BBC One Minute Movies {click here}.
I checked out *Dave's Dream.* Cool.
Also *Scone in 60 Seconds*
*fishcake c5* and *One Black Wish*.
Don't miss *Italian Paint Job*!
(You need Real One Player or some equivalent)

Via Penny Dreadful {click here}
(links from the exquisitely beautiful
Notes from The Dovecote {click here})

Notes towards: *The Unbearable Lightness of Blogging*

It seems I'll never stop being fascinated
by the machinations of time. Of course
as you get older, the past means more
and more. Why should it still be surprising
that time bends in on itself, that its
equivalencies change, the way the light
so gradually changes through twilight into
evening into night? Past events keep reviving
themselves in the present, from the present,
towards the past, and at other times the
current changes it around the other way.


I was reading Hazlitt on this topic of
relations among temporal classifications. He emphasizes
that the past in downplayed with relation to the
present, and particularly the future. He thinks we
underestimate it because it is finished. But he
focuses on the fact that it is definitively real and
observeable- in ways that the future and the present
are not; one can return to pleasant times in ones thoughts
at will, and keep on exploring the various meanings of
ones experiences. In this way he is close to Rousseau,
particulary in his *Reveries of a Solitary Walker*, and also,
of course (and I've been noticing this more and more) to
Freud.

from Caterina {click here}
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

"You held doors open."

from Peter Handke
*Kaspar and other Plays*
Hill and Wang, 1989
first published by Farrar and Straus,
1969

notebook (poem): circa 1979


Amounting to Something

I needn't sort out
My world in lengths
Or measure my life
In years or feet

A certain intension
In whatever dimension
Will be remembered
As sour or sweet

notebook: 10-14-87

Would it be possible to capture the inflations
of optimism and the deflations of pessimism
that surround the life of a petty
bureaucrat who wishes to imagine that he
has a noble heart? With each elaborate
strategy to realize some scheme which
would establish his importance in his own
eyes and the eyes of the world, eventually
there emerges a crushing disappointment
which brings home to him in no uncertain
terms the futility of his resolve. For it
becomes more and more clear to him that
in a society in which comfort and prosperity
are the only conceivable goals for the
individual or for the mass, there is no
hope, none whatsoever to realize the ultimate
fruits of the moral passions implanted in
him by the religious fervor of his youth.
The noble worlds and ringing phrases which
he read again and again at that time
can never be totally abolished in his mind
or heart by cynicism because
neither his ideals nor those of his
lover will permit this. On the other hand,
a fiery rage has gradually grown within
him as a result of all of this, a
rage which vents itself meaninglessly on the
small injustices which emanate from the
(mostly) naive incompetencies of those people
he comes in contact with in his daily
life who have- by necessity or choice- embraced
and maintained a station in life
similar to his own. And long since has
he ceased to pump himself up from
within by employing feelings of superiority
over those who have been less fortunate
than he. If nothing else, his training as a
helper of others has taught him that these
slight "advantages" may be ascribed not
to any superior effort or qualities of his
own, but basic accidents of
background and early family life.

How desperately he wishes to
believe that there is some social path which can
be opened to him which would lead to
a wellspring of potential actions which- in taking-
would serve to continuously demonstrate his
good will. But ultimatelly he becomes
suspicious of this impulse (which is really
nothing more than "caring") because those
around him either frustrate it or
deride it or are threatened by it. Like
Melville's heroes, he stops himself
short- again and again- of the total
self-destruction which is the only
possible outcome of the continuous cultivation
of the impulse to "love and serve"
his fellow man. Is it nothing more than
a distorted replica of an impulse to find
love with a particular woman and found his
own family? "Book the first" would
end with this?

Reference Camus- The Fall,
Melville- Billy Budd

Brenda Iijima, Leslie Scalapino,
Mairead Byrne & Rachel Levitsky's
books displayed &
essayed on Pantaloons {click here}

Carlo Carra collage on Wood s Lot {click here}

La Photo du Jour {click here}
How do you say
"you can say
that again"
in French?

That maddening aspect of reality
that throws you off just enough
to cause you to
lose your momentum or your
direction; anything
and anyone that needs to
control and hold back
employs this.

"Rent out my side of the bed, she says, because I won't be coming home tonight.
25 cents = two minutes of Magic Fingers = the vibration of loneliness.
Did the earth move? Was it good for you?
I think I want my money back...."
New posts right now on
Negative Velocity {click here}

Tim Yu's new poem *Chasm*
right now on
Tympan {click here}
"Contributors
are listed in the order in which their heads
can be fit to a vanishing framework..."

notebook (poem): 7/10/86

The Statue of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E

Give me your bored, your sore,
Your programmed synapses yearning to break free
The wretched syntax of your meanings sure
For we are as on a plain darkening
Where blind alleys lead to faulty cash machines
By sight- and not with a bang but a particle accelerator
Rage, rage against the writings of the bright
And words shall have no denomination.
Dead thoughts naked they shall be one
With the grammar of the texts in your classrooms.
TV, TV burning in the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could flame thy beerful robotry?
For we are as aspirin
Rolling down a flight
Of stares, plop, plop
Into the peripheral consciousness
Where ignorant critics bash from the Right.
One ray the more, one cathode less
Could half repair that empty space
Between our thoughts, the chide
Is blather to the Plan
And the Who if I shouted among the hierarchy
Of Hell's Angels could bear me?

At Last

Hurrying up the stairs,
never quite ready for
the landing I'm on.

Our heartfelt gratitude goes out to Tympan (Tim Yu) {click here}
for intervening on the latest Poetics List
verbal onslaught. Since Okir (Jean Vengua) {click here}
mentioned "silences" on the part of list members
we feel it is important to overtly censure
harsh and offensive comments made on the list
and all such mean spirited activity
that abuses the freedom of speech granted there or anywhere.
Why do so many people conflate harshness and strength?
Apologies for our slowness in response:
we are still knee deep in boxes, and we have yet
to tell you in detail about the occasional
jet scream problem
going on here since moving in March 26th, finally very nicely
alleviated by the purchase
of a Marsona sound conditioner.

Brother Tom Murphy
Wednesday, April 07, 2004 {click here}
"his leader... impractical instructions from
his self-esteem... our attention reduced to
his poetry... conditional lamentations in
his nerve... exceptional subversions of
his room... uncertain sanitation of
his wardrobe... suspicious origins of
his past... our puzzling adherence to
his bidding... lost in the clouds over"
posted at 3:26:29 PM

Longtime Poetry Project board member
Vicki Hudspith {click here and scroll down}
has been nominated for
a Pushcart Prize
*************
Spalding Gray memorial: Tuesday, April 13 {click here}
via wood s lot {click here}