Who the…?!!!

What’s In A Name?

I think of myself, among other things, as a not-for-profit poet, a penny philosopher, a dysfunctional artist, and a citizen of the post-apocalypse.  Confusing?  Try living it. 

I have been writing poetry off and on about as long as I have been able to put scribbles on paper.  Though my endeavors have always been sporadic, it is something that I have always felt the desire to do, hence the main purpose of this blog being to share my work.  I have no illusions of being a “professional” poet, but I would like to at least have my work read.

By the same token, I have always been a free thinker, by my own opinion at least.  I am fascinated by thought and ideas, dreams and the possibilites of everything.  Suffice it to say, I spend entirely too much time thinking, and probably not enough time actually doing. 

As in, doing things like making art.  If nothing else, I have an artistic soul.  I would safely say that I have been creative in everything I have ever done, always finding a way to express something somehow or another.  Right, what I have to show for it is almost exactly nothing.  Whilst I’ve been wandering about these rambling years of my life, I’ve never actually taken the time, thus far, to focus on actually making art itself.  You know, art expressly for the sake of art.  Certainly, I have dabbled here and there with pencils, ink, words, photography, leather, junk, the neighbors cat…well, you get the idea.  In the end, I am still searching for my mojo, artistically speaking. 

I guess that brings me to the last statement.  I was born to a dying people, raised in world that had already come to an end, and became a refugee in order to survive.  I am not going to preach about where I came from as there are already enough people on all sides of the issue that are more than willing to do so.  All I can say is that, not so far away, there are places where entire societies of people came to an end against their will.  Where everything that they knew, everything that they were, everything that they believed, was irrevocably destroyed.  In these places, the survivors are still trying to put the pieces back together and find some kind of existence.  I thought that running away would be my salvation, only to find that the real wastelands to escape are the ones buried deep inside.  I made it this far, many didn’t or won’t.  For the one’s that have been lost, for whom I’ve known and loved, I go on for them.

Well, that explains that, but…

Really, what is in a name?

Since this subject has been brought up on several occasions now, and since I realize that I have never publicly discussed this topic, I will cover it now.  I have never really felt “at home”, if you will, with my name.  It’s not really that I think it’s such a bad birth name, heaven knows there are worse, but it just never suited me.  As long as I can remember, I have imagined alternatives, some dignified, some read like a bad adult film star.  Such is the imagination. 

Then I discovered the cyberpunk genre and with the proliferation of the internet as we know it now, something else became apparent.  We have entered a new era of the online “reality”, where anyone can be anything and nothing may be as it seems.  We are all steadily becoming defined by our cell phone numbers, our e-mail addresses, our screen names and gaming monikers.  This fascinates me, as so many of the visions of those early cyberpunk writers are being realized.  We say, at least in America, that we can be anything we want.  Within the electronic realm, we have made that a reality.

When I decided to start publishing my poetry online, I knew that I wanted to do it under a psuedonym for a variety of reasons.  In choosing my new persona, I looked back to those old tomes of science fiction for some guidance and to it I added some introspection and self description.  The results?  Zero, something forever trapped between positive and negative, nothing, not really there.  In a way, I don’t exist.  I was born to one tribe and raised on the reservation of another, and now, separated from both, I belong to nowhere.  Anon, short for anonymous, the unknown.  So I am, both by circumstances and by choice.  Zero Anon, in end, I just like the way it sounds.

Addendum

In addition to the poetry, and as I stated above, I continue to be interested in creating art.  After many aimless years, I did become a student of metalworking and will, thankfully, be finished with my schooling soon.  While I intend to “get a real job” after graduating, it is my hope to begin working with metal as an artistic medium.  I have also recently become more interested in old printing techniques and the possibility of printing some of my poetry in handmade books.  My other interests include (in no particular order) camping and the outdoors, motorcycles, movies, reading (when I make time), paintball, enjoying the artwork of others, and travel.  I really am quite a boring person once you get to know me.

Maybe you’ll even stick around long enough to find out.

Zero