The sky was dull, and hypothetical…

Posted on by kylar

I’m feeling a bit melancholy today, and I must say that it’s a feeling that I really care for. There’s something very peaceful about it, about feeling a sweet, languorous sadness. This morning I awoke at 5:15, having had a night filled with fitful sleep after two nights of no sleep, and upon exiting starbucks, was greeted by the first summer rain that I have experienced in over 6 years. The smell of the rain on the pavement and the earth after a period of hot dryness is one that I will never tire of. It’s as if the earth herself is opening up and calling out to the sky, and it fills me with a feeling that I can’t really describe.. partially sad, partially contented, but sweet. And I have made a playlist for a Rainy Day in Summer, to share.

Contact me if you’d like me to share my playlist with you.

Tragically Hip – Long Time Running
Indigo Girls & Ani DiFranco – Midnight Train to Georgia (Live)
Tragically Hip – Bobcaygeon
Tragically Hip – Fiddlers Green (they make so many good songs!)
Colin James Hay – Waiting for my Real Life to Begin
Train – Drops Of Jupiter
Coldplay – In My Place
The Vogues – Five O’Clock World (The day has to end sometime…)
Spirit Of The West – Roadside Attraction
Stone Roses – Waterfall
Counting Crows – Raining In Baltimore
Stabbing Westward – Breathe You In

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One Year Ago…

Posted on by kylar

Today, my father passed away. I was watching Shrek 2 with my daughter and wife. For the last month or six weeks I’ve been thinking ahead to this date and been wondering how I was going to deal with it. For the longest time I’ve been thinking that I would pickle my liver and sit around, thinking and crying. Now I don’t know. I keep thinking of something that one of our pastors said a while ago in service, it goes along these lines:

We all struggle with sin and difficulties, and being human we will sometimes (often times) fail. But when we do, or more importantly when we are presented with a situation where we are struggling against sin or a difficulty, then we too often think of the times we have failed at it, and think that one more failure is nothing, or that we are bound to fail at this again, so why bother trying. (As Yoda would say it: Seductive is the dark side.). But when we are in this situation, all we have to think is that we will not let it beat us this time, and I will be successful against my problem this time.

So I think more about this. Alcoholism runs in my family, and my Dad suffered from it. Drinking is something that happens a lot in my family, not alcoholism specifically, but it is a social activity that we all take part in. I guess was thinking that instead of drowning my sorrows (which, to clarify is not something I generally do), I could do something more constructive.

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More Smells

Posted on by kylar

This weekend I was out doing yardwork and I went into the shed to get out the lawnmower – and was hit by the smell, it took me back to being a young boy and going to my grandparents house, I would love to go into their shed and smell the warm grass-smell, walk around their small backyard and look at how neat, and organized it was. I was fascinated with my grandfather’s small workshop downstairs, how neat he kept everything, hammers hung up by the prongs, little glass jars with nails, screws and fasteners, all labled and organized. Now that they’re both gone there’s no central point in my mom’s family anymore. Their house would be the central meeting place, the point of contact for Christmas, Easter and gossip. Now there isn’t one, and I wonder what will happen in the future… this year there wasn’t any family gathering to speak of (extended family), where there has been one for dozens of years past. I can remember doing it even when I was very small.

creator..or poseur

Posted on by kylar

so tonight i hung out with a couple friends and we played a little music, some guitar, some bass, whatever. and we had a little discussion (which i’ll go into more about later) that made me start thinking a bit. i’ve written some poetry (mostly bad), some essays (mostly bad), and some songs (all bad), and every time i read a really good poem, i know that i’ll never be able to have the effect on other people that that poem has on me. one of my favorite poems is titled ‘howl’ and it’s by alan ginsberg, the noted beat poet. when i read the first lines, a shiver runs through me, the imagery so perfect, every word exactly right, and when i’m done reading i always feel a little sad because i don’t really have any creative talents. i can pretend to be able to create a little here, or little there, but really i’m only a not-so-competent fake. that started me thinking even more, about what distinguishes an artist from everyone else. is it passion? is it desire? is it some unnameable longing that burns inside, and every time you write or sing or paint or sculpt you’re trying to give a name or a voice to that burning? i don’t know, and even if i did, i wouldn’t be able to find the words to describe it. back to the conversation that i was having earlier. we were listening to one of our favorite pieces of music, a piece that manages to convey so much feeling that you cannot avoid being swept up by it. it was ‘shine on you crazy diamond’ by pink floyd, and when david gilmour picks up a guitar, it becomes a more natural extention of his feeling and artistic talent than my hands or fingers or voice. i could spend hours and days learning every note, every bit of tremolo, every tiny little bit of inflection, and still, the best i would ever be is a poseur. a competant fake. i do know, however, that i can enjoy the works of others, and i will continue to do so. thanks to any and all who create, without you life would be much more dreary.

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following the penguin

Posted on by kylar

a penguin was asking for some input on questions about blogging. you can check it out here. i’m going to post my reply because it’s almost a reason why i blog.

her question is:

– what has writing online/the blogging community done for you? how did you
> get involved? why do you stay involved? what are your thoughts about sharing
> your poetry/words online?

well i’m going to point this more at writing online as opposed to the blogging community angle. i write online almost as a catharsis, just for myself. i don’t so much share as just write publicly, like scrawling my thoughts on a subway wall. i think that most poets (and by that i am encompassing bloggers, using it as a loose term not restricted to classical definitions of ‘poetry’) write because they can’t keep their ideas inside. the fact that someone else reads what i write is entirely secondary. it’s the same reason that i play guitar when no-one is around to hear. i’ve always felt like my brain was a huge jumble of ideas that has been waiting to get out, and a blog gives an outlet to shape those ideas, or at least release them from my brain. as to a blogging community, i don’t really know how to define it. is it the blogs that i read on a semi regular basis? or the ones that i interact on? i think the yearning for kinship, of like minded people is what has brought people to other’s blogs, and that is a basic need that is more easily fulfilled online. where previously you might have had to ferret out a poetry class, or independant coffeeshop somewhere, now you can interact from the comforts of your armchair, read and have read your flowing prose, all from safety. some last thoughts about sharing your words online: it’s definately a risk, especially for people who are open and can share their personal lives. i have a great respect for them. if, however, i was truly worried that someone might critique something i’ve wrote in a mean way, or if i had a very fragile self-image (well, i mean, more than most….) then i wouldn’t have put stuff online in the first place, it would still be in a hardbound journal stuck under my mattress.
sorry for going on and on.. that damn penguin is too tempting not to follow.

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