Freudian Stoma

The Once Wonderful Wizard

Weary from their westward walking, our wanderers reach the Wizard
The Wonderful Wizard
The one who made the town emerald and the eyes green
The Wonderful Wizard
Who is larger than life
Whose compassion knows no bounds
The Wonderful Wizard
With several tongues
Wearing the story of life on his skin.

Weary from their walk, they wrestle with the Wizard.
The Wonderful Wizard
Who projects himself as strong and all-knowing
Who turns out to be a mere mortal after all.
The wall has fallen and the Wizard looks beyond
Wondering if he should seek his own rainbow.

Our wayward travelers continue west.

Weary from their walk, our wanderers realize
They never really needed the Wizard after all.
They'd walked so far on the saffron road together
Wondering how this would all come to end.

The straw woman wizened on her journey
She now knows she cannot stay in Oz.
The last we heard, she let the wind take her west.

The maple colored leo was searching for the antidote
The one to cure his pussycat ways.
This lion, once thought to be a coward,
Was right to turn tail and flee in the rain.

The metallic automaton was on a journey to find emotion.
The thing to make him fully human.
The Wizard chided him, called him scrap.
Told him to oil his own joints.
The tin woodsman cried back:

I am indeed a
clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caliginous junk.
And one day I'll take off this tin armour streaked with rust
And follow the gilded road home.
On that day you'll realize that I do have a heart and you
Wizard
have no magic.

And that girl
The infectiously chipper girl,
(And her little dog too)
was disappointed most of all.
But at the end of this journey, the long westward walk
She learned that what she was seeking
Was with her the whole time

She learned though she's not in Kansas
or Kansai
anymore, she is home.
So she stayed. And they smiled,
The girl and her armoured companion.

What about the Wizard
The once Wonderful Wizard
The once Wonderful Wizard is searching for blue birds.
And he, like our wayward wanderers, needs to follow this road through.
And we hope to see the Wizard soon.
And we hope the Wizard can tell us his stories.
And we hope the Wizard finds his magic too.

But he will never be the Wonderful Wizard again.

I just found out through facebook that a friend of mine passed away last night. Details have not been made clear yet.

Even worse is his last status update:
"I passed!"

What a cruel, fucked up joke, universe.

And yet, in the awful irony I wonder, what will my status update say when it happens to me?
I could only hope it would be so morbidly appropriate and profound beyond necessity or rationale.

Nevertheless, you will be missed and your talent will never be matched.

And yet

And yet everyone else gets what they want.

I'll see to it

I'll see to it that everyone else gets what they want

I'll see to it, and yet

I cannot see what I want.

What is it that I want?

Maybe these five years back.

Five years is a long time

Five years is a long time to see that everyone else gets what they want and yet

I still cannot see the point

The point

The point where everything feels home

And everyone else feels like home

And yet I am writing from your bed, alone

You made your bed

You made your bed now I lie in it

And yet

And yet being home is the only time where things make sense

Because I can sense through blue eyes

This is the last sleepover because of everyone else

And yet I can see the paths ahead of me and everyone else

The paths are made of dust and clay that forms

Clay that forms from

The clay is made of vermillion dust, two parts dust one part tears

Tears from blue eyes

Not shed over you

Not over you yet (not over you, yet)

A record to chant, a mantra on repeat 

These tears are not shed over your skin

I can shed your skin

And yet

And yet the red dust is comprised of human skin

So dust is a reminder of everyone else

And yet everyone else gets what they want, and with green eyes I'll see to it that everyone else

One day
Like planets we'll align

One day
Like aliens, we'll tell tales in strange sounds
Resembling the languages we've amassed.

One day
I'll joke in Japanese
You'll soliloquize in Serbian
You both will sojourn in Spanish
We'll feebly fling our French about
You can speak a thousand words through the language of Canon and Nikon
Both of you will silently dream in a Sapphic language on the couch in the middle of the party
You'll read from your book of heart and teach us the language of hope that kept you going
Until you finally found that happy ending you deserved.

We eagerly await the sequel.

And we'll all be a little more fluent in life than we were those summers ago when we spoke Wednesday Dance

When laughter was as abundant as the white hairs, and just as sweet as the girl who left them behind.
Just as sweet as Muscato d'Oro, pork tenderloin, chocolate-chip cookies baked at midnight.
Just as sweet as No-Bake Cheesecake when the oven was not an option.

A love deeper than seven layers of deliciousness

And even if we never raise our voices to the wind (strong as it is in both Chicago and Hamamatsu)
if we never hear those familiar voices again
We've a love that cannot be found in je t'aime or ai shiteru
And my heart'll explode a thousand times when I see you.

One day
Like the stars we are that shine so brightly, we will align.
And we'll realize how the universe wasn't created in a day
but in an everlasting bond that outlasts contractions and goodbyes.

One day we'll shine again together.

This election season is starting to piss me off.

But it's not the candidates (who are not free from blame) who are driving me crazy, but the idiots who post their comments on websites. While some writers offer impressive musings- writers on both sides- the majority are propaganda filled sequences of words that cannot be considered sentences from a grammatical point of view. I officially think, and I am sure I can get a petition filled, that some of these posters should be shot. And I think the shooting should be bipartisan; everybody deserves to be shot for PDS, (public displays of stupidity). For the sake of my own bias, I will admit most of the problems I find are from McCain supporters, but I'll get to that point in a minute.

I wish there were rules to posting comments regarding their political views. For example, anyone who puts the words Barack Hussein Obama, is, a, and Muslim together in a sentence should be shot. This has been fact-checked to death; it's time to let it go. And it must be noted that calling him a Muslim should not be considered an insult. In fact, I would appreciate if we would all remember that "Separation of Church and State" protects us from a politician's personal religious perspectives (or at least it should). I don't give a damn who or what either man worships as long as the American people are at the forefront of their policies.

Anyone who uses the term "drink the Kool-aid" should be shot. Trust me, I get the implication of Jim Jones and being brainwashed to the point of drinking poisonous punch (and it was actually grape Flavor-aid), but, first off: if you "drank the Kool-aid," you're now dead. When I watch when both candidates speak, it is far more often in the Republican events that you get the drone, mindless chanting- "Drill, Baby, Drill," "Nobama," "Zero," and "USA" are examples. In writing this post (up to this point) McCain's been interrupted three times by their chanting. On the other end, the words Bushbots and McCainbots should be scrapped from liberal bloggers. It is not fair to consider either side cannot think for themselves, and we get nowhere by claiming one side is fundamentally dumber. Although this leads to my next point:

I keep reading, more so about Obama than McCain, that the people who are voting for Obama are idiots who don't know how to think for themselves and are uneducated. Funny thing, though: Obama has higher support from college-educated supporters- first noted during the primaries- and he is polling higher in all 7 of the Ivy League states. One could postulate that the smarter people in the country are voting for him. But even I won't go that far; Bush went to Yale after all and schools can't teach intelligence.

On the other end of intelligence, consider that the National Institute for Literacy confirms that Southern US states continue to have the highest rates of adult illiteracy. Mississippi ranked worst, with every third adult in the state illiterate. Louisiana has the second highest illiteracy rate with 28 percent of its adult population, followed by Alabama, Florida and South Carolina, each with 25 percent. These states (with Florida being the exception) are polling high for McCain. Again, this is not to insult McCain's supporters, but to suggest perhaps they should find another attack.

Perhaps they should continue the line about how often Barack Obama has voted "present" 129 times while in the Illinois Senate. I, however, would advise against it, as McCain has missed 420 votes (64.1%) this session. This is 109 votes more than Sen. Tim Johnson who has spent much of his time not-voting recovering from a brain hemorrhage. I would also think that more citizens would include that he voted present 129 times out of roughly 4,000 votes (verified by factcheck.org), which is slightly more than 3% of his total votes. I can see the problem in Senator Obama not making a decisive vote 3% of the time, but it's much better to be present and following the issues than not even showing up.

Obama supporters are not doing their candidate justice, however, by posting little more than "nah-uh" or "I'm rubber, your glue." And yes I spelled that incorrectly on purpose. To make up for their lack of knowledge about their guy, here are just a few bills Mr. Obama has sponsored or co-sponsored:

• The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, signed into law by President Bush and was followed up by Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008.
• S.CON.RES.25: Calls on the government of Zimbabwe to end its violent campaign against fundamental human rights, respect the courts and members of the legal profession, and to stop illegitimate interference in travel abroad by its citizens, especially for humanitarian purposes.
• S.115: A bill to suspend royalty relief, to repeal certain provisions of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to repeal certain tax incentives for the oil and gas industry.

And because I am fairer than most, here are some of my favorite McCain bills:

• S.RES.70:  A resolution expressing the sense of the Senate that the Commander of Multinational Forces-Iraq and all United States personnel under his command should receive from Congress the full support necessary to carry out the United States mission in Iraq.
• S.192: A bill providing greater transparency with respect to lobbying activities, and for other purposes.
• S.AMDT.1190 to S.1348: To require undocumented immigrants receiving legal status to pay owed back taxes.

In Obama's three years in the Senate, he has sponsored or co-sponsored several hundred bills and resolutions, two have become laws- giving him a average of passing 1.5 bills a year. McCain has had 30 bills with his name attached become laws since his first term as a Representative in 1992. In his sixteen years, his average is 1.875 bills a year.

Now that they both have a record of achievements that is well-documented on non-partisan, government websites (I used www.govtrack.us) let's get Mavericky. McCain supporters keep parroting their leader's claim of being a Maverick, which is the reason why in 2001 I began to like Senator McCain. He is definitely willing to work with Democrats, but- and this is opinion- I think it was mostly because he was disappointed in Bush's re-election (and subsequently his loss for the bid) and wanted to defy the Republicans. In fact, in 2004 he openly flirted with the idea of being John Kerry's running mate against Bush. I personally liked that McCain. But when this incarnation of McCain says that Barack Obama hasn't voted against his own party, it's because he has little reason to do so. His party does not support the majority of Bush's flawed agenda. Quite a simple answer, really. My friends, we should teach our kids that "liberal" isn't necessarily a bad word and "Maverick" isn't necessarily a good one.

That brings us to the current attacks on both sides: "Obama + Ayers forever" and "McCain loves Keating." Both of these stories are ridiculous distractions and should both be buried under actual concern for our future. Obama was 8 years old when Ayers began to climb the ranks of the Weather Underground Organization. Now, after being exonerated of charges related to terrorism, Ayers is well-respected as the Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. As for McCain, he too was found without blame in relation to the Charles Keating cover-up. He was reprimanded for his "poor judgment," but if the courts have cleared him of guilt so should the American people. Both of these issues need to be thrown aside for real questions about education, health care, real energy solutions, and the economy (stupid).

Personally, I am a firm supporter in Mr. Obama because when I see him, I am inspired to be a better American. I think he is an embodiment of the American dream. I am a little concerned about Obama's inexperience at the national level, but I honestly don't think McCain has any more experience in order to be a better president. While Obama was leading a community in Chicago and teaching constitutional law, McCain was leading troops as a lieutenant commander in the Navy. I think both have their merits and neither outranks the other as having more presidential experience. If Obama's judgment, presence and intelligence combined with Wesley Clark's military experience, Hillary Clinton's foreign policy experience, and a cherry-picked selection of Ron Paul's policies (including revising "don't ask don't tell," decriminalizing marijuana, and reversing the Patriot Act) I would be a very happy man this election season. But since that will never happen, I stand by my candidate.

In fact, I don't think the beast that is the American government will change significantly with either one of them in office. But I do believe that an Obama administration would lead to Americans taking more investiture in its government for better or worse. His plan to help students attend college in return for serving the country is much needed and I wish I could have had that opportunity. Not only do I owe over $35,000 for student loans, but I haven't been a good steward of civil service. But also, his opponents will highly scrutinize his cabinet, causing them to be better informed in the government- it's a win-win.

An Obama victory will also encourage the world to reconsider taking America back into its arms as a diplomacy-first country. Like I wrote to a friend living in England (who thankfully has dual British/American citizenship and can vote here), if the world could vote, this election would be over. Obama is change- not necessarily in policy (which is rank-and-file democrat, not crazy-leftist as falsely claimed) but in society. For example, and I borrow this from Chris Rock, black parents will finally have a role model when they tell their kids "You can become president someday." If my words aren't enough, look at the record numbers of people who are now registered to vote democrat and the record amounts of donations he receives from poor people like me, whose one-time $5 donation grows into $454 billion dollars, and counting.

The bottom line, I suppose, is to urge all Americans to be vigilant in what they say and write and pass along to others. I know a lot of my opinions will not sit well with others, and they lean to the left, but I also know the difference between fact and opinion. And, for me, when I put the facts side by side, I prefer to argue using facts. And those facts merge with my opinions to lead me toward Obama's side. I don't think the world would end if McCain is elected, but I have yet to feel he has my interests in mind. Again, my opinion. I also know that other people actually think Rezko, Wright, Ayers, Keating, Troopergate, and Bristol Palin matter in this election and they have their right to believe that too. On November 5th, none of these opinions or pseudo-controversies will matter. The only thing that will have any relevancy is the voter turnout. Talk and type will amount to nothing if we don't use our ballots instead of our misinformed blogs and e-mails.

So shut up and vote.

Sincerely,
A Kool-Aid Drinker.

From what I've learned in school, good writing should have a hook in the introduction to lure in readers. Here's mine:

I'm going to Japan for at least a year.

Yeah. It started out very innocuously. I spent many days over the summer engrossed in old Japanese films, very similar to the summer I spent watching BBC America, a year before going to the UK. Eventually the idea crossed over to another idea that was sitting deep in my subconscious: directing Titus Andronicus. I thought, and I am positive I am not the first, that the violence in Shakespeare's play would lend itself well to the  bloody (perhaps comically stylish) Japanese action film genre. Also I wanted to include elements of No or Kabuki drama. I checked out quite a few movies, but I realized that watching movies would not really help as much as actually learning about Japanese drama from the source.

Fast forward to a (practically) jobless- living with my parents in opposing parts of Dallas- version of myself who needs a little more money to move down to Austin. While scouring for jobs, I came across the word "eikaiwa." These are English conversation schools in Japan that recruit American, Canadian, British, and Australian/ New Zealand youths to teach, rather facilitate, conversations in English. Basically, the students, ranging from children to "salarymen," have already taken English classes, but they need an opportunity to practice it. We have a similar education problem in America: a lack of opportunities to practice speaking a foreign language outside of the classroom. On a whim, I applied online.

Two days later, I received a phone call; better: a phone interview. Two days after that, I received an invitation to the formal interview. All this happened faster than I could contemplate what moving to Japan would really mean. This past weekend I got my suit from the cleaners and went to the interview. I guess I can spare the details because today I got the news that they are extending an offer to me. The contract, as well as documents to secure my visa, are in the mail.

As far as the job itself, I'll be working with a company that generally teaches after school and work lets out. My job will also require my selling skills, keeping students coming back and buying our teaching materials. Most people complain about that aspect, but the recruiters were upfront at the meeting so I think I will do my part to help keep the company afloat. I am not sure what part of Japan to request, but I want to be on Honshu, the main island. Hokkaido in the north will be too cold for me and Kyushu is too far away from Tokyo. I think I want to be somewhere like Chiba, an hour away from Tokyo but not in the middle of the crowd- like Baton Rouge to NOLA or Brighton to London. After a year of teaching, I can apply for CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults). Training for CELTA happens in Brighton, England (of all places!) and in New Zealand (another place I'm dying to visit). So I am strongly considering certification. That would probably mean two years abroad. I am okay with that, right now.

I've spent the past few days constantly online. I fluctuate between RealClearPolitics.com, The Huffington Post, learning Japanese, and checking the vitals: e-mail, Facebook, etc. But I also keep reading testimonials from students who have taught English in Japan. The experiences are overwhelmingly negative, but I know through psychology and personal experience that people who are content or very happy with their experiences are less likely to write about them. Whereas disappointed people need to vent or rant. I am aware that the situation is not perfect, and I expect some frustration abroad, but I am the kind of person who embraces life in both positives and negatives and I know that this is an ideal situation for me to grow more as a person, as a man, as a student and as a teacher. Perhaps even as an American.

In the next few months, I will be calling on my friends and family to send me off the best way possible. By this, I mean e-mails of elation, calls of concern, and going-away parties in Austin, in Dallas, in Baton Rouge and in New Orleans. I won't be placed in a specific city until my visa is approved, so once that information is given to me, I'll post it. And I'm sure there will be a blog set up to document the trip because I don't know anyone there and I'll need to type, a lot. As they say on the television: stay tuned.

I love you.

This is a big deal.
This isn't such a big deal.

I have an interview this weekend (Sat and Sun) to teach English in Japan. It's not a fancy job but it'll give me direct access to Japanese drama, which is important because for my next big play, I want to direct a Shakespeare play (Titus Andronicus, if you were interested) using traditional Japanese theatre forms as inspiration. Going to Japan is the only way to really experience this and teaching is the best way to get me there.

So, there.

I probably need an anchor.

It is depressing to consider that I live in a country where intelligent discourse is discouraged, ignorance is valued as a sign of patriotism, and words like liberal, freedom and victory-in-Iraq have no real, consistent meaning.

I have been keeping myself occupied in Dallas, while waiting for my life to get back on track, by watching a shit-ton of CNN, Real Time with Bill Maher, and YouTube clips of my new best friend: Dan Savage. I've also started learning Japanese online whenever I'm not at The Huffington Post, RealClearPolitics.com, or fishing on Wikipedia. I hate cliche, but I am definitely a sponge. But the more I read, the more I realize that this is not common of many people anymore. I am asked everyday, Have you seen this or that television show. I have no idea who Lauren Conrad is or what she does. This does not make me a bad person, nor you, so stop looking at me like I've committed a cardinal American sin of not watching anything that challenges my capacity to think. Trust me, I am not the puritan of television; I'll watch ATHF all day long and that has property of making its viewers considerably dumber in just 11 minutes. But I'm definitely meant for a society that talks about Jeffrey Eugenides, Geoffrey Wright, and Jeff Anderson.

What am I ranting about again? Oh yeah, the value of dumbness. Now, this does not include any of you because as a reader and writer you are already posing questions about the content sent to your brain. But too many people are complacent with hearsay. I want to punch people who still think Barack Obama is a Muslim, even after the PASTOR Wright controversy. I want to punch people who listened to Newt Gingrich and believed that he, of all people, had the right to lead the charge against President Clinton's transgression in the White House. When Gingrich left the courthouse, he went home to a woman who wasn't his wife. The fact that John Edwards is a political ghost when he used to be one of the few politicians making a positive impact with real solutions. He's not my favorite person, but he doesn't deserve to treatment he is getting from fellow dems.

Tina Fey nailed her portrayal of Sarah Palin last night. The funny thing is, it was an accurate dramatization that did not have to deviate too far from the real woman to still be funny. I cannot wait until the election shifts from her to the actual issues. We still don't have a good, clear education policy to raise the literacy rate and lower tuition costs. No one has impressed me with a health care plan. And I fear the fact that McCain has a 15% chance of dying within the next four years, according to actuary tables. Not that math can dictate life, but that is too much when you consider who will inherit his job.

And this ideal that Obama is elitist only shows how dumb Americans really are. In my high school, a group of kids were labeled The Elitists. I do not think it was self-imposed, but when you empower someone with that title, don't they automatically gain that status of being better than you by self-defeat. Yes, there is an American elite. They travel to places you cannot spell or likely find on a map. They have phone numbers you will never know about and money the American government doesn't know about, and therefore cannot tax. Obama is worth about 3 million and the majority of that came from his book sales and went straight into buying a home and paying off his school loans. He is hardly in their category. He's eight houses to short and his wife shops at Gap. Seriously people- McCain calling Obama elitist is like me congratulating Clay Aiken for being straight. It makes no sense.

I used to like John McCain. Really. I have made that known many times in the past few years, until he sold his soul to become the GOP (Gas and Oil Party) nominee. He has turned into a lying sack of shit who has renounced so much he stood for, like drilling in ANWR. He keeps talking about how his tax cuts will cut jobs. That's what Bush said and the economy has been screwed and will be screwed in the next few years. He is saying right now Obama is the most liberal senator, when it has been proven he's probably the eleventh most liberal senator. Obama is really centrist; our definition of liberal is so far off from left-wing, which is more communism than Americans are willing to accept. FactCheck.org keeps dispelling his lies yet they keep working.

Oh Ron Paul. Why did you have to run Republican and get swallowed up by the idiots who yell USA incessantly?

Oh yeah, the US is not the number one country anymore. Me saying that is not being anti-patriotic, just real. We were not even number one at the 2008 World Olympics. While Phelps, who is not human, kept us in the race, China clearly took those games home (even though they should give back the ones won by 14 year old gymnasts). China and India are both taking over the economic reigns (which they should having such massive populations). We have a shitty health care system ran by insurance and drug companies. And yes, Obama, people are bitter. I'm bitter as hell that we have let our government make decisions without our voice- like going to war in Iraq. We are the nation of hubris and it's time for a reality check to get us back on track. Yes, we should be number one. But if we keep expecting everyone else to do it and continue the witness apaty for the government and keep suing people and movies and video games instead of taking responsibilty for our lives, maybe, just maybe, we'll take the country back and ascend back up to the top. At the very least we should let Europe encourage us again, like France was inspiration to Thomas Jefferson and Fredrick Douglass. Let's just steal borrow their form of national health. Please.

I just needed to type. My mind is getting heavy from thinking. We need more substance. More cake and less frosting.

I need to move to Japan.

We made a pact:

We were going to change the world.

Two years later, I haven't really held up my end of the bargain.

I am happy to report though that my time in Baton Rouge is very short. With two tours left, both two weeks long, I only have approximately six weeks left before I move away. Until I find a job, I cannot say where away will be exactly, but the jobs I am vying for are in New York, San Francisco, and Austin, with the latter being my backup home in case I don't get any of the jobs.

Just give me a little more time to make it.

I took a one in five thousand chance of trying to get into the graduate directing program at the University of Texas in Austin.

I was not the one person they admitted into the program. I found this out a few weeks ago. I've been so okay with the result I've forgotten to tell people. I moved on as soon as I put the application in the mail (overnighted it even). It was a long shot but like any other chance we take, I don't have to spend the rest of 2008 wondering what would've happened if I didn't apply.

Life is life and the what is the what. I am actually kicking ass on stage in a play that we put on tour for a week. I play this 75 year old man who jumps out of his window after the floodwaters came in one scene and it is the most fun anyone could have on-stage. We'll be touring all summer and hopefully the next leg- Texas to California- will go much smoother. We visited Birmingham, Atlanta, Charlotte and Spartanburg, SC. I had a fantastic time in Charlotte and I would love to go to Asheville the next time my lovely friends decide to make the pilgrimage. Atlanta is of course Atlanta. I'm dying to get to LA. Dying, I tell ya.

It's almost been two years since I've been computerless.  Someday that laptop will be up and running again. I may just give it to my little brother. Having no personal computer accounts for most of the blog-absence. The other being time. The play rehearses in New Orleans. I spend 3 hours a day driving to and from work and rehearsal. When I get home shortly after 11, all I want to do is watch Scrubs and read something until I pass out.

I'm going to get reviewed soon at Banana Republic for a raise. If anyone in the company deserves one it's me. I am not saying that in vanity, but I know how hard I've worked for them and they know (and acknowledge) how hard I work for them.

I'm taking it easy now. We start touring again in June and I need this next month to start painting and being awesome in general.

And maybe to connect with another human being.
Glad you are all alive.