We have a get-together. There is a relationship with the page. We have not shown that to you yet. More to be revealed. Discovery is suspect. Discovery process is pigheaded. Nerves are jazz. Music is the instrument. Tuning is resisted, this is discordance. This is the dance of discord. This is a sort of hyperbolic naming. This is a frustrated desire to name in an overnamed environment. This is afterwords. This is the wretchedness of the beach. This is me being me, and I won’t apologize. She says “Excuse me, everybody.” She says “Sorry.” She apologizes. Her voice is a snake and hers is a frayed carpet. A stalled carpet, crumpled in the infrastructure. A plan, a cornucopia. This is disaggregated. This is a collection. This is a hard time. This is opportunity management. This is a to-do list, a task list, a watch list. This is a water path. This is a box. This is a box of books. This is enjoying my handwriting. This is an addiction to form. This is a crusty rind of moldy sentences. This is an appearance. This is a disappearance. This is an over.

Hello goddess, hello Godfrey. Here’s a secret: Karen Finley telling me the writing seemed like psychotic ranting, I should cut it back to one page. I felt like she had requested that I violate the “Form.”

There’s no commotion. I have a half-page left. I take whatever happens, but do I even have to say that? Stomachache. I want connection, with Chamunda, stomach-body. I want my ugly greedy demons that befriended me. I want to stop, I want to read a book. I feel saliva in my mouth. I hear the air conditioning alive in these tall ceilings. I hear the heater ticking. Robin out there looking at the Wetland sign.

april 14, 2007

Just three pages, all boiled down to just three pages. My granola stomachache, the dryness in my nose and mouth. Heater ticking next to me, cold air drafting from behind my shoulder. Grayness out the window, brownness out the window, sign saying “wetland preserve” names that small anonymous swampy spot. My relationship with suffering is changing, trying to change. Or is this all in my head anyway?

Soft—softness of her terms. The soundness of her structure. Building system like a structure of spun sugar, stained with drops of food coloring. Where do you want to work? On the page, on the screen? at some point, I let go of all that effort. That did fall away like husks. I envy Mister You, at his desk just prior to dawn, staring out the window at the frozen lawn, no meadow. Cardinals and bluebirds. Resistant to maternal comments, on the —Robins or the —Peepers. Like a metronome each spring drawing your attention. And yet I have to trace my way through boredom, I have to throw my mind a bone to chew on and make Money. It’s awfully hard to retain my concentration on this thin high music as though here I was up in the mountains in my hut.