Three more days, two nights in an apartment on
the Upper West Side where Toni and I have lived
for 12 years. And 12 years in the previous Upper
West Side apartment. When I moved back here from
Park Slope in 1980, John Lennon was living
in the Dakota- a few blocks away on Central
Park West. A few years earlier, Jim Brody
dubbed the local L=A writers, The West Side Wall
of Words.

I'm glad to be moving back to Park Slope and Toni
is also. My office is here, on West End Avenue, so
I'll still be around here frequently- so technically the
Wall of Words is still extant.

I've given away or sold over 40 boxes of books, and just
finished packing 40 more. As anyone who has done this knows,
you can't help but see your life passing before your eyes.
This isn't easy, but there is still lots to look forward to. Especially
here in blogland- glad to see the likes of Li Bloom,Alli Warren, Ray Davis,
Jim Behrle, Mike Snyder, Jonathan Mayhew, Nada Gordon,
Guillermo Parra, Gary Sullivan, Eileen Tabios, Dagzine,
DaDooDoFlow, Josh Corey,
Drew Gardner, Lanny Quarles, Brother Tom,
Katie Degentesh, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen,
Stephen Kirbach, Jack Kimball, Christy Church,
Amanda Cook, Tony Tost, Jordan Davis, Clayton Couch,
Mark Woods, Andrew Lundwall, Michael Bogue,
Christina Strong,Cassandra and Boynton,
the Dovecote, Shanna Compton, Caterina,
& all the New Brutalists, Savoradin, Priego,
Amy Bernier, Michael Gates,
Jean Vengua, Heriberto Yepez, Marianne Shaneen,
John Latta, Michaela Cooper,
Malcolm Davidson, Daniel Nester, Mark Lamoureux,
the Umbrists, Tim Peterson, Bill Marsh,
kari edwards, Steve Tills, Tom Beckett, Crag Hill,
Johanna Rauhala & so many other hot bloggers
still enthusiastically blogging and new bloggers jumping in
alll the time. (Check out the sidebar to your left for a link to the
most recent *fait accompli* ((((HOT)))))((((BLOGLISTS))))). There are,
of course, thousands of great bloglists out there to be discovered.
Technorati has added some new features including current events
as seen in blogland, as well as a new links beta feature.
Silliman is determined to blog less, and better. That is no doubt a given.
Nice to see Robert Creeley more and more in the blogging midst.
Will he be the among the first septuagenarians to start a blog? Imagine
that! Usually, when bloggers start getting letters from terrific poets, it
means they're thinking about it.

Well, rummaging around my stuff, naturally I came across a few lost
journals. Here's some time travel back to 1988.

**

Notebook: 1988

I do have something.
Little pieces of paper
with words on them
to look at. They call
it reading but first
and last it is looking.

1) Stack

2) Alphabetize

Why is is that few
care to state the
obvious? The government
collapsed so the
economy collapsed.
The peoplle are more
ordered than the
language because they
are free.

You think because
I am not dressed
I am not armed.
You think because I
stand here poised to
glimpse the future I
don't understand what
the stacks in front
of me represent. the
secret to finding order
is to attend to the
disorder. But, for now,
we know each other
only by our effects.
I have to stop if only
to pause on a word,
returning to the sisyphus
labyrinth. And *if* you
stop in time it
momentarily unifies.

You can protect
yourself by consciously
assessing others. Mark
their traits well. Do
not feel guilty about
it- there's no other
was to establish
reciprocal relations.

An inner measure
of things taken
as a gradual edge
is cut by a person's
individuality set against
experience's constant
pressure. The mind has
a chance of staying
ahead of this- but
the disparity is often
hard on balance.

There is a give
and take when the
thought comes back
to me, dear reader,
just the way it comes
back in thought. It
circles around and
won't go away,
anyway.

Poets, poets, poets.
Everywhere I see
poets. Poets to the
right of me, poets
to the left of me.
Poets seizing the sun-
paragraph, and poets
gathering the moon
paraphernalia. They
resist my bolts and
dress in the most
obvious forms imaginable.
No matter
how hard I try to
imagine them
fooling me with
their masks
(no one told them to
stop concealing their
attacks) I still
recognize all the
animal disguises
they use- almost
immediately.

Realizing perfectly
that my assertion
contains an invitation,
which may, of course,
be refused.Then
again, life is a
series of occasions
not matter what.
Isn't this also, in
itself, a kind of
companionship? As
one poet said (as
another poet said and
this *could* go on
forever) opposition
is true friendship.

The close you
look into a mirror,
the more you see
your own face.
Something else is
exactly what you
won't find there.

Hold a few
things in place and
watch where the
change takes place.
Order is one kind
of illusion very
useful for steadying
the structure. "I
hate structure*
writes Alan {Davies}. Rock
what? Rock the
boat (the "ship of
state") says Allen {Ginsberg}.

Numbers confuse
me. No more trace of
this and trace of that.
Lets go back to copying
pages one at a time
and passing them around.
(Let the machines take care
of themselves. Rusty
ventilator or Venite
Adoremus, Daddy.)

Again, the idea
(deja vu, for you) that
a poem is a kind
of legalized symbiosis.-
(Another way of expressing
Winnicott's idea of
transitional objects, an
idea which stresses the
developmental phase aspect
of art, (not* its *timelessness*.)

Blake's "Enough- or
too much"= go
too far and come back-
or don't go at all.

All in good time.

The abandoned journey
began with a single step.

To love is to return.