Read the blog posts and the articles on this site if you like, but the way I see the world might be more accessible by reading this web page. With some reluctance, I took the Keirsey test at work about three years ago. I thought it might be as relevant as the career test I completed in high school that suggested I become a fireman. Everyone has a different experience, but when I added the numbers up, what I found was an almost dead-on description of me. The test is based on preferences – what motivates you or what options you would want to take in given situations (for example, do you prefer to work on deadlines or … just whenever?) and from each response, your character and temperaments are etched out. Feeling an eeriness about the outcome, I read the details of my “type” – the INFP – in Please Understand Me. Less than one percent of the population has the INFP character type. The uniqueness comes from the INFPs’ energy sources. There are two: other people (external) and themselves (internal). Yes, I am introvert, but I’ll talk to strangers in line at the grocery store anytime.
This is my favorite part of the write-up I linked to above: INFPs are usually talented writers. They may be awkard and uncomfortable with expressing themselves verbally, but have a wonderful ability to define and express what they’re feeling on paper. INFPs also appear frequently in social service professions, such as counselling or teaching. They are at their best in situations where they’re working towards the public good, and in which they don’t need to use hard logic.
Here’s a link I found if you’d like to take the test.
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Tags: Personality
In the same vein as Allen Ginsberg, I offer this poem … in the guise of a Yahoo! personals ad. Ginsberg’s piece is as honest as anything I’ve ever read. When I was first putting words together, I thought I held the license to deeply personal writing – complete openness to readers – and words that were spontaneous and flowed like music. I didn’t realize the beats had beaten me to it some 30 or 40 years earlier. The times have changed since the original members were writing poetry, which was well into the 1990s. Newspaper classifieds today or the tabloids you pick up in the vending machines downtown are more likely to contain ads for erotic services than ones from innocent hearts hoping to make connections. The following advertisement is fictional. It hasn’t been posted anywhere. Given its themes and proximity to recent changes in my life, it should not be regarded as accurate or as a serious post for what I hope to find from a friend or lover. This site is not about me making a connection (that would be a side benefit.) I am merely playing around with the medium – playing the field, if you will – as a creative writing exercise. I couldn’t tell you what I want now. Probably not for another few months. But it’s fun to imagine that true love can be found through a well-worded sales approach, which is what personal ads are, in the end.
In a few hundred words, it’s almost impossible to condense a person into an accurate portrait while also making them sound appealing. So this is my attempt to make a few broad brushstrokes with a nervous hand – at least turning the sky the right shade and showing the flow in the hills. The landscape is me and you are the audience filling in lovely details from a general description I’ve presented. This metaphor may have something to do with my background as a writer. Or it could just be optimism. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Poetry
Scrawled on the mailbox side over the metal rivulets was the old man’s last name. Though it belonged to a long lineage of back-broken men and sad women, the broad blood-colored paint strokes of his own making on display at the end of the driveway made the name belong to only him, and not even to the grandkids who sometimes watched him work.
He’d painted it on a Saturday morning in a half-lit garage, where he did all his building and fixing, that smelled like 100 year-old limestone sweat and oily work tools. He had sturdy hands, his fingers calloused and often bandaged. Sometimes there were open sours smeared with some red first aid goop that his grandsons thought particular to old wisened men from another generation. They’d watch him in the narrow tool shed next to the garage sharpen lawn mower blades standing in shooting orange sparks, his face not changing. The boys, if they were older by another five years, might have seen him as the composite of the concentration and the lostness of old age, but instead saw him as still. His work was done in quiet, repaid with a handshake from a neighbor happy to mow again or a smile from a little boy grateful to have a bicycle tire patched, and when he was done, he was usually hungry. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Family Life
Sloppy behind the wheel, too broad on the turns at the intersections, the caravan came wild toward its destination – a karaoke bar attached to a strip club. Artificial lights had taken over the city streets with a brown-orange hue muddying the crosswalks and building sides. Another intersection and the cars swung wide, the passenger-side tires coming up to the pavement and veering off. The windshield glass started beading light rain, an occasional heavy drop falling hard and streaming through the smaller ones. But they kept their windows down, their heads looking out and their arms reaching, waving drunk hellos to foot traffic on the sidewalks, waiting for lights to change or sitting under umbrellas and sipping café drinks.
l fell back in my seat and concentrated on following the taillights. I did my best to keep up, but sober, I wasn’t nearly as good a driver as them. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Bars
Sometimes, this happens. I almost gave up on this piece. I spent an afternoon writing it. I sent it to a friend for editing when I thought I’d come too close to it (thank you, Jenni). But here it is, a mercy posting. Whittled down to its essence, the most beautiful words here and the others dicarded, so that what I meant to say is more evident – and relevant. Good. Now I can move on to something else.
In the back bedroom, I cleared some space on a desk for my things. I set some private papers written in lawyer language there, my keys, my wallet and filled the drawers with cash and some writing that I’d composed on loose pages a year ago. This is my confidant now. The place where I have absolute faith – this room with the desk and its tall mirror. The subtle hint by its interior designer must be introspection. On every wall, a mirror shows me back to myself and my life in legal records. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Me
