The Writers Voice
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Look At My Philosophy
by
Brent Fuller
To Whomever It Engages,
While whiling away the hours of today I noticed no specific indication that anyone reads my comments, poems and observations on "The Writer's Voice." Indeed, they were mostly sent out earlier this year. I caught a virus from "Gain"/"Network54" and have only recently gotten back on my feet. Therefore, acting on my own behalf I scratched down what I had to say and prepared to forward it to this place on the Net and await your signal.
I certainly understand the opinion that I become unheeding of the many good reasons for stopping more quickly in my ramblings or even pleading the fifth instead of answering so many unasked questions. I never learned to just let sleeping dogs lie (as they say).
In the end, this is the majority of my plight.
Just below, you'll discover my first assertion but don't forward this around to
everybody.
I don't want calls from people acting like I showed this to them. I'll then
disclaim all penning of same.
First, I will tell you that geographically I am Stateside, presently in far
Minnesota.
Though my repairing here would seem an unlikely morass for a person to enter
deliberately...each to their own nuance.
Folly, Folly.
Your buddy, Brent.
Now Part II
I've learned to never give out my password or credit card number in an instant
message conversation.
Do you have any idea how late I am up according to Eastern Standard Time?
Oh well, that's not entirely relevant because you and I are in other zones. I'm not mad about it or anything either.
In fact to be honest I guess it's not really you that kept me up.
But since I am writing again, another comment or two, I just want to be sure you
don't take it with a grain of salt.
You understand.
The muse starts with the time I dropped a good friend, Renee off at "Harley's
Roadhouse" after her particularly long exposure to me and I saw that side of her
where she was so obviously not in any mood. While remaining a good soul, she
couldn't take even a LITTLE bit more of me and I understood then and still do.
But I still gave her the ride there.
Do you watch a lot of international films?
I do too.
We don't want to linger on that point longer though. It but serves as an
ascension point onward to the meaning of life.
I decided the other day to play a test on someone to see what the outcome would
be.
Ya ever notice how people tend these days not to ask much about other people?
Half cuz' they really don't care and half cuz' they don't know that they wouldn't be stepping on your toes.
So I go up to this guy, sort of a friend of mine and said, "Man, if someone were to come up to you and ask any given question, what would interest you most and/or be the most flattering question that you could be asked?" Now I ask you. What would you say about this guy that answered that the question he's been waiting his whole life to hear someone else ask him is "What do you want of life?" That is exactly what this friend answered me when I asked him that.
Here's somebody with an otherwise irrefutable intellect and he said that in serious candor. I didn't want to understand that. If someone had ever even cared to flatter me by asking me what I think I'd most look forward to another person asking me, I 'd answer confidently. I'd prefer to hear them ask me more about my thoughts on another topic we may have talked about earlier or at least something beyond their space. Something where the obvious flattery is that they're considering and still thinking about what we'd discussed on a whole separate occasion.
No one has ever come to me and asked me what I meant when I said something
earlier.
The people from our generation don't believe there's anything real around them
in the first place, at least not enough to induce them into asking something so
self-exposing.
Anyone from the right generation, (those born in the 40's and maybe early 50's)
still would not undignify themselves so willingly that way as to ask of a youth
such a needy seeming question. It they did, it could serve instead to inhibit
their own self-confidence in the simple act of admitting that they're still
looking anyplace for some truth.
Matter of fact, if you believe there are apparently no answers to certain
questions would you ask the questions at all, let alone of someone so tender of
age.
Anyway, I'm going thru something kind of (really) harsh right now. I decide to
try to put it into some kind of nutshell like this.
You think everything's okay then something cataclysmic like my recent scenario
happens, and you glean altogether more knowledge of how impacting change can be
than you ever gleaned before.
It's in seeing that if you sit in one place too long you will become a target.
And make no mistake, you really will. Think of your own examples. And yes there
exist contradictions as well, but I'm only using a crude tool to focus a point.
We will always be making mistakes and any acceptable pride within my life will
only be from successful feats of servitude or the validation that comes from
seeing right choices honored in my life as I help live it along.
Hopefully, neither will look at all like pride.
Theoretically, I would think I should less frequently be blindsided by life in
any effective or negative way. Altho' that's not how I'd get assurance of my
actual veracity as regards my specific sanity. It's just that these are positive
symptoms, or the fruit of a healthy psyche.
And then, and so,,,,
My main problem is, and has always been that I don't go all the way in
manifesting the image of what I profess (though I really believe in what I
trust.)
"Why don't I?" I keep asking myself? Seeming so illogical, I yet live my life by single days and while realizing this harmful indication, effectively resist change. You don't know how much I wonder if I'm just perfectly incapable of being steadfast. The whole place of fragility in which I live out life is surrounded by fellow populants who appear just as convinced of their own conviction as I of my own, but whose philosophy looks to me, as thin as a guess.
So explains the difficulty of getting beneath the surface and ever talking to other people about the meaning of life. Is there a gift of salvation offered for our woe-begotten state? Is it all just for nothing? I don't want their answers assuming I've already bandied them around. I want strong argument with a goal of agreement with people and instead it comes threatening other people. I want to get to the bottom with my friends. I want to strive for wisdom, not dimension.
I want one person to talk with me as if in a court of law and use reason to find answers to questions beyond realms of Labor and World News and Perdition. Questions like these have been parlayed around by the would-be wise for so long that it's nothing more than rhetoric to them. The skill in debate is now the goal, rather than any possible truth in answer.
We don't even dare attempt to convince our friends of our own rational ethics when in the profile we're seeing of ourselves every day we see little more than kinetic failure to keep the basic tenets of our own religion. We become our own best accusers and undermine the possibility of our ever really believing we can know anything for certain.
What's the explanation for how that indeed life steals from us at every possible
trunk and that we limit all belief in what remains of integrity, which we
especially hope for in ourselves?
You know something, I'm sick of pretending.
Something about me that's important to me is that I want my friends to see that
I'm at least asking right questions in life and want to know the best answer.
One that can stand certainly against diverse sorts of inquiry and argument. I
want to be intentionally discerning.
Perhaps in light of some recent good decisions regarding your destiny you aren't currently experiencing any of these feelings of internal struggle in your own personal life like I describe here. I don't see myself as distinguishably purposeful although when there's no threat of bodily harm, or I'm not up against much resistance I can be. That doesn't seem very redemptive in the grand scheme seeing as how the world IS filled with resistance.
I'm angry with myself that at 37 I haven't any particular luminescence in my character. This to the point where I sit there and think about things like how that noone ever asks me to talk more about something I speak about though they may have been thinking about it too. No one takes me seriously except my wife. By the grace of God she is my soul mate.
Unfortunately, if we're being perfectly honest I've done nothing but enforce my
bad and common and distractive tastes and bents and thoroughly worked toward
backwardness in my endeavors.
I've known my ultimate allegiance is where it belongs. Every once in a while I
meet someone who comes unglued while in my room. And from my preoccupation with
what Judas Iscariot did always rearing large before my horizon, I engage with
them with passion and conviction in persuasive overtures to them in hoped
benefactor's tongue. I'm willing to love and accept
God's unyielding love yet am met with inborn repudiation. I really break up sometimes with overwhelming sickness about the lost state of most of the world. The sadness and mayhem. But to testify of my conclusions to others, (if asked) I must attempt to gain exception and explain away my obvious personal failings by saying how imperfect I know I am. Or better yet, how I'm not even better than before I was confronting the error of my ways on my road of life. It's so sorry that, like it or not, most of the world can not claim to have any certainty about a hope of redemption. Or even tell truth from fiction in history, the fossil record, whether to believe Creation or Evolution, whether straight or gay, if there is right or wrong.
I wonder if like other accountants give me, I'll receive a bill from God at
time's end. It will say, "For nicks and scratches and mileage beyond allowed,
and as determined by our lease management technicians and bean people, 82
million dollars is due and payable upon receipt of this notice…" because I
haven't always given Him what I should...If only it were solvable monetarily I would really go for that!!! That's why I
know I'd really be a great Catholic.
I've got this old Michael Hedges album and it's shearly incredible! I remember
back when I was a 21-year-old kid and living at 2747 Stevens Ave S., Mpls, Mn.
and first heard him play. I was indignant that his music seemed to be without
time; in no time signature.
That being true or not, I thought how that the music bespoke "New Age" and that
whole thing to a tee. I saw the "New Age Movement" as an agenda. As basically a
constant, ongoing attempt to distract men and women from watching time click
away. It introduced rudimentary techniques toward the numbing of the natural
consciousness and conscience that was the only remains of our "God Image" from
creation.
Then, embarrassed, I saw how that "Aerial Boundaries" sounded that way only because of it's ownership by the Windham Hill label. And Mannheim Steamroller seemed to be having a decent run of luck. Mr. Hedges just said, "I can play that if you really want me too..." The stifled part at the end that you never heard him exclaiming about was where he protested, "But why?" And the forthright response from the Oracle was, "We can't have our young Ripleys deciding whether to believe it or not".
How would it look if this chapter doesn't sympathize with the last and how would that seem?Fortunately he came to care and yet not care. That out of the way, he recorded ever-better poignancy while merry doing so. Each new album was laced with engaging theme thru lyric and playing. Certainly each new album of it's own qualities surpassed "Aerial Boundaries" in breadth and still left "Aerial Boundaries" sounding splendid in the necessary departure from the "Windham Hill" label.
I grew up next door to this kid we'll call Scott Cottage and he was an only child. He lived on the corner of Tilyn Place and Brookdale Drive. The bus would let us off from school in 1st grade or so and I would cut through his yard and he'd get so pissed at me for tracking up what he considered "his snow". At 7 years old I'd say, "I promise not to walk in your new snow. I know how you need room for all those snow angels in case." Then I would scoot home for my 60 minutes practicing on the piano.
I remember his mom getting him piano lessons and a metronome. I thought how reasonable it was that I should have gotten a metronome too, seeing as my mom did and always will play the piano better than his mom. My mother's daily practice on our piano kept her in position as Pianist in the Milwaukee Philharmonic Orchestra for several seasons. Gary down the block would feast with me on his old man's better-than-store-bought apples and plums seeing as they had a tiny orchard.
That guy Scott next door to me got Golden Delicious' from his Mom for nothing but watching "The Flintstones" and "Speed Racer" and "The After School Special". I on the other hand got chastised just for seeing their TV sets. (Not really). But I wasn't allowed to watch TV unless it was something like "I Love Lucy", "Walton's" or "Little House On the Prairie", and those only with express permission. We never had a TV till I was 16. Too, Scott got Andy Michter mad at me one time and Andy threatened to take my little mole off from my neck and cause me cancer. His Afro-American sister Aidee and myself were playing M.D. in their new shed with the locking door that had all their 6 adopted kid's initials and handprints forever tedious in home-made cement in it's floors.
Those were the times when everyone told me they thought they heard my mom calling and I would keep checking with her till I was remanded to bed because of the very bother of my checking so much. I sometimes paid visits to Craig Reglow with precisely the same lassitude. (His dad was a cop that turned out to be crooked). Or better yet the Voss's down at the end of the road behind Cobol's house. Theirs was home to all of those ferocious and disobedient 2, 4, and 6-wheeled vehicles of potential destruction, etc. Elder brothers aside, Jeff Voss wasn't that dangerous in those days but I'm sure I can guess of what ilk he is today.
I'm not saying anything while it sounds like I'm disparagingly referencing these "townies" of Brookdale Drive. It's just that I'm still dealing with some similar yuck now. Better even than finding that "Playboy" in the culvert was when I went collecting for my paper route. That episode at the house at the end of our street. It and that 30-something wife who came to the door that Friday in near birthday wrap. And those eyes; I couldn't believe she wanted to marry me. I also had the bad sense to flee as a common 12 year old would, but the image remains indelibly stamped. You know, some would never even talk about things like that but it doesn't upset me to at all. I like it. But you weren't there so your silence IS best.
On a different note, right now once again I'm the only one in the house who wisely resists sleeping. They all act like it's totally okay to just go to bed at night. I'm a saint, still critically intent at 3:16am and showing no signs of stopping. A champ as from yester year; possessor of moxy and confounding perseverance doubtlessly.
I should mention that Scott kid though and his later, brief fraternity with
those Buddhists in Milwaukee. He should go back there and state a formal
disaffiliating with them immediately. He doesn't want to keep shaving his head
anyway, is my guess.
And we'll lose our hair pretty soon anyway (in case you really like yours). My 7
year-old kid Latimer told me I look like a grandpa the other day merely because
of a single gray hair. (In my nose or whatever). I'm going to start keeping
opposing hours.
He shouldn't go public on me for years.
I have no ending to this diatribe I've done. I have nothing else but to hark to
potential responses to my words. I think people should write more than poems if
a poet. They will sharpen their skills with those hours alone. I want to leave
guile and craft behind. I hope there's a reason to have written in time.
There, Brent.
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