what's it like... out there at five-thirty in the morning? it's cold when the slightest breeze puffs into yr fingers or past yr ears... it's painful enough when the sky spatters bare legs and face with a little rain... but here you are... walking circles toward the sunrise and away from it... wind in yr face wind at yr back.. that's the good thing about the circle... repetitious yes... but you get to see it all... such as there is to see... more clouds to the west than to the east... and brighter there, of course... on a cold morning the birdsong is complaint... or is that just me? i wasn't having the most fun i'd ever had... but i was doing it and feeling pretty good about it all... especially after the eighth lap.

doing it... that phrase carries some weight, don't it? right now there's a controversial ya novel of that title in england... something of a "realistic" look at adolescent sexuality... ho... hum... doing it... get it?

in my world, "doing it" finds me taking on some difficult (bothersome, boring, complex, or just plain hard) but necessary task... nike captured some truth for its "just do it" campaign... just as the army found a live one with "be all that you can be" ("an army of one" just don't cut it.. what is that?)... you know... doing it involves setting aside all internal objections, ignoring all external obstacles... and just stepping forth... walking out the door (literally or metaphorically)... into the act... shut up that prufrockian mumbling in yr brain (never much liked that poem... why does it seem so true?), grab the blade, slice through whichever current knot seems so impossibly gordian.. and you too may conquer the known world (that's the initial thrill, isn't it?)...

recently my most worrisome knots have been exercise and paper processing... the first is underway... the second remains... and nags... but there's a third... the pressure (from where?) to write... and then not just to write... but to write well enough...

i'm doing it a bit with finish your phrase... but i acknowledge, as a friend wishes recently, that "more" might or should come of it... those are fragments... a sort of notebook, of course... but it's also the site of my big poetry battle... what is the proper and necessary relation of language to the world? i dunno... sure, i'm right there with wendell berry (bright sword who splits my soul) when he asserts that

...the subject of poetry is not words, it is the world, which poets have in common with other people.

i'm shouting amens when he says

As regards this connection between humans and the world, the specialization of poetry is exactly analogous to the specialization of religion. Putting exclusive emphasis upon a world of words has the same result as putting exclusive emphasis upon heaven; it leads to, and allows, and abets the degradation of the world. (both from "The Specialization of Poetry" in Standing by Words)

no world-degrader do i care to be... and yet... i let myself write (and publish to the web... for the three of you to read) stuff like

i had enough power to color the sky a sad sort of stainless steel... then you asked for groceries... yellow red blue groceries from the bottom up... no one wants etchings any more... try careless black and white photos of streets and walls... still you prefer roses and cherubic fish... and this morning we were invaded by the americans... their fingerpaints smell like old milk and sushi... you can't remember a better time... to be alive

as my sophs might see it, there's either a hidden meaning... a secret code... here woven through the weirdness... or it's just nonsense... and to speak truly, i much prefer that it be nonsense than it be some clever game or inside joke that nobody gets but me... cuz i don't get it either... i'm not that clever... something else is happening...

i don't think that this playing around with language finds me turning my back on the world... feels more like i'm massaging the world with words... using words to break through the callus of ordinary sleeping and waking... looking for something wonderful... and sometimes words used strangely can get me there... can surprise me on a day when not much else does...

i'm going long here... and need to remember that lately my favorite word is "enough"... it's a subtle sensible word... and i am (by most external measures) at least a sensible guy... but that may also be why i need some place to set it all aside... and get strange... not a lot strange... just strange enough...

If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you.

Dorothy Parker

 

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