Another blog on the fire

Anyone following along will see that I've had a pretty weird week with some negative moments. I'm going to put another one (notice I don't say, the last one--seems like there have been 10 or so "episodes" this week)--this one is controversial, so it could just be that I'm crazy. I'm also going to just lay it out there and some of you guys (particularly one person) will know the players involved, but I'm not going to hold back.

So I sent a gift to a person that I don't know very well, which made me quite nervous. One of the items was a book of Walt Whitman's poems that reminded me of this person--I am not a huge Whitman fan but I could have qualified for a minor in Literature except my University didn't award minors, and one of the obscure classes that I took focused on Whitman's poetry for about a month. Well, this person reminded me of 2 of Whitman's poems: Song of Myself (about individualism), and O Captain My Captain (Which is about Abraham Lincoln's assasination, but uses metaphor about Lincoln as the leader of the country, a respected individual, etc. But this person is actually a Captain, so I thought that was cool--Also, I put a joke in there about ignoring the line in the poem "Fallen cold and dead".) Anyway, the poem has a fantastic cadence to it and is fun to read--I would type it out here but the book is downstairs right now...

Side note: Mike's Drumbeats is actually a play on perhaps 3 things: 1) I kinda do my thing differently (aka different drummer) 2) I actually played drums in school and 3) "Drum Taps" was Whitman's book of poetry about the Civil War (I think his first book), and some of my things are supposed to resemble poetic language.

So, in this class, I was supposed to analyze Song of Myself, which I quoted in my letter...blah, blah, blah...so it is somwhat stuck in my brain.

When the person gets the gift, they call me and say "You must be a fan of Dead Poet's Society"--it was really (not my imagination) worded like they were "busting" me. Huh? Then I realized that both of these poems were referenced in the movie (good thing I didn't include the dagger scene from Shakespeare)(or sign it Carpe Diem!--see, I do remember the movie)--I haven't seen that movie in....a long time...but I did like it, in a B-movie kind of way. I love Robin Williams, who has the same birthday as me, and who has done both his share and my (untouched) share of cocaine but is funny as hell.

So, I kind of went through some trouble to come up with something personal that could possibly be meaningful, and this person seemed to interpret it as me being pretentious and snobby and trying to act like I know something about poetry (I confess, right here and right now, that I know precious little and have never read a single Edgar Allen Poe poem and I didn't think Thoroeau was very good, etc.--I was, however, a charter member of my elementary school's library/poetry club by memorizing Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", which I cling desperately to as my one tie to culture--that and my collector's item pink flamingo collection in the front yard).

Another interpretation: This person is self-absorbed and acted that way for some reason that has nothing to do with me and didn't consider that they were coming across as ugly...hmmm I think I'll take that one.

Anyway, I was really trying to be nice, but now I feel rotten and defensive about it and look at myself and think "what a pretentious bastard--why would you send a book of poetry to someone that you don't know? Maybe you WERE trying to make someone think you are 'literary wizard' when you are a 'science lizard'"--okay, just put that in because it rhymes and have no idea what that means.

Here's another one: Maybe next time a Whitman's Sampler instead of a sample of Whitman!

And another: I guess my gift horse just got a root canal!

Just FYI everyone-I won't be turning my blog into "true confessions" any time soon, but I wanted ya'll to know what was going on with me this week.

See ya!