Gary Snyder, You Asshole.

I keep noticing this odd subliminal phenomena and wonder if I am the only one. I've tried this a couple of times with mixed results. The most recent time was unintentional and happened last night. I was sitting on the couch with a novel when I started into a conversation with the Croft. The book's back cover was facing up and the words of praise in bold ink were visible, but only if i looked down. I was looking at the Croft, but when i spoke to her I began to use words that aren't normally found in my vocabulary. Most notably, I said the word 'Marvelous.' 'What a strange thing to say,' a part of my mind pointed out, and then I looked down and not one but two bold Marvelouses revealed themselves.

My question is this, was my brain suggestible to the words I wasn't even looking at directly? Was the fact that these words were in my cone of vision, just not being actively read have something to do with the fact that i used marvelous in a sentence? Jus how impressionable is the mind? Because this definitely is not the first time this has happened to me. Its really best that I don't even have so much as a newspaper nearby when I talk.

All this started me on a paranoid line of thought that wondered just how much every little thing I see and hear effects me deep down. Are all those shitty pop songs I've heard over the years secretly informing the way i write? Do the thousands of advertisements I've seen in my life have a sinister influence on my sketches? And does the repetition of these cultural ephemera add to their suggestive power? Because I've read the line "Read the Poet Gary Snyder, a True Elder, A Modern Age Thoreau" on the wall of the men's restroom at work so many times it has become some sort of mantra. I have no desire to read Gary Snyder, am not even sure what a True Elder is and am pretty sure Thoreau is a modern age Thoreau.

But i can't get it out of my head, I'm stuck with it, seemingly forever. Deep inside, where the knowledge of how to start a fire in the wilderness or tie a sheepshank knot or something useful and potentially life-saving, or a romantic memory might lay to make me smile on a day where things are going fairly shitty there lay that stupid bathroom graffiti. Far from wanting to read Gary Snyder, suddenly I hate him. and Thoreau. And my True Elders. Whoever the hell they might be.