Distribution Automatique

Saturday, May 31

O.k. Nick, but what does it mean?
posted by Laurable on 5/30/2003 02:12:59 PM | link

Let's see, Laurable in the P category. Kasey must have meant: perspicacious, personable, persuasive, pragmatic, pertinacious, pert, pretty, pleasant, perfect, philanthropic, paradoxical, particular, perceptive, patient, pithy, peppy, perky, perpetual, persistent, petit, phantasmagorial, phenomenal, philosophical, philotechnical, pioneering, pleasing, playful, pleasant, pleasurable, pluralist, peachy, poetic, poised, polished, politic, polymathic, popular, positive, potent, powerful, precious, precise, preeminent, preferred, prepared, preponderant, prevailing, prized, probing, prodigious, productive, professional, profound, profuse, prolific, proleptic, prominent, prompt, protective, prototypical, provident, prudent, public-spirited, punctual, punctilious, and purposeful.
What else could he possibly have been thinking of?

Check out "The Horde" by Megan Burns in Shampoo
This blog has an awesome page of links:Chris Lott...Ruminate On the page is a link called: more. Click on that!
Someone did a google search for the word "fait" of which there are over 12,000,000 results. *Fait accompli* was the 8th result and the searcher cllicked on this page.
11/30/84

Post-actualism comes into being long, or perhaps, not-long after the actualities have set in. Today's form of tough realism has prepared us for an art movement which will reveal the actualities of inner and outer experience in the most vivid and authentic forms possible. By this means actualism and post actualist forms will evolve the relationship between art and science which will harness the energies of science by modifying human needs rather than tormented fantasies of death and destruction. Never has it been clearer, with the advent of Adolph Hitler, that technology in the hands of brutal, demonic personalities could permanently injure or even destroy the human race. This will not be stopped by a view of art which condones insensitivity, mockery or irrational behavior in the spirit of self-expression. Freedom of expression does not include expression of a freedom to repress or humiliate, hurt and annihilate. These are the forces which isolate people from one another and which do not further communication and understanding. Actualism will show us that there is no ideal form of communication and understanding, whether Freudian or Marxist, Christian or Republican. With actualism, no one's identity may be reduced to that of any other individual or group. Actualism will demonsrate that the identity construct is so complex that it can encompass not only many perspectives in one temporal plane but in the direction of all temporal axes.

Multi-identity has been the direction of literature since in order to protect itself, the self-construct splits itself into various directions. Current psychanalytic theory favors a diagnostic category called the "borderline" syndrome which is partly a misinterpretation of what is happening when a person's self-construct is fragmented.

In order to construct a viable identity in today's society a human being must encompass an increasing array of purposes, intentions, goals and needs. When the identity is overwhelmed by presssures, it splits. This is an adaptation to the total actuality of the person's experience, if not some aspects of the reality shared with others. Paradoxically, the cultivation of the means of authenticating written experience through associative networks of syntactical expression, permits and even urges a wider expression of facets of the inner identity in the act of writing. This does not only include the active portions of a particular facet, but also the signal functions which participate in the formulation of perceptual processes. The world is seen through the lens of who we are. If this view is to be evidenced, it must always admit new methods authenticating the evidence of actualities , since these actualities are constantly changing in tenor and mode. Actualism, by promoting the inclusion of associative expressions of various levels of the self (such as roles, responsibilities, identifications with groups, philosophical viewpoint, etc) in written expression, promotes the widening of various wavelengths of communication. Actualism must come into existence in order to permit the establishment of the authentification of documented communications via associative matrixes rather than visual-perceptual replication. We must learn to code our messages much more subjectively if we are to encourage access to our individual inner processes and be enabled to freely and generously exchange and share information cocerning all the actualities of our experience. Conventional linguistic forms are shaped to fit individual facsimiles of the then current mode of social communication. As old hierarchies dissolve, the authenticity of certain forms of syntax also dissolves. The psychological need to maintain a sense of a continuous connection of the inner associative stream to the evolution of external events promotes the adaptation of conventional usages of sylistic linguistic forms. With the devlopment of electronic means of information dispersal comes a further need to transform syntactical forms into consistent units of information...

Friday, May 30

Bill Marsh
nominee for the -fait accompli- Oxymoron of the Year Award has written a manifesto for bloggers titled -Escaping the Garret- that is witty, wise and potentially of great practical benefit, if topically applied, as needed. Don't miss this piece!
To my delight, someone searched "ALPHAVILLE + godard + TIME TRAVEL" and was pointed by Google to *fait accompli*

Also, Guy Debord + birthday
The sun paid a brief visit to the city today so we zipped right out to Central Park. After a short walk in Toni pointed to a tree on the right with a hole in the trunk. Two of the cutest little birdie faces peeked out and started chirping to beat the band. After what must have seemed like an eternity to the bird babies mom came back with a bit of food: they pointed their beaks in the air and mom poked it right in. Mom seemed frantic and took the bit of bread I gave her for them quickly to them. I left some under the tree and we walked on. Later, near the Shakespeare Theater it started to rain. We ran under the awning stretching out from the roof of the building. When we looked out we noticed that a nest had been built on the neck of Juliet on the Romeo and Juliet statue in front of the theater. A woman next to us mentioned how poetic this was.Two more birdies peeked out from the nest. Nobody had to tell us this was pure poetry!
Jim Berhle's new sonnets are terrific. Here are two gems to fondle:

29.

I would trade truth
for beauty



and a player to


be named
later


85.

do it in fever and
be done with it

just headlights and
lampposts

and at weekend
heartbreaks endure

heartbreakers and alphabets

all debts are paid in silk











from ululations... Nada Gordon

(7:15 AM ) Nada  
On the Rasa

This Daumal text, in part a translation of a translation (from Sanskrit via French), really illuminates the idea for me, particularly in regard to poetry....

Earlier, the same text asks,

What, then, ultimately is poetry?
Poetry is a word whose essence is savor.

We will now explain the meaning of "savor". Savor is "the essence" in terms of the substantial reality. That is to say, savor is the life itself of poetry, without which there is no poetry. "Savor" (rasa)is, etymologically, that which is "savored" (rasayate). The term includes savor-emotions and savor reflections....

The faults are that which veil it (poetry).

The faults, cacophony, superfluous words, are analogous to infirmities, e.g. blindness or lameness, which affect (the person) through (the medium) of his own body: they affect (the poem) through sounds and meanings....

The virtues, ornaments, and allures are called "agents of construction."


from double visions of Johanna

Phone call from my impostor. This and that. Eavesdrop:

"But poetry is much more than logic," she said.
( Muffled noise.)
"It's more than language," she insisted.
( )
"More than philosophy."
"More than science."
"More than death."
"More than imagination."
"More than love."
  posted by Johanna @

11/27-28/84

(1) Check out "Observing ego" with Mark.

(2) Change or *eliminate the Roy Shaefer quote*

By concentrating only on time, I hold
time for one whole minute. The w-hole.XXXXXX
XXXXXXX For a minute I felt
like I was holding back time
itself by experiencing the completeness
of time's meaning, time had
no longer any meaning at all
and I was free of it again, by
being xxx xx immersed absorbed into the
experience itself *through* its meaning.
More evidence that anxiety originates
through holding back, through an
incompletion of the act, its fragmentation.

The moments of actually being invited to read
and running into Jeremy were jarring.

So there is something there. Her calling within
5 days of Charles showing me the Watten
piece is interesting. But this gives me 2 whole
molnths.

Nov. 29-Feb 9 or *5 weeks*
35 days
35xxxxxxx pages to choose from

11/30/84

It is 70 days. Look how anxious I was.
70- days.Still a tremendous amount of time.
"Fitting things in" creates time.

Time is expanded both by expanding the intervals
(the duration of an experience)-"I'm not
going to call it anything"- and by "making space"
by "fitting things in." Collage making is a fine
example of the complexity and economy of this
process.The larger and smaller parts can
be almost endlessly combined within a
tremendous range of scales. New elements
can be easily accomodated. Eventually, however, the
sheer immensity of the number of elements
xxx creates a language of representative
xxxx forms which xxxx allows access of new
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx images or xxxxxxxxxxxx
shards of language which act as transmitters
or resonant receivers of various otherwise
hidden or less obvious wavelengths of actuality.

2/28/96

The return to sound, the return to the sea, the part of nature with its own voice. This is its translation from the original thoughts. The sea increasing, the thoughts unceasing. A metaphysical equation connects the two. Always going back to the beginning, the sea and the sounds of the sea in one unceasing displacement. Nothing can cover it or hide it. Sheer naked energy that can't be stopped.

The poet asks: what intentless signal could I bear to dream? The sea is an abyss, I stand wordless at its precipice. At the boundaries some things coalesce.

All of my poems are about going away..

3/29/96

The Symbolic Universe

Not male or female
But female in relation to female
female in relation to male
male in relation to female
male in relation to male

not war or peace
but peace in relation to war
war in relation to peace
not black or white
but their relation

4/5/96

In the secret room of secret
writing there are no secrets. You
do it for another reason. Absolutely
what is eliminated.This was first.
Avoid the bombs with an s-weave.
Something gets stuck on the edges.

Even with the slightest bit of that
you'd know what you tested. If this
isn't one long English lesson, what
is it? You can hear the echoes.
You can hear the lessons. Starting right
back there at the beginning with an
ideologue.As long as you can watch.
It is spinning. As long as you can
breathe.

This is a test.This is a test of
what you can make of it. What you can
make of remembering, what you can
make of listening, what you can make
of living. If it isn't philosophy, what is
it? What it is, it hard to be serious
about. No time to be serious.

It is more like wrestling than dancing,
To enter into a whirlpool of helplessness
for no other reason than to get some
words on a page. For no other reason than to
read. Words on a page.

A displacement of cravings. Is it
you or is it me? A fear: some symmetry.
As dew drives up a flower, the
ink dries upon the page, the words
dry upon the mind. It's just that
if it's in your/my/our vicinity
we will want to control it.

Can I close the book? To
play the priest you must hide.
The inverse of reasoning is not
going crazy, not sleep, not an
avoidance. Be willing to end. To stay,
to go back.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx It's quiet on the
sidelines. A gardner would not
perfume her own flowers, nor a
poet her poems. This was heard on
Cocteau's radio.

A circle is drawn. Are the
books reading me?

Nick's Bloglink Crush List (most recent links)

abolone..Li Bloom


We Write To Taste Life Twice...Crystal King


The Wily Filipino...Benito M. Vergara, Jr.


Mysterium...Carlos Arribas


Arm Sasser...Carl Annarummo


The Brutal Kittens...James Meetze


Process Documents...Ryan Firzpatrick


Love's Last Gasps...Eileen Tabios' Poem Journal


Topher Tune's Times...Christy Church


Last Week
prrrowess...Nada's Poems


Tympan...Tim Yu


Porthole Redux ....Catherine Meng

Mr.Tong Bliss' Journal...Joe Massey


Human Verb...Noah Eli Gordon


tex files...Chris Murray


Parking Lot...Chris Corrigan


Black Spring...Meno ter Braak


Chimera Song Mosaic...Deborah Wardlaw Pattillo


The Jetty...Cassie Lewis..


double visions of Johanna


No Starting Point...Emma Barnes


Technorati Cosmos


Mike Snider's Formal Blog


Never Neutral...Ernesto Priego

Thursday, May 29

So what does Category P mean?
posted by Laurable on 5/29/2003 12:53:03 PM | link

Oh, Laura, a fairly astute observer of the graduate student scene has explained to me that poetics students often become obsessed with "positioning." Of course Kasey Mohammed is entitled to his opinions and observations. But I find this need to create hierarchies in an emerging situation such as this self-serving and mildly destructive. Not kick-ass, just asinine. Divide and conquer is the classic approach of the timidly and unimaginatively ambitious. Shades of the Buffalo Poetics list.The stale aroma of the classroom in May.
11/24/84

Feeling very excited, but also feeling a bit overwhelmed. So many thoughts and fantasies, feelings, strange murmurings. Bachileanus Brasilieros. Then Carmen.

International Journal of Psychoanalysis
Postgraduate Journal?

Book to Univ of So Ill Press?

Poetry manuscript

11/26/84

Visualized identity=narrative-
you "see" the identity by means of
contextual descriptions
Dickens' -contextualized image-
the "click" of the woman's purse being shut
Mann's-visual/contextual descriptions (letimotifs)
as writing-noise in the background- such as the
air purifier- imaginitive noises- Foreman-Zorn
identity- understood as distortion-free of idiosynchrasies
November- the magic month- late November
orange notebook- Marrakesh

optical instrumentality-
description of visual-perceptual experience

life is simply a test of will

we'll have to go back to baby-talk to
express the least sense out of what we
experience

The only explanation I can see that the development
the science of love preceded that of
beauty is that the need for a lover is
more insistently and demandingly felt than the need for an
identity
?
Identity is an aesthetic achievement insofar
as the self, in order to be responded to,
must resonate harmonically with other
selves.
?

11/27-28/84

There *is* something out beyond the edge of the visible universe. It is hearing the ear
thinks, seeing the eye thinks. Out beyond
there where nothing is seen, in a single pulse
the universe repeats itself with every breath.
Normally, the eyes see. But when one is
listening, light itself translates the
signals into bird's movements, strumming air
with its harnessings, transfiguring a past scrap heap
of posturings in the lattices of a sparkling
hesitancy. Dripping with sweat, the angel mutters
to her or himself, down with this, hurling a
strictly documented universe, graduated, gyrated
and expostulated in the grainy
screening-room of history. Lifted high and
carefully deposited on the shelves, the words
stretch and yawn and then start to move, scramble madly, from
one volume and meaning to the next. In a
deft stroke of recognition the words run off the
books- onto the shelves, failing, obstinately, to utter
a sound or thought.
.
call Olga
call Richie, Mom

get *blinds*- put them up and vacuum

11/24/84

Once again I'm aware of the anxiety I feel
about making moves forward. As I collect the
objects to do it, I feel it welling up. The old
position was to sit still, hoping the waves around me
would settle.Now I'm learning to tolerate that
dizzy, nauseous feeling inside that slows me
down to a snail's pace because part of me
believes this will be soothing. I don't want
to live (all the time) in that twilight, that misty
world.

But I also recognize that I've earned
the right to live in that world as much as
I choose. It is also the world of reveries
and ideas.
(Then I left and went out and
accomplished a number of things- bought a
jacket and shirt, found a chair, Toni's radio,
picked up the blinds, straightened the house).

Leaving a t.v. on for backgound noise of the "average expectable environment."

Experience (1)........................Experience (2)
situation.........signal decay
_______________________________________________
thought.......variant a............variant b..........variant c...............variant d

)........................)............................).......................)............................)

..................such as rational......such as............such as...............such as memory


..................deduction................ludicrous...........connected
...............................................................................anticipatory
.................................................................................thought
....................................................association
1/29/86 Rocket's Red Glare

Is there any immediate threat to national security?

(No, but the-)(crossed out) (to himself: Ghastly.
They won't listen to me anymore.)
What? 72 Seconds. Wait a minute.
Can that! What I want to know is,
is there a threat? Is this an indication
of subversive activity? (Namely)(crossed out) are the
Russians involved?
I don't beliveve that is possible, Mr. President. (They must think I'm getting feeble-minded. You know how much that computer cost you? -crossed out)

(Not in any way forthcoming. Who is this not-forthcoming person, if not my father.
That's how I had to hold myself back. In order to have him, I...)
1/30/86

This is the note I wrote today at the coffeeshop: For the article- a theory without unity- a unity of looser states of mind- looser boundaries- may allow for an expansion of strength- perhaps at the cost of some ambiguity of focus.

The cost, postponement in attaining the ideal.

The purchase: the hope of having any theory at all (ref: Duhem) (this added in later)

Higher and lower lines- sum lines a line can indicate that the lower thought- came later- in recognition of the fact that....

What is this aberration?

The problem with measurement is that the things most worth measuring cannot yet be measured by any device. But as we discard the scale towards simple material ( a philosopher is a slave of philsophy; the poet is shackled to his or her poetry)

2/1/86

Suddenly, once in awhile, a sense of the total *rush* of time on one level- In this experience we sense that time- while moving from then to now- is also a huge rising tide -going forward at ever greater rates of intensity- (the last phrase crossed out in the notebook) that to observe (crossed out) it at all is to feel a sense of its totality- whilch is of undreamed of immensity -magnified in all the...(crossed out, last word unreadable) senses.

Exactly at the point of metaphor (crossed out)
The entire language dissolves-
a vapor in the imagination of experience
gathered at the threshold (crossed out)
Poet: A Four Letter Word
I think to speak
I search for... (crossed out) the telling the saying
the language dissolves
leaving (crossed out) a trauma of experience
not fit for a dog

I tried to be frank
And sarcasm paid
Its eloquent witness
A translation of fraud

A lying (crossed out, unreadable) mustache
The absence of history
fluorescent fortune cookie

booby, booby
scuba duba
don't deny
a separate Cuba

2/2/86

I

These were the conditions of the poem:
A bright sun and distances neither too near or too far
And an element of ruse, so near here in the absence
An emphasis of shape and strangeness, ushering in
An elongated tense (peculiar that asks, but
Primarily speaks its explanations in faults)
Kinds of primary qualities, associations, basks
A self-conscious *hauteur,* leans over to pick the
Flower from her- parenthesis- awake- key signature

II

Wednesday, May 28

This from Ryan Fitzpatricks Process Documents yesterday:


Tuesday, May 27, 2003

 
If you listen to Kasey Mohammed, being in the "EE" section of his links bar is a fate worse than death. I don't know. It's not so bad. What if I have no desire to "improve my station" in blog-life. What if implying a hierarchy in his linking system is reifying the inequality inherent in the capitalist system. Maybe it doesn't matter, because blogs are essentially dumb like most things. I only do this for kicks anyway (and they keep getting harder to find).
posted by ryan 9:24 PM

(1/28/86)
No longer possible------------

--------past hurricane "aids" earthquake rocket crash future------------

"event comet going through the fabric of current space-time"

---------------no longer possible

common properties: Something ordinarily stable, expectably invulnerable, becomes vulnerable (loose and less resistant in its structure)

1) The air wall "caving in" to the hurricane

2) The earth "giving way" to the earthquake

3) The bodies of the ill people :giving way" to the disease

4) The ship's balance of systems gets jostled by something it ordinarily could fend off

If the particles lose confidence in the structure, they will pull apart, leaving the texture with "holes" that "allow" potentially destructive forces to penetrate the protective shell. the particles overall belief in the structure governs in the past, this unified movement- (Hofstadter's concept in which things suddenly all go a different way- I don't remember how to spell it? Sphexish- or something like that).

When the particles lose trust (Reagen's 60 Minutes, Alexander Cockburn article)- the texture fragments- the trust builds up the ladder- this is why for centuries people have believed in faith in God- something about space-time responds to faith- because something about space-time gathers momentum towards the idea that what we believe about the world is *authentic*- when doubt is vanquished, the universe holds together. Doubt rises, llike a tide. To stay above it, you need only follow it with one lazy eye- forget to do that and fate might land right on top of your head.

The multiplicity of this book is partly a source of excitement. Then again, it seems spineless- unfocussed. The romantic is needed to spur multiplicity- which is dangerous because faith becomes less and less available.

The bottom line is- predicting is not controlling- to sense the tide is coming can only help by letting you know how to use it-

*Nothing* is totally predictable.

In order to be considered worthy of receiving the final bit of information- one might have been considered worthy-This, in itself, must have been prepared for, in some way. *This* is why one h as to be *involved* with what one does. Otherwise you'll not be considered worhy of the outcome. An outcome, considered inauthentic, is ultimately not considered real- and thus is deprived of any actuality.

Therefore, many things having no intrinsic power over anything else- even of themselves- have such a power- this must be rejected.

(Consider a book as a series of cryptic remarks, meta-memories and *instructions* and advice- this is an aspect of Stevens' poetry).
1/28/86 the Orange Notebook

Last night, Toni and I talked about reincarnation. Today, after her doctor's visit, we returned some books to the library and I picked out: Finnigan's Wake, a book of Stevens, Emily Dickenson and *Timewarp.* The last book pushed me over the edge into my childhood. The coincidence of a cold brought other strong associations. Staying home from school, being sick and being taken care of. But another theme, often overlooked, is me taking care of *her.* Like the time we came back from Germany for a visit to her mother and I endlessly entertained her playing cards, talking about books I was reading. The more I travel back, the more real those memories are to me becuse they are the form and substance of how I experience what I am experiencing now.Another theme is banishment and defeat, but that for anothet time- yes, the mind weaves, moves across a shuttle and possibly in the perihelion of this axis...(now back to *Timewarp.*)

Idea for a story: a man has a tremendous need to discover a system which gives him exact results. Obsessed with documentation, authority, authenticity, certitude. He chooses the most exact of all. Through a labyrinth of investigations, he finally comes upon someone whho says: "Trust me, I knew the absolute value." He goes from discipline to discipline, finallly discovering one where you do not have to take the word of one another. When he realizes this, it is not long after that someone comes to him who is observed with knowing where and when the absolute value can be established.
1/23/86

Upland. Fort Thunder, lynx
Mix- Jollity.
I'm not an ordinary elevator man
Either- polka- dot
Sphinx- take that part out

Ranging, Start over.
Order me about- al letter.
Stars stay about (some..)
"Leave that out, too."
Sans letter, sans danger
Out of time comes things and litter
and over about moments whether

In poetry it is style which is the
pedal tone, the bass tone, the
oine and only point which can be
held past a moment. The presence
of this style can amount to only a
trace of a nuance of emphasis beyond ordinary thought and speech.
But there are poetic styles which
go further, which challenge what can
now be ascertained as an existent
possible stance towards the current artistic
situation.

It is as if one were bending out the
impact of words to make them come at the
mind from the opposite of a vantage point
Here s/he is reading, reading, reading
Reading the lids of jars, laughter's frequency,
Light's harmonic, a treasured vernacular
Circular starlit humming, the spin close to
orbit, squalor. A prince is a royal entrance
to Egypt, night's labyrinth of columns, earth's
atmosphere, colonization, testimony.

Picture to image to image/souind
Some kind of memory image

Other tagged whence
airlift tossed remark to settle
harmonic memory (cold oscillate)
Changes, cloying,
deadmaster protest. Earth clone, cyclops,
whereby zoos (Banya Luka). Clips,
steps, archaic stretegy- parachutist,
eclipse, railway-hurry. Steps, into, out
of. Ip. Cit. Norway/haiku- tunnel,
frequency (end frequency). I think. Op. Cit.
France (Normandy).- Lip, clip Clips, pucker-
chop-chop.
Dentist, aunt, journey.








Tuesday, May 27

Tuesday, May 27, 2003  


Why sleep when you can blog?
posted by Tim | 2:59 AM
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

Nick? Are you still awake? Nick?
posted by Tim | 2:59 AM
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well done, Tim. You definitely won this round! Good blogging too.
Let's see what happens later...
 
Remember *Little Shirley Bean*? This just in from Corina Copp!


Hi all. See below for what seems to be another fairly relevant matter....
love cori

On June 2, the Federal Communications Commission is planning on
authorizing sweeping changes to the American news media. The rules
change could allow your local TV stations, newspaper, radio stations,
and cable provider to all be owned by one company. NBC, ABC, CBS and
Fox could have the same corporate parent. The resulting concentration
of ownership could be deeply destructive to our democracy.

Congress is supposed to guard against monopoly power. But the
upcoming rule change could change the landscape for all media and
usher in an era in which a few corporations control your access to
news and entertainment. Please join me in asking Congress and the
FCC to support a diverse, competitive media landscape by going to:

http://www.moveon.org/stopthefcc/

You can also automatically have your comments publicly filed at the
FCC.

When the folks at MoveOn.org talk to Congresspeople about this issue,
the response is usually the same: "We only hear from media lobbyists on
this. It seems like my constituents aren't very concerned with this
issue." A few thousand emails could permanently change that perception.
Please join this critical campaign, and let Congress know you care.

Thanks.





"We do not remember days...we remember moments."

Cesare Pavese
1/23/86 Soundings of the Ordinary/Actual

It is in the abstract universe
that difficulty with (the) enactment
takes place.

"Nothing" is stopping you.
"It" takes too long.

All that I said about inspiration
was wrong. Minus that.
"Then" you weren't listening.
The Minotaur didn't have a name yet.

Things are so gentle in the sunlit
island of entitlement. All that you
breathed one could call birds (or "boids.")

"Scudder" or something like that.
Enticements of the interval.
Rhythm is "something wrong."
Merits of the literal.
You accept that something is yet to happen.
(a cinch))
or, a conch
to spare (explode)

Proximity is All
On this certainty
Atoms are built
What slips between...
Wraps itself
in (title) calm...(call him) (colon)
"Call Collect" a memory-
representation of something else
in the same way that "space"
"needs" "time" to happen in
and things "need" intervals
to separate them so much
All enlarges itself to the scale
tht time starts to be experienced
in proximate values
Intervals are characteristic

Such is the literal
why words change scale
such is the social (lower class-caste-case-)

The poor (treated) like animals- more smells, more work, experiences slow, dull, interminable, filled with desperation, envy, rage, remorse

The sound of a brush scaping again and again across a canvas
Sing,will you!
Or be not abandoned and alone.
:Less than a year ago, a lot of slipping
and sliding, scrapping and shaking.
Vitamin C.
Mathematics, physics, philosophy of science.
Names and names of things.
Things across a river. Rustling,
gathering points towards...

Safety...the airlines whose...
sifting
whose blimps...
erasures...shift
poor animals in a rut
tighten, tighten
"don't disagree!"

isolates hardly ever
happen (bracelets...forgiven)
(Hampton's=pads/priceless)

figment, fragment
more meant
movement/Silicon/looseleaf/cylinder

Wait: things seen as other than things
where all the owners are distant,
and cranky and difficult

Dear Publisher: I will try to back my poem safely into your magazine:
I am not entwined.
I am innocent (interest)

I have applied Before.
(Applaud)
(Forest tumbles.Type tree-
harlow's, harry's out- type glum
Fair St.)
She maybe never tasted such futurity,
Striped and grim,
F sharp minor, petrol fumes
License/winner/folk/trot
6/85

Fifth Avenue was very slow and the driver overheard me mention the accident to Toni. It was the driver who told me about the woman being pinned under the crane.

Something inside me suddenly felt the full force of what must have been her actual pain. Then the outrage of the fact that this was due to human carelessness. And then all of it together: my ridiculously expensive apartment and my three jobs needed to support it; my threatened second layoff in ten years. The long years spent in school-now up to 22 of my 42 years and still owing $20,000 to the bank)- all of it. I could feel her pain because it was also me and those like me under that crane- the price of "building up" New York's face again- yet another operation to conceal New York's flabby chin. And what is the flab? The moral flab- the lack of caring, understanding- even simple responsibility- in a society build on and even more addicted to desperation and artificially created longings.

And then a strange thought entered my head. What if my legs were chopped off? I would be forced to spend the rest of my life writing all day and all night- something I could never do now. Toni compared losing my job to having a chance to really use my full potentials. But this is wrong because without legs I really can't *help*- or have the feeling I can provide the legwork that really assists others.
6/1/85

(The image of) The double quality of time- one- the feeling of *plenty*- this in the sense of (the moment's) actuality's relentlessness- the other- in the planning of activities- there is a pressure- to accomplish things- to actually do them, to finish them- there is a different quality to time during such experiences.

To *produce* experience is one of the pressures of the experience of what Arakawa had called *blank.* There is a side of experience which feels tabula rasa, in which there is an inward sense of resistance to the relentless force of reality and its actual manifestations. This side of experience is akin to sleep, reverie, exhaustion, even delirium and hallucinations in its extreme forms.

These two sides of experience- one, which flows out of all that has accumulated, the other in which time is also timeless and unmoving- still and permanent as a painting, a hieroglyphic symbol carved in stone. The huge statues of Easter Island are always there, unchanging, watchful. This side of time is also always *in wait.* Even as we are wholly engrossed suddenly in some sequence of events, some future possibility...a few days ago a woman was crushed under a crane. Her legs may still have to be amputated. Toni said maybe her Karma was to point to dangers with her life- she had almost been injured in a cable car accident in Switzerland and her husband died of cancer. For six hours she lay there.

I first heard of the incident on the radio in the afternoon. I was listening to some pop music when an announcement was made that all the traffic waas totally gridlocked around the Upper East Side due to an accident with a crane. I finished work at my office and left with Toni in a cab to go see a friend's husband's film at MOMA.

4/4/85

A Play- The Characters

Reader
Poem
Talk
Idea
Word

(a theoretical construct which is

ANONANONANONANO ANON)


4/7/85

I still like ANON for the title of my book.


I am writing the theoretical construct- Now for the play- Gods- in the background *two* levels- the human level and the -mind- level- which is reflective and analytical

So events on the left are discussed on the right- and ocassionally actions reach across the two frames- this is partly observable in Woody Allen's *Purple Rose of Cairo.* - by presenting this oscillation- a resonance can be "heard" emanating from parts of reality we can't "see." We "hear" the parts we can't "see" and "feel" the parts we can't "say" or "think."

For one to assume a focal point of obtaining authenticity- in our age it is visual information- visual confirmation (as in Rilke quote in the Currents of Attention article) is to overly develop one aspect- of sensory experience at the cost of the deemphasis of the other senses. The visual is the timeless sense- while the others fade in and out- the visual attains a constancy unparalleled by the other senses- and thus an unparalleled monumentality . Yet the scale of the visual includes all but the infinite although the soul resides there. The other senses in the infinitesimal durations- contain the heart of infinitude. Thus- the tower of babel was presented with limits and language at the same time- we lost immortality in order to speak- but with language came diversity and wholeness- "words were what were whole" as the poet Bruce Andrews puts it: and Genesis: "in the beginning was the word."

4/11/85

(music like *Call Collect*)

(1) Film- close-ups of all the electronic connections for an automatic recording to trace all the succeeding calls on any call coming in and giving a printout of this.

(2) The idea of books which you hold in your hand (Freud's Mystic Writing Pad)

Monday, May 26

10/23/80

9 months of no writing in this book. The articles for L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E- finished. More like a death- a reversal of the cycle. None months to die.

Melodramatic. I just had another thought about language. Memory is lexical (crossed out with questionmark added). To see a sign is a reminder.

Combination of OBJECT REPRESENTATION (SIgn) and SIGNIFIER.
2) To see specific printed letters is a reminder of (1)
1) original "meaning" or set of associations

1) original "meaning" or set of associations
2) later associations when the script is again (noticed/seen/remarked)
3) The "original" reading experienced as "meaning"
a) the rereading establishes a net of associations
b) the set of associations
4) the later associations reminders of associations to experiences

Dependence> independence
closeness> distance
self> other

You felt what you felt-
why should you say to yourself that these feelings brought about a specific reaction i somebody else?

argument
anger provokes anger

But to say that means to say that what you feel was caused by some previous interaction

My love for you is not what makes you love me
My hate for you is not what makes you hate me
7/78

By a systematic relieving of guilt, an analyst is able to assist an analysand... a relief from the pressure of responsibilities.This is true. But the fictive muse might entirely neglect her object. These mutterings from the unconscious precede a more organized perception of time. So many selves are required.

Dr.Fielding- owe $180. Patient owes me $200.

The technique of unresolved relationships. All the things I couldn't say to someone.

X said what she sees in my work are unresolved relationships. How about mine? The writing is, in the end, about these relationships. Someone else felt my writing "exploited" the audience. My relationships do have a "distant" quality to them now.

Will power. Avoidance of responsibilites. For six months I carried "Two or Three Things I Know About HIm" in my briefcase. But my relaxation techniques seem to be related to fear. Plainly, because I was so afraid, I backed into a corner, like Gregor Samsa in -Metamorphosis.- I withdrew into a world of words, books and writing. I took forays into the world of people and then withdrew into my solitude.

It's just that when I don't have to make a move, in terms of those responsibilities, I don't want to. I would rather live in a world of my own creating during that time. There is a story in my secretiveness too, and I want you to know it. And so he begins taking small photographs of his most familiar landscape, his own thoughts. True, they were all thought before. But even the way I press my pen down so hard on the page has a personal history. Perhaps I loved making those words so much my teachers would read. Maybe it's just a way to get out my anger. I do like tightening up the muscles in my arm when I write. Maybe it was my sport instead of baseball, which the other kids played, but which I, especially in my childhood, withdrew from. It's frightening how personal my exposure, my (emotional) rape by my mother was. She wanted to own me completely, make me completely her slave, perhaps. Or maybe she ws still so angry at her father for deserting her and her mother for another woman.

So, it is all these unresolved relationships. How I leave the feelings there to accumulate like a pile of leaves waiting on the lawn to be burned.

Seemed kind of wary.

Assumed.

The problem of space= the human relationship to space.

Harcourt, Brace= 888-4444.

The letters, checks and bills.

Impatiently waiting. Need for a certain kind of support- different kinds- also related to fear. All this concentration on preoccupations can be directly translated into poetry. Making a plan, a move (also, fear), telling a story M.G. Giving out directly a kind of direct interpretation of the narrative. This would feel like making a personal choice, a form of committment.

Let's see if I can be up blogging later than Nick tonight. He has that East Coast time zone advantage though.
posted by Tim | 12:43 AM

Go, Tim! It's 2:15 am Eastern Time; 11:15 pm Pacific. We're off and blogging!
Toni's sister Beryl and her husband Bob came down from Arlington, Mass to make a holiday visit this weekend. To celebrate her 70th birthday, Toni's stepmother Barbara suggested that we drive up to Storm King Art Center near Cornwall. Though it was a cloudy day everyone still wanted to go. The drive up the Palisades Parkway was pleasant as usual and the sumptuous country style breakfast we had in Cornwall was more than pleasant: It was naughty to have pancakes with eggs and sausages but what the hell, we needed strength to cover all that area at Storm King where hundreds of sculptures, many of them monumental in scope, may be seen in an outdoor setting of rolling hills, streams and trees. We boarded a tram and got an overview of numerous sculptures, but everyone agreed to get off and wander around when we caught sight of the Andy Goldsworthy stone fence he constructed there in 1997-1998 over a period of about 4-6 months. The museum collected the stones and with 4 or 5 helpers Andy Goldsworthy reconstructed a gorgeous fence made out of stones fallen from old stone fences, which were piled by hand and kept stacked by gravity alone, circling beautfully around tree after tree and ending up at the edge of a stream, to be picked up again on the other side. I bought a nice color photo of the site covered with snow in winter later in the museum shop as well as a slide of the fence. The groundsperson explained to me that a bunch of students had carelessly walked along the top of the fence the other day and some people were stealing the stones. For those of you who are as yet unfamiliar with Goldworthy's work, I suggest you see the film about it, that was recently released, if you can. There are numerous books with plenty of photos of his work in wood, ice, stone and other materials. Somehow, for me, this fence made most of the other numerous monumental sculptures, mostly constructed of steel, look like quaint leftovers from an age obsessed with metal girders and skyscrapers. Goldsworthy's work celebrates the earth, stones, contemplation, stillness, grace and, that apparently hopelessly outdated concept, "nature." This work offers time travel par excellance! I also enjoyed a huge, but subtle piece by Richard Serra, a collection of David Smiths, a small gathering of items by Nam June Paik, but in addition to the Goldsworthy, most of all a monumental piece made out of cedar and graphite by Ursula Von Rydingsvard, whose recent show followed Goldworthy's at the Gagosian Gallery.

Barbara, who used to live in Nyack with Toni's father, the late Bill Simon, who was a fine songwriter and musician, about ten years ago, suggested we stop over there for coffee on the way back. I got a chance to visit a compact used bookshop I like very much and found a small hardbound book of short pieces by Samuel Beckett called "Fizzles," from 1977 with the bright yellow Grove Press book jacket still intact and a book about the musical theories of Claude Debussy by Leon Vallas which I had long ago taken out of the library and regretfully returned.. I got into a conversation with the owner about his own book collection and he told me he liked to collect memoirs by bookstore owners like Vincent Starrett's *Born in a Bookshop* and another one by Madeline Stern. He also told me about his collection of hobo's writings. A number of these interesting wanderers were typesetters who would get short term jobs and write memoirs, typeset them on the sly and sell them! Later, on the drive back to the city Bob suggested a book of essays by Camus: "Summer and Nuptials." Never heard of that one. Dinner at Mogodor, of course, on St Mark's and back to Barbara's for Chinese Checkers, beer and cheese and looking at old photos. I didn't feel like Chinese Checkers so I read an article in the Sunday Times Arts and Leisure section about photoblogs (one recommendation was fotolog.net). Suddenly the Times is very interested in bloggers! But the articles, as usual, have been fuzzy and neither exciting nor informative. The Times is often lacking in two crucial aspects that make for absorbing reading: sensitivity and insight. I've had it with the Times: The New York Times is over if you want it!

Sunday, May 25

(7/78)

Historicity
The thought before is substituted for the anterior reference. Time in moment-to-moment tension is dissolved and diffused in the form of various perspectives of scale. This hypertrophy of scale is observable in contemporary abstract art and largely formalized including concepts of self-reference and documentation- in the tiny collages of Kurt Schwitters. Schwitters' association with the Dada movement- and deepened by his reaction to Nazism- fixes him in the historical frame which is for the moment overemphasized and ignores the space/thought dimension of his work. The promise of Surrealism- fusion of thought and language forms- also of a...

Tottering in its confused association with Freudianism- did not lead to the mecca of instant self-enlightenment. Before long too, the beats were to again vastly enlarge the possibilities for line to line scale and it's di...

7/8/78

As presently we will see the tides are still searching out their newest shapes and colors and the words for connection are still the same. I see your expressions in the coded messages of my feelings. You weren't kidding when you said I was happy. Soon we will answer to the gestures this sharing implies. Sunset also has a place in the vocabulary of history. Feelings go in lines too and afterwards another long kiss. No eyebrows raised the sun is in your greeting...Let's hurry, one foot after another, always a single word drawn into a series, the preceding enters onto the following like a ruin of small mistakes. the coming together draws closer the frayed ends of the present, past and future.

7/20/78

Losing pace with the historicity article, the reports from BCG, the correspondance for L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E. I just don't feel like doing it. After the feelings about Roof IV and what happened with X, *I just don't feel like looking at it.* The wall I told Fielding about. After that point, I may be entering into vulnerable areas that may cause some pain. I am happy about my relationship with N but I also feel afraid. But I face away from writing work when I'm struggling with trust. Now I'm thinking of being published in the magazines and mixed up in this other thoughts, about security. So many people have said to me there isn't any, even some analysts, but I don't believe this. And the symbol of that feeling for me is the sea in summer. The dream of love, the eternal sea in summer. Scylla and Charybdis, responsibility and trust on the one shore- no, that is not what I mean- I mean the two voices I was thinking about the other day, it has to be allowed to be able to come out like that.What is the realization of a language I ask myself and the Call Collect Neil wrote asked me that- will I never achieve my sense of organization? Part of me likes the dissolving, a different sense of time Alan called it.

This started with the thought about the man who turned his apartment antique shop- art gallery into an exclusive restaurant. Certain things I'm afraid to buy. Like an electric typewriter. I paid back all the money except to Cheska- I have $1113 plus cash for the month- but I'm still scared. I guess it's because I'm always afraid of losing my job. But *that fear* must be countered by a real committment to study, analysis and actual effort.The recurring objects of his fantasy- he was waiting for them to appear and they did.

*So historicity has to do with waiting, if it is to mean anything. * Life as it is lived also guides our choices.

Needlefish a voracious eater of small fishes. Uses a web for bait, to catch the fish. Red shell money-gathered by the diver in the deepest part of the lagoon. He uses 30 cent goggles. He has earned his pay.

The nautilus, a creature of the night, is rarely seen except as bones.

The sharks in the water help you if you do good by them, or they will kill you. A pig is sacrificed, they collect the skulls of pigs sacrificed.

Shell money- different colored shells ground in a certain way.

A priest swims out and offers the shark a pig. It's the first time the skulls have been brought out in 30 years. The eldest priest has the most skulls. it's a heavy burden. They pray for the shark to arrive. He takes the sacrifice eagerly.

The sharks didn't attack the people.

The sea snakes talked to the shark and all fish the shark had chased into the cave escaped. This happened in Time Before.

8/15

I don't remember when I wrote that but I saw it on t.v. The article about writing dreams.

Can I really keep my dreams? Can I color them pastel colors again and again in memories. Like a bunch of fires built along the beach. Beacons. No, bacon. No memory. Just by.

The signature was mine, take it- the nature of its essence maybe will be our essence once. I try to keep it, but it keeps slipping away from me. I keep on fishing for it, like the collector of conches, they are also your words and I'm thinking about each separate name. And for the moment I'm in your frame. It's not like slipping into the word star machine- and the rust collects stamps- also a lot of rags are held in locks, in voices- I'm...an ocean just for you...twice in the parts of once or twice, ashore. Someone comes by to clean it up, to protect it. I'm afraid of this person, because the person who can help me is also still part of my dreams and I don't need better glasses than that. Whether or not you can fill it for the one who is lost now.

"You'll forgive me," he says "if I admit to you immediately that I like to have some money in the bank." He turns and looks away with a wistful expression on his face. "I remember the times I felt differently. I still had my recklessness and my taste for gambling with my life. I wasn't really much of an artist anyway, though I knew some very good ones." He pointed to his furnishings. "Now I console myself with a little extravagance, and the love of my dear wife."

His pince-nez.