is it true? our society, verbalized.

question

2007-01-15T21:00:00.000-08:00

Is it true:

Does everyone in America, going about daily lives, feel like something is off in our society? The way it runs, the way it is? Maybe it is a small thing. Or perhaps systemic, weighty.

If you feel that, what is it?

And most,
To look upwards instead of spiraling into dark for no need,
How shall we fix it?

Allow yourself to be honest and heartfelt, and please only answer once.

Send responses to CallieHelen@gmail.com for posting on this site. Posts can be anonymous or credited.

Response Seven

2007-01-15T14:37:00.000-08:00

I think that our society is slowly being desensitized to everything.
Not just violence, not just death, but to emotion and imagination. If
you think about it, to be told outright to be just like everyone else
sounds ridiculous, and yet the masses strive to be the masses, not the
lone person standing by themselves. To truly think freely I don't
believe is possible, unless you have never been exposed to anyone
else's thought. Outsider art and pop art are rarely the same thing,
although art is purely subjective anyways. To be successful in art,
you either have to produce what people want to see, or produce
something new, something that will make people think, "now that what I
want to see." And unless you are happy only making that new thing
until the end, you will be a one hit wonder. At least you swayed the
masses as to what they want to see, right?
If we could all muster up the strength to stand alone, maybe we would be ok.

-Elliott Samuel-Lamm

Response Six

2007-01-15T14:31:00.000-08:00

The Circus

I am a cardiac arrest awaiting your sweet caress of disbelief.
The unexpected vacation from the frozen food section of your life;
And it's quiet, honest, and long awaited.
You've spent years duct taped to computers,
Attempting to find relief prematurely.
I myself was lost in cyberspace, a traveler gone astray.
Wandering in the intangible,
Tasting anything but the obvious,
The perfection of the non-existent.
I would escape by writing poetry in odd places
On the backs of spoons,
The tips of tooth picks,
Anywhere they couldn't find it.
And i think to myself,
"It's so abstract I must be deep."
I am so deep in the shallow end of humanity,
I've lost the need to swim.
I can tread water in my ego and talk about my own philosophy.
And philosophically I only speak the binaries they give me.
The juxtaposition between wrong and right,
I might be in the land of the free,
But as far as I can see,
It's a 9-5 curfew,
A 24-7 rat race.
Who can spit the most absurdities and not have to confess.
WE KNOW NOTHING!
We experience life in digital precision,
Information excelerated,
We make guesses, never decisions.
We talk about everything but the here and now.
LIVE, LATE BREAKING NEWS!
Is pre-recorded, edited, fabricated
In Los Angles Back Rooms.
I'm Just dying for a conversation,
That doesn't begin with the suspicion,
That this has all been said before.
Every word mechanical and trite,
I forfeited my right for independence,
And got shackled to pay stubs and the nightly news.
But I only got what I see.
Hollywood is in diet pills and magazines, not movies.
Somewhere people are dying in large quantities,
But the room they've locked me in is too dark to be objective.
So I smell victory in the decisions we make.
Because although we talk of revolution,
We also buy, sell, and consume.
They say freedom is choice,
But how can we know what we want, when they tell us what to choose.
Check your local supermarket.
You are directed by the tag lines:
Organic, new, Sale, fresh, club member,
24 brands of low carb frozen lasagna.
Line the rows,
Along side the red and blue state battle of Coke vs. Pepsi,
Democracy prevails in redundancy.
Beyond isles of repetition,
Lie check out counters and last time offers of acceptance.
You are inundated with magazine racks,
That host a sea of piercing affluent eyes, air-brushed and flawless.
Brunettes with boob jobs,
Celebrity bachelors tanned, gray, and horny.,
So you look in the horoscopes that line their head.
In the T.V. guides and
The 16 variations of extreme winter chill peppermint gum,
You look until you are offered your final chance to exercise you
inalienable right,
Your Freedom:
Paper or Plastic?
Its a cycle...a sickly natured beast.
You could be the most conscious motherfucker,
And still be begging on your knees.
Ain't no escaping it,
If brevity is the soul of wit,
Well than this is the joke that never ends.
So try and find your peace in between the punch lines that never arrive.
The seconds that they haven't cataloged.
Locked down,
Solidified.
Presumed individuality does not equate autonomy .
Your life still exists outside of wall clocks and watches.
Name brands and credit cards.
The trick is to still be breathing when your regularly scheduled
program turns to static.
When the powers gone out,
And gasoline has ceased to combust,
This earth will still be spinning, still dancing with a billion other
balls of light.

Thanks for creating a dialogue in this endless web of diatribes.

-elliott kuhn

Response Five

2007-01-08T16:45:00.000-08:00

It seems that there are many ways to answer this question. There is the Zen-like answer of wisdom,
that there is no thing wrong with any person, group or society that I do not share.

Yeah... that feels really enlightened. Anyway, here's my response:

Florida Mojo

This is not me
This is not me here and now
at least this is not how i dream myself to be

Wait! this is not how i was
and if i were in florida right now
I'd be organizing midnight canoetrips
and bike rides to the springs through the wildflowered and canopied roads
and overnighters on the beaches
hikes on the florida trail and visits with picnics to Marjorie's old cracker house

Wouldn't I?

And plotting ecovillages wherever
soul-less suburbs facade and plasticize this brave and humble land,
saying to them, "You can stay here so long as you acknowledge..."

1) the right of the grass to be ratty
2) the right of the palms to bend and sway
3) the right of the air to be hot and humid, because maybe you can't have everything
4) the right of the oaktrees to drop limbs on your rooftop
AND provide shade and great climbing and general contentment

oaktrees living with resurrection fern,
with lichen and with spanish moss

And I'm not saying you can't live here
god knows, it's not my land to hoard
but i think we could all learn something from the oak tree

see, it feels like we're running out of space
And i don't mind sharing,
but i kind of resent the notion that my grandchildren, no my children!
will have to endure my self-righteous fairy tales of "the real florida."

"When I was a kid..."

When I was a kid we hunted for sharksteeth in Hoggetowne creek
We used bicycles and our two feet to get around
We covered ourselves in mud from the swamp, near the horsestables,
two sets of white teeth and eyes glowing from the wickedness
We bushwhacked to the sinkhole, praying for alligators or
something wild please!

-Alison Moss

Response Four

2007-01-06T06:32:00.000-08:00

Just this morning, as I left my house heading for work, I passed a homeless woman with a shopping cart who was hanging out in front of the Zen Meditation center next door. She was obviously suffering from some sort of mental illness, yelling to herself and cursing loudly. Even though the bus stop was on my side of the street, I quickly crossed to the other side so that I would avoid walking past her. I was immediately reminded of the biblical story about a man who was beaten and left for dead on the side of the road, the sad and holy men who passed by him by without helping. They too, crossed the street and shut their eyes. Christians love to ask this question "WWJD?." But what would Jesus do?

He would probably heal that woman.

He would show her love and transform her life.

We think that guy must have had super powers or something. But me? I'm just... I don't want to be late.

I need to go to lab.

I don't want to be taking verbal abuse from a stranger that early in the morning.

I just want to catch the bus.

-Anonymous

Response Three

2007-01-04T20:55:00.000-08:00

Something off in our society? An unscratchable itch? Banging your
head against sound and fury to produce only a bump? Yeah, sure,
absolutely.

I am not part of your community, but a friend of a friend. As many
reservations as I have about forming a community around disquiet, I am
tired and frustrated enough to contribute something. I will write an
earnest poem. I don't usually write poems. Here goes:

A broken thing

I am looking at a broken thing
and I am telling you it's broken

There is a furnace and a pot and water at a rolling boil;
Somehow these things are connected
They can all hurt you if you're not careful enough
But if you're just looking, just listening

There is a crane lifting a tree as big as a house
over a house
And I'm in an orange vest with my hands in the air
above my head
like everyone else around
keeping the tree suspended, steady
You see? It's willpower if you're careful

The water doesn't whistle or hum
or yelp or anything for that matter
It churns quietly until all of the air is gone
or until it steams out the hot, empty pot
or until the churning is careful and quiet
replacing silence, becoming silence
You see? It's balance

What do you do with this broken thing?
I could wish it was unfamiliar
We have known each other our whole lives

I could throw fist fulls of dirt into the air
and root it to the sky
But I can't let my hands down
and my hands are rooted to the sky

I am looking at the furnace, in the furnace,
and my eyes are numb
And we are all listening

There is a broken thing
And we are quiet enough
And all we can hear is listening

-Anonymous

Response Two

2007-01-02T19:10:00.000-08:00

Something is way off.

To quote my lady lady genius:
http://www.righteousbabe.com/ani/rev_rec/l_yournextboldmove.asp

I think the problem is complete and total selfishness.
And I don't think we can fix it. Ever.

-Anonymous

Response One

2007-01-02T19:00:00.000-08:00

Yes. Everyone in America, as they go about their daily lives, feels like something is just a bit off in their society, the way it runs, the way it is.

But I mean everyone. Pick a binary. Shatter it into a pile of glass. Shine a light on the heap so it casts rainbows against the nearest wall. You'll find spectrums from red to blue, from east to west, from right to left. Put your finger on a color. Trace it back to its piece of glass and you'll find an angry edge.

Careful it'll cut you. Because everyone in America, as they go about their daily lives, feels like something is just a bit off in their society, the way it runs, the way it is.

Fundamentalist atheistic gay straight god-fearing and -loathing cross-burning and -bearing (wo)myn, pigs and pinkos unite!

-Anonymous