Il y a quatre jours...

As of this publishing, I can safely say that the conscious among our western world has embraced the start of a new year. January first, despite being one of the coldest and darkest days of the year, cruxes the holidays, relinquishing within us the arcane anxieties that well up within humanity during our tribulation. Though I can't speak for everyone, I sense a sort of reverence or austerity in today. Despite the noise and nature of our gathering, watching the snows swirl in a menagerie of light wuthering in the capital region reassured a good end and beginning to the years.

Honestly, a lot has happened this year, and retrospection keeps popping in and out of perspective. I tried to push myself this year, and succeeded, from skipping classes to read a poem, to periodically changing the language of my keyboard to force myself to relearn to type. My grades were mediocre, and more the representative of my inability to focus on even the hedonist pleasures. Christmas was pleasant this year, though I think this might have only been in comparison to everyone else's subdued nature.

It's interesting that in this decade we embraced the rise and fall of multiple sectors of the economy, continued to murder across the globe for the health of the state, and lived in a time of incoherence in art and literature. I lost my childhood, had my adolescence; lost my adolescence, and stuck myself between ages. Music continues on a downward spiral of productivity and sales, and the merchants of cool have a tighter grip on the world than the forces that bind it.

Life may very well be a tragic, inevitably dead existence, that much I've learned from this decade, and from the microcosms that continue to unfold; but as I sit spaced from riding home, daydreaming of cryptographs and protractors, death feels further away than the columns of the Sahara. Four days ago, my sky darkened, and was still alive to the lights and sounds of the great final civilization. So here we are, hurtling toward the darkness as a great comet bowing closer to the sun, and back again into the darker three quarters. May we grow our tastes, and appreciate not the watery blathering of bureaucrats. Enjoy your year!

Good ol' Oneonta.

Historic Downtown Oneonta, as a title, hits a nerve. It perpetuates the same reacationary mentality you typically find in these small, dead towns, while managing to be the most pompous statement in the area. I do not need to point out that, while Oneonta may have had a history, any town has had a significant history, if it's around to-day. Need I point out Norwich, whose history touts a criminal organization and an aspirin factory, or a real city like Boston, whose countless events have throughout America's history impacted her for better or worse?

Suffice to say, I don't get mad when I hear Boston claiming to have a history; but it's weathered itself long enough to be able to boast such claims, while Oneonta, not so much (and Norwich is even more of a joke).

Like Sun Tzu said in his treatise on war, you cannot hope to win after you've already declared war, you must win before going. Maybe the Oneonta officials could be doing more to create and promote a functional Oneonta, one where oppressive taxes didn't destroy the industrial park.

Star-nosed Moles

"Star-nosed moles write beautifully about the arts."

This picture has strangely shown up in my folders, and is a peculiar one to say the least. Does anyone know the origin of this image, and who the writing is from?

Still not published, still not published, still not...

On writing this, I’m on the harbor, by Battery Park, and by the infinite light of the night. My apologies to those who have been patiently (or impatiently, as you so choose) waiting for another journal response for me to shew. It has been a quiet month, with too many whispers to write about at once.
I am in the bitter abyss of the Hudson, somewhere on the delta islands, and ultimately alone, though with the more esteemed of friends. They have given me shelter in the warm winds, the dirty winds. But is it that which has compelled me to stay in the desolate city? They are happy here, presumably for themselves, and with that connection I am not unfamiliar with, though presently without.
There have been many subjects of discussion floating about the river lately, on nostalgia, wontedness, loneliness, futurity and other things. Among the recesses of conversation, I stumbled on Solomon, and how he is the truest words in the Bible; and the sun is down now, just like he said, the sun will rise anew.
The sun is really the only thing to be jealous of, from that antiquated point of view, but ultimately, even the sun’s rises are in vain. And yet I struggle to get published, while Poetry magazine still shovels out shit by the bucketful. What a load of vanity.
And what's worse is that I know I'm better than 80% of the writers out there; but I appear not to put in the effort for it. This is the cost of being spoiled early on: it's a rough time of it to adjust at any age. At least a child has nothing to lose for wasting a few precious moments. Though maybe it's theirs to waste?

And thusly ends the night, with the mad siren carrying someone off.

The Catskill Eagle and the Owl

Oneonta's population makes up roughly one third the population of Otsego County, likely employing most of its Susquehanna Valley inhabitants, and more along the fringes of Delaware County. Since so much of Otsego County's population rests in Oneonta, I thought it adequate enough to use Otsego County statistics for the sake of this argument.
Unfortunately, like most of the nation, it seems Oneonta has been rather stagnant of late. Between 2000 and 2008, Oneonta grew by 0.5%, far lower than the 2.7% growth the whole state of New York has experienced. Paltry in either case, the spike between the two numbers is indicative of the lack of incentive to come to Oneonta.
I can imagine the population shift in Oneonta is mainly due to births vs. deaths. In short, it only looks like population growth because older people are living longer here.
I am not wholly opposed to the Oneonta World of Learning, and as far as I'm concerned, as long as it is privately funded, it flies with me. While I'm not sure of its funding status, the point is rather.. pointless, so to say. What's missing is the community's apathy toward our stagnant bubble of a world; even in a depressed state like New York, we could at least exist with the standards set by the census average!
I propose a lack of ambivalence toward the impending disaster that is Otsego, Oneonta, the sleeping folk north-west of the Catskills. Wake up, please; we need business models, industries that aren't taxed to death, and places for our work force to keep themselves happy, not museums these apathetic majority will scoff at while their children are barely kept fed with the hiking unemployment rates and social services benefits packages.

sources:

Census QuickFacts

Census FactFinder


addendum: I added in the sources, which I carelessly left out.

I Am Home; Where Are You, Dark Thoughts?

I told people I love America. That's such a lie; I do not, in fact, love America. What has really happened has been a love for the ideals, the fleeting respects of a country that could never really exist.

Where is the existentialist paradise? I do not require much; in fact, I request a country, a state, a plot of land where I am simply not protected from myself. That's what I want; a bare exposure to reality, to catch a glimpse of Cthulu, or some nameless inevitability we call death or kismet.

My God! I could really think you dead, that you could create a real world of suffering. And I know it to be true, that suffering exists. The spark of the glimpse of terror, the finger on the axis of reality, and then to have it yanked away: that is more torturous than any other pain I've thus far encountered. It is an all-encompassing throb from the neck to the pit of the stomach, a scorched line extending outward; a yearning for convalescence from this state of being where people do not follow the golden rule. I do not like being told what to do, or how to do it, on any level; I'm sure no one else does either.

The Moon is Full Somewhere

The room is atrocious, yet again; I want to ignore it and just play games or sleep.