A D Journal 2012

    Friday the thirteenth. Didn’t we just have one of these? Maybe we bring about our own back luck, like I did last week when I emailed her to ask if my coming to the main office to work regularly would upset her. This was not a completely honest gesture, but one designed to put a wedge between her and her chief supporter in the main office, a man who I still believe lied to me when it came to his relationship with her. This was also a total betrayal of trust between me and him since I was well aware he wanted to keep our conversations about her between us. But I also wanted the truth out there, to have us all aware of each other in this game of secrets, and perhaps shed some light on the trickling up she’s been doing, not just with our former temporary boss but with the owner on the third floor from whom she expects to get a raise. In some ways all of this is predictable, a pattern of behavior that started long before she set foot in our office and will likely co...

   Her post today isn’t really a poem, but something of a light-hearted observation about how difficult it is to live “in the moment.” Despite her previous references to this state of perpetual “now,” in truth, she clearly has the same issue most do when confronting the concept. How exactly do you maintain that moment without falling off the edge into the past or future, and how exhausting an effort it is, “Thinking about thinking,” when a moment should be allowed to flow effortlessly from one moment to another. Too much focus ruins the whole concept of “letting go<’ and you wind up dissecting the moment rather than experiencing it. This idea that we must live in the moment and not worry about the past or speculate about the future is easier said than done. How do you live up this idea when the mind seems to have a will of its own and goes off where it wants? It becomes a big a struggle to corral random thoughts than to deal with the hamster wheel thinking in th...

    It would be easy to read into this poem what may not really be there, partly because of the unusual point of view she uses as opposed to other poems she has posted previously. Unlike many of her other poems that seek to do away with overt characterization by eliminating pronouns or by converting them into a form that seems devoid of a persona, here, she doesn’t just the opposite, using a plural pronoun that on a superficial level might suggest two separate characters rather than two aspects to a single persona instead. Instead of the “inner” and “outer” voices which some of her earlier poems have suggested, we get side by side personas, one apparently on the edge of panic, while the other exerting its influence for calm. There is a temptation to assign this second, calming voice to another person, some kind and generous lover who offers her aid when she is most upset. But the poem itself does not support this idea, suggesting rather a second persona is a kind of ...

    Working at the annex office, I’ve become more and more isolated, excluded from a lot of the information otherwise available at the main office, but in some cases deliberately withheld from me by people hording these nuggets to better position themselves. Even before Tom’s alarming speculation about what is going on at the main office, I had to rely on my own network of spies to ferret out and supply me with information necessary for my own survival. While Tom had a lot more to say about goings on in the main office, I have to reserve judgement until I can reach out to some of the principles, including the senator, the congressman and some of the mayors of north county to see just how valid these are. But it is clear I know less and less about the goings on in the main office that I ought to. Even with my network of spies. This partly has to do with my need to be physically present more than just one day a week, so I can catch the daily chatter for myself. The s...

   There are two over arching schools of literary criticism that incorporate either internal or external material when evaluating a work of art. Those who follow the external school, almost anything goes, meaning that a work can be evaluated by factors beyond the boundaries of the work itself to include the artist’s biographical data, looking for aspects of that artist’s life that may have influenced the creative process. Purists, however, believe an evaluation must include only those elements contained within the framework of the art itself. If something isn’t in poem, for instance, it shouldn’t be used, unless there is some allusion inside the work from which an inference can be made to something beyond. Most criticism is hardly one or the other and generally even the so-called purists sometimes draw on biographical and other materials if they can build a strong enough case for them. In dealing with her poems to this point, I’ve bended to use a purist approach, kee...

    I knew exactly what I was going when I sent her the email last Friday morning, not so much declaring open war with her, but with the man she had taken on as mentor and whom I felt betrayed by after I had poured out my heart and soul about her to him. I still feel he lied to me about his involvement with her after I had completely confessed everything to him about everything that had gone on between me and her. I guess I expected camaraderie rather than deception, a kind of mutual understanding, when all he seemed to do was run for cover. I still don’t know for sure. But his circumstances and mine were so similar and his reaction so overwhelming secretive, the whole thing felt wrong, and it nagged at me ever since our meeting in the park. Maybe his interest is only about helping for shape a young talent as he claims. But he was not the same person he had been during his first tour as our temporary boss as he was the most recent tour, and this may or may not been...

    I met Tom today during my stroll through Liberty State Park. He’s an operative for the county (some say) political machine, and when he saw me, he pulled me aside, telling me we had to talk. He said he’d heard rumors about the company I worked for and wanted to know if they were true. We get this a lot, partly because we are the only regular media in a lot of small towns, especially up county which largely falls in a waste land between the local daily and the big cheese daily in Bergen County. Tom said rumors claimed we’ve been taken over by a political cabala from one of the northern County towns. I told him the male owner of our newspaper was too inept to get taken over by a political organization. “My boss has the political instincts of a pet rock,” I told Tom. While our company frequently took sides in elections, it almost always depended on which side had the bigger bank roll. For the most part, the male owner almost always picked the losing side. He...