On the internet, everything is a joke, which is as it should be. It’s the safe haven of absurdists, and the challenge we need most. Can you hold your ground and keep believing nothing is sacred in the face of the infinite electronic laughter?

Ones and zeros: It’s there or it’s not. We live in an intricate series of yes or no questions that, taken all together, result in a big amorphous maybe.

We thrive on intersections of opposing ideas. It is the age of Hecate and Hermes and Pan all over again. I used to know a witch who swore by Pan’s balls. It only occurs to me now how appropriate that is.

The things that make the least sense to us, the ideas that refuse to be categorized, the questions that cannot be answered – those are where we find our truth. We thrive on nonsense because it makes sense in an age of contradictions. When we grow up learning about the american dream, when it’s en vogue to hate the leader no matter which side you’re on, when we see reflected in ourselves everything that’s wrong with our country and our world, we turn to the absurd, and we say yes.

It’s important not to get too wrapped up. It’s essential not to believe too thoroughly. Faith will disprove itself, we have seen. Absolutes once embraced show us the gaping wounds in their bellies or in their brains.

And despite and because of the uncertainty, we become a conglomerate of hope. We become the new primordial ooze. We are extraordinarily rich with potential, even as we wallow in this mud. Ideas form and flow faster than any of us can think. The collective human computer is at war with itself and producing one failed solution after the next to the unsolvable problem of human nature.

We don’t even have to fear artificial intelligence because we don’t have time to invent a machine that smart. We’re too busy destroying one another. We are our own monster creation. Beautiful and grotesque. The most amazing stage of human evolution is now.

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Have you read any good poetry lately?

Reading a poem, throws my brain right out of it’s daily doldrums and into metaphorical thinking. Like most people, I spend my days speaking Corporatese, using phrases like “reaching out” and “on the same page” — you know, that meaningless stuff that is laden with false importance and must be included in every e-mail, which in turn must be CC’d to everyone you’ve ever worked with on a given project because the last thing you need (and the easiest way to ruin your day) is someone saying they weren’t informed of some essential bit or bob. Anyway, all that stuff can get rather mind-numbing, and one of the best and quickest ways I’ve found to soothe the corporate beast in my brain is to read a good poem.

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I have just about had it with spiritual writing. Just about. I’m going to read one more spiritual memoir, at least, and then, well yes, probably another one because my book list simply doesn’t stop growing. I always make the mistake of telling people about this dream I have of finding the perfect modern book (or writing it myself, which would be preferable if it didn’t involve so much work), and then they recommend the book they think comes closest to the ideal I’m trying to describe to them (usually rather badly, while drinking, which doesn’t help).

But the next book on my list is one I stumbled across after I recently started reading the Tricycle blog, which is the blog of a magazine I have often contemplated buying but never forked over money for because I am tortured — tortured, I tell you — about spirituality and especially about spiritual writing, which tends to be pedantic and over-inflated. (Too many people are promising magic and enlightenment when what I really want is just a solid grasp on life, which isn’t asking too much, and yet it seems to be the hardest thing to get.)

That’s why I’m going to read The Novice: Why I Became a Buddhist Monk, Why I Quit, and What I Learned, by Stephen Schettin next. Aside from being a mouthful of a title, doesn’t it sound like someone who is a little fed up with spirituality yet inexplicably drawn to it? Doesn’t it sound like me? Yes, it does.

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What do you want to be when you grow up? Tell me about the person you long to be.

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This is our drive to Digital Overload 2010. It was actually a pretty extraordinary day. I love my dudes. Hopefully, there will be more videos for you soon.

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Cleavages: The Lines That Shape Us

Today, I am Pretty from Ellie Di of Apples and Porsches who is a beautiful genius, y’all.

Take Five Friday: This Fun House (cute!)

True Story: I’m Transgendered on Yes and Yes. Sarah Von is doing this fantastic series of interviews on her blog lately, and this one was just awesome.

MC Yogi – Give Love (Giving4Living Mix) from MC Yogi on Vimeo.

On Being Womanly

Ten Rules for Writing Fiction

Lady Gaga on the cover of Q Magazine: “The joke is not on me. It’s on you.”

We Are Becoming the Men We Wanted to Marry

This Can’t End Well, band practice

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In my preschool class, there was a little black girl named Monique. She wore her hair in a lot of braids with colorful accessories. She was very cute and had a very cute laugh, and I liked her a lot. She was my friend. Concepts about race and our differences had not yet reached me. I just liked her. I liked her braids and her laugh. I tried to laugh like her, but I couldn’t pull it off. I ended up sounding silly, and it bothered my sister. My natural laugh has always been loud and raucous. Monique’s laugh was light like soapy bubbles blown through a plastic wand. When I remember it now, I am so glad that I was able to make her laugh. She laughed a lot. She was a happy girl. But one day, Monique moved away. I have a vague memory of our teacher telling the class Monique had to move and would no longer go to our school.

It was the first time I realized that people sometimes go away, and to this day, I wonder where she went and why.

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As I write this post, I am still in the midst of reading Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club, and so far I have to tell you it’s not at all what I thought.

A lot of books get a lot of praise for being stories of triumph over adversity. It seems in vogue to write about a life that starts of awful and ends up beautiful, and it’s all because the author had the gumption to pull herself up by her bootstraps and make the best of it. People love a good redemption story.

Being a bit of a misfit (my dad always described me as “oppositional defiant” as though it were a disease), I cannot bring myself to read most of these books, so when I heard Mary Karr’s book discussed in terms of her troubled childhood, I felt repulsed. The thing is, I find that real life is difficult enough as it is, and while I love nonfiction, I typically feel all kinds of pukey about books about troubled childhoods. I mean, honestly, didn’t we all sortof have troubled childhoods? I mean, whose life is perfect? The downfall of memoir in my not so humble opinion is that we seem to think that anyone who’s been through anything difficult has the right to a book deal. Like, Whoa is me, my daddy is rich, and people had unfairly high expectations of me! or I was really poor for a while, but I lived through it, and now you should read about my days of eating ramen and scrounging change from the sidewalk to buy meals. (Oh, wait … no, that last one is how I got through college. It wasn’t that interesting after all.)

The point is, I was expecting to hate this book, but I felt compelled to read it because not only is it wildly successful, but writers I actually like and admire have said how great it is. So, I thought of it as homework, went to the bookstore and picked up a copy.

I’m not prepared to give a full review of it since I’m not done reading yet, but I can tell you this: I was supposed to pick up dinner on my way home the night I picked up The Liar’s Club, so I planned on just going in, getting the book, and hitting the road. I even thought maybe I wouldn’t start reading it until we got on the road for Digital Overload. But, just to be sure I wouldn’t be unfairly punishing myself, I decided to read the first page before purchasing it, a safety precaution I take often. If the first sentence was bad or seemed too self-absorbed or teen-angsty, I wasn’t going to buy it. I wound up standing there reading the first five pages or so, then sitting in one of those big leather reading chairs for about 15 minutes to read several more pages. Only when I realized I’d almost finished the first chapter did I close the book and proceed to the checkout counter.

This is a good book, and I think I can learn a lot from it. Look forward to a full review in the near future.

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How to Write About Your Life by Penelope Trunk

If You Don’t Ask, I Won’t Tell via InnyVinny

Oprah’s Dream Board (Yes, of course Oprah is getting in on it. She’s Oprah, yo!)

9 Attitudes of Highly Creative People from ProBlogger

Literature’s Most Mind-Blowing Drugs by Darragh McManus

The Art of Doing by Sarah Von

Write One Leaf: a Tumblr site for writing every day. Really nice writing prompts there!

Check Your Creative Pulse from the NAEA Monthly Mentor

How to Create Creativity from Six Revisions

Motivation Monday: The Blahs and How to Get Over Them from Creativity on a Mission (I just discovered this site, and I expect to keep revisiting it.)

So, how are you going to feed your creative soul this weekend?

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West of the Moon (trailer) from Mothership on Vimeo.

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