essay on why cliches are important

communication between people is impossible. all people learn language individually. nobody taught me, or any person, language. language suddenly appears, spoken, in children. parents, when they parrot words at children, do not teach children language. language is genetic. the structures of language are already in our brains. all languages use similar structures. humans may learn which words to associate w/ which structures through hearing, but it is not taught.

each person has an individual language which is completely unique w/ individual associations for all words. i'm color blind. when i was young i felt that i shouldn't be judged 'color-blind' & that really these other people were 'color-blind'. i can see colors. my perception of of colors & their associated names is genetically different. i think language is the same. each person has individual language so 'real' communication b/w two people [or more] is impossible. two people can't think the same thought, or directly communicate a thought so perfectly that the other communicator [interlocutor?] thinks the same thought.

this is why cliches are important. cliches aid in person to person communication. the impossibility of communication causes, in my opinion & experience, anxiety & stress. someone says to me, 'i think peeing is an inherently political act'. i become anxious. i don't know how to answer. cliches lessen this anxiety & stress. cliches are culturally agreed upon phrases to express simple ideas [still impossible to communicate exactly]. if i possess a command of cliche, i can easily answer something like, 'tmi: too much information' or something equally boring, unoriginal, & a-unique.

the stress & anxiety produced from attempts at communication, i think, lead to violence. example: i was maybe twenty-three, at a bar w/ some friends. i shake my head about something. guy says, 'you shake your head at me?'-makes fists. the shaking of my head meant something specific to him. i say, 'maybe i shook my head, but it wasn't at you.' he says, 'you shake your head at me...'-adlibs something about causing physical pain.

stress & anxiety from communication is bad. cliches are good.

i don't know what this is continued

thirteen
einstein middle school. tristan writes doctor seuse book. flunk math.

fourteen
i baby-sit younger brothers and sister most days. this is true of last five years.

fifteen
shave my head

sixteen
first job second job. full time summers

seventeen
full time job plus school. seldom home. buy my own food. move away.

i don't know what this is

one
i don't remember

two
i don't remember

three
i don't remember

four
golden gate bridge. dad throws cigarette out driver-side window. cigarette returns through my window. plastic-hole jacket. candy corn. "ward" license plate.

five
freemont elementary. riding bicycles not has fun as i hoped. friends: rudolpho, megan, shawna, athena, heather, dominic, ...

six
blessed sacrement elementary school. can't take communion. not really catholic. friend: frankie.

seven
viewlands elemntary. Ms. Hallie. Comet. hike carkeek park. never got origami star. friends: can't remember names.

eight
echo lake elementary. aurora village. free popcorn. frozen yogurt. perfume fight nordstroms. frogs. friends: tim, justin, dave, justin, others.

nine
candy theft.

ten
hit girl in head w/ baseball bat. accident.

eleven
i did my homework but left it at home award. new friends: don, robb, jason. tree-house smash up. football after school.

twelve
einstein elementary.

something else

i'm reading 14 Stories by Stephen Dixon. i like the first three stories pretty well and i think i enjoy how dixon seems to write from the point of view of someone very obsessed. it reads very thought-like sometimes.

i'm listening to hip hop daily. when i was young i loved hip hop and mainly listened to 2 short, nwa, ice cube, snoop, and kid & play for some reason. now i listen to the geto boys a lot and a little jay-z, a lot of just what i'd consider pop music now because i think any music designed for popular consumption must generally be pop-music.

everthing is pop everything.

this is boring post.

sorry

lazy

i'm lazy. i sit around watching youtube videos of the geto boys and then i cry for a while for no reason and then i stop & watch the x-files.

list of names of kids in trailer-park i grew up in:

big tim
dave
andrew
justin
big justin
dana
timy
mat
ed
amy
candace
damar
courtney
shelby

there were probably some other kids, i've forgotton most of them

fond memories:

trailer park was next to echo lake & on the grass in front of the lake we played a lot of football. when i first started playing i dropped the ball when tackled but learned to hold on to the ball. the grass was covered w/ slimy green duck shit. i was tackled in the duck shit & everyone was tackled in duck shit & we smelled like duck shit & also grass stains. also some baseball w/ tennis ball instead of baseball. playing hackey-sack w/ lowlife early twenties neighbor [we were 10-14 yrs old]. learned about sex from said neighbor. learned of said neighbor's desire for large & bouncy boobies. removing hood ornaments from cars. vandalizing cars, w/ crayons & eggs & toilet paper & stolen nail polish, etc... stealing things, candy, lighters, stickers, watches other things.

kids that were a bad influence on me:
don
robb
tim

name of trailer park: holiday resort trailer park - i think it used to be a vacation spot.

i was once menaced by children & told that i lived in the "projects".

i feel like this shld be good writing material but it's not it's boring.
bye

ofelia

ofelia has a bloodless coup at bear parade.

ofelia is a genius, and other stuff.

...

["I sound authoritative there but if you are paying attention you will know I am being sarcastic, that 'everything I type, say, or do is both meaningful and self-aware of its own meaninglessness,' and the part I just put in quotes is also both meaningful and self-aware of its own meaninglessness, and the part I just put in bold is both meaningful and self-aware of its own meaninglessness, and so on, repeating itself."]

I think this statement is pretty much true from my frame of reference and interesting. Everything else might be solely based on his context. Free will is an abstraction. Any argument for or against it is an abstraction. Abstractions are abstractions... It's times like these that I feel that everything is true and everything is false. Meaning is made, etc... My girlfriend hates that about me because I will argue about anything from any point of view and any context (I find it enjoyable).

I think even "pain and suffering" are abstractions.

the superbowl

i'm watching the superbowl. the superbowl is an amazing event. large padded men battle other padded men and assault each other in a physical manner and with strategy. the strategy is complex. like chess or war.

the commercials this year are subpar. my favorite shows various men slapping each other in the face rather than high-fiving.

but something else. i was emailing w/ a friend and she said something about people and class struggle and i thought this:

people coming out of a middle-class/upper-class background don't want to help poor people by paying taxes for a comprehensive health-care system or by subsidizing education expenses, food etc..., because they think something like, "i earned healthcare, a good job, etc... by myself and so why should i have to help someone else do what takes hard work. poor people should just work hard, then they wouldn't need my help." what middle-class/upper-class people don't understand is that this is a false thought. these people have had help all their life. they had parents who could afford health-care, childcare, healthy food, after school activities, homes, homes in wholesome neighborhoods, the schools that are in wholesome neighborhoods which are also wholesome, if not private schools, money for college, the time to complete college applications and to apply for grants, scholarships etc... if a high school student is working full-time, he or she doesn't have the time to take advantage of these options. then finally the money to not work when at college and to focus on studies, to get internships (unpaying internships that the poor college student can't afford to take). in high school i once asked my teacher for an extension because i had to work etc etc... and my teacher said, "you shouldn't be working, school is your job." i tried to explain that if i didn't work i wouldn't have clothes to wear or food to eat, and i certainly wouldn't be going to school but...

i don't know what i'm talking about.

i don't know how this relates to football.

i went to the dentist maybe five times from age 0 to age 27. never had insurance. my teeth aren't quite white and aren't quite straight. everywhere i look i see people with white, straight teeth and i think about how much money and time it took to get them that way. i see young people with new cars. it is a different lifestyle and mindset. the middle/upper-class person always knows that no matter how much they fail, drop out of college, choose and 'alternative-lifestyle', try living in various cities, try different carreers, that there is always a support system to help them. this is good, but it is wrong to think that all accomplishments are the accomplishments of one person alone.

this was boring.

there will be a monkey battle-royale later.

and kissing elephants.

...

i'm not sure but i think all writing i write that isn't about class struggle is probably some kind of sell-out. but i can't write about these kinds of things. it sounds lame and boring. people who are read are middle-class/upper-class people, with, of course, exceptions. i mean, generally, people who have time to read and to spend money on something as unnecessary as reading (or looking at art or whatever) are all in what used to be termed the 'bourgesoisie'. [i probably spelled that wrong]. if this is the case, and only this class of people are reading the [L]iterature then to write [L]iterature or [P]oetry is to cater to this demographic and ultimately isn't this the definition of selling out. Even to take the anti-mainstream/anti-bourgesoisie pose is really just a pseudo-rebellion against this class of people to entertain this class of people. are these readers saying, "check out this crazy shit this guy wrote about poor people". is outsider writing turning the lives of the very poor or whatever into a fetish for rich people? Maybe only genre writers are the true writers, and the voice of blah blah blah. i don't know.

this is all bullshit. ignore.

wheel of fortune

pat sajack doesn't seem into it anymore. he's mildly annoyed by his guests, talks over them, jokes a superior way. i like him more now.

i think wheel of fortune is probably more fair than real life

real life is probably fair

maybe

note

sometimes i feel strange when i'm on airplanes, like a 'business-man' will suddenly point at me and say, 'your teeth aren't straight.'

...

poverty is not having access to good health care, insurance etc... that is a lot of people.

...

i am watching jeopardy and i am bored. i have quit writing. i want to become a data entry artist. i will enter data into computers artistically. i can enter all kinds of data. i am almost a specialist.

i'm sorry. i shouldn't have written of that because it's not entertaining.

i grew up very poor (if you are reading this, chances are you know me, and aren't surprised by this). my parents owned a small two-bedroom mobile home. the mobile home had no wheels. my parents paid rent (about 250 dollars a month) for the land that the mobile home sat on (on cement blocks). there was a yard smaller than my bedroom. there was a very large tree. there were other trailers, a little brown lake, and ducks that shit everywhere. we played football on the grass in front of the lake and rolled in little green duck turds.

i have two brothers and one sister. we shared the same bedroom. i often slept on the floor (really only room for three beds).

it is strange and distant now. i can barely remember that. i had a bicycle etc... i stole many things, many hood ornaments. i vandalized many things (houses, trees, streetlights, roads), with friends and alone.

this is all very boring but i want to say that really none of these things that i've typed means i was poor. people who are poor don't have homes, can't find food, don't drive to work. my parents drove to work.

alice blue

returns

warehouse dream

In my car on Mt. Ranier. Snow and ice. Sled my car down narrow roads. A woman appears. She is six feet tall with gray hair and gray skin and gray eyes. She holds a small mammal. I say, "what is the mammal for?" The snow is gone. We're in a warehouse. The woman says, "stop." The woman breaks the mammal in half. She shows me. Inside the mammal are tight little bags of red and blue berries.

bronson incognito

Charles Bronson slowly eats the leg of a live rabbit. I offer my bottled water. Charles Bronson says, "What are you, some kind of left-handed bitch? Bring my mutton." I bring the mutton and Bronson stabs my pet kitten. Bronson looks at me. "I'll write a poem in kitten blood," Bronson says. Then he stabs me in the neck.