yearbook in the mornings...read into the afternoon until sleep takes me...then wake up and read some more... what do they call it when a diver rises too quickly...something happens to the brain...a period of decompression...i used to decompress by renting five, ten, or twenty videos...i would watch and watch and watch them until some part of my brain had changed or settled...then i would do a litle work...but that won't happen now...with yearbook mornings and gray wet chilly days...there's no certain border between school and not school...and no good cheap video store in the neighborhood...to help me cross the river of...

there's no end of talking and writing until the end of it all...you know what i mean...do we get language in the hereafter?...i'd like to think we'd be above all this scribbling and jabbering then...but it can bring such pleasure here...how could we do without for eternity?...it's such a vital tool for staking claims and making self...but in the hereafter - if we can imagine such a thing - self will be complete, a finished job...we can imagine...what work would words serve?...at that future point where only one word will do...here language is everywhere and everything...and it only means as much as the ground...the particular earth from which we speak and write...it only matters as much as branches or leaves or fruit may matter...and by their fruit you shall know them...you'll know the conditions of their conception and birth...confusion breeds confusion...and crazy dreams...and certainty breeds a brutal singularity that has nothing to say beyond yes or no...this way to the feast, ye saved...this way to the dungeon, ye damned...nevermind ...i'll never be cursed with certainty...confusion's my lot...and yours...i bet...

read a book today called Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song. good enough. cleared up some of the mystery of the origins of Billie Holiday's song...have you heard it? good enough if you overlook the central photo section wherein two lynchings are documented...i don't want to look...which is, of course the critical issue with the song and Holiday's performance of it (which can hardly be seperated) ...how can something so horrible become something so beautiful ...some part of the moral brain rebels against this... someone in the book says of Billie, "She didn't like to sing it because it hurt her so much. She would cry every time she would do it." that's the only way you could do it. i met the song late... through Cassandra Wilson on New Moon Daughter... then i had to have Billie's version, but could only find the live version of 1945... which is strong - maybe too strong... lacking "the purity and understated eloquence of the original" says the book... i played this live version for the sophomores last year... i don't know what it did to or for them... it was just another stupid classroom experience i suppose... but it was upsetting to me... there's something obscene in having to talk about how the metaphor functions there...

tomorrow i will probably start Madame Bovary... if the weather allows...