Bill Marsh
nominee for the -fait accompli- Oxymoron of the Year Award has written a manifesto for bloggers titled -Escaping the Garret- that is witty, wise and potentially of great practical benefit, if topically applied, as needed. Don't miss this piece!
Distribution Automatique
Friday, May 30
The sun paid a brief visit to the city today so we zipped right out to Central Park. After a short walk in Toni pointed to a tree on the right with a hole in the trunk. Two of the cutest little birdie faces peeked out and started chirping to beat the band. After what must have seemed like an eternity to the bird babies mom came back with a bit of food: they pointed their beaks in the air and mom poked it right in. Mom seemed frantic and took the bit of bread I gave her for them quickly to them. I left some under the tree and we walked on. Later, near the Shakespeare Theater it started to rain. We ran under the awning stretching out from the roof of the building. When we looked out we noticed that a nest had been built on the neck of Juliet on the Romeo and Juliet statue in front of the theater. A woman next to us mentioned how poetic this was.Two more birdies peeked out from the nest. Nobody had to tell us this was pure poetry!
Jim Berhle's new sonnets are terrific. Here are two gems to fondle:
29.
I would trade truth
for beauty
and a player to
be named
later
85.
do it in fever and
be done with it
just headlights and
lampposts
and at weekend
heartbreaks endure
heartbreakers and alphabets
all debts are paid in silk
29.
I would trade truth
for beauty
and a player to
be named
later
85.
do it in fever and
be done with it
just headlights and
lampposts
and at weekend
heartbreaks endure
heartbreakers and alphabets
all debts are paid in silk
from ululations... Nada Gordon
(7:15 AM ) Nada
On the Rasa
This Daumal text, in part a translation of a translation (from Sanskrit via French), really illuminates the idea for me, particularly in regard to poetry....
Earlier, the same text asks,
What, then, ultimately is poetry?
Poetry is a word whose essence is savor.
We will now explain the meaning of "savor". Savor is "the essence" in terms of the substantial reality. That is to say, savor is the life itself of poetry, without which there is no poetry. "Savor" (rasa)is, etymologically, that which is "savored" (rasayate). The term includes savor-emotions and savor reflections....
The faults are that which veil it (poetry).
The faults, cacophony, superfluous words, are analogous to infirmities, e.g. blindness or lameness, which affect (the person) through (the medium) of his own body: they affect (the poem) through sounds and meanings....
The virtues, ornaments, and allures are called "agents of construction."
from double visions of Johanna
Phone call from my impostor. This and that. Eavesdrop:
"But poetry is much more than logic," she said.
( Muffled noise.)
"It's more than language," she insisted.
( )
"More than philosophy."
"More than science."
"More than death."
"More than imagination."
"More than love."
posted by Johanna @
(7:15 AM ) Nada
On the Rasa
This Daumal text, in part a translation of a translation (from Sanskrit via French), really illuminates the idea for me, particularly in regard to poetry....
Earlier, the same text asks,
What, then, ultimately is poetry?
Poetry is a word whose essence is savor.
We will now explain the meaning of "savor". Savor is "the essence" in terms of the substantial reality. That is to say, savor is the life itself of poetry, without which there is no poetry. "Savor" (rasa)is, etymologically, that which is "savored" (rasayate). The term includes savor-emotions and savor reflections....
The faults are that which veil it (poetry).
The faults, cacophony, superfluous words, are analogous to infirmities, e.g. blindness or lameness, which affect (the person) through (the medium) of his own body: they affect (the poem) through sounds and meanings....
The virtues, ornaments, and allures are called "agents of construction."
from double visions of Johanna
Phone call from my impostor. This and that. Eavesdrop:
"But poetry is much more than logic," she said.
( Muffled noise.)
"It's more than language," she insisted.
( )
"More than philosophy."
"More than science."
"More than death."
"More than imagination."
"More than love."
posted by Johanna @
11/27-28/84
(1) Check out "Observing ego" with Mark.
(2) Change or *eliminate the Roy Shaefer quote*
By concentrating only on time, I hold
time for one whole minute. The w-hole.XXXXXX
XXXXXXX For a minute I felt
like I was holding back time
itself by experiencing the completeness
of time's meaning, time had
no longer any meaning at all
and I was free of it again, by
being xxx xx immersed absorbed into the
experience itself *through* its meaning.
More evidence that anxiety originates
through holding back, through an
incompletion of the act, its fragmentation.
The moments of actually being invited to read
and running into Jeremy were jarring.
So there is something there. Her calling within
5 days of Charles showing me the Watten
piece is interesting. But this gives me 2 whole
molnths.
Nov. 29-Feb 9 or *5 weeks*
35 days
35xxxxxxx pages to choose from
11/30/84
It is 70 days. Look how anxious I was.
70- days.Still a tremendous amount of time.
"Fitting things in" creates time.
Time is expanded both by expanding the intervals
(the duration of an experience)-"I'm not
going to call it anything"- and by "making space"
by "fitting things in." Collage making is a fine
example of the complexity and economy of this
process.The larger and smaller parts can
be almost endlessly combined within a
tremendous range of scales. New elements
can be easily accomodated. Eventually, however, the
sheer immensity of the number of elements
xxx creates a language of representative
xxxx forms which xxxx allows access of new
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx images or xxxxxxxxxxxx
shards of language which act as transmitters
or resonant receivers of various otherwise
hidden or less obvious wavelengths of actuality.
(1) Check out "Observing ego" with Mark.
(2) Change or *eliminate the Roy Shaefer quote*
By concentrating only on time, I hold
time for one whole minute. The w-hole.XXXXXX
XXXXXXX For a minute I felt
like I was holding back time
itself by experiencing the completeness
of time's meaning, time had
no longer any meaning at all
and I was free of it again, by
being xxx xx immersed absorbed into the
experience itself *through* its meaning.
More evidence that anxiety originates
through holding back, through an
incompletion of the act, its fragmentation.
The moments of actually being invited to read
and running into Jeremy were jarring.
So there is something there. Her calling within
5 days of Charles showing me the Watten
piece is interesting. But this gives me 2 whole
molnths.
Nov. 29-Feb 9 or *5 weeks*
35 days
35xxxxxxx pages to choose from
11/30/84
It is 70 days. Look how anxious I was.
70- days.Still a tremendous amount of time.
"Fitting things in" creates time.
Time is expanded both by expanding the intervals
(the duration of an experience)-"I'm not
going to call it anything"- and by "making space"
by "fitting things in." Collage making is a fine
example of the complexity and economy of this
process.The larger and smaller parts can
be almost endlessly combined within a
tremendous range of scales. New elements
can be easily accomodated. Eventually, however, the
sheer immensity of the number of elements
xxx creates a language of representative
xxxx forms which xxxx allows access of new
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx images or xxxxxxxxxxxx
shards of language which act as transmitters
or resonant receivers of various otherwise
hidden or less obvious wavelengths of actuality.
2/28/96
The return to sound, the return to the sea, the part of nature with its own voice. This is its translation from the original thoughts. The sea increasing, the thoughts unceasing. A metaphysical equation connects the two. Always going back to the beginning, the sea and the sounds of the sea in one unceasing displacement. Nothing can cover it or hide it. Sheer naked energy that can't be stopped.
The poet asks: what intentless signal could I bear to dream? The sea is an abyss, I stand wordless at its precipice. At the boundaries some things coalesce.
All of my poems are about going away..
3/29/96
The Symbolic Universe
Not male or female
But female in relation to female
female in relation to male
male in relation to female
male in relation to male
not war or peace
but peace in relation to war
war in relation to peace
not black or white
but their relation
4/5/96
In the secret room of secret
writing there are no secrets. You
do it for another reason. Absolutely
what is eliminated.This was first.
Avoid the bombs with an s-weave.
Something gets stuck on the edges.
Even with the slightest bit of that
you'd know what you tested. If this
isn't one long English lesson, what
is it? You can hear the echoes.
You can hear the lessons. Starting right
back there at the beginning with an
ideologue.As long as you can watch.
It is spinning. As long as you can
breathe.
This is a test.This is a test of
what you can make of it. What you can
make of remembering, what you can
make of listening, what you can make
of living. If it isn't philosophy, what is
it? What it is, it hard to be serious
about. No time to be serious.
It is more like wrestling than dancing,
To enter into a whirlpool of helplessness
for no other reason than to get some
words on a page. For no other reason than to
read. Words on a page.
A displacement of cravings. Is it
you or is it me? A fear: some symmetry.
As dew drives up a flower, the
ink dries upon the page, the words
dry upon the mind. It's just that
if it's in your/my/our vicinity
we will want to control it.
Can I close the book? To
play the priest you must hide.
The inverse of reasoning is not
going crazy, not sleep, not an
avoidance. Be willing to end. To stay,
to go back.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx It's quiet on the
sidelines. A gardner would not
perfume her own flowers, nor a
poet her poems. This was heard on
Cocteau's radio.
A circle is drawn. Are the
books reading me?
The return to sound, the return to the sea, the part of nature with its own voice. This is its translation from the original thoughts. The sea increasing, the thoughts unceasing. A metaphysical equation connects the two. Always going back to the beginning, the sea and the sounds of the sea in one unceasing displacement. Nothing can cover it or hide it. Sheer naked energy that can't be stopped.
The poet asks: what intentless signal could I bear to dream? The sea is an abyss, I stand wordless at its precipice. At the boundaries some things coalesce.
All of my poems are about going away..
3/29/96
The Symbolic Universe
Not male or female
But female in relation to female
female in relation to male
male in relation to female
male in relation to male
not war or peace
but peace in relation to war
war in relation to peace
not black or white
but their relation
4/5/96
In the secret room of secret
writing there are no secrets. You
do it for another reason. Absolutely
what is eliminated.This was first.
Avoid the bombs with an s-weave.
Something gets stuck on the edges.
Even with the slightest bit of that
you'd know what you tested. If this
isn't one long English lesson, what
is it? You can hear the echoes.
You can hear the lessons. Starting right
back there at the beginning with an
ideologue.As long as you can watch.
It is spinning. As long as you can
breathe.
This is a test.This is a test of
what you can make of it. What you can
make of remembering, what you can
make of listening, what you can make
of living. If it isn't philosophy, what is
it? What it is, it hard to be serious
about. No time to be serious.
It is more like wrestling than dancing,
To enter into a whirlpool of helplessness
for no other reason than to get some
words on a page. For no other reason than to
read. Words on a page.
A displacement of cravings. Is it
you or is it me? A fear: some symmetry.
As dew drives up a flower, the
ink dries upon the page, the words
dry upon the mind. It's just that
if it's in your/my/our vicinity
we will want to control it.
Can I close the book? To
play the priest you must hide.
The inverse of reasoning is not
going crazy, not sleep, not an
avoidance. Be willing to end. To stay,
to go back.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx It's quiet on the
sidelines. A gardner would not
perfume her own flowers, nor a
poet her poems. This was heard on
Cocteau's radio.
A circle is drawn. Are the
books reading me?
Nick's Bloglink Crush List (most recent links)
abolone..Li Bloom
We Write To Taste Life Twice...Crystal King
The Wily Filipino...Benito M. Vergara, Jr.
Mysterium...Carlos Arribas
Arm Sasser...Carl Annarummo
The Brutal Kittens...James Meetze
Process Documents...Ryan Firzpatrick
Love's Last Gasps...Eileen Tabios' Poem Journal
Topher Tune's Times...Christy Church
Last Week
prrrowess...Nada's Poems
Tympan...Tim Yu
Porthole Redux ....Catherine Meng
Mr.Tong Bliss' Journal...Joe Massey
Human Verb...Noah Eli Gordon
tex files...Chris Murray
Parking Lot...Chris Corrigan
Black Spring...Meno ter Braak
Chimera Song Mosaic...Deborah Wardlaw Pattillo
The Jetty...Cassie Lewis..
double visions of Johanna
No Starting Point...Emma Barnes
Technorati Cosmos
Mike Snider's Formal Blog
Never Neutral...Ernesto Priego
abolone..Li Bloom
We Write To Taste Life Twice...Crystal King
The Wily Filipino...Benito M. Vergara, Jr.
Mysterium...Carlos Arribas
Arm Sasser...Carl Annarummo
The Brutal Kittens...James Meetze
Process Documents...Ryan Firzpatrick
Love's Last Gasps...Eileen Tabios' Poem Journal
Topher Tune's Times...Christy Church
Last Week
prrrowess...Nada's Poems
Tympan...Tim Yu
Porthole Redux ....Catherine Meng
Mr.Tong Bliss' Journal...Joe Massey
Human Verb...Noah Eli Gordon
tex files...Chris Murray
Parking Lot...Chris Corrigan
Black Spring...Meno ter Braak
Chimera Song Mosaic...Deborah Wardlaw Pattillo
The Jetty...Cassie Lewis..
double visions of Johanna
No Starting Point...Emma Barnes
Technorati Cosmos
Mike Snider's Formal Blog
Never Neutral...Ernesto Priego
Thursday, May 29
So what does Category P mean?
posted by Laurable on 5/29/2003 12:53:03 PM | link
Oh, Laura, a fairly astute observer of the graduate student scene has explained to me that poetics students often become obsessed with "positioning." Of course Kasey Mohammed is entitled to his opinions and observations. But I find this need to create hierarchies in an emerging situation such as this self-serving and mildly destructive. Not kick-ass, just asinine. Divide and conquer is the classic approach of the timidly and unimaginatively ambitious. Shades of the Buffalo Poetics list.The stale aroma of the classroom in May.
posted by Laurable on 5/29/2003 12:53:03 PM | link
Oh, Laura, a fairly astute observer of the graduate student scene has explained to me that poetics students often become obsessed with "positioning." Of course Kasey Mohammed is entitled to his opinions and observations. But I find this need to create hierarchies in an emerging situation such as this self-serving and mildly destructive. Not kick-ass, just asinine. Divide and conquer is the classic approach of the timidly and unimaginatively ambitious. Shades of the Buffalo Poetics list.The stale aroma of the classroom in May.
11/24/84
Feeling very excited, but also feeling a bit overwhelmed. So many thoughts and fantasies, feelings, strange murmurings. Bachileanus Brasilieros. Then Carmen.
International Journal of Psychoanalysis
Postgraduate Journal?
Book to Univ of So Ill Press?
Poetry manuscript
11/26/84
Visualized identity=narrative-
you "see" the identity by means of
contextual descriptions
Dickens' -contextualized image-
the "click" of the woman's purse being shut
Mann's-visual/contextual descriptions (letimotifs)
as writing-noise in the background- such as the
air purifier- imaginitive noises- Foreman-Zorn
identity- understood as distortion-free of idiosynchrasies
November- the magic month- late November
orange notebook- Marrakesh
optical instrumentality-
description of visual-perceptual experience
life is simply a test of will
we'll have to go back to baby-talk to
express the least sense out of what we
experience
The only explanation I can see that the development
the science of love preceded that of
beauty is that the need for a lover is
more insistently and demandingly felt than the need for an
identity
?
Identity is an aesthetic achievement insofar
as the self, in order to be responded to,
must resonate harmonically with other
selves.
?
11/27-28/84
There *is* something out beyond the edge of the visible universe. It is hearing the ear
thinks, seeing the eye thinks. Out beyond
there where nothing is seen, in a single pulse
the universe repeats itself with every breath.
Normally, the eyes see. But when one is
listening, light itself translates the
signals into bird's movements, strumming air
with its harnessings, transfiguring a past scrap heap
of posturings in the lattices of a sparkling
hesitancy. Dripping with sweat, the angel mutters
to her or himself, down with this, hurling a
strictly documented universe, graduated, gyrated
and expostulated in the grainy
screening-room of history. Lifted high and
carefully deposited on the shelves, the words
stretch and yawn and then start to move, scramble madly, from
one volume and meaning to the next. In a
deft stroke of recognition the words run off the
books- onto the shelves, failing, obstinately, to utter
a sound or thought.
.
Feeling very excited, but also feeling a bit overwhelmed. So many thoughts and fantasies, feelings, strange murmurings. Bachileanus Brasilieros. Then Carmen.
International Journal of Psychoanalysis
Postgraduate Journal?
Book to Univ of So Ill Press?
Poetry manuscript
11/26/84
Visualized identity=narrative-
you "see" the identity by means of
contextual descriptions
Dickens' -contextualized image-
the "click" of the woman's purse being shut
Mann's-visual/contextual descriptions (letimotifs)
as writing-noise in the background- such as the
air purifier- imaginitive noises- Foreman-Zorn
identity- understood as distortion-free of idiosynchrasies
November- the magic month- late November
orange notebook- Marrakesh
optical instrumentality-
description of visual-perceptual experience
life is simply a test of will
we'll have to go back to baby-talk to
express the least sense out of what we
experience
The only explanation I can see that the development
the science of love preceded that of
beauty is that the need for a lover is
more insistently and demandingly felt than the need for an
identity
?
Identity is an aesthetic achievement insofar
as the self, in order to be responded to,
must resonate harmonically with other
selves.
?
11/27-28/84
There *is* something out beyond the edge of the visible universe. It is hearing the ear
thinks, seeing the eye thinks. Out beyond
there where nothing is seen, in a single pulse
the universe repeats itself with every breath.
Normally, the eyes see. But when one is
listening, light itself translates the
signals into bird's movements, strumming air
with its harnessings, transfiguring a past scrap heap
of posturings in the lattices of a sparkling
hesitancy. Dripping with sweat, the angel mutters
to her or himself, down with this, hurling a
strictly documented universe, graduated, gyrated
and expostulated in the grainy
screening-room of history. Lifted high and
carefully deposited on the shelves, the words
stretch and yawn and then start to move, scramble madly, from
one volume and meaning to the next. In a
deft stroke of recognition the words run off the
books- onto the shelves, failing, obstinately, to utter
a sound or thought.
.
call Olga
call Richie, Mom
get *blinds*- put them up and vacuum
11/24/84
Once again I'm aware of the anxiety I feel
about making moves forward. As I collect the
objects to do it, I feel it welling up. The old
position was to sit still, hoping the waves around me
would settle.Now I'm learning to tolerate that
dizzy, nauseous feeling inside that slows me
down to a snail's pace because part of me
believes this will be soothing. I don't want
to live (all the time) in that twilight, that misty
world.
But I also recognize that I've earned
the right to live in that world as much as
I choose. It is also the world of reveries
and ideas.
(Then I left and went out and
accomplished a number of things- bought a
jacket and shirt, found a chair, Toni's radio,
picked up the blinds, straightened the house).
Leaving a t.v. on for backgound noise of the "average expectable environment."
Experience (1)........................Experience (2)
situation.........signal decay
_______________________________________________
thought.......variant a............variant b..........variant c...............variant d
)........................)............................).......................)............................)
..................such as rational......such as............such as...............such as memory
..................deduction................ludicrous...........connected
...............................................................................anticipatory
.................................................................................thought
....................................................association
call Richie, Mom
get *blinds*- put them up and vacuum
11/24/84
Once again I'm aware of the anxiety I feel
about making moves forward. As I collect the
objects to do it, I feel it welling up. The old
position was to sit still, hoping the waves around me
would settle.Now I'm learning to tolerate that
dizzy, nauseous feeling inside that slows me
down to a snail's pace because part of me
believes this will be soothing. I don't want
to live (all the time) in that twilight, that misty
world.
But I also recognize that I've earned
the right to live in that world as much as
I choose. It is also the world of reveries
and ideas.
(Then I left and went out and
accomplished a number of things- bought a
jacket and shirt, found a chair, Toni's radio,
picked up the blinds, straightened the house).
Leaving a t.v. on for backgound noise of the "average expectable environment."
Experience (1)........................Experience (2)
situation.........signal decay
_______________________________________________
thought.......variant a............variant b..........variant c...............variant d
)........................)............................).......................)............................)
..................such as rational......such as............such as...............such as memory
..................deduction................ludicrous...........connected
...............................................................................anticipatory
.................................................................................thought
....................................................association
1/29/86 Rocket's Red Glare
Is there any immediate threat to national security?
(No, but the-)(crossed out) (to himself: Ghastly.
They won't listen to me anymore.)
What? 72 Seconds. Wait a minute.
Can that! What I want to know is,
is there a threat? Is this an indication
of subversive activity? (Namely)(crossed out) are the
Russians involved?
I don't beliveve that is possible, Mr. President. (They must think I'm getting feeble-minded. You know how much that computer cost you? -crossed out)
(Not in any way forthcoming. Who is this not-forthcoming person, if not my father.
That's how I had to hold myself back. In order to have him, I...)
Is there any immediate threat to national security?
(No, but the-)(crossed out) (to himself: Ghastly.
They won't listen to me anymore.)
What? 72 Seconds. Wait a minute.
Can that! What I want to know is,
is there a threat? Is this an indication
of subversive activity? (Namely)(crossed out) are the
Russians involved?
I don't beliveve that is possible, Mr. President. (They must think I'm getting feeble-minded. You know how much that computer cost you? -crossed out)
(Not in any way forthcoming. Who is this not-forthcoming person, if not my father.
That's how I had to hold myself back. In order to have him, I...)
1/30/86
This is the note I wrote today at the coffeeshop: For the article- a theory without unity- a unity of looser states of mind- looser boundaries- may allow for an expansion of strength- perhaps at the cost of some ambiguity of focus.
The cost, postponement in attaining the ideal.
The purchase: the hope of having any theory at all (ref: Duhem) (this added in later)
Higher and lower lines- sum lines a line can indicate that the lower thought- came later- in recognition of the fact that....
What is this aberration?
The problem with measurement is that the things most worth measuring cannot yet be measured by any device. But as we discard the scale towards simple material ( a philosopher is a slave of philsophy; the poet is shackled to his or her poetry)
2/1/86
Suddenly, once in awhile, a sense of the total *rush* of time on one level- In this experience we sense that time- while moving from then to now- is also a huge rising tide -going forward at ever greater rates of intensity- (the last phrase crossed out in the notebook) that to observe (crossed out) it at all is to feel a sense of its totality- whilch is of undreamed of immensity -magnified in all the...(crossed out, last word unreadable) senses.
Exactly at the point of metaphor (crossed out)
The entire language dissolves-
a vapor in the imagination of experience
gathered at the threshold (crossed out)
Poet: A Four Letter Word
I think to speak
I search for... (crossed out) the telling the saying
the language dissolves
leaving (crossed out) a trauma of experience
not fit for a dog
I tried to be frank
And sarcasm paid
Its eloquent witness
A translation of fraud
A lying (crossed out, unreadable) mustache
The absence of history
fluorescent fortune cookie
booby, booby
scuba duba
don't deny
a separate Cuba
2/2/86
I
These were the conditions of the poem:
A bright sun and distances neither too near or too far
And an element of ruse, so near here in the absence
An emphasis of shape and strangeness, ushering in
An elongated tense (peculiar that asks, but
Primarily speaks its explanations in faults)
Kinds of primary qualities, associations, basks
A self-conscious *hauteur,* leans over to pick the
Flower from her- parenthesis- awake- key signature
II
This is the note I wrote today at the coffeeshop: For the article- a theory without unity- a unity of looser states of mind- looser boundaries- may allow for an expansion of strength- perhaps at the cost of some ambiguity of focus.
The cost, postponement in attaining the ideal.
The purchase: the hope of having any theory at all (ref: Duhem) (this added in later)
Higher and lower lines- sum lines a line can indicate that the lower thought- came later- in recognition of the fact that....
What is this aberration?
The problem with measurement is that the things most worth measuring cannot yet be measured by any device. But as we discard the scale towards simple material ( a philosopher is a slave of philsophy; the poet is shackled to his or her poetry)
2/1/86
Suddenly, once in awhile, a sense of the total *rush* of time on one level- In this experience we sense that time- while moving from then to now- is also a huge rising tide -going forward at ever greater rates of intensity- (the last phrase crossed out in the notebook) that to observe (crossed out) it at all is to feel a sense of its totality- whilch is of undreamed of immensity -magnified in all the...(crossed out, last word unreadable) senses.
Exactly at the point of metaphor (crossed out)
The entire language dissolves-
a vapor in the imagination of experience
gathered at the threshold (crossed out)
Poet: A Four Letter Word
I think to speak
I search for... (crossed out) the telling the saying
the language dissolves
leaving (crossed out) a trauma of experience
not fit for a dog
I tried to be frank
And sarcasm paid
Its eloquent witness
A translation of fraud
A lying (crossed out, unreadable) mustache
The absence of history
fluorescent fortune cookie
booby, booby
scuba duba
don't deny
a separate Cuba
2/2/86
I
These were the conditions of the poem:
A bright sun and distances neither too near or too far
And an element of ruse, so near here in the absence
An emphasis of shape and strangeness, ushering in
An elongated tense (peculiar that asks, but
Primarily speaks its explanations in faults)
Kinds of primary qualities, associations, basks
A self-conscious *hauteur,* leans over to pick the
Flower from her- parenthesis- awake- key signature
II
Wednesday, May 28
This from Ryan Fitzpatricks Process Documents yesterday:
Tuesday, May 27, 2003
If you listen to Kasey Mohammed, being in the "EE" section of his links bar is a fate worse than death. I don't know. It's not so bad. What if I have no desire to "improve my station" in blog-life. What if implying a hierarchy in his linking system is reifying the inequality inherent in the capitalist system. Maybe it doesn't matter, because blogs are essentially dumb like most things. I only do this for kicks anyway (and they keep getting harder to find).
posted by ryan 9:24 PM
Tuesday, May 27, 2003
If you listen to Kasey Mohammed, being in the "EE" section of his links bar is a fate worse than death. I don't know. It's not so bad. What if I have no desire to "improve my station" in blog-life. What if implying a hierarchy in his linking system is reifying the inequality inherent in the capitalist system. Maybe it doesn't matter, because blogs are essentially dumb like most things. I only do this for kicks anyway (and they keep getting harder to find).
posted by ryan 9:24 PM
(1/28/86)
No longer possible------------
--------past hurricane "aids" earthquake rocket crash future------------
"event comet going through the fabric of current space-time"
---------------no longer possible
common properties: Something ordinarily stable, expectably invulnerable, becomes vulnerable (loose and less resistant in its structure)
1) The air wall "caving in" to the hurricane
2) The earth "giving way" to the earthquake
3) The bodies of the ill people :giving way" to the disease
4) The ship's balance of systems gets jostled by something it ordinarily could fend off
If the particles lose confidence in the structure, they will pull apart, leaving the texture with "holes" that "allow" potentially destructive forces to penetrate the protective shell. the particles overall belief in the structure governs in the past, this unified movement- (Hofstadter's concept in which things suddenly all go a different way- I don't remember how to spell it? Sphexish- or something like that).
When the particles lose trust (Reagen's 60 Minutes, Alexander Cockburn article)- the texture fragments- the trust builds up the ladder- this is why for centuries people have believed in faith in God- something about space-time responds to faith- because something about space-time gathers momentum towards the idea that what we believe about the world is *authentic*- when doubt is vanquished, the universe holds together. Doubt rises, llike a tide. To stay above it, you need only follow it with one lazy eye- forget to do that and fate might land right on top of your head.
The multiplicity of this book is partly a source of excitement. Then again, it seems spineless- unfocussed. The romantic is needed to spur multiplicity- which is dangerous because faith becomes less and less available.
The bottom line is- predicting is not controlling- to sense the tide is coming can only help by letting you know how to use it-
*Nothing* is totally predictable.
In order to be considered worthy of receiving the final bit of information- one might have been considered worthy-This, in itself, must have been prepared for, in some way. *This* is why one h as to be *involved* with what one does. Otherwise you'll not be considered worhy of the outcome. An outcome, considered inauthentic, is ultimately not considered real- and thus is deprived of any actuality.
Therefore, many things having no intrinsic power over anything else- even of themselves- have such a power- this must be rejected.
(Consider a book as a series of cryptic remarks, meta-memories and *instructions* and advice- this is an aspect of Stevens' poetry).
No longer possible------------
--------past hurricane "aids" earthquake rocket crash future------------
"event comet going through the fabric of current space-time"
---------------no longer possible
common properties: Something ordinarily stable, expectably invulnerable, becomes vulnerable (loose and less resistant in its structure)
1) The air wall "caving in" to the hurricane
2) The earth "giving way" to the earthquake
3) The bodies of the ill people :giving way" to the disease
4) The ship's balance of systems gets jostled by something it ordinarily could fend off
If the particles lose confidence in the structure, they will pull apart, leaving the texture with "holes" that "allow" potentially destructive forces to penetrate the protective shell. the particles overall belief in the structure governs in the past, this unified movement- (Hofstadter's concept in which things suddenly all go a different way- I don't remember how to spell it? Sphexish- or something like that).
When the particles lose trust (Reagen's 60 Minutes, Alexander Cockburn article)- the texture fragments- the trust builds up the ladder- this is why for centuries people have believed in faith in God- something about space-time responds to faith- because something about space-time gathers momentum towards the idea that what we believe about the world is *authentic*- when doubt is vanquished, the universe holds together. Doubt rises, llike a tide. To stay above it, you need only follow it with one lazy eye- forget to do that and fate might land right on top of your head.
The multiplicity of this book is partly a source of excitement. Then again, it seems spineless- unfocussed. The romantic is needed to spur multiplicity- which is dangerous because faith becomes less and less available.
The bottom line is- predicting is not controlling- to sense the tide is coming can only help by letting you know how to use it-
*Nothing* is totally predictable.
In order to be considered worthy of receiving the final bit of information- one might have been considered worthy-This, in itself, must have been prepared for, in some way. *This* is why one h as to be *involved* with what one does. Otherwise you'll not be considered worhy of the outcome. An outcome, considered inauthentic, is ultimately not considered real- and thus is deprived of any actuality.
Therefore, many things having no intrinsic power over anything else- even of themselves- have such a power- this must be rejected.
(Consider a book as a series of cryptic remarks, meta-memories and *instructions* and advice- this is an aspect of Stevens' poetry).
1/28/86 the Orange Notebook
Last night, Toni and I talked about reincarnation. Today, after her doctor's visit, we returned some books to the library and I picked out: Finnigan's Wake, a book of Stevens, Emily Dickenson and *Timewarp.* The last book pushed me over the edge into my childhood. The coincidence of a cold brought other strong associations. Staying home from school, being sick and being taken care of. But another theme, often overlooked, is me taking care of *her.* Like the time we came back from Germany for a visit to her mother and I endlessly entertained her playing cards, talking about books I was reading. The more I travel back, the more real those memories are to me becuse they are the form and substance of how I experience what I am experiencing now.Another theme is banishment and defeat, but that for anothet time- yes, the mind weaves, moves across a shuttle and possibly in the perihelion of this axis...(now back to *Timewarp.*)
Idea for a story: a man has a tremendous need to discover a system which gives him exact results. Obsessed with documentation, authority, authenticity, certitude. He chooses the most exact of all. Through a labyrinth of investigations, he finally comes upon someone whho says: "Trust me, I knew the absolute value." He goes from discipline to discipline, finallly discovering one where you do not have to take the word of one another. When he realizes this, it is not long after that someone comes to him who is observed with knowing where and when the absolute value can be established.
Last night, Toni and I talked about reincarnation. Today, after her doctor's visit, we returned some books to the library and I picked out: Finnigan's Wake, a book of Stevens, Emily Dickenson and *Timewarp.* The last book pushed me over the edge into my childhood. The coincidence of a cold brought other strong associations. Staying home from school, being sick and being taken care of. But another theme, often overlooked, is me taking care of *her.* Like the time we came back from Germany for a visit to her mother and I endlessly entertained her playing cards, talking about books I was reading. The more I travel back, the more real those memories are to me becuse they are the form and substance of how I experience what I am experiencing now.Another theme is banishment and defeat, but that for anothet time- yes, the mind weaves, moves across a shuttle and possibly in the perihelion of this axis...(now back to *Timewarp.*)
Idea for a story: a man has a tremendous need to discover a system which gives him exact results. Obsessed with documentation, authority, authenticity, certitude. He chooses the most exact of all. Through a labyrinth of investigations, he finally comes upon someone whho says: "Trust me, I knew the absolute value." He goes from discipline to discipline, finallly discovering one where you do not have to take the word of one another. When he realizes this, it is not long after that someone comes to him who is observed with knowing where and when the absolute value can be established.
1/23/86
Upland. Fort Thunder, lynx
Mix- Jollity.
I'm not an ordinary elevator man
Either- polka- dot
Sphinx- take that part out
Ranging, Start over.
Order me about- al letter.
Stars stay about (some..)
"Leave that out, too."
Sans letter, sans danger
Out of time comes things and litter
and over about moments whether
In poetry it is style which is the
pedal tone, the bass tone, the
oine and only point which can be
held past a moment. The presence
of this style can amount to only a
trace of a nuance of emphasis beyond ordinary thought and speech.
But there are poetic styles which
go further, which challenge what can
now be ascertained as an existent
possible stance towards the current artistic
situation.
It is as if one were bending out the
impact of words to make them come at the
mind from the opposite of a vantage point
Here s/he is reading, reading, reading
Reading the lids of jars, laughter's frequency,
Light's harmonic, a treasured vernacular
Circular starlit humming, the spin close to
orbit, squalor. A prince is a royal entrance
to Egypt, night's labyrinth of columns, earth's
atmosphere, colonization, testimony.
Picture to image to image/souind
Some kind of memory image
Other tagged whence
airlift tossed remark to settle
harmonic memory (cold oscillate)
Changes, cloying,
deadmaster protest. Earth clone, cyclops,
whereby zoos (Banya Luka). Clips,
steps, archaic stretegy- parachutist,
eclipse, railway-hurry. Steps, into, out
of. Ip. Cit. Norway/haiku- tunnel,
frequency (end frequency). I think. Op. Cit.
France (Normandy).- Lip, clip Clips, pucker-
chop-chop.
Dentist, aunt, journey.
Upland. Fort Thunder, lynx
Mix- Jollity.
I'm not an ordinary elevator man
Either- polka- dot
Sphinx- take that part out
Ranging, Start over.
Order me about- al letter.
Stars stay about (some..)
"Leave that out, too."
Sans letter, sans danger
Out of time comes things and litter
and over about moments whether
In poetry it is style which is the
pedal tone, the bass tone, the
oine and only point which can be
held past a moment. The presence
of this style can amount to only a
trace of a nuance of emphasis beyond ordinary thought and speech.
But there are poetic styles which
go further, which challenge what can
now be ascertained as an existent
possible stance towards the current artistic
situation.
It is as if one were bending out the
impact of words to make them come at the
mind from the opposite of a vantage point
Here s/he is reading, reading, reading
Reading the lids of jars, laughter's frequency,
Light's harmonic, a treasured vernacular
Circular starlit humming, the spin close to
orbit, squalor. A prince is a royal entrance
to Egypt, night's labyrinth of columns, earth's
atmosphere, colonization, testimony.
Picture to image to image/souind
Some kind of memory image
Other tagged whence
airlift tossed remark to settle
harmonic memory (cold oscillate)
Changes, cloying,
deadmaster protest. Earth clone, cyclops,
whereby zoos (Banya Luka). Clips,
steps, archaic stretegy- parachutist,
eclipse, railway-hurry. Steps, into, out
of. Ip. Cit. Norway/haiku- tunnel,
frequency (end frequency). I think. Op. Cit.
France (Normandy).- Lip, clip Clips, pucker-
chop-chop.
Dentist, aunt, journey.
Tuesday, May 27
Tuesday, May 27, 2003
Why sleep when you can blog?
posted by Tim | 2:59 AM
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nick? Are you still awake? Nick?
posted by Tim | 2:59 AM
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well done, Tim. You definitely won this round! Good blogging too.
Let's see what happens later...
Why sleep when you can blog?
posted by Tim | 2:59 AM
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nick? Are you still awake? Nick?
posted by Tim | 2:59 AM
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well done, Tim. You definitely won this round! Good blogging too.
Let's see what happens later...
Remember *Little Shirley Bean*? This just in from Corina Copp!
Hi all. See below for what seems to be another fairly relevant matter....
love cori
On June 2, the Federal Communications Commission is planning on
authorizing sweeping changes to the American news media. The rules
change could allow your local TV stations, newspaper, radio stations,
and cable provider to all be owned by one company. NBC, ABC, CBS and
Fox could have the same corporate parent. The resulting concentration
of ownership could be deeply destructive to our democracy.
Congress is supposed to guard against monopoly power. But the
upcoming rule change could change the landscape for all media and
usher in an era in which a few corporations control your access to
news and entertainment. Please join me in asking Congress and the
FCC to support a diverse, competitive media landscape by going to:
http://www.moveon.org/stopthefcc/
You can also automatically have your comments publicly filed at the
FCC.
When the folks at MoveOn.org talk to Congresspeople about this issue,
the response is usually the same: "We only hear from media lobbyists on
this. It seems like my constituents aren't very concerned with this
issue." A few thousand emails could permanently change that perception.
Please join this critical campaign, and let Congress know you care.
Thanks.
Hi all. See below for what seems to be another fairly relevant matter....
love cori
On June 2, the Federal Communications Commission is planning on
authorizing sweeping changes to the American news media. The rules
change could allow your local TV stations, newspaper, radio stations,
and cable provider to all be owned by one company. NBC, ABC, CBS and
Fox could have the same corporate parent. The resulting concentration
of ownership could be deeply destructive to our democracy.
Congress is supposed to guard against monopoly power. But the
upcoming rule change could change the landscape for all media and
usher in an era in which a few corporations control your access to
news and entertainment. Please join me in asking Congress and the
FCC to support a diverse, competitive media landscape by going to:
http://www.moveon.org/stopthefcc/
You can also automatically have your comments publicly filed at the
FCC.
When the folks at MoveOn.org talk to Congresspeople about this issue,
the response is usually the same: "We only hear from media lobbyists on
this. It seems like my constituents aren't very concerned with this
issue." A few thousand emails could permanently change that perception.
Please join this critical campaign, and let Congress know you care.
Thanks.
1/23/86 Soundings of the Ordinary/Actual
It is in the abstract universe
that difficulty with (the) enactment
takes place.
"Nothing" is stopping you.
"It" takes too long.
All that I said about inspiration
was wrong. Minus that.
"Then" you weren't listening.
The Minotaur didn't have a name yet.
Things are so gentle in the sunlit
island of entitlement. All that you
breathed one could call birds (or "boids.")
"Scudder" or something like that.
Enticements of the interval.
Rhythm is "something wrong."
Merits of the literal.
You accept that something is yet to happen.
(a cinch))
or, a conch
to spare (explode)
Proximity is All
On this certainty
Atoms are built
What slips between...
Wraps itself
in (title) calm...(call him) (colon)
"Call Collect" a memory-
representation of something else
in the same way that "space"
"needs" "time" to happen in
and things "need" intervals
to separate them so much
All enlarges itself to the scale
tht time starts to be experienced
in proximate values
Intervals are characteristic
Such is the literal
why words change scale
such is the social (lower class-caste-case-)
The poor (treated) like animals- more smells, more work, experiences slow, dull, interminable, filled with desperation, envy, rage, remorse
The sound of a brush scaping again and again across a canvas
Sing,will you!
Or be not abandoned and alone.
:Less than a year ago, a lot of slipping
and sliding, scrapping and shaking.
Vitamin C.
Mathematics, physics, philosophy of science.
Names and names of things.
Things across a river. Rustling,
gathering points towards...
Safety...the airlines whose...
sifting
whose blimps...
erasures...shift
poor animals in a rut
tighten, tighten
"don't disagree!"
isolates hardly ever
happen (bracelets...forgiven)
(Hampton's=pads/priceless)
figment, fragment
more meant
movement/Silicon/looseleaf/cylinder
Wait: things seen as other than things
where all the owners are distant,
and cranky and difficult
Dear Publisher: I will try to back my poem safely into your magazine:
I am not entwined.
I am innocent (interest)
I have applied Before.
(Applaud)
(Forest tumbles.Type tree-
harlow's, harry's out- type glum
Fair St.)
She maybe never tasted such futurity,
Striped and grim,
F sharp minor, petrol fumes
License/winner/folk/trot
It is in the abstract universe
that difficulty with (the) enactment
takes place.
"Nothing" is stopping you.
"It" takes too long.
All that I said about inspiration
was wrong. Minus that.
"Then" you weren't listening.
The Minotaur didn't have a name yet.
Things are so gentle in the sunlit
island of entitlement. All that you
breathed one could call birds (or "boids.")
"Scudder" or something like that.
Enticements of the interval.
Rhythm is "something wrong."
Merits of the literal.
You accept that something is yet to happen.
(a cinch))
or, a conch
to spare (explode)
Proximity is All
On this certainty
Atoms are built
What slips between...
Wraps itself
in (title) calm...(call him) (colon)
"Call Collect" a memory-
representation of something else
in the same way that "space"
"needs" "time" to happen in
and things "need" intervals
to separate them so much
All enlarges itself to the scale
tht time starts to be experienced
in proximate values
Intervals are characteristic
Such is the literal
why words change scale
such is the social (lower class-caste-case-)
The poor (treated) like animals- more smells, more work, experiences slow, dull, interminable, filled with desperation, envy, rage, remorse
The sound of a brush scaping again and again across a canvas
Sing,will you!
Or be not abandoned and alone.
:Less than a year ago, a lot of slipping
and sliding, scrapping and shaking.
Vitamin C.
Mathematics, physics, philosophy of science.
Names and names of things.
Things across a river. Rustling,
gathering points towards...
Safety...the airlines whose...
sifting
whose blimps...
erasures...shift
poor animals in a rut
tighten, tighten
"don't disagree!"
isolates hardly ever
happen (bracelets...forgiven)
(Hampton's=pads/priceless)
figment, fragment
more meant
movement/Silicon/looseleaf/cylinder
Wait: things seen as other than things
where all the owners are distant,
and cranky and difficult
Dear Publisher: I will try to back my poem safely into your magazine:
I am not entwined.
I am innocent (interest)
I have applied Before.
(Applaud)
(Forest tumbles.Type tree-
harlow's, harry's out- type glum
Fair St.)
She maybe never tasted such futurity,
Striped and grim,
F sharp minor, petrol fumes
License/winner/folk/trot
6/85
Fifth Avenue was very slow and the driver overheard me mention the accident to Toni. It was the driver who told me about the woman being pinned under the crane.
Something inside me suddenly felt the full force of what must have been her actual pain. Then the outrage of the fact that this was due to human carelessness. And then all of it together: my ridiculously expensive apartment and my three jobs needed to support it; my threatened second layoff in ten years. The long years spent in school-now up to 22 of my 42 years and still owing $20,000 to the bank)- all of it. I could feel her pain because it was also me and those like me under that crane- the price of "building up" New York's face again- yet another operation to conceal New York's flabby chin. And what is the flab? The moral flab- the lack of caring, understanding- even simple responsibility- in a society build on and even more addicted to desperation and artificially created longings.
And then a strange thought entered my head. What if my legs were chopped off? I would be forced to spend the rest of my life writing all day and all night- something I could never do now. Toni compared losing my job to having a chance to really use my full potentials. But this is wrong because without legs I really can't *help*- or have the feeling I can provide the legwork that really assists others.
Fifth Avenue was very slow and the driver overheard me mention the accident to Toni. It was the driver who told me about the woman being pinned under the crane.
Something inside me suddenly felt the full force of what must have been her actual pain. Then the outrage of the fact that this was due to human carelessness. And then all of it together: my ridiculously expensive apartment and my three jobs needed to support it; my threatened second layoff in ten years. The long years spent in school-now up to 22 of my 42 years and still owing $20,000 to the bank)- all of it. I could feel her pain because it was also me and those like me under that crane- the price of "building up" New York's face again- yet another operation to conceal New York's flabby chin. And what is the flab? The moral flab- the lack of caring, understanding- even simple responsibility- in a society build on and even more addicted to desperation and artificially created longings.
And then a strange thought entered my head. What if my legs were chopped off? I would be forced to spend the rest of my life writing all day and all night- something I could never do now. Toni compared losing my job to having a chance to really use my full potentials. But this is wrong because without legs I really can't *help*- or have the feeling I can provide the legwork that really assists others.
6/1/85
(The image of) The double quality of time- one- the feeling of *plenty*- this in the sense of (the moment's) actuality's relentlessness- the other- in the planning of activities- there is a pressure- to accomplish things- to actually do them, to finish them- there is a different quality to time during such experiences.
To *produce* experience is one of the pressures of the experience of what Arakawa had called *blank.* There is a side of experience which feels tabula rasa, in which there is an inward sense of resistance to the relentless force of reality and its actual manifestations. This side of experience is akin to sleep, reverie, exhaustion, even delirium and hallucinations in its extreme forms.
These two sides of experience- one, which flows out of all that has accumulated, the other in which time is also timeless and unmoving- still and permanent as a painting, a hieroglyphic symbol carved in stone. The huge statues of Easter Island are always there, unchanging, watchful. This side of time is also always *in wait.* Even as we are wholly engrossed suddenly in some sequence of events, some future possibility...a few days ago a woman was crushed under a crane. Her legs may still have to be amputated. Toni said maybe her Karma was to point to dangers with her life- she had almost been injured in a cable car accident in Switzerland and her husband died of cancer. For six hours she lay there.
I first heard of the incident on the radio in the afternoon. I was listening to some pop music when an announcement was made that all the traffic waas totally gridlocked around the Upper East Side due to an accident with a crane. I finished work at my office and left with Toni in a cab to go see a friend's husband's film at MOMA.
4/4/85
A Play- The Characters
Reader
Poem
Talk
Idea
Word
(a theoretical construct which is
ANONANONANONANO ANON)
4/7/85
I still like ANON for the title of my book.
I am writing the theoretical construct- Now for the play- Gods- in the background *two* levels- the human level and the -mind- level- which is reflective and analytical
So events on the left are discussed on the right- and ocassionally actions reach across the two frames- this is partly observable in Woody Allen's *Purple Rose of Cairo.* - by presenting this oscillation- a resonance can be "heard" emanating from parts of reality we can't "see." We "hear" the parts we can't "see" and "feel" the parts we can't "say" or "think."
For one to assume a focal point of obtaining authenticity- in our age it is visual information- visual confirmation (as in Rilke quote in the Currents of Attention article) is to overly develop one aspect- of sensory experience at the cost of the deemphasis of the other senses. The visual is the timeless sense- while the others fade in and out- the visual attains a constancy unparalleled by the other senses- and thus an unparalleled monumentality . Yet the scale of the visual includes all but the infinite although the soul resides there. The other senses in the infinitesimal durations- contain the heart of infinitude. Thus- the tower of babel was presented with limits and language at the same time- we lost immortality in order to speak- but with language came diversity and wholeness- "words were what were whole" as the poet Bruce Andrews puts it: and Genesis: "in the beginning was the word."
4/11/85
(music like *Call Collect*)
(1) Film- close-ups of all the electronic connections for an automatic recording to trace all the succeeding calls on any call coming in and giving a printout of this.
(2) The idea of books which you hold in your hand (Freud's Mystic Writing Pad)
(The image of) The double quality of time- one- the feeling of *plenty*- this in the sense of (the moment's) actuality's relentlessness- the other- in the planning of activities- there is a pressure- to accomplish things- to actually do them, to finish them- there is a different quality to time during such experiences.
To *produce* experience is one of the pressures of the experience of what Arakawa had called *blank.* There is a side of experience which feels tabula rasa, in which there is an inward sense of resistance to the relentless force of reality and its actual manifestations. This side of experience is akin to sleep, reverie, exhaustion, even delirium and hallucinations in its extreme forms.
These two sides of experience- one, which flows out of all that has accumulated, the other in which time is also timeless and unmoving- still and permanent as a painting, a hieroglyphic symbol carved in stone. The huge statues of Easter Island are always there, unchanging, watchful. This side of time is also always *in wait.* Even as we are wholly engrossed suddenly in some sequence of events, some future possibility...a few days ago a woman was crushed under a crane. Her legs may still have to be amputated. Toni said maybe her Karma was to point to dangers with her life- she had almost been injured in a cable car accident in Switzerland and her husband died of cancer. For six hours she lay there.
I first heard of the incident on the radio in the afternoon. I was listening to some pop music when an announcement was made that all the traffic waas totally gridlocked around the Upper East Side due to an accident with a crane. I finished work at my office and left with Toni in a cab to go see a friend's husband's film at MOMA.
4/4/85
A Play- The Characters
Reader
Poem
Talk
Idea
Word
(a theoretical construct which is
ANONANONANONANO ANON)
4/7/85
I still like ANON for the title of my book.
I am writing the theoretical construct- Now for the play- Gods- in the background *two* levels- the human level and the -mind- level- which is reflective and analytical
So events on the left are discussed on the right- and ocassionally actions reach across the two frames- this is partly observable in Woody Allen's *Purple Rose of Cairo.* - by presenting this oscillation- a resonance can be "heard" emanating from parts of reality we can't "see." We "hear" the parts we can't "see" and "feel" the parts we can't "say" or "think."
For one to assume a focal point of obtaining authenticity- in our age it is visual information- visual confirmation (as in Rilke quote in the Currents of Attention article) is to overly develop one aspect- of sensory experience at the cost of the deemphasis of the other senses. The visual is the timeless sense- while the others fade in and out- the visual attains a constancy unparalleled by the other senses- and thus an unparalleled monumentality . Yet the scale of the visual includes all but the infinite although the soul resides there. The other senses in the infinitesimal durations- contain the heart of infinitude. Thus- the tower of babel was presented with limits and language at the same time- we lost immortality in order to speak- but with language came diversity and wholeness- "words were what were whole" as the poet Bruce Andrews puts it: and Genesis: "in the beginning was the word."
4/11/85
(music like *Call Collect*)
(1) Film- close-ups of all the electronic connections for an automatic recording to trace all the succeeding calls on any call coming in and giving a printout of this.
(2) The idea of books which you hold in your hand (Freud's Mystic Writing Pad)
Monday, May 26
10/23/80
9 months of no writing in this book. The articles for L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E- finished. More like a death- a reversal of the cycle. None months to die.
Melodramatic. I just had another thought about language. Memory is lexical (crossed out with questionmark added). To see a sign is a reminder.
Combination of OBJECT REPRESENTATION (SIgn) and SIGNIFIER.
2) To see specific printed letters is a reminder of (1)
1) original "meaning" or set of associations
1) original "meaning" or set of associations
2) later associations when the script is again (noticed/seen/remarked)
3) The "original" reading experienced as "meaning"
a) the rereading establishes a net of associations
b) the set of associations
4) the later associations reminders of associations to experiences
Dependence> independence
closeness> distance
self> other
You felt what you felt-
why should you say to yourself that these feelings brought about a specific reaction i somebody else?
argument
anger provokes anger
But to say that means to say that what you feel was caused by some previous interaction
My love for you is not what makes you love me
My hate for you is not what makes you hate me
9 months of no writing in this book. The articles for L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E- finished. More like a death- a reversal of the cycle. None months to die.
Melodramatic. I just had another thought about language. Memory is lexical (crossed out with questionmark added). To see a sign is a reminder.
Combination of OBJECT REPRESENTATION (SIgn) and SIGNIFIER.
2) To see specific printed letters is a reminder of (1)
1) original "meaning" or set of associations
1) original "meaning" or set of associations
2) later associations when the script is again (noticed/seen/remarked)
3) The "original" reading experienced as "meaning"
a) the rereading establishes a net of associations
b) the set of associations
4) the later associations reminders of associations to experiences
Dependence> independence
closeness> distance
self> other
You felt what you felt-
why should you say to yourself that these feelings brought about a specific reaction i somebody else?
argument
anger provokes anger
But to say that means to say that what you feel was caused by some previous interaction
My love for you is not what makes you love me
My hate for you is not what makes you hate me
7/78
By a systematic relieving of guilt, an analyst is able to assist an analysand... a relief from the pressure of responsibilities.This is true. But the fictive muse might entirely neglect her object. These mutterings from the unconscious precede a more organized perception of time. So many selves are required.
Dr.Fielding- owe $180. Patient owes me $200.
The technique of unresolved relationships. All the things I couldn't say to someone.
X said what she sees in my work are unresolved relationships. How about mine? The writing is, in the end, about these relationships. Someone else felt my writing "exploited" the audience. My relationships do have a "distant" quality to them now.
Will power. Avoidance of responsibilites. For six months I carried "Two or Three Things I Know About HIm" in my briefcase. But my relaxation techniques seem to be related to fear. Plainly, because I was so afraid, I backed into a corner, like Gregor Samsa in -Metamorphosis.- I withdrew into a world of words, books and writing. I took forays into the world of people and then withdrew into my solitude.
It's just that when I don't have to make a move, in terms of those responsibilities, I don't want to. I would rather live in a world of my own creating during that time. There is a story in my secretiveness too, and I want you to know it. And so he begins taking small photographs of his most familiar landscape, his own thoughts. True, they were all thought before. But even the way I press my pen down so hard on the page has a personal history. Perhaps I loved making those words so much my teachers would read. Maybe it's just a way to get out my anger. I do like tightening up the muscles in my arm when I write. Maybe it was my sport instead of baseball, which the other kids played, but which I, especially in my childhood, withdrew from. It's frightening how personal my exposure, my (emotional) rape by my mother was. She wanted to own me completely, make me completely her slave, perhaps. Or maybe she ws still so angry at her father for deserting her and her mother for another woman.
So, it is all these unresolved relationships. How I leave the feelings there to accumulate like a pile of leaves waiting on the lawn to be burned.
Seemed kind of wary.
Assumed.
The problem of space= the human relationship to space.
Harcourt, Brace= 888-4444.
The letters, checks and bills.
Impatiently waiting. Need for a certain kind of support- different kinds- also related to fear. All this concentration on preoccupations can be directly translated into poetry. Making a plan, a move (also, fear), telling a story M.G. Giving out directly a kind of direct interpretation of the narrative. This would feel like making a personal choice, a form of committment.
By a systematic relieving of guilt, an analyst is able to assist an analysand... a relief from the pressure of responsibilities.This is true. But the fictive muse might entirely neglect her object. These mutterings from the unconscious precede a more organized perception of time. So many selves are required.
Dr.Fielding- owe $180. Patient owes me $200.
The technique of unresolved relationships. All the things I couldn't say to someone.
X said what she sees in my work are unresolved relationships. How about mine? The writing is, in the end, about these relationships. Someone else felt my writing "exploited" the audience. My relationships do have a "distant" quality to them now.
Will power. Avoidance of responsibilites. For six months I carried "Two or Three Things I Know About HIm" in my briefcase. But my relaxation techniques seem to be related to fear. Plainly, because I was so afraid, I backed into a corner, like Gregor Samsa in -Metamorphosis.- I withdrew into a world of words, books and writing. I took forays into the world of people and then withdrew into my solitude.
It's just that when I don't have to make a move, in terms of those responsibilities, I don't want to. I would rather live in a world of my own creating during that time. There is a story in my secretiveness too, and I want you to know it. And so he begins taking small photographs of his most familiar landscape, his own thoughts. True, they were all thought before. But even the way I press my pen down so hard on the page has a personal history. Perhaps I loved making those words so much my teachers would read. Maybe it's just a way to get out my anger. I do like tightening up the muscles in my arm when I write. Maybe it was my sport instead of baseball, which the other kids played, but which I, especially in my childhood, withdrew from. It's frightening how personal my exposure, my (emotional) rape by my mother was. She wanted to own me completely, make me completely her slave, perhaps. Or maybe she ws still so angry at her father for deserting her and her mother for another woman.
So, it is all these unresolved relationships. How I leave the feelings there to accumulate like a pile of leaves waiting on the lawn to be burned.
Seemed kind of wary.
Assumed.
The problem of space= the human relationship to space.
Harcourt, Brace= 888-4444.
The letters, checks and bills.
Impatiently waiting. Need for a certain kind of support- different kinds- also related to fear. All this concentration on preoccupations can be directly translated into poetry. Making a plan, a move (also, fear), telling a story M.G. Giving out directly a kind of direct interpretation of the narrative. This would feel like making a personal choice, a form of committment.
Toni's sister Beryl and her husband Bob came down from Arlington, Mass to make a holiday visit this weekend. To celebrate her 70th birthday, Toni's stepmother Barbara suggested that we drive up to Storm King Art Center near Cornwall. Though it was a cloudy day everyone still wanted to go. The drive up the Palisades Parkway was pleasant as usual and the sumptuous country style breakfast we had in Cornwall was more than pleasant: It was naughty to have pancakes with eggs and sausages but what the hell, we needed strength to cover all that area at Storm King where hundreds of sculptures, many of them monumental in scope, may be seen in an outdoor setting of rolling hills, streams and trees. We boarded a tram and got an overview of numerous sculptures, but everyone agreed to get off and wander around when we caught sight of the Andy Goldsworthy stone fence he constructed there in 1997-1998 over a period of about 4-6 months. The museum collected the stones and with 4 or 5 helpers Andy Goldsworthy reconstructed a gorgeous fence made out of stones fallen from old stone fences, which were piled by hand and kept stacked by gravity alone, circling beautfully around tree after tree and ending up at the edge of a stream, to be picked up again on the other side. I bought a nice color photo of the site covered with snow in winter later in the museum shop as well as a slide of the fence. The groundsperson explained to me that a bunch of students had carelessly walked along the top of the fence the other day and some people were stealing the stones. For those of you who are as yet unfamiliar with Goldworthy's work, I suggest you see the film about it, that was recently released, if you can. There are numerous books with plenty of photos of his work in wood, ice, stone and other materials. Somehow, for me, this fence made most of the other numerous monumental sculptures, mostly constructed of steel, look like quaint leftovers from an age obsessed with metal girders and skyscrapers. Goldsworthy's work celebrates the earth, stones, contemplation, stillness, grace and, that apparently hopelessly outdated concept, "nature." This work offers time travel par excellance! I also enjoyed a huge, but subtle piece by Richard Serra, a collection of David Smiths, a small gathering of items by Nam June Paik, but in addition to the Goldsworthy, most of all a monumental piece made out of cedar and graphite by Ursula Von Rydingsvard, whose recent show followed Goldworthy's at the Gagosian Gallery.
Barbara, who used to live in Nyack with Toni's father, the late Bill Simon, who was a fine songwriter and musician, about ten years ago, suggested we stop over there for coffee on the way back. I got a chance to visit a compact used bookshop I like very much and found a small hardbound book of short pieces by Samuel Beckett called "Fizzles," from 1977 with the bright yellow Grove Press book jacket still intact and a book about the musical theories of Claude Debussy by Leon Vallas which I had long ago taken out of the library and regretfully returned.. I got into a conversation with the owner about his own book collection and he told me he liked to collect memoirs by bookstore owners like Vincent Starrett's *Born in a Bookshop* and another one by Madeline Stern. He also told me about his collection of hobo's writings. A number of these interesting wanderers were typesetters who would get short term jobs and write memoirs, typeset them on the sly and sell them! Later, on the drive back to the city Bob suggested a book of essays by Camus: "Summer and Nuptials." Never heard of that one. Dinner at Mogodor, of course, on St Mark's and back to Barbara's for Chinese Checkers, beer and cheese and looking at old photos. I didn't feel like Chinese Checkers so I read an article in the Sunday Times Arts and Leisure section about photoblogs (one recommendation was fotolog.net). Suddenly the Times is very interested in bloggers! But the articles, as usual, have been fuzzy and neither exciting nor informative. The Times is often lacking in two crucial aspects that make for absorbing reading: sensitivity and insight. I've had it with the Times: The New York Times is over if you want it!
Barbara, who used to live in Nyack with Toni's father, the late Bill Simon, who was a fine songwriter and musician, about ten years ago, suggested we stop over there for coffee on the way back. I got a chance to visit a compact used bookshop I like very much and found a small hardbound book of short pieces by Samuel Beckett called "Fizzles," from 1977 with the bright yellow Grove Press book jacket still intact and a book about the musical theories of Claude Debussy by Leon Vallas which I had long ago taken out of the library and regretfully returned.. I got into a conversation with the owner about his own book collection and he told me he liked to collect memoirs by bookstore owners like Vincent Starrett's *Born in a Bookshop* and another one by Madeline Stern. He also told me about his collection of hobo's writings. A number of these interesting wanderers were typesetters who would get short term jobs and write memoirs, typeset them on the sly and sell them! Later, on the drive back to the city Bob suggested a book of essays by Camus: "Summer and Nuptials." Never heard of that one. Dinner at Mogodor, of course, on St Mark's and back to Barbara's for Chinese Checkers, beer and cheese and looking at old photos. I didn't feel like Chinese Checkers so I read an article in the Sunday Times Arts and Leisure section about photoblogs (one recommendation was fotolog.net). Suddenly the Times is very interested in bloggers! But the articles, as usual, have been fuzzy and neither exciting nor informative. The Times is often lacking in two crucial aspects that make for absorbing reading: sensitivity and insight. I've had it with the Times: The New York Times is over if you want it!
Sunday, May 25
(7/78)
Historicity
The thought before is substituted for the anterior reference. Time in moment-to-moment tension is dissolved and diffused in the form of various perspectives of scale. This hypertrophy of scale is observable in contemporary abstract art and largely formalized including concepts of self-reference and documentation- in the tiny collages of Kurt Schwitters. Schwitters' association with the Dada movement- and deepened by his reaction to Nazism- fixes him in the historical frame which is for the moment overemphasized and ignores the space/thought dimension of his work. The promise of Surrealism- fusion of thought and language forms- also of a...
Tottering in its confused association with Freudianism- did not lead to the mecca of instant self-enlightenment. Before long too, the beats were to again vastly enlarge the possibilities for line to line scale and it's di...
7/8/78
As presently we will see the tides are still searching out their newest shapes and colors and the words for connection are still the same. I see your expressions in the coded messages of my feelings. You weren't kidding when you said I was happy. Soon we will answer to the gestures this sharing implies. Sunset also has a place in the vocabulary of history. Feelings go in lines too and afterwards another long kiss. No eyebrows raised the sun is in your greeting...Let's hurry, one foot after another, always a single word drawn into a series, the preceding enters onto the following like a ruin of small mistakes. the coming together draws closer the frayed ends of the present, past and future.
7/20/78
Losing pace with the historicity article, the reports from BCG, the correspondance for L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E. I just don't feel like doing it. After the feelings about Roof IV and what happened with X, *I just don't feel like looking at it.* The wall I told Fielding about. After that point, I may be entering into vulnerable areas that may cause some pain. I am happy about my relationship with N but I also feel afraid. But I face away from writing work when I'm struggling with trust. Now I'm thinking of being published in the magazines and mixed up in this other thoughts, about security. So many people have said to me there isn't any, even some analysts, but I don't believe this. And the symbol of that feeling for me is the sea in summer. The dream of love, the eternal sea in summer. Scylla and Charybdis, responsibility and trust on the one shore- no, that is not what I mean- I mean the two voices I was thinking about the other day, it has to be allowed to be able to come out like that.What is the realization of a language I ask myself and the Call Collect Neil wrote asked me that- will I never achieve my sense of organization? Part of me likes the dissolving, a different sense of time Alan called it.
This started with the thought about the man who turned his apartment antique shop- art gallery into an exclusive restaurant. Certain things I'm afraid to buy. Like an electric typewriter. I paid back all the money except to Cheska- I have $1113 plus cash for the month- but I'm still scared. I guess it's because I'm always afraid of losing my job. But *that fear* must be countered by a real committment to study, analysis and actual effort.The recurring objects of his fantasy- he was waiting for them to appear and they did.
*So historicity has to do with waiting, if it is to mean anything. * Life as it is lived also guides our choices.
Needlefish a voracious eater of small fishes. Uses a web for bait, to catch the fish. Red shell money-gathered by the diver in the deepest part of the lagoon. He uses 30 cent goggles. He has earned his pay.
The nautilus, a creature of the night, is rarely seen except as bones.
The sharks in the water help you if you do good by them, or they will kill you. A pig is sacrificed, they collect the skulls of pigs sacrificed.
Shell money- different colored shells ground in a certain way.
A priest swims out and offers the shark a pig. It's the first time the skulls have been brought out in 30 years. The eldest priest has the most skulls. it's a heavy burden. They pray for the shark to arrive. He takes the sacrifice eagerly.
The sharks didn't attack the people.
The sea snakes talked to the shark and all fish the shark had chased into the cave escaped. This happened in Time Before.
8/15
I don't remember when I wrote that but I saw it on t.v. The article about writing dreams.
Can I really keep my dreams? Can I color them pastel colors again and again in memories. Like a bunch of fires built along the beach. Beacons. No, bacon. No memory. Just by.
The signature was mine, take it- the nature of its essence maybe will be our essence once. I try to keep it, but it keeps slipping away from me. I keep on fishing for it, like the collector of conches, they are also your words and I'm thinking about each separate name. And for the moment I'm in your frame. It's not like slipping into the word star machine- and the rust collects stamps- also a lot of rags are held in locks, in voices- I'm...an ocean just for you...twice in the parts of once or twice, ashore. Someone comes by to clean it up, to protect it. I'm afraid of this person, because the person who can help me is also still part of my dreams and I don't need better glasses than that. Whether or not you can fill it for the one who is lost now.
"You'll forgive me," he says "if I admit to you immediately that I like to have some money in the bank." He turns and looks away with a wistful expression on his face. "I remember the times I felt differently. I still had my recklessness and my taste for gambling with my life. I wasn't really much of an artist anyway, though I knew some very good ones." He pointed to his furnishings. "Now I console myself with a little extravagance, and the love of my dear wife."
His pince-nez.
Historicity
The thought before is substituted for the anterior reference. Time in moment-to-moment tension is dissolved and diffused in the form of various perspectives of scale. This hypertrophy of scale is observable in contemporary abstract art and largely formalized including concepts of self-reference and documentation- in the tiny collages of Kurt Schwitters. Schwitters' association with the Dada movement- and deepened by his reaction to Nazism- fixes him in the historical frame which is for the moment overemphasized and ignores the space/thought dimension of his work. The promise of Surrealism- fusion of thought and language forms- also of a...
Tottering in its confused association with Freudianism- did not lead to the mecca of instant self-enlightenment. Before long too, the beats were to again vastly enlarge the possibilities for line to line scale and it's di...
7/8/78
As presently we will see the tides are still searching out their newest shapes and colors and the words for connection are still the same. I see your expressions in the coded messages of my feelings. You weren't kidding when you said I was happy. Soon we will answer to the gestures this sharing implies. Sunset also has a place in the vocabulary of history. Feelings go in lines too and afterwards another long kiss. No eyebrows raised the sun is in your greeting...Let's hurry, one foot after another, always a single word drawn into a series, the preceding enters onto the following like a ruin of small mistakes. the coming together draws closer the frayed ends of the present, past and future.
7/20/78
Losing pace with the historicity article, the reports from BCG, the correspondance for L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E. I just don't feel like doing it. After the feelings about Roof IV and what happened with X, *I just don't feel like looking at it.* The wall I told Fielding about. After that point, I may be entering into vulnerable areas that may cause some pain. I am happy about my relationship with N but I also feel afraid. But I face away from writing work when I'm struggling with trust. Now I'm thinking of being published in the magazines and mixed up in this other thoughts, about security. So many people have said to me there isn't any, even some analysts, but I don't believe this. And the symbol of that feeling for me is the sea in summer. The dream of love, the eternal sea in summer. Scylla and Charybdis, responsibility and trust on the one shore- no, that is not what I mean- I mean the two voices I was thinking about the other day, it has to be allowed to be able to come out like that.What is the realization of a language I ask myself and the Call Collect Neil wrote asked me that- will I never achieve my sense of organization? Part of me likes the dissolving, a different sense of time Alan called it.
This started with the thought about the man who turned his apartment antique shop- art gallery into an exclusive restaurant. Certain things I'm afraid to buy. Like an electric typewriter. I paid back all the money except to Cheska- I have $1113 plus cash for the month- but I'm still scared. I guess it's because I'm always afraid of losing my job. But *that fear* must be countered by a real committment to study, analysis and actual effort.The recurring objects of his fantasy- he was waiting for them to appear and they did.
*So historicity has to do with waiting, if it is to mean anything. * Life as it is lived also guides our choices.
Needlefish a voracious eater of small fishes. Uses a web for bait, to catch the fish. Red shell money-gathered by the diver in the deepest part of the lagoon. He uses 30 cent goggles. He has earned his pay.
The nautilus, a creature of the night, is rarely seen except as bones.
The sharks in the water help you if you do good by them, or they will kill you. A pig is sacrificed, they collect the skulls of pigs sacrificed.
Shell money- different colored shells ground in a certain way.
A priest swims out and offers the shark a pig. It's the first time the skulls have been brought out in 30 years. The eldest priest has the most skulls. it's a heavy burden. They pray for the shark to arrive. He takes the sacrifice eagerly.
The sharks didn't attack the people.
The sea snakes talked to the shark and all fish the shark had chased into the cave escaped. This happened in Time Before.
8/15
I don't remember when I wrote that but I saw it on t.v. The article about writing dreams.
Can I really keep my dreams? Can I color them pastel colors again and again in memories. Like a bunch of fires built along the beach. Beacons. No, bacon. No memory. Just by.
The signature was mine, take it- the nature of its essence maybe will be our essence once. I try to keep it, but it keeps slipping away from me. I keep on fishing for it, like the collector of conches, they are also your words and I'm thinking about each separate name. And for the moment I'm in your frame. It's not like slipping into the word star machine- and the rust collects stamps- also a lot of rags are held in locks, in voices- I'm...an ocean just for you...twice in the parts of once or twice, ashore. Someone comes by to clean it up, to protect it. I'm afraid of this person, because the person who can help me is also still part of my dreams and I don't need better glasses than that. Whether or not you can fill it for the one who is lost now.
"You'll forgive me," he says "if I admit to you immediately that I like to have some money in the bank." He turns and looks away with a wistful expression on his face. "I remember the times I felt differently. I still had my recklessness and my taste for gambling with my life. I wasn't really much of an artist anyway, though I knew some very good ones." He pointed to his furnishings. "Now I console myself with a little extravagance, and the love of my dear wife."
His pince-nez.
Saturday, May 24
The Poetry Project Newsletter, issue #195, for June-September 2003, edited by Nada Gordon and Gary Sullivan is hot of the press! The issue is mostly devoted to blogging and bloggers with pieces, for the most part drawn from the blogs of Drew Gardner, Stephanie Young, Patrick Durgin, David Hess, Jack Kimball, Jordan Davis, Tim Yu, Heriberto Yepez, Eileen Tabios, Brandon Barr, Marianne Shaneen, Mairead Byrne, Camille Roy; a poem by Marianne Moore adapted to the topic of blogging by Brian Kim Stefans, a conversation drawn from the blogs of Josh Corey and K. Silem Mohammed; and Jack Kimball on new work by Bruce Andrews, Joe Elliot, David Larsen, Carol Mirakove, Rene Ricard and Lytle Shaw. This gala, but final issue to be edited by Gary and Nada includes an in-depth review of George Stanley's *A Tall Serious Girl* by Lewis Warsh and a terrific comic strip by Sharon Mesmer and David Bourchart *Rebuilding the City of The Future*and a piece by me titled "Confessions of a Blog Artist." Free to members, the issue costs $5. The Poetry Project is located at 131 East 10th Street, NY , NY 10003, (212) 674-0910. Email poproj@thorn.net
web site: www.poetryproject.com
web site: www.poetryproject.com
Nick's Bloglink Crush List- (most recent links)
prrrowess...Nada Gordon's Poem Blog
abolone..Li Bloom
Tympan...Tim Yu
Porthole Redux ....Catherine Meng
Mr.Tong Bliss' Journal...Joe Massey
Human Verb...Noah Eli Gordon
tex files...Chris Murray
Parking Lot...Chris Corrigan
Black Spring...Meno ter Braak
Chimera Song Mosaic...Deborah D
The Jetty...Cassie Lewis
No Starting Point...Emma Barnes
double visions of Johanna
Technorati Cosmos
Mike Snider's Formal Blog
Ernesto Priego...Never Neutral
(apologies to Jimmy Behrle for lifting some of his links and his "crush list" idea, but, as we all know, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and it's easy)
prrrowess...Nada Gordon's Poem Blog
abolone..Li Bloom
Tympan...Tim Yu
Porthole Redux ....Catherine Meng
Mr.Tong Bliss' Journal...Joe Massey
Human Verb...Noah Eli Gordon
tex files...Chris Murray
Parking Lot...Chris Corrigan
Black Spring...Meno ter Braak
Chimera Song Mosaic...Deborah D
The Jetty...Cassie Lewis
No Starting Point...Emma Barnes
double visions of Johanna
Technorati Cosmos
Mike Snider's Formal Blog
Ernesto Priego...Never Neutral
(apologies to Jimmy Behrle for lifting some of his links and his "crush list" idea, but, as we all know, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and it's easy)
"K. Silem Mohammad will never reveal his mysterious bloglink categorization system."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh, Kasey, please, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out this "mystery."
HInt: Check out Category E. 16 men, two women. This must be Kasey's "kickass" maximum security prison category.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh, Kasey, please, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out this "mystery."
HInt: Check out Category E. 16 men, two women. This must be Kasey's "kickass" maximum security prison category.
Cassie Lewis...The Jetty is the author of several "Postcard Poems" books, including one with Stephanie Young. Two of her postcard poems are just out in Shampoo 17. If you're living- or going- to San Francisco, she has a reading with K. Silem Mohammed in the famous at home reading series in David Hadbawnik's apartment. Cassie Lewis is interested in collage! Here's one from her postcard collab with Stephanie:
Found Objects
I got to thinking about collage and whether
or not to practice it. Remembered how
when I made an Expresso book
called "Experiments" all I used
for the cover was a faded shirt
of this most gorgeous fabric, shimmery
on one side matte on the other. I stuck a
ripped square on the cover of each book.
Felt good to recycle this thing of beauty,
my old best shirt.
*
Friday, June 13, 7.30pm – K. Silem Mohammad and Cassie Lewis
Willl be reading at David Hadbawnik's reading series
at his apartment in San Francisco.
Directions:
Public trans: From downtown San Francisco, take the 38 Geary
or the 31 Balboa, and get off at 35th Ave.
Driving: drive to 35th and Balboa, park. David's building is the big one
on the northwest corner of the street. Ring the buzzer for apartment
204.
NOTE: the phone will be turned off after 8pm, so don’t be late!!!
Found Objects
I got to thinking about collage and whether
or not to practice it. Remembered how
when I made an Expresso book
called "Experiments" all I used
for the cover was a faded shirt
of this most gorgeous fabric, shimmery
on one side matte on the other. I stuck a
ripped square on the cover of each book.
Felt good to recycle this thing of beauty,
my old best shirt.
*
Friday, June 13, 7.30pm – K. Silem Mohammad and Cassie Lewis
Willl be reading at David Hadbawnik's reading series
at his apartment in San Francisco.
Directions:
Public trans: From downtown San Francisco, take the 38 Geary
or the 31 Balboa, and get off at 35th Ave.
Driving: drive to 35th and Balboa, park. David's building is the big one
on the northwest corner of the street. Ring the buzzer for apartment
204.
NOTE: the phone will be turned off after 8pm, so don’t be late!!!
7/1/89
Reading Pavese's diaries. The illusion the book offers is that it can represent time moving faster than it does, that we could skip over events and get an overview. What this neglects, and the diary form restores, is that the insight is the event, par excellence, in the best literary sense. The book ignores the philosophical basic tenet that knowledge of the truth, and the gaining of that knowledge, constitutes a valuable kind of condensing that the "sequence of events" leading up to it obviates in their importance. This event marks a beginning of a new *order* of events on a certain plane.
Perhaps Pavese was akind of "backwards" person in that he ended his biological life at precisely the time that a certain mythical (fictional or poeticas) figure dissolved of itself.
7/4/89
Small occurances which are trifling in the large (macro) world, but momentous in the microworld.
Satie: the "child's" march. Self-importance of these little men.
7/9/89
That some writers (Pavese is one) cannot sustain very much joy in life- a factor which makes their words appear more ironic than they are. (Karl Kraus: the closer you look at a word, the more distantly it looks back).
We venerate the sustained effort it takes to write a book- and are blind to the sustained effort it takes to live a life. Or should I say- go blind in the sustained effort it takes to live a life. But intellectuals romanticize their losses- try to build something out of them. Other people feel an absence and try to find a way to shrug it off. The annoying tendency that intllectuals have of celebrating *all* perceptions- including odious ones. I mean , I can admire the way you cannibalize your own experiences without really enjoying it.
But this is all a vicious cycle, in a sense.
Do I burst your bubble in order to make to make you look at mine?
later:
The coffee grinder and her lover
7/12 Wednesday
Eventful vs. non-eventful
Chipping, scratching
Coalesce- conversely
Dividing
Soaked, absorbed
Drained
Stained
Remains
'Markers
Records
Could touch- feel the difference
Together whisper forth
Early remembrance
Tap-tap
Can place it
Reading Pavese's diaries. The illusion the book offers is that it can represent time moving faster than it does, that we could skip over events and get an overview. What this neglects, and the diary form restores, is that the insight is the event, par excellence, in the best literary sense. The book ignores the philosophical basic tenet that knowledge of the truth, and the gaining of that knowledge, constitutes a valuable kind of condensing that the "sequence of events" leading up to it obviates in their importance. This event marks a beginning of a new *order* of events on a certain plane.
Perhaps Pavese was akind of "backwards" person in that he ended his biological life at precisely the time that a certain mythical (fictional or poeticas) figure dissolved of itself.
7/4/89
Small occurances which are trifling in the large (macro) world, but momentous in the microworld.
Satie: the "child's" march. Self-importance of these little men.
7/9/89
That some writers (Pavese is one) cannot sustain very much joy in life- a factor which makes their words appear more ironic than they are. (Karl Kraus: the closer you look at a word, the more distantly it looks back).
We venerate the sustained effort it takes to write a book- and are blind to the sustained effort it takes to live a life. Or should I say- go blind in the sustained effort it takes to live a life. But intellectuals romanticize their losses- try to build something out of them. Other people feel an absence and try to find a way to shrug it off. The annoying tendency that intllectuals have of celebrating *all* perceptions- including odious ones. I mean , I can admire the way you cannibalize your own experiences without really enjoying it.
But this is all a vicious cycle, in a sense.
Do I burst your bubble in order to make to make you look at mine?
later:
The coffee grinder and her lover
7/12 Wednesday
Eventful vs. non-eventful
Chipping, scratching
Coalesce- conversely
Dividing
Soaked, absorbed
Drained
Stained
Remains
'Markers
Records
Could touch- feel the difference
Together whisper forth
Early remembrance
Tap-tap
Can place it
Friday, May 23
(An unsent letter, around 10/77)
My whole body is trembling. It isn't only happy, it's sad. Everything that verges on being more than being draws up with it a longing for freedom of feeling and action greater than one could have even imagined just before. And every floating color that vanishes into memory records delicate reflections, representations of actual experience which is the greatest healer and guide. Moments we shared, even re-inventing the pronoun incites a mysterious venturesomeness, a daring that hides in its face the doubts that turn one's head away from the next turn. Only this one may be straight or was straight until we turned back before the trees, before night, into the red tailights and green signs and the door with its quietness behind it. I feel, as I kiss you, I can hold your breathing, I want to laugh till we shake some yellow leaves down, taken down, done down to the deepest kisses imaginable. Saturday did give me a reminder, many reminders of that scent. But I'm back there again. Only I hold your image before my mind, a metaphor of a pronoun, the memory, like the way to open the camera or to load it, the thing in my hands like a wounded animal to be taken to the front of the car. I guess there aren't any photographs that could conjure up the thought teased away by your voice- I must have- you did too- there's we, and a sentence unfolds to depict the whole blue sky and the raining trees. The deepest memories are being remembered and forgotten into the deepest
chambers of memory. Can we find our way back? Can we rewind the tape, wind the film, always with the wind of tomorrow blowing into our faces? Lead us back, find our way to the path through the low bushes across from the off-center main spot of the field on which so softly we spoke- we do it to make them listen as we do- only *once*- and now I'll leave us there, in our jackets, in the October clear sun, high, immersed in each other's thousands of faces.
Love,
Nick
My whole body is trembling. It isn't only happy, it's sad. Everything that verges on being more than being draws up with it a longing for freedom of feeling and action greater than one could have even imagined just before. And every floating color that vanishes into memory records delicate reflections, representations of actual experience which is the greatest healer and guide. Moments we shared, even re-inventing the pronoun incites a mysterious venturesomeness, a daring that hides in its face the doubts that turn one's head away from the next turn. Only this one may be straight or was straight until we turned back before the trees, before night, into the red tailights and green signs and the door with its quietness behind it. I feel, as I kiss you, I can hold your breathing, I want to laugh till we shake some yellow leaves down, taken down, done down to the deepest kisses imaginable. Saturday did give me a reminder, many reminders of that scent. But I'm back there again. Only I hold your image before my mind, a metaphor of a pronoun, the memory, like the way to open the camera or to load it, the thing in my hands like a wounded animal to be taken to the front of the car. I guess there aren't any photographs that could conjure up the thought teased away by your voice- I must have- you did too- there's we, and a sentence unfolds to depict the whole blue sky and the raining trees. The deepest memories are being remembered and forgotten into the deepest
chambers of memory. Can we find our way back? Can we rewind the tape, wind the film, always with the wind of tomorrow blowing into our faces? Lead us back, find our way to the path through the low bushes across from the off-center main spot of the field on which so softly we spoke- we do it to make them listen as we do- only *once*- and now I'll leave us there, in our jackets, in the October clear sun, high, immersed in each other's thousands of faces.
Love,
Nick
Don't miss an exceptionally thought provoking piece today by Caterina on the photographer Andreas Gursky and poet Walt Whitman.
*
I regret only finding out about the most amazing Kurt Schwitters show I've ever seen just a few days before it ended, which was today. It was at the Ubu Gallery. Fortunately there is a catalogue available with color prints of every one of the 60 pieces in show. Comfortably priced at $20! Ubu is at 416 East 59th Street, New York,NY 10022 info@ubugallery.com www.ubugallery.com
*
DOOR WIDE OPEN
At the Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery, NYC
this Saturday, May 17th at 7:30pm
With performances every Saturday & Sunday
At 7:30pm, through June.
For reservations and information, call 212-614-0505,
Or book tickets on-line at www.bowerypoetry.com
Tickets $15. An Actors Equity Showcase.
SPECIAL DEAL FOR POETS!!!! Use the code word MIRANDA
for $10 tickets at any performance!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Click on the following link to zzoz.com
For a feature on the play, with a beautiful color photo
of John Ventimiglia & Adira Amram as Jack Kerouac & Joyce Johnson
/www.zzoz.com/theater.html
*
I regret only finding out about the most amazing Kurt Schwitters show I've ever seen just a few days before it ended, which was today. It was at the Ubu Gallery. Fortunately there is a catalogue available with color prints of every one of the 60 pieces in show. Comfortably priced at $20! Ubu is at 416 East 59th Street, New York,NY 10022 info@ubugallery.com www.ubugallery.com
*
DOOR WIDE OPEN
At the Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery, NYC
this Saturday, May 17th at 7:30pm
With performances every Saturday & Sunday
At 7:30pm, through June.
For reservations and information, call 212-614-0505,
Or book tickets on-line at www.bowerypoetry.com
Tickets $15. An Actors Equity Showcase.
SPECIAL DEAL FOR POETS!!!! Use the code word MIRANDA
for $10 tickets at any performance!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Click on the following link to zzoz.com
For a feature on the play, with a beautiful color photo
of John Ventimiglia & Adira Amram as Jack Kerouac & Joyce Johnson
/www.zzoz.com/theater.html
3/2/76
Am I making the same mistake? Tonight I see a similar selfishness. The stuff about babies- not asking about myself- nothing about F's feelings- Whimsy- the withdrawal-quick to anger- flirtatious with S- sutff about money- *watch this*- I feel afraid tonight that she's a lot like W- I thought this with the acting and t.v stuff- if she is, she won't understand- I must protect myself- got scared tonight when she suddenly got cold- also "announcing" "no abortion"- Special kind of object choice?
1) Don't accuse
2) decide if my needs are being considered
3) remember my own boundaries (money and things)
4) watch anger
5) don't be afraid to ask if she will do something
6) stop, look and listen- does she listen?
7) take your time
8) you can always make it alone
9) don't sentimentalize
10) look at positives too
11)don't overdramatize
12)be realistic
13) don't get down on yourself or J
Am I making the same mistake? Tonight I see a similar selfishness. The stuff about babies- not asking about myself- nothing about F's feelings- Whimsy- the withdrawal-quick to anger- flirtatious with S- sutff about money- *watch this*- I feel afraid tonight that she's a lot like W- I thought this with the acting and t.v stuff- if she is, she won't understand- I must protect myself- got scared tonight when she suddenly got cold- also "announcing" "no abortion"- Special kind of object choice?
1) Don't accuse
2) decide if my needs are being considered
3) remember my own boundaries (money and things)
4) watch anger
5) don't be afraid to ask if she will do something
6) stop, look and listen- does she listen?
7) take your time
8) you can always make it alone
9) don't sentimentalize
10) look at positives too
11)don't overdramatize
12)be realistic
13) don't get down on yourself or J
(Between 6/75 and 3/76)
Objects- Self- Others
I know which piles to lift. I leave the objects in disorder and later try to translate why they were left in that specific order. This arrangement is not necessarily parallel to any series of actions performed at predictable intervals. If value is used as a gauge, the self is also evaluated because the relationship between the self and the object and the self and others must also be evaluated. Also the objects are viewed abstracted- as messages. My imagination chooses to dwell on the associations. The singular object separated from its relationship with the others becomes a totem to disorder. I freeze the possible action before its realization into reaction. The reaction becomes abstracted from the utililty of the object. The visualization of the object's image thus becomes primary to locating it. I don't reach for it visually or physically first, but mentally.
Objects- Self- Others
I know which piles to lift. I leave the objects in disorder and later try to translate why they were left in that specific order. This arrangement is not necessarily parallel to any series of actions performed at predictable intervals. If value is used as a gauge, the self is also evaluated because the relationship between the self and the object and the self and others must also be evaluated. Also the objects are viewed abstracted- as messages. My imagination chooses to dwell on the associations. The singular object separated from its relationship with the others becomes a totem to disorder. I freeze the possible action before its realization into reaction. The reaction becomes abstracted from the utililty of the object. The visualization of the object's image thus becomes primary to locating it. I don't reach for it visually or physically first, but mentally.
1/30/98
While I'm reading silently, a tape is playing which represents my thoughts "about" the poem. Then I read the poem aloud. While I'm reading aloud, I'm recording the poem. Then I play the recorded poem while I write something about that. Then I read what I've written while I've listened to the poem.
2/6/98
To take a note is to think about it. To publish it is to speak it out loud.
Also: "Out loud" is said louder than "aloud."
*
There are people who think that to "work with" is to subordinate. But most people sense, even if they don't know, that this is true.
2/8/98
What's The Matter (Daria Fain)
Get material from consultants
Brainstorm w/ peformers as Tuesday rehearsals
Using "art of memory"
Frances Yates
(use of "locii")
Camillo- theater of Camillo
7 different planets
7 rows- each row has a myth
store all knowledge in different place
Gorgon myth, narcissus
Persephone, etc
(ink sketch of a radiating sun)
Kathleen's article
Is there a place of origin that we can relate-
4/3/98
"God" would be an infinitely slower process than anything ordinarily imaginable, if it did exist. Perhaps the earliest monuments- Easter Island, Stonehenge, the Pyramids of Egypt and of Mexico. The same with "locale." This is a permanent "locale"- only a relationship of forces, where this locale, under those rarest of circumstances... The patient waiting attiutude of the mystics, the wild-eyed supplicants, the loneliest of ecstacies. Perhaps the body is the true unconscious of the mind. We try to separate mind from the body in the same way the child separates mother and father. To divide is to conquer. The body and the mind are not like negative and postive, but an endless dualism like male and female. Even in ths case, we too easily fall into thinking of the "war between the sexes," akin to "war." But "war" at the very least, is a sign of anxiety. It is evidenced by an unwillingness to wait. Ideals pit us against each other as they pull us towards each other. We set ideals before ourselves, hoping for an ultimate surmounting of the dialectic. But, like infinity set against limit, there can only be an oscillation, not a victory or resolution . One "spurs" the other, acts as a spur of the other, even in their occasional opposition. But this requires as much the ability to tolerate dissatisfaction as it does to combat what it perceives as the obstacles.
We always come back, that is the body. It is continually our spur, as much as it is a receiving and transformative mechanism. Our minds "ride" our bodies, much as the horse-tamer rides the bucking bronco. It is a powerhouse which will throw us around if our minds cannot comprehend it and have the ability to loosen the reins as much as tightening them. And still, as we ocassionally loosen the reins and let it go as passionately devouring it can be one of life's pleasures, and we know then to ask it to go into the background again as our mind takes over.
Sleep is like this. We have to let ourselves fall into it and this is partly why the dream is the model for an ongoing daily mechanism which graphically displays the mind and body relationship.
The patient had observed a woman give birth to a baby in a situation reminiscent of an earlier time in her life when she was still living with her son. She had to help the mother give birth but there was nothing to cut the umbilical cord with . But the baby was born with teeth and then she and the baby and the mother sit down and eat dessert at a restaurant. The all sit down to eat Creme Brulet. Then she is going up some shaky stairs.
Although this dream can be analyzed on many levels, the part I am interested in right now is how the mother can make peace with the parting of the body (to me, notably the issue of separating from the mother and still find ecstatic pleasure in life for herself.) In fact, she has never really left her child (her baby) and despite all the pain and crisis, life can be still enjoyed.
But this requires negotiations. The table is the symbolic site of negotiations, as the meal symbolically represents the totemic rite of of incorporation through oral ritual. In fact, the dream, the Creme Brulet of all pleasure sustains a special place in our feelings- child and mother are both still entitled to it, in spite of separation and loss.
While I'm reading silently, a tape is playing which represents my thoughts "about" the poem. Then I read the poem aloud. While I'm reading aloud, I'm recording the poem. Then I play the recorded poem while I write something about that. Then I read what I've written while I've listened to the poem.
2/6/98
To take a note is to think about it. To publish it is to speak it out loud.
Also: "Out loud" is said louder than "aloud."
*
There are people who think that to "work with" is to subordinate. But most people sense, even if they don't know, that this is true.
2/8/98
What's The Matter (Daria Fain)
Get material from consultants
Brainstorm w/ peformers as Tuesday rehearsals
Using "art of memory"
Frances Yates
(use of "locii")
Camillo- theater of Camillo
7 different planets
7 rows- each row has a myth
store all knowledge in different place
Gorgon myth, narcissus
Persephone, etc
(ink sketch of a radiating sun)
Kathleen's article
Is there a place of origin that we can relate-
4/3/98
"God" would be an infinitely slower process than anything ordinarily imaginable, if it did exist. Perhaps the earliest monuments- Easter Island, Stonehenge, the Pyramids of Egypt and of Mexico. The same with "locale." This is a permanent "locale"- only a relationship of forces, where this locale, under those rarest of circumstances... The patient waiting attiutude of the mystics, the wild-eyed supplicants, the loneliest of ecstacies. Perhaps the body is the true unconscious of the mind. We try to separate mind from the body in the same way the child separates mother and father. To divide is to conquer. The body and the mind are not like negative and postive, but an endless dualism like male and female. Even in ths case, we too easily fall into thinking of the "war between the sexes," akin to "war." But "war" at the very least, is a sign of anxiety. It is evidenced by an unwillingness to wait. Ideals pit us against each other as they pull us towards each other. We set ideals before ourselves, hoping for an ultimate surmounting of the dialectic. But, like infinity set against limit, there can only be an oscillation, not a victory or resolution . One "spurs" the other, acts as a spur of the other, even in their occasional opposition. But this requires as much the ability to tolerate dissatisfaction as it does to combat what it perceives as the obstacles.
We always come back, that is the body. It is continually our spur, as much as it is a receiving and transformative mechanism. Our minds "ride" our bodies, much as the horse-tamer rides the bucking bronco. It is a powerhouse which will throw us around if our minds cannot comprehend it and have the ability to loosen the reins as much as tightening them. And still, as we ocassionally loosen the reins and let it go as passionately devouring it can be one of life's pleasures, and we know then to ask it to go into the background again as our mind takes over.
Sleep is like this. We have to let ourselves fall into it and this is partly why the dream is the model for an ongoing daily mechanism which graphically displays the mind and body relationship.
The patient had observed a woman give birth to a baby in a situation reminiscent of an earlier time in her life when she was still living with her son. She had to help the mother give birth but there was nothing to cut the umbilical cord with . But the baby was born with teeth and then she and the baby and the mother sit down and eat dessert at a restaurant. The all sit down to eat Creme Brulet. Then she is going up some shaky stairs.
Although this dream can be analyzed on many levels, the part I am interested in right now is how the mother can make peace with the parting of the body (to me, notably the issue of separating from the mother and still find ecstatic pleasure in life for herself.) In fact, she has never really left her child (her baby) and despite all the pain and crisis, life can be still enjoyed.
But this requires negotiations. The table is the symbolic site of negotiations, as the meal symbolically represents the totemic rite of of incorporation through oral ritual. In fact, the dream, the Creme Brulet of all pleasure sustains a special place in our feelings- child and mother are both still entitled to it, in spite of separation and loss.
Thursday, May 22
Nada Gordon is definitely in a kick the podium mood, and when Stephanie Young starts numbering her blog, she's tapping that red shoe, better listen up:
Well Nourished Moon recently had this to say:
"2. Tim posts a call for papers from the "University of Minnesota Blog Collective" for a conference! Into the blogosphere. When is the Jism blogcon? & will there be a call for papers, or just nudie pics? But I'm serious. I want a summertime blog con."
"The Blog Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even?"
Second the motion for the summertime blog symposium!
Well Nourished Moon recently had this to say:
"2. Tim posts a call for papers from the "University of Minnesota Blog Collective" for a conference! Into the blogosphere. When is the Jism blogcon? & will there be a call for papers, or just nudie pics? But I'm serious. I want a summertime blog con."
"The Blog Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even?"
Second the motion for the summertime blog symposium!
9:15 AM ) Nada
Thinking about how everyone's blog (like, I suppose, everyone's personality) is too something. Surely you've thought this too. #
( 9:14 AM ) Nada
Five more days of rain slated. Mercury still retrograde through June 5. #
True, Nada, every voice in the ensemble will reach beyond, but remain, itself; every instrument in the orchestra, except for the occasional solo, or monologue, or recitatif, will ultimately grate, would be incomplete, without that intriguing "overlap" or curious or challenging dissonance with the others; wandering from one blog to another, especially now, in the relentless minor key of mercury retrograde, is more than a pleasure: it is a refuge.
Thinking about how everyone's blog (like, I suppose, everyone's personality) is too something. Surely you've thought this too. #
( 9:14 AM ) Nada
Five more days of rain slated. Mercury still retrograde through June 5. #
True, Nada, every voice in the ensemble will reach beyond, but remain, itself; every instrument in the orchestra, except for the occasional solo, or monologue, or recitatif, will ultimately grate, would be incomplete, without that intriguing "overlap" or curious or challenging dissonance with the others; wandering from one blog to another, especially now, in the relentless minor key of mercury retrograde, is more than a pleasure: it is a refuge.
What about what's left of Europe
For the rest of us? In Nurnberg
I learned German, though I can't speak it.
It speaks through me. Mere lies...
What a lesson to untangle.
Spirited outside, the master temporizes.
Language temporizes, still it's enough
To dampen enthusiasms before they arise.
Playing the accordian, I mumble,
What's to distinguish us? Limbering,
I strike out on my own. And nearness...
Apostrophes, anticlimaxes, apogees...
It's a sport to listen, here, someone is coming,
Approaching without a clear personality.
Yet the goal is to approximate expression
On the fullness of experience, irony plays
Out its full hand, vagueness with a full leer.
No one can take it back, not even that little girl
With the leaflets in her hand. Perhaps Celan
inhabits me or Vallejo with his brusque voice
Or Gertrude Stein in all her mathematical precision,
Where will I go to hide from them?
Am I too old to get rid of Stevens?
Even Bloom is a thorn in my side.
She takes the pages and spreads them apart.
They twinkle and this is arresting.
Peer pressure and a comic interlude regarding
The Sun mooning and the earth giving in.
There are simple ways to put this in academic terms.
But that is all so much resistance, so much outside, so much *wiederstand*
Forgiven.Then read. Then return. Then speak.
The point is to disappear while learning to complain,
And *they* translate the alphabet. And *you*
Want to understand them? In a month?
What will you call them and how will you reach them,
Like patience, "where does it grow and who will eat it?"
Maybe, by now, it can be absorbed and alleviated.
I dreaded their pain so I learned to fabricate
Distance in the hands of a sunny disposition.
There were geographical puzzles, but few minded this either,
As long as the map to the subway was clear.
But not even nothing is completely transparent.
So no one need struggle to induce symbolism.
Yet vocabulary, of itself, debilitates.
We yearn to forget and to hear again,
To repeat and mistake again, to forgive
And deduce again, to greet and prepare again.
Words worry me, and they too are wearing thin again
in their sympathy for me.
*
Death is not "far away."
It is space. It is air.
We breathe it. It eats us.
All invisibly. Not sorrowfully.
Not yet. Is the breaking
But not broken. Is the clashing
But not the pieces. Is one.
We are two.
Still, saying nothing at all,
Said nothing, says nothing.
it is nothing. Is nothing.
But it won't
Let go.
(1/13/93)
*
"Even stones have a love. A love that seeks the ground."
Meister Eckhart
Mother takes you into her arms
A central image
But also a deep feeling
A throbbing at the center of being
You know how to keep quiet about it
But you also know how to moan it and cry it and even scream it
Mother! O mother! Oh my mother!
Father up there on the cross
And me, infant me
Deep in my throbbing pleasure
Deep in the throbbing satisfaction of mother's arms
Shadow and veils, bending over in a hood,
Smile and holding, shape and shadow,
Arms and, hand and gleaming eyes and streaming hair,
Light in the eyes, and sometimes sorrow
And sometimes screaming, screaming and crying like an infant herself,
Exploding outwards in evanescent shapes or fragments
The rage that through me back in terror,
That took me like an earthquake and hurricane winds,
And lifted me high and shattered me against the wall,
Tiny pieces breaking apart into memories,
Pain smashing my pleasure in two,
Hands held against the face in tears,
Arms finding nowhere to fall back,
Eyes closed in hurt and darkness,
Hands bunched against the body falling at you,
Heart clenched against the love slipping away,
Making room for fear and coldness,
Loneliness and dread, aching and shivering
O her shimmering eyes
O the softness of her soft cheeks
O the pillow of her soothing words,
Uttered into the confusion of the world coming at me
On a million confused circuits
Spinning my thoughts into a billion necessary tasks
And a trillion answers to a trillion questions
No one ever heard, even me in my most silent dreams
Could never recognize with any absolute certainty
The words used to utter them.
How could she have thrown me from such heights
Into such completely deep agonizing doubts
Into such a condition of loneliness
Into such an absence of her, in my hatred of anger,
That somewhere deep inside that rage and sorrow
I planted and planned my escape
What could be more frightening then the free fall from love
Into the abyss below mother's holding arms?
In the same way that parts of the physical universe are attracted to each other,
Parts of the human being are attracted to each other
There are two languages, if you will,
For the same process. Is it possible
That just as human beings ultimately derive their existences
From the physical universe, thought is derived
From the physical beings of humans,
To exist in a separate universe where it ultimately joins
Other thoughts which now interact with each other in a separate dimension
To build their own structures and travel,
Meeting each other unconstridctedlly,
Opening energies not containable
When within the mind?
Thought curled up inside the pages of books
And canvas.
*
"Farewell to an idea...The mother's face,
The purpose of the poem fills the room."
Wallace Stevens *The Auroras of Autumn*
(1/21/94)
For the rest of us? In Nurnberg
I learned German, though I can't speak it.
It speaks through me. Mere lies...
What a lesson to untangle.
Spirited outside, the master temporizes.
Language temporizes, still it's enough
To dampen enthusiasms before they arise.
Playing the accordian, I mumble,
What's to distinguish us? Limbering,
I strike out on my own. And nearness...
Apostrophes, anticlimaxes, apogees...
It's a sport to listen, here, someone is coming,
Approaching without a clear personality.
Yet the goal is to approximate expression
On the fullness of experience, irony plays
Out its full hand, vagueness with a full leer.
No one can take it back, not even that little girl
With the leaflets in her hand. Perhaps Celan
inhabits me or Vallejo with his brusque voice
Or Gertrude Stein in all her mathematical precision,
Where will I go to hide from them?
Am I too old to get rid of Stevens?
Even Bloom is a thorn in my side.
She takes the pages and spreads them apart.
They twinkle and this is arresting.
Peer pressure and a comic interlude regarding
The Sun mooning and the earth giving in.
There are simple ways to put this in academic terms.
But that is all so much resistance, so much outside, so much *wiederstand*
Forgiven.Then read. Then return. Then speak.
The point is to disappear while learning to complain,
And *they* translate the alphabet. And *you*
Want to understand them? In a month?
What will you call them and how will you reach them,
Like patience, "where does it grow and who will eat it?"
Maybe, by now, it can be absorbed and alleviated.
I dreaded their pain so I learned to fabricate
Distance in the hands of a sunny disposition.
There were geographical puzzles, but few minded this either,
As long as the map to the subway was clear.
But not even nothing is completely transparent.
So no one need struggle to induce symbolism.
Yet vocabulary, of itself, debilitates.
We yearn to forget and to hear again,
To repeat and mistake again, to forgive
And deduce again, to greet and prepare again.
Words worry me, and they too are wearing thin again
in their sympathy for me.
*
Death is not "far away."
It is space. It is air.
We breathe it. It eats us.
All invisibly. Not sorrowfully.
Not yet. Is the breaking
But not broken. Is the clashing
But not the pieces. Is one.
We are two.
Still, saying nothing at all,
Said nothing, says nothing.
it is nothing. Is nothing.
But it won't
Let go.
(1/13/93)
*
"Even stones have a love. A love that seeks the ground."
Meister Eckhart
Mother takes you into her arms
A central image
But also a deep feeling
A throbbing at the center of being
You know how to keep quiet about it
But you also know how to moan it and cry it and even scream it
Mother! O mother! Oh my mother!
Father up there on the cross
And me, infant me
Deep in my throbbing pleasure
Deep in the throbbing satisfaction of mother's arms
Shadow and veils, bending over in a hood,
Smile and holding, shape and shadow,
Arms and, hand and gleaming eyes and streaming hair,
Light in the eyes, and sometimes sorrow
And sometimes screaming, screaming and crying like an infant herself,
Exploding outwards in evanescent shapes or fragments
The rage that through me back in terror,
That took me like an earthquake and hurricane winds,
And lifted me high and shattered me against the wall,
Tiny pieces breaking apart into memories,
Pain smashing my pleasure in two,
Hands held against the face in tears,
Arms finding nowhere to fall back,
Eyes closed in hurt and darkness,
Hands bunched against the body falling at you,
Heart clenched against the love slipping away,
Making room for fear and coldness,
Loneliness and dread, aching and shivering
O her shimmering eyes
O the softness of her soft cheeks
O the pillow of her soothing words,
Uttered into the confusion of the world coming at me
On a million confused circuits
Spinning my thoughts into a billion necessary tasks
And a trillion answers to a trillion questions
No one ever heard, even me in my most silent dreams
Could never recognize with any absolute certainty
The words used to utter them.
How could she have thrown me from such heights
Into such completely deep agonizing doubts
Into such a condition of loneliness
Into such an absence of her, in my hatred of anger,
That somewhere deep inside that rage and sorrow
I planted and planned my escape
What could be more frightening then the free fall from love
Into the abyss below mother's holding arms?
In the same way that parts of the physical universe are attracted to each other,
Parts of the human being are attracted to each other
There are two languages, if you will,
For the same process. Is it possible
That just as human beings ultimately derive their existences
From the physical universe, thought is derived
From the physical beings of humans,
To exist in a separate universe where it ultimately joins
Other thoughts which now interact with each other in a separate dimension
To build their own structures and travel,
Meeting each other unconstridctedlly,
Opening energies not containable
When within the mind?
Thought curled up inside the pages of books
And canvas.
*
"Farewell to an idea...The mother's face,
The purpose of the poem fills the room."
Wallace Stevens *The Auroras of Autumn*
(1/21/94)
Wednesday, May 21
9/13/93
Reading Wobbling
Words do not allow you to attend to the specifics of the author's ego
The relationship to music
A (re)connection of the relationship between
words and music that does not require
the mechanics of creating sound
incidental sounds and thoughts become part of
the music
instead of comprehension-reading
raw reading- unrefined
"classless" categoryless reading
Valery quote in The Outlook for
Intelligence-poems made from words-not ideas
Relief from the inexorable rule of
one thing follows from another-
from discipline as an ordering principle
from completion as an ordering principal
relief from the literal, from the symbolic
from the puzzle
akin to the contemplation of constellations-
constellations without names
Return to the undifferentiated
the sea, forests of trees
"natural" in *that* sense
p.60 "knowledge was numbered now
Argument vinegar"
I'm feeling I understand this criticique of
pointed, but useless, specificity
Holding, retaliation and interpretation
Associations: I thought either I
saw something repugnant in that woman
(fair and browning blonde hair and stout)
or the dog read my thoughts and atttacked
me for it. 4 injections and more to come.
Aggression and retaliation- two cling
together in deep dissatisfaction,mutual
criticism and repugnance- they are
not through with each other
until each feels the lesson has
been taught
It was amazing how quickly that dog
came out of nowhere to attack me when
I thought that critical thoought about that
woman. Or is it the dog's simple
minded way of agreeing with me?
You hold on to be taught and use
the transitional object as a supporting
object so the holding can be continuous.
Imagination and the holding environment
the area of play in the cultural experience
Holding the dictionary says:
This is the closest thing we have
to a bible.
Chairs: the interpreter in the High
Bench- the writer in the dock, the
publisher is the lawyer and History is the
prosecutor.The jury are the readers.
The audience watches it on
television and talks about it during
the breaks.
9/19/93
Definition of the aritist's domain:
wild West of the imagination
where anyone can stake a claim
Tuesday, May 20
"It is impossible to exagerrate the importance that Paul Valery had for Rilke during the last five or six years of his life. His letters and conversations were full of the impressions which had received from Valery. What struck him most, because it touched him at his most vulnerable spot, was the the French poet only came into the open with his poetry after a silence lasting many years. How he approved, how he praised such a silence, in which the work of art could grow and ripen slowly, imperceptibly, hidden from the world! And how that silence justified his own silence, before he was able to break it at Muzot."
J.R. von Salis, Rainer Maria Rilke: The Years In Switzerland, UC Press, 1966
J.R. von Salis, Rainer Maria Rilke: The Years In Switzerland, UC Press, 1966
"I am unpacking my library. Yes, I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order. I cannot march up and down their ranks to pass them in review before a friendly audience. You need not fear any of that. Instead, I must ask you to join me in the disorder of crates that have been wrenched open, the air saturated with the dust of wood, the floor covered with torn paper, to join me among piles of volumes that are seeing daylight again after two years of darkness, so that you may be ready to share with me a bit of the mood- it is certainly not an elegaic mood but, rather, one of anticipation-which these books arouse in a genuine collector. For such a man speaking to you, and on closer scrutiny he proves to be speaking only about himself. Would it not be presumptuous of me if, in order to appear convincingly objective and down-to-earth I ennumerated for you the main sections or prize pieces of a library, if I presented you with their history or even their usefulness to a writer? I, for one, have in mind something less obscure, something more palpable than that; what I am really concerned with is giving you some insight into the relationship of a book collector to his possessions, into collecting rather than a collection. If I do this by elaborating on the various ways of acquiring books, this is something entirely arbitrary. This or any other procedure is merely a dam against the spring tide of memories which surges toward any collector as he contemplates his pssessions. Every passion borders of the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories. More than that: the chance, the fate, that suffuse the past before my eyes are conspicuously present in the accustomed confusion of these books. For what else is this collection but a disorder to which habit has accomodated itself to such an extent that it can appear as order?"
Walter Benjamin, "Unpacking My Library," *Illuminations*
December, 1976 (Written as an unsent letter to a friend)
"Even the most boring type of book discoverable in the literature of the past is never wholly dead. It will come back- if only as an antidote to the boredom that the most exciting type will end up by inducing."
Valery- Analects
These thoughts of Valery continue to excite me. He says "What's needed is to have the energy one day to pick up the book we regard as boring, order it to *exist*, and try to recapture the interest the author took in it." Also- "False 'depth' I loathe, but neither do I greatly relish the true variety. 'Depth' in literature is the outcome of a special technique; one kind of effect among many, procured by one of the many possible techniques. You have only to see how a book of "thoughts" is manufactured ("deep thoughts," I mean).
What does it matter whether that lake is twenty inches deep or twenty thousand fathoms? It is the surface sheen that fascinates us."
He was able to spell out the subtleties of the art of making poetry. Pick up those thoughts that are obvious difficulties that come up when you write poetry- really he sees what makes it magic, "slick," he really has a slick mind. His comments are like good Warholisms. The remark about depth reminds me of what you and I like best.
"The martyr: 'I'd rather die than think it over.'"
What really gets me is how I'll remember all these things I've thought about writing as I read those comments. I think one of the beautiful things about writing that acknowledges the "boredom" of reading includes a lot of irony and detachment from words. Who wants to pin them on their objects like playing pin the tail on the donkey with your eyes blindfolded?As Andy (I wrote "any") Warhol said "So what" All writing contains a lot of 'so what' but the writers go on like wise professorial baboons saying things. Hey- isn't "any" a great word, especially if you think of it as a thing? Anything. He also writes: "Conspiracy. It would be nice to bring together all the people for whom we think and to whom we dedicate, within ourselves, our best ideas." "A literary work should be a monument to such a 'gathering of the clan'"
What can I say? You should get the book- incredible. You'd love what he says about proselytizing- I wish I had the energy to write a lot of it out- I'll write out as many as I can.
I have a feeling that all my study of Rilke made Valery so exciting for me. Probably related to Rilke's love of Valery's work- see book on Rilke in Switzerland- a lot of Valery.
"Even the most boring type of book discoverable in the literature of the past is never wholly dead. It will come back- if only as an antidote to the boredom that the most exciting type will end up by inducing."
Valery- Analects
These thoughts of Valery continue to excite me. He says "What's needed is to have the energy one day to pick up the book we regard as boring, order it to *exist*, and try to recapture the interest the author took in it." Also- "False 'depth' I loathe, but neither do I greatly relish the true variety. 'Depth' in literature is the outcome of a special technique; one kind of effect among many, procured by one of the many possible techniques. You have only to see how a book of "thoughts" is manufactured ("deep thoughts," I mean).
What does it matter whether that lake is twenty inches deep or twenty thousand fathoms? It is the surface sheen that fascinates us."
He was able to spell out the subtleties of the art of making poetry. Pick up those thoughts that are obvious difficulties that come up when you write poetry- really he sees what makes it magic, "slick," he really has a slick mind. His comments are like good Warholisms. The remark about depth reminds me of what you and I like best.
"The martyr: 'I'd rather die than think it over.'"
What really gets me is how I'll remember all these things I've thought about writing as I read those comments. I think one of the beautiful things about writing that acknowledges the "boredom" of reading includes a lot of irony and detachment from words. Who wants to pin them on their objects like playing pin the tail on the donkey with your eyes blindfolded?As Andy (I wrote "any") Warhol said "So what" All writing contains a lot of 'so what' but the writers go on like wise professorial baboons saying things. Hey- isn't "any" a great word, especially if you think of it as a thing? Anything. He also writes: "Conspiracy. It would be nice to bring together all the people for whom we think and to whom we dedicate, within ourselves, our best ideas." "A literary work should be a monument to such a 'gathering of the clan'"
What can I say? You should get the book- incredible. You'd love what he says about proselytizing- I wish I had the energy to write a lot of it out- I'll write out as many as I can.
I have a feeling that all my study of Rilke made Valery so exciting for me. Probably related to Rilke's love of Valery's work- see book on Rilke in Switzerland- a lot of Valery.
Monday, May 19
I can't find the playbill now, and will post more information later, but "Door Wide Open" the Joyce Johnson play about Jack Kerouac based on her letters to and from him from 1957-1958 is a must see! directed by Tony Torn and produced by Rip Torn now at the Bowery Poetry Club. Thanks again to Bob Holman for making this terrific work and so much other great stuff available.The Bowery Poetry Club is a hit! Good coffee and a great bar too!
4/10/76
...the sense that she's observing me all the time and making criticisms. The threat to me is that she might desert me. I am afraid of the silence...Constructing the sentence involves examining the root thought (contained in words) but holding the whole thought and elaborating on the associations- adding in the details. My imagination produces a series of words- usually a phrase which is an abbreviation for the entire thought. When I "copy" these out I write "grammatically" incomplete sentences. But should or can the thought be used as it is- is there always something in the ordinary thoughts or should these be somewhat inaccessible, be presented in some way that blocks access. It's true that I word very slow. So that the method I use is very slow. But I am now changing this- recognizing how I might use various materials. The collage is a similar venture.
Since relationships occupy so much of my energy and most people's energy they must be incorporated- this is what is lacking in Valery. It isn't a question of privacy, discretion but I think the true problem is that it is difficult. D plans to write about friendship. This is close to the mark. We are silent about relationships because they are always so crucial. This is the attraction of the solitary man. Moment to moment in the presence of others we are experiencing ourselves as mixtures of qualities. Alone, these qualities feel different to us. Writing is writing about the sense of others' presences when they are not presences.So that there must be remembering. But what I am now is also what I am in relation to others. My style in relation to others. What part of my thought (the tone, the attitude, the stance) shows what this relationship to the other is? If I can find that I can use that awareness to write about relationships. I want to examine how someone else deals with, manages their relationships. I want to imagine this.
...the sense that she's observing me all the time and making criticisms. The threat to me is that she might desert me. I am afraid of the silence...Constructing the sentence involves examining the root thought (contained in words) but holding the whole thought and elaborating on the associations- adding in the details. My imagination produces a series of words- usually a phrase which is an abbreviation for the entire thought. When I "copy" these out I write "grammatically" incomplete sentences. But should or can the thought be used as it is- is there always something in the ordinary thoughts or should these be somewhat inaccessible, be presented in some way that blocks access. It's true that I word very slow. So that the method I use is very slow. But I am now changing this- recognizing how I might use various materials. The collage is a similar venture.
Since relationships occupy so much of my energy and most people's energy they must be incorporated- this is what is lacking in Valery. It isn't a question of privacy, discretion but I think the true problem is that it is difficult. D plans to write about friendship. This is close to the mark. We are silent about relationships because they are always so crucial. This is the attraction of the solitary man. Moment to moment in the presence of others we are experiencing ourselves as mixtures of qualities. Alone, these qualities feel different to us. Writing is writing about the sense of others' presences when they are not presences.So that there must be remembering. But what I am now is also what I am in relation to others. My style in relation to others. What part of my thought (the tone, the attitude, the stance) shows what this relationship to the other is? If I can find that I can use that awareness to write about relationships. I want to examine how someone else deals with, manages their relationships. I want to imagine this.
I spoke with Katie Degentesh right before her reading (poor thing, she was trying to eat her dinner) and asked her what she thought about the fact that some of our favorite blogger friends, like David Hess and Stephanie Young are getting won right over to New York due to her popular Bloggedy Blog Blog. Katie talked about the skills you need to survive a walk down a New York City street. I said I thought her blog captured the gritty moments that can't be so easily supplied by one's imagination based on previous visits here. One could easily summon up memories of the St Mark's Bookstore or the Poetry Project, but Katie's terrific tableaux supply some of that unique flavor of those passing conversations that seemingly could only happen here. Katie read from her blog some and read some poems that astonished me for their insight into how words as objects stand in for meaning more than we ever think they could. In one piece she rings so many changes on the word "popsicle" I could only compare hearing this (Drew Gardner would appreciate this) to a complex solo by, say, John Coltrane, in his unforgettable rendition of "Aisha." Douglas Rothschild recalled one of Katie's readings at the Zinc bar when she arrived in an all silver outfit that well befitted her poems which he described as "shining." This was pretty good considering the fact that Douglas-in between sneezes- left his intro to her reading on the Staten Island Ferry. Will it wash up on the shores of the Upper West Side like a message in a bottle, like he said? You never know...
Sunday, May 18
(3/30/76)
I expected
something and hoped for- something will come.
You gave me something, she sings, but she
didn't say what it is. If I learn, I'll
never come back. Rock and roll, I won't go,
is taking my man away.
You gotta work to live. It's a struggle,
my friend gave me that. I wanted something.
He said you just sit down and do it- he gave
me a gift. We're all waiting fo rthe
song.Tragically backing away from the past.
looking back anxiously and sadly, every moment
prismatically dividing into a spectrum of
feelings. How were we to piece them together so
rapidly, feelings imploding so silently.
Equally tragic- money and luck. Place the
sad emphasis on any word- even the gold
can be shaped into a knife.
We want soft things to live among. The
hard things are dangerous. I move towards them
ambiguously, obliquely. I don't stop. I stop
to rest. There are still sounds. I can't take
away that pain. You will have more thoughts,
of a trance. Continuing. Waves and waves.
Where it moves towards.
My friend lets me be. When he's my philosophical
uncle. The ego. Ago, I'm reading and the
world's my uncle- out goes a word.
I'm thinking abou the world's my uncle. "I want to be alone" a secret annotation.
A figure mingling in our presence. Divided.
I expected
something and hoped for- something will come.
You gave me something, she sings, but she
didn't say what it is. If I learn, I'll
never come back. Rock and roll, I won't go,
is taking my man away.
You gotta work to live. It's a struggle,
my friend gave me that. I wanted something.
He said you just sit down and do it- he gave
me a gift. We're all waiting fo rthe
song.Tragically backing away from the past.
looking back anxiously and sadly, every moment
prismatically dividing into a spectrum of
feelings. How were we to piece them together so
rapidly, feelings imploding so silently.
Equally tragic- money and luck. Place the
sad emphasis on any word- even the gold
can be shaped into a knife.
We want soft things to live among. The
hard things are dangerous. I move towards them
ambiguously, obliquely. I don't stop. I stop
to rest. There are still sounds. I can't take
away that pain. You will have more thoughts,
of a trance. Continuing. Waves and waves.
Where it moves towards.
My friend lets me be. When he's my philosophical
uncle. The ego. Ago, I'm reading and the
world's my uncle- out goes a word.
I'm thinking abou the world's my uncle. "I want to be alone" a secret annotation.
A figure mingling in our presence. Divided.
3/28/76
Dream of a boy. He wrote a poem in red based on bible myths- one of the myths was of a place which was like a vacuum where people couldn't speak or hear. I explain to a woman that I've read his poems and am impressed by the using of the bible in this way. He is a young boy (maybe 12). I can't remember what he looks like. I sit beside him and it is a very warm feeling. I feel happy doing this. He shows me his poems.They are beautiful. But when I explain it to the woman she is critical- the poems are old. (Actually this would make it more impressive since he would be even younger when he wrote them).
I go for a ride to pick up Whimsy. I pick her up at a house. There's mail for me- tiny letter from D, another small thing. I put Whimsy in a cab with two people, a couple, in it. Joking with the cabdriver about a word (for a homeless dog?)
(3/28/76)
What could be simpler
I waited and waited
For endless time
Nothing was happening
It's true I heard noises
Some of them music
Breathing and sighing
no one new came
One night I saw movies
and at a great distance
Someone told me a secret.
Then a few stairs
and long winding hair.
Excitement is mystery
Movement is frightening
Red leotards
and open gray eyes
Drunk on laughter we
gulped down the days
My life had changed
I forgot I was living
Gold is for rich men
and I was still poor
I saved only memories
you are their alchemist
I sometimes go outside
I always return
to my chair and my dog
and my slow empty breathing
But I'll never forget
your mysterious offering
I'd trade all my gold
for your priceless uncertainty
3/30/76
And what is this real world-
Exists in a surround
tiresome boring and wonderful
by a slight change in form
as if that which was contained
taking away and giving back
an event which ocurred. A detail
included in a moment of concentration, I am
accepting the every aspect of self,
one approached and drew back , they ocurred
relatively fast or slow; one wanted the past
it wasn't shaped in any particular way-
there were so many ways of going about it.
Put two and two together.
There was more . A person may be dying.
We move to the hospital. Feeling strangely
amid life and death.
Words by the lack of words I add to the world.
I'm thinking about B. From dead to living.
What do I want from him?
Dream of a boy. He wrote a poem in red based on bible myths- one of the myths was of a place which was like a vacuum where people couldn't speak or hear. I explain to a woman that I've read his poems and am impressed by the using of the bible in this way. He is a young boy (maybe 12). I can't remember what he looks like. I sit beside him and it is a very warm feeling. I feel happy doing this. He shows me his poems.They are beautiful. But when I explain it to the woman she is critical- the poems are old. (Actually this would make it more impressive since he would be even younger when he wrote them).
I go for a ride to pick up Whimsy. I pick her up at a house. There's mail for me- tiny letter from D, another small thing. I put Whimsy in a cab with two people, a couple, in it. Joking with the cabdriver about a word (for a homeless dog?)
(3/28/76)
What could be simpler
I waited and waited
For endless time
Nothing was happening
It's true I heard noises
Some of them music
Breathing and sighing
no one new came
One night I saw movies
and at a great distance
Someone told me a secret.
Then a few stairs
and long winding hair.
Excitement is mystery
Movement is frightening
Red leotards
and open gray eyes
Drunk on laughter we
gulped down the days
My life had changed
I forgot I was living
Gold is for rich men
and I was still poor
I saved only memories
you are their alchemist
I sometimes go outside
I always return
to my chair and my dog
and my slow empty breathing
But I'll never forget
your mysterious offering
I'd trade all my gold
for your priceless uncertainty
3/30/76
And what is this real world-
Exists in a surround
tiresome boring and wonderful
by a slight change in form
as if that which was contained
taking away and giving back
an event which ocurred. A detail
included in a moment of concentration, I am
accepting the every aspect of self,
one approached and drew back , they ocurred
relatively fast or slow; one wanted the past
it wasn't shaped in any particular way-
there were so many ways of going about it.
Put two and two together.
There was more . A person may be dying.
We move to the hospital. Feeling strangely
amid life and death.
Words by the lack of words I add to the world.
I'm thinking about B. From dead to living.
What do I want from him?
Saturday, May 17
3/20/76
This has been a fruitful day and I never
set pen to paper. I suffered for awhile
but when I spoke aloud I broke the spell and
thought about getting my tape recorder and
speaking directly into it instead of writing.
My handwriting is not conducive to work nor
is the typewriter. I see also the great
value of time alone. I will never fear it
that way again because of its great
value in centering.
Last night I read some of Rilke's letters.
That was very valuable- I have learned the
immense value of "distance." I may have
had it confused with coldness.
Stop thinking always in terms of loss and
gain. What is the advantage of "advantage"?
In class Osvaldo talked about the
"upper hand" in acting. I have a more
complex view of that than I thought.
I must be more careful about disclosures.
I have been learning that. Also, reading
Jung teaches me more about the complexities of
projection- a view of that that includes
not only the defensive aspeect but the
context as well.
I also placed the talismen in the talisman box. Valery- "hide your god."
Learning to center myself- sensing how much about that I have learned.
SP called last night and talked about
Godel's masterpiece of ordering. I am
moving towards a more rich and complex ordering.
How? By relaxing and observing what it *is* in
me- by letting the pieces fall.
A thought today- to some extent I have
lived unconsciously with a great taste for
"high" moments. This involves some, or a great
deal of sentimental romanticism. Such an
attitude developed to too fine a pitch can
screen out important nuances of experience.
The answer- to become more aware of this
attitude. I think of A- the relaxed
acceptance. What was (or is) my anger
towards him all about?
Thinking a lot about QR. I noticed
how much I project onto him- particularly
regarding what I imagine to be his rejection
of me. That ambivalent attitude. I talked to
JL about this. Her wisdom.
This has been a fruitful day and I never
set pen to paper. I suffered for awhile
but when I spoke aloud I broke the spell and
thought about getting my tape recorder and
speaking directly into it instead of writing.
My handwriting is not conducive to work nor
is the typewriter. I see also the great
value of time alone. I will never fear it
that way again because of its great
value in centering.
Last night I read some of Rilke's letters.
That was very valuable- I have learned the
immense value of "distance." I may have
had it confused with coldness.
Stop thinking always in terms of loss and
gain. What is the advantage of "advantage"?
In class Osvaldo talked about the
"upper hand" in acting. I have a more
complex view of that than I thought.
I must be more careful about disclosures.
I have been learning that. Also, reading
Jung teaches me more about the complexities of
projection- a view of that that includes
not only the defensive aspeect but the
context as well.
I also placed the talismen in the talisman box. Valery- "hide your god."
Learning to center myself- sensing how much about that I have learned.
SP called last night and talked about
Godel's masterpiece of ordering. I am
moving towards a more rich and complex ordering.
How? By relaxing and observing what it *is* in
me- by letting the pieces fall.
A thought today- to some extent I have
lived unconsciously with a great taste for
"high" moments. This involves some, or a great
deal of sentimental romanticism. Such an
attitude developed to too fine a pitch can
screen out important nuances of experience.
The answer- to become more aware of this
attitude. I think of A- the relaxed
acceptance. What was (or is) my anger
towards him all about?
Thinking a lot about QR. I noticed
how much I project onto him- particularly
regarding what I imagine to be his rejection
of me. That ambivalent attitude. I talked to
JL about this. Her wisdom.
3/9/76
Need the "distance" for beauty. She is
leaving. Took the plants off the shelf.
In a way it will be a relief. I guess
it's true that I'm not ready to live with
someone. But I'm also not going to allow
anyone to trample on me with constant anger.
Or be manipulated constantly. If it's another
failure- but it will be much emptier then
before for awhile and I probably will blame
myself too. See it as a repetition and will
become afraid. But the point is I won't
be made to "bend" in her sense of the word.
And I learned something too about
what happened beween me and T. It
will take much longer-but- at least I'm
taking care of myself.
Need the "distance" for beauty. She is
leaving. Took the plants off the shelf.
In a way it will be a relief. I guess
it's true that I'm not ready to live with
someone. But I'm also not going to allow
anyone to trample on me with constant anger.
Or be manipulated constantly. If it's another
failure- but it will be much emptier then
before for awhile and I probably will blame
myself too. See it as a repetition and will
become afraid. But the point is I won't
be made to "bend" in her sense of the word.
And I learned something too about
what happened beween me and T. It
will take much longer-but- at least I'm
taking care of myself.
3/7/76
Red- anger
Green-jealousy
Black-envy
I was so lonely. He was angry.
Washer winder washer window
What happened. Quite a shock.
feeling the distance. See her objectively.
I have Vito in mind. The waves.
I’m not interested in most of the above
language. Then why am I writing it?
Trying to understand something- see something.
Figure something out is what I was thinking.
Start living at the point of accepting yourself.
Tedium of writing is the failures at concentration.
Part of the energy not available for it. Look at
the above. Single word images- as a beginning.
But what’s going on here (between me and J.)
As a “subplot.” Her constant anger.
She’s been exploding at me quite a bit. Alternates
then with affection- but she’s feeling very
ambivalent and I pick up on it. Failure of
trust- that kind of trust I seem to have
a very different perspective of now. So I can
enjoy it more for what it is. And then help her to
enjoy it. Then I can work. Point is to plot out
the work- map it, diagram it. This is the
great discovery of Vito and Smithson-you can
map out your art. Well, maybe not great discovery
by them. That might be bullshit. You can do what
you do with a story- plan it- but it needn’t
follow conventional lines.
The way I did that poem with “your body is a
map”- unfocussed images (mind) as a body of
images. That related to the process of communication.
You related that to the process of communication.
But not necessarily around the reading. The
sorrow I feel that we had such a powerful moment.
But the point is I wasn’t working when I wasn’t
loving- it would have gone on and on. I guess it
would have been better, tonight, is the point.
But for me life is a succession of moments.
Don’t like the cliché phrase. Of course you regress to
The adolescent image of love (Pavese)
Reread earlier diary note. Give me $68 dollars
And promises half the rent. But then doesn’t go to
work.
That I would spend $35 on x. Really
angry at her now. Like X she lives off men.
Then she got angry at me- but she does know
that. I guess I’m really wondering. Well,
what alternatives. Can always tell her to go.
This “niceness” has a hostile edge- because she’s
holding on to her rage. Borderline all right.
Fuck but so is everybody else- and I hate
the safe ones. Shit. Well, maybe better tomorrow.
Red- anger
Green-jealousy
Black-envy
I was so lonely. He was angry.
Washer winder washer window
What happened. Quite a shock.
feeling the distance. See her objectively.
I have Vito in mind. The waves.
I’m not interested in most of the above
language. Then why am I writing it?
Trying to understand something- see something.
Figure something out is what I was thinking.
Start living at the point of accepting yourself.
Tedium of writing is the failures at concentration.
Part of the energy not available for it. Look at
the above. Single word images- as a beginning.
But what’s going on here (between me and J.)
As a “subplot.” Her constant anger.
She’s been exploding at me quite a bit. Alternates
then with affection- but she’s feeling very
ambivalent and I pick up on it. Failure of
trust- that kind of trust I seem to have
a very different perspective of now. So I can
enjoy it more for what it is. And then help her to
enjoy it. Then I can work. Point is to plot out
the work- map it, diagram it. This is the
great discovery of Vito and Smithson-you can
map out your art. Well, maybe not great discovery
by them. That might be bullshit. You can do what
you do with a story- plan it- but it needn’t
follow conventional lines.
The way I did that poem with “your body is a
map”- unfocussed images (mind) as a body of
images. That related to the process of communication.
You related that to the process of communication.
But not necessarily around the reading. The
sorrow I feel that we had such a powerful moment.
But the point is I wasn’t working when I wasn’t
loving- it would have gone on and on. I guess it
would have been better, tonight, is the point.
But for me life is a succession of moments.
Don’t like the cliché phrase. Of course you regress to
The adolescent image of love (Pavese)
Reread earlier diary note. Give me $68 dollars
And promises half the rent. But then doesn’t go to
work.
That I would spend $35 on x. Really
angry at her now. Like X she lives off men.
Then she got angry at me- but she does know
that. I guess I’m really wondering. Well,
what alternatives. Can always tell her to go.
This “niceness” has a hostile edge- because she’s
holding on to her rage. Borderline all right.
Fuck but so is everybody else- and I hate
the safe ones. Shit. Well, maybe better tomorrow.
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