What do we know?

It seems that, conversationally people tend to preface arrogant words with phrases like I don’t claim to know everything. Yet, I feel this is a quite thin cop-out for an arrogance built on shallow understanding. (E.g. one can know everything about nothing, even though this is just a kinder way of saying that we know nothing.) I strive to live a life so hit-you-in-the-face honest it runs the severe risk of misrepresentation. I don’t glaze my life with the sweet nothing of feigned and arrogant humility (yes, one may be arrogant in their humility). Of course, it is obvious that no one would claim to know everything; it would take a child to ask a single question to prove that fact. The problem is that we too often claim to know anything at all. I am the chief of such a sin. I don’t believe that I am arrogant in what I know, by the world’s standards I do know a fair amount, but I do believe I am the victim of my selfish laziness. In that I resisted so faint-heartedly he temptation and the false truth that I am mine own. It is the confused and muddled false truth that has become so a part of my nature that leaves me seemingly stranded on an island of hopeless selfishness. Hopeless in that I can’t not be selfish and hopeless in that being selfish no longer fulfills. Both darts fierily pierce the amorphous structure of my heart, with the sting of grace, the impending tempest of confession, and the beautiful glimpse at the realization that under me rest two steadfast arms. Perfect in love. Perfect in power. Harmonious in relationship. And abounding, undeservedly so, in grace.

A Stasisial mini-interpretation of 'the good life"

A good life, it seems, is a poetic one; the manifestation that is of the inherent beauty transposed in attraction and the magnificent journey undertaken to capture what lies therein. Life cannot be about materials, lest they be stripped bare and we; left. Stranded. Naked. A return to stasis is merely idealistic, and thus will go unfulfilled. Therefore, I desire to do the things that thrill me. To put myself in a position where death is no longer painful but embraced, not foolishly, but risking this life I have borrowed to travel through the woods unaware and leave my footprint in the mud. To set my course for the path less traveled by, and fearlessly plow through it, like a sculptor looking at a rock and seeing a man inside, so I see the world as my rock and my life my tool. As the sculptor reveals the man behind the stone, I intend to leave the world behind a life. My life. My legacy. This is my rugged stasisial ideal. Those instilled by my desire for heaven, I believe. The desire for the created things rather than those which are fabricated.  The Fight Club-esque principles that one day I will die, and that my white collar job, my philosophic prejudices, my straight-out-of-the-magazine furniture, nor my khakis will be taken to my eternal life. That life is meaningless, fake, and that truth is painful, and I’ll be damned if I don’t express this fact. The world is my playground so long as I care for her.

The Time is Now

the twinkle in your eye shimmers in the candlelight
the softness of your hands melts me
the curiosity in your face suggest what might alight
the closeness suggests a 'twining tree

time seems to stand, still as we talk without speaking
time is on our side for a moment
time doesn't age rather youth appears to be leaking
time will die, love as its atonement

is this real, but what else could feel so good so right?
is it even possible for her to love me?
is this the kind of shallow lust which splits at just one fight?
is love enough to overcome bestiality?

now i lean in closer i have nothing left to lose
now is she leaning too?
now is later and i stand in tux i didn't have to choose
now she stands and as i smile she cries and says i do

Flying, Falling, God knows what

i feel my heart so beating
i feel it out my chest
i feel im merely bleating
i feel i should give it rest
i feel my heart surrounded
i feel the air so cold
i feel it in your hands its drowned
i feel i lose my hold
i feel not in control
i feel out of my head
i feel it soon will take its toll
i feel it will unravel its thread
i feel like im flying
i feel like icarus not a dove
i feel in need of catching
i feel i am in love

A Random Series of Life Limericks

I dreamt I went to heaven

I dreamt it smelled like rain

I dreamt it good not great

Because I dreamt it in my brain

The man crawled over the wall

A smile on his face

Taking a shortcut happy and free

Shortening a too short race

The musk of battle clouds defeat

But pain says otherwise

 If only I had set my eyes

On the one who grants the prize

Aloft in such high places

I shout my praises ring

But in the valley down below

They barely make a ding

I thought once, that I alone

Could conquer this fleshy orb

But I have since found out how much

Of its poison I absorb

I often write of philosophy

Evils and life so grim

But I only do so that I better see

The Beauty that lies with Him

Aborticide (murder by the millions)

If it were to be permissible that the woman high on hormones to kill the child she is carrying, to kill it for merely the reason that she desired not to carry it, than I say take your selfish self to your knees and do what you’ve been scared to do your whole life and look at yourself. Tell me what you find and if it’s a smile than I can no longer talk to you in this manner as you are obviously incapable of rational thought, interpretation, or understanding. If it were only to kill because it would be a struggle for the family to keep up, then I say, first that if you can’t afford the consequences you can’t afford fun, secondly that God will provide. Not a hair falls from your head without its purpose. If you don’t believe there is a God, comment or leave me a message on Facebook or email at 11mosteller@carolina.rr.com, I’d love to talk to you for your great amounts of faith astound me. If you just turned your nose up folded your arms and gave a snobby snort just now saying this buffoon clearly doesn’t know what atheism is. I don’t have any faith. Please message me; I can’t wait to astound you. Back on track if you should kill a child because you don’t want your sin to find you out in this life. Talk to someone. How’s guilt treating them?  It’s not a fond thing either. Nextly, if you think you are too impoverished to sustain a child, maybe we should round up all the poor in the world and put them in a concentration camp and kill them all. And if you believe that a fetus isn’t a human, let me inform you scientifically the difference between when the sperm and egg first join until you die somewhere in your late 70s. 4 things. (do you believe it..4!) Time. Air. Water. Food….oh. So its genetic make up and DNA doesn’t change? That poses a bit of a problem for all these arguments. You see when it boils down to it. Everyone knows what’s wrong and what’s right most people are just too selfish to acknowledge their own depravity. So I ask you to complete this sentence

It is okay to kill babies when______________

Ponder this before you search your souls. Trust me you’ll be there awhile. Set in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, starving, homeless, living off Americans used, used clothes and orphan schools. 

Covered by ash crawling under this tin roof

10 feet by 10 feet wide 

I play in the flotsam of yesteryear

9 feet by 9 feet wide 

My leafy mattress and that of my brother

8 feet by 8 feet wide 

The alley between huts once with free ocean air

7 feet by 7 feet wide 

The space not of bed, a kitchen, a study

6 feet by 6 feet wide 

My quarter of the hut though I get more I get less

5 feet by 5 feet wide 

The table at the school where 6 or eight often sit

4 feet by 4 wide 

The ripped, well worn chalk board hard to see

3 feet by 3 feet wide 

My spot at the dinner table, not a tenth full

2 feet by 2 feet wide 

The baby inside me

1 foot of blessings abide!

Selah

Pondering Wilde's Wise Words in Dorian Gray take 5

“’Like all good reputations, Gladys,’ interrupted Lord Henry. ‘Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a mediocrity.’

‘Not with women,’ said the Duchess, shaking her head; ‘and women rule the world. I assure you we can’t bear mediocrities. We women, as someone says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you ever love at all’

‘It seems to me that we never do anything else,’ murmured Dorian

‘Ah! Then, you never really love, Mr. Gray,’ answered the Duchess with mock sadness.

‘My dear Gladys!’ cried Lord Henry. ‘How can you say that? Romance lives by repetition and repetition converts an appetite into an art.’” (Page 154)

When I came across this particular passage it seemed to correlate strongly to leadership. Leadership; however, is not mediocrity, but rather, being so un-mediocre that mediocrity and enemies don’t break you down. It is true that popularity and ‘good’ reputations require mediocrity, but it is for that reason that I desire to not desire that shallowness. Mediocrity seems to be blasphemous in nature, given that we have the potential for greatness, settling for mediocrity must slap our Image-Giver right in the face.

The next paragraph comes from perhaps my overall favorite character in the novel, Gladys. She represents the intellectually perfect woman to me. She is not overly feminist, or pompously independent, but rather she is individual, confident, philosophically wise, sultry, and enticing. And so right when she makes her claim that women rule the world. Well men figurehead the world. Women rule the world. Equally true that they refuse mediocrity. Men are pressured to be exceptional at at least something to be desired by a woman, and they must be either exceptional at everything or exceptional at nothing to be popular to other guys. The cliché of men loving with their eyes and women with their ears is so clearly true, despite its cliché. However the next part caught me off guard. I have hopefully already established that I tend to think similarly to Lord Henry and with that the case I took the hot side of this burn from Gladys. I was so used to Wilde blowing smoke in Lord Henry and thus mine rear that this statement came as a shock. I spent awhile thinking that maybe it was just a part where I disagreed with Lord Henry. But I came to the somewhat depressing realization that that was my problem. I was like Harry in my unwillingness to admit wrong. The rest of this passage continues with Lord Henry babbling like a fool about love being new every time it happens. Too many men feel this way. If it is ephemeral than it is not love. Gladys was convicting in her words, “Ah! Then you never really love, Mr. Gray.” If one loves everything, what separates that from loving nothing? Love is love, because it is rare, exclusive; valuable. If you take the rarity out of love, it is meaningless. If you take the exclusiveness out of love, it is meaningless. Romance lives by an eternal flame of passion not repetition, repetition produces a habitual love. An all action no feeling love. And if that is the case than there is no love there at all.

Pondering Wilde's Wise Words in Dorian Gray take 4

 “It was the strangest book he had ever read. It seemed to him that in exquisite raiment, and to the delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world were passing in dumb show before him. Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made real to him. Things of which he had never dreamed were gradually revealed.

It was a novel without a plot, and with only one character, being, indeed, simply a psychological study of a certain young Parisian, who spent his life trying to realize in the nineteenth century all the passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his own, and to sum up, as it were, in himself the various moods through which the world-spirit had ever passed, loving for their mere artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin…One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book. The heavy odor of incense seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain. The mere cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so full as it was of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated, produced in the mind of the lad, as he passed from chapter to chapter, a form of reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made him unconscious of the falling day and creeping shadows. (Page 98)

It’s a peculiar thing. Books. Few people read them in this increasingly technologicalized modernity, but media, by any means holds great weight. Nathaniel Hawthorne once wrote, “Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.” Good writing convicts and good conviction (whether right or wrong) causes change. This book, obscure in this story save one chapter, was the catalyst of the harum-scarum downward spiral into the corruption that was the rest of Gray’s all too short life. It was an intoxicating book, and thus the effects are equally intoxicating.

This book was, for me, what the yellow book was to Dorian. Besides the fact that they were both yellow which may or may not have been a coincidence, I felt that when Wilde wrote, “The heavy odor of incense seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain. The mere cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so full as it was of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated, produced in the mind of the lad, as he passed from chapter to chapter, a form of reverie, a malady of dreaming” it stated perfectly the response my soul had to the song it was hearing. I feel that this was more like a song than a novel, it was more ethereal, more extreme, more everything than a simple play of characters across a stage or a novel of static cast and predictable plot. It was rhythmical; I read it like poetry, not just with its elegance but with its suggestiveness. This book too, is poisonous, but I sincerely hope that I can use it almost as a vaccine to inoculate me into the world, but not poison me so much as to make me of it. Books allow you to experience things not possible in our minute life. To be on the sidelines of someone else’s life, to see how someone else would respond to the situations you go through.

I believe that Wilde wrote this book to share his personal opinions on life, on how one should live, what it means to live life to the fullest, on the soul, on guilt. The characters were merely vessels for his wisdom. This is what good writers do so splendidly and shallow readers read so poorly. This poor reading causes confusion, anger; disdain…the poison envelops them. The only way to read is either so complex as to not miss any messages in the book, or so unaware so as to just read a story. Ignorance is bliss.

The description give of what was in the book is quite short but overwhelming in its power. It is no coincidence I think that Dorian plays the young Parisian trying to live life through Lord Henry’s eclectic philosophies. This book is the psychological study of Dorian Gray, and once one understands that, the rest of the description falls perfectly in place. The lack of a plot, the plays and operas, how Dorian displays both the matchless innocence of youth hardly tarnished (as it seems), the wisdom of Basil, Lord Henry, Gladys, and Dorian drumming the cadences of every emotion, mood, and feeling timeless throughout history.

In this section on virtue, it should be noted that most men aren’t necessarily  unwise, but they often speak unwisely, and they call their artificial rules and ‘morals’ virtue, while the wise sit so pompously on their towers of knowledge and philosophy that they can’t see the true and glorious meanings for the natural rebellions constantly occurring. Lord Henry representively justifies the natural rebellions that arise in the novel, giving them high honor and valor for their naturalness and the ‘glory’ of acting solely on visceral impulse and temptation. (This as clearly demonstrated after the death of Sibyl Vane when he glorified her death and justified Dorian, not by saying it wasn’t his fault, but that it was good that he reacted in that way lest she put forth bad art. That her death was her last work of art and you gave her something back that she had lost, when in actuality he had taken it away.) Also, I feel that artificiality too often represents virtue, instead of raw acoustic moral.

Lastly, the last phrase is such wonderful, if not curséd foreshadowing to the devastation so impending. To say something like that implies such avid involvement with the work that one is defined by it. Dorian became so engrossed in this book, so drunk with the reverie of its poison that he became so twisted in his mind; nothing was real, nothing was fake. It was insomnia of the brain. The creeping shadows haunt his future, but he’s too involved, to obsessed to change. I hope that this book does not inflict the same harsh results, but it has caused me to think, and for that I am most grateful.

Description of a Shark Attack

86 curved knives clean their white razor tips in the tasteless meat of Coley’s well fashioned arm. The 18 foot animal at the other end thrashes as much as he does enjoying a messy feast. The shoreline bulges with the dumbfounded ignorance of the 80 or so Malibu vacationers obviously appalled at the scene from only a few hundred feet away, but way too selfish to do much about it, or even to resist the fleshy temptations of the crowded, swimsuit-clad beach.

A few ocean grayed men walk slowly in the shallows hoping the next step brings them their badge of courage. Two lifeguards have already sprinted through the water, now only about ten feet from the mangled teen and within the new ocean of his blood. Navy training had uneducated them of fear.

Once clear water pulses with the smell of raw blood. More sharks would soon arrive. It didn’t matter that the shark didn’t like the taste and would spit his once valuable flesh out almost immediately. 6 more similar ‘just one bite’s would leave a human without blood and shredded. As Coley thrashed he at last feels the release of the powerful jaws that had been, moments earlier, weaving through his flesh. The release only brought the simultaneous withdraws from adrenaline and the somewhat reasoned focus to his stead had him longing for the shark to return. At least there was hope with that.

The enormous muscle of the ravenous juvenile 12 foot Great White winded its damp-gray fin into the bright twinkling periwinkle of the California skyline. It was slashed almost as bad as the boy. A battered animal. Though evidently rogue, it was hard for anyone to look it in the face with judgment or rage. It had been on the other side of many battles. This was his territory though after all. What right has the robber to sue the homeowner for swatting him while he was intruding?

The lifeguards load him onto the banana-like stretcher now fading into unconsciousness.  His left arm dangled upon the string that was once his triceps. His rib cage was ravaged, bloodlines were shawdilly covered up, and the bite marks traced an almost completely decimated left side. The stretcher pulls past the ‘courageous’ men in the shallows, each providing a hand to ease the load of the exhausted life guards.                

The darker life guard ran up the sand, (slowly to those watching, but quite fast for those who have ever tried such an exercise), he slid rather movie star like under the tower and grabbed the Shark Attack kit. It wouldn’t help. The shoreline clenched itself to center on what was left of the man now laying on one of the rapidly provided towers. Everyone wants to have a part. Enough to be legitimate, not enough to actually hurt. The AED revived his heart, but the lack of blood and the disconnection of veins almost led to question that being a good thing. The other lifeguard, a certainly well fed and rather homely looking southern young man began his newly learned process of CPR. Three pumps… Breath… breath. Three pumps…bre…..

Description of a Pirate

The dense, well matured, overgrown, forest green shrubbery of the mid-Chilean Andes blinded the sun from Perez and his crew. The silent energy of the forest pulsed against its jagged rocky base. Perez’ plod stained white cotton bandana draped over almost all of his shoulder length waves of hair. Only sweat-laden curls twisted their way out from underneath the cloth’s taut confinement, like snakes wriggling out of a fist. His deep brown hair silhouettes his angular face, which looks almost like it is being squeezed up and back onto his high cheekbones, his Caribbean oversized green eyes slanting ever so slightly downward like a tiger looking down off a precipice onto its prey. His nose bent to an oddly sharpened point facing down on his slightly chapped pink small pink lips hidden under the rough stubble which coated his upper lip like a putting green. His hollow cheeks were well worn by the wind, and the wind blew just right as his right foot dug into the boulder’s crevice making him look like a Spanish explorer of old. He was a striking man of about 28, outside he was a survivor, and that made him seem almost glorious, but the danger which creped behind his greedy eyes, made one want to hide. The crew were a mangled bunch of bearded old chums well in their forty’s sea weathered and raimented with canteens of Cuban rum, which dangled rather noisily on their stolen British clothes, and the jewels of their trade. They sauntered up to the hill like ravenous mutts for a fresh steak. Many of them had one eye bright and open the other cocked, as if by doing so they were seeing a whole new world. They looked ready to conquer the world, or rather that they had already done so, and looked to conquer something greater. There was much greed and determination in their eyes, but in all, a sense of tragedy had been written. The stone exteriors of these men protected the past of pain. Suffering was not a part of this society, though many had cause.

Pondering Wilde's Wise Words in Dorian Gray take 3

“’Harry, you are dreadful! I don’t know why I like you so much’

‘You will always like me, Dorian,’ he replied. ‘Will you have some coffee, you fellows?—Waiter, bring coffee, and fine-champagne, and some cigarettes. No: don’t mind the cigarettes; I have some. Basil, I can’t allow you to smoke cigars. You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want? Yes, Dorian, you will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.’” (Page 62)

We all have that one friend. That friend that is so raw and true that we feel better about ourselves. That ‘heathen’, pleasure-filled friendship that teaches one more about himself than all of the rest of his friendships put together. Curiosities revisited and fulfilled. Experiences given dare enough to try. Staring down consequence until it feels far-fetched or easy enough to handle. Courage impassioned by stupidity: that’s what these friendships give. It feels a sin so; to say that it is necessary seems quite counterproductive: a sin as the panacea for other sins? Though I feel it is a part of life, which when handled incorrectly drags us in the opposite direction of the Kingdom, but when appropriately responded to, drives us to the innermost fabric of ourselves, and hopefully the Holy Spirit residing there. Anna Nalick wisely wrote in her song, Breathe, “And these mistakes that you’ve made, you’ll just make them again, if you only try turning around.” As sinners, life must always face forward, reverting back leads only to old sin. Our hope is in the future, through the cross. To continue being sanctified as we are justified by grace. Something must drive us forward to this new destination. “We make the paths and God directs our steps”. These people in our lives who are the wild, reckless sinners, often shape us. They break us from the suffocating bubble of Christianity and throw us into the real world. A world full of tools, sin, idols, and pleasure to build our paths. We still have no hope though without Christ, but by understanding his world, understanding our guilty status, understanding sin and depravity, hopefully we can see that standing in front of the burning perfection of a holy God we are equally guilty.

As a side note, Lord Henry describes the cigarette as the perfect form of pleasure, which isn’t all that odd, but the reasoning is quite unfounded. It is as if the perfectness of pleasure is achieved by a perpetual bliss rather than a once in a while climactic experience. A perfect substance indeed, would have these qualities, for it would thus always be needed, but a perfect pleasure seems to imply something glorious done by choice.

This helter-skelter ramble serves to prove that someone must represent to us all the sins we have not the courage to commit, because if not, we will gain such courage. We are hopelessly curious as creatures. However, it is so easy as the case was with Dorian Gray, that as you begin to discover your own sinful desires, someone to do them with can prove a seemingly insurmountable temptation. It is a fine line between gleaning valuable information about things, so as not to have to do them and gleaning so much as to not resist doing them. This type of relationship/ friendship is very crucial. It must come with kindness and respect, but an overdose of either is fatal.

Consequently it seems it was respect which shot down Dorian Gray. His emotion outweighed his reason and his relationship with Lord Henry became far too codependent. Relying on another human to fulfill what only God can truly satisfy. He made Lord Henry an idol, and the more Lord Henry talked, the more Dorian applied. The more he applied the uglier his soul got. I have friendships like this. Some, good ones, but by keeping the balance with friends that push me to be better I can keep looking at least forward if not upward. I will sin many, many more times before I die, but it has always been my opinion, that going back to previous sins is always fatal, new experiences have a glimmer of hope at least. And when I meet the crossroads and don’t know which path to choose. I take the one I haven’t tried before. Pressing forward. Striving upward.

Pondering Wilde's Wise Words in Dorian Gray take 2

“Lord Henry smiled. ‘People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.’

‘Oh, Basil is the best of fellows, but he seems to me to be just a bit of a Philistine. Since I have known you, Harry, I have discovered that.’

‘Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him into his work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life but his prejudices, his principles, and his common sense. The only artists I have ever known, who are personally delightful, are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.’” (Page 44)

Firstly, it seems that this first statement of Lord Henry’s sounds as if it is true because of the artfulness of its delivery. But that is the magic of it. As a speaker, the audience is the most important variable in the equation. When ignorance is involved, as it is with the depraved human race, it is those which possess the crucial trait of epistemological modesty (that is that the world is too complex for us to understand and we are ignorant people and must take that into account in our dealings. This last part grants ease to always appearing deep, thoughtful, and true. When taking into account the ignorance of the audience, one is given the upper hand. Like the throw always beating the runner, the speaker with the write mindset always has the advantage) who receive the masks of depth and intelligence. I am one. (If you haven’t caught on to the pattern I am very much like Lord Henry, his sins my sins, his glories my glories, though most perhaps more mild in nature.) It is very true to say that people are very fond of giving away what they don’t want even if it is something they need. This; however, is not the same thing. While the results are identical, the true depth of generosity stems out of necessity, guilt, selfishness, or on exceedingly rare occasions: love. For example if I was to have both a bottle of water and a Cheerwine, and be walking down the road in Kenya where they are dying of thirst, and I was to give the water to a thirsty child. Sure, was I in that situation, water would be better for me, and perhaps it would appear I was taking a sacrifice, but the real underlying reasons for that generosity came from my abundance of liquid, my paternal instincts of provision my guilt in walking away from it, and my preference of that Cheerwine over the water. This very poor analogy I hope still evinces the convicting and somewhat depressing true explanation of this “depth of generosity”.

Between Lord Henry’s eye-opening philosophies, which I would call the ‘tree of knowledge of good and evil’ philosophies; Dorian Gray sees the world for what it really is and responds accordingly. He sees Basil as a “Philistine”, which is to say, as a boring, workaholic, sort of drained out pot. The response given is very true to the natural courses of life. We all, as image-bearers, possess some level of ‘charm’: some of it exclusive, some universal. What that person chooses to do with that gift is up to them. Charm is dispensable by nature, meant to be evinced to the populations. The method by which this is done is the poetry of it. For Basil, his charm was exclusive to his artwork, for some, it is in only a few people, for some it is in himself, and for others it is with everyone around them.

It does also, seem improbable that an artist could put worth a notable piece of work, without losing some from himself. Though Basil tried quite hard not to put himself into the painting, he neglected to withhold pouring out himself for the painting. In order for a work of art to be great it must possess a sort of dynamism which can only stem from emotion put into it. A static work of art is bad art, but in its lack of emotion, it could preserve that emotion, that âme de l’amour of the artist. Being a self-proclaimed poet myself, the last portion of Lord Henry’s words alighted on particularly adoring ears. The best part about poetry, I feel, is its opaque beauty, that twists, straightforward messages to whatever the reader needs to hear. I think in this language, though my tongue does not know how. When I read and write poems, it seems that the poetic society has gone so extreme with free verse, non-lyrical, non-syllabic bland poetry, that it appears to be the infamous ‘polar bear blinking in a snow storm’ piece of paper. Poetry should be complex by nature, not by design, first hand poets think far too much before they write. They put so much in, but they receive nothing, for they have weaved such confusing webs in their messages. I, probably more along the lines of a third or fourth rate poet, will trade success in the field, to passion in life. Poetry in words is marvelous, but poetry in actions is divine. I embrace the idea that “The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible.” I hope to do this one day. I love the art of poetry too much to not write. But I love life too much to not realize and embrace the poeticism which is all around me. Wilde said it best on the glory of being inferior in art, so I’ll quote it again, “He lives the poetry he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.”

Poetry.

                Art.

                                          Beauty.