[END OF BOOK ONE]
150
This sequence was written in a light-blue room. The same color as my childhood room. The previous owner--Cecilia Greene--died in here, after a long illness. I never changed the color until this last week. I actually finished painting it yesterday. For the buyer, as I said that I would.
The color on the walls is Ruffled Clam. Whatever that is. The color of the trim is Moonlit Snow, which it isn't.
149
We are moving to Chico, California. Chico being Spanish for "boy".
148
I remember being five years old, playing in the back yard of our apartment building in Milwaukee. There was a through street behind the apartments, running parallel to the length of the building. One day, a car pulled up. This was 1974. It was a big four-door, dark blue or black car. I was alone in the yard for some reason. The car sat idling. A woman in the passenger's seat said something to me that I couldn't hear. She beckoned me to the car. There was a man in the driver's seat. Both were white. I began slowly walking to them, to the car. She said, "I've got some candy for you." She was very upbeat. I continued walking, and was now about 25 feet or so from the car. My sister was watching me, unbeknowst to me, from our apartment on the second floor. It had a little patio and a patio door off the kitchen. She screamed to my back, "Don't go, Don't go, Jimmy. Wait, wait!" I turned around, confused, wondering where she was, and then I saw her yelling from the patio deck. The car immediately took off.
147
I remember mowing my grandfather's lawn when I was around 14, and noticed him standing in place near his garden, while I kept going back and forth on the riding lawnmower. After many passes, I put my foot on the brake and stared at him. He was a good 30 or 40 feet away. He hadn't moved. He was looking straight at me. I didn't know what he was doing. I became a bit confused, and so I turned off the mower and walked over to him. He told me to get my grandmother. I did. My grandmother came out with me alongside. She looked at him. He said to her, to me, "I can't walk". We helped him into the house. He went into the hospital that day, came back briefly for a few days, and died about one and half months later. I can still see him not moving, just standing, on the lawn, out of the corners of my eyes.
146
Being nice is almost never being nice.
145
Anyone can use the principles of collage in poetry, but it's the quality of the mind doing the collage, the assembler him/herself, that makes one poem more richly nuanced than the other.
May 19, 2005
143
A take on the Freud/Woody Allen line: "I would never want to belong to a community that would have me as a member."
142
One's perspective, no matter how broad, is always a limitation, because it is one's.
141
"Space is the place." Some people--not Bergvall--don't understand this.
A take on the Freud/Woody Allen line: "I would never want to belong to a community that would have me as a member."
142
One's perspective, no matter how broad, is always a limitation, because it is one's.
141
"Space is the place." Some people--not Bergvall--don't understand this.
May 18, 2005
140
300 miles to meet strangers.
139
Fictions From The Self is one of Michael Burkard's books of poetry. I don't trust the centering in that "from", however. As if the Self was a solid permanence, even if jagged and dissolute. I'm not sure of that.
138
Using Life as a frame for what gets written and in what sequence. One's own.
137
A sequence on hiddenness, lies, false fronts, masks, subterfuge, appearances, identities, memories, delusions.
136
We went to a German restaurant tonight, and the food was very good, the atmosphere homey and clean. Our ancient waitress, however, was having problems with her dentures and kept making strange facial contortions to realign them. At one point, I felt I might use my hand to help her, but the feeling passed.
135
Selling my car has to be in the top three of the most frustrating, niggling events in my life. Every person I've dealt with over the past two weeks has been an absolute flake.
300 miles to meet strangers.
139
Fictions From The Self is one of Michael Burkard's books of poetry. I don't trust the centering in that "from", however. As if the Self was a solid permanence, even if jagged and dissolute. I'm not sure of that.
138
Using Life as a frame for what gets written and in what sequence. One's own.
137
A sequence on hiddenness, lies, false fronts, masks, subterfuge, appearances, identities, memories, delusions.
136
We went to a German restaurant tonight, and the food was very good, the atmosphere homey and clean. Our ancient waitress, however, was having problems with her dentures and kept making strange facial contortions to realign them. At one point, I felt I might use my hand to help her, but the feeling passed.
135
Selling my car has to be in the top three of the most frustrating, niggling events in my life. Every person I've dealt with over the past two weeks has been an absolute flake.
May 17, 2005
134
Khane-ye doust kodjast?
133
Under publishing is the positioning of the deferral contract/morality: that someone else should be the judge of the work, that it is unseemly/pathetic/unhumble to self-publish. Selfpublishing carries with it these stigmas, which really need to be eradicated for their emptinesses.
Khane-ye doust kodjast?
133
Under publishing is the positioning of the deferral contract/morality: that someone else should be the judge of the work, that it is unseemly/pathetic/unhumble to self-publish. Selfpublishing carries with it these stigmas, which really need to be eradicated for their emptinesses.
[Received Kimberly Lyons' Saline. Sl, sli, slip, slipp, slippery details with a tone that, admirably, isn't trying too hard to convince.]
132
I once thought that I was a drinker only when I drank and sober when I didn't, but the mindset of a drinker continues on long after the drink is put down.
A friend once asked me to explain it, and I said that what makes a drinker conspicuous is typically a sarcastic attitude, a general "excited" state (to which a sober person usually wonders, What is he/she so excited about?), and a pretty clear avoidance of anything having to do with an emotional world, especially in relation to one's self. That's as close as I can get.
131
Community is a word that makes me squirm. Like Nature. The Nature referred to almost always bares no resemblance to what goes into, what becomes, it.
130
I had a hard time in MFA Intern(ment?) School, mostly because I just never thought much of anyone's opinion. That is not to say I didn't respect another's opinion; it's just that I didn't put much stock in them. The opinions seemed based on so many other things--like the mood one was in, which books one read, one's available vocabulary, the color of the sky, what one ate or didn't eat, drank or didn't drink, where one grew up, what one's childhood was like...for instance, if one was ever in a car whose driver would take it into country ditches in attempts to kill animals, etc.
I couldn't stop putting stock in my own opinions until after I quit drinking. A drunk will always tell you how the world should be, and that's just one of the reasons to avoid him or her.
129
The entries in this ongoing writing that are more interesting to me are the ones for which I don't suppose an audience.
132
I once thought that I was a drinker only when I drank and sober when I didn't, but the mindset of a drinker continues on long after the drink is put down.
A friend once asked me to explain it, and I said that what makes a drinker conspicuous is typically a sarcastic attitude, a general "excited" state (to which a sober person usually wonders, What is he/she so excited about?), and a pretty clear avoidance of anything having to do with an emotional world, especially in relation to one's self. That's as close as I can get.
131
Community is a word that makes me squirm. Like Nature. The Nature referred to almost always bares no resemblance to what goes into, what becomes, it.
130
I had a hard time in MFA Intern(ment?) School, mostly because I just never thought much of anyone's opinion. That is not to say I didn't respect another's opinion; it's just that I didn't put much stock in them. The opinions seemed based on so many other things--like the mood one was in, which books one read, one's available vocabulary, the color of the sky, what one ate or didn't eat, drank or didn't drink, where one grew up, what one's childhood was like...for instance, if one was ever in a car whose driver would take it into country ditches in attempts to kill animals, etc.
I couldn't stop putting stock in my own opinions until after I quit drinking. A drunk will always tell you how the world should be, and that's just one of the reasons to avoid him or her.
129
The entries in this ongoing writing that are more interesting to me are the ones for which I don't suppose an audience.
128
Explanation? of an epigraph/the forwarding notion: I was reading Kafka's diaries and opened the book one day at random, to find a sentence I hadn't yet read--"If I am not very much mistaken, I am coming closer". Kafka is writing a fictional account in his diary of a character approaching some building, but I didn't see the heavily-led context being set and read the sentence as I originally saw it, meaning "If I am not very much mistaken, I am coming closer [to being mistaken]". This is the first epigraph in the false sun recordings.
Explanation? of an epigraph/the forwarding notion: I was reading Kafka's diaries and opened the book one day at random, to find a sentence I hadn't yet read--"If I am not very much mistaken, I am coming closer". Kafka is writing a fictional account in his diary of a character approaching some building, but I didn't see the heavily-led context being set and read the sentence as I originally saw it, meaning "If I am not very much mistaken, I am coming closer [to being mistaken]". This is the first epigraph in the false sun recordings.
May 8, 2005
110
People not taking into consideration Keats' age when he wrote some of those amazingly vague/trite generalizations, i.e. Truth Beauty Beauty Truth.
109
"The world" floats by with people who like to say a thing is or things are, when, in truth, they don't know and never will.
108
Grateful, suddenly, to not have ever been in a conversation where the quality of the sperm was uttered.
107
Subprogram of complex revenge?
106
It was uncanny and noteworthy how everything reminded her of Eliot's Wasteland.
People not taking into consideration Keats' age when he wrote some of those amazingly vague/trite generalizations, i.e. Truth Beauty Beauty Truth.
109
"The world" floats by with people who like to say a thing is or things are, when, in truth, they don't know and never will.
108
Grateful, suddenly, to not have ever been in a conversation where the quality of the sperm was uttered.
107
Subprogram of complex revenge?
106
It was uncanny and noteworthy how everything reminded her of Eliot's Wasteland.
May 4, 2005
105
On my desk there is a picture of my grandfather holding a pan in one hand, pipe in his mouth, looking/squinting at something outside of the picture's view. He looks to be in his 50s. In a photograph beneath this one, my father is 19 years old, in his Navy uniform, holding his chin. My father also has a watch on his wrist. He is looking straight ahead, but a bit below the eye of the camera. He seems lost in thought. It has just struck me that I must be now at the medium age, at 35, older than my father and his mystified look and younger than my grandfather and his squinting at something beyond him, down a gravel road. In still another photograph, my great-grandfather, an enormous German, is standing with my great-grandmother and a younger relative in the middle of winter in Wisconsin, outside of the farm. All three are dressed in their Sunday clothes, perhaps returned from church. I had the photo repaired and digitalized at a local photo restoration store. When I put the disk in to see this photo, I enlarged it out of curiousity to see if I could make out my great-grandfather's face, which was in partial shadow from being beneath his hat. When I got the photo to 400x, I saw only two black holes, with no hint of any eyes, no hint of light.
104
If one might have organized one's self, one's no one, at least mostly in opposition to one's parents, to differentiate, are the characteristics of who that one-in-opposition is actually a geniune articulation of self or just classic reaction formation? If it is not geniune, if it is a formation of revenge, a reaction toward and not a singular movement, then the question remains who is the one beneath the one one says one is?
103
Where self was said say No One. No one. Not one.
On my desk there is a picture of my grandfather holding a pan in one hand, pipe in his mouth, looking/squinting at something outside of the picture's view. He looks to be in his 50s. In a photograph beneath this one, my father is 19 years old, in his Navy uniform, holding his chin. My father also has a watch on his wrist. He is looking straight ahead, but a bit below the eye of the camera. He seems lost in thought. It has just struck me that I must be now at the medium age, at 35, older than my father and his mystified look and younger than my grandfather and his squinting at something beyond him, down a gravel road. In still another photograph, my great-grandfather, an enormous German, is standing with my great-grandmother and a younger relative in the middle of winter in Wisconsin, outside of the farm. All three are dressed in their Sunday clothes, perhaps returned from church. I had the photo repaired and digitalized at a local photo restoration store. When I put the disk in to see this photo, I enlarged it out of curiousity to see if I could make out my great-grandfather's face, which was in partial shadow from being beneath his hat. When I got the photo to 400x, I saw only two black holes, with no hint of any eyes, no hint of light.
104
If one might have organized one's self, one's no one, at least mostly in opposition to one's parents, to differentiate, are the characteristics of who that one-in-opposition is actually a geniune articulation of self or just classic reaction formation? If it is not geniune, if it is a formation of revenge, a reaction toward and not a singular movement, then the question remains who is the one beneath the one one says one is?
103
Where self was said say No One. No one. Not one.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)