On Transience

Building Happiness

Having finished de Botton's small book, The Architecture of Happiness, I want to capture some of the ideas, the words he covers in his ruminations on how to design buildings, houses, and other spaces that engender feelings of joy or at least comfort. In a bit of synchronicity re a thread that seems to have asserted itself from the start of this blog, I'll open with a quote from the end of the book: "To design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light or turning on a tap."

How mindless we are about such gestures. That indeed is the gist of the book. That we must pay attention to, think about and recognize the importance of place, be it work or home. Which seems like a rather obvious notion, certainly one that's already been taken up by commercial enterprises like Pottery Barn and Bed, Bath & Beyond (so clever the name -- beyond into what?). De Botton tries to investigate the premise more deeply by summarizing architecture's history, especially its aesthetic trends. These were the parts of the book that captured me. He briefly describes movements that have celebrated beauty as occuring in ornately designed buildings filled with busy details versus more recent trends toward simplicity and spareness of line and form.

This is of course occuring in the arts in general, poetry included. The stand-off now between poetry that is filled with narrative and description versus poetry that is about the fragmentation of language fills me with questions as I work with words. I like both. Each ideal of beauty serves me in different ways.

Perhaps this is the confusion of our time and it's best to ricochet between poles, slowing for awhile at various points along the way. Perhaps the image of these being poles at opposite ends of a spectrum is not so useful -- IE abstract VS realistic. The place in between may just be the place of my time, like finding happiness in not-knowing.

On Not Knowing

FEMA Trailers
Pensacola, FLA

Anne Carson quoted in a recent interview in The Guardian, "Not knowing what one is doing is no prohibition on doing it. We all grope ahead."

Which is a bit how I approach the work of this blog project. I'm not exactly sure what to make of this and although I listed some things to do here, there's a part of me that wants this to be spontaneous or at least a tad open to the whims of a day. Here on the first day of the new year.

On that note, perhaps it's a good time to highlight some books I'm reading and podcasts I'm listening to -- a rather schizoid accumulation: The Architecture of Happiness on how we react to the spaces we inhabit, how the buildings and other structures in which we spend our time move us; What is the What, Dave Eggars' latest on the Lost Boys of the Sudan. He retells one story in that young man's voice. Very moving, another tale of children ruined by grown-ups. All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward Jones, his short story collection, really great writing in here. A soon-to-be-published poetry collection that I'll read again (poetry does indeed need to be read several times at least to take in the full force of the work). Let's see for pod casts, Bookworm's Michael Silverblatt interviewing Jorie Graham and John Yau and Italo Calvino...each one a kind of unexpected synchronisity on the work of remembering, among other topics covered. Oh yes, a several video-casts from TED, one on love by an anthropologist and the other on the brain.

Where's this going...who knows. To end on Carson again, "when I get too many words, I don't feel I'm saying anything." Which happens to me a lot these days. Strange sensation for one who loves words.

Setting Out

Falling Blue, 1963
Agnes Martin
Oil and graphite on canvas
SFMOMA

So as the year ends I launch this blog, which takes its title from a line in Wallace Stevens' poem, Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction -- "perhaps/the truth depends on a walk around the lake."

My project will be to write about some of the stuff of my life: poetry, art, teaching, writing, family etc. I do think a blog with a more specific focus becomes more meaningful, at least for the writer. My narrower purpose will be to use the blog as a kind of study guide, with myself as both student and tutor. I guess also that anyone else who stumbles upon the blog will participate in my note-taking by adding to the discussion.

The work thus will be akin to some sort of homeschooling experience. I'll set a reading list and as I work through the books will try to write here about my thinking, questions, etc. I'd also like to post my reactions to other experiences that relate to my next book, which I have started to think about in a very loose way. That word "next" should be qualified by an explanation. My chapbook, The End of the Body, was indeed published earlier this year as part of the Quartet Series by Toadlily Press. It was a small collection. I now am researching, revising and drafting new work for the next manuscript.

I guess I'll end this inaugural entry with a quote from Agnes Martin, who wrote, "When I draw horizontals you see this big plane and you have certain feelings like you're expanding over the plane." I hope to keep expanding.