Learning to resolve, learning to dissolve, distort, depress, the discouragement of your name, learning about tanned skin, catalogs, and scans. How the coffee machine works, where you stand up where you stall where to stand up where to stall, how far to go, considering you are a hairy white man chubby belly straining plaid with ear phones and bewildered eyes—

This is my life what has it come to what I am learning is something different I must say it is draining it is lanced I am lanced and oozing after Canyonlands and  Arches Park. I am teetering on the edge and struggle to make something when there’s the skyline halfway clothed with leaves and a suburban brightness in the air with sounds of water gurgling and a morning goldness in the air and a suburban cheeping with a hum of traffic while the dog rests and the flying bee whirrs by.

brief thoughts of sex—need for writing about sex—some struggle in the bedroom and some insight—my mother unable to find comfort unable to take refuge—what is my refuge? yes the moment’s smell and that sensation walking on this trail this step-by-step, yes, your shoulder and pow—the odors of your hair sensation pressing mouth into your shoulder upper arm, sensation from other parts of body sensation pleasure from the use of muscles in my limbs with a calibrated abandon—leading okay—leading out of mind—it is a kind of practice—the flexibility to change your frame of reference—to let the body lead (no breath awareness) but—this is something I have learned

The absolute arrogant daring of a teacher. The heartbreak of the curious student. The value of curiosity is discounted. Do not examine. Do not look in. I know what I think, I know what I feel. All is different, the lamb is a dog, the horse is a louse. House. The mercury, the mystery. Free write disjointed. What’s going to sell. Hyperaudience, overengineered society. Leading to exhaustion. Aspire to humility. What do you hear here? What do we hear here? In the giant auditorium filled with five poets. Oh my god. How much compassion do you need?

Questions overflow. Abounding, then melt away like fields of snow. Flocks moving wrestling through the heavens. Harbingers of arbeit. After all, it’s mesh, how much is mesh? I refuse at some point. Stop. Step.

Dear Alex,
I am getting very interested in meditation.
Although I am shy.
I want a Zen teacher. Buddhist teacher.
I want to speak freely. I mean really.
I hope I can live with some humility.
I hope I can exhibit. Color.
I hope to make frail notes at my mother’s bedside.
Step 9 says: whenever possible.
I think that is funny
This smart-aleck
always ready to move on
The dharma makes it hard
to say anything you see
I am getting
Back
on
Track

I am strained at work, straining to get enough time to concentrate on Next Gen work which is much improved with concentration. But now I’m in charge of training K and—hell, I don’t know—it’s for the best—but it hasn’t been that easy. I’m going to give her my work in duplicate and see if she does the same things as I do with it. Case studies.

This is not worthwhile, is it?

Meanwhile, it’s always someone’s birthday, I would like to race away so far and demand a year in cloister only one outfit, one bowl, one word—sometimes the complexity of extroversion slays me—this is a tired story, isn’t it? Am I busy self-making? Did I have a moment when the rug was pulled out from under someone who I thought was so familiar? Ski jacket, ski jacket, ski jacket, sunglasses—how it is in here. I am not in Sunnyside. And Poetry is Impossible to Learn. (So I Say so I say so say so say) Oh say so, so you say.

I am interested in Artist’s Books. I really don’t want to publish an ugly standard book. I designed an ugly standard book and had it produced by Thomson Shore. That’s good. I learned a lot. I made some mistakes. It was good though. No way to teach you how to do this. I don’t want to be generous, don’t trust myself. I am not that generous. Not sure you have aptitude. I do not want to work with people without aptitude.

We eat—places like Red Bamboo, Mamoun’s. We drink—the tea shop, the Angelica juice bar. Potent ginger flavor seems recurring. I never learn my way in Greenwich Village. I do learn how to zero in on Union Square from any direction.

The Queensboro is a very attractive bridge with her own set of turrets and a suitably tortured manner of approaching her. I think I had to wend an underground exit like escaping from a conch shell off the FDR and rise up then at least two blocks, maybe 3, to 2nd Ave, where a hard left led me to her skirts. Lower Roadway. Don’t know if I ever accessed the upper, not sure if it exists. As the frame of fall progressed sunsets off the bridge grew more inflamed to less, then stopped.

39th Street in Queens. Parking was a challenge every night, except the first, when I stopped in a spot right outside the building.

I don’t know whether to pull or push the doors. I don’t know how to get in. I don’t know I can enter the little lobby and push “7D” to pay the magic entrance fee. I don’t know any of this stuff the first night. It’s exhausting figuring this out. I get better at it.

I don’t live in New York.

The surface is uneven. The cutting board is warped. The gentleman was proud to show me the use of passive voice in my writing sample. Fucking shit. Well live and learn. I am still expecting to show them, every one of them, show them—what?

The foxes coughing in the mountains. The evil fox light. Lost lore of animals lost lore of fears. Our superstitions are gone now, transformed into bombers from the air. Our strange fear of foxes or wolves following, met with turbans and robes. We do not learn much about any of this, we don’t push through it. We just take it as it lays.

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 want to post something online I am taken with the practice of blogging I am taken in a different direction          It has been hard to learn         Yes it is my focus that is needed         Telescoping eyes         Zoom out zoom in               sometimes

you just don’t feel like talking

One of the things that I love about Natalie is her ability to make judgments about people and say them out loud. It’s thrilling to hear her sum up a person, their behavior, their motivations, their unconscious fire, all rolled into one or two quick incisive statements. Initially, I just bought into everything she said. I had never experienced such a wise window opening onto other people. I was hungry for the guidance. Somehow, I had been misled, led to believe that everyone was a Child of God. Christian psychology is very flat and its behavioral modification systems are very dumb. I had no ability to read people, to differentiate between them. I was like a person, a woman, in an arranged marriage with everyone. As far as Natalie’s stories go, later I learned there might also be other points of view.