siouxsiepoetuncensored: the unnamed feeling

ah yes, i remember now what i wanted to write about today, but first let me say this. i'm all up in arms about poets and some discouraging words a friend got. who benefits from discouraging people to write poetry? no one. my angle on it is, write. write the worst poems you can, so the best can come too. i've been critiqued by a great many souls. some of them harsh. some of them i had to suck it up and fight for my right to party (ha!, no, that song just popped in my head), i had to fight for my poetry. to create crappy poetry if i needed to, so i could get to where i'm at today. i'm not there by any means. i'm not famous, i'm not published. i'm not a great many things. but i am a poet. no one can take that from me now. when i first adopted the name, i was a little sheepish. uncertain. but now, i look back and wonder what was i thinking? i am a poet. i always have been. i just didn't know it. if during those times of tenativeness, uncertainty, someone (like i have been) would have tried to rend the name from me, i would have yielded it (perhaps. but i do like a good fight and being the scrapper that i am, might have fired my jets more to keep the name. i am cliche queen today, eh folks?). all i'm trying to say is. be who you are. don't let anyone tell you who you are. or give them the power to change who you are becoming. be who God created you to be. you cannot get to the good poetry by bypassing the bad. you cannot get to the poet you will be tomorrow if you give up the name today. don't give it up. i try to provide some critique for those who want it these days (and some do, bless their souls), but mostly, i just want to be around poets. young, old, inbetween poets. and find, this attitude has helped me touch the lives, and have my life touched, by a great many poets. most of the people i deal with on a regular basis either write or have a great affinity for poetry (some are dabblers, but they don't realize they are on their way to a great love).

that is all on that. i will have more next wednesday at ma.

i walked by this guy at the store. sports getup. he looked tan like he's real active. and he reeked of pheremones. like he was going to a rut or something. the dude could have battled a musk ox and won by scent alone. whew.

i walked by again and took a deep whiff of that musky scent he was broadcasting. i swore if he walked by me again i'd ask him about it. (sometimes i am sure i do these things just to write about them) but he did not go by. shucks.

i'm all fixated on other things now so i can't write today. but i've got some righteous indignation going on, i want to fight for my people when i can. and, well, i get a little territorial, too.

let me try to tie in what i was going to write about here, it is a passage from a book called inner work by robert a johnson, the man speaks my language, i tell you (i will put in more for context than i normally would, as i'm all toasty mad right now):

[Let me explain] something of the feeling function and the difference between emotion and feelings. It took me a long time to come to the point where I associated this detail...because I had never thought of myself as a feeling kind of person. I thought "feeling types" were the highly emotional ones. I thought that, since I'm not given to displays of emotion and can't stand much sentimentality, I was not a feeling type, that I was dominated by thinking or intuition.

It was this association to the heart [he is interpreting a dream in this passage] that made me look more closely and see that Jung did not mean mere "emotional" when he referred to a feeling type or a feeling function. This symbol forced me to look more closely at myself. I began to realize that the aspect of life that really motivates me, around which I involuntarily revolve my life, is the feeling side: the people who draw my love and whose magnificent quality I sense, and the values that capture my devotion and loyalty. It is these feeling relationships, of valuing and sensing the value in people, that energize my life and give it its center. That which moves me and inspires me most deeply in all of life is the beauty, nobility, and inner quality that I see in human beings who come in contact with me.

Until I had this dream, I had always tried to repress this stream of energy in me, downplay it and keep it under wraps. In the family and the culture in which I grew up, feeling was not openly displayed. It was considered embarrassing, untrustworthy, impractical. If you were moved too deeply by a symphony, you would be considered a little strange. If you showed too much affection, it made others uncomfortable. Anyone who made decisions from the heart, rather than from cool practicality, was considered suspect as undependable. To feel, to love intensely, to be intoxicated with the beauty of a person, something in nature, or a value--all this would be inappropriate and out of place in respectable society.

now you can see why i love this man so much! though this book deals more directly with what many christians would deem "new agey" stuff. i still think it a fabulous read. this passage alone is one of those passages where the reading reads me. i love to find a writer, a book that says, this is who you are, you know how i know? because this is who i am. see yourself because i see myself so clearly.

that is what i endeavor to do in all my work. whether i accomplish what i set out to do is not for me to decide. the fact is, it can be done.

i'm still all heated and fumy about my friend, an excellent poet, probably better than me (though that person would not put himself above anyone), getting knocked around. this is why we need community. even cyber community. we need each other. i do hope and pray more poets come out of the woodwork and join us.

be well my friends. thank you for reading me again today. even if you say nothing, i know you are there. peace.

(ps, for those who always want to understand my titles, some are not ever going to be understood. but this is a metallica song off the current album, st. anger. i was sitting in the library yesterday with my mp3 player going, i'm drumming along with lars, checking email. rocking out. and the guy across the way kept eyeballing me. i have those officer and a gentlemen moments when i wish i could say things like that to people.

but i forgot to tell you of this one muslim type, i keep taking chances with them. and i don't mean to be all racist, but they don't seem to like me. i'm too forward i guess. anyway, i walk into the library and this guy has struck a pose on the seat next to the computer i was going to use. he had his arm up in the air behind his head. and was splayed out. i write like that too sometimes. but when i walked up he reeled it in.

i told him,