A Serving Suggestion

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Three  years and nineteen unsuccessful college applications later, (with another ten to go), I still can't tell the difference between a prospectus and a box of cereal.

   

It's funny because they both offer good times, personal growth (even the horizontal kind) and a fresh start to your day and future. They are all ample and abundance. And there's always enough milk, cereal and personal growth to go around. 

What their faces don't tell you is that you're accruing credit and calories, the American way. There's something about living on credit and feeding off calories that's undeniably addicting. They never satisfy desire, but exasperate it. It's a fascinating predicament, and can be seen erupting on Wall Street every now and then. 


Speaking of Wall Street, let's not forget cheat meals! And the confessionals that follow, after. No priest at the booth this time, but your personal trainer/doctor/therapist. Also known as the priest at the booth. Only this booth looks more like a counter with a cashier at the till. Guilt sells. And self actualization sells long before it ever pays back. 


 That priceless education, sunshine and invaluable experience gained whilst canopied in the shadow of an appropriately Medieval Gothic spire or Baroque building, is going to make you pay out of your ass.

The devil is, afterall, in the details (I hear they're calling it 'texture' too).

Some cereals are kinder, and recognizing this, care to mention in the finest of print:

ENLARGED TO SHOW TEXTURE;

CONTENTS MAY HAVE SETTLED DURING SHIPPING

I wish the prospectus would say the same.

 

Prospectus

Prospectus

             THE CEREAL KILLER SMILE

Homecoming queen,

say cheese to your

                 

American Dream

Hashtag Perspective

Too Camp for Kansas

For my debut Youtube video, here I am with a cover of Judy Garland's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", as rendered for the MGM musical "The Wizard of Oz" (1939), with music and lyrics by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg.

After so many years of taking notes on camp, I thought the rainbow would be a good place to start.

This is for Judy, and all the friends of Dorothy.

Here's to the lies that tell the truth. Here's to the rainbow- and here's to all those who want out or want in.

Happy Listening!



                                           

The Problem of Perspective: When my walls agree.

Sometimes, all this tired talk of "perspective" and "putting things in perspective", gets on my nerves. Or rather, it numbs them, like any good ol' anaesthetic for the soul.

It's dizzying in the most unflattering of ways. It reminds me of an optician constantly adjusting and readjusting the aperture of their lens, in an attempt not simply to put things in perspective, but force perspective upon things.

Screw the view and the vista. And to rest with all these world views and visions of a better tomorrow. Then there's the "bigger picture" trope. Now, depending upon the frame one casts and recasts that picture in, ideas of scale, size and dimension are all relative anyway. So this bigger picture is bigger than what picture exactly? The smaller one staring me in the face right now?

When that picture happens to be a beautiful set of lips or a beautiful, sensual something else, I desire no perspective. 

This is not an exhibit at a museum, rubric reading "Please do not Touch" (or alternatively: Pictured: Sunset at Ipanema Beach). 

This is about the reach.

This ain't a view. This is you. And me. Without the room for two overlooking a postcard of molten (and always broad) horizon.

This is not perspectival, civilizational or millenial, because it's not a self-help guide or a Third-World Development Goals booklet- it's personal.

Expand/broaden my horizons? Sometimes, I really don't want to. There is horizon in the wainscot if I will it enough.

Perspective means I look through things to their utmost, obtuse end. It's giving my dream vacation the same dimensions as that tropical looking beach in post-card-pristine. I don't want to look through you, I want to look at you. I don't want to look through that beach, I want to look right at it. I wanna hold it in the palms of my hands and smell it and touch it and feel it. I wanna spin it around on its invisible axis. And when it's time for my vacation, and the world to end, I want to unhinge it off that axis all together. 

Sometimes I just want to contract-it-ALL so that for one sacred glorious moment, all that really matters, is this perfect square inch of wallpaper and all the goings on within it. 


I would like to make peace with the walls and agree.
I would like to be shown no bigger picture. Not bigger than this room, anyway. Not bigger than my mirror, which knows me best. 

Perspective demands I view the painting from a distance. But what of that inviting stroke there and that speck of paint here that falls on the canvas like it could have been a suggestion, rejected. Or a divinely ordained accident. The sort I'd commit deliberately and with eyes wide shut.

I would like to be that speck and be that stroke.
I'm not sure if it sees much at all, but it looks so content. It looks like it would rather be nowhere else. It would raincheck on the beach.
I would like to think that I can give it my blessing. And that it can bless me in return.
All that really matters, is this- my perfect square inch- this palm to hold and clench. Then, release again.

I've got my eyes on the prize so often that I forget. It is possible to hold your palm in your hand.




The walls agree.