william_faulkner Piso Mojado I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work--a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand where I am standing. Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands. Until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail. 050512 ... Piso Mojado ...until he was nothing and they were nothing and there was not even a voice but instead their hearts were speaking to one another in chanting measures beyond the need for words... The Sound and the Fury 050512 ... Piso Mojado the_heart_in_conflict_with_itself 050512 ... Piso Mojado ...by April it was the actual thin depthless suspension of false dawn itself, in which he could already see and know himself to be an entity solid and cohered in visibility instead of the uncohered all-sentience of fluid and nerve-springing terror alone and terribly free in the primal sightless inimicality. That was gone now. Now the terror existed only during that moment after the false dawn, that interval's second between it and the moment which birds and animals know: when the night at last succumbs to day... the hamlet 050525 ... Lemon_Soda Where is the compassion? How empty and hollow the words thrown across this forum seem when compared to the tribute they represent in the imagination of the writer. Do we so readily except the good enough, the words that come from the eyes of a person who cannot see past the imaginary and weightless illusion of their own world? Can we not lift the pen free of the trappings of selfishness and elevate it to the benevolent intention and focus of the selfless? I implore the humble poet, the scribe of the spirit, to apply their finesse to the expression of a verse above and beyond the view from thier own front door. Travel the dusty roads with an open eye and a broader heart and truly recognize the divine inspiration that so pointedly drives the human race. Know the value of but one tear shed when wept for another. Feel your bosom burn with the pride of anothers great achievement. Wail aloud, long and broken, for the tragedies. Feel the rush and excitement of true adventure. Let the drama take you. The true poet, the true writer, does not write of themself, but of all of us. Their works are inspired because they reach out and touch every one of our lives in a deep and signifcant way. They talk of our world, our accomplishments, our downfalls and faults. They scribe on parchment the very essence of the spirit of what it is to be human. They do not record their fears and desires, nor triumphs and views. These mean something only to themselves and are better left in a journal. Share us with us, show us were we are. Take all the world in your hands and wring it out like a wet rag all over these pages and don't let a drop fall to the wayside. We are one and all siblings, part of a greater entity, a birthrite, a blessing. Write about here, now, with all of us peeking over your shoulder. Put a taste of every view, every heart, in the words you select. Take the awesome power of expression that is yours to command and spin a show of dancing words so great that every soul that sees it sees themselves, and is touched. Selfless and selfish, you can change the world. 050525 ... pipedream the sound and the fury tore at my heart....brilliant, brilliant work. 050526 ... oE yeah...ditto good to see the empress of effulgance back in blather 'Sup pd ... 050526 ... epitome of incomprehensibility La la la. I seem to be saying that a lot today. I finally finished The Sound and the Fury a while ago. Here's to stream of consciousness pebbled with myriad steppingstones. 060118 what's it to you? who go blather from