space

It seems that creativity is adaptive, like anything else. When a space becomes available, work emerges to fill it. The genius, the emergence of a truly remarkable and memorable work, happens when the thing is perfectly suited to its context and is also surprising. And when something works, it strikes us as not just being clever — a good adaptation — but as strongly and emotionally resonant. When the right thing is in the right place we are moved.

What seems obvious by now is that emotion, passion and personal expression can be poured into whatever form or vessel becomes available. And that form and those structures are determined primarily by the available venues — be they a club or an arena in music, a blog entry, a forest, or a white gallery wall.

Perhaps I've been lost in the woods of quietude, to appropriate Silliman's label and use it for my own purpose, IE as terminology to describe lack of blog posting, actually, writing of any sort for more than a month, this not being about being so-called blocked but about not having the words, no, having the words but not having the space or form to put all the words into just now, but the form being formulated in the imagination, mine that is, the outer life taking precedence over the inner but the inner making its shape visible for filling via dreams, via reading (the Icelandic Sagas being voyaged through), via running, via teaching.

this not

sorry about the partial screen-can't figure out how to make it fit in blogger-damn it.

missing this

cut ups

Before photo shop, there was photo
collage. And today I dallied at
the Metropolitan Museum to view
a whimsical little exhibition:
Playing with Pictures: The Art
of Victorian Photocollege.

And my mind returned. It's been missing
since the opening of my exhibition a few weeks
ago. A drift, a spin, out to sea or something.
So it was good to pour over the delicate cut ups.
And then on to Surface Tension -- another small
exhibit of contemporary photographs. There were
things to think about, ideas and images. That
was good. Then a walk in Central Park -- a sunny
afternoon before more snow. Time with S and W.
W heads off to basic training soon, then OCS. Have
I mentioned this? No. Not much personal stuff gets
discussed here. I don't really know how to write
about this yet anyway. And here-well, maybe or
maybe not. Is here a room for writing about big
stuff -- I mean for me? For others, yes indeed.
I'm the reticent type. Always have been. Lots
boiling under the surface, like volcanoes in the ocean.
It's why I like Elizabeth Bishop, who was never just
writing about a moose or a stove.


Collage
By Alice Notley

Sometimes just to make something
Pretty prettier than
What's around in the mind to
Dominate
So there's first the sequin red or other
Remembering favorite
Paper dolls a dress strapless
Sheath of blue sequins
At bottom a pink tulle flounce
Of course I later hated that stuff
I mean I
Like the one sparkle next to a piece of
Torn gold foil
This collage will be a ragged experience
I've never found beauty harmonious
It tears at our lack of harmony
You you are the wound
says anyone to anyone
This infantile mob this molesting song of yours
Your individual-getting-rocks-off feeling
But in the dime store's beauty that's where and there's
Meanly a lace of no doctrine or power to tie
Around the neck or wrist or thigh
Well of course not I'm lonely tie it for who
Tie it across the sky and its expansive provincialism
Telling us the length of our eternities
Glue it to the sky of the paper
And I was narciss recess young
Poignant enough to be something that
Another element in the collage an
Arrowed green line on chewing gum wrapper
Youth was knowing before becoming then being
Interestingly hurt by becoming
So did girl know as much then when less bent as now
Being more bent and knowing
But she didn't know what I know
She's beauty and I I don't know what am I
Add something else torn but black cloth soft
With hard and fake a yellow "topaz" the
Most beautiful thing I've ever seen
Because the best is always now and some paint my
Old gold ink
And diamondlike pieces of shattered car window
The really ruined world

what's in a name

the pamela satellite : for Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics

Pamela

from urban dictionary: define then use in a sentence

The pimpest of the pimp. Everyone wants to be

a Pamela. Can conquer anything. Wakes up and pisses

excellence. Indulges and rules in all gangstativities.

You never meet anything above a Pamela

because it doesn't exist.

Man: Pamela you are so amazing.

Pamela: I know, i don't know why, it just keeps happening.

One hot babe=] that talks to phillip on aim

Is usually the craziest of the bunch. quite often has a variety

of different laughs and can perform them all on demand.

everybody loves pamela, the type of person you always want

to protect. she is a flamboyant driver. loves make up, clothes

and accessories.

oh pamela's coming. I can't see her but i can hear her.

Sometimes shy but yet the LOUDEST when she walks

into a room...you know what i mean. not perfect but still

is confident and so beautiful...she's a sly cat with her words

knows what to say, when to say it and how to say it.

Never washes her fruit before eating it.

ekphrasis at lift trucks project

Maybe it was the moon or the bitter cold or January

or the lack of sea air I don't know

but last night was amazing.

The art and the text and the typography and the words

out loud and the band and the crowd.

You can get a sense of how the ekphrastic conversation

morphed into a visual dialogue in the photo above.

Now I'm making soup.

true that

Time is matter here

By Jean Valentine

Time is matter here
The freight train
I saw in the morning
still in the evening
inching across the flatlands
word after slow word
too many to count

And you are matter—
your eyes, your long legs,
slow breath sometimes catching
in your sleep, your head
resting against the bus window,
tired horse,
tired rider

winter

Henri Michaux, Narration, 1927. automatic drawing.

My Life

after Henri Michaux

Joe Wenderoth

Somehow it got into my room.
I found it, and it was, naturally, trapped.
It was nothing more than a frightened animal.
Since then I raised it up.
I kept it for myself, kept it in my room,
kept it for its own good.
I named the animal, My Life.
I found food for it and fed it with my bare hands.
I let it into my bed, let it breathe in my sleep.
And the animal, in my love, my constant care,
grew up to be strong, and capable of many clever tricks.
One day, quite recently,
I was running my hand over the animal's side
and I came to understand
that it could very easily kill me.
I realized, further, that it would kill me.
This is why it exists, why I raised it.
Since then I have not known what to do.
I stopped feeding it,
only to find that its growth
has nothing to do with food.
I stopped cleaning it
and found that it cleans itself.
I stopped singing it to sleep
and found that it falls asleep faster without my song.
I don't know what to do.
I no longer make My Life do tricks.
I leave the animal alone
and, for now, it leaves me alone, too.
I have nothing to say, nothing to do.
Between My Life and me,
a silence is coming.
Together, we will not get through this.

upcoming

I've been having a great time

curating the writing for this upcoming

exhibition, which opens at the end

of the month. There will be a reading too.

And the writings will be rendered

so they can hang next to/around

the art works. If you're in New York

check it out.

here

from The Story of My Typewriter

By Paul Auster

We have been together for more than a quarter of a century now.

Everywhere I have gone, the typewriter has gone with me. We

have lived in Manhattan, in upstate New York, and in Brooklyn.

We have traveled together to California and to Maine, to Minnesota

and to Massachusetts, to Vermont and to France. In that time, I have

written with hundreds of pencils and pens. I have owned several cars,

several refrigerators, and have occupied several apartments and houses.

I have worn out dozens of pairs of shoes, have given up on scores of

sweaters and jackets, have lost or abandoned watches, alarm clocks,

and umbrellas. Everything breaks, everything wears out, everything

loses its purpose in the end, but the typewriter is still with me.

It is the only object I own today that I owned twenty-six years ago.

In another few months, it will have been with me for exactly

half my life.