I was kinda wondering about that, myself...seeing as how we each get a line at a time (technically)...and maybe it works better as one?

Check if you're still in the edit window! Don't do as I do...haha....

Breaking Bad is the best show ever made.

 

So I've been learning, reading up on it. I always learn so much stuff on this site.

 

But Cheers'll be hard to top.

Under the purple lemon tree we talk and laugh of many things

The stories are woven

And fortunes are told

So honey child, harken to this one which never grows old.

And actually, I'd like to hear this sung and played on the banjo.

I love banjo.

Absolutely, especially as Walter White was paying homage to Walt Whitman...

Come to find, there are a few illustrious Walter Whites out there (one, fictional). I'm only familiar with the NAACP guy, and even then, not that familiar. So I'm not sure which one was invoking Walt Whitman. bluh

I adore the "yawped" line. Walter White would be proud.

Why thank you. Walt Whitman might also nod in assent, d'you think?

We should make up a pseudonym and enter these kinds of poems in contests.

You mean, one collective pseudonym?

On milk flowers and splendor, a round sky fire burns

While Sweet Baby Jesus rocks his ghost-manger in the sky

I am all sad and wondering why

It's such a beautiful day but only want to cry

The Christ child rocks n rolls, Apollo's light will never return

Before the cows come home and this day adjourns

Oh sweet Efron let me be the Lucky One, pollinate my sticky saffron under the blazing sun

So we may unite and live forever more, without pain and sadness that we had before

Let our love not be dead in a tomb like Mr and Mrs Montague, never let our be done

and when the light turns black and deep, may embers crackle lest we sleep

Surrendering a left eye, then a right, to the marauders of dreams

For nowhere in your roiling slumber can the endless horseman find his home

Full of pain wand impossible sadness , here I shall forever rest, no more to roam alone

It is now sad sweet Efron that roams alone, to seek again the horseman's love

And as the horseman swiftly rides, he espies a solitary dove

Held in a hawks jaw, no sign of life it gives

Until the mighty clawed creature, dreading its own vice, yawps from knotty beak

And the lifeless blood doth leak

So justice is found where the proud eagles reign.

A clouded dream on an earthly night

Hangs upon a crescent moon

Where summer solstice meets Luna waning

Artemis aims her bow, the deer and sheep running,

As Rhyme and Rhythm cull their dwindling flock

The pearl-white skin of Shantibella brings hand to drum, beat to Efron's heartbeat,

Ha, I caught that, yes -- so I went back and turned MY "yawped" into "yawps"! (I was on the fence about tense -- another great rhyme, btw.)

So now you have to go back and turn "yawped" into "yawps," in yours, I'm afraid!

Sorry to make you do this, Cap. What a run-around! LOL! But I made it in the nick of time to make it "yawps", so I'm stoked! And now I'm sticking to it!

(see my "reason for edit" below my post, hehe)

WOW, Cap! That's brilliant.

Just a note to my fellow mad cut-and-pasters, though:

In my line (right above Cap's),

"Until the mighty clawed creature, dreading its own vice, screams from knotty beak"

I changed "screams" to "yawps"...because "screams" was just kind of meh.

So make sure to change that bit next time around. YAWPS. I know Cap got to it faster than I could edit it. I'm slow on the edit draw.

The poem is about baby Jesus.. at Christmas away in a manger, he discovers rock'n'roll and forms Whitesnake, and is living the rock'n'roll dream. Groupies and sticking stuff up the nose.

He gets addicted to the narcotic Efron, chillaxing in his mancave, hallucinating about a roaming horseman, his dealer.

The dealer stops roaming, full of pain and impossible sadness.

 

He has a nervous breakdown in the hotel room just before a live gig, and then OD's.

Bob Hoskins kicks the door in, followed my the medics and try to revive him.

To the soundtrack of Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb.

 

By this time he's trippin' off his t*ts, imagining Bob Hoskins as the non roaming horseman,

and the hawk is Satan, with dove in his mouth.

Ohhh. See, that's what got me. Otherwise, I was totally good. Now that totally makes sense.

I believe what ultimately must happen is that he finds you-know-who.

Which means it is really an allegory about self-discovery.

But it should play out, because there's this bit of Ozzy where we left off, come to steal the show.

On milk flowers and splendor, a round sky fire burns

While Sweet Baby Jesus rocks his ghost-manger in the sky

I am all sad and wondering why

It's such a beautiful day but only want to cry

The Christ child rocks n rolls, Apollo's light will never return

Before the cows come home and this day adjourns

Oh sweet Efron let me be the Lucky One, pollinate my sticky saffron under the blazing sun

So we may unite and live forever more, without pain and sadness that we had before

Let our love not be dead in a tomb like Mr and Mrs Montague, never let our be done

and when the light turns black and deep, may embers crackle lest we sleep

Surrendering a left eye, then a right, to the marauders of dreams

For nowhere in your roiling slumber can the endless horseman find his home

Full of pain wand impossible sadness , here I shall forever rest, no more to roam alone

It is now sad sweet Efron that roams alone, to seek again the horseman's love

And as the horseman swiftly rides, he espies a solitary dove

Held in a hawks jaw, no sign of life it gives

Until the mighty clawed creature, dreading its own vice, yawps from knotty beak

(This poem is freaking awesome and needs to be sung by Whitesnake.)

That would work.

EDIT: Curious, anyone have a clue WTH this poem is about??

 

I dunno about you, but I got lost at "Efron."

In milk flowers and splendor, a round sky fire burns,

While Sweet Baby Jesus rocks his ghost-manger in the sky

I am all sad and wondering why

It's such a beautiful day but only want to cry

The Christ child rocks n' rolls, Apollo's light will never return

Before the cows come home and this day adjourns

Oh sweet Efron let me be The Lucky One, pollinate my sticky saffron under the blazing sun

So we may unite and live forever more, without the pain and sadness that we had before.

Let are love not be dead in a tomb like Mr. and Mrs. Montague, never let our love be done

and when the light turns black and deep, may embers crackle lest we sleep

Surrendering a left eye, then a right, to the marauders of dreams.

Hey, thanks, you guys. I appreciate it.

It's been a really long time since I've "felt it" with poetry. I really thought I may never be able to write one again.

So Cap, that's really very, very kind of you to say -- ha, well at least I got ya to log in! (kind of long time no talk, too!)

I really feel this one. Beautiful imagery, especially the burned landscape.

It nears Eleven,

And the pane of shrieks

fine as Venetian glass

rattles in the sills of night,

still.

There are butter-soft malasadas

changing hands

and skeins of cotton candy, to be sure --

how could there not be? --

it's a carnival.

Bulbs around "Pizza! By the Slice!"

beaded wreaths of white and ruby lightening

crown the foreheads

of trees, single-file

giddy in their

shrouds.

The Ferris Wheel

and Tilt-A-Whirl

jukebox selection

of screams

is kind of like

what Rock 'n' Roll must

have been to Dad:

"It all sounds the same."

That is what deathly joy --

everyone upside down --

is like.

Hand your

ticket to the

man with the crank,

settle into your

preferred contraption

behind

bars that lock in place

(too late now)

and commence a vocal

shelling of the City.

Multitudes sound

the same -- all different

throats. One

note. Crave the

swooping blink of

dropping into

doom,

with

a hotdog at the

end, for the

road. More

ketchup. Thanks.

The fan seems a bit slow

tonight. Its lazy pinwheel

shadows not fit

for Saturday night.

Maybe it's just how far away

that clock is -- that Midnight

approach. Out there,

uproar is slow to

fade.

Those shattered shrieks,

collapsed like that cherry mist

on the tongue --

now turned to leaving

motorcycles.

Everything ends.

Even the carnival

ends.

Aw, Jeezus. What a cryin' shame.

You know what you can do? You don't need to call me baby, but you come right on over here and feel free to make the sky the limit of ambition: you up to the chore of peeling the guy downstairs off his floor, gathering all his cigarettes and aerosols, and hauling the entire shebang over the balcony? If you're good to go on that, you can give my next-door-neighbor (the one who's in the running to be bowling with Lobo, I'm suspecting) a whirl as well -- though you'll need a crane for that. I'm prepared to be awed and amazed by you.

Imagine THAT!!

We'll offset that other witch in a jiffy. No such thing as too much ambition.

Your first shot (Ueno Park) stands out to me as by far the best. The composition is superb -- bringing the eye dynamically from the foreground leaf, to the pink blossom, to the rooftop, to the furthest hill in a zigzag pattern. The perspective and the angle of the shot are intriguing, and the contrast of the bright pink against the other more muted colors is very effective. I love the interplay between the rooftop and the blossom especially.

Because there is so much going on in the foreground and middle-ground, I don't think the background should be competing, so the grey sky works for me. The only thing about it is that it's too uniform in shade. The top quarter of the picture is monotonous, so I'd work on making an overcast sky that shifts in value. I'm not a photographer so I don't know how you could achieve an overcast sky that looks like impending rain, but some basic streaks might work, or subtle cloud formations. Or, you could create a darker tone gradating to lighter on either side. Even an eerie luminosity somewhere by darkening the edges might work. I'd focus on the left side of the sky being more active or dramatic, since the rest of the picture is leaning to the right with focus and attention. So the upper left sky should balance the "heaviness" of the right of the pic.

Also, I might darken the layer of trees furthest in the background to pump up the other shades of green more (since the layers of trees aren't contrasting much now) The greens in the foreground are good though.

The foreground will pop more if you do this, but the blossom is really popping and I like that.

The other shots don't feel like they're at the same caliber of interest. I agree with winniethepooh about the Kyoto and last two shots. I think the first Kyoto shot has more potential because the monumentality is striking, but the cropping could use some work to balance it better. The second Kyoto shot I agree looks too ordinary due to the lack of contrast with the lighting. The last two shots do not offer enough in the way of composition or content that I would do much with them. Focus on the others.

I share a similar feeling to all the posters.

I'm very much like you, OP -- I put "hidden" symbolisms into my work and often then I fight with how much should remain just my personal secret and how much should be "readable" as a message that others can share in. But these symbolisms are very personal and usually I leave it to the viewer/reader to make their own meaning. I don't usually prefer doing totally abstract stuff, because for me, conveying some message, some STORY is important. I think my true nature is as a storyteller, which is why my first love is illustration (in visual art.) Which is odd because in writing, I am much better at "painting" a scene with descriptive words, but I'm not good at making up fictitious stories, and I'm bad at creating plots.

I like to try to represent and interpret life.

And if I had to summarize an answer to this post in one sentence it would be: To celebrate all that has been created, so that it can be recognized better.

Well done, with the meter. I find meter very, very hard to write. I like a number of moments in this. I've bolded my favorite passages and lines.

If I may suggest something -- you've used the word "ego" many times, and also repeated a few words several times. Words that are, as a writing teacher told me once, "1000 dollar words", you don't want to use more than once in an entire poem, or even short piece of prose. I live by that rule because repetition is a fast way to kill important sounds/words in their impact. "Ego" would be a million-dollar word.

I would save it for the very last stanza, where you have it -- and in that one stanza, it would make an enormous impact of meaning, conceptually as it is there. Everywhere else, I would find different words to replace it or rework the lines.

Same for other repeated words, including "chess", especially since it's in the title. (like in the 6th stanza, for instance, where you've used it, you could say "board games")

Nice job, though.

ETA: And what about the King?