1/30/86

This is the note I wrote today at the coffeeshop: For the article- a theory without unity- a unity of looser states of mind- looser boundaries- may allow for an expansion of strength- perhaps at the cost of some ambiguity of focus.

The cost, postponement in attaining the ideal.

The purchase: the hope of having any theory at all (ref: Duhem) (this added in later)

Higher and lower lines- sum lines a line can indicate that the lower thought- came later- in recognition of the fact that....

What is this aberration?

The problem with measurement is that the things most worth measuring cannot yet be measured by any device. But as we discard the scale towards simple material ( a philosopher is a slave of philsophy; the poet is shackled to his or her poetry)

2/1/86

Suddenly, once in awhile, a sense of the total *rush* of time on one level- In this experience we sense that time- while moving from then to now- is also a huge rising tide -going forward at ever greater rates of intensity- (the last phrase crossed out in the notebook) that to observe (crossed out) it at all is to feel a sense of its totality- whilch is of undreamed of immensity -magnified in all the...(crossed out, last word unreadable) senses.

Exactly at the point of metaphor (crossed out)
The entire language dissolves-
a vapor in the imagination of experience
gathered at the threshold (crossed out)
Poet: A Four Letter Word
I think to speak
I search for... (crossed out) the telling the saying
the language dissolves
leaving (crossed out) a trauma of experience
not fit for a dog

I tried to be frank
And sarcasm paid
Its eloquent witness
A translation of fraud

A lying (crossed out, unreadable) mustache
The absence of history
fluorescent fortune cookie

booby, booby
scuba duba
don't deny
a separate Cuba

2/2/86

I

These were the conditions of the poem:
A bright sun and distances neither too near or too far
And an element of ruse, so near here in the absence
An emphasis of shape and strangeness, ushering in
An elongated tense (peculiar that asks, but
Primarily speaks its explanations in faults)
Kinds of primary qualities, associations, basks
A self-conscious *hauteur,* leans over to pick the
Flower from her- parenthesis- awake- key signature

II