Today I copied and pasted a poem into my Livejournal from this blog and changed the text of the title to that of the original work, "Pojo". After I had posted it I discovered that the title was a link to this weblog. While I wasn't planning to openly advertise this place, I refuse to delete the offending link - it feels too much like hiding. Sometimes mistakes are meant to be made.
I am not one to buy much into classifications and titles, or the act of belonging to a particular group of people who support a specific cause. Debate kid, Anarchist, Republican, Satanist... It's too easy to associate so many connotations both negative and positively inaccurate when applying a label, and I believe that in associating under these words we assimilate aspects of philosophy that we never really believed in. Political parties are especially bad, even though no one really seems to really ever know what they stand for. I'm a firm believer in finding middle ground, in searching philosophies for the pieces that agree with you and building something out of that. It's as Walt Whitman says: "Re-examine all you have been told at school or at church, or in any books, and dismiss whatever insults your soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem."
That's as good a place to start as any. Today I'm going to look at one of the labels that I perceive myself as falling under, that of the feminist.
I don't necessarily know that I qualify to be classified as a feminist - as I am, of course, male - but I can tell you that I support most movements associated with feminism and share most of the same ideological concerns. Therefore, the assumption made by certain factions that males cannot be feminist would be the first thing that I dismiss, for simplicities sake if nothing else. The other thing is that apart from a few very specific ideas I take from feminism my philosophy equality in all categories. Still, seeing as females are still not always treated equal a stance that supports equality could be considered feminist. So, yes, call me a feminist as you will.
What that entails to me, in summary: I believe, first and foremost, in the protection of all rights granted to men and women alike, life, liberty, and the pursuit of whatever-the-hell-you-please. I believe that the founding fathers wrote all "men" are created equal because "persons" doesn't scan, and that no one should be discriminated against for any reason save their actions. As the defining quality of feminism, I believe that identities are constructed on the basis of gender and that those identities should be celebrated, not dismissed. Finally, I believe that phallic imagery is far too present in literature and that we need to get some critics who don't see penises in every paragraph.
My own identity I would not qualify as being based on gender. I do not do things because I am a guy, or because I am straight. I dislike many things that are often associated with men, such as sports, and I appreciate many things that do not involve violence, struggle and competition, or other traditional "male" categories. While I buy that men are more inclined towards those categories, I don't believe that they should belong specifically to men, and I believe that physical factors are only a small part of the established mindsets we divide ourselves along.
To sharpen the classification, we go to our lovely extension of the brain, Wikipedia. From there I can point you very easily towards the type of feminism I associate with the most: individual feminism, which seeks to celebrate or protect the individual woman. Most of it is pretty textbook what I am for, though some of it (say, legalizing prostitution) is more of a sidenote under other philosophies that I espouse (if it hurts no one's rights, it should not be illegal - at some point I will discuss this in a little more detail). Above all else I believe in the individual, that any established identity should be protected and not absorbed or repressed by categories and organizations. People are people. Let them be as they are.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Monday, March 17, 2008
Meet the press.
My name is Pojo.
Or at least, that's what I keep telling myself. In reality, my name is Brian - which stands for strength and nobility, according to the baby book. Pojo is the name for the Internet persona I have developed - it also stands for those things, but in a somewhat more symbolic manner. It is at the basest level the name assigned to a fire-breathing chicken from an ancient arcade game, but I would not have kept it so long had I not assigned more meaning to it than that. My handle is generally LocoPojo, but things have settled a bit and I no longer aspire to the claim of insanity.
I am a writer - and again, these things I say to comfort myself. In 21 years of living (nearly 22, now), the grand total of works I am proud enough to call my own amounts to a mere fifty something in poems and short tales - of those, I have sold and published none. Still, words have been my friend since childhood, and while of late we have sometimes been estranged there is not a day that goes by in which I do not think about or physically attempt to place my thoughts into text. There are stories still lingering in my head that I have been drafting since middle school, and now in my junior year of college they are still hanging around, though the text of them has changed somewhat. For all my love of speech and debate I find I communicate best, and sometimes only, in the written word.
This is my third weblog. My first, somewhat unofficial blog started in the year after Blizzard's WarCraft III was released, and consisted of a collection of humorous articles on the game written by myself as an adolescent to my first ever active audience. They're as mist now, but a few crucial pieces remain, comedic stories of no relation to the game at all.
My second blog was and is a LiveJournal, and contains the larger part of my life in diary format, but recent events have led me to believe that starting anew may well be an appropriate course of action. The company has been bought by someone new, and their actions towards their users have been somewhat unpleasant as of late, though my initial sources of information on the subject appear to have been greatly exaggerated. In the course of the next few weeks I will quietly back up every scrap of information I own on that site somewhere tidy, and if the abuse continues or deepens I will resign the account. I view the Internet as a system of information that aspires to something loftier than the shenanigans this new company is pursuing. We'll extend on that theme later, my promise to you.
In any event, starting afresh is a grand thing to do. The labors of my past efforts at journaling have been filled with frivolities and short, near incoherent ramblings about the world around me, which in my opinion has never been the point of blogging but rather an effective way to waste time. Coupled with that was a general fear and aversion towards really exploring my thoughts in detail, despite the fact that writing is invariably how I think. And the thing I wanted to do the most with it - to practice writing - I don't know if it really amounts to good practice anymore.
So this is my goal for this blog: to create a meaningful, substantive work of nonfiction, a diary open to the world (should the world care to take a glance) that details not the events of my life, but the images and ideas I extract from those events. A profile, in the truest sense of the word, both personal and public - written as something that I would want to read were I someone else, containing thoughts that I would normally never attempt to unveil to another person. For now it is a secret, but in time I will link it to those that I trust - or they and the general public will find it on their own. My life is an open book, tucked away in a dusty attic amidst a thousand others. Whether you knew exactly where to look or you found it by purest chance:
I hope you enjoy the read.
-Pojo
Or at least, that's what I keep telling myself. In reality, my name is Brian - which stands for strength and nobility, according to the baby book. Pojo is the name for the Internet persona I have developed - it also stands for those things, but in a somewhat more symbolic manner. It is at the basest level the name assigned to a fire-breathing chicken from an ancient arcade game, but I would not have kept it so long had I not assigned more meaning to it than that. My handle is generally LocoPojo, but things have settled a bit and I no longer aspire to the claim of insanity.
I am a writer - and again, these things I say to comfort myself. In 21 years of living (nearly 22, now), the grand total of works I am proud enough to call my own amounts to a mere fifty something in poems and short tales - of those, I have sold and published none. Still, words have been my friend since childhood, and while of late we have sometimes been estranged there is not a day that goes by in which I do not think about or physically attempt to place my thoughts into text. There are stories still lingering in my head that I have been drafting since middle school, and now in my junior year of college they are still hanging around, though the text of them has changed somewhat. For all my love of speech and debate I find I communicate best, and sometimes only, in the written word.
This is my third weblog. My first, somewhat unofficial blog started in the year after Blizzard's WarCraft III was released, and consisted of a collection of humorous articles on the game written by myself as an adolescent to my first ever active audience. They're as mist now, but a few crucial pieces remain, comedic stories of no relation to the game at all.
My second blog was and is a LiveJournal, and contains the larger part of my life in diary format, but recent events have led me to believe that starting anew may well be an appropriate course of action. The company has been bought by someone new, and their actions towards their users have been somewhat unpleasant as of late, though my initial sources of information on the subject appear to have been greatly exaggerated. In the course of the next few weeks I will quietly back up every scrap of information I own on that site somewhere tidy, and if the abuse continues or deepens I will resign the account. I view the Internet as a system of information that aspires to something loftier than the shenanigans this new company is pursuing. We'll extend on that theme later, my promise to you.
In any event, starting afresh is a grand thing to do. The labors of my past efforts at journaling have been filled with frivolities and short, near incoherent ramblings about the world around me, which in my opinion has never been the point of blogging but rather an effective way to waste time. Coupled with that was a general fear and aversion towards really exploring my thoughts in detail, despite the fact that writing is invariably how I think. And the thing I wanted to do the most with it - to practice writing - I don't know if it really amounts to good practice anymore.
So this is my goal for this blog: to create a meaningful, substantive work of nonfiction, a diary open to the world (should the world care to take a glance) that details not the events of my life, but the images and ideas I extract from those events. A profile, in the truest sense of the word, both personal and public - written as something that I would want to read were I someone else, containing thoughts that I would normally never attempt to unveil to another person. For now it is a secret, but in time I will link it to those that I trust - or they and the general public will find it on their own. My life is an open book, tucked away in a dusty attic amidst a thousand others. Whether you knew exactly where to look or you found it by purest chance:
I hope you enjoy the read.
-Pojo
Well. Here I am.
I am
a little white bird
with the flames of Prometheus inside me
I glow a little
even in the noonday sun
I was born on the day a quarter dropped
in the slick machine
with a secret
but I've been around
a little bit longer
than that
I am child of pheonix and simurgh
The basilisk is my brother
though we are not on good terms
I am the Roman oracle
Lions fear me
the devil flees at my crow
Hindus say I will chase evil spirits away
when they set you alight
That's me standing beside the red wheelbarrow
that so much depends on
and there, adorning Sir Robins shield
a symbol of that which he treasures most
I am what was owed to Asclepius
but I bear no diseases
and I will signify none
I will stand in for the bride
at a Confucian wedding
that red silk scarf at my brow a badge of hope
I will fight the lions
and the demons
and the spirits
those that oppose me know
I am not afraid
I am the breath of the living
I am the exuberant crow
breaking apart the night
I am the fire inside
the meekest of us
even in the noonday sun
I glow a little
with the flames of Prometheus inside me
a little white bird
I am
a little white bird
with the flames of Prometheus inside me
I glow a little
even in the noonday sun
I was born on the day a quarter dropped
in the slick machine
with a secret
but I've been around
a little bit longer
than that
I am child of pheonix and simurgh
The basilisk is my brother
though we are not on good terms
I am the Roman oracle
Lions fear me
the devil flees at my crow
Hindus say I will chase evil spirits away
when they set you alight
That's me standing beside the red wheelbarrow
that so much depends on
and there, adorning Sir Robins shield
a symbol of that which he treasures most
I am what was owed to Asclepius
but I bear no diseases
and I will signify none
I will stand in for the bride
at a Confucian wedding
that red silk scarf at my brow a badge of hope
I will fight the lions
and the demons
and the spirits
those that oppose me know
I am not afraid
I am the breath of the living
I am the exuberant crow
breaking apart the night
I am the fire inside
the meekest of us
even in the noonday sun
I glow a little
with the flames of Prometheus inside me
a little white bird
I am
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