bone work

Picked clean is how I'm feeling after April and pages of words, more than expected, my output seemingly to be at the low end of outputting in blogland, at least from what I've observed, but output nonetheless. Sometimes, I'll admit, I worry as others seem to outpace my pace, books streaming out, poems posted, chappies shipped as I peck away at the same old bones. So there it is, printed out, the pages -- a good amount of work to work with. And whether any of it is any good won't matter because I needed matter and matter is what I made morning after morning starting when it was dark and dawn not yet around though as the mornings went on there dawn was brighter than me as the words did some kind of magic. Now to look at the work, see the bones, play with the bones, the bones-o, like a fox on the town.

theme & variation

from The Geometry of Shells

The shells of mollusks derive much of their aesthetic

appeal from the regularity of their form. From the platelike

valves of scallops to the tightly wound needle-shaped shells 

of auger snails, shells are endless variations on a geometric

theme in which an expanding figure sweeps

out a curved or spirally coiled hollow edifice. 

Because shells are growing structures built by animals, 

an appreciation of how these variations

are brought must rest on an understanding 

of how shells grow. Once we know the rules, 

we can ask why certain shapes that are compatible 

with the rules are rarely or never encountered in nature.

Geerat J. Vermeij

My mind, being tired, is thinking about other ways of being.

may day

After Joan Mitchell's La Grande Valle XIV