#devinhamilton

[mrs-alicejones]

Oscar Wilde’s Outsider Philosophy

Phrases and Philosophies for use of the Young, by Oscar Wilde, is one of those pieces you dig through the book shelf to find when you feel as if you have lost something that cannot particularly be named. In it he proves that not all philosophers are old men who have had their heads sculpted into slabs of marble. The ones who truly have insight, who can inspire, are more often than not men and women who have been punished for their convictions, men and women who probably know how to have a good time. Living in an era that was overly concerned with correct civil propriety Wilde eventually found himself on the butchering table of English society. Throughout all of his work he demonstrates how standing apart continues to be necessary. Too often people become ceaselessly lost and dulled by the wave heading for the horizon. Putting too much faith in an agenda takes the fun out of life, and turns off the mind. Enjoy tonight even if it doesn’t help you tomorrow, enjoy yourself without a particular motive, learn and grow without a reason. Re-evaluate the designated path that has been entrenched into the landscape. There lies the damages, and broken bones, of everyone else who forgot to take a look around, and that road has always been heading in the same direction. Here to offer encouragement for the outsider, one of my personal favorite devils, the pondering of a highly intelligent beast posing as an English gentleman.

Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young by Oscar Wilde

-The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered.

-Wickedness is a myth created by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others. 

-If the poor only had profiles there would be no difficulty in solving the problem of poverty.

-Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither.

-A really well-made button hole is the only link between Art and Nature.

-Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.  

-The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

-Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest importance. 

-Dullness is the coming of age of seriousness.  

-In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential. In all important matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential. 

-If one tells the truth, sooner or later, one is sure to be found out. 

-Pleasure is the only thing one should live for...nothing ages like happiness. 

-It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes. 

-No crime is vulgar, but all vulgarity is crime. Vulgarity is the conduct of others.

-Only the shallow know themselves. 

-Time is waste of money. 

-One should always be a little improbable. 

-There is a fatality about all good resolutions. They are invariably made too soon. 

-The only way to atone for being occasionally overdressed is by being always absolutely over educated. 

-To be premature is to be perfect. 

-Any preoccupation with what is right and wrong in conduct shows an arrest in intellectual development.

-Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

-A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it. 

-In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer. 

-Greek dress was in its essence inartistic. Nothing should reveal the body but the body. 

-One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art.

-It is only the superficial qualities that last. Man’s deeper nature is soon found out.

-Industry is the root of all ugliness. 

-The ages live in history through their anachronisms. 

-It is only the Gods who taste of death. Apollo has passed away, but Hyacinth, whom men say he slew, lives on. Nero and Narcissus are always with us.

-The old believe everything: the middle ages suspect everything: the young know everything.

-The condition of perfection is idleness. The aim of perfection is youth. 

-Only the great masters of style ever succeed in being obscure. 

-There is something tragic about the enormous number of young men there are in England at the present moment who start life with perfect profiles, and end by adopting some useful procession. 

-To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance. 

[mrs-alicejones]

Corridor

Eternal summer exists in the mystifying shadows found inside the coiling inner tapestries. As fragile and important as a lone flickering flame on the portentous shores of an empty night. Serving as the beacon that ignites the watch tower, calling the menacing, leviathan sea. Mine. Those days were mine, belonging to me, and so did I. In one sun drenched afternoon I lived entire lifetimes in the strangest of corners, places we now ignore. We, a feral gang, would explode into the echoing hallway of the apartment building, feet beating the cement floor ceaselessly. Wherever, wherever, surpassing past the endless night. 

By Devin Hamilton 

[mrs-alicejones]

To die wild is not an accomplishment; it is galvanic resonance, inside, full, creeping continuously to each little particle with the intention of a fluid wave swelling through and sweeping over the top of the damns and the borders of the little lives living separately inside shoulder to shoulder. Natural and slow when you stop attempting and take a seat on the ripped couch to listen to the purr, growl, carnivorous steps deep, uninterrupted. Lay lady lay, the kill comes shortly. 

[mrs-alicejones]

New Years In The Attic

I think I left it in a public bathroom. That must be what happened. The mattress has been overturned, all the corners inspected with a flash light, I got down on my knees, rubbed my belly on the floor, searching, searching, searching, and every back pack and purse has been unzipped and gutted. Hell, I even found my favorite purple lipstick in the bowels of my grandmothers red crocodile clutch. . Losing my glorious black leather bound notebook has tested my awareness of my own levels of possession. Fuck, my girl was beautiful. Stiff as a brick with a spine that worked like hinges, overlain with an inky black overcoat that never once rippled or tore. Her pages consisted of a simple cream with a grid, instead of lines, dissecting the soft thin paper. She was all dominatrix on the outside and spring within. It was love at first sight in the aisles of Target.

Once, due to my own carelessness, the backbone ripped down the center separating the guts from the protective coat. I employed my father, an engineer, to surgically stitch her back together. He sat across from me at his kitchen table, pausing the glass of whiskey moving towards his red lips, my soap stone rocks clinked inside his glass. He eyed me, suggested I buy a new one. “That’ll fix the damage,” his jovial laugh came out as he washed down his drink. Relating the bond I’d created to this magic book to the one he’d carried once upon a time on his sailing trip to Africa, I convinced him to take up the project. Apparently, all it took was a special glue running down the spine, and a night under a spring bed. 

It has been perhaps three months of saying ‘yes, yes, she’s gone’ to myself when I stand in front of the bookcase and my muscle memory points my eyes on top of the geography books where she use to sit. The turn of the year reminds me of the contents I placed inside that I lost. It was around this same that I sat at my favorite wild coffee shop with my familiar notebook flipped open on top of the scratched tables. The bustle of business men, artists, and gleeful non conformists hummed around me and, hungover in more way than one, I penned myself a list of 15 goals for the new year, the amount was in homage to the changing digit on the calendar that year. But before I did that, I bent my head forward and whispered truthful secrets to my black notebook. The thought started as a consideration of the entire social phenomenon of setting and almost immediately forgetting fanciful wishes, year after year. 

“What is your New Years Resolution?”  Intention is a beautiful concept. Inspiration is a necessary driving force. Crafting plans and recognizing the measures to accomplish is what can make the difference in elevating a person to their next level. I do not scorn the process, nor do I defend it, because -as is most often the case- these processes are neutral in and of themselves. It is the morality, ethics, and motivations applied to any concept that skews it towards white, black, grey. 

Two scenarios play out like a broken record. The, first is the popular tribal notion to be reborn. Current practices shy away from fire and death, though. The clock strikes, the numbers shift, and inward millions of people lustily whisper now with glassy eyes staring up at the clock. They have planted a foot and marked a spot to either metamorphasize into their intrinsic self that has been denied to them, or change into the person they have desired to be for too long dammit! Their battle is identity. The concept of the self evolves and updates, but it never overturns all the way to the foundation, erasing the past. Believing this is possible, and more importantly awaiting an inception instead of finding one, orchestrating one, is to buy into the ultimate scam, to sip on the poisoned kool-aid of Egypt. 

 The second, is the commitment again to change, but this time in the physical realm. Do you feel bloated after the holidays? Becoming self conscious about all those Christmas cookies, carved ham, sugary cocktails, and the deprivation of the out of control proportion of decadence you willingly partook in when we told you to buy it? I bet your blue jeans feel like a blanket of shame when I show you an exotic toned beach babe. Well, we have a new solution for you to pay for. If we can’t get you to directly pay for it, we will still manipulate your emotions and self worth because, fuck, this will still indirectly help us to get you to hand over your money. 

 An interesting modern phenomenon is occurring in which people publicly lie about their desires. Suzie says on facebook: In 2016 I intend to graduate from college with new experiences that I will remember forever. Translate this and really, Suzie wants to experience cocaine and have a thrilling experience to relay one weekend when shes brunching. Scott instagrams an iPhone photo for his followers that reads “This years I will run out of pages in my passport,” a pair of leather shoes and a bike can be made out in the background. The thought that truly dwells inside of Scott's mind is running away from the guilt of making excuses at every turn, and barely spending more than a day in a half at the apartment of his dying grandmother. She left him a travel fund. Scott gets upwards of 300 likes. Betty snap-chats a photo of her pink running shoes with the caption, “Already at a great start of having a healthy and happy 2016.” She spent $350 at Nike after 15 minutes surveying her own naked body in her mothers bathroom mirror. When you translate any of it there are only three New Years Resolutions. I don’t want to die. I want to be important. Fear is an enemy.  

Now, the picture I’ve spelt out feels like a blue toned Picasso piece hanging alone in a dark deserted museum with the security guard jacking off in the Greek nudist exhibition to the left. But when my pen worked across my black notebooks pages, the tone was anything but. My lover and sister were sitting around me laughing, my latte was hot and delicious, I felt swollen with a serene sense of accomplishment putting this idling thought into action in my journal. Remember, also that although I started off inside her pages in my cynical way, that I followed it up with a giggling hypocrisy: I preceded to create my own 15 New Years resolutions. Our planet completing a loop around the sun is pure magnificence, I think Christians say miracle, a real reason for Animalistic, balls to the wall, champagne spilling celebration. The problem is that it has become another smoke guard, another great marketing accomplishment. A new way to keep smart peoples attention on the superficial and spread this like a disease. The common cultural phenomenon of designing a New You each New Year is not evil, but it is a one hell of a trick, the important thing is too make sure you have the last laugh. Do not take the whole thing too seriously. 

 I closed my baby girl confident she’d be here for this moment with me. Ending those New Years thought, for the first time, I penned a little loving intention just to her. I told her of course that I was well aware it was more than likely, perhaps even intended, that none of the 15 goals would be remembered or accomplished , but that I couldn't wait to open her a year later and laugh together at them. The one distinction, I put it to her seriously, was that I completely planned on getting a magnificent hat to crown myself a pirate king. I told her not to be jealous when I became attached to that as well. Well the hat is here, but she is not. Its sitting on the chair next to me and looking at it I can't help but wonder if my pirate hat will make it to 2017.

[mrs-alicejones]

Remember?

I’m all about a little bit of pale surrender

too many white lights and not enough cunning conversation 

melting in the corner of the room 

not entirely, 

because my body floats to places I didn’t give it permission

lips pressing around secrets 

a mouthful of pleasure 

[mrs-alicejones]

Aftermath Blues

Shivering on a cement ledge as the remaining raindrops patter on top of a closed lid of a metal garbage across from me, and siren pass by, I light another smoke. Brown leaves are stacked on the edge underneath my boots and the wet fence my back rests upon is decayed and cracked open two space to my left. I don’t like the scurrying of noises I can hear seeping from this hole; flashed of the raccoon I encountered dining in the graveyard from an early part of summer wash across my brain. I’d rather not find him maneuvering about my backyard in the biting cold of winter. No happy meaning could be contrived if he sent one of his desperate paws through the underside of the open part of the damp brown two-by-four. But I sit without stirring. because this outside wind is too damn intoxicating with its mean, cold, kisses. Three pens lie inside my pocket, but none bleed correctly on the sorted page I dragged outside with my weary bones. What has it been? 45 hours since I last slept? 29 hours since my flesh pushed back upon my skull in submission to the tirade of a colorless gust of cold. I did it. I met the soulless deadlines, cemented from my vantage point like a marble God only able to offer endorsement. Yes, I do believe my lungs will inhale all of this cold promise they can get. I can’t say I allowed myself to waste away on a dark winter night, it was a pleasurable greed dripping down my spine that locked me at the center. 

[mrs-alicejones]

Modern Scaffold

“Here check this out.” I hand you my phone and rest my head on your shoulder as we both giggle cynically at gifs of women in too tall shoes face planting. I could also place my phone in your hands to edit my recent writing sample, pick apart a selfie, or see if you recognize the number bomb calling me since last Friday. No one wants to admit to the silent trust both parties agree to when such an act of swapping occurs, because it hits on a level of materialism that causes internal cringing, but such a treaty is real and by all means deadly serious. Therefore, when trusted with the phone of another, please, do not take the liberty of leaning back and letting your fingers fly across my screen. Do you hear that? That’s the sound of forced patience, you are right, it does sound a lot like your mother. In reality I have death threat eyes judging the aerodynamics of shanks cutting through this city bus air. Each time an individual pulls this incredibly rude move I become consciously aware of my breathing to keep that pulsing vein from making an entrance. Yes, an enticingly sexy lingerie clad photo set lurks in my recent pictures and I am not ashamed about saving these bombshell pictures or sending them to a loved one, but do I want you to see them? Well, I might, but if I do I will hold the phone during the appraisal. A depressing and personal prose that got me through the horrors of last week is open on my home screen, my bank account automatically logs in from my phone, and I am waiting on an incriminating txt from a friend of a cousin. When I hit you with a cold, “hand me back my phone,” and you put up your hands in the universal ‘I’m guilty of nothing’ fashion just know I could hit you, and I want to, and now you’ve lost all privileges of seeing the remarkable and hysterical wonders I hold on my phone, because you, you are a phone stealer. I will remember that. At least, until the next time I have a video of old men trying karate in parking lots for us to snicker at in the elevator, but this time instead of passing it off, I’ll keep the materialist garbage firmly in my grasp.

[mrs-alicejones]

Discreet Symptoms

You invaded my brain, overtook. This time a 1915 faded postcard forced my surrender to your fiery red lips. The slanted cursive tore my heart another rupture to eventually scar, reminding me abrasively of the hand written notes you left by the coffee pot after endless nights of red wine when we’d dance around the apartment. You miraculously managed to wake up before 10 a.m. always. The postcard lingering in my fingers at the checkout, the woman asked if I was set. I dropped it on the counter. “No thanks,” I replied, “I don’t think the past is my thing.”

Words and picture: Devin Hamilton