supermoon

I wrote this nearly a year ago. Feels right still.



few streetlights, fewer traffic lights.
I can’t seem to speak.
my speakers are broken.

bbbzzzzZZZZzzz, in stereo
until we hit another pothole

– silence.
time slows.

shy mind too content to spoil with words
a straight and steady road unwavering,
I round a blind internal curve and wait, impatient.

my eyes roll over miles of moon shadowed fields,
trained away from you, framed within
frames, for fear I won’t see what I feel.

and now the window falls, escape wisps of silver,
sparks red, sparks of energy invisible – microscopic
specks from our small cosmos, fleeing.

time folds in, a soft and stifling linen sheet,
the end of a wave rushing to reach the crest

– trapped.
it catches us

me with one hand on the wheel, twirling my hair
to keep my spare hand from straying out of my chaos
into yours, and you, turned away.

"Letters are just pieces of paper," I said. "Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish."


H.M. - Norwegian Wood

"And then there's my father...He went off to Uruguay in June last year and he's been there ever since."
"Uruguay?! Why Uruguay?"
"He was thinking of settling there, believe it or not...once he's settled he'll send for me and my sister...he never answers our letters."
"What would you do if your father said 'Come to Uruguay'?"
"I'd go and have a look around at least. It might be fun..."
"Do you like your father?"
Midori shook her head. "Not especially."
"So how can you follow him to Uruguay?"
"I believe in him."
"Believe in him?"
"Yeah, I'm not that fond of him, but I believe in my father. How can I not believe in a man who gives up his house, his kids, his work, and runs off to Uruguay from the shock of losing his wife? Do you see what I mean?"
I sighed. "Sort of, but not really."
Midori laughed and patted me on the back. "Never mind," she said. "It really doesn't matter."

I wish I had a dollar for every person I believed in like that. Who, despite how I felt about them, I believed in.

Okay, so I'd only have about five bucks, but still.

excerpt

Hi friend,

...I haven't had any thoughts of hurting myself and haven't been doing anything to hurt myself, but in a way I guess my apathy is self-destructive. I always wonder, though, if everyone doesn't have self-destructive tendencies of one sort or another.

One of my favorite shows that I used to watch with my family was "Joan of Arcadia," about how God would appear to this 16 year old girl named Joan and give her different tasks to do. In this one arc, she has this close friend named Judith, who is in ways neglected by her psychiatrist parents and has bad drinking and drug habits. One night, when with a bunch of friends who are meeting a guy for a drug deal, Judith is fatally stabbed. Joan is freaking out, and her boyfriend Adam, whose mother had committed suicide a few years earlier, is hard on Judith and leaves Joan at the hospital.

When he shows up again, Joan rages at him.
Joan: How could you? How could you just leave me?
Adam: I'm sorry. I tried, okay? I couldn't do it, Not after my mother, I couldn't, I just couldn't see someone throw her life away like that, not again.
Joan: She didn't, she didn't kill herself.
Adam: Some people do it all at once, and some people do it a little bit every day.
Joan: I loved her.
Adam: I know. And I don't know why that doesn't matter.

I always think of that scene when I think of people's self-destructive tendencies, or even just of the way people neglect themselves. Maybe everyone is just killing themselves a little bit every day. And if that's true, even if only in ways, I don't know why other people's love doesn't matter to us. And at the end of the day, if my apathy is my worst self-destructive tendency, I guess things could be a whole lot worse.

- Me

EVIL.

AMER 317-01

Dr. Shannon

February 11, 2008

Summary: “When Evil is ‘Cool’”

In his 1999 Atlantic Monthly article “When Evil is ‘Cool,’” Roger Shattuck provides a comprehensive analysis of evil: the forms it takes, the different categories of evil, past musings on it, its role in literature and contemporary culture, and the connotations it has.

...Shattuck proceeds to give definition to four specific types of evil.  The first is “natural evil,” which he says can affect anyone, and over which we have limited control (76).  The second is “moral evil,” which Shattuck says is, “actions undertaken knowingly to harm or exploit others in contravention of accepted moral principles or statutes within a society” (76).  The third, “radical evil,” is what he attributes to “immoral behavior so pervasive in a person or society that scruples and constraints have been utterly abandoned” (76).  The last is “metaphysical evil” – it identifies an “attitude of assent and approval toward moral and radical evil, as evidence of superior human will and power” (76).  Though Shattuck says these definitions are useful, he says he learns more about evil in narratives (76).

...Shattuck closes with a discussion of Quentin Tarentino’s crime film Pulp Fiction, which Shattuck says portrays evil as “cool” (78). “By depicting evil in this fashion the film neutralizes it—absorbs it into ordinary life, broken by a few thrills and laughs, and desensitizes us to evil” (78), he writes.  He also notes that evil and sin have been given a positive connotation in being called “transgression”: “As used by postmodern critics, ‘transgression’ refers to conduct that aspires…to an implied form of greatness in evil” (78). Shattuck finishes with a call to action, warning readers not to condone evil, as, “We cannot afford such blindness to history and such naiveté as to embrace the morality of the cool” (78).

Works Cited

Shattuck, Roger. “When Evil is ‘Cool.’” The Atlantic Monthly Jan. 1999: 73-78.