saturday... for the first time in months, dom and i walked outside this morning... only needed a double sweatshirt... the path was a bit squishy from the rain and the melt... it was good to see the old familiar world... still kind of stripped down... as thin from winter as i'm not... a crazy yellow in the old growth of the back field... dessicated black deer leg quiet in the treecrotch still... us walking... enjoying the rough the squish the rise and bump of the actual earth at footfall... so different from the effortless jetson glide of white and burgundy floor tile... flourescent...

yesterday... was it?... i received an inquiry from a reader out yonder who asked very specific questions about my process at fyp. no one had ever put it so directly... using a specific poem...

Is there a thought process, a narrative or scene, that you trace on paper but I usually fail to see, or do you deliberately erase your tracks behind you? From "hardly sprung from lunch..." to "in the sour half-light before it all makes sense," is there a thread and an order. Are the candles and sandles and scoundrels real phenomena or sounds?

i wrote back... tried to "explain"... don't know how satisfactorily... line by line in that particular piece what i was thinking of or reacting to at the writing moment... (lately i've been unhappy with things over there... which is an unhappiness or restlessness with myself... no doubt)... i was happy to describe that process... it reminded me of what i know and don't know about it all... and myself. even when the outcome the product feels like crap, the process has always mattered... quick things... on the run things...scraped from brain corners in between the day's big slabs of ordinary.

i was happy that someone was interested or puzzled or irritated enough to ask what i was doing... i told theresa who'd come in for her ritual good morning that this query was better than a compliment... nothing wrong with a quick "i like yr stuff"... but that somebody wanted to know more... mattered. his "that i usually fail to see" bugs me a bit because i don't want him or anybody who reads this stuff to feel stupid... failure should have no part... it's not a test... i don't much like reading poems... or anything... that accents some kind of irremediable failure to understand... stuff that makes me feel stupid. i enjoy the shock... of something fresh that offers to wake me up... because i'm always falling asleep... some kind of aesthetic narcoleptic... me

this raga ali akbar khan plays now... just goes... sure it's got a structure a form a history... but in the doing it just goes... and i'm all for going

now monday... this is so typical of me in march... everything stays unfinished... unposted... if i stopped to ponder and craft, i'd never post a thing... maybe that wouldn't be so bad... i'd get to stop groaning under this...

well, here it is again... these expectations i have of what others (invisible you) expect of... this... that there should be some wise brotherly wisdom... some brilliant or middling light... some christian hope... but i'm not that guy... so just let me muddle... it seems to be my style for now

(this next part is morose... don't go there if yr not up for it... it seems to be something i need to write at the moment)

in the past couple days i've been thinking of old times and old friends... mostly from college and post-college days... the seventies... wishing we'd been better friends... we who were best or close to best friends... wishing things had gone differently so that they were still in my life somehow... some are dead... at least one of them didn't have to be... i've always wondered if i might have made the difference by taking another path... might have... (i know what yr thinking... no frost... please)

well i'm not sure what's behind this dredging... some people have dreams or nightmares... they read them plain as the morning tribune... they get it... some people have real trouble have been beaten pretty low by life... not me boy... not me by a longshot

but it's a weary moment here... i do understand why the hatter went mad... the time is right... so

i'll pause here... to consider

There comes a pause, for human strength
Will not endure to dance without cessation;
And everyone must reach the point at length
Of absolute prostration.

Lewis Carroll

talk to me

brtom.org