Song of Presley Conkle

America is going through another great change. The tide of war is rolling in to wash this nation away. Immigration, education and the cost of waiving our right to walk down the road are the pins that pierce the soft tissue that is our brains. Under the leadership of a fool prince, and a merry band of thievish magpies, we the citizens of America suffer. As we struggle to find solutions while our oily fingers only point outward. A better country is achievable. Committee discussions and protests are not the answer. We must first look inside, a simple idea with monumental possibilities. Who are we?
I sat and asked myself several questions recently. When I first meet someone I try to ask as many questions as possible in order to learn about the person to whom I am talking. What do they enjoy? What do they fear? What is there favorite color? How do they feel about this or that? And when I get my answers, they turn the questions around on me. My predetermined answers usually fall out of my mouth and the night is considered successful. When I was asking questions of my self I made it a point to answer each question that I asked, honestly. My findings astounded me. I don’t know this man whose body I have occupied for twenty eight years. My honest answers didn’t match up with the answers I had given hundreds of times previous. After reading Song of Myself, I understood why there may always be a stranger in my skull.
Walt Whitman’s epic poem Song of Myself brings the world into the light and tells us that we are all one. “I celebrate and sing myself" (Whitman 882). The opening line of the poem is not a call for masturbation, but a reminder that if every person on earth takes care of
themselves, then harmony will follow. It is the stupid idea that loving ones self is wrong that has led us down this dark path. “And what I assume you shall assume" (Whitman 882) tells us that we know right from wrong it is all inside every one of us, but we rely on others to make the laws.
Deciding that we must change who we are to change others, is the first step in our training to become better world citizens. “I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of grass" (Whitman 882). The grass is life. It represents the human form. Billions of blades of grass congregate to make a lawn, just like millions of people make a city. To look deeper into a single blade of grass is to examine life itself. Yoda once said “You must feel the Force around you. Here, between you…me…the tree…the rock…Everywhere!”
In stanza #2 Whitman is in self realization mode. The details of where he is at the present moment are enlightening him to the wondrous possibilities that each moment, and beyond that, each thing on earth is important fabric for the quilt of life. “The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless, It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it" (Whitman 882), Excuse my while I kiss the sky?
By the time we reach stanza #5 we are a fully trained Jedi, and that which waits for us is the creation of life. The coolest thing about life is that in order to make life there must be love. Say what you will about, mistakes, rape and alcohol, some how, love must be there for life to bloom. If love is absent, the pregnancy must be terminated immediately for the sake of a better world. In stanza #5 Whitman addresses the presence of the soul. He then proceeds to make love with the soul. The soul and the poet are one as in all things in life. Amen.

csn

Christina Littlefield’s recent story regarding CSN construction administrator, Bob Gilbert, while appearing balanced in that it notes the remarkable talents Mr. Gilbert brings to our college, is troubling in that it inaccurately describes the central critic of Mr. Gilbert, Frank Lassus. Mr. Lassus, prior to being fired by CCSN president, Ron Remington, was not a “high level administrator” at CCSN. He was a low level functionary who moved furniture and opened doors to locked classrooms. Dr. Remington believed that the 60, 000 dollar a year salary being collected by Lassus was too much and gave him a notice of contract non-renewal. Since that that notice would give Mr. Lassus only one more year of guaranteed employment, Bob Gilbert volunteered to allow Mr. Lassus to work for him during his remaining year.
Mr. Lassus is still apparently unhappy that Bob Gilbert could not rescind his firing and has, now, chosen to present himself to the SUN as something he was not to get even with the only man who cared enough about him to give him a break. (Several months, ago, Mr. Gilbert provided MR. Lassus with a letter of recommendation.) Mr. Lassus, unfortunately, gives credence to the axiom, “No good deed goes un-punished.”

Down the rabbit hole

People that know me or have known me, or well, that don’t know me, but meet me in a super market checkout line know that I am a cynical, depressive, fuck, and I do all that I can to reject reality. The world is shit. Life is suffering. Holden was right. One of my favorite books is about dreaming away life. Going to some place that perhaps isn’t better, but at least it is not here. That book is called Dreaming of Babylon by Richard Brautigan. I have become a huge fan of stories that take me down the rabbit hole to a new world with obscure problems. I love to watch characters deal with their problems. It helps me avoid my own. I love to see worlds that mirror reality, but stay outside the walls of truth. Maybe it has some weird magnetic relation with the fact that I share my birthday with Walt Disney. As books and movies go I tend to lean towards the same direction. I skew from time to time, but I always return to the standard style of “leave here, you can fix the problems of here, someplace else.” I’m also a big fan of Hunter S. Thompson, who as anyone who has read his books knows, spent most of his life far from reality. Now there are millions of stories that transport its characters to other worlds, but when they get there the threat is lacking seething evil. True evil must exist in the new world for any growth to happen. Innocence must be stabbed and left bleeding without the hope that help is on the way. The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass are prime examples of how to leave reality and find darkness waiting in the wings. They set the stage for innocence to be challenged. Peter Pan leaves reality and brings the kids to the doorstep of danger and abandons them there. There must be the perfect storm of torture, pain, fear, love, disgust, loathing and acceptance. The danger that waits must far more comforting than the caustic light of reality. There are a few films that have touched on this perfection, such as The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Some films come close, and are good, but they never really hit the mark such as The Never Ending Story, Lemony Snickets, a Series of Unfortunate Events and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Then there are films that miss the mark completely like the revamped version of The Chronicles of Narnia. A couple of movies have come out recently that are pure Picasso reprints of Alice’s adventures in Wonderland and are some of the best films ever made. The first film is Pan’s Labyrinth a dark, twisted look at war and change through the eyes of a child. This film boarders on perfection. The fear that comes while watching Pan’s Labyrinth leaves people in a contemplative coma for hours. This film got it right. And when it is done right, when there is a true since of danger, and the character is pushed to the breaking point, when the bad guys might actually win, then and only then can I say that I have felt something while watching a film. Another film that I have recently watched and is pretty much the reason I am writing this is Tideland. Like Pan’s Labyrinth, Tideland is terrifying. It takes the viewer on a ride through the resilient, innocent and dark mind of a child as she deals with the world that she is born into. Tideland is everything that I have ever wanted in a story and a film. Tideland pissed people off at every film festival that it went to. Tideland is at times hard to watch and even opens with a declaimer from the director Terry Gilliam saying “many of you won’t like this film…” Life is sordid, and scary at times, and we have forgotten that sometimes we need to see the ugly to make the pretty things pretty. Tideland is a great movie that no one will see. But if you do, you will see what I mean.