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Lest you, whoever
you are, worry that I've given up on This Journal, here's a short
piece.
Since a journal is
at its roots a daily thing (my old French dictionary gives it
as "1.journal; 2. diary; 3. newspaper, paper; 4. com.
daybook" - you get the picture), you have every right to
expect a daily appearance - and I have every need to write one.
I've learned that this electrical-surface is not the same as
paper, cannot be so quickly scribbled and hidden. It's mode is
publication, revelation. Sometimes there are occurrences and
feelings that we don't publish. Everybody knows that. So it's
a pleasant fiction that this space really is my closet.
Well, it's My Closet,
but it's not my closet. We can watch, but none of us can touch
this space, not really. It can't be held in the hand the way
I hold my old French dictionary. I picked it up for two bucks
at Colleen's Books on Telephone Road, Houston. I like the heft
of it, the brown of it. It's fragile with age, but still a solid
thing and came in handy for awhile when I was trying some translation
from Rimbaud, because the date is just about right, 1891. Previously
owned by one Hardin Craig of Princeton, New Jersey. (I believe
he was on the faculty there.) It's got a funky bronze glow, a
book still lively and useful after a hundred years of use. No
doubt, like any book, it has spent the better part of its time
on the shelf. But for as long as I've had it, I've been glad
- and even comforted - to have had it, one of those anchors.
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