meinberg

06:18 pm: Thoughts on Narrative Conflicts
There was a discussion on a chat I belong to (you know the ones e-friends!) concerning the lack of potential plots in fiction. While the person who brought it up isn't someone whose opinion I really listen to, the idea got me thinking.

He presented the three conflicts as man vs. self, man vs. nature, and man vs. man. First of all, I'm not a fan of the term "man" in this context, even though it's essentially short-hand for "humanity." Just a thing of mine, I suppose. And furthermore, I can think of several conflicts that exist external to those.

Personally, I divide the conflicts into three major categories which have multiple sub-divisions which are unique: self vs. dynamic, self vs. static, self vs. other. In a self vs. dynamic conflict, the main character struggles against an understandable threat that manages to adjust itself to the actions of the main character. In a self vs. static conflict, the main character struggles against a threat that, while capable of changing, does not do so in response to the main character's action. And in a self vs. other conflict, the main character struggles against a threat that cannot be understood. Obliviously, a threat can change, most notable from self vs. other to self vs. dynamic, as the main character takes steps to understand the threat.

Thinking about this further, I've developed an incomplete list of these sub-divisions:

Self vs. Dynamic
Self vs. Self
Self vs. Rival
Self vs. Active Society
Self vs. Understandable Intruder
Self vs. Local Stranger

Self vs. Static
Self vs. Terrain
Self vs. Static Society
Self vs. Mindless Beast

Self vs. Other
Self vs. Foreigner
Self vs. Unknown Intruder
Self vs. Thinking Beast
Self vs. Occult
Self vs. God

Just something that's been on my thoughts lately and potential fuel for the conflicts in my upcoming NaNoWriMo attempt. If you have any ideas or critiques, I'd definitely be interested in hearing them.

06:12 pm: I fear I have grown quite mad in my ambition. I seek with ever increasing vigor to attempt things beyond my means. But I attempt them nevertheless.

I intend to, with the aid of a fellowship grant, produce my own show. Doing so successfully will provide me with a wealth of experience, provide opportunities for many of my peers to showcase their talents to the public, and hopefully turn a tidy profit. Doing so unsuccessfully will mean certain financial ruination.

And yet I risk it, because it is a thing worth doing, and a thing worth doing well. If I am successful, I truly doubt that my name shall go unforgotten any time soon amongst the actors of the Richard Stockton College.

02:04 am: I'm not the sort of fellow to do this, but rest in peace Mr. Cronkite, you were amongst the best of us.

05:48 am: I can't see their faces, but I hear their voices and I sense as much of their history as they do. Not all of them yet, though, and not to the same degree. The first there, the oldest, I know him better than the rest. He's lonely, forced to live in that place without companionship for years. But he's a soldier and he's strong and he knows how to endure things that should not be endured.

But he lacks curiosity. He just wants to live out the rest of his years in peace, not explore the strange abandoned yet intact settlement that rests by the shore. He doesn't like the shore, the open ocean reminds him of just how desolate things are, and the emptiness of the settlement sends worse fears into him. The woods are safer, despite the predators, his pistol would protect him.

But then came the newcomers. The tourist that had taken charge through personality alone, nicknamed Hans because of his accent. Hans was prepared, and knowledgeable and made sure everyone knew what to eat. Without him, the dozen or so others that arrived with him (though no less knowing of themselves for it) might not have lasted to meet the soldier and join him in the hunts and gathering to see to everyone's satisfaction.

Then there's the insufferable brat, even though he's not near the youngest. Sullen and quiet and uncooperative, refusing to join in day to day necessities, even though he partakes in the meals with everyone else. But he knows the secret to this place, or at least the key to unraveling it. His knowledge doesn't come from some secret connection with the place, but with a knowledge of how the forces that brought them all there thought.

There are others as well, the young woman who is the only one to think America has a black president, the hard working man from India, the middle-aged woman with no cares in the world, and so many others who cry out for their story to be told and trouble my sleep with musings.

12:44 am: Despite my best efforts, I find myself becoming more and more the accountant as the days pass. I'm certain I could become an artist if I devoted the mathematical side of my brain to the back of my consciousness. But I refuse to do so. I enjoy the little tricks of balancing the balance sheet, and the intricate relations of the statement of cash flows.

I want to live comfortably. I'd rather be a patron of the arts than a starving artist. Ultimately, the only way for me to be a better artist is to be a worse accountant, and I refuse that. Let me be the small one, the speck, with a comfortable life surrounded by numbers than that guy with a fabulous script, waiting tables.

As a side note to you, Megan, I have been reading the poetry of Borges and I am entranced. He is a wonderful poet and full of allusions to material that I understand. He wrote a poem about the pains of being Shakespeare and the wonders of the German language. He is me, if I were a good poet and a native speaker of Spanish.

01:37 am: Well, my posting box is open and I've been drinking, so I might as well post something. Or not. But I guess I will.

My internal self remains mostly constant. Despite my best attempts to the contrary, my worse inclinations work against me. In particular, my laziness. As an example, this semester, there are two classes that I've only been to once before this week. The primary impetus for my return this week is that both of them have tests this week. I've promised to myself, again and again, that I would fight against the impulse to sleep in this semester, but I've faltered up to this point.

But I think I can do it. I've already plied my lies to my professors and hopefully I can turn things around. On the plus side, the tests aren't too hard. I've only had one so far, but it was mind bogglingly simple, and I'm pretty sure I got an A on it. We'll just have to see how the rest of the week progresses.

In other news, I've found my acting experience to have dramatically expanded since my coming to New Jersey, with three performances last year and three performances already this year. This has been coupled with a renewed passion for poetry and other forms of creative expression to provide an interesting counter to my three years of idleness during my return to Germany.

I think I can do it. I think I can push through my faults and become the guy I've always wanted to be. Time will tell.

02:15 am: I return to my apartment after a long rehearsal, I helped hang lights afterwards which resulting in me not getting home until one-thirty in the am, and I find that my living room is completely trashed. The plastic chairs tossed to the side and the empty beer bottles and cans and the shotglasses are all part of day-to-day life here. But there are t-shirts pinned to the wall, bearing slogans that I cannot recognize, and one of our wooden chairs has been nearly reduced to kindling. Most peculiar of all, to me at any rate, is the goldfish in a bowl resting in front of the television. Oh, and to top it all off, the apartment is devoid of any other people besides myself.

I have taken the wisest precautions and sealed myself in my bedroom, hoping against hope that the living room will return to some degree of normalcy by the time I awaken tomorrow, or at least by the time I return from class. Or rehearsal. Something about the state of affairs here, though, makes me doubt it.

10:47 pm: I think the number thirteen gets a bad rap. It's a good number. Prime. The second two digit prime number in fact, and you can hardly count 11, it's just too obvious. But thirteen has a majesty to it, a legacy, an air of fear. It's a good number, my number, the sigil that I would wear upon my seal, not an omen of doom, but a pleasant reminder of the power of numeration.

06:01 pm: Serendipity
My dreams, when I remember them at all, always have a certain aspect of mundanity to them. They lack outrageous imagery, deeper layers of subtlety, or even anything that could be considered weird. The only thing that separates them from reality is the unlikeliness of those events occurring to me.

I dreamed last night that I was going to have sex. Not the actual act mind you, but the series of events leading up to the act. Altogether prosaic, but of course tinged with a heightened sense of nervousness and unease, which would be my natural reaction to such an occurrence. Despite the prosaic nature of the dream, it was a nice reprieve from my recurring dream of myself driving a truck down an empty highway on a flat, featureless dry plain.

I really need to get myself some better dreams.

10:33 pm: The First Meinberg Manifesto
Our world is moving away from the basic keystones of modernity: capitalism and nationalism. In the place of these two powerful forces, it is necessary to visualize those systems that might come into place to ultimately replace them. This Manifesto, and those that follow, will paint my particular view on the way of life to come.

1) It is the responsibility of the strong to defend the weak.

2) It is the responsibility of the weak to accept the assistance of the strong.

3) In the modern era, economic strength is the cornerstone of all power.

4) All human beings, regardless of class, nation, or any other factor, deserve to have their basic needs satisfied, no matter the cost.

5) The basic needs of human beings include, but are not limited to, health, security, and opportunities for personal advancement.

6) Those that knowingly and willingly cause to pain to humans, without the consent of those other humans, revoke their rights to humanity as they are described in this manifesto.

01:17 am: Another realization occurred to me this evening: those that I share a living space do not possess the same social attributes that I do. They seem to rejoice in the crowd while my social abilities are strained while in a small group. I tend to drift towards the periphery, indulging in my silence like a deep, dark wine, tainting my lips with every sip.

I will have to pursue other avenues of socialization during my time here, if I am to seek companions of the same sort and quality that I have enjoyed previously. Theater seems a likely outlet for such activities, the appeal of the artist and the joy-seeker. But somehow I doubt I will find a proper intellectual sparring partner, at least not until I delve deeper.

That is what I miss the most, those individuals that can respond to my intellect, while simultaneously having the superior social skills necessary to pull me forth from my shell.

In other news, my brain is slowly becoming that of a businessman in a way that I can accept. I see things in term of profit margins, of wins and losses, of dollar signs. And that is acceptable, given our culture. There is a fluidity to it, and I feel that if I delve further, I can see the poetry of cash flows in greater light.

01:02 am: Those of you that you know me relatively know that I don't particullarly care for my emotions. I try to hide from them, I try to prevent them from taking any sort of root. And for the most part, I can maintain my air of calm indifference. But every once in a while, my feelings rise back up to remind me that they're there. Sometimes, this is joyful, the triumph of victory over something or another. But tonight, in a perhaps subtle fashion, I felt the pangs of defeat.

It's day like tonight, when I find myself meditating on the concept of my own self worth, that I most often seek to deny my emotions, to try and find some objective portrayal of myself, with the spurns of my self-doubt and self-hate.

Compared to the pains that others feel, my hurt is shallow, but that does not mean that I feel it any less keenly, especially when it sits so close to other, more depressing realizations.

01:32 am: There are no new stories in my life, just the old ones played over and over again with different characters, all of which differ only aesthetically from their archetype. My archetype is one I wish to reject, but there are no others that fit in my skin.

Five years is a long time, but the counter only goes up from here.

08:43 pm: I was introducing my idea for a performance of several plays produced over the course of twenty-four hours to a member of the Theater Club here on Stockton, and the person I'm speaking with spoke of it as a "flash performance." This got me thinking in another direction.

The idea of flash fiction is not part of the mainstream as of yet, and there is extensive overlap between it and prose poetry. To tell you the truth, I don't know where or if there is a line between the two. However, if we take the basic principles of flash fiction: a narrative condensed to an exceedingly small number of images and a focus on emotional impact and then apply those principles to theater, the result might be worth investigating.

A similar concept has been introduced in the program known as "Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind," a series of thirty plays over the course of one hour. Though I have not seen the performance myself, a quick reading into it and a discussion with someone who has seen it has pointed out one of its flaws, from the perspective of an actor, it consists of raw emotionality, the actor laying bare his soul in a brief burst of complete and utter honesty.

This concept has some merit, but it is not what I wish to explore. Those pieces revolved around character, the condensation of a being into a burst of effulgence. My idea, in contrast, is doing the same thing but for an event, an intersection of individuals. Less an exploration of the self and more an exploration of abstracted matters, of ideas and moments that exist external to the self, though obviously as informed by the self.

I don't know if it is possible, but I'm going to give it a try, one of these days.

12:21 am: I just finished reading another of Billy Collins' books, and I remain as amazed as ever of the power and subtlety of his works. Perhaps it is just me being the accountant, but I find his writing to be absolutely sublime. It's almost like a drug, it enters your system, changes how you see things, and next thing you know, you're looking for another hit.

In the vein of that last statement, I'm looking for other poets. I know I was introduced to a lot last semester, but not many of the names left an indelible print in my mind, so if anyone could make any recommendations, I would appreciate it.

06:34 pm: I saw this message today, and I just thought that it was worth sharing. Enjoy!

04:23 pm: The sky may not be falling, but the DOW Jones sure is.  This is not going to be a good week for those of us who have invested heavily into the stock market.  And of course, the wide reaching impacts of the House not agreeing to the bailout today cannot be underestimated.  If we were not in a recession before today, I am going to take a leap and say we are in one now.  May the great spirit keep an eye on your pocket books.

02:07 am: Mental note: the sense of humor of some people is radically different from my own.

02:37 am: It's kinda sad that is the one real outlet for my grey matter.  People tell me that I'm not shy, but you know what? I am shy: almost cripplingly so.  I don't know how to start a conversation with someone I don't know.  It's... unpleasant.  And when copied with this outer shell of calm that I carry with me all the time must make me seem like some kind of jerk.  I see this same girl all the time on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday... but I've never gone up to say hello to her.  I'm going to try and say hello on Friday, but I don't know if it will work.  I don't if writing it down here will make me feel any more bound to the same promise I've been telling myself every time I've seen her for the last few weeks.

On the other hand, besides being desperately lonely, I'm doing pretty good.  Electronic stimuli are often sufficient for my day to day needs, I find amusement and wonder in the creations of others and some degree of satisfaction through my interactions with people over the internet, even if it is not enough, and my classes are ridiculously easy.

When it comes down to it, I miss Brookdale.  It had everything I could want, except for the degree of academic achievement that I'm after.  I had friends there.  Imagine it, real friends! People I would see relatively often and talk about random shit with.  And even some people that I could confide my neuroses in, and that didn't really mind too much.  I had actual creative outlets with peer review, not this random screaming into the void that I employ these days. I had a place and I played a role.  Here, I feel too intangible, too much like someone that could be removed without the slightest hesitation.

Ultimately, this is the key axiom that I find I'm following: I get emo when I'm drunk.

10:51 pm: Writing
I've been doing some writing lately, perhaps spurned by the lack of a support system for non-Lit major writers on campus.

I've been focusing mostly on what I like to call "index card poems," those being poems that I write on an index card.  Their short length makes them punchy and easier to write and edit.  And I think I can tap into my emotions a bit better through them.  I'm going to start posting a few on here, and I'd appreciate any and all feedback.

In other news: blah, blah, blah, angst, angst.