Talking Dirty

[imaginary friend]

Chinese Checkers? Cate I'm sure you can do better than that.... unless your man didn't do enough housework this week to qualify for Strip Poker...

XO

[Cate]

Not a bad idea - maybe I could start a little star chart for him.
Sadly my fella's not even here, he's off at a conference which is why I was so tired.
My kids will play Chinese checkers, or any game for that matter, over and over again.

[~greg]

okay you're teasing and joking with me,

No, not really. And if that's what you think I was doing,
and if you were to compare it to, say, doing the salchow,
then you'd have to wonder at someone like me
who can execute the move time and time again,
each time concluding with their skate in their mouth,
and pick myself up, shake off the cold shoulder,
and go back and try it again. And again and again and again.

But no. That is not what I was trying to do. And in fact
I never do tease or joke. Because I know I am very bad at it.
Whenever I try to do it, it's almost always mistaken
for an uncalled-for personal attack. So I try not to do it at all.

Which unfortunately doesn't mean that when I am trying
to do something else, it isn't also mistaken for an
uncalled-for personal attack.

But wait! That's not all! Buy now and we'll
throw in for free these two bits of gratuitous trivial
word play guaranteed to extend your pleasure
by seconds or your money back guaranteed!

That was me teasing myself.
(Which I am very good at. If you ever wake up
with me in the morning, you'll see. Cf LC's
"Cover up your face with soap. /
There, now you're Santa Claus". Etc.)

(Or, if you knew anything about Gurdjieff,
then I'd say it was more like a product of self-remembering,
or self-observation, and not any kind of self-teasing or self-criticism
at all. And that's a very important distinction. But it's entirely
irrelevant here, so I won't go into it.)

But it was really an hypothesis about why I, (and not necessarily why you,)
too often write lines like "you can't believe how unbelievably believable this is."
Lines, in other words, like a bad movie actor who is always looking straight into
the camera and spoiling the spell. (Drawing attention to the language being used,
rather than simply using the language.) And I am very tired of myself doing it.
Because while it may be, (or at least while it may be intended to be,)
mildly amusing, it is really not the best way to express anything other
than that the author does not want to be taken too seriously.
Whereas, in truth, sometimes I do want to be taken seriously.

At this time in my life I am finding myself more and more
attracted to Kierkegaard's "Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing."
(Which I may even read some day, instead of trying
to base my entire philosophy on the title alone.)
Or, as I put it to you before, "stand by your man.".
~~

More:

"My knees feel wobbly when you
when you ..." --- may have been unintended stuttering.
But stuttering would be expected from someone with
wobbly knees. So it would have been a good intended effect.
And more appropriate in the context than "believe how unbelievable"
was. The only problem with it, I thought, was that it would have been
the only such effect in the poem. And that it ran counter to the underlying
thrust of the rest of the poem, in so far as the poem has a confidence,
I think, that is much better to drive straight, without any artifice.

Of course you are still self-sabotaging your own poem with
"just being silly" in the title. And if you mean it ironically,
then ok. But as you yourself said -

ha! I'm poking fun a bit, because it's still fun to bug him.
but really it is very sexy to come home, after a night or two away,
to an already clean house
- much better then flowers btw.

In other words, you do know that what you're talking about
isn't silly at all. It is in fact, in one way or another, at the
foundation of every human relationship. Of every good
relationship. And of every divorce, for that matter.

(
Whenever a kid asked me how to seduce a girl,
(which was remarkably often -- considering! ...)
- about what kinds of lines to use, and what kinds
of gifts to give, - I always said the same thing:
Don't use any lines. And don't give arbitrary gifts.
Just try to be around her when she needs help.
And try to be helpful.
)

~~~

- nice poem.
no it's not, thank you though I just wanted to write something,
as I was stuck not writing the something I wanted to write.
...

yes it is.

And you should cherish the times you write something only
because you're stuck not writing the something that you thought
you wanted to write. This is a general principle of creativity.
As a friend of mine once said, our conscious minds are like
a child trying to be helpful, but just getting in the way.

And all you ever get from conscious frontal assaults
(the 99% perspiration) are inventions. Whereas
when your conscious mind is fully engaged in that way
your subconscious mind is set free to give you
the real gifts (the 1% inspiration) of discovery.
Unfortunately you really do have to distill
many tons of conscious pitchblende to get even
an ounce of unconscious radium. But the point is,
don't be afraid to throw out the slag.
It happens all the time. Someone writes a 500 page
dissertation, or 50000 lines of code, and it gets ruined
in the rain, or lost in a hard-drive crash. And they
despair. But if they pull themselves together long enough
to start over, it invariably happens that they wind up
writing a much better version. The point is, it took an
ouside force to make them give up their investment.
Likewise in the begining it takes a critic, a guru, a cold
external objective eye to tell us which lines need to be
crossed out, before we develope a good healthy habit
of doing it ourselves. The problem is always the same.
It's our attachment to our own lines. (The "ego" in our
poems, as I too often incorrectly call it.) We make a fetish
of our own lines, so that when someone tells us to cross
one out, we resent it, almost as much as if they had
asked us to cut off a limb. (Again, Cate, while I hope
this is helpful to you, I am really talking to myself.)
The best advise to give anyone who wants to write is:
1) Write a lot. 2) Cross out a lot.
Because that's a much more definite program
than "revise a lot". And if you want to know
how far along you are, then just take your temperature
when someone tells you to cross out a line.
If you can consider the suggestion without getting
any more angry than if you had made the suggestion
to yourself, then you are "there". (Which I am not, btw.
But I'm working on it.)

~~~

I want to play with and mix sounds, but every thing comes out puce.

Puce is the color I invented.
So if you're going to use it, you'll have to pay me royalties.

~~

You seem to have edited your post.
Which is very confusing to someone as slow as I am to respond.
But I remember you asked something about meter.

It did seem to me that your "when you / when you" "stuttering",
as you called it, had something to do with the meter, consciously or not.
In any case, to make your poem better now, you will have to work
a little more on the meter. But it's much harder to make suggestions
about that.

Hands down the best book on meter is Paul Fussell's little book:
"Poetic Meter & Poetic Form".

I leave you with a quote from it -

from Poetic Meter & Poetic Form - Paul Fussell, 1979,
pgs 100-101

The lust for rhythm is so universal in readers of poetry
that a poet can hardly be said to have a choice about
whether his poem shall be rhythmical or not: his only
choice is whether he is going to use meter well or ill,
efficiently or inefficiently. If he tries to write "without"
meter, it is certain that his readers are going to restore
meter to his poem, and, in the process, as I. A. Richards
has shown in Practical Criticism, misread it.
Attempts to "escape" from meter - or at least some kind
of governing rhythm - are thus almost equivalent to attempts
to escape from poetry.
...
Here the price paid for the neglect of the metrical
dimension is severe, and it is a price exacted from
a great many contemporary poets whose devotion
to politics and revolutions, personal and social,
transcends their devotion to the art of poetry.

Many contemporary American poets have been tempted
to renounce rhythm on the grounds that, associated as it is
with the traditional usages of England and the Continent,
it is somehow un-American. And it is probably true that
the special tonalities of American idiom do require some
adjustments in traditional prosodic usages. Robert Frost
is one who has perceived that American idiom calls for
special metrical treatment, but in working out that treatment
he has adapted the proven expressive resources of English
prosody. The poet E. L. Mayo has appraised Frost's
achievement in embodying metrically the unique tone
of the American language. He writes:

Effective meter is closely bound up with the matter
of living idiom. ... Frost's line from "Birches,"

Kicking his way down through the air to the ground,

never fails to give me pleasure because it accommodates itself
so well to the purpose it serves in the poem (sudden activity
after inhibited movement) without violating American speech idiom
at any point. Some of the most casual and common idioms
of the language have strongly developed metrical elements;
for example:

I told him half a dozen times
Whether you like it or not
Is there any real reason why you can't?

(the list might be endlessly prolonged) and I conceive it the duty
of the poet who desires authenticity of sound and movement
to cultivate his ear, avail himself of these riches that lie so close
to hand whenever they serve his purpose. In this way his metrical
effects become more than merely personal; they become native.
He thus clothes his naked uniqueness (no fear - it will be civilized
and intensified, not smothered by the clothing) in the real spoken
language of the time.

[Cate]

No, not really. And if that's what you think I was doing,
and if you were to compare it to, say, doing the salchow,
then you'd have to wonder at someone like me
who can execute the move time and time again,
each time concluding with their skate in their mouth,
and pick myself up, shake off the cold shoulder,
and go back and try it again. And again and again and again.

Greg, if you can do that time and time again and still get up,
then I am highly impressed.

But no. That is not what I was trying to do. And in fact
I never do tease or joke. Because I know I am very bad at it.
Whenever I try to do it, it's almost always mistaken
for an uncalled-for personal attack. So I try not to do it at all.

Which unfortunately doesn't mean that when I am trying
to do something else, it isn't also mistaken for an
uncalled-for personal attack.

hummm....
are you sure?
Well I can't ever remember thinking you've personally attacked me,
but then if you had of I probably would have assumed that you
were just playing and never realized. Only once did I feel this
way on the forum - someone used the term 'reprehensible'
not even directly to me, but I think the moon was in the wrong spot and
I was in need of chocolate and after I let it fester a couple of days,
I lashed out. Then I wondered at why I had been so irked by
someone I didn't even know and probably would never bother with
in real life.

That was me teasing myself.
(Which I am very good at. If you ever wake up
with me in the morning, you'll see. Cf LC's
"Cover up your face with soap. /
There, now you're Santa Claus". Etc.)

Santa! (I have a bit of a crush on that guy)
okay now I know you are teasing me

If my dear Greg, I ever wake up with you in the morning - I may enjoy
watching you tease yourself for a while (since you claim to be good
at it) but don't think you can dress up as Santa doing this and not
end up with me on your lap ... that would be rude and I know you are not rude.

(Or, if you knew anything about Gurdjieff,
then I'd say it was more like a product of self-remembering,
or self-observation, and not any kind of self-teasing or self-criticism
at all. And that's a very important distinction. But it's entirely
irrelevant here, so I won't go into it.)

I looked him up - seems he thought we were living in a dream.
sounds interesting, I'll go back later.

But it was really an hypothesis about why I, (and not necessarily why you,)
too often write lines like "you can't believe how unbelievably believable this is."
Lines, in other words, like a bad movie actor who is always looking straight into
the camera and spoiling the spell. (Drawing attention to the language being used,
rather than simply using the language.) And I am very tired of myself doing it.
Because while it may be, (or at least while it may be intended to be,)
mildly amusing, it is really not the best way to express anything other
than that the author does not want to be taken too seriously.
Whereas, in truth, sometimes I do want to be taken seriously.

At this time in my life I am finding myself more and more
attracted to Kierkegaard's "Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing."
(Which I may even read some day, instead of trying
to base my entire philosophy on the title alone.)
Or, as I put it to you before, "stand by your man.".

~

Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing
- what the hell kind of title is that? It's just a giant abstraction. Don't
bother reading it I'm sure it's stupid based on the title, which as you know
is the best way to judge anything. Perhaps there will be a
sequel, Confusion of the Head is to Will Two Things.

Of course you are still self-sabotaging your own poem with
"just being silly" in the title. And if you mean it ironically,
then ok.

okay the silly thing really was a bit of a cop out, but it was really
more for me. I think we might view silly differently. For me silly is
a good thing; it means for play and fun, it means I won't get
hung up on whether or not it's okay enough. No best
effort required, and if it turns out terrible who cares and if
I like it ... good I'll try it again.

(
Whenever a kid asked me how to seduce a girl,
(which was remarkably often -- considering! ...)
- about what kinds of lines to use, and what kinds
of gifts to give, - I always said the same thing:
Don't use any lines. And don't give arbitrary gifts.
Just try to be around her when she needs help.
And try to be helpful.
)

~~~

- nice poem.
no it's not, thank you though I just wanted to write something,
as I was stuck not writing the something I wanted to write.
...

yes it is.

And you should cherish the times you write something only
because you're stuck not writing the something that you thought
you wanted to write. This is a general principle of creativity.
As a friend of mine once said, our conscious minds are like
a child trying to be helpful, but just getting in the way.

And all you ever get from conscious frontal assaults
(the 99% perspiration) are inventions. Whereas
when your conscious mind is fully engaged in that way
your subconscious mind is set free to give you
the real gifts (the 1% inspiration) of discovery.
Unfortunately you really do have to distill
many tons of conscious pitchblende to get even
an ounce of unconscious radium. But the point is,
don't be afraid to throw out the slag.
It happens all the time. Someone writes a 500 page
dissertation, or 50000 lines of code, and it gets ruined
in the rain, or lost in a hard-drive crash. And they
despair. But if they pull themselves together long enough
to start over, it invariably happens that they wind up
writing a much better version. The point is, it took an
ouside force to make them give up their investment.
Likewise in the begining it takes a critic, a guru, a cold
external objective eye to tell us which lines need to be
crossed out, before we develope a good healthy habit
of doing it ourselves. The problem is always the same.
It's our attachment to our own lines. (The "ego" in our
poems, as I too often incorrectly call it.) We make a fetish
of our own lines, so that when someone tells us to cross
one out, we resent it, almost as much as if they had
asked us to cut off a limb. (Again, Cate, while I hope
this is helpful to you, I am really talking to myself.)
The best advise to give anyone who wants to write is:
1) Write a lot. 2) Cross out a lot.
Because that's a much more definite program
than "revise a lot". And if you want to know
how far along you are, then just take your temperature
when someone tells you to cross out a line.
If you can consider the suggestion without getting
any more angry than if you had made the suggestion
to yourself, then you are "there". (Which I am not, btw.
But I'm working on it.)

Seriously, this is probably some of the best advice
I've been given.
~~~

I want to play with and mix sounds, but every thing comes out puce.

Puce is the color I invented.
So if you're going to use it, you'll have to pay me royalties.

Fine
humph - I'll send you a check, ignore that I sign Jane Smith.

~~

You seem to have edited your post.
Which is very confusing to someone as slow as I am to respond.
But I remember you asked something about meter.

nope - I sent you exactly what I posted. I just mentioned that
I was starting to be able to see Metre - like in Vern's I could
see that he was trying to do da dum da dum da dum, although
the middle lines might have been different, but that I can't
write in metre (yet). I don't think I have a natural ear for
it, but that's okay I can still learn the basics and like any
learned skill it'll get better as I use it.

It did seem to me that your "when you / when you" "stuttering",
as you called it, had something to do with the meter, consciously or not.
In any case, to make your poem better now, you will have to work
a little more on the meter. But it's much harder to make suggestions
about that.

Hands down the best book on meter is Paul Fussell's little book:
"Poetic Meter & Poetic Form".

I leave you with a quote from it -

from Poetic Meter & Poetic Form - Paul Fussell, 1979,
pgs 100-101

Oh sounds good, Chapters has it listed online - I'll order a copy of it.
Right now I'm very slowly reading The Secret Lives of Poem by Tom Paulin.
He takes each poem apart and explains what it is that works about them.

I hope you know that when I said thank you before that I meant it.

I mean it again.

Thank you Greg - you really have been very helpful to me and I do
appreciate it.

x
Cate

[Harry S]

yeah, you say that Cate but that's not what Greg is after

[~greg]

While "Harry S" may be charming, (see eg his response "rubbish",)
and articulate, (see eg his response "whatever",)
and good looking, (whatever,)
and while he may put even more considered thought
into his responses than I put into mine (see eg his response
"what does life mean?", delivered May 02 2009,
to Everett Wade's "Four in the Morning" post, posted Jul 10 2002)
you do have to admit, Cate, that he is not very helpful.

[Cate]

While you're away

I'll sleep with the front door locked, the hall light
on and living room t.v. going. I will bunch all of the sheets
to middle of the bed and tangle my feet in them
with your blue blanket over my back and hair.
I’ll lie on my belly and waiting for you to call, to tell you
I'm wearing a pair of pretty pink panties and nothing else

no not those ones, these are new. I bought them
for the gardener, no you can't talk to him about the rate
he's in the bathroom showering off the mud.
~~ I think I got us a deal though! hehe
what did you say the maid was doing - why do you need
all those towels again? Hehehe (sorry - say it again I won't laugh)

We'll carry on and just be silly, and then you'll have to go
they'll be having drinks downstairs and no I don't miss you,
I like the quiet it's good to be able to stretch out for a change.
I'll hang up the phone, tuck my nose into your t shirt that I’m really
wearing, the one that dropped to the floor yesterday, and fall asleep
with your pillow pressed beside me, TV humming in the background.

[Cate]

While "Harry S" may be charming, (see eg his response "rubbish",)
and articulate, (see eg his response "whatever",)
and good looking, (whatever,)
and while he may put even more considered thought
into his responses than I put into mine (see eg his response
"what does life mean?", delivered May 02 2009,
to Everett Wade's "Four in the Morning" post, posted Jul 10 2002)
you do have to admit, Cate, that he is not very helpful.

Yes, Harry does seem to be charming and I suspect that he's plenty good looking but you're right he doesn't seem to be very helpful, well maybe a bit helpful at stirring the poets from the edges of the pot and getting people chatting a bit in this old forum. but I've seen no mention of Santa or salchows (I'm not even sure if he shaves or even skates!)

I haven't read the what does life mean one yet, I'll have to check it out - I have to admit I been occasionally curious about that myself.

[lizzytysh]

Not much to it, Cate... don't bother trying to find it. That's really all it was... a non-sequitur question thrown out for... some... reason...

"While You're Away" and "Talking Dirty" ~ perhaps, the best kinds of love letter. Love the newest... WYA.


~ Lizzy

[Cate]

thanks Lizzy,

well I didn't try to hard to find the meaning of life comment, but now I see it was a question not an answer.
Just as well, why ruin a good mystery by peeking at the last page.