A Clichéd Life

Big Frank does not want to create the impression that he is not as trapped by clichés as others. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right? He does avoid them like the plague, but it is easier said than done. So let's start the conversation. This narrative may be clichéd; but hey - Big Frank is a work in progress.

His life is nothing to boast about. You know what I mean. Like, you could say that the facts speak for themselves. Big Frank now lives with his daughter – a joy and a delight. When all is said and done she could be said to be the apple of his eye, but let's not confuse apples with oranges. Is that a red herring? Be that as it may we are happy as two peas in a pod. It should come as no surprise that she’s heading off to college. If the truth be told, the time is ripe. However, there is another side to the coin, but who wants to dwell in the past. In any case, tomorrow is another day. What will be, will be: life is a journey. But Big Frank might just be in denial. Maybe he just doesn't get it. In any case, it is what it is, . . . or else not.

Big Frank could hardly believe his eyes when he took the plunge and got a house with a yard last year. There is no place like home. Don’t get Big Frank wrong, living there is probably the right thing to do. So far so good; but if truth be told it is easier said than done. Keeping up a yard is not all it is cracked up to be. There is no question in his mind that the time was ripe, but God only knows what will come of it. Sure there are second thoughts, but who wants to make a mountain out of a molehill. To hammer home the point: the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, literally and figuratively (don't go there). Nonetheless, by fits and starts the lawn is coming in, but what will come of it: that’s the $64,000 question? Big Frank sometimes wonders if he bit off more than he can chew. I mean he doesn't want to be OC about this (who died and left him in charge?); still he’s keeping his fingers crossed and has a back-up plan - as if!. Where there’s a will there’s a way: just hunker down and do it, do it do it. By the same token Rome wasn’t built in a day. Still getting down to brass tacks, Big Frank is looking to get closure on this soon so he can move on.

All work and no play makes Big Frank a dull boy, and so he does go cycling from time to time. It’s one way to keep body and soul together. Granted sometimes the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Just do it - is the name of the game; that's a no-brainer for sure. Big Frank is of the opinion that, day in and day out, exercising is medicine for the soul (or is it self-medicating?). Still talk is cheap and the proof is in the pudding, which is why you often find Big Frank is the saddle, as it were.

What part of cliche do you not understand? Hel–LO: it’s not rocket science. Whatever . . .

Cliché Busting

Clichés are empty-thought fillers whose contents have nothing to do with the user’s content (head or heart). They are used mostly out of habit but grow to the point where they can dehumanize the user and the person receiving the clichéd messages. Occasionally someone comes along and prods our consciousness into becoming aware of our reliance on these clichés. In the visual arts we have seen how Magritte shook the viewer out of his/her complacency through shocking images like The Lovers II. In that case the image of lovers embracing blind to each other took the cliché (love is blind), and brought it back to life in a fresh way. The typical reading of “love is blind” is of the delusional view of the other that being in love engenders. Magritte turns the cliché back on the viewer showing the horror of embracing someone while deliberately blinding yourself. He breathes life back into the cliché – declichéing the cliché.

Another approach comes through an admirer of René Magritte: Jasper Johns. What Johns does is to show you something that your cliché ridden mind is used to looking at in its clipthought-like way and show how it is not what you thought it was. Look at John’ Target with Four Faces (1955). The word “target” in typical cliché manner conceals the other possible readings of the image. Once you have heard (read) the word “target” then the image corresponds to the preconceived thought – you see a target. However – could this not be four concentric circles or four Os, or four zeros. Or could you be looking up to a red ceiling with a hole in it looking out into the blue sky and in that sky are floating yellow circles? Or could it be a yellow sky with blue floating circles? Or could it be a series of globes one in front of another? Or . . . perhaps it’s an eye staring at you. There are lots more possibilities – the point is that it is YOUR view, one you have thought about and have come to on your own that determines what you see. So here we have meanings sliding into meanings confounding thought. As Johns himself said about his paintings: “And in looking at such an object you may have a sense that there’s something at work that you don’t see. Many things are like that, aren’t they? That’s one of the ways that science and art develop. One feels that there is something that isn’t evident and one tries to find what it is.” This is cliché busting business. His creations come from reflection and encourage thought: “one tries to find what it is.” This is the exact opposite of the cliché which is born of laziness and bad habits and encourages in its response the same. In response to a clichéd thought or image one turns away and does not try to find what is there – because there is no there there.

The Thought-terminating Cliché

Clichés are the simplistic, thought-negating, tired, and generally vague notions, ideas, images, and expressions that people use in place of true thought. Dictionaries typically define clichés as trite phrases or expressions, for example:

“You only get out of life what you put into it.”
“There you go!”
"Time takes time."

What do these clichés really mean? When they are put in equivolent words their inanity emerges. For example:

• "I'm a work in progress." = "I'm still not dead."
• "Life is a journey." = "In my life I will go places and do things."
• "It is what it is." = "It exists."
• "It will be what it will be." = In time something will change, or else it won't."

In other words these clichés are empty of thought beyond the transparently obvious truth they express. So why are they used so often. Perhaps it is becuase when real thought is desired to truly express the distinct meaning appropriate to a unique situation (a predicament that calls upon some reflection and search for appropriate expression – appropriate to thinker and his/her context) these clichés spring to mind. They come to relieve you of the difficulty of thinking for yourself: they'll think for you. The more you use them the harder they are to get rid of. Keep in mind that clichés also include the ideas that they express! This is the true danger of using them. By doing so you relinquish your own awareness, feeling, and ideas and surrender yourself to the vagueness of the cliché. Thinking then becomes thought via "clipthoughts".

Robert Jay Lifton calls this surrender to the cliché “thought-terminating cliché”. When such a cliché is used it does not permit analysis, or discussion. The conversation is over. It is characteristic of totalitarian regimes and totalitarian approaches to relationships. When someone trots out one of the following during the analysis of a complex human problem you know the conversation has ended. These clichés are by nature highly reductive, definitive-sounding, easily memorized, and easily expressed. They are also totally empty in that there is no relationship between the words, their meanings, and the topic or person at hand. Here are some we all have bumped into:

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion.”
“We will have to agree to disagree.”
“Such is life.”
“We are just different.”

Here Big Frank is making reference to the verbal clues (clichés) to the vacuousness of the thought. There are also visual clues, clipart, for example. Perhaps the key notion here is one of awareness of self and the world coupled with an ability to express one's individual way of seeing things. It requires effort. Here’s William Stafford’s view on discovering his own way of looking at things, which he characterizes in almost romantic terms as finding his MUSE.

When I Met My Muse
By William Stafford

I glanced at her and took my glasses
Off—they were still singing. They buzzed
Like a locust on the coffee table and then
Ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the
Sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and
Knew that nails up there took a new grip
On whatever they touched. "I am your own
Way of looking at things," she said. "When
You allow me to live with you, every
Glance at the world around you will be
A sort of salvation." And I took her hand.

Magritte's "The Lovers II"

Cliches as illustrated by paintings. Here is Magritte’s famous painting “The Lovers II”. It is an visual cliché. How shall we interpret it? Let Big Frank count the ways.

-

Given that it is a cliché, perhaps a list of clichés would be a good place to start.
1. Love is blind.
2. Misery loves company.
3. Love at first sight
4. Love knows no color.

-

But then again song lyrics capture these clichés very well also.
1. “It’s love’s illusion I recall. I really don’t know love at all.”: Joni Mitchell – “Both Sides Now”
2. “You’re my love cliché. I like it that way.” : Bran Van 3000 – “Love Cliché”

3. "Maybe I'm amazed at the way I love you." Paul McCartney - "Maybe I'm Amazed"

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And the actual song titles give the most complete list of clichés available.
1. “Be My Escape” Reliant K.
2. “Crazy” Patsy Cline
3. “Dangerous To Know” Hillary Duff
4. “Do You Want To Know a Secret” The Beatles
5. “Dreaming of You” Selena
6. “Hips Don’t Lie” Shakira
7. “Hope Has a Place” Enya
8. “I Want a Love I Can See” Jennifer Love Hewitt
9. “I Only Have Eyes For You” Frank Sinatra
10. “Imagine” John Lennon
11. “Still Crazy After All These Years” Paul Simon
12. “Underneath Your Clothes” Shakira
13. “What is Love” Haddaway
14. “We Belong Together” Mariah Carey
15. “World of Our Own” Westlife

Holding Your Ground

Big Frank presents a poem based on an actual conversation. Afterwards the exchange took on layers upon layers and the dilemma of the real replaced by the fake in order to change reality that is laughed off at the time, but effective nonetheless. The neatness of the outcome is a puzzle that leaves you scratching your head.

Holding Your Ground
By Big Frank Dickinson

Side by side, yard by yard – neighbors but in name;
A year or more the fence between – not one thing more.
And on the ground weeds grew among the rocks,
Til over the fence unwanted weeds were tossed.

“Are those rocks real?”, she asks
abruptly in answer to his question:
“You aren’t throwing those weeds in my yard, are you?”
He tells her that they are; (who has fake rocks?)

Then points to the piles of boulders that lie
Strewn all about, and talks about the quantity
And the function they serve upon the slopes.
“They keep things in place – such as they are.”

Just their heads reach over the fence
Between them – neighbor to neighbor
Talking as never before and all around them lie
Rocks holding the ground down.

He turns trampling the weeds to go inside
and puzzles how a rock could be doubted?
And in her mind the satisfaction of having
Replaced his question with her own.

Nostalgia

Nostalgia

(for carolyn)

By Big Frank Dickinson

Looking back - going back;
Being back with a different view.
Clearer after all this time;
See then what you feel now.

Early morning coffee calm;
Calm coffee - pictured now.
Now pictured, that still heart.

Heart still, still that heart.

Elephants on Parade?

William Stafford writes such wise poems. His insights in this poem ring a bell that we would all do well to listen to. Patterns can be set up by us that can allow us to reach our stars, or we can fall into the imposed patterns of others. Be awake - be aware - and clearly signal who you are.

A Ritual To Read To Each Other

by William Stafford

If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider—

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give—yes or no,

or maybe—should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

The Solace of the River

Big Frank greatly admires the writing of William Stafford. Below is a particularly good poem of his. Stafford bites off a very serious chunk in this poem. This is a truly big pictures poem that places us human beings in much larger context than the simple narrative with which we so often accompany our lives - whether its our narrative or one of someone else. As Stafford wrote about this poem: "There is a steadyness and somehow a solace in knowing that what is around us so greatly surpasses our human concerns." It carries a common theme of Stafford's: accepting what comes.

Ask Me

Some time when the river is ice ask me

mistakes I have made. Ask me whether

what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into

my thought, and some have tried to help

or to hurt: ask me what difference

their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.

You and I can turn and look

at the silent river and wait. We know

the current is there, hidden; and there

are comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say.

Hollywood Diatribe

Big Frank went to the movies this evening. He had scanned the reviews in the local Spokane paper - The Inlander - to see what was recommended. Now Big Frank is aware that most movies out there are total crap, but there ought to be at least one movie that is worth watching on a Friday night. So one of the paper's "diamond picks" is Wanted. This is what the review said, "Wow! This is a thrill ride of a movie that is as smart and as surprising as it is visually stylish and viscerally electrifying." Sounds pretty good, not? Well, actually very not! This movie is a complete load of crap! Typical Hollywood swill: a few name actors including Angela Jolie and Morgan Freeman (talk about selling out), lots of chase scenes, typical plot turns, and lots and lots and lots of killing - including whole train-loads of innocent people of which not one word is said. The point of the whole thing: there is no point except to get people into the movie and get their money. Why? Big Frank walked in the middle.

Here is what Czesław Miłosz had to say about Hollywood in "Roadside-Dog":

Hollywood

Let us imagine a poet gets in his hands the Hollywood crowd, those financiers, directors, actors and acresses. And that he is fully aware of the crime perpetrated every day on millions of human beings by money, which act not in the name of any ideology but exclusively for the purpose of multiplying itself. What penalty would be adequate? He hesitates between slitting their bellies and disemboweling them; locking them together behind barbed wire in the hope that they would start to eat each other, beginning with the fattest potentates; grilling them on a small fire; throwing them, bound, onto an anthill. However, as he interrogates them and sees them humble, trembling, obsequious, fawning, not at all remembering their own arrogance, he is discouraged. Their guilt is as elusive as that of the party bureaucrats in an authoritarian state. The closes thing to justice might be to kill the whole lot. He shrugs, and sets them free.

Two From Czesław Miłosz

Big Frank presents two prose poems from Czesław Miłosz, the great Polish/American poet. These come from his unusual book entitled “Road-side Dog". Big Frank is not sure that any introduction is necessary. The connection between the two prose poems is evident and carries through Miłosz’s poetry: the illusion of preconceptions that clouds our world and the difficulty of piercing it.



A Warning
Little animals from cartoons, talking rabbits, doggies, squirrels, as well as ladybugs, bees, grasshoppers. They have as much in common with real animals as our notions of the world have with the real world. Think of this, and tremble.


Falling In Love
Tomber amoureux. To fall in love. Does it occur suddenly or gradually? If gradually, when is the moment “already”? I would fall in love with a monkey made of rags. With a plywood squirrel. With a botanical atlas. With an oriole. With a ferret. With a marten in a picture. With the forest one sees to the right when riding in a cart to Jaszuny. With a poem by a little-known poet. With human beings whose names still move me. And always the object of love was enveloped in erotic fantasy or was submitted, as in Stendhal, to a “cristallisation,” so it is frightful to think of that object as it was, naked among the naked things, and of the fairy tales about it one invents. Yes, I was often in love with something or someone. Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love. That is something different.

100 and counting

Big Frank has been recently made aware that this post is his 100th blogging message. So that number seemed to invite a quantitative comment. What Big Frank was thinking was that this number carried some significance and that called for something special. Then the thought came to him that this was just another number carrying no more signification than 49 or 82, or 24. Well, theoretically it’s just another number, but in fact it’s not just any old number. We invest some numbers with more significance than others: the 5s, the quarter markers (25, 50, 75), and the centuries (100, 200, 300), and the all of those numbers multiplied by 10, 100, 1000, etc. Those are the anniversaries that we mark in our birthdays: personal, institutional, national, etc. Those are happy numbers. We also have happy numbers that correspond to our desired weight, bank account balance, interest rate, wait times, waist line, cholesterol, blood pressure, restaurant bill, miles per gallon, temperature, etc. etc. And these last categories also have disappointing numbers that we count away from. However, the numbers that Big Frank thinks most obsesses are those connected with duration. In only 2, 5, 25 minutes, days, years I will acquire, be rid of, arrive at, figure out, pay off, or in some way satisfy some as desire. This counting takes place at regular intervals and is actually numbered off. The calculation is made, recalculated, counted out (often sotto voce), but like the calendars in old black and white films, in your mind the numerical milestones are counted forward in anticipation and counted backwards from the culmination of desire. It is not enough to have a desire – it needs to be placed within a quantitative sequence that one can then go in, from time to time, and walk around in taking steps – Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday; 4,000/5,000/6,000; January, February, March; Winter, Spring, Summer; 21nd, 23rd, 24th; 5:00 pm, 5:15 pm, 5:30 pm; 9th floor, 8th floor, 7th floor; Exit 87A, Exit 87B, Exit 91; and on and on. The clock never stop ticking; the centimeters; the degrees; the calendar pages turn; and the count no matter where you are, where you’ve been, or where you’re going – it never arrives at the end of the alphabet, nor the end of the calendar, nor the season that stops; no culminating point – none.

The Bad Muse & blogging

Big Frank is including a poem by Lawrence Raab from his book "What We Don't Know About Each Other". This poem was sent to Big Frank by his blogging buddy, Magne. It is is posted here because it seems appropriate to a lot of what Big Frank posts. As his brother, Big Fella, says: "Why don't you just send an e-mail to yourself?" Well, it's not the same for a lot of reasons. As Lawrence Raab puts it in his poem: ". . . yours/is the same old life a thousand people/ have had the good sense to keep to themselves". Well, Big Frank doesn't keep it to himself. He is selective: not everything gets deposited here (Big Frank will spare you the catalogue of what he doesn't post). Still, he is vulnerable to accusations of being under the influence of "The Bad Muse". But, while waiting for "The Good Muse" the posting will go on.

And with that . . . here is Raab's poem.

THE BAD MUSE

by Lawrence Raab

Calm down. No one's listening. Of course
you have the right to make mistakes.
Say anything you want, any dumb thing that
occurs to you. On the other hand,
it really does look bad, doesn't it?

And if anyone were foolish enough to print it
scorn and ridicule would be heaped upon you,
upon your family as well.
Think about them, if not yourself.
Someone in New Hampshire or California

is writing the important poem about history
at this very moment. Most of it
is done already. And this person
has had a life of great interest,
full of struggle and incident, whereas yours

is the same old life a thousand people
have had the good sense to keep to themselves.
Who wants to hear about what it was like
to turn forty, or the strange thing
your dog did last week? So relax.

Think of how good it will feel
to climb into bed and turn off the light.
And tomorrow is Sunday. You can read the papers,
go for a walk, cook outside. Friends will drop by.
Why not invite them all to stay for dinner?

And when the conversation gets really lively
and they're nodding in agreement
with everything you say, maybe someone
will ask you to tell that story—you know,
the one about the dog and the squirrel.

Your Dream Show

We write, direct, and act in our own productions. Well, this is a little trite when we think of it as a metaphor for life. You know the old saw - life's a stage where we all strut and fret etc. etc. However, when we look at this as reality it carries a little more weight, and this is nowhere more true than in your dreams. Here is where you are in complete control. The catch is, of course, that afterwards, or before, you can't analyze and second guess what you decided to do. Talk about being in the NOW, it seems to be nowhere more true than in your dreams.

In your waking life most often any kind of action that you take is preceded by plans with lots of alternatives, and then ultimately some kind of decision that often is delayed, changed, or even abandoned. And then, even when you do act upon it, there is your reaction to it. You might be proud of what you did, regret it, or even put a spin on it (consciously or not) so that it becomes more of what you would have liked it to be, or maybe even what you didn't want it to be (no sense in being rationale about this process - for it usually is not). Memory is its own story-teller, as often as not as far off the mark as perception - if there is such a thing as "the mark". However, in the dream there is no need to spin, no need to regret, no need be proud. It is almost as though the ego has been removed from the picture. Maybe the ego had some kind of input into the writing, directing and acting; if so a whole different part of you (let's call it the producer) made the calls and put the show (the dream) together. Who this producer is (that's a topic for another time), is beyond our understanding, and so we acknowledge that it was "only a dream", and we played our part(s), and mostly take pleasure in whether or not we even remembered what it was that we did.

It comes from many sides at once . . . or does it?

Big Frank has been thinking lately about the phenomenon of being exposed on many fronts at the same time by a particular idea. Does this mean anything? Well, Big Frank does not mean such common assaults as tighten your abs, take advantage of this credit card offer, or send your bank account number to a friendly former government employee in Nigeria in order to receive 10 million dollars. No, these are ideas that assault everyone at the same time everywhere. They have no particular significance to anyone. What about the idea that seems to pop out un-expectantly over and over again, from a variety of sources but seemingly aimed particularly you you?

Big Frank was reading a blog of the other regular attendee of the Spokane Weblogger’s meetup and on his blog there was a link to a philosopher’s page on which was a list of her favorite philosophy books. One of these books was David Hume’s A Treatise on Human Nature. So Big Frank, never having read this, went out and bought it. In the opening pages of this book he came upon this: in section 3.5.2: "As to those impressions which arise from the senses, their ultimate cause is, in my opinion, perfectly inexplicable by human reason, and ‘twill always be impossible to decide with certainty, whether they arise immediately from the object, or are produc’d by the creative power of the mind, or are deriv’d from the author of our being.” Basically Hume was not going to address the physical causes in any detail, but rather examined the immediate object of the mind, which he believed was always something mental or internal.

Then in a recent issue of the New Yorker Big Frank was reading an article by Atul Gawande entitled “The Itch” and came across this idea of the separateness of reception from perception. The commonplace notion that reception = perception is rarely challenged (other than by philosophers), and if so with the kind of derision of Samuel Johnston’s refuting kick “I refute it thus”’ by which he claimed to refute Berkely’s notion that people do not know the external world, they only know their mental ideas of object. The article demonstrates how the mind itself without any external prompt creates perceptions that can linger for years, for example itches, and phantom limbs. Most amazingly, however, the article then shows how through a very clever manipulation of the mind these “misperceptions” can be removed. However, that can only happen through the creation of a counter misperception through a tricky set of mirrors. OK, so now Big Frank has been exposed, within two days, to views questioning the reliability of the reception = perception notions.

Then – here comes number three – an article in the most recent issue of The New York Review of Books entitled: “How the Mind Works: Revelations” that reviews primarily two recent books by Jean-Pierre Changeux - The Physiology of Truth: Neuroscience and Human Knowledge, and Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptors: From Molecular Biology to Cognition. Once again the idea at the forefront of this review is that external reality is a construction of the brain. He even sites the same experiments mentioned in Gawande’s article: a therapeutic devise invented by the neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran – mirror box therapy to rid patients of phantom limb pain.

There are more, but Big Frank has already pushed this blog entry to the limit. What does this all mean. Well, for Big Frank it means that he had better start paying attention to the external reality that he has constructed. The shared perception that we have with others is secure territory (perhaps); however, those uniquely personal constructs – and we have a ton of those – are what are interesting: memories of events, emotional readings of others, judgments, and by extension – dreams (the topic of the next blog), where the mind reigns supreme and the “perceptions” are interpreted as “real” as long as we are “in” the dream. When we are in the dream we grant the mind preeminence and when we awake we like to think that external reality holds sway, but in both cases there is an influence from the other: external reality colors our dreams, and our mind colors external reality. "Color" is a good word to choose because contrary to our visual experience there are no colors in external reality - only electromagnetic waves of differing frequencies. All of this, of course, has profound implications for representation, meaning, and memory.

Fading Into view

Big Frank has been thinking lately about the hidden beauty that surrounds us. This is sleeping beauty; the cloud that struts its stuff high above you in shifting shapes that goes unseen. This is like the perfect symmetry of the solid green leaves that dangle out of sight. This is the corner locked colors of that long-ago purchased picture looked at . . . when? This is the ambition/worry clouded view that overhangs our days. This is . . . the faded bluish-green paint on the weathered wood on that street two blocks from your house. William Carlos William can show you the way.

Pastoral

by William Carlos Williams

When I was younger

it was plain to me

I must make something of myself.

Older now

I walk back streets

admiring the houses

of the very poor:

roof out of line with sides

the yards cluttered

with old chicken wire, ashes,

furniture gone wrong;

the fences and outhouses

built of barrel staves

and parts of boxes, all,

if I am fortunate,

smeared a bluish green

that properly weathered

pleases me best

of all colors.

No one
will believe this

of vast import to the nation.

Chinese Jump

Poem [“At night Chinamen jump”]
by Frank O'Hara

At night Chinamen jump
on Asia with a thump

while in our willful way
we, in secret, play

affectionate games and bruise
our knees like China’s shoes.

The birds push apples through
grass the moon turns blue,

these apples roll beneath
our buttocks like a heath

full of Chinese thrushes
flushed from China’s bushes.

As we love at night
birds sing out of sight,

Chinese rhythms beat
through us in our heat,

the apples and the birds
move us like soft words,

we couple in the grace
of that mysterious race.

As Ron Padget wrote of this poem in his poem “Night Jump”: Frank O’Hara starts on “funny” and then goes on to write of love, mystery and of grace. Big Frank believes that this poem is a beautiful expression of the wonder and mystery and absurdity of life . . . the earthiness and the wonder, the humor and the joy of love and the grace that accompanies that coupling. It is even a little silly and that makes it all the better for its eschewing the solemnity of the coming together in love.