October 7: "Adage," Monday, Clichés

Since I started taking creative writing workshops, I've been taught to avoid clichés like the plague.  (Okay, I know it's an old joke, but it still makes me chuckle.)  

I've tried to follow that rule, for the most part.  However, there was a time when each cliché was new and surprising.  Some author once wrote "dead as a doornail," and it was considered bold and insightful.  I'm not quite sure when originality gives way to hackneyed. 

Billy Collins clichés it up a little . . . 

Adage

by: Billy Collins

When it’s late at night and branches
are banging against the windows,
you might think that love is just a matter

of leaping out of the frying pan of yourself
into the fire of someone else,
but it’s a little more complicated than that.

It’s more like trading the two birds
who might be hiding in that bush
for the one you are not holding in your hand.

A wise man once said that love
was like forcing a horse to drink
but then everyone stopped thinking of him as wise.

Let us be clear about something.
Love is not as simple as getting up
on the wrong side of the bed wearing the emperor’s clothes.

No, it’s more like the way the pen
feels after it has defeated the sword.
It’s a little like the penny saved or the nine dropped stitches.

You look at me through the halo of the last candle
and tell me love is an ill wind
that has no turning, a road that blows no good,

but I am here to remind you,
as our shadows tremble on the walls,
that love is the early bird who is better late than never.

It was a Monday.  (That may be a cliché.)  Everyone knows what that sentence implies--it just wasn't a good day.  I won't say it was a terrible day, but it certainly wasn't one for the record books.  Nothing exciting occurred.  I didn't get a call from the Swedish Academy.  Or win the lottery.  Or write a perfect poem.

However, I did teach my Intro to Film class.  And revised some poems.  And visited with my great friend Jody.  In short, I kept myself busy as a beaver.  As Mary Poppins said, a stitch in time saves nine.  (I have no idea what that adage means, but it has something to do with careful work.)

I'm not feeling very . . . original tonight.  More like tired, bordering on exhausted.  Tonight feels like a cliché, because Mondays are supposed to be disappointing.  So, I'm going to leave it there.  I'm sure that there are people who will argue with me, saying that it's all about attitude.  If I changed my attitude, perhaps today would not have been so . . . so . . . Monday.

But I didn't.

Nobel Prize-winning writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez once wrote, "This should be the spirit of every Monday.  Know that something good will always happen."

Forgive Saint Marty if he doesn't stand up and cheer.

A cliché picture--it has appeared a couple times on the blog..  

April 22: "The Exorcist," Garrett Hongo, "I Got Heaven"

I just got finished watching The Exorcist with my Intro to Film class.  They all acted like brave, disillusioned college students.  Jaded.  Unafraid of anything.

But, as the night wore on, they all started giggling nervously.  Shrinking down in their seats.  I have to admit, the film affects me on a deep level, and I've seen it many times.  There's something very unsettling about it, forty years after it was made.

After that movie, Saint Marty could use a little Heaven.

I Got Heaven

by:  Garrett Hongo

I Got Heaven...
I swear that, in Gardena, on a moonlit suburban street,
There are souls that twirl like kites lashed to the wrists of the living
And spirits who tumble in a solemn limbo between 164th
And the long river of stars to Amida's Paradise in the West.
As though I belonged, I've come from my life of papers and exile
To walk among these penitents at the Festival of the Dead,
The booths full of sellers hawking rice cakes and candied plums,
All around us the rhythmic chant of min'yo bursting through loudspeakers,
Calling out the mimes and changes to all who dance.
I stop at a booth and watch a man, deeply tanned from work outdoors,
Pitch bright, fresh quarters into blue plastic bowls.
He wins a porcelain cat, a fishnet bag of marbles,
Then a bottle of shōyu, and a rattle shaped like tam-tam he gives to a child.
I hear the words of a Motown tune carry through the gaudy air
…got sunshine on a cloudy day…got the month of May…
As he turns from the booth and re-enters the River of Heaven—
These dancers winding in brocades and silk sleeves,
A faithlit circle briefly as warm in the summer night.

We all need a little Heaven sometimes