Poem of the Week; And Goings On

Dear readers!

Alex has been most lackadaisical in his blogging, has he not?

This is because Alex:

a) Is now in Romania, to which he arrived by travelling east on a midnight plane—his body clock is totally off, you see, and he has trouble sleeping;

b) Has had a mole removed on his back, which is uncomfortable and annoys him to no end;

c) Has been made busy with a problem in his external drive: specifically, nothing will read it.

Being plagued by such vicissitudes, I have been unable to entertain you lot. This will now change. I have written a poem—the one which was supposed to be the poem of the week—and I shall even deign to talk about my little town of Vaslui.

So What’s This Place Like?

Depressing. I don’t mean to sound all negative and downer; but I am finding quite depressing. This is partly because I am a little unstable with my various worries (exam results, moles, etc.) and am therefore prone to depression.

But, still: this place is quite underdeveloped. It’s not poor by the standards of a not-so-well-off country in a not-so-well-off county—but even coming from little Britain, I do find it depressing.

There’s more to it than that though. Heck, Barcelona—which struck me as underdeveloped when compared to the likes of Luxembourg, Bruxelles, Eindhoven, Paris, Hamburg, etc.—was one of the liveliest places I’ve seen.

I could blame it on the architecture. There are a lot of Communist-era flats: their hard concrete and decaying windows don’t exactly inspire me to sing YMCA, or whatever idiotic song they do for that nowadays. Neither do the pothole covered roads. Or the stray animals. Or…

You get the point.

It’s not like Romania as a whole is this depressing. My country home (located in a village I guarantee you’ve never heard of) is much nicer: it’s got lots of flowers around it, it’s got vineyards, multiple buildings over multiple levels, hidden gardens…

It’s a lot more peaceful too. For a town of 50,000, Vaslui sure as hell is noisy. You can’t sleep with a window open—the pneumatic drills and lorries will drive you stark raving mad.

Okay, enough on Mr Stargazer’s location. Time to read some poetry!

(Check out my latest photos on Vaslui. I’ll promise I’ll make better ones once I get to my little country home.)

What About That Essay?

The Essence of a Good Tale is almost complete. In fact, this Poem of the Week was written in part to give me some more… direction in the essay.

Poem of the Week: Essence

This poem was actually entitled ‘Void’ to begin with. Why?

My initial premise for the poem stemmed in relation to the place which—funnily enough—I call the Void. The Void is actually a place in a (very future) novel I plan on one day writing (which shall be entitled Biology, and would—hypothetically—be made a series called Biology, Chemistry, and Physics.)

‘Alex, get on with it…’

Yes, so. The Void is the place where nothing but consciousness exists. There is no life. There is no light. There isn’t even time. Or space. It is a pure place: in it, you are your truest self. There are no illusions, nor any false pretense.

(‘He’s getting all weird again, isn’t he?’ some of you are no doubt thinking.)

However, this poem isn’t really about that. As my fingers glided over the (most uncooperative) keyboard, something else was created. Something about the essence of art.

The Essence of Art

The poem is quite short; I shall break my usual structure of weird-quotes–weirder-analysis–weirdest-poem (it was lying in tatters anyway, the poor thing) and give you the poem directly.

Read the Cause of the Altercation

I honestly don’t think any analysis is necessary: the poem is quite clear; and its implications are debatable—better for you to figure out. Of course, if it’s really leaving your knickers in a twist, you could ask me to do it. You’d have to say Please—with a cherry on top.

Very well. Here endeth this blog post. Stay following, because that essay will be coming soon. I just need to fix my hard drive, get myself a proper haircut, see a doctor with this mole removal of mine, and maybe save the world.

All in a day’s work, right?