Hands\Thinking

I think, if I think hard enough, you think of me too.

Then I need to find things to do with my hands.

A (Perfect?) Day

The sun through the window is a different shade of bright in the winter; it seems to absorb the white of the snow. I leave two shutters open so that it can filter through. My window looks out onto the Huron River, frozen and still, except for the train at two a.m. and the geese sometimes, afternoons.

It's darker in the mornings here, the sun reaches this longitude about an hour after New York City - not that New Yorkers are awake when the sun rises, though. I rise at six-thirty.

There may not be reason, but there is power in motion. It is an impulse, an obsession, and an obligation. It is difficult for me to write about the body, just as it is difficult for me to incorporate writing into the body, the movement. One cannot yet speak to the other. Or through it?

Please don't ask me about the writing. Please don't ask me about the running. I don't know how well I can do either.

Walking to a reading between a & b:

Mon. 7 pm, E. 10th St. between Ave. 1 and a:

Tai Chi in the Villages
Yang Style
Must be willing to yield
to play
Only the serious must apply
If you are serious you can play
Inhalation becomes substantial
Exhalation becomes insubstantial

Beautiful Distractions

Recently have read, Reading, Re-reading, or Reading in the very near future:

A Seahorse Year, Stacy D'Erasmo
Man in the Middle, John Amaechi
The Plays of Anton Chekhov
ABC of Reading, Ezra Pound
Metamorphosis, Ovid (hopefully a 16th or 17th Century translation)
The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot
Time and Materials, Robert Hass
Elders and Betters, I. Compton-Burnett
The Selected Poems of Osip Mandlestam
Stardust, Frank Bidart
The Lyrics, Fanny Howe
In the Surgical Theatre, Dana Levin
Dark Back of Time, Javier Marías (and a huge thank you to M. for this! I can't wait to read it...)
...

You, in sentences. Almost.

Wanting. Like the escape of a moment or the near-brush of a body.

Bodies ungraspable.
Temporality and spacial distances creating a whole. Full gap of space, a river canyon.

You know I exist, just not how. This is what makes words empty, lacking body.

Opening books to random pages and finding

"Music rots when it gets too far from the dance. Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music." - Ezra Pound

The Day After

To not step on the toes of others. To not be enough.

And in not being enough, to know. But who is to say what is not enough? Or to know?

To give thanks. For you, and for others (even in not knowing what it is to be thankful in them).

Spending hours preparing poems. My voice, a slight whisper. Slit in the face. Somewhere a woman speaks, or speaks through objects; touches the keys of an instrument, touches the handle of a weight. Layers and mass of meaning. Haunted by specters of words and their uses.

::

Reading a gathering of matter a matter of gathering by Dawn Lundy Martin.
Wondering at the genre of fantasy and hoping for enchantment. (this has nothing whatsoever to do with the aforementioned book of poetry).

"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares to other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours directly and clearly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep that channel open.

No artist is pleased...there is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others" -Martha Graham to Agnes DeMille