Hurrying to obtain the energy for sleep
all too often we fail
in slowing ourselves.
Savor the richness of relaxed observation;
allow for a hug
to embrace those things
time hasn't the courage to share.
05 January 2011
31 October 2010
Possible regrets: A list
if there is to be a regret of this life,
it will be...
1. not being able to grow a beard
2. not dying of lung cancer and quitting smoking
3. not having cried enough out of happiness and sadness
4. not learning to experience the two in equal repose, and the hereafter now.
it will be...
1. not being able to grow a beard
2. not dying of lung cancer and quitting smoking
3. not having cried enough out of happiness and sadness
4. not learning to experience the two in equal repose, and the hereafter now.
11 May 2010
A Thought on Same-Sex Relationships
A 'tradition', like marriage, brings a well-structured past into the present, it connects to an otherwise shapeless present a past structured by formulations of truth: Memory and ritual; ritual as remembrance, ritually enacted, births tradition into an ordered act of translating memory; love in relation is a reciprocated act of translating memory, freely chosen, enacted, and repeated often, often, and ever more often, perforce, like perceiving the time in a year diminish relative to age, it occupies less and less, and less awareness; when reciprocated, an act of translating memory learns and knows only this one How: to naturalize next to nearby ken, if not blood, then breath; that act of breathing begins to seem only ever as old as it is new, and in time ever newly, reflexively reciprocating an act of translating memory--such an act is only ever creative, a processural act, exercised to fitness daily when I and an other 'I' freely choose to enact and rinse and repeat often through time a choice that I for myself and an other 'I for myself and' remember increasingly every contour of his body, every mole and birth mark, and his may-as-well-be congenital tattoo, and I remember this my left big toe's repeated crossing the no-hair | hair boundary, where his ankle meets his leg, with little more documentation to account for this its small right than the very experiences of his happiest smile--still shining--and his crying and wiping his eyes, and his every meaningless sound: his moaning from those piercing, despairing eyes, and now our eyes crying for snuggles longer, closer, and as so close as in minutes again he moans and he moans for minutes after his cumming, and soon soon after tangling and disappearing, fixing upright that small tuft of hair on his tummy after my cumming inside of him, and finally I remember the words he wished the the trembling of his lip would not fail.
01 March 2010
Panini and Padakaaras
George Cardona will deliver a lecture in the Department of Sanskrit at the University of Hyderabad tomorrow. I have extended my stay here to attend the talk. Dr. Cardona is a pioneer in the field of grammar and linguistics, retired professor from The University of Pennsylvania.
More to come.
More to come.
22 February 2010
Southern Hospitality
A city passing in eyes--
everywhere people--
eyes sipping coffee and smoke
frozen, eddying swirls of neon
ಕನ್ನಡ
Kannada, English
ಇಂಗ್ಲಿಷ್
Pleasant people and poetic pass-age
in Bangalore where
dance moves tell smutty stories,
a back-bend smile, mental acrobatics;
modern art, media outlets, and food fun.
Cucumber? Spicy Pineapple, anyone?
Hear this: It was all for a good cause!
a Queer Film Festival.
everywhere people--
eyes sipping coffee and smoke
frozen, eddying swirls of neon
ಕನ್ನಡ
Kannada, English
ಇಂಗ್ಲಿಷ್
rounding from blue to purple
or eyes don't seem
to discriminate.
a tongue, nose, or mouse caresses
you control the pressure, do press.
Some clicking, too.
Not of growing bamboo,
but the equally speedy-to-develop buds
of friendship, buddies. Sweet, huh?
All this on the first date!
Taste of morning chai, The Hindu and The Economist;
a sip of ras, Mālavikāgnimitram;
Evening tide:
waves magical hips blooming to boom box boys.
Men, samosa, kingfisher,
a German, too! Carlsberg for good measure.
Like black coffee, a real,
one-of-a-kind experience.
Pleasant people and poetic pass-age
in Bangalore where
dance moves tell smutty stories,
a back-bend smile, mental acrobatics;
modern art, media outlets, and food fun.
Cucumber? Spicy Pineapple, anyone?
Hear this: It was all for a good cause!
a Queer Film Festival.
18 February 2010
07 February 2010
If My Words Did Glow, with the Gold of Sunshine...
Wow! How does one define an exceptional day? Today. That's the definition.
For the past three days (3, 4, 5 February), the Central Institute of Indian Languages (where I study Kannada) has been hosting an international poetry conference, Kritya 2010. This is a venue wherein poets from all over the world come together and share their work. I attended the first few days anticipating more of a 'local' flavour, but the 'international' rang more true at the end of days one and two; today, though--day three--was exceptional!
I will post some of the more specific poems as I meet with the poets over the coming weeks. I have been invited to attend a number of different classes, and even to deliver a lecture on my research to a class of M. Phil. students of English literature. That should be interesting! But it will give me something to sit down and plan out a bit. I'll try to even throw in some of my thoughts related to queer theory, which will definitely be a crazy experience for the students of Mysore University. But it'll be great!
The English-Kannada dual language setting at the Kritya conference really made today's poetry readings shine for amateur audience members like myself. Compared with most audience members, I have a fair amount more familiarity with the diction these Kannadiga poets use from my background with Sanskrit. Clearly, though, I can neither speak nor understand well poetry spoken in Kannada by any means. Presented, as these poems were, however, on a dual language stage with effective follow-up commentary on each piece, I really enjoyed a nice taste of numerous styles from about ten different Kannadiga poets, ladies and gentlemen.
We can see historically that generations of Kannada speakers self-consciously formed and birthed this tongue from poetic sentiment. All the earliest works of Kannada are responses to a dominant, subcontinental and enduring tradition of Sanskrit poetics. These early writers shaped Kannada into something of its own flavour, and thereby created their political and social-cultural landscape.
One of the objectives that I would have liked to see the conference deal with a little more was this political, social-cultural element of poetry; this is probably just the academic in me. I read some blurb at the conference or in a dream that was jotted down on paper, and it brought my attention to the necessary difficulty poets undertake to inhabit experience with language, to infiltrate the readers' senses and thereby affecting a particular reaction. The ancients' knew this fertile strength of language, and nowhere on earth--ever--was it refined and refined and refined to the precision that it was by the men who made it their means to moksha, or liberation, dwelling in the pre-modern lands we now know collectively as India.
Today, after lots of centuries, a particular model of discourse, or maybe a peculiar grammatical disposition, or a language of law that predisposes a person to think of their self in a particular way occupies this spot of power. It's peculiarly eurocentric; Western. The dream object that I read at the conference spoke about how poets today often choose silence, how poets increasingly navigate the corridors of absence. Just like diction, silence, too, is a choice. A choice, I think, that is one symptom of the particular model of discourse, or peculiar grammatical disposition, or a language of law that predisposes a person to think of their self in a particular way: Poetry?
The quiet power of the Kannada language really 'wowed' me on day three of this poetry conference. This quiet power was barely audible to me; maybe I imagine what I heard? But this is precisely the point! Even with all these other distractions emanating from a peculiar style of self-enactment that political and social-cultural tendencies of modernity proscribe and prescribe--and this being a force that the poet, subject of, often chooses silence--the undercurrents of sentiment from these Kannadiga poets shone through, doppling the ears and mind with its tambour, its rhythm quite unlike any language I've ever heard; its appeal direct to that of aesthetic concern.
[I am still in process on this writing, along with a number of other pieces. Check back in the coming days, please. I'll be posting pics of a quick jaunt to Hoysala temples at Belur and Halebeedu--VERY impressive. I plan to be in Sringeri for Mahashivaratri this Friday.]
For the past three days (3, 4, 5 February), the Central Institute of Indian Languages (where I study Kannada) has been hosting an international poetry conference, Kritya 2010. This is a venue wherein poets from all over the world come together and share their work. I attended the first few days anticipating more of a 'local' flavour, but the 'international' rang more true at the end of days one and two; today, though--day three--was exceptional!
I will post some of the more specific poems as I meet with the poets over the coming weeks. I have been invited to attend a number of different classes, and even to deliver a lecture on my research to a class of M. Phil. students of English literature. That should be interesting! But it will give me something to sit down and plan out a bit. I'll try to even throw in some of my thoughts related to queer theory, which will definitely be a crazy experience for the students of Mysore University. But it'll be great!
The English-Kannada dual language setting at the Kritya conference really made today's poetry readings shine for amateur audience members like myself. Compared with most audience members, I have a fair amount more familiarity with the diction these Kannadiga poets use from my background with Sanskrit. Clearly, though, I can neither speak nor understand well poetry spoken in Kannada by any means. Presented, as these poems were, however, on a dual language stage with effective follow-up commentary on each piece, I really enjoyed a nice taste of numerous styles from about ten different Kannadiga poets, ladies and gentlemen.
We can see historically that generations of Kannada speakers self-consciously formed and birthed this tongue from poetic sentiment. All the earliest works of Kannada are responses to a dominant, subcontinental and enduring tradition of Sanskrit poetics. These early writers shaped Kannada into something of its own flavour, and thereby created their political and social-cultural landscape.
One of the objectives that I would have liked to see the conference deal with a little more was this political, social-cultural element of poetry; this is probably just the academic in me. I read some blurb at the conference or in a dream that was jotted down on paper, and it brought my attention to the necessary difficulty poets undertake to inhabit experience with language, to infiltrate the readers' senses and thereby affecting a particular reaction. The ancients' knew this fertile strength of language, and nowhere on earth--ever--was it refined and refined and refined to the precision that it was by the men who made it their means to moksha, or liberation, dwelling in the pre-modern lands we now know collectively as India.
Today, after lots of centuries, a particular model of discourse, or maybe a peculiar grammatical disposition, or a language of law that predisposes a person to think of their self in a particular way occupies this spot of power. It's peculiarly eurocentric; Western. The dream object that I read at the conference spoke about how poets today often choose silence, how poets increasingly navigate the corridors of absence. Just like diction, silence, too, is a choice. A choice, I think, that is one symptom of the particular model of discourse, or peculiar grammatical disposition, or a language of law that predisposes a person to think of their self in a particular way: Poetry?
The quiet power of the Kannada language really 'wowed' me on day three of this poetry conference. This quiet power was barely audible to me; maybe I imagine what I heard? But this is precisely the point! Even with all these other distractions emanating from a peculiar style of self-enactment that political and social-cultural tendencies of modernity proscribe and prescribe--and this being a force that the poet, subject of, often chooses silence--the undercurrents of sentiment from these Kannadiga poets shone through, doppling the ears and mind with its tambour, its rhythm quite unlike any language I've ever heard; its appeal direct to that of aesthetic concern.
[I am still in process on this writing, along with a number of other pieces. Check back in the coming days, please. I'll be posting pics of a quick jaunt to Hoysala temples at Belur and Halebeedu--VERY impressive. I plan to be in Sringeri for Mahashivaratri this Friday.]
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