Who do I still think I am??

This one's about the nerve of them.

30DBC PROMPT: "Write about the time you were the most nervous you've ever been."

Greetings from snowless but absolutely freezing Cortland, NY, where the temperature topped off at three whole degrees. Since everyone seems to have something to say about the weather today, I'm gonna act like I've seen snow before and talk about something else.

The problem is, even though I saw this prompt last night before I went to sleep and again when I woke up eight hours or so ago, I still feel like it's putting me on the spot. That's not to say I've never been nervous about anything before- I do suffer from live with anxiety and panic attacks- but I haven't been able to pull out a single memory (well, ok, one...but I wrote about it a long time ago and I really don't feel like rehashing that weekend over again anymore than I already have) that's rendered me anything more than with your garden variety "bottom of the last inning with two outs, runner on third, and you're at bat" sweat pouring and frazzled nerves. I guess now that I've started typing, I better come up with something. I can already feel my chest tightening under the pressure I'm placing upon myself. Ugh...ok, here goes.

Maybe I should check my email again. Or my other email. Or Facebook. Maybe take a walk. No...I should do this. Really.

I guess I could talk about that time I played floor hockey with a team I'd never played with before, and I was assigned to shadow one of the best scorers in the league. It was for the league championship, and the only game my new team had lost all year was to the team we were playing, which was undefeated. But I don't remember much about it, other than the long assist I had that blew the game open, and we wound up routing our way toward championship t-shirts, pizza and beer. I played my style of game and the guy I was covering hardly had but a couple of weak shots on net. I may have had another assist or two (though I wasn't really a points guy throughout my playing days), but like I said, I don't remember much else from that game...it had to be 15 years ago. I couldn't have been that nervous though; instinct eventually kicks in.

Kinda like with this entry so far. I know I hadn't played hockey in a year or so at the time, and even back then I was usually the goalie, where you don't have to worry as much about whether or not you're gonna mesh with your team as you have to about stopping pucks. I'd played defense years before that on some crappy teams, but I could still hold my own, or at least thought I did, but not having been out there in a few years should've been at least a little intimidating, especially with guys I barely knew. To correlate, I haven't felt this all-in during a "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  in a long time, but once I get settled in and start working out ideas in my head, typing happens and before I know it there's an entry. It sounds corny I guess, but it's true. I think everyone has things that deep down inside scare the over-lovin' outta them until they're actually in the middle of doing it, and then it feels like you never stopped in the first place. For me nowadays, writing aside, it's a lot of little things...and if I look back 10, 15, or even 20 years ago, I can see where I started to feel anxious about certain places and situations that are so common for everyone else, but I didn't know what it was or how to deal with things; I only knew how to go around (if that makes sense). It does to me.

And now I don't feel as weird or knotted up about today's prompt. If only the rest of life were that easy.

BCF PROMPT: "Tell us what kind of poetry appeals to you? Why? Which poet is your favorite? If you do not enjoy reading poetry why?"

This is a much easier prompt. When I was younger and the English teacher in school would say something like "Today we're gonna study poetry!" and everyone groaned, I was secretly excited. I actually enjoyed it. I don't think I've retained a damn bit of it, but hey, that's what happens when you get knocked in the head too many times immerse yourself in so much of it.

I like weird, dark, emotional, and abstract stuff. Poems that make you think. Poems that read one way and can be interpreted in many other ways...you know what the words are and what they mean, but they represent something else entirely in the big picture. I'm not a fan of styles or structure...I think they're too confining, especially when you want to do more with less or feel like you want to see through to what it means. I know, again, it's corny and cosmic and "out there, man", but it's true. And maybe it's the skeptic in me trying to always see something that isn't necessarily available to the naked eye (be it that way in anything), but that's how I've always approached poetry.

As you can see in my newly-created (after yesterday's prompt regarding our biographies)...ummmm...biography (here, in case you don't want to stray too far: http://www.writing.com/main/profile/biography/fivesixer), the two poets I really appreciate are Richard Brautigan and Saul Williams.

Brautigan's Trout Fishing In America/The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster/In Watermelon Sugar was my introduction to him, and I've read and reread many of his other works. In Watermelon Sugar, especially, while not necessarily poetry, is very poetic in the way it details and mirrors almost a parallel existence of the time it was written in (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2xxGKnZvvk). There's an aching beauty to it. He was a master at what he did, but I don't think he ever really fit in with his contemporaries exactly, which I believe led to later underappreciation and his untimely death. {link:http://www.amazon.com/Richard-Brautigans-Springhill-Disaster-Watermelon/dp/0395500761/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1389132287&sr=8-2&keywords=richard+brautigan+in+watermelon+sugar}

Williams' work, on the other hand, feels like a blindsiding, gut-punching whirlwind of force and aggression, and that's just regarding how I feel about the opening of pages of Said The Shotgun To The Head, which to me is more a series of shorter poems unfurling into a giant love story for the universe. Taken from the passage on its cover:

The greatest Americans
Have not been born yet
They are waiting quietly
For their past to die
please give blood
Here is the account of a man so ravished by a kiss that it distorts his highest and lowest frequencies of understanding into an
Incongruent mean of babble and brilliance...

His work in 2003 felt so next-generation. It felt like it was meant to be published online, like it was what WDC authors were supposed to be doing with WritingML once they got off their computers and started publishing exactly what they meant. And it's amazing to hold and feel and let it take you away into its world so you can lose yourself in its power and mystique. {link:http://www.amazon.com/Said-Shotgun-Head-Saul-Williams/dp/0743470796/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389132753&sr=8-1&keywords=saul+williams+said+the+shotgun+to+the+head}

MUSICAL BREAK!!

Saul Williams has also put out some music, including a U2 cover of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and several tracks produced by Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor.

THE DAILY BOX SCORE:

3: I wasn't kidding...last I checked it was three degrees outside. It's supposed to warm up by the end of the week, but damn near everything today is preceded by a warning or a caution or a closing. Except stores here...but they closed all the major malls in Buffalo and cancelled Bingo, which is when you know it's bad out.

Hah! Come on, you know I can't talk about poetry without linking this song for the 189th time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_RSJ6xuHbE.

In my opinion, certain songs can be considered pieces of poetry. Rap music, when done properly and with intelligence, can be sincere, honest and striking. And who better than one of Canada's foremost celebrities, known globally for hosting one of the most enduring trivia franchises all of television has ever seen, to narrate some of Hip-Hop's greatest classic tales, while in the middle of his own program?? Mind=blown. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WmMqi5PTt0.

The Carolina Hurricanes' game at the Buffalo Sabres tonight has been postponed due to all the inclement weather downtown (have you heard about it? ). Yes, the Hurricanes were taken out by a blizzard. Don't tell me that's not an anchorperson's dream news headline (and it is, because I stole it from one I saw on Facebook earlier today).

Ok, I've gotta get on with my day. I've wasted enough of it procrastinating and putting off one thing in favor of putting off another thing in favor of putting off something else, so I should start trying to tie up these loose ends before they become knotted. Peace, don't tell me what the poets are doin', and GOODNIGHT NOW!!