>>From: Belacqua
>>To: Perdita
>>Subject: monday morning sickness
>>Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2000

Now that it's Monday morning and I have to go to school, I can't imagine what the hell I was looking forward to. If I have nothing to do, I want something to do, and when I have something to do, I don't want to do it.

I had a weird dream last night. I finally got a bottle of whiskey, and as I was drinking it, it was the best tasting liquid I had ever experienced. I was drinking the shit like it was Kool-Aid. That's probably not a good sign. I hate that feeling when I need a drink, but right now, I really need a fucking drink. I really don't want to have to write a paper this afternoon. I've already resigned myself to a B in this class, so there's really no pressure. I can write a B paper with little to no effort, but the fact that I have to sit down and think about it and do it is the worst part.

I was thinking about what you said about over-studying in music and reducing it to mathematics where it's not fun or as meaningful anymore, and I realized how easily that can be done to poetry. So many professors reduce poetry to individual words and stresses and rhymes and miss everything else that is involved. That's part of why I hate my literary theory class. We're taking the literature itself completely out of our focus and putting all these fucking theories in its place. You have poets now who don't write from the heart anymore. I wrote a poem about it. There's this girl in my theory class I talked to one day, and she's in the creative writing program trying to get an MFA in creative writing, and I look at this girl, and I don't see a poet anywhere in her. I think great writers study other great writers; they don't study writing methods. Anyway, here's the poem.

How can you write poetry?
Your mind moves in the same circles
As the mundane human mind,
Terrified beyond its boundaries.
You cannot pull from the crowds
And become free to observe.

I can see you
Crouched at a desk with a dim lamp,
Hair hanging perfectly off your earrings,
Tritely biting your lip
While counting syllables and feet
With a rhyming dictionary on one knee,
Trying to restrain the foul dust of your emotions.

You've never felt the pain of creation.
I can see in your expensive clothes
And accessories that you've
Never reached inside and found it,
That pulsing purple boil
Sucking the blood from your heart.

Too much lately the trend has been to avoid being sentimental or emotional in poetry and then make it into something purely academic. Poets and critics are trying to murder what makes poetry so extraordinary by trying to reduce it to a scholastic hide-and-seek game where the poet is trying to trick the critics while completely removing him or herself from the poem. Many would probably disown the poems as soon as they are created as not being a part of themselves, and that's dangerous and wrong. I believe sincerely that artistic creation is forged from inner turmoil that the artist is trying to come to some sort of terms with. Why else would someone feel the need to write? I have to write. I don't have an alternative. If I don't write, I go crazy. I can't imagine someone writing something with any substance if they do so merely for entertainment.

Well, that's my tirade for the day. I have to begin my before-school preparations and get ready to pass another day. I hope your day goes well and I hope to hear from you soon.

I love you.
Belacqua

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>From: Perdita
>To: Belacqua
>Subject: Re: monday morning sickness
>Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2000

Belacqua,

I just finished writing to you, but I have to write again. Ugh, I know exactly what you mean by people thinking they're artists but not knowing what an artist is. That was fucking obvious as HELL to me in school because of the singers who would sing everything perfectly rhythmically and technically correct, but how can you even ALLOW yourself to sing Strauss or Brahms with no PAIN involved?! The classical music world is so devoid of emotion, and it's SO SAD because I KNOW the composers wrote that shit with all the pain flowing from their artistic souls. I HATE the classical world for that now. I can't stand that they even allow some of those people onstage to slaughter the genius of centuries-old GODS of music, and then they have to praise these droid-like singers as being talented? Huh? How can they DO THAT?! It makes me so mad, I can't even listen to a singer without getting pissed off at the whole music world these days. It enrages me to no end.

A few weeks ago, I was writing a lot to a guy I met online. We got to e-mailing a lot, and the whole reason I wrote to him in the first place was because he had an online journal that was so grammatically flawless that I assumed he must have had that sort of writer instinct that forces people like you and me to write endlessly, but he doesn't have it. I eventually just stopped writing to him because everything he wrote was dripping with scientifically delineated emotionless bullshit, and he thought he was god's gift to the English language. I couldn't even fathom how wrong he was, so I figured it best to let it go at that. Of course, it helped my decision to stop writing to him when it became painfully evident that he thought I was completely psycho.

I like for people to be aware of my psycho-ness, but not if it means they'll purposely keep themselves at a distance from the real me. Sometimes I feel like people just allow themselves to get involved in my life because I'm some sort of a curiosity that should be displayed in a museum somewhere. Either that, or I feel like they're talking to me because they want to be able to tell their friends how cutting-edge they are to they have this crazy friend.

Well, I guess that's all I wanted to add for now. I'm glad to hear that you eventually got some alcohol, and I hope your Monday goes as well as can be expected.

I love you.
Perdita