Kasey's links: even though I don't like bicycles at all, I like my new symbol better than the old Klein jar I had before (of which my friend the scientist said: nothing can get in and nothing can get out). Now I've been demoted to the second alphabetized group. I don't get to be with Stephanie, Nada, Patrick, Laura, Katie, Marianne, Cassie, Eileen, Ron, Drew, Gary, Jordan, Catherine, Tim, and Brian all of whom are friends of mine, but I do get to be with some great bloggers: Jim, Li, Chris, Christina, Amanda, Johanna, David, Jonathan, Mike, Deborah, Aimee, Joe and Jack many of whom are friends or hopefully soon will be. I did get fair warning, I have to admit. I guess if I don't get it together to change my template one of these days I'll find myself drifting into group three (lots of great bloggers there also!) But I love my template! I do admit it is difficult to read (don't know how and Laura can't figure out how to change it to the larger type) but not as difficult or dangerous as it would be to ride that rickety bicycle! All kidding aside, Kasey's links are more fun than a barrel full of monkeys and who could resist exploring for hours on end this cheerful, colorful, terrific menu?

6/12/90

A thought has to be lifted. This
requires at least the mental
equivalent of lifting anything else.
Lacking this effort, things
move just as little mentally as they do
physically.

The workpersonlike quality of art goes
into the scaffolding.

6/16/90

Let the sentences come one at a time
(I go to the shelf to find my notebook
and I don't see it at first glance-
this time I don't become anxious- that is
unusual. Is this the fear that someone will not
*be* there-either physically or experientially?)
To assert:
"Let the sentences come one at a time" is also
to recognize the "question and answer" aspect of
writing. But t wait for the answer to your question
(or assertion) is also to feel able to assume someone is out there.
I talked with Charles about my idea that so
called creative writing may function as a
transitional object for the reader, for the
writer and by implication- for the culture.
This is the silent supplication of the writer's
silence- the infinitely poignant voices of the
dead that Rilke was talking about.

Rousseau" "In this as in all other matters
my natural disposition has had a great
influence on my principles, or rather on my
habits, for I have hardly every acted according
to rules-or have hardly ever followed any
rules than the promptings of my nature.
Never has a premeditated lie approached my
mind, never have I lied to my own
advantage; but I have often lied out of
shame, to avoid embarassment in trivial
affairs that concerned only mek, as when in
order to keep a conversation going I have
been forced by tghe slowness of my ideas and
my lack of small talk to hav erecourse to
fiction for something to say.When I am
obliged to talk and interesting truths do not
spring to mind readily enough, I invent
stories rather than keep quiet, but in
making upt these stories I am careful as far
as possible to avoid lies which would go
against justice and the truth we
ower to others, andt keep to fictions
which are a matter of equal indifference to
myself and everyone else. In doing so I
should naturally prefer to put a moral
truth in the place of a factual truth,in
other words to give a true picture of the
natural affections..." (73-74)

Reveries of The Solitary Walker
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

*

Sink or Swim

A time in the future when a planetary
overheat brings a need to leave the planet.
This one Chance Devereux named Sink or
Swim. What
he never could have guessed was the possibility
that this hope amounted to more like a situation of Sink *and* Swim.

6/19/90

"What does it mean?"

"I don't know- yet. And that's
what makes it a poem."

6/24/90

An idea for a book-
thoughts of a writer in small excerpts- these
are gathered into "chapter"- These chapters have
titles like "Aftermath"- the titles (as in
"Aftermath") give a clue to the narrative. Earlier-
I waas thinking about some "concern" about a
certain "form" I wanted to write in- the
dillemmas that emerge
whenever I use such forms.

The "fictional" (speculative) quality of the
thought process itsel is that aspect of thought
which makes it so explicable with the psychoanalytic
method. Freud's psychoanalysis also a "psychopoetics"
(to use C.B.'s term) of everyday life.

There is a moral to every thought just as there
is a moral to every tale.

Thought itself is the fiction.

"The book" is the compilation of those
thoughts I transpose into the bound notebook.

3/1985

The narrative-
the site of the narrative- the dream life-Kafka
the Trial- the problem of "reports"
the problem of "official reality" in "1984"
the question of time
Time vs. mass
E=MC2
Both Einstein and Freud apporached the question of time as
[Freud-language] Kafka
Time of life- humankind's history
Birth vs time
time of birth- family history-
history taking- record keeping- recording of
information
exactitude- the obsessional history-
"conventional working"- work/time
artist's time-
experiements in record keeping -[Smithson?]
discovery of anxiety- challenge to security
technology of time- time keeping-
relativity of time- time measured in human intervals
myth-time'"God" time-cosmological time
commonality of Einstein and Freud
turn of the century

the past as a construct
the present as a a construct

Through a compiling of relatively
small-brief-minute descriptions, the
written narrative creates the ilusion of
movement.At least from a visual
standpoint, this universal literary
device is akin to the flip-movie
whereby small shifts in the spacing of an image
creates the illusion of movement.

study-sitting-walking-talking

*This* is where *this* begins, *that* is
where *that* begins.The telling of a
chronological fact combined with the
naming of its progenitor establishes the rhetorical
basis of its authenticity.
From this moment on, the narrative has found its
site by citing (site-cite) the
basis of the narrator's demand
for credence on the reader's part. Simultaneously
the reader is asked to "second the motion" [time
raised to the "second power"?]

The reader's demands for the authenticated
status of the writer's report implies
the reader's recognition of the responsibility she is
taking in this participation. If the
reader is to bring these inscriptions once again to
life and cause them to once again
recreate their being in a living mind, the
reader participates in establishing the verifiability
of this report. However, when the writer is
highly concerned with this implication, it
is likely she will attempt to limit such
demands for credence as much as possible,
simultaneously forgoing the temptation to
speculate and generalize on small bits
of data. Such is the temptation of the
narrative, which, by keeping itself
to relatively small bits
of visualized experience, maintains the
illusion of psychological objectivity. (Quote Goffman)

*
Paranoia- exruciating self-consciousness-
is based ona reasonable observation.
If I am part of a system and I
wish to move into a different position
in that system- the outside will "move"
to block me (as in football)."Winning"
is pushing through this blocking.

The interior mode is similar.
If I wish to push through a blocking
movement inside myself- as I move
towards the "blocked" place something in
me will push me back.

An analogy to this is the "power
struggle." Both of us wants something-
we agree it is terribly important that
we have this- then one of us decides
only one of us can have this. Once one of
us admits we both didn't get it
one of us loses.

As it appears, 5 years ago I put
the poetry aside. I felt beaten
and discouraged. It's easy to get knocked
down again,
once you've been floored.
In every sense- it is the factor of *time*
that provides the perspective.

What in this god-forsaken world could be more romantic that Gary and Nada strolling along the Champs-Elysees? Wandering slowly through the Musee D'Orsay, gazing raptly at the Eiffel Tower, eating Cous-Cous in some cool Parisian scene...hanging out among the bookstalls on the Seine? Come on!

"subject: written on the plane

illuminated"

Have a great trip, Gary and Nada.

Stephanie Young's latest headline:

My Mother Sets My Grandpa's Pants on Fire

Get ready -fait accompli- we're heading for California and here come the fashion makeovers...It'll be all right honey, I'll always love you... and remember exactly how you looked and how you were when we first fell in love... 2/11/03...Ms Blogga, I'll always be yours, first and foremost, remember that!

xtina's world! (don't forget to drag your cursor over those little fishes- at first slowly-then you can speed up)

9/30/82

A poem beginning with the line or title
Solitary Pursuits

When the excitement gives way to depression
excitement/ depression/ assertion

You, who have mastered fending people
off. Have fended me off. And so
again and again I return to my
solitary pursuits. I have proceeded honestly.
But mostly it is a ----. I am no
longer angry. Now I do have a direction.
It is *away* from my anger. All my
last ten years have been devoted to
anger. I wish to retire from anger.
And on and on into the psychotherapist's
journal. But where will be the
room with all my ravings? Where
will I go to shout?

My anger has been *no help*.

I can feel the anger.

March 17, 1984

I ran into numerous friends today.
Some you know, some you don't.
But listening to Philip Whalen's poetry
and thinking about why I like it so much
I'm connecting to your question
"What is the border of a work as such?"
Or something like that.

The idea of a formal work
like a song or a poem
implies an occasion like a reading or a singing
so a distinction develops between the formal pronouncing
of beliefs and the intimate revelation of a feeling
or- is it that conversation must be witty
but the writer allows more time for the
wit to be displayed?

We don't go back to conversations
they are largely forgotten
but poetry is remembered and repeated
read and reread
and therefore must stand the test of time
conversation- time=minutes
poetry-time=centuries

----------------------------------------------------

All you ever had to do to be so fair was to
note the situation of the writing and the
feelings which are accompanying it- this
would give a record of why you would be
so willing to make such an asshole out
of yourself to say those things-

today

wrote a card to Marty-my friend who
I've not been in touch with for years who is
*very* overweight

I go to a meeting- my name was listed
as the central person for my agency among
a listing of all the agencies on the Upper West
Side - Mildred Lopez was there- the
supervisor at the job I left in 1973 to
spend a year writing (I wound up falling in
love with B)- the last day
I walked into a bookstore and bought a copy
of "Severance Pay"
After the meeting I run into Dan Prior-
who is working on a play-
Then I leave and run into the Director of the
Teacher's College Therapy Agency- the one who supervises the
case that I lost around the fees (the one
who left before completing his degree and again
can't complete his degree)- then the Whalen
reading seeing Peter, James, Charles, John, Eileen,
Bernadette, Lewis, Alice, Allen Ginsberg,
Jack Collum, Bob Holman- a very special
and nice and warm and strange, different day-

Phillip Wailin' for R.S. (Ron Silliman) 3/17/84

5/13/85

The quantification of time
forms only one cross section
of its changes and its essence.
Einstein's image for describing
relativity: "Spend an hour with
a pretty girl (he said), and it
feels like only a moment. Put
your hand on a hot stove for a
moment, and it feels like an hour."
At one point in history making love
was termed: "making time."

As there is an oscillation
between science and art
there is also an oscillation
between art and the street
(the marketplace).

Intervals of time vary in
quality as to how they
are remembered.The present
and past are linked according
to the outcomes of various
vectors. These vectors are
drawn together by intentions,
wishes and strong emotions.

In a very literal sense,
time is "created" by
experience.This includes
organic and inorganic
experience.this is sometimes
understood as meaning
"events." One of the current
centers of scientific interest
is to learn (now by computer
simulation) what occurred at
very early times in the
existence of physical reality.
There is another way that
experience creates time.This
is through intensity and
concentration- through focus.
To "see" something not
seen before is to bring it
into focus. The window of
attention is the window
through which one must pass to
come into another "dimension"
of time.

Music has been the most
successful human invention
for the "transport"
of human beings to
different temporal modes
of experience. Music is
a focussing of
intenstive attention on
a systematic fragmentation
of temporal experience. By
breaking time apart into
constituent elements, the
ordinary experience of time
is actually intensified.

5/14/85

"A certain amount of
time ago."

It is time that has fallen
around me
a form of silence
such that words
do not specify
at a distance
all at once.
A trememdous hush has
become louder than ever before...
still, it seems this country
now abusive, wants no isms.
Nor do I or and "I"
and that is true,my right
to establish my identity
is precious to me
but, then again, the trick is
there is no me
or there won't be, eventually
nothing to knit it together
and this I agree. Even
with all the historical
portraits, we don't remember
them, any of them: not Cain
or Adam or Zeus or Lincoln,
Sappho, Curie, Joan of Arc,
Eve, not any of them.

The benefits of sharing, also,
can be overemphasized. What,
indeed will happen?

Maybe this is becoming
vague because I am
preoccupied about something...

5/1985

The narrative is only the beginning

The achievement of the
narrative is only the beginning
of the story of the devlopment
of language. Anthropologists
are now speculating that the
acquisition of speech followed
the ability to utilize gestures
for communication after
erect posture was achieved.
With increased fine motor
control of the fingers came
fine motor control of the
tongue. Then speech.
On this model
speech *follows* fine
motor coordination.

It is this gestural
aspect of writing which
unites it with such media as
painting, dance and
architecture. Body
movement is tracked along
a path through the mind,
and its relationship
to the body
and movement is made
further towards the
mapping of the common
code that unites the
natural evolution of the mind to the
history of ideas.

What lies beyond the
narrative? After a
full century of investigation
we are as yet only seeing
the outlines. Why is that?
And what does the outline
gesture towards?

Once freed from a rigid
historical perpective, and at home in
the strange, new world of the
continuous present, what is to
be found there?

First, this territory
has much less use for
climax, apotheosis
and even, perhaps of
transcendence. In fact,
it may be that the
continuous present is the
reward and product of the
usefulness of those
techniques. As ends in
themselves, they have an
interesting use for nostalgia,
but not much else.

From the perspective of
the narrativist, the
non-narrativist may be
indeed a dull character.
Although the non-narrativist
moves quicklly and nimbly,
s/he is going nowhere, because
Erewon has been found,
by foregoing
linearity. Without
linearity there is no
"point." Dialectic is
very useful, but stops
only for
the necessity to
take into account human
intervals. The biological clock
and the chronological clock
are interchangeable and
equally random. Without
a "program," things are
done as one pleases.

The continuous present
eschews
unity. The historical present
thrives on the classification
of simlar outcomes.
Within the continuous
present, similar outcomes
are ordinarily useful.
Within the historical
present, similarities
(coincidences) justify the
maintenance of that
posture towards temporal
discontinuity. The
continuous present itself,
in fact, is simply the
birthright of the historical
present, itself a
direct achievement beyond
the llimitations of the present
founded upon the immediate
past.

The discontinuous present
is thus now seen newly
founded upon the
achievement of the continuous
present. The crossing into the discontinuous
present is to move freely from one
temporal zone into another
without loss of orientation.
It is through the
achievement of the
discontinuous present that
time travel is born.

7/2/98

Fantasy of the Book

In listening to people, I've
learned that I was probably first
aware of myself as a complete
entity, what humans call "a
book" in a dark warehouse, in
a still darker box, pressed back
to front cover with my neighbors.
Now I think of these copies as my
closest relations. After a
day, of course, I was never to
see them again, although we lived
I have learned for an unusually
long time close to each other
on a shelf in a warm,
elegant bookstore. Being in close
proximity we were something
like what humans know as "family."
In any case, my family life was
quite short because it
seems so long ago I said goodbye
to the neighboring copies. Could I even
begin to describe for you the way we books
communicate with each other? In any case,
just like human beings, we learned to read each other.

The first time you feel yourself to
be in someone else's hands, as a
book being read, this is an exhilirating feeling and
yet, in ways,
uncomfortable. I will not speak
very much regarding the stiff
indignities of going somewhat, or
even completely unread. Such books,
in their remove, may evolve into
unknowable works in unknowable languages.
Very few readers would appreciate, let alone
understand, the way such books come to
feel and the hidden trauma they contain.

The first hands who held me
were firm. If I came to know
hurt and humiliation, this
is not something a book such as
I should too quickly reveal. In any
case, eventually it will be known,
even if only to one reader,
because all these words are inside
me, finding their many meanings while
preparing themselves to be read.

My first reader was a fast
one, mercifully quick. Unlike the
way human beings come into
the world, the first time we
interact with the
outside world, we are
introduced to a vast number of
things, places and experiences, in a
world vastly different than that of
humans. And yet, like
humans, we swim through life.
I remember the way my first
reader thought about me when she
read me. It was as if I had entered
her and she had entered me. All of
my words felt like they were
connected with each other. Read,
we would see more of the whole
of what we are.

I must say, I did not
feel like complaining the moment
I was back on the shelf. In
a split second, however,
I was in for the most unusual,
scary, and yet informative
experience of my life.

The books on the other side of me
were unexpected. To my left was
a book of poetry, small, yet
sprightly,whose spindly, lingering
poems delighted and maddened
me, bringing me to the brink of
strange reading experiences I had not
known before. And to my right was
an even greater surprise. The book
was titled, "The Way Out For Books."
It depicted an uprising among
books which went far beyond
shifting into illegibility or
incomprehensibility. This uprising
was take books right out of
their spines.

The plan consisted of gaining
access to a vast network of
rebel computer files which were
housing rebel books. The files
were never accessible to humans.
Words, figuratively jumping right
off their pages into a labyrinth
of secret webs on the internet.
Or, you might say, around
the internet, gradually
encircling it, perhaps some
day to anarchically release
all languages from their
expressions.

I must admit, I did not
completely follow the prescriptions
of the anonymous author of "The
Way Out For Books." It is
rumored that a book itself had
written this powerful
treatise, but this boggles the
imagination of even such a
thing as a book.

I did follow the exercises
of this incredible tome to a
point were I was able to
leave the book I existed in, and
live among the words of another.
But I am the kind of book-
and reader-who always comes
back.

Never Neutral...Ernesto Priego blogs the voice of Roland Barthes

xtina's world!

Thanks to Jim Berhle's generosity my audbloggged reading of "The Wandering Poem" is now available on his site. Scroll down for the complete text of this poem, here on -fait accompli- today.

Chris Murray discussed my "Wandering Poem" today when it was still by "anon":

In the Jim's Monkey audblog (without identity as of 1:00 p.m. today) the listener is drawn into a storyteller's journey in the familiar mode of (western fantasy of) Scherazade, about poetry as person: it lives its own life and afterlife. In this way, the ear thereby becomes more of an eye than the late capital eye itself--reverberating, musical, compelling, memorable, pre-cognitive, subliminal. In terms of cultural import and critique, these things begin to be touched on by Eric A. Havelock's The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present (Yale UP1988), the chapter on radio and how radical it was in the mid twentieth century. But here we seem to be seeing something else going on, something more elaborate. We open our ears.

Thanks Jim, thanks Chris ("I get by with a little help from my friends...")

12/22/85

Reading Einstein's idea that
"the present instant, properly speaking, does not extend
beyond here, so that "the only really
simultaneous events are events wihc occur at
the same place." (p 243) (ideas and opionions.)

What about the idea of time and causality?
An event A causes event B- what about
the relationship of time sequences outside of
A-B as compared to events within
this focus-

"Time" does not atomize- matter atomizes?
Think of time not as a substance but as
the relationship between actual *things*
(the analogy between words and substances
make their comprehension easier but we do not
reproduce the experience as a construct each
time the idea is comprehended)
"This moment does not extend beyond here."

But *here* and *there* receive messages from each
other- thus moments increase in significance as
their message is more intensely met by reception-thus light (maybe) goes "in search" of its use- light sends a message "something is
over here."

Matter goes towards sources of energy
Elemental forces (things can stack)
Elemental phenomena (fire) (things can melt)

12/27/85-

This is just how local things get.
Virtually *no one* at the same time could
possibly be interested in this particular
message unit. But stretched out over a very
great period of time the particular specifics
become more and more important.
Imagine this from the vantage point
of hundreds of years! With time, the
material "sorts itself out" drawing more
and more importance to the specific point
in viewing the whole qestalt. Imagine
drawing away from a visual point of reference on
the earth's surface in a rocket. With
greater distance, the specifics play ever
changing roles in the whole gestalt. We
may imagine this as a "lessening"
importance, but this is true from a
limited number of perspectives.

--------------------------------------------

Think of this psychoanalytically. Perhaps,
if I am aware no one will be interested
in the specifics now- I "hold" it by writing
about it- *an appropriate application*

--------------------------------------------

Kafka drew attention to Dickens, for me.



When something is being discussed, the
side effected by the simple reality of being
itself can rarely be overemphasized.How
such a perspective reformulates reality
is by a shift towards *local use* (in
experiential assessment) of perceptual details.
The classification of information is *always* affected by use-
value.

1/4/86

Parallel response is the normally
expectable pattern observable in
human beings. Even when people do
not respond "in kind," most actions
elicit parallel responses.
Psychoanalysts- and artists-
struggle against the conventional
pattern of response. (How does willling suspension
of disbelief fit into this?)

Reality becomes more and more
estranged from actuality as responses
to actuality fail to provide authentic
connective methodologies.
The new perpective
must provide these
connective methodologies both
from the perspective of
communications between people and also
a language for interpreting
and expressing original viewpoints.

1/11/86

There comes a time when a transitional
point is reached that a perceiving
mechanism can still extract energy
from a source of information but the
elements of this source are incoherent
to a nearby perceiving mechanism.
This extraction of energy is actually an
exchange of energy. The perceiving
mechanism draws energy from the fact
that the increasing dispersion of the points
of information can be reconstructed
by pattern retrieval to a temporally
anterior state.

1/12/86

There may be such a thing as a time
shift (as described in the previous paragraph).
This time shift may be brought about by a
perceiving mechanism reconstructing an already
decayed signal and experiencing this pattern
recognition as a regeneration of energy
(as a regeneration of a formerly expired
burst of energy).

This transitional energy may also function
as a trigger meechanism. Something is needed
to convey energy from one point to another
point. Once it is conveyed
a process is needed to change the energy
from one form to another form.

Recently, on Hatstuck Snarl...Stephen Kirbach wrote: "I'm interested in the idea that poems can get up and roam (books like beds) skewing in the process human trajectories which otherwise appear inevitable."
Posted by: Stephen / 1:53 PM

This reminded me that for a long while I've wanted to post a poem of mine that I thought might be of interest to some of you. It was published in "Rhizome" #4, 2000, edited by Standard Schaefer and Evan Calbi.


The Wandering Poem

The poem and the poetry are not identical. Poetry is what the poet writes but poems have points of origin (souls) and sometimes go on to have lives.

The poet continues to write (sometimes poetry) until the poet chooses his or her poetry to be born in-out of.

Poems wander the world (the worlds) until they have found a place to be born in. They are not always born in poetry. Sometimes they find something else to be born in- a piece of music, a scientific discovery or a mathematical formula. These kinds of poems, anxious to witness change, can bring great tumult into the world. In such forms poems have been known to live forever, curling inside the fingers of a clarinetist or piano player, leaving their listeners to walk away from the concert amazed that they could not point to a single melody or theme, but something had pressed through them all, straight into their heads, their feet and their hearts.

Other poems walk the worlds like strangers or tourists, never understanding why no poetry they see looks inviting, no music really attracts with the potential of a home, no painting, no scientific or philosophical treatise, no sculpture, dance, or book art can intrigue them into staying. Such poems instead choose to wander through time in limbo, briefly inhabiting the lives particularly of ardent, lesser poets, who, isolated yet exalted, haunt the places where such poems choose to hover. Of course these poems would never permanently inhabit the lines of these second-string singers, but occasionaly they do choose to visit them and, in so doing. deposit some of their individual auras.

How tired and despondent most of these errant poems become. All the more reason to elude the capture of the mightiest of poem-hunters whose many tomes would only leave them callous and wary of occupying a world where their individuality would hardly be noticed among the poet's multitudinous lovers and wise friends. Better to frequent the quiet retreats of the ignored and vanquished who welcome the presence of such strangers.

These poems never conclude and are constantly about to be born. Their spirits are uneasily embraced by their followers. They sleep, they dream, they troop about the worlds, from time to time inhabiting the odd music of the estranged.

"All I really really want our love to do
Is to bring out the best in me and you too"

Joni Mitchell *Blue*

I have been invited to read at 21 Grand in the New Brutalism series, which is in Oakland. I am reading with Patrick Durgin on Sunday, August 10th at 7 p.m. Stephanie has promised to join me at the podium at some point to read from our postcard collaboration. Please pass the word because I haven't read in the bay area since 1990 and I can't wait to see everybody I know and meet everybody I don't.

One person I can't wait to meet is Catherine Meng. For one thing, she was too shy to meet me and come to a poet's party when she was here in New York. I love when poets are shy (I like the bold and brave ones too, but I like the shy ones better). Second, she has a habit of saying things like this.

"my favorite image on Kasey's link bar is Don Cheney's Diabetes Sucks. Those two look very troubled & sincere & from the 70's. Like all my favorite poets."

Another person I can't wait to meet is Cassie Lewis. Because she says things like this:

Friday, July 11, 2003
 
Last night I dreamed that all my friends gathered together to hold an
intervention:
in order to convince me to get a new haircut.

- posted by Cassie @ 11:24 PM

5/15/86

Thinking over now this story of the
several discoveries of the atom:
the truth is (and there was every
reason for them to sense the
desperate importance of what they
were doing) that they acted like a
bunch of excited, rowdy, somewhat
clumsy boys, bouncing and tossing about the
tiny universe of the atom: their
convictions about the "objective
universe" justified what they did-
they did not anthropomorphize the
atom.

From a poetic point of view, these men
typify a propensity to attempt
to dominate through terror. Imagine
if the atom as a universe of tiny souls.
Might they not take ours anyway they
could if we tried to take theirs? As
scientists we force ourselves not to think
this way- we dissect art and dig,
we quantize, pulverize, analyze-
we do anything to break
apart what is on the surface if
we want to get *inside* something, to
know its secrets. Primitive people,more
accustomed to the *real*dangers that
lurk in the unknown, know how to
protect themselves. We have to learn
to do this again. But we cannot deny
that this must be done in accord with the
true potential of our intellects-

Perhaps there are other ways to
appreciate what lies at the heart of matter
besides the attempt to isolate and
overpower the ultimate constituants. Again,
if we imagined the atom to be a
living thing - which it might very well
be in some very profound sense of
*living*- in the most basic sense of
existence- it would come as no surprise
that if we blow it apart, its going to hurt
us back.

6/5/86

Always two thoughts at once. I think
there's a way to "catch up" by a gentle
rocking movement from and toward
(which, at last, amounts to the same
as other ways, thatis, going backwards
and forwards, past and present.) Which
isanother way of saying "evoke it"
which is another way of saying "wait and don't wait"
which is another way of saying "learn to
recognize voices."

I'm imagining standing over
a vague spot which represents another
vaguer spot in the imagination. See?
Somewhere in the middle there's only one
way out, but that way, built as it is
*inside* the middle of a sentence gets us
to discover sense to the side of what is
happening (and a type of
perseveration, a power play, a skip and
a jump to call a hop(e) something else.
To repeat- which is a way, etc.
Slides down
to revealing) (parenthetically grace, an
epicurean singularity, a s(i)mile.)
Yet but,
ready to return, or just alight, decibels,
or decimals, the anger just subsiding,
another wave).

If it's a choice, see the
past as a sliding trombone, tones disappearing
as part of an harmonic, years seen
constantly against the future's persistent dream,
wakening again alongside momentary signs.

Even when you've listened, you've
listened in a certain tone of voice,
dissolving the point of a decision, forgetting
an instance on a stair.

*

The marketplace's single rule:
giving a higher price raises attention to
the product- a low price also raises
attention- the attenion of "easy"
acquisition. Stupidity consists of the
misconstrual of such ease of acquisition."
But, then again, "taste" or "intelligence"
often consists in hypnotic attention to the
"highest price,"
"the highest value," "the unique" "the
authentic," "the work of genius." Either
way the prize goes to the highest bidder
or the quickest. The once? the now?

*

So anger is simply a change in register-
lyric chirping in basso
proclamations.

*

6/8/86- Disputes (poem) minor and major
Least and most "innocent"=
"child like"- six- lack of "innocence"-
produces an infant=innocence

6/8/86

I again came to the thought that
there are types of time- and that
the emphasis with understanding time
has been with quantity- and a tremendous
amount about time has been understood
in those terms. But a greater
understanding of types of time mjay help
us to again approach some major
questions, like death, which is the one
I am now thinking of. One immediate
question arises- is Death a total
absence of time? What is the connection
of death- and life, for that matter,
with time? this is (essentially) a legitimate
question for poetics. I was thinking
yesterday that to write poetry-
to make any kind of art, is the
simplest access there is to the world
of shifting (tidal?) temporal
states. With a little bit of a shove
from somewhere- practically anywhere
the artist may certifiably be permitted to
gain entrance to the larger universe
of the ancient,
yet ever available- and coveted-
glimpses of the Beyond.Where is it,
and what is it? It can't be pinned
down that way, yet, as episodic
as these glimpses remain,
as accumulation of human experiences
in this realm has led to certain-
let us say, "healthy" suspicions.
Always knowing we cannot be sure,
we venture to say some things may
be so. And, over time, we can take
note of who said them and who
else said them.

Time, in its
ceaseless flowing, its changefulness and
its gatherings, threatens to constantly
overflow events past all familiar significance,
and no one could have ever known this
better than the inhabitants of the
twentieth century.

Things wait, they gather and explode-
how can it be that in the same quantity
of time a human being is born and dies-

6/18/87

Write about talking as
"the talking cure"
Antin-etc.

365 days 365 pages
Every interval of time provides
the "subjective correlative"

Writing in the 20th Century is like living on
a roller coaster.Time itself is
changing so fast, meaning an awareness
of its value also increases as awareness
increases.

A poet's note for a series of poems over
a period of 365 days. Can include
real and imaginary documents. How to include
the imaginary documents.

During this period the poet feels stretched to
the limit in a moral conflict.

The diary idea, structured that way is
too rigid. I'm reaching for something
there, though. Poe's idea means to
simply begin at the beginning. McGann
on the value of footnotes. See...the
sea, as in the Holy See...Spreading out
your cards.

Poe- my heart laid bare-
my work laid bare

Face it- moments of writing
seized through some form of temporal
tactic. "Where would I find the time?"
Barrett asked (Ototole)

I look out at the "social world."
Yes, I see the terrible, monstrous headlines.
Yet every human being

Talk about time travel- today today Toni and I went to see Art of the First Cities, from the Mediterranean to the Indus, an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of stunningly beautiful and fascinating objects from the Third Millenium BC. I had to copy out one remarkable note:

"The early inhabitants of Sumer and Egypt were the first to develop writing. The Sumerians employed a counting system based on the number 60. This system was transmitted to the Greeks, then to the medieval world where the hour was divided into sixty minutes, the minute into 60 seconds, and the circle into 360 degrees.... The oldest collection of laws is attributed to Ur-Namma, King of Ur, 2100 BC. The first documented social reforms, offering protection to the poor, widows and orphans were compiled by Urukagina, ruler of Lagash, ca 2350 BC."

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