Wish I'd Said That Dep't

"The world people peruse
is not the one they pursue."

from Crag Hill's Poetry Scorecard {click here}

Got to make a long story short and just
say the move took two days but all's
well that ends well and we're in the new
place. A broken elevator and a delay,
but no broken hearts, the opposite,
we like it here and we're sure we'll
be comfortable. Toni likes the
kitchen, and the Park Slope
vibes, and we like the layout and
the bit of river view far off in the distance,
you can see from the bedroom
window; especially at sunset time.
Hope someday to post some
images here. Too tired to blog much more,
and still too much to do. Special
thanks to Toph for the kind words
and congratulatory poem. Love those
images on Topher Tune's Times(Christy Church)
{click here}
and Toph's way of describing
that moment of finding a poem you wrote
lying around, especially if a certain slice
of it catches your eye.

Thanks also to Okir (Jean Vengua){click here}. I had
written to Jean when the necessity for the move first came up.
She was surprised to hear I was giving up Central Park,
and I was too, but this is right on Prospect Park,
a park also designed
by Olmstead, and the Botanical Gardens are right
up the block. By the way, I got to meet Jean in when she came
to a reading I gave there in SF with the Postcard Poets
and at 21 Grand Performance Space {click here}
in August last year.

It's 8:40 am. The movers haven't arrived yet,
but we're almost ready! Unbelieveable!
Thanks for all your kind words
and support.

Well, I'm really not quite going mad,
but anyone who has moved with a long term
partner knows why the kindly Claude
who shares my office reminded me that
moving is up there with the top stressors
like, well, the worst things that can happen!
Claude told me he has an Inuit shaman statue
whose head is upsidedown and represents
the Trickster. Claude says in Jungian psychology
the trickster is in rare form having a great time
with your head while you are going through transitions.
Toni and I have tried to be as patient with each other
as we could but at certain points tensions ran high. But
we're working on a project to improve the way we
work together, and while there have been some
discouraging moments, late last night (it's now 2:38
am and the movers are coming around 8 am), Toni
showed a moment of stellar empathy when I kept
looking around for a certain flashlight and kept losing
it, and Toni keeps on finding other flashlights and
giving them to me. At the very moment when I was most
frustrated in having lost it again (don't go there:
sometimes a cigar is just a cigar) at just the moment
I was finding the one I was looking for she was offering
me still another one.

Don't tell me these small triiumphs don't count!

"Oh lord, shine that little ol' light right on me...!"

Though we're excited about moving to Park Slope,
it is difficult to leave these familiar surroundings. In
yesterday's *fait accompli* I evoked the names of'
some bloggers, I realized as I awoke this morning, as
people who have become important to me, who I
hope wll continue to be there, to be here, wherever
I go so I had a need to evoke some of these names, not as
some kind of "roll call" and I am hoping that no one
feels left out, because that list was meant to be
evocative, not inclusive. Even if I put together a list
from the Bloglinks on the EPC and all the ((((HOT))))
((((BLOG)))) lists we've published here, it would still
not be inclusive. I forgot to mention Alex Trimble Young,
Ron Silliman, Deborah Wardlaw Patillo, for example,
Gregory Vincent St Thomassino,
and Laura Wiley, Carlos Arribos and Chris Murray
just to name a few. If I have forgotten anyone else,
and I suspect I have, I hope they
will forgive me; at the moment, moving
has driven me clear out of my mind. Also,
like so many other bloggers, I am
constantly rediscovering blogs I haven't read recently
and enjoying the excitement of discovering new ones
all the time.

Notebook: 1988

There is nowhere a
more intense life
than the one you are
living right now. If
you think so you are
buying into a Hollywood
or a bohemian scam.
Ideas are everywhere.
I would have trouble
getting along without a good
bookstore, on the
other hand...

I felt the effects,
short term and long-
term of events that
hadn't actually
happened. As this
capacity to
imagine such events
flourished, I felt more alive.

Style is as
much a state of
undress as it is
of dress. Letting down
my guard, I imagined
saying things to
people I would never
allow myself in real
life. In this fantasy, I always
hang up the
phone in a state
of intense satisfaction.
It is life, *not*
the imagination,
which is oblique
and mysterious.
(Truth of poetry: St John Perse).

The source of humor
is the tolerance
for paradox, and
this is gained
by increased participation
in acquiring knowledge
about anything, as
we reach the limit-
or saturation point-
this is intimately
connectede with the
balance between
satisfaction and
frustration. For
example: the necessity
that teachers and
students (hearers and
speakers) attack each
other- however
nimbly- is related
to the necessity
to acquire *playfullness*
in order to learn.
What Lorenz limited
to humor should be
extended to include
the capacity to
hurt and be hurt
and to reinvent
creativity in
*that* connectedness.

All sense organs
are also sexual
organs.

I guess I've
known for a long
time now that, in
the long run, I'm
for the poem not
for the book. Poems
seem to last longer
than books- (like songs).

Let's put it this
way: I've never
wanted to think of you
as confused, but I've
always known you were
a lonely man.

I've had to hide
my work from you
the way the mother
of a handicapped
child hides her child's
defect- inside part
of herself which is even
a mystery to herself.
Because she is protecting
something more valuable
than the truth.

Even freedom hnas
its price. But this
is true because price
is such a good parasite
that feeds on everything.
Freedom protects itself
in its constant attention
in watching for an
opening.

Freedom evades
something- right. But
this is because
it is advancing.
While evasion
contains a kind
of freedom it is
not generative of
freedom. Freedom
raises, so it scares.

Structure is strong.
This is why it seems
beautiful. But the
spark of beauty is
not in the structure.
It is in the particularity.

Where am I going?
I'm going back to
where every particle
came from. Why
do I come? The tendency
for particles to
come together.

Senses play with
each other, like children,
like birs.


People attach themselves
to things and to
ideals. Often the
two conflict. But
both committments are
strong.

The depths of
human tenacity are
inestimable. Is this
the most visible
similarity- in
personality- to our
immediate ancestors-
the apes?

Why do we
imagine that
readers have no
sense of touch in their
eyes? Reading is
*all* Braille.

Reader and
writer- no faith in
each other.Both
fear betrayal-
but the reader-
more, even though
the writer takes
most of the risk.

The final thought
of thought is
freedom from thought.

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.

Notebook: 1/4/90

Adversity

The human capacity
to create or even to
fabricate
the human out of the
inhuman is at the center
of our ability to
tolerate and finally to
weather adversity-
sometimes even to
recognize
the challenge inherent in
adversity and to rise to
the occasion,
adapting to even
the most
tiresome burden, gradually
the circumstances become
part of the landscape,
and then ourselves.

A child's father is
poisoned. The boy clings to
the stretcher and in
order to make him
let go of his father- who
is bleeding from the
mouth- an attendant
tells him his daddy
will live. He is 4
years old. It is
Christmas Eve. When
he dies- the boy
cannot forget- night
after night his
mother must rock him
quiet.

5/20/90

One day you see that
you can do no more
than accept the
washings, the
wendings, the
meanderings of
feelings which
arose from the comings
and goings of joys and
sorrows.

Emotions wash over
me, splash through
me

Fate's tides
approach my feet on
the beach.

I watch the waves
but I want to keep
my feet dry.

Bush Flash {click here}
This link is hot!!!

"Aggression against the individual self, the denial of the
personality, seems to me to be, consciously or not, the belated fruit of the
two main collectivist trends of our century: Nazism and Left-
wing totalitarianism (as realized in history).(The personalist
philosophy of Emmanuel Mounier and his journal *Esprit* had
overcome this problem at one time, and provided an answer;
how urgently we feel the need for a new personalism!) If the
individual self is an illusion, who's to prevent me from repudiating
it, from destroying and despising it, from killing or imprisoning
my fellow men?

And yet the fact that there is such a relentless attack on the
personality suggests that basically it is still believed in, that it is not
considered an illusion, that people believe in it so strongly that
they want to destroy it. Other selves are resented as rivals by those
who deny the self. Yesterday's politicians, today's ideologies, all
those who deny individualism are fierce and violent individualists,
impelled by a pathological will to power and an excessive urge
to assert themselves, to realize themselves, to absorb or dominate
others so that only their own hypertrophied self may survive:
personalities, races, works, signatures, everything must be
submerged in the collective impersonalism, in the collective
unconscious, except the self which denounces the presence of the
*others* whom he seeks to drive out from his own being."

Eugene Ionesco
*Fragments of a Journal*
Grove, 1968

no more little miss nice kantogirl {click here}:
"Online we lie less...
Perhaps in the machine age
everything be remembered,
none forgotten."
This reminded me of the fascinating
*Physics of Immortality* by
Frank J. Tipler in which someday
computers resurrect everybody
and everything.

Bush the Tush
Twist & Turns (Michael Gates) quote of the day {click here}

Collage & poem by
Anita Rust {click here}

Notebook: 8/8/98

It comes down to little
specks of things.
Even the smallest
particle of time
can be
crucial. Like
an accordian, life
expands and
contracts.

For example
a bit of a
lesson might
be gained in
experiencing a
mistake. Such
contractions and
expansions emit,
over time, a
considerable amount
of energy.

I wonder
what the relationship
is between such
tiny specks or
particles of things
and the constant
expansion of time which
is called "forever,"
Except as an
idea, whatever
forever is can only
be understood in
relation to the
tiniest portion
of time.

"Anything might
be transformative
if you would only
allow yourself to
complete it."

He had come to
distrust any
kind of explanation.
Or is it that a way
to talk about
what you might
talk about in
everyday conversation.

For example,
some sentences may
be incomplete,
in verbal terms.
But the nuances
of a person's
gestures and tone
of voice- not
to speak of
years or even
decades of
exchange...

Always, some
things are too
much to say,
or too little.
Then, more and
more things are
too much to say
or too
little.

The glances
may become embarassing.
More and more
and eventually you
turn to your
violin.

You take your
violin in your
arms and play
it. As you play
it. you're creating
the melody. You've
put on a tape
recorder.
Unbelievably, you
realize as you
are playing that
you are actually
creating music. As
a result, later,
when you put
it down, you
suspect very
strongly that you'll
come back to it.

As you are
playing, you
realize that the
opening chords
were very
important. You go
back and listen
to them. You
go on your way
after them, but
now and then you
come back to
them.

To know how
to do something
is to know that
the constituants
of the doing might
be. These might
be many difficult
kinds of steps,
but there will
always be steps.

Sometimes there
is an apprehension
that precedes
steps. The step
is visualized,
imagined, and
anxiety creeps in. On
some level,
however slightly,
danger has been
realized, or
rather, recognized.
There might be
hardly any
expectable order
in the events
that precede
the steps.