additional space

 

Dear Y'all,

Yes, I am thinking of you!  I still have to tell you about two books I read, but you know how it is, things keep coming, clocks keep ticking.  I am reading another book now; and there is a part about space and time; and that made me think on space.  Well, let me be more precise.  In my reading, I tripped on a thought from my own mind; it happened when I was re-reading a sentence, trying to 'know' it, to feel it, to internalize it.  Of course I wasn't even sure what the sentence meant.  And there was a song on the radio, a song that sort of drones/expands/continues, like many songs I am fond of and insert a little pause in my mind's endless rattling.  So this little stumble, and wondering if a person I know would like this book, caused me to consider a thing a woman I know used to say when she was leading our monthly group centered on anti-racism.  She felt, and I am not here to dispute it, that our systemic, learned, invisible-to-us, racism needed to be addressed somatically; or to put it the other way, anti-racism needed to be embodied individually.  To facilitate this embodiment, we would begin with various meditative practices.  

All this preamble, all this context, just to tell you that what she said often during our meditative preparation was: open your consciousness a little wider, make a little more space for even this; this new grief, this new atrocity, this new information.  She said there was ample space for these feelings to fit in our crowded brains.

Now I have heard a lot of these kinds of instructions, and you have, too: imagine the liquid gold flowing and filling yourself as a vessel, breathe in the positive and exhale the negative, let thoughts float on by as if clouds.  Not much of it has been worth remembering and certainly not worth repeating, but this one, an invocation to make more room for things, make space for difficult thoughts and feelings, this seemed very useful to me.  I often feel very small when I am overloaded, over extended, and grasping, and like I need to cram things, or get rid of things, or bar any further things from entering and this phrase suggested that I just needed to notice that there was plenty of space for everything.  Rooms and rooms, acres and miles of space.

PS  Have another version; let me know which you prefer; write to me and leave your note in the usual place; the oak bole by the dry riverbed.

seasonal glums

 

Frosty's traumatic impermanent permadeath*

Dear Ones,

Does the end of the year bring a glumming?  A heightened awareness of temporal fragility?  For me, it does; in spades.  For one thing, I am always sorry to see a year go by, even if it was a dud of a year;  I just do not like feeling that there is less and less of anything, especially time.  By time I don't mean time, though; I mean chocolate chip cookies, walks at the beach, floats on the river, cups of coffee in the morning.  I mean that I am sad when I think of how few car rides might be left; how few pies are left to make.  Moon rises.  Knitted sweaters.  French films.

Running along parallel to this discomfiting remainder, are the repetitive 'traditions' of the holidays.  The sticky sameness of our un-adaptive and drear 'traditions.'  I think, and I look forward to your thoughts on this, that our holiday celebrations are closer to a form of mass hypnotic psychosis than an expression of kind togetherness.  

Between these two ominous ghosts, Loss and Ennui (not to mention Ennui's twin, Excess), what, in these last weeks, could be salvaged or savored?  Let's mull that over with spices and orange rind, while we listen to the song for today.

*Yes, I do think watching children's cartoons like Frosty without any contextualization by a qualified adult could have a lot to do with the way I feel about this 'joyous' season!  And, in the spirit of the ghost of Excess, here's another.

where it's at

 

Minhwa (Korean Folk Painting)

Dear Hours and Days,

It has been a long time, 5 years, I think anyway, for my medicine to work.  Ah, maybe it has been many more years than even that?  The mind is very hard to change.  I don't mean the part of your mind that chooses which ice cream to get- I mean the part that seems to be hewn of bone, immoveable, unplastic.  Yes, science tells us the brain is all kinds of mutable, but, I am speaking of the learned things, the mind that is your conscience.  The mind that tells you when it thinks you are good and when it thinks you are bad and the mind that spends two hours analyzing if you asked her about the funeral gently enough or if you should have said nothing.  That mind, the authority part of your mind.  Ah, it's so rambling and vague, isn't it?  

What I mean, I think, is that I set about looking for a different foundation, a different sort of tool for coping-  you might call it acceptance, you might call it anything you like, actually.  But it felt like an open wound, irritated constantly, throbbing at night, and unresponsive to salves or balms.  It isn't, no it isn't gone, it is less.  Noticeably less.  Why?  It's hard to say, but I think it is because of wonder.  I have spent a good amount of time working to wonder.  To encourage wonder.  I don't mean answers, I mean questions.

Questions like these:

Why do I grind my teeth when they say that?  Where does my idea of 'right' come from?  What do I think my duty is?  Who told me it was my duty?  Who told me to be quiet?  Who told me to be nice?  Who told me to smooth things flat?  Why do I jump in there to try to make it less awkward?

A leopard can, I think, change its spots, a little anyway.

my year with the women

We Are All Alike, Eleanor Lowden.

Dear Books,

It's been about a year now, that I have been keeping track of the books I have read; in conjunction with a commitment to reading women authors.  I also include non-white writers (any gender), and trans or non-binary authors, but my favorites are from women like me*, writing about what it feels like to inhabit their bodies.

It isn't a total ban, either, I read some white men now and then; and, as I go along filling my head with predominately women's voices, or perhaps I should say: non male writers? I notice, I notice it hard, when I read one of these menwrit books that is trying to build a great castle, an empire, with words- all about their sex organs and oozing what have yous.  I know you think I am exaggerating, but try it- try 5 books in a row by women, and then pick up one of these men and see if you ken what I am getting at.

It's not that all the women (plus) are the same style/type of writing, and it isn't that I could pick them out in a blind taste test, it's something kind of small and ineffable.  Many women write in ways that have a very Male Voice, and some men write in a genderless way, too.  If I had to distill it all to one single difference, it might be a question mark.  The lack of definiteness, not authority or confidence, but a kind of inherent acknowledgement that the view is multiple, and this line, this sentence, can only be a snapshot.  Or, maybe the question mark is the sense of searching.  One thing, though, even if I cannot define it, it is there.

It's also not that I don't love, love a word castle, built out of strange and wonderous similes and inhabited by lonely princes of darkness and light.  No, I love that kind of thing, I really do.  I think what I am trying to tell you, is that I was surprised to find a such a definite feeling of difference.  

For the counters and statisticians, it has been 64 books by female and female-identifying writers, and 14 by men in 49 weeks- and that makes 88, and well, if I had counted sooner I'd have seen what a silly thing it was to start this calendar year off with a plan to try to read 50 books!  Oh, and I am not done with the women, not at all!  Check out this list of writers on my shelf still to be read:

Clarice Lispector

Han King

Lillian Hellman

Jenny Ditski

Dianna Athill

Maeve Brennan

Alice Munro

Lillian Faderman

Sara Ahmed

Eudora Welty

Donna Haraway

Eileen Chang

Jen Hatmaker

Samantha Harvey

Kathleen Hanna

Kate Zambreno

Ágota Kristóf

Saidiya Hartman

Tove Ditlevsen

Lydia Lunch

Kate Manne  

Barbara Comyns

Cristina Campo

Willa Cather

Janet Frame

Isabel Allende

Fleur Jaeggy

Inger Christensen

Esther Kinsky

Ellen Meloy

Eileen Chang

Agnes Smedley

Cookie Mueller

Claire Messud

Susana Kayson

Shirley Jackson

Margaret Drabble

Jean Rhys

Angela Carter

Anaïs Nin

If you are still wondering why anyone would read like this, well, let me put it this way:  These are my sisters, and they have millions of pages of wisdom to give me!  Who the hell am I to refuse such a gift?  

*  Like me, in this case, means a woman who writes.  It's also extra dear to my heart and enlivening when the women authors are within ten years or so of my age.

PS  If you want to hear a few favorites, well; The Price of Salt, The Quest for Christa T., What Kingdom, Astragal, To Throw Away Unopened, The Last Samurai, The Lady with the Little Fox Fur, The Old Child, All Passion Spent, Checkout 19, The Lover, Small Things Like These, and here is one old dead white guy for you:  A Room with a View.

delayed gratification

 

Tove Jansson*

Dear Y'all,

I have two things, from beloved author Tove Jansson for you.  I will send you the next one soon.  I want to spread out the loveliness, to make it last.

Making it last is why- when I first started reading her books, the three volume edition of Moomin comics that the library acquired 15 years ago or so, and then the wonderful Moomin books, and then, then the amazing books for whatever an "adult" is-  I did not rush to finish all her books in 1 or 2 years.  I was very sad to have read the last (as in, the only one I hadn't read yet) Moomintroll book, so I have to take care not to read what is left too quickly!  

I am not sure exactly how many are left to me now; I have for certain, two on my shelf, and one that I know of but do not have.  I guess, if there are say 5 more, and I live another 25 years I should read one every five years?  Ah, but even as I write that to you, I see the flaw: what about the unexpected early death!??  What about missing out entirely on the few that are left??  Well, this is the rush and roar of our gambling, gamboling lives, isn't it?  Here today and 5 books unread tomorrow!  Still, I don't want to be one of these manic over achievers, so, maybe I will read just the two books I have before the end of the year.

But, I digress:  Here is Tove Jansson from Sun City, & yes, you should run (but be careful of that bus when you cross the street!) to your library or bookshop so you can read the whole delicious thing.

There has to be time to think, thought Mrs. Morris, an opportunity to reflect.  The time that writing requires, a mute communication, would leave space for deliberation.  Almost everything we say is marked by haste and thoughtlessness, habit, fear, and the need to impress one another.  So much needless triviality, exaggeration, and repetition, so many terrible misunderstandings.

PS  

Do you suppose that I am only pacing myself like this because I want to feel superior in my emotionally intelligent plan for delayed gratification?  C'est possible.

*  I don't need to tell you that you want (desire deeply) to read a book by a woman that looks like this!

Lynx Boa (Self Portrait), 1974, Tove Jansson.

(See also, related:  Dodo: 4/28/2025)

corazones quebrados

 

Dear Listening,

Well.  We find ourselves in such a pickle these days.  I don't really know where to start or how to address this mess we are in, so I guess I won't speak of it just now.  Today is the anniversary of the first Dodo post; 12 years ago.  Time flies, but not really.  It goes forward and back and stays still too, sometimes.

I started writing the Dodo to memorialize all these things that were disappearing: the empty lot, the VHS player, the corded telephone, the roller rink; but right away, I couldn't do it; I couldn't only send you stories of my sadness and loss.  It felt cruel; people want to look forward, to look to something that hasn't been despoiled yet.  Plus-what, I don't think of every loss every minute of everyday.  Double plus-what, I am not sure that sadness isn't a kind of patina that we could learn to enjoy.  Nostalgia might be one; we seem to enjoy that kind of sadness so much it isn't even funny.  I didn't want to just give you nostalgia either.  I wanted to give you that one cream biscuit recipe, only now I usually make *these biscuits (which are NOT fast like the cream biscuits are!).

In any case, happy anniversary to you, too, if you read these pages- because if you don't, it's kind of silly for me to be here, whistling in the dark, but I will be here anyway.  Making art is like that; you just make it, even if you can't find anyone to show it to.

PS  Your song for today.

* Flaky-ass Biscuits adapted from Jessica Koslow's Everything I Want to Eat.

4 cups AP flour

2 Tbs. sugar

1 3/4 tsp. baking powder

3/4 tsp. baking soda

1 1/2 tsp. salt

Put all this into your mixer- mix it.

Add:

250 grams (1 cup plus 2 Tbs.) frozen unsalted butter that has been patiently cut into cubes.

Mix it for maybe 30 seconds.  Then add:

1 1/4 cups buttermilk

while the machine is running- don't mix it too long!  What does that mean?  You know it if you know it, and if you don't, make biscuits more often, or watch some cooking shows. 

Put the dough out onto a flat surface; shape, roll, or pat it into a rectangle about 3/4 of an inch thick.  Spread:

4 Tbs. room temperature unsalted butter

over two-thirds of the patted out dough.  Now fold the unbuttered third over the buttered third, and then fold the last third over that.  Like you would fold a letter.  

Put it in the fridge, and in a half hour, roll it out, and give it what the pastry chefs call a 'turn.'  Repeat this two more times; then leave it in the fridge for an hour.  Now, roll it out and cut it into biscuit about 3/4 inch a thick.  I just cut them into squares, but you can cut circles with a cutter if you like.  To be even more exacting, to exercise even more patience in the kitchen, you can brush the tops with buttermilk and sprinkle flaky sea salt on top of them before you bake them at 400 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes.  

Note:  One December, I gave this book to several pals, for Old White Man's Mas.  It was received as though it were a Rubik's cube: it might be fun, but it is too hard.  I still say, it is an amazing cookbook; I think my mistake was in my estimation of people's patience.  If you, dear reader, are not looking for ease, if you like hard things; women like Violette LeDuc and Emily Wells, then you should get this book!

out on the wily, windy moors

 

Ellsworth Kelly.

Ellsworth Kelly.

Dear Moving Air,

What is time?  A river?  An arrow?  A goon?  A construct, a treasure, a collapse?  An ordering principle?  It feels like wind.  Here is your song for today.

Old Year's Day.

 

 Selene Santucci.

Dear Time,

What a drag you can be, with your damn thresholds between the day and the night, the month, the year.  I am tired of you, even as I try to mark and honor you.  Well, what have you done for me, eh?  Yes, let's not and say we did, this New Year's.  There's not enough champagne in the world to make it a party anyway.

I think, what I will say, in truth, and with a minimum of resentment, is so long, it's been good to know you.

I learned everything I know about saying The Long Goodbye from singers and songwriters.  You can learn it too, in easy, online lessons.  Here are your course materials for Goodbye 101.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

Ten.

Eleven.

Twelve.

think about direction

 

Dear World,

It's time, I think, the time that I said would come, when the string of pearls first broke.  The time I said would be looked back on, would be seen from a far distance forwards, but looking back.  (Stand in the place where you are).  

What is here, now?  I feel it, the presence of the huge impact of the Pandemic, but, I look around, standing in the place where I live, and I see that we don't talk about it.  (We have turned away?)  The emptiness, the slowness, the worry and the fear, the honesty.  I don't think they have exactly gone away.  I think they may be there, here, like huge thundercloud ghosts, ready, (raw, open, bleeding) to break open on some little party, some small hope.

I proceed now, cautiously.  Not only because of fear, that's the thing I wanted to tell you:  It's also because I liked the pure sharp edges of those days.  The rarefied air of loss and longing was like the thin atmosphere of a high peak- like, a smallness within a bigness, like an exposure to the elements and suffering and hope, too, that was so immediate.  It was just so much 'less' of everything.  

I believe that is why I have wanted to empty my living spaces; cupboards, drawers, closets, boxes, chests.  I want some empty space made for that high-pitched purity of purpose.  Very little of "You Should" crossed my mind then.  It was a vacation away from You Should, I think, because You Couldn't and maybe that is what I miss.

Anhedonia.

 

Dear Others,

I fell into a space, a largeish one, filled with unimaginable sadness.  I thought I might have read it in the calligraphy of clouds, which is very readable this time of year, even in the shorter daylight, or maybe because of it.  It holds, this time, for sure, the coming gloom, the chill, the end of at least the year, and maybe many other things that we daren't consider.  But, as I said, the clouds might give us the message even while we bustle around trying to avoid it.

Maybe sadness isn't the word, isn't the place.  Maybe the place is pathos.  Or my favorite, abject melancholia.  To be sure, I was reading about a case of the AMs.  An author that is now dead and gone.  

Now another thing I read or heard, Laurie Anderson saying that we must not be sad, only feel sad.  It was a distinction I hadn't kenned before, and sometimes I still don't.  She said, I think, that it was a tenet of Buddhism.  Or perhaps I imagined that she said it and I read it in the clouds?

I try to maintain these two separately; the feeling and the being, I really do, but the gaping hugeness of what I think must be everyone's sadness, is sometimes unavoidable. If you are like, or like I have been, you will micro analyze your blue snit, your dark brow, until you fear actual madness.  What we are supposed to do, say the sages, is to make space even for this, this yawning horror, to feel it, not to scrutinize it silly.  

Ah but, you still may try to; you are clever, you are smart, you will outfox this feeling.  You might, perhaps, suffer from anhedonia; a word I am obsessed with since I read it a few years ago.  Anhedonia, anhedonia, my country 'tis of thee!  If you Google it, chances are you will see that you have it too.  

But again, you are smart; you know, because of your monkey cleverness, that people don't really respond to your work, to that which is your messy self, they just like the outward you; and of course they do, because you are endlessly seeing to their comfort, feeling for them, telling them what you'd like to hear:  you are fine, you are well, you are acceptable by every metric!  You are good.

Sticky wickets all around.  Try out this concept:  Beautiful Mess Effect.

It's a balm, for certain, but, it doesn't take away the cavern of sorrows.  It's like a missing limb, you learn to live with, next door to, around, the cavern, I guess.  Because of our really serious case of anhedonia.  Because of the calligraphy of the clouds.  Because of the light.  Because of time.

a steady hand

 

17th Century Palm Reading Diagram

Dear Sympathetic,

And nerves of steel.  It is a very delicate operation, sifting through the objects of the past.  You need a steady hand and nerves of steel to pull the tiny needles from the endless hay.

I examined carefully several disintegrating plastic bags full of my old figure drawings.  They were good.  The weight was where it was heavy, the line was where it was light, the shadow was where the energy was, the gesture matched the movement.  They were good.  There were hundreds.  They were as good as anything.  Let me try to explain; I would think they were good if someone else had made them, if I saw them in a museum in Europe I would think they were good,  I would say:  I saw this great show of drawings at the Pompidou.  I was in Venice, and the biennale had this amazing exhibit of figure drawings.  

But.

But, let's remember that I made them, and so I am not really qualified to say whether they are good or bad.  Well, actually, no one will object if I say they are bad, but the point still stands.  We cannot really feel sure of the quality or merit of what we have done.  There are better ones, yes; and there are worse ones.  So, where are we?  Good or Bad?  I think we need a new way to end the sentence, the project.  It cannot be money or validation from the Institution, so what could it be, this thing that confers satisfaction?

Also, let's not forget the Famous Artist Instructor* asked to have some of my drawings, because they were that good. I gave them, of course, and within two years I had forgotten I had even been complimented in this way.  So, it doesn't last, that's sure.  It doesn't carry you like a raft over the rough seas.  The other thing I see, now, is that I was A Good Student.  Which means, as you already know, that I followed directions accurately and carefully.  Which, well, may not be anything to celebrate, either.  It might be Bad, even.  But if it were Good, that would not be that great either.

Does this kind of circular stuff make your head hurt?  Or does it let you see that yes, the circle just repeats, and maybe you don't want that anymore, either?

* The thing to note here, is that the Famous Artist Instructor was selling their work, in several high profile galleries, and also, working a full time teaching gig.  This was the late '80s, early '90s, so it should have been the (late and ending) good old days for making a living as an artist, but they were also pulling a 9 to 5 teaching, which suggests that even Famous Artist is not as lucrative as we might all have hoped.

PS  Do, please, take a peek at the Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things.

Marking Time.

Image courtesy of the Museum at Eldridge Street.

Dear Calendar,

You are chock full of National Days (case in point: National Create a Vacuum Day), and I cannot seem to manage to celebrate even a few of these, so I am setting my sights low, on just one per year, and National Egg Cream Day is today!  

If you have never had one, well, you can go out and find one, or you can make your own.  Here is a website devoted to egg creams to set you off enjoying, celebrating, and drinking egg creams on their big National day!

We used to drink them outdoors, at a cafe called Swilly's, in the sun, with Nanaimo Bars, near the train tracks, when the walls of the cafe were covered in a friend's beautiful paintings.  It was a feast of sight, sound, and taste.

I Can't Tell You: an anti-note.

                                       

Pettakare Cave

Dear Contemporary Parlance,

I can't tell you how much I wanted to reach out to you during this challenging time of being together alone.  It's just that I am so busy with diving deeper into self-care, that I haven't found the time.  There used to be time, but, I think it wasn't really there.  It was just crammed into smaller instants, because it was an all you can eat buffet of time.  Now that I have all this time, I am using it much differently.  I don't even recognize it as the same substance, actually.  And I really don't have time now, to observe your normal and play my pantomime role in it.  So, don't come around here for your precious 'normal,' because it's not here, it went away, and I don't miss it even a tiny bit.  Also, if you come over for a cup of 'new normal,' don't bother to knock, because I will be self-isolating for your protection.

 Not, and please never do, signed "warmly."  It sounds as if you are just starting to get mad, just at the outer edge of outrage that you should have started feeling years ago.  Instead, let me sign, 

hotly,

yours,

for now.

PS  

Your song for today.

belatedly

 

Dear Listener, Reader, Viewer, and Friend,

I forgot, again, this year, to note on February 10, the anniversary of our little meetings here.  It's been going on for 9 years.  Ain't it funny, how the time slips away? 

Encore. 

Another encore.

Encore again.

More posts about poems and phones.

 

Dear Telephoned,

I have been thinking of you, and station wagons, Mr. Pibb soda, drive through hamburger joints, and the radio.  I wonder what these images and memories mean?  They might mean I am old, and they might mean I am nostalgic.  They might also mean that time telescopes in and out every minute of every day.

Here is a poem:

[Sonnet] You jerk you didn't call me up

BY BERNADETTE MAYER

You jerk you didn't call me up

I haven't seen you in so long

You probably have a fucking tan

& besides that instead of making love tonight

You're drinking your parents to the airport

I'm through with you bourgeois boys

All you ever do is go back to ancestral comforts

Only money can get—even Catullus was rich but

Nowadays you guys settle for a couch

By a soporific color cable t.v. set

Instead of any arc of love, no wonder

The G.I. Joe team blows it every other time

Wake up! It's the middle of the night

You can either make love or die at the hands of the Cobra Commander

_________________

To make love, turn to page 121.

To die, turn to page 172.

"[Sonnet] You jerk you didn't call me up" by Bernadette Mayer, from A Bernadette Mayer Reader. Copyright © 1968 by Bernadette Mayer. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

And here is a song that goes with it.

And here is another.

That's all!

Why & How

 

Dear Readers,

Do you know why I am here?  Did I ever tell you why I write to you?  It might be a good time to remind you, even if I did tell you before.  I write here because of time.  I saw so many things evaporating; things like bowling alleys, telephones with cords, film cameras, all kinds of stuff that maybe isn't very meaningful actually, but it seemed like a lot of good stuff was going the way of the dodo, so I thought I'd make a little list, a little collection, and give it to you, here.  But, I didn't really do that.  I started on it, and sometimes it seeps in, but I thought it was kind of sorrowful to just send you lament after lament.  So that was what I planned to do here, but that isn't what I do, and this leaves my purpose here intentionally ambiguous.  How about you?  Why do you come by?

fast fwd.

Dear Concerned,

I don't actually think they were simpler times; I think we just forgot all the myriad complications.  Once in a while, I get a glimpse of it, out of the corner of my eye; a kind of 'true memory' and it is pretty awful: there is doubt in abundance, and confusion; worry & sorrow are there too.

I am suggesting a kind of fast forward, no, not to the end of the pandemic, I mean something more utilitarian than that even:  I mean, what does it feel like to tell about now in a year or a week?  Let me try:

Everyday, with regularity, I searched for good news.  All I ever found were more reasons to worry.  From the people I knew, I received comfort of all kinds- I tried to send it in return.  I wrote, I called, I sent messages and packages.  I made things to give.  Making masks depressed me, not because I didn't want to wear one, but because it felt like such a tiny little blow against the enormity of the danger.  I did not like the virtual ways we used to connect.  Looking at myself felt silly and it sapped all my confidence and energy.  It turned me into a self-conscious 12 year old, which is something I did not want to be again.  The phrases and language that blossomed annoyed me- 'at the end of the day,' 'pivoting to the new reality,' 'the new normal.'  Why wouldn't people use a language of honesty, of candor?  Why did they hide behind these rubbishy jingles?  I studied daily the numbers and data- it was like a kind of ritual, a kind of penance and a way to bear witness.  People actually took to the streets, but things seemed mired in absolute endless repetition.  Everything fell apart, but it was all just barely taped together anyway.  What was hardest, was trying not to inflict suffering on others.  This is always so, but it seemed even harder than usual: why the hell were we even trying to work 'online?'  None of this make-work mattered much.  The real scare lay in what we were going to do with ourselves if nothing was required of us- it was alternately scintillating and frightening.  There was no reason to do much of anything.  I discovered that I communicate with words, but that isn't even half of the information in a conversation.  The flattening of interactions revealed how our culture and society obscures the elemental levels on which we actually function:  smell, small tells of movement, infinite and invisible physical cues.

And that, is some of what I will have learned, later, in the future.  Back in the olden times.

barstool

Dear Others,

I know you are out there, on a Saturday, trying to practice.  It's glacially slow, snails overtake me in my progress, I get nearly no where, and worse, I know the time when I could have improved is long gone.  I also suspect it isn't doing my knees any favors.  There is a barstool with a margarita or a beer on the counter that I could be sitting at, instead of facing my incremental improvements.

I know you could be doing stuff that needs doing, too, I mean, say, if you didn't just go and enjoy that drink at the bar.  You could be doing the taxes, or mopping the floor.  Yep, you could do a lot with this time.

Maybe though, you too are trying to do the Bunny Hop.  I am, and I think, just maybe, possibly, I have got it!  After nearly 12 years of skating and who knows how many tries.  It's a kind of a gallop step, where you jump off of one skate onto the toe stop of the other.  Sounds very simple, doesn't it? 
If you are working at it, study this and this instructional video as well.

The greening has begun.

Dear December,

It's you and me baby, that makes the world go around.  Here is your song for today.  It's Al Green, on account of the fact that now the ground, after just a few lovely, soggy days, has gone All Green.  So the Fall, which is still floating and swirling gorgeous yellow and russet leaves, is on the way out, and the few minutes of the actual winter look of the place, the silver, faded shafts, and dark, leafless branches, has gone already.  It's a narrow season, the one I speak of, and delicately liminal.






PS  A few more versions of the same song, because it is a fine song.  Etta, UB40, Marcia Griffiths. Griffiths.

20.

Dear Questioning, Quitting, and Beginning,

Submitted for your approval: James Benning's film Twenty Cigarettes.

It might be genius, or maybe it is just boring.  It is definitely beautiful, and certainly uncomfortable in the old familiar performance art way, although I love the distance the camera imposes between me and these people.  There's a bit of the *sublime in it, the void, the terrible immensity of us.

I guess what it could be is just a document, or a collection like any other: bottlecaps or Fiestaware or first editions.  I don't think it can be watched in it's entirety, except as a kind of endurance test, like a triathlon.  I love the uncomfortableness of the persons being filmed, and how that reflects onto viewers; like an enchanted mirror.  I also love the way my mind won't stop supplying a narrative in the vacuum of one:  Where is this person?  What are they feeling?  What do they do when they aren't in front of this camera?










* The sublime in art is a delightful concept that we spent many months discussing in graduate school, which is a place made for such pastimes, because no one there has any soil to till or livestock to feed.   I adored it, of course, and you would have too, but for a five second description of what it refers to, see this link.