Orthopedist’s office: comedy of errors, a rare circus, plaster melodies and hardware.
Category Archives: econotes
Hey Sal.
I have nowhere to go.
I alternate. Surprise me.
My stomach is twisted.
Suddenly I am warm.
Occasionally, I feel something trickling next to my skin.
I am observation.
There is an ancient print shop on a hotel property that may have to be demolished.
The reserves have lost all their tigers. A tiger reserve outside New Delhi with no tigers to show for it. A man willing to shoot to kill. My nephew going into the Navy.
What about another planet, another world like the Little Prince’s? Obviously, it can be simple, a planet populated by nothing more than a plant.
Worn floors in here, dirty linoleum, the random escaped coffee bean.
Greed delusion and hatred.
Listening to dharma talks on the car radio, through my IPod. Driving into Queens, my last fling. It all feels final.
If I could find my way to a simpler conception. If I could find my way to the egg on the pedestal, if I could find my way to the walking rock. No table salt. No laughing pepper. No funny farm. No moldy vegetables. Rot in a garden. Where do we see that rot, the heavy mosses, the packed earth of the path? The beaten borders, crumbling boundaries? The edge trees fallen into the river, bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, in a death flirtation with the current. Where do we see that? Where do we see the planes? How far away are they? The red light blinks far away at night and there you are, another person. We forget that all of these poets are also persons, one after the other, exhibiting bodily functions. Yes you are a wizard of language. Yes you may set a bonfire. Yes you can turn and turn and turn. No you are not a clergy person. No none of this should be bandied about. No you are not for sale. No you have no memory of the mountain of marzipan you saw in Italy.
I am puzzled by the moldiness of man-made surfaces, the genial alignment of everything in the natural world.
“I went into the mountains to interest myself”
“in the fabulous dinners of hosts distant and demure”
“The foxes followed with endless lights.”
(J. A.)
I am going to pull out “The Instruction Manual”—”as I sit looking out of a window of the building.” I want to write “The Questionnaire.” All of these ideas are depressing and messy, like litter. Like leaves. The dead brown leaves, everywhere, curled, curled. Every year, done, down, down.
Investing. She is investing time. She struggles to define the terms and conditions. The terms of daylight and nightlight. The conditions of breakfast, tea, noise, and satisfaction. She is not sufficiently passionate. Her passion is weak (again). I can learn from the past. I can make a move out of passion. I can dedicate.
I will dedicate my room to the poetries, my living museum of cloth and pixels. The pixels are little squares in the fabric. Her technique is appalling. Going back through the catch—fishes, shells, seaweed, and garbage. Fishes fish, dishes or dish. Hollywood Hollywood Hollywood (dactylic) Perilous Perilous (dactylic) In my room (anapestic). I could go through some poems, mark them. I could observe them in their carriages.
I am going to stop for a moment and read Desnos halfway through.
Where am I? In Silverado, the foothills. Sloshing around in cold water, panning for cold. Defined by the late afternoon, the decline of light over the side of the mountain.
I hear the train. I hear the surface water sound that invades this house. This is a house of strangers. I am intrigued by watercolors. I am happier here if I pretend I live in California OR Oregon. Yes, hey ho, I live in Oregon.
november 11
Jumpy. Jumpy. Leaf blowers until I can’t hear myself think. Renegotiating everything. What about a month of fragments? What about a month of Sundays? What about doing some hard laundry? What about turn off the critical frame of mind?
Not necessary.
I learned there is a different definition of project. At first,
I thought I had many projects. Now I realize I have only one.
How not to get hit by a car.
A shower would be better.
A shower would be best.
And yet yesterday
it rained all day.
Over the ridge, a view.
A view, a view, a view of the electorate.
Excellent dew we’ll go out fishing and fishing has come up. All smiles in a night dream, hiking up the humid woodsy path, all moist and mud, on my right the human fish ladder sparkling turquoise with its uphill current all bubbling and clean, the naked humans serious as porpoise, bend and flail feet flippers, swimming up to spawn I guess.
So what. The leaves are fallen. Falling. The leaves are alphabets.
november 5
The quiet relief that the weekend is over. Platinum light gone down and gone down early. My dream mists back into my mind. Medieval garb, a princess in pink veils, brocade gown, pointed hat. I was dark-haired, petite, happy, pretty. I was in a play, but I had an agenda. Much more active and engaged than I ever am in waking life.
I am attracted to behaviors by which we might move off the grid. Out of the mainstream. These are the behaviors I have to hide at work. Sam tried to rig up a stand for my swollen arm that I could wear, out of a piece of copper tubing. It didn’t work.
Still sad. Last night I had an apple and a few chunks of parmesan cheese for dinner, and watched an Italian movie “I’m Not Scared.” Intense. I was distracted from sadness by my awareness of what was going on inside Michele, the 10-year-old boy. Empathy, I guess. I also felt the heat of the sun and the joy of running in the wheatfields. I played and ran in fields. Corn fields. Forests. Meadows. I played in brambles and thickets, streams, streets.
Some envy. I enjoyed a short story that included a line about envy.
I enjoyed John Ashbery’s line “I write in the afternoon.” It hit
me with a great impact. Why? Because I don’t like afternoons. They are a negligible, hateful time, a chunk of time to get through. I am optimistic in the morning (usually) and pessimistic in the afternoon. There’s a wish that I could heal this. What would a good afternoon look like? Sunshine? Satisfaction? Rest?
I don’t like any hour of the day.
Resistance to going to make political phone calls. Even if they work, I don’t want to do it.
november 2
Appropriately, raining. Wet leaves scattered everywhere. Sad place in my solar plexus, deep hole of mourning. Or rather, not so deep, shallow and sheltered. Impressionable as a child.
Something clicked against the window. Again. Don’t know what it was.
november 1 4pm
The quiet room, the late afternoon.
Dogs barking in the neighborhood. The house phone rings; not a good idea to answer it, it’s either a political call or a fund-raising call. Or both. Or a wrong number.
There’s a stack of paper next to me and a stack of poems in front of me. “Backwoods Broadsides.” I enjoy seeing them there, in a little box decorated with pears. There’s a pile of pink ribbons with white dots on this desk. I picked them up from a rainy Nantucket sidewalk outside the Unitarian church. After a wedding. I guess they’d been used to tie wedding favors together.
TV noise at night bothers me. I feel very lonely. I remember Eli watching movies drunk in the middle of the night. What am I to do. Sam is asleep on the couch. The soundtrack of “Fast, Cheap and Out of Control” is pleasant. I can try to listen to it.
I’m wishing for my own soundtrack. I don’t think I have ever really lived my life. Just stepped through it. Looking backwards, while walking forwards. That’s how I broke my wrist. It was windy at the time.
The train goes by. It’s lovely to ride the train at this time of day. Very quiet passengers, almost empty trains. We took a train from Amsterdam’s train station back to the airport at this time. Working people with staid composure. Kids in dark baggy clothing.
I walked down the hill, the easement nobody owns. I thought there might be some kids there, drinking, fucking, smoking. There are some white plastic chairs back there, a trio of them, but they were empty. I thought about Al ruining his life, and how Blair rejected his friendship. I liked the stucco look of that garage. It reminds me of Italy, a place where kids hang out and ruin their lives as well, I guess.
I went for a walk in the neighborhood. I’ve spent a lot time walking in this neighborhood. The streets were quiet, just glazed with honey rain. Faint smell of donuts. I was glad to see the Dunkin’ Donuts was open. I didn’t encounter anyone, just heard someone in a car picking through people’s recycling for returnable bottles. I didn’t want to greet that person.
The only time I was afraid was when a brief yellow leaf fell onto my arm.