in the wet

 

in the stars, in the cards

 

Dear Days Remaining in the Year,

I have a song for you, for today.  Aselestine.  

If there were more time, I'd write to tell you how I am feeling, but the days left are so few, it feels silly to bother.  I am trying to write this mountain of greeting cards, and there is nothing really to say about all this darkness and hate.  For years I have been thinking we will get to a place, a place in the future, where we will look back and say, Whoo boy!  What a terrible time that was!  It's so great to be here and think back on that time; like a fading nightmare.  A place you leave and it just gets smaller and smaller in your rear view mirror.  But thinking on the future feels indulgent and foolish.

There is one thing, I guess, that feels worth the saying:  I am sorry for the times I hurt you.

no doubt

 

Jack Stauffacher

Dear Letters,

I think I may have mentioned this book before; may have entreated you to read it already.  I know I gave one of you a copy of it.  I still hope you will take a look at the conceptually fascinating Alphabetical Diaries.

It's not just that it doesn't fit into our expectations of narrative; it defies all this continual page turning.  I was startled mightily by it, because when I am tearing up and painting over and gluing down the shreds and fragments of my own journals, I think that my silly words are a narrow little existence; I think that no one felt like this, no one one filled 100, 500, 1000 pages with their aching self doubt and their limitless self loathing.  But that would not be true, it seems, from reading Sheila Heti's Alphabetical Diaries.  

It felt so good to me to know that someone else wanted to try to contain themselves, to try to improve, to reform, to rehabilitate.

Here, for today, an ABC song about singers, When Smokey Sings.  The thing I like best about this song, is the little musical reference to ABC's really big song, Be Near Me.  Of, course, I also love that 'she threw back the ring.' 

cranberries

 

Dear Season of Sauce,

Your song for today!  Spread it on liberally!  More cranberries!

Oooh.

 

Dear What Can the Matter Be,

I have a book I feel you should read- only, it is devastating.  I don't use that word much to describe books and tales, but it is warranted, here.  I could tell you more, but you know, it might be nicer for you to be enchanted in your own way; plus-what, I am now very busy acquiring all the other Rachel Cusk books, so I don't really have the time to sit and chat!

PS  Okay, that might not be enough to convince you, alright; even after all these books, all this time, you still don't quite believe that I wouldn't send you someplace you shouldn't be; okay:  here is another description:  This book sees you.  Yes, you.  And you, and me.

PPS  Okay, you want a taste, okay: no, you won't get it from me!  You must go and forge your own beautiful, specific relationship with these 255 pages!  And anyway, why not just judge it by its beautiful cover?

PPPS  Okay, one more thing: it all happens in a day, just as our beloved Mrs Dalloway.  And if that isn't enough?!  The endorsement, the recognition, the cover, the similarity?  Well, you just cannot be satisfied today, I guess.

it plays a little melody

 

A pocket calculator.   Another pocket calculator.

Dear Grantor of Wishes,

What I want, O Enobled One, is a learned little pocket sized person to have with me at all times, to consult with on terms like "chiasmus."  A portable being who could unpack for me, the meaning, in the literary sense.  Not the foul block of text generated by our Robot Overlords that I must train my eyes to shut out when I see the degenerating* phrase:  AI Overview.  And not even, the kinder, much more useful sterile dictionary description, because I see, that chiasmus, chiasma, has a meaning used in genetics as well as in literature.  It means, Alice, in part, the little crossed section in the center of say the letter x.  Now, as a space**, an interstice, well, it's terribly evocative, but that still doesn't let me know what it might mean for a translator to talk about the formal preference of chiasmus found in Borges.  

And well, damnmit, Jim, I want to know!

Beyond this desire, for defining specificity, the contextual knowledge of a word, I want this little pocket being to be gentle, kind, but never condescending.  I want to it beckon me, with an excited little hand gesture, and say:  "Looky here!  It is this, the text refers to, to this concept, and that is only really the beginning, because the text might also share some of the context of its life in another field, and you must also want to know who uses a term like this, and when, and also, why.  So grab a cup of tea and I'll get a little bit of scrap paper and pencil and we can make a diagram of all the arms this word has, all the roads that lead in and out from it."

*  "At this use of 'degenerating,'" my little pocket person would say, "the writer suggests that the AI is both degenerating itself and the things it overviews, and also that it degenerates the user, or reader of the AI Overview, hence the writer's rush to avoid reading the Overview.  A concept like this invites us, as readers, to wonder if writing, if words, become less potent with overuse, over reading.  This could be a question, in the writers' mind, of efficacy.  Tangentially, we know, from other pieces this writer has given us, that the writer believes that one measure of a story's value is the number of times it is retold, referenced, or read."

** In a church, the transept's "crossing."  Certainly a liminal area.

slow fade

 

 A nice essay on effacement with a beautiful series of photographs.

Dear Contemporaries,

Ah, you must remember this!  They barely played this on the radio back when it came out, and I loved it!  I had also forgotten about it entirely.  It's all a big wheel, though, so let's enjoy it again and not fret about what is lost or missing:  it is your song for today!