8/6/89
There is no easy way to accommodate
pain. But the quicker you stop
registering disgust, outrage and fear, the
quicker it will appear less
formidable.

To habitually avoid certain steps
because of fear is to begin to
permanently delimit one's freedom of
movement.

Nothing sayable goes without saying.

Later (2pm)

"Quieting" the mind, Zen, etc- like
allowing the murky surface (memories) to
settle so you can see to the bottom
of the pool- or "through" it- which
reveals life and currents beneath. The
everyday events plus the aroused memories
connected with these events forms
a swampy surface which must be cleared
away routinely almost without thinking,
automatically.

Before clearing it away, however, you
may want to examine it, or while
letting it clear away.
you can accumulate
those sediments, which, after all, are part
of that whole glimpse.


Time is a test, in the above sense, but
in others too. In this sense, if "life" and "time"
follow any pattern, they resemble
a series of tests or examinations. Even the
magazines "Life" and "Time" resemble test
results. "Experiments were conducted in the field,
and here are the results."
I write poetry using the same principle, only
the scale involved is not years, but an entire
life, or, life itself and time itself, as
"far as I can see."

9/1/89

In all of that (the anticipated theft of the
car, the argument, the fever blister) what was
taking place was the (manic) resistance- or
emotional denial- to the taking place of the
end of summer (symbolized by the end of August).

Does ritual reduce acting out by offering
a point of acknowledgement? (meaning temporal
point).

Circumstances (in life) are like the wind or
rain in weather.

This morning- or almost exactly at noon
(the half-way point between the day or night)-
I thought that maybe there is a third
alternative besides the categories "objective"
and "subjective." We now have only the
term "intuitive" which is quickly equated
with the vague.

We can only avoid something "taking place"
by having something else take place. ("Take place"
is a physical image for a temporal event).

-If the objective (day) is to be distinguished
from the subjective (night)-

We now have a third person ( a judge) in place of
a third category - "objective/subjective"

The analyst offers him or herself as
the representative of this "third category" The
analyst is the agency of the not-yet-known,
already existent and unconsciously denied
truth. Baudelaire acknowledged this in the form of
"correspondances."

Art calls forth the silent adherent. Psychoanalysis
calls forth the verbal adherent. Politics
calls forth the acting adherent.

9/2/89

I am like a whittler whittling away
at something. I am a good whittler, in
that what shows in relief is usually taken
as a sign for a direction toward what
is underlying.

You find out the nature of things by
touching them.

Denial provides shelter at the cost of
numbing response to everything that surrounds
what is being denied.

I am waiting, like a whittler,
but I am not "Waiting for Godot."
I am waiting for x.

I've built a shelter for my waiting
out of pages, out of silence.

9/9/89

How kind time, even history, is to those that love.

Time and history are kind to those that love.

From thought to history in 12 seconds.
Shrink=divide
divide=misspell
misspell=blueprint
blueprint=sky
sexy=reduce
reduce=loss
loss=categories
categories shrink
shrink categories
shy sex
reduce recline residence
lose blues
print

Being unable to wait is what brings about the
embarrassing numbers- the world via dissolution
returns with death to oppose this conception of reality itself as
a victim of objectivity.
Objectivity, like subjectivity, is temporary
(I can claim this appropriation of myself for the world's purposes as an injury-)
Objectivity/touch/grasp

subjectivity/sleep/encompassment

This side/that side
this side of this one
that side of that one

with love there are spills, squaws

gulls squawk

10/1/89

Am I taking secret pride in *not* writing?
The answer is yes. The pride consists in
knowing that to refuse expression encourages
a state of independence from the dominion
of definitiveness. The strength I derive
from this sense of independence is pleasurable and
feels healthy. This is the opposite of
Davies' "quitting writing because your life
is not going well."

Writing eventually pushes you into a
corner in the sense that yhou get cornered
by your own defintions.

Reading can similarly screen
out feelings of experiential autonomy.
The reader is
enticed to search for a characterization
of reading which corresponds with her
experience- The intoxication of this hide-
and-go seek game can even make her
forget that nothing can correspond to her
own experience more than her own
experience

Quickly, this definition also
erodes, i.e., company is its own best
company, the differences between good for and
good with, 1890=1967, the era of nuance.
1967- the era of fact.

All discoveries have to do with freedoms.

If you can't remember the last time you
lied to yourself successfully or unsuccessfully,
you probably won't understand or remember
this sentence very long.

"Head to the Hills!"

10/3/89

Too much exertion means its an old
ritual, done too many times before to still
have much zing.

11/3/89

The Argument

(The lovers have had an argument.
She and he are divided. She has
gone to stay with her mother. He
addresses her, their friends, his friends,
his family, her family,
their ancestors, his nation, the cosmos.)

This evening I must rest
I can't believe we were so
sharp with each other, I mean
I didn't realize we had become
so angry, so embittered. I
guess I'm naive, I thought I was
being patient, but I see now I
was wrong.