Continued from Blog 490, here is a PDF of the above poem,http://sites.google.com/site/stokastika2/itisimportantotakeamomentandconsiderPOEM1.pdf , written in a state of panic attack (crying, bawling, screaming, yelling) alone in my room.... It's a poem of "powerful words" but the "not now" censorship syndrome prevailed in the New York Publishing House climate back in 2005....
Sorry to repeat from Blog 490, but here's the blurb. The second most memorable response was a very contentious phone call with the editor from the UC Press. It was funny... I was exploring the website of the University of California Press and was noticing how they had this "non-discrimination statement," stating that the UC Press does not discriminate based on race, ethnic background, class, job position, AGE, or any other factor that could possibly construct the notion of discrimination. And yet, the phone call with the editor showed CLEAR DISCRIMINATION BASED ON AGE ("ageism" as opposed to "racism" or "speciesism" in District 9). He told me flat out (paraphrased, I have exact wording in another computer), "How could any 24-year old have something to say about the world?" which was extremely derogatory to me at the time. I left the phone call feeling like I was "no good" and didn't have anything valid to say because I was "too young." Following this phone call, I went through another panic attack alone, and I ended up writing a poem "It is important to take a moment and consider..." which I will place in the next blog, because I don't want to place too much information here....
I retyped up the poem, but I hardly changed a thing (except for some indentations). I find the poem to be a little overly melodramatic given my present state of mind.... The poem does crystallize my dire mental state back in that time.... Look at me, being a psychologist to my former self.... I probably won't submit this poem anywhere in particular unless it's a literary journal that emphasizes politics....
Blogging this today, it's funny think to in the American Climate of Mental Warfare, or American War of Ideas, I somehow have survived this first encounter with the gatekeepers of mass-produced storytelling.... I am an Intellectual Survivor... I live to tell the story... in a humble little blog.... I'm sure I am not going through post-traumatic-stress-disorder... or MAYBE I AM... that's why I'm compelled to write these blogs... resolving ancient stress, ancient knots... resolving my past traumatic encounters.... Writing is indeed psychological therapy....
It's funny that my life (and MANY other writer's lives) has become "dramatic" simply due to the traumas of interacting with publishers/literary agents. I had a close friend write a novella about how a suite of characters were so close to having "their big break" in getting their story out in Hollywood to be produced as a film, but the entry ended up as the runner-up. I really don't want to see my own stories becoming REFLEXIVE (authors writing stories about writing and publishing rather than writing stories about other worldly experiences) such as this, unless I take my experiences and transpose them to a science fiction story about censorship and the mechanisms of mental digestibility. How some alien society evolved (or denigrated, dis-evolved) from a state of imaginative dreamers to pacified consumers. Their minds started to resemble degenerate 2-year-olds.... Oh, I can easily, easily write a story about this topic....
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