Aug 30
Charles BivonaTeaching Writing/Writing Teaching
I think more teachers need to explain to their students that no one knows what they are doing. Most people feel lost a lot of the time. And it’s ok. We can work on learning how to figure it out. There are tools that I can teach you that have seemed to work for me. Better don’t ever assume that I know everything, or that I have things figured out. I’m thirty-seven years old and I am confused and overwhelmed a lot of the time. I struggle, a lot. I can look really good doing it. I can seem at ease. Or not. I have no idea how others perceive me, and it’s delusional to assume that I appear collected. I just know that students I tell about my depression and anxiety are usually surprised. You? You feel that way? The girl who suffers from panic disorder was shocked to learn that my panic attacks render me unconscious. The quaking and sweating young man who tries to explain his writing stress suddenly relaxes when I admit that I know how he feels. It took me years to feel comfortable enough to share my writing. I worked so hard on this. There is so much of me in it. What if it isn’t good? What if the smart people don’t like it. What if they laugh at me? Then what will I do? I feel that with every word I write, but I write anyway. I tell my students that, and we start from there.
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Aug 28
Charles Bivona420 Meditations
Poets and writers just sit around all day listening to language. Well, I know that I do. I have developed a method of visualization, or something like that. I can just somehow imagine how the words I hear would look on paper. I see the words appearing as they are to me right now, out of the blinking portal of the cursor. Into nothingness appear the letters and then the words. From the smoke of my thoughts they concretize to fill up the MS Word void. The words congregate together. They gather according to very specific rules.
There are people who debate these rules. The efficacy of the passive voice—in certain situations—is pondered by some, while others claim that the sentence-ending proposition has been abused by the schoolmarms they’ve lived under. I am glad these people are there. I like that they are on that micro level, taking care of our language. I appreciate it.
But I want to go to the boundaries. I want to see outer space. I want to push this imperfect and imprecise system as far as it can go. My literary training tells me that language is slippery, that words can not contain truth, that “truth” itself is a word and a concept—and concepts are merely interpretations, and Nietzsche said that there are only interpretations and never truths—fine! I accept it all. I will never tell anyone exactly how I really feel. I will never get myself into words, not really. And when I die, if anyone reads me, I will be remembered as this imprecise portrait I’m creating. The man I am in my life and my mind and my body will be dust. Only my words will sustain me.
Walt Whitman understood this. That’s why he was so specific about which of his documents survived. Many scholars—David Reynolds is one, I believe—discuss his burning of his own documents: letters, and notebooks, and poems. In fact, most of what we have of Whitman today is what Whitman wanted us to have. The true POEM of Walt Whitman, is our idea of Walt Whitman. The narrative that we know of his life. The narrative he allowed us to know.
It dawned on me one night in a flash. My best friend asked me what Walt Whitman would do, if he were alive today. My answer: he would open an account on every social networking website and dating service. He would comment in internet threads and among chat rooms. He would start a Twitter feed and a Blog. He would write in all these mediums, every day, and selectively post his thought to the world. He would meticulously present his mind to the world at one centralized url: his internet online cyber body—a digital YAWP.
He’d call his website Leaves of Grass.
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Aug 28
Charles BivonaFun Charles Bivona: Writer & Poet
Hey there–
I’ll get to my barbecue idea in a minute, I promise. First, I want to say that if you’ve been reading so far, you are the coolest most righteous human being that has ever been showered from the heavens on a beam of starlight! Yes, you reader! You rock!
I also want to say that I’m sorry if the things I’ve been writing are a little too raw for comfort. I really am I happy guy, ask anyone. It’s just that, when I write, these things come out. I assure you it isn’t a conscious choice. I’d rather be writing by the ocean.
[literary analysis lesson: The author loves the ocean. Why? Discuss.]
I’m sorry if I’ve been bothering you. I’m even more sorry if I offend you. I really don’t mean to. I’m just being me. If you have a problem, well, that is your problem, after all. I wish you luck in working it out. And that’s not sarcasm. I’d love to help, but I’m wrestling with my own shit over here.
I mean, this all just started happening sometime in April. Parts of me started shedding away. At first I was scared. I couldn’t stop it. I still can’t stop it, but I honestly don’t want to anymore. I started writing on May 3, 2009, and I haven’t really stopped since. I can’t seem to stop it. I don’t think I want to. It feels good. It’s scary, but good.
I feel awake for the first time in life. I still feel fear in every pore of my body, but my mind finally knows that I’m safe. I can’t stop pushing now. I have to keep writing it out. I’m almost there. I’m almost “better.” And you won’t believe this, but I’ll tell you anyway. The secret to life, I think, is this: We were all born perfect. We are all manifestations of the universe’s curiosity about itself. The universe needed eyes to gaze upon itself, ears to hear its own songs, a nose to be enticed by its own natural perfumes, a mouth to taste its own supple mouth with, and a body to feel its embrace. That is why we are here—so the universe can fall in love with itself in six-billion different ways moment after moment after moment. So you know all this human diversity that we treat like a problem? That’s more of our perfection. The universe wants to perceive itself through a rainbow of eyes. Why would the universe have limited vision? It wouldn’t make sense.
So, look, just think about it. It isn’t supernatural at all. It just makes sense. We are all born from the universe, and we are the only species that studies the universe. Hmmmmmm.
Get it? You are the universe made self-aware. You are the universe choosing to feel. So am I. So is everybody. How can you feel bad about that? How can you kill or steal from someone else who is that creature of the universe?
We are special in the galaxy, ladies and gents, just not for the reasons we think. Can we just stop with all the hating? It really is beneath all six billion plus of us. If we could get past that, we could feed everybody. Food and drink for the entire planet Earth for the rest of our history.
Come on!! Wouldn’t that be a great fucking barbecue?
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