Rebellion, Transgression and Poetry

"It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are." -e.e. cummings

I have always been attracted to e.e. cummings' poetry; his subtle painting with typeface and free syncopation that flows like blues music. His name, itself void of distinguishable capitalization in most its expression, denotes equipoise. Linguistic equality. The weight of his poetry balancing, beautifully, without the emphasis of a new thought, a new sentence. Break. Critics believe he preferred lowercase out of humility, but I think he just gravitated on some divine plane, swimming in disjointed syntax. Using erratic punctuation and the capitalized word, salient and calculated, for voice inflection and defiance of conventional thought.

i mean that the blond absence of any program 
except last and always and first to live
makes unimportant what i and you believe; 
not for philosophy does this rose give a damn...

But I'm no big critic. I'm a poetic nobody, no acclaim in my name. But when I channel beauty, it manifests itself as poetry--in its simplicity, its complexity, its minimalistic decadence. Its paring down of our dense language, so only truth can resurface. Just as cummings' unique flavor came from his writings, emphasizing the beauty of nature over his paintings resonate with the same disjointed serenade. Color with purpose, texture with meaning, strokes with intent. His language and its expression are transgressive, a word I ironically realized I never understood until last night. Relevant application of rebellion against norms in all forms:

Oxford English Dictionary: transgressive, adj.
That violates or challenges social, moral, or artistic conventions; subversive, experimental.

For the past few months, when I would wake up and weigh myself, the digital face of the scale was a reminder that I was carrying the weight of the world, cliche upon cliche, square between my sunburned shoulders.

But when I stepped on the scale this morning, I didn't see a three-digit affirmation of myself. Whatever mirror that I stood on shattered. That past life of counting stretch marks, the hours spend with tweezers and lipstick, reapply and repeat: This is another reason to let the digital scale face speak, knowing that voice penetrates the insecurities locked up on one's marrow and gut. My self worth tells him to shut up. That past life. That void.

(While you and i have lips and voices which 
are for kissing and to sing with 
who cares if some oneyed son of a bitch 
invents an instrument to measure Spring with?  

each dream nascitur, is not made...)
why then to Hell with that: the other; this, 
since the thing perhaps is 
to eat flowers and not to be afraid.

(e.e. cummings--voices to voices, lip to lip)

Our baggage shouldn't be a mandatory claim. Embrace this life, this phantasmagoria. Starting with that Walmart-purchased plastic apparition of worth, rebellion is beautiful.

Questioning the Grid Plan: A Metaphor of Discovery

Timothy "Speed" Levitch has the beautiful knack for both articulation and poetry.

For anyone who feels like digging into their biases, who may be struggling in the structure of the everyday-mundane-whatever, or who is interested in some damn good philosophical diatribe, check this out:

Speed Levitch: The New York City "Grid Plan"

Here's the closing passage from the video, which particularly resonated with me.

"By saying everyone likes the grid plan, you're saying: I'm going to relive all the mistakes my parents made. I'm going to identify and relive all the sorrows my mother ever lived through. I will propagate and create dysfunctional children in the same dysfunctional way I was raised. I will spread neurosis throughout the landscape and do my best to recreate myself and the damages of my life for the next generation."

Levitch seems to emphasize the importance of questioning and skepticism--who is "everyone" when relating the values of our society, particularly in this metaphor of the New York grid plan.

Pop culture's influence is intravenous. It has merged so many identities with skewed views of reality, of past mistakes in search of feeble justification. I remain adamant on three things imperative to self growth: Question, question, question. Do we have biases, and if so, why are they there? What purpose do they serve? It may be difficult to question notions that seem so available, so readily injected into the mainstream. But those are the very values we might not be questioning enough.

We must have the courage to seek them out, and like Levitch says, recognize: "There is no homogenization available. There is only total existence, total cacophony." Isn't it time to change the grid plan?