A Tyranny Against the Wind

A Defense of Romanticism

I would begin to unwind if I could just find a reason. Ahh, my heart is so very put upon by delusions of the perfectly romantic. My heart is put upon by the absence of love. I do love myself, but that is only so much masturbation. I need to share my love with another, but not just any other. My beloved must be able to requite and in so many ways. To be saved from this put uponness, yes, I need to share my love with another. What great selfishness and cruelty is it that says we must love simply ourselves for happiness, and to need another to love is unhealthy??!! That is the sentiment of the impotent to love.

I would begin to unwind into some perfect tapestry if I could love you. Now, I am all knotted up in balls of despair over your absence, dear love of mine. And love has the singular right to possess. My love. It is the solitary privilege of the beloved, to be loved solely.
And I say to you bastards of love, those of you who no longer know what it is to sing to the night hopelessly, because you love so much, and those of you who condemn us “hopeless romantics” because we “love too much”; and to all the insensitive fucks who have written me off, to you, I say goodbye and good luck. Go live your petty lives of liking and caring, revel in your hatred. That would be good. No, you could not even do that; you lack the passion to hate. Hate, a preference to dislike for the true lovers and dreamers of true love. You feeble minded mockers of the romantic soul are like a pestering wind beating against my bedroom window at night when I try to sleep and dream of love. You feckless idlers who cannot decide, cannot commit to anything, you, the wind that blows away all of my romantic fibers and twists them into knots. I can joyfully say that I hate the wind of indecision, of middle-paths, and frozen minds, fickle hearts.
Ah, but at least the fickle hearts have some inclination to love….

And I would lay down and bask, in the silent passion of the lover’s night, I ask, who doesn’t want to find completion with another being? Who wants to die alone, let alone live that way?
I lay down and I ask. I lay down on the earth’s heaven ground and croon to the sky; at least you accept my love. Still, the hopeless romantic spirit in me waits countless eternities for you to croon back, “I love you, too.” And even if I didn’t hear these words, I would give myself to you to save you from suffering, and take away all your bad habits, strip away all your bullshit, chip away your porcelain veil…and free you. And in your letting me love you, I would begin to unwind.

But still, I suffer endless and tiresome retreats into the lonely passages of love. I am strung out on a romantic buzz with no one to share it with. I do ask, I do beg and plea, I do pray and wonder, desperately, like a naked beggar in city streets. Where, who, when, and how, love? I have standards that breach the heavens and this is why, I am certain, I suffer this despair. No one is equal to my capacity to love, when I do. And in this great feat, I am abandoned to life, loveless. So I cry and I moan, I write unyielding words, feverishly, as if to conjure the one true One –for one is all there is, in romantic love. I dance stunning solos for the setting sun and all hope of requition. Then I lay down and die a thousand deaths; I crawl into silent corners and retreat. I wonder who is there that is like this, out there, in the world. I dream. Ah, dream is the salvation of lovers. It offers a momentary relief from the cutthroat necessity to shed the brightest loving light onto the beloved, however unimbued with the ability or desire to reciprocate the feelings the beloved is.

Ah, the hopeless romantic rants. The hopeless romantic chants this tirade in hope of an answer from her love, whoever, wherever he may be. And in the twilight, finds her final repose. At least the sun loves the west, unwaveringly. And, watching the sun sink toward the body of the earth at the horizon, she finds some subtle relief in this, the singular salve of night: a glimmer of hope, even if only symbolic.
And hope is the mana of the hopeless romantic, hope, the worst thing to come out of Pandora’s Box. The hopeless romantic thrives on hope like air to a normal human being, and this is why the hopeless romantic is hopeless, or at least always almost to the point of running out, but a true and total junkie. The hopeless romantic is singularly astonishing in resourcefulness. Only the hopeless romantic can always find a glimmer of hope somewhere, somehow, someway. The hopeless romantic is a master rationalist, adroit at finding evidence for loving, of maintaining hope. Maybe, the hopeless romantic is more full of hope than any other, and thus, the most sublime, for hope represents belief in the possibility of a finer reality, attained.

But as for the search for “ideal” love, the “perfect”, it teaches hope.

The Spell

Crimson deeper speeding over the darkness
Crashing into oneness
Someone witness this
I can’t stand the idea that I’m here alone
Project my experience on the silver screen

I haven’t got time to feel like shit
Can’t you see I don’t like it
Kill myself a thousand times
And wonder why everyone wants me alive

God dam it

Who the fuck is anyone?

I would take something from anyone
I would take your shoes
And fall in love with your bleeding feet as you walk across the razor blade beam
If I knew it meant
Heaven
Nirvana
Salvation
Enlightenment
Peace
For all

One
Or
The many

Why don’t you know the truth
It isn’t something you have to prove
It’s just the way you feel
And what you think see breathe
And everything about the way that you wanna be

I can’t tell you anything
About the future
So what am I?

Never saying anything about the realities that you experience
It’s just a fucking waste
Of something
That could be true

Why do you say
Nothing

It’s a pathetic fucking god dam waste of energy

Kill yourself and do the world a favor

Because if you are not in touch with what’s real
Then you are wasting a life
Die
Reincarnate
Come back as something better
Like a rain cloud or a daffodil or a cat
Or some kind of Buddha

Otherwise
GO TO HELL

I thought you had a connection to the truth
I thought you had a connection to the truth

Everyone was saying something
I can’t hear anything
No one is saying what they mean
No one is aware of how they are

It’s scary and lonely and fucking weird

Is this happening
Right now?
Where are we?
Do you know?
Does anyone?
What have they all said?
After you are dead you realize all this shit was just an illusion
And finally
You are free

But the passion of the body
Keeps us here

Pleasure induces

Pain repells

The taste of you reminds me that there is something deeper in me
That wants to heal

I could rejoice at the thought of us on the wild beach at night
stars crashing down
Our naked bodies melting
together in the heat of the burning stars’ flame
Perfect death

There is but only this:
You and the spell

THIS

i don't want the center of the stage
i don't want to be right or care about punctuation and grammar
i rave in the darkness with the rain
i dance naked in the fire and die inside this rampant madness
disintegrated wholly yet resurrected in desire

i can't see any reason not to be
splayed out with this intensity
i lay down on the road and beg you to run over me
i stand up and make a single motion
signaling this as the thing that matters:
drowning with the fervent certainty of hell
in our delicious ocean

the plants need watering and everything is cut down
i want the overgrowth and wildness and flooding mystery of passion
i'm blind and lost in this great season
open my eyes like a child at dawn
my heart is wild among the lush blooms
i follow the footsteps through the garden
strung out on treason

i can't even lay down or sit still or begin to think about anything
i want to thrash on the keyboard and bang drums with my bare hands
i want to roll in the mud and get dirty
i want to break everything and scream YES!
and go running in the sands that came from the degeneration of great mountains

until it all means something
and everything is nothing again

I've been Facebooking

I've been very active on Facebook lately. Check me out, there. It's a nice way and place to interact with others in a non-linear time-frame.
You can post information about yourself, what you are doing, share thoughts, notes, photos and check out what people you know are up to without needing to interact at the same time.

Facebook represents a new paradigm of communicating and sharing and being in community.

Check it out, sign up, it's free.... and fun!

I Won NaNoWriMo!!!

I did it I did it I did it I did It!!!

I wrote a novel in a month!
It's a jumble of ideas and characters! It's a big gorgeous mess of words and events!
But it's mine and I wrote it and it's alive and out there!

Now, I get to read what I wrote! Now, I get to revise and revisit. Now, I get to have people read it!!!

YAY!

The following is the message from NaNoWriMo to me:

You Won!

So it's official.

Our word-counting robots have analyzed your November novel, and they've delivered their final, binding assessment: Winner.

You did it! You did it! You did it!

This was, without a doubt, one of the hardest years on record for NaNoWriMo participants. At some point in the literary marathon, most of your fellow writers fell by the wayside. They lost their books to work, to family, to school, and to the hundreds of other distractions and interruptions that tend to shutter creative undertakings like NaNoWriMo.

But not you. Not this year.

This November, you set out with the ridiculously ambitious goal of bringing an entire world into existence in just 30 days. When the going got tough, you got writing. Now you're one of the few souls who can look back on 2007 as the year you were brave enough to enter the world's largest writing contest, and disciplined enough to emerge a winner.

We salute your imagination and perseverance. The question we ask you now is this: If you were able to write a not-horrible novel in 30 days, what else can you do? The book you wrote this month is just the beginning.

From here on out, the sky's the limit.

We wish you well on your many upcoming adventures, and hope to see you for Script Frenzy in April, and again for NaNoWriMo next November.

Before you go, though, we have some NaNoWriMo Winner gifts for you.

The first are a couple of winner's icons, meant to be posted on a website or blog.
Winner Icon Winner Icon

Please do not link directly to this image on the nanowrimo.org site. Please download copies of these images and place it on your webserver for your own use. Most web browsers have a Save Image or Save Picture feature: PC users can right-click on the image to bring up a menu, and Mac users can just hold down the mouse button over the image.


Since your achievement should be proclaimed far beyond the internet realm, we've also created a special Winners Certificate for you to print out and hang anywhere novelist groupies tend to gather. After downloading from our site and printing it out, you'll just need to grab your favorite calligraphy pen or re-run it through your printer to customize it with your name and the title of your new novel.

If you haven't made a donation to NaNoWriMo already, please visit our Donation Station and add your name to the list of wonderful folks who believe in NaNoWriMo and our Young Writers Program enough to support us. Even $10 does a world of good!

On behalf of everyone here at NaNoWriMo headquarters, I offer you my congratulations.

Warm regards,

Chris Baty
Program Director, NaNoWriMo
---------------------------------
YES!
Leila

NAME NAME What is a NAME?

JULIET:
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

Leila’s Musings on Names
In response to a discussion and question posted by Barbara Ann O'Leary, who founded her online Evoking Authenticity community forum, I have journeyed into the question: What is a Name?

What is a Name?
When musing on this question, I think of the Bard’s famous line…. “A rose by any other name is not the same… “ and I feel that there is something vital, something essential (as in of the essence), something true and authentic about our Name.
I capitalize Name because it seems to command a certain respect. Name. In the beginning was the NAME. And the name contained the energy of the named.

Certainly we exist before we are named. It’s not that naming is preter-phenomenal to our existence, but it seems that naming is a distinctive moment in our existence. As if, that thing there, this thing here is hereby this essence named this!

So, I existed as something, some form of energy before my mother said you are Leila. But in the naming moment, something clicks, and voila! There is Leilaness about me and all other Leilas , just as there is Janiceness about youJanices, and Barbaraness about all Barbaras, and Adamness about all Adams.

I see it as something similar to being born under a star sign. I mean, come on, there are only 12 sun signs, but there are 6 billion or more of us on the planet right now! So, there is something Piscean about me, that is true for all Pisces, naturally, as with each of the 12 signs. There is something essential in the energy pattern that is associated with a name, a sign. It seems that a lot more energy has gone into researching and cataloging the various characteristics of astrological signs than names. While there are many resources for the meaning and origin and historical use (etymology) of names, I think there is something that we, as the Named, have personal experience that can speak to what it is to be with the names we acknowledge.

I really don’t see Names as labels. Leila is not a label for me. Writer or dancer or poet are labels/roles. But, I find that my Name does not feel like a label.


What’s in a Name? The Power of Naming
It seems that a Name can contain Secrets to patterns that our being takes, tends to take, can take.. potentials (dormant or active), a flavor of being, a title, an identifier, an identity (but not always).

It’s interesting that there is so much energy put into naming, the act of giving a Name, of naming something… that energy goes somewhere.. into the named, into the subject, who now embodies something, some force, some essence, some part of the energy of that naming, of the Name.

I like the idea of considering that name is a verb and a noun. I Name myself the Name, Leila.
And thus, contain some essence of that which is Leila-ish.

When I looked up “name” at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Name
I was fascinated with the synonyms, and the thesaurus references. Words I saw there, that struck me as interesting, include: Appellation, Moniker, Title, Designation, Sign, Character, Distinction , Reputation (like, the name you’ve made for yourself…)
Name as verbal or symbolic representation really stood out to me. I like the symbolic aspect. For years I’ve researched the meaning, origin, history, and occurrence of my birth name, Leila. It’s meant a tremendous amount to me to have a relationship with my name, to feel my acceptance and recognition of it is intentional and authentic, true to me, and who I feel I am.

You see, I’m 100 % certain that I would be very different if I were not given the name and lived with the name and identified with the name, Leila.

It was interesting to play with what I found in the etymology and history of names.
I found Shakti Gawain’s explanation of her name in her book, Living in the Light. She talks about how it was a process, an adventure, and that over the years she started being called Shakti, and it stuck, until one day she realized she identified herself and thought of herself as Shakti, and had her name legally changed.

Whatever naming is and names are, what our names mean and the energy they carry definitely affects us.
One thing is for sure: there is a distinct power in naming, claiming, and recognizing a Name.


Do you know what your name means? What is your relationship to your name? How do you claim it, be it, identify with it? Have you changed your name? If you were to change your name, what would it be?

Can you experience yourself beneath your name?
Absolutely! That’s just it! I do not think that I am only my name, Leila. I am not just that. It, Leilaness, is part of me. But there is more me, all of me, that is not just Leila.
I live day to day with the awareness of the being here, this being here that experiences this here like this right now that is not just Leila but is also Leila.

Usually, for me, Leila is a subject that is experiencing things. The Leila part of me is the character in the adventure, the protangonist in my life story, the heroine on her journey.

There is definitely a God here, a Divine presence, a spirit and conglomeration of benevolent, compassionate, and wise beingness in me, that I do not attribute to the unique flavor of Leila. But, as Leila, I can describe the experience, communicate about it, share with you about it, express it, and cherish it.

And there is nothing inauthentic about being Leila and noticing the notLeila. In the end, I really feel it’s all one. All one. And I just look at reality through this peephole most the time.

I feel this is authentically delivered in the spirit of musing on a subject I’ve always been fascinated by: Names!
By the Named, Leila and all the unnamed beingness herein!