pit stops at the subconcious junction

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As I was trying to say last night before a technophage interrupted me, I did a little investigation within the periphery that is my eventual poetry compilation.  Why on earth I am sharing its nuts and bolts on this public forum is unknown, but here goes:

Back in 1998, I got sober.  Big deal. For me, it was just that, a mere life and death issue, one that required me to focus every bit of meager physical, mental, and spiritual wherewithal I was barely clinging to at the time.  As a result of immersion within the AA fellowship, I predictably began getting heavy into confessional music, namely 70's singer/songwriters.  My favorite of them (perhaps still) was Joni Mitchell. Her 1976 release Hejira was written while Joni was traveling by car from Maine to L.A.  The title is somewhere of a twist on the Islamic hijira, or pilgrimage.  I take it she was kind of on a surveying sort of escape, or at least, I knew I was at the time I first heard this glorious record.

One of the most popular songs of this unheraled (at the time) record is “Amelia”, which was a tribute to the quasimythical aviator Amelia Earhart. Truly, Earhart's legend has grown so prolific that her deeds she did accomplish, within both the atmospheres of the air and society, are subsumed inside of the details of her final expedition.  As you can see in the following lyrics to “Amelia”, Mitchell handily captures Earhart's spirit and subsequently intertwines the resonance of the same and makes it flow alongside Mitchell's own emotional undertow. This song, along with every other spectacular song on this album, also helped me, acting as a sort of rinse cycle for the foul and prickly things that were pouring out of me as I tried to learn what it was like to become a clear thinking adult for the first time at age 26.  My drinking started at age 13 and carried on straight through until this time.  Of course, it's hard to know how to act like a realized human being if you were too comatose, blind or oblivious to find out or even care about how it is all supposed to work.

Fast forwarding to 2004, I had finished graduating college with an English degree. I suppose this was fitting, as manipulating my native language was something I was found to be pretty good at since I was little. While in college, I ended up taking a poetry course having not written verses before and being pretty much  intimidated by the whole formulaic set up of stanzas, rhyme scheme etc.  foisted upon me as a sophomore in high school slogging through Julius Caesar.  I did ok in the college course, with the semi-help of a now fairly well-published poet who is making a name for himself in certain small presses. More than anything, I was now gifted with a much wider set of tools to use toward self-expression. Despite the sometimes brutal criticisms I obtained (usually rightfully) in that class, I at least halfheartedly kept up the practice of writing verse, reading the same, and perhaps most importantly, trying to be both observant and manipulative enough to please myself in the manner with which I saw and recorded my visions, thoughts, and feelings.

Sometimes, the process of writing and healing interpolated themselves within each other so much that I pleasantly found myself locked into groove after groove in both my school work and my improving condition of spiritual health.  In retrospect, not all of this “serenity” was of the peaceful or happy kind.  Much of my emotional health was contained within the inverse, with lots of anger and disappointment to be reckoned with.  This was a good thing because it helped me form a much thicker skin that I had during my drinking times, thus providing a sort of “insurance policy” against future upsets of the most grave.  After a time, much of the active efforts I put in toward keeping sober were not needed as much as before. My “broken coper” was somehow functional at the subconscious level, much as my desire to get drunk had been for so long.

Graduation was not an instant path to “the next stage” in life, as many people think it is or find it to be.  I was not hired for the immediate school year as a teacher, so I found working as a security guard, airplane refueler, fieldhand, and substitute teacher to be enough to pay most of my rent and hold off eviction for a time.  While working all of these jobs and genuinely struggling financially after moving on from a seven-year job, I ran into numerous people who were trying as I was to “make it” to some kind of destination in life, of comfort, security, of belonging, or contributing to the greater good.  I also saw many people who had no chance in hell over ever doing those things. There were some folks nestled somewhere in between and, much like I was before I stopped drinking, just looking for their “in” to get them along that golden road.  Some of the people made it, but were, to me, going to be unhappy due to unresolved personality issues that either obliviously or intentionally alienated their fellow human traveler.  Many of these souls were misled by old, dysfunctional, and untrue conventions such as, “I am killing myself little by little and not bothering anyone else,so why do you care?”, or “This is business, so it's ok.”  I found myself constantly questioning my goals, my identify and my general worth and wealth.  All the while, I was reading more and more poetry and committed to wanting to make my book of poetry. The concept came to me that I should highlight the lives of the various people I have talked to, dined with, loved, disliked, admired, or ignored. T here was always a since of failure involved, theirs or mine, and not often was there a “center that could hold”, as Yeats writes in his masterpiece “The Second Coming”.  I figured a good working title for the larger collection would be called Yonderlings: those people who are within sight or reach, or hearing of what they sought or where they were supposed to be, but somehow never arrived at their destination or went right past it, or lost it etc.  Each poem was/ is to chronicle some tale of someone, or several people who fit the mold, so to speak.

A good opening of sorts seemed to be a tribute to Amelia Earhart.  The poem, as most of the ones I am most happy with, came to me rather quickly and took only for me to put it to paper.  Verses I have labored over in the past have come out quite terribly, and thus, I don't spend a lot of time hashing over what comes out.  Yet, I used to take copious amount of notes on scrap paper and such, always thinking this line or that idea or this term would fit in somewhere down the line.

Last night I was surprised to find out I had subconsciously mimiced Mitchell's “Amelia" with my “Invocation”. Granted, I took a different twist than she did, but many of the phrases and words were too close. See for yourself: