To Create is To Destroy

I've recently discovered the greatness that is blackout poetry and I'm kind of in love with it. The whole idea of destruction and subtraction becoming a form of creating is very appealing, and in some ways reminds me of Keri Smith's books. It's been a lazy Saturday, and what do you do when boredom is threatening? Make things, obviously. Most of these poems were created from passages from a horrible book called Are the Kids All Right?, a novel from the 80s about how rock and roll is "evil". It felt good to destroy that batshit crazy propaganda.

A lot of these turned out much darker than I anticipated and the one about divorce has a certain dark humor to it. What's up with that? Maybe I should lay off the Woody Allen movies for a while.

A Lexical Gap

You know that feeling you get when you're looking for a word and it doesn't exist? And words seem like they will never do their subjects justice? There's a word for that-a lacuna, or lexical gap.

I've been reading a lot of memoirs and biographies lately. I'm not sure if this is one step toward the boring, domestic tastes of adults, but I have been getting a lot of insights from these books. I'm currently reading Life Itself by Roger Ebert, which is really amazing.

It's really interesting to me to read about how these well-known people came to be. And I also like to prepare my own answers to my own future interviews. There's no such thing as too much confidence, people.

I love sifting through quotes. I feel like in some way we're all quoting each other and the idea of being made of the stuff of greats (assuming that energy is constantly passing through different states) gets me through those days when it seems like all the consonants and vowels are inadequate. And I guess I really want to leave my own quotes behind as well. One of my favorite people on the planet, John Green, once said,"Sometimes our favourite quotations say more about us than the stories or people we're quoting." I feel like I have way too many quotes to contain on paper. But here are a few that I've recently found that I love. A lot. Also, this video is beautiful and makes me fall in love with writing all over again.

--J.D. Salinger, one of my favorite writers

And lastly my favorite quote, from Alexander Supertramp, whose story has affected me so much

Let It Snow, December!

So it's finally December! Not only does that mean that I'm done with Nanowrimo (which I successfully finished), but it's also now the socially acceptable time of year to be singing Christmas songs.

Since we are currently living on a base with really small housing, my family had to be relatively conservative about the size of our Christmas tree. It was sort of like that one Charlie Brown movie about Christmas where the gang has to get a skimpy little tree. So it goes.

I'm really jazzed about Christmas this year, mainly because we'll be going to New York. I'll be able to live out all those cheesy romantic comedies. Which brings me to the topic of Christmas. Over the course of this past year, I've come to the conclusion that my religious views are secular. That still means I can watch Charlie Brown and decorate the pine tree, right? In my opinion, Christmas is becoming a largely secular holiday. It's becoming less about "the birth of Jesus" and more about just spending time with family and the cycle between giving and receiving. And who doesn't love that?

So whether you celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or Chrismakwanzika, enjoy your December. (As well as this perfect picture of James Franco.)