March 01 the limits of language
Can't use I, can't use You, can't use We, can't use He, can't use She. Can't use Yes, can't use No, can't use Sorry, can't use Forgiven. Can't use Please, can't use Thank You, can't use Yesterday, can't use Tomorrow. Can't use Up, can't use Down, can't use Hope, can't use Despair. Can't use Bitch, can't use Sphincter, can't use Friendship, can't use The Blue Balloon. Can't use Quality -- I'm sorry, we can't use quality poems. Can't use Community -- we're imperfectly bound. Can't use A hug -- unbearable touch. Can't use That Kleenex -- already too soggy. After awhile, typography is the only refuge.

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March 02 250, 1, 14
I passed the 250 submissions mark today. And I think there are enough poems to sink another Himalaya waiting for me down at the church. At times today I was ready to go into the hospital. Finally B told me "you're pissed" and it was like a lightbulb went off. Oh yeah, I'm pissed! Then I felt much better. I got one great prose piece. Fascinating. No information about the author, just initials PD and last name. I want to meet this person. Quoting without permission: "He walked responsibly and the nature of his own intellect began to carpet the walkway ahead in clarity. For this reason, he assumed control of as much space as his eye power would permit." Reading night. April 14 seems very far away. I want many great great great big bouquets. Tremendously huge bouquets. In fact, a few flowering trees in the room would not be too much. Indian bedspreads. A few busts. Some blown up artwork. A lot of full chairs. A microphone. Maybe I'll MC, depends how emotional I am. I'll wear my light purple velvet jacket and a black skirt. Maybe I'll have my hair done up, something I've NEVER done before. This is assuming I actually get the journal printed, which might not be a great assumption. Well, I can dream.

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March 03 seeds of spunk
It goes against the grain not to write something. It goes against the grain not to write something new. It goes against the grain not to write something new every night. Even though this repetition is driving me, this repetition is driving me, this repetition is driving me. I need to explore, there's nothing there, the excavation uncovers vast empty plains of dirt and sand, no shards. Let's just try, she says. Let's just see what happens. After ruling out all topics ... it's not beyond me to erase all this and start over if I find a crystal seed. What did I do as a child? I ran up and down the street. Roller skated on the neighbor's patio. Ice skated in the winter. Tried to put on plays with the neighbor kids and my siblings, although I was never successful. Danced around the family room to "The Nutcracker Suite" and "Runaway" (run, run, run, run runaway). Wanted to move my hands like the priest when he said "Let us pray." I kept trying to bite into crabapples. I chased my prissy neighbor Myra with worms. I saw three things in Farmer Ralph's field: an arrowhead as big as my hand, a cougar silhouetted against the sky, and a tornado cloud far in the distance. I never thought I would grow up. I never fantasized about my wedding. I never imagined how many children I would have. Occasionally I played Horses, but, more often, Spies. I would tell my sister at night that spiders were creeping up the walls next to her bed and were going to drop on her from the ceiling. I chased Tommy Arbuthnot around on the playground in second grade, threatening to kiss him. I had a friend named Connie who took advantage of gullible me by scaring me with stories of this new fatal disease called the Blue Pox. She also told me all about her dirt collection, which turned out to be a lie. I was fascinated with this set of blond triplets, Diane, Daryl, and Dale. Their brother cut off his foot with a lawnmower. I stepped in deep water over my boots more than once. Hmmm. Must be trying to access some inaccessible inner spunkiness. It's not working. I'm going to sleep.		V e s t i n a m b u l a

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March 06 fight the battle
Is anything really happening? I mean, What is really happening? I had to read the Bhagavad-Gita over the weekend and tell myself, "Stand up, Arjuna." The Gita is really THE book for cowards and fainters. My attitude was terrible. Continually going right to the most anxiety-provoking point of view. But then I turn into a completely different person at dinner, my problems escape me, and I feel very inspired and chatty with a fabulous famous poet, Karen Swenson. She had six great aunts! Who lived in Fargo! When I came home, I thought there's her way, the way of describing spiral staircases, and there's my way, the way of many deadlines. Ummm -- how do I get there from here? I was standing at the Greenwich train station with my most esteemed co-editors and Karen Swenson. I was HAPPY! We were talking and laughing! I didn't feel any sense of shrinking or moroseness. Conversation sparkled. When the train came, she got on. I felt only the most fleeting instant of desire to hop in through the closing doors. Go home, Arjuna. Finish the poetry journal project and then ask again for knowledge of your will for us. She wore the pointiest shoes I've ever seen and a necklace of SKULLS. She had a gold ring in the shape of a stretching frog. "The Gap is a misnomer." "How many millions of dollars does it take to cancel out a potato moment?" "This was Not a Happy Woman." (fr. Beowulf)		V e s t i n a m b u l a

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March 07 Ode to the whine
I can't wait to be on the other side of this effort. I can't write anything. ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~ Oh permanent whine, oh permanent whine, why don't you dissolve why don't you decline why won't you eat artichokes, russets, or squash, why won't you shut up when we go for a walk, where is your handkerchief where is your brush how you carry on through this permanent crush what will become of you what will you do you don't listen don't breathe you don't swallow don't chew just unquenchable stories of muggings and tears and heartaches and fainting and falling down stairs park your permanent butt on that permanent ledge let go of my ears cause I'm close to the edge try to keep still for once		V e s t i n a m b u l a

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March 08 snake, sparrow
That poem stayed with me all day. Isn't it cool when you can manufacture your own gifts? This morning I was thinking, it's not really an ode, it's more of a chide. Chide to the whine. What would "Chide to the ode" read like? The most touching part of my day was watching managers be very nervous public speakers. They all had notes for two minutes of speaking. They were tongue-tied. Some of them rocked back and forth the whole time. Most of what they said didn't make any sense. You just can't go into rah-rah mode that easily when it's not your natural style. Other than that, I wasn't touched by anything today. I was cold, cold, colder than cold. A sense of shame hovered around me. I felt a lot of pain in my chest, my knees, my hands. I have a question mark, big and muscular like a boa constrictor, coiled up inside me. I'm tired and ill from carrying it around but I can't get it to leave. It's samsara. The caged sparrow. Maybe I'll go read some Thich Nhat Hanh.		V e s t i n a m b u l a

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March 11 poetry journal status report
Maybe I'm on the other side of the hump. I hope so. I got the poetry journal more than half done. Today I formatted all the extra pages, proofread once, and made corrections. I also made a sticky note for each poem and sat at my desk arranging them for an hour. I love this part. It's hard, but it's a very abstract process. It depends on the tone, emotional quality, subject matter, words, illustrations, and reverberations between poems. The first and the last poems are important. The first has to be neutral enough, short, and inviting. The last also has to be neutral, short, and has to linger in a mysterious way. I can't put all the Indians together, or all the Africans, or make too many obvious connections between the war poems or the immigration poems. The most interesting vibrations come forth. A poem about being downsized and one about immigration both had the same tone and brought forth interesting thoughts about loss. One poet's work in particular was very hard to follow. His work had to be in the middle of the book; it has a gravity that has to be worked up toward and then down from. And he's a very accomplished poet. I ended up using a confused, barely articulate poem by a beginner. I liked it because it seemed to struggle with being inarticulate in an interesting way. Sometimes that's how I feel after reading a very deep, accomplished poem. Maybe I'll change my mind tomorrow. I'm letting the sticky notes stay on the desk overnight. I'll look at them again in the morning and see if they still work. I had a brainstorm about how to use this kid's art. I begged her for some work and when I got it, I was kind of disappointed. It looked really amateurish. But I'm going to break it into four vertical panels and use it in the contributors' biographies section. The flaws aren't a problem that way. By the way, all hell is breaking loose among the contributors' biographies, and I'm trying desperately to establish some order. The more accomplished poets tend to write short, succinct bios. Others go on and on and on. One in particular could only come up with a very weird note that ended with the words "I died." How much leeway should I give the weird poet? Especially when two other poets ARE actually being published posthumously. These are the kinds of things that are preoccupying me. I'm not being very good at keeping this journal.		V e s t i n a m b u l a

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March 12 some good words
Druid vow of friendship: I honor your gods I drink from your well I bring an unprotected heart to our meeting place I hold no cherished outcome I will not negotiate by withholding I am not subject to disappointment Amazing. I'm not sure I believe it's "Druid" but it is amazing. I could stand to read that about 100 times.		V e s t i n a m b u l a

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March 13 the questions
They are coming around again. I can feel the brushing tips of their long silvery hair as they start to dance. My intuition is eager to borrow their pale robes. My eyes want to review through their violet contact lenses. My strands of brown hair are magnetized, ecstatically, to their strands of silver. They come with the bud of oak. They come before forsythia. They come with the sound of showers of buttons falling in the tin box. They are graceful with their lazy smiling hips. They wear backpacks made of carpet, full of light. They're smiling from above at their deceptions. I'm angry. I don't know if I'll forgive them. I frown periodically until my eyebrows get loose and dizzy. The mechanical is weakened. No halo belt from this martial art for me. Amen soon these burdens will be lifted.		V e s t i n a m b u l a

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March 15 the un easy
I wonder what it will be like in May. I keep trying to type May instead of Mar. It's really hard to believe in May, but my fingers seem to want to. The poetry journal is coming along. I did some of the more creative formatting tonight -- the table of contents, worked over the biographies. The biographies are by far the hardest part of this project. Let's wipe out the biographies. The women write their autobiography. Except for me. I can't comment on anything. I have no perspective. I forgot a lot while I was remembering too much. I'm a sad witch. I feel as sad as night. I didn't do anything but pray for the best. All of my spells could go either way. All of my charged objects had more than one meaning. All my chants said "more than enough" or "knowledge of your will for me." Honest. So I've managed to freeze myself into a stopped stupor so cold that I wouldn't recognize a desire if it bloomed right up out of this keyboard. It doesn't feel like detachment. It feels like a living death of details, formatting text twelve hours a day. It's not good for me. Honest. Today I got a card in the mail from one of the poets. Three shiny black caribou on warm brown card stock. He will be coming down from the Catskills for the reading. He wishes me luck on the journal. I'm uneasy with a personal note like that. I'm uneasy with the Romanian poet of love. I'm uneasy with the Indian poet publisher professor. I'm uneasy with the glasses and dreadlocks. I'm uneasy with the curly brown haired Catskills. I'm uneasy with the waterskiier of sad lake who doesn't cook. I'm uneasy with the adorably rumpled fashion sense of engineers. I feel nauseous. Men. What is this? Does God pray for me?		V e s t i n a m b u l a

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March 16 visible, invisible, and damn dumb
Ominous silence at work today. Why? I was in a rage, taking the bull by the horns, shooing away all the chickens that were nagging me. I took a break and walked in the woods, fast, looking at the ground. Finally I stopped and stood still and looked around me. I stood still for about five minutes, trying to observe. After the fifth minute, the star shaped worn root of a fallen tree trunk came into focus. It was beautiful and irregular and pointing right at me. It took that long to see it. I love collaborating with my illustrator. She teases me. She understands my eccentric Aquarian nature. She says I'm always asking her to draw all these invisible subjects, like fire, and smoke, and air. Tonight I asked her to draw light. I tell her to add chaos. The woman's face looks too beautiful, her hair too Brecklike. The violet's puffy sleeves look like bulging biceps. Remove the eyelashes. I have some final proofreading and tinkering with the illustrations to do. I'm amazed. I'm starting to feel a little bit good about it, less anxious about the outcome. It's basically done. Now we just have to plan the party. Oh, yes, and finish writing letters to the rejected, and deal with the printer, and pay the bills, and do all the publicity for the reading, and send the final accounting to the city, and distribute the journal ... I got a job offer today. The guy was willing to hire me because the former manager-that-quit said I was a great writer and I might be sick of working for T and he's hiring ten people and it's a startup. No, not quite yet. I never actually was a technical writer until October, and now I'm so much better than my co-worker, I can't believe it. He's starting to seem half-witted to me. I'm in idiot savant documentation genius mode. I tried to talk "vision" to him. I tried to give him a lot of latitude. I tried to inspire him. I tried to edit him. Now I'm spoonfeeding him like a baby. He always has something to say, so I thought he was thinking. He makes the wrong assumption every time and then he wants to quarrel with me about it. The first time we sat down to talk he had a nosebleed. And one morning when I went into his cubicle to talk status, he had a big slice of ham on his shirt which had fallen out of his breakfast sandwich. I'm disgusted. He's the dweebiest of dweeby guys. I'm so grateful for the poetry journal project since it takes my mind off him.		V e s t i n a m b u l a

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March 17 Marching
March bravery. It's spring, the crocus, that brings it out in me. Bravery is a strange possession. It's the speechless voice of the divine talking through my trembling fingers. I feel 100 percent better. I took a drive in a snowstorm up to Webb Mountain Park. Even the most rundown rural areas of southern Connecticut are sprouting "McMansions" like fungus. It unnerves me. These towns are creepy and haunted and crawling with Boy Scouts. Who cleans these gigantic newfangled houses. The poor from Bridgeport I guess. Ten families could live in these houses. Who lives in these houses? And what would they give up to stay in them? Negativity, what to do, what to do. I don't like it. I'm getting extremely intolerant. It's a way of keeping on the move. Don't let anyone trap you. I don't feel normal until at least noon. My eyelids are made of violet fabric. Their color brings out the hazel in my eyes. My face is embroidered with stress. My hair is fragile and tendrous and witchy. I gulp my words, or croak them. There's a flare of innocence lurking somewhere in these dried orchid petals. There's always another pristine page. I'm getting psyched to buy shoes. The shoes of tomorrow. The shoes of the huntress. The socks of the devil. I'm fighting romance to the death. Weapons: tense fingers of overwork, intolerance, fussiness, negativity, and exhaustion. She's lying in the corner, limp and blue, almost strangled. Or is that me?		V e s t i n a m b u l a

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March 19 Levertov
Prayer for Revolutionary Love That a woman not ask a man to leave meaningful work to follow her That a man not ask a woman to leave meaningful work to follow him That no one try to put Eros in bondage But that no one put a cudgel in the hands of Eros. That our loyalty to one another and our loyalty to our work not be set in false conflict That our love for each other give us love for each other's work That our love for each other's work give us love for one another. That our love for each other's work give us love for one another. That our love for each other give us love for each other's work. That our love for each other, if need be, give way to absence. And the unknown. That we endure absence, if need be, without losing our love for each other. Without closing our doors to the unknown. Denise Levertov, in Cries of the Spirit, ed. Marilyn Sewell		V e s t i n a m b u l a

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March 20 anxious and shouting
It's the first day of spring. And I'm done with the layout for the poetry journal! It goes to the printer tomorrow. I am so anxious. Something has got to go terribly terribly wrong. There's nothing I can do about that weirdness on the cover. I ended up taking out two of the illustrations at the last minute. They just did not seem right. They had been bugging me all along. I could explain why, but it would be just words. It's the gut feeling that I finally decided to listen to.... I hope Cecilia understands. Why am I including that poem of mine? Gag me. There are serious flaws in it. And it's so damn sensuous. And it sounds like I'm on drugs. And it's CRUDE. My mother read it Saturday night. Luckily I am 44 years old and she didn't force me to take it out because it was so CRUDE. If I had been 14, she would have. This was cute -- my co-editors both proofread the manuscript and did a fine job, catching many small things. But in addition to the corrections, they both came back with MAJOR changes to their poems and their biographies. God, poets are so finicky. That's why I'm so anxious! Someone is bound to object to something. And it will be what I least expected ... Ummm. It's the first day of SPRING!!! (lots of shouting)		V e s t i n a m b u l a

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March 21 words from the porch
Open your mouth. I implore you. Don't just sit there with your face melting, tragic over trash and the cold wind. Make a shape. Any shape. A sound. You'll feel better. More possible. More like tomorrow than today. Wake up, honorary roadkill! There's still time. Name your comforts: dark rooms standing up Wanda oranges and almonds Sweeet, sweeet, sweet, sweet, sweeet, sweet the distance. Remember, the distance is sweet. Memories are dusty, but plush, lush, but cold. Cold and sweet as ice. Wrapped in ice, I am telling you this. This is me, the one from the porch.		V e s t i n a m b u l a

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March 22 I give up (again)
I'm sorry. I apologize. The one from the porch does not use words like "I implore you." That was completely wrong of me. I need to start digging out of here. I found the FAF. I went through one stack of papers. Now I'm ready to recycle everything. I don't feel well. I pushed too hard. Now I don't know what to do. I feel too strained to recover. I have cramps. My eyes hurt. I will never feel rested again. Clarice Lispector: "Submission to the process" "The process of living consists of errors -- most of them essential -- of courage and indolence, the despair and hope of inert awareness, of constant feeling (not thought) which leads nowhere, leads absolutely nowhere, and suddenly what you thought was nothingness turns out to be your own terrifying contact with the fabric of life. And that moment of recognition (akin to revelation) must be accepted with the greatest innocence, with the same innocence with which one is born. "		V e s t i n a m b u l a

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March 23 better
I feel much better today. I don't know what happened. Something snapped and my mood-of-wuss went away. I like talking to that bearded guy. That candidate I interviewed -- well, I'm not HER, that's something! My co-worker -- I hate him, but I'm not him. I'm not my ex-husband. Or my mother, or my sisters. Wow, I'm me, what a relief. This is something I can work with. I got home and did some of the taxes. Financial stuff gives me a backbone. I'm all over it. Two whole days away from the poetry journal. I'm afraid to call the printer and ask if it's okay. At work -- it's just a matter of being able to hang in there and keep working. Everything will be fine. And love -- today I can take it or leave it. Why is that? Oh god, it must be entirely chemical. I dumped about half the pile of mail that's been accumulating since January. I'm in a radical cleaning mood. A couple of new contacts on the job left me feeling less like a troll. I made some tables that looked really nice. I took a lot of pleasure in them. That chapter is really shaping up. It's a miracle that I ended up working as a tech writer. I'm coming back to my life. Community projects are hell. Literary projects are hell. Arts projects are hell. I'm going to take care of my kids, my house, and my yard. I'm going to plan some vacation time. I'm going to make two months' worth of archives. It feels good.		V e s t i n a m b u l a

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March 26 staying alive
Catching up. Today I did the most of the taxes, the Financial Aid Form, reservations for my son's summer trip, and other difficult chores. I went to the conifer garden. The sky was partly cloudy. The snowdrops were blooming and the daffodils were starting to bloom. I don't want spring to come and go. I had to touch. I touched the tiny tender crocus petals, lightly enough not to bruise them. I explored the sculpture with my hand, around the inside metal wrinkles and around the outside curves smooth and glossy. I wrote a huge to-do list in a notebook, then I crossed it all out, with heavy dark lines. I don't know. I don't know. What if I sat by the water until I had the answer? When I write, I feel numb with disguise, or limp with disgust. I had a lot of hugs this weekend, I danced all night Saturday, or until I was stopped by a thunderstorm. I wore a helmet of self-confidence. Dawn called me a hero. I had several intimate conversations, looking deep into magnetized eyes. I kept the bruised crocus petals hidden. I said Help Me too many times. Saying Help Me betrays a lack of trust. I was planning to buy A and me corsages for the poetry reading. And maybe a carnation for the poison.		V e s t i n a m b u l a

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March 27 chatty, with squirrels
I'm almost done with these rejections. I asked my favorite woman in Al-Anon to be my sponsor tonight. She said yes. You have no idea how much of a breakthrough this is for me. I just couldn't go around moaning and crying and talking to myself any longer. I haven't had a sponsor in years. Sue helped me a lot initially. I called her often when my life was disintegrating, always hitting the wall with tears and frustration. I did a bunch of steps with her, all the way through the 5th step. It was good for me. Then she left the program and we lost touch immediately. This gives me another new relationship to focus on. I told her immediately and honestly what was wrong with me (big time lonelies, obsessive thinking, self-pity, getting worse instead of better, AND my g-d h-p isn't listening to me...). My voice shook a little, but I didn't bust into a million pieces like I used to with Sue. Growth happens. Tomorrow I'm going out to dinner with my computer graphics classmates. I'm dragging my 11-year-old with me. I might have a beer. I might have a meltdown if I talk to C too much and she gets me going. Tonight I told my son the father of his cousin may have committed suicide by jumping off a bridge. They don't know for sure. No body, but the guy hasn't shown up. We talked about it quite a lot. I'm very removed from this situation, since I never met this guy. I debated whether I should even tell my son, then the No-more-secrets rule kicked in. What if the cover lady on the poetry journal comes back with no lips? This was my overwhelming anxiety of this afternoon. And it's very possible that she will come back with no lips. She kept losing her lips when I was messing around with the file. I am petrified of any kind of dealings with the printer. If there are any horrible flaws, like no lips, I'm just going to have to swallow them because I am so petrified. I wrote some good rejection letters tonight. I still have a few more to go. Mostly the late, late submissions are getting the late, late rejections. Some are hard to write -- I twisted their arms to get these people to send me their poems and then we basically didn't like them. My son is scheduled to go out west May 28th through July 7th. He's going to miss a bunch of school. It's his own special 12th year trip with Grandma. They're going to do free-form touring in the Southwest. Is that SO COOL? More creative formatting of manuals today. More fun revisions of the COCB installation guide. Maybe I'm getting better adjusted. Maybe. I'm trying hard to tame the squirrels running around in my head. Chatty chatty chatty tonight ...		V e s t i n a m b u l a

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March 28 R. I. P. Shantigar barn
I found out today. The Shantigar barn burned down. I guess this is the Buddha's way of slapping Jean-Claude's face for straying too far from the fact of impermanence. But I'm sad about it. I have great memories of that barn when it was half-renovated. Dancing with jewel-girl. Getting lost in the woods and finding myself again, due to sitting down while eating a nectarine. Creative whispering to James, a total stranger. Creative fighting with Tendzin (the most liberating experience I've ever had!). Group imaginative experience with the tiny chick (at least that's what I thought it was). S and I made up a dance. It was the dance of "put the other person's hands wherever you want them." Try it sometime! Reciting poems from the great throne. That was the first poetry book I ever put together. The broom was standing in an afternoon shaft of light. August light came through chinks in the walls. So beautiful. I tried to teach S to sing "Un Flambeau, Jeanette Isabella." For some reason, I remember the words in French. She tried to teach me to sing "Glow, Little Glowworm, Glow." We all danced for hours and hours. This was the best workshop I have ever attended, Carol Fox Prescott, on Performance and Presentation at Shantigar. This summer they're doing the workshops in a tent. From the Shantigar website: The barn burned on the night of January 26th, apparently due to oily rags being carelessly left in the barn by the carpenters. The fire raged for over twenty-four hours. It nearly took Jean-Claude's house across the road. The fire melted the great old Chinese bells that were used in the millennial bell-ringing in the barn, so the temperature was likely way above six hundred degrees. Where previously there was an imposing protective large old barn, there is currently a deep black crater, with almost nothing salvageable except the stone lions at the entrance, the Shantigar sign by the door, and the big Buddha in the foyer. There has been an outpouring of feeling for Shantigar from friends near and far. The local papers have run several compassionate articles. All friends of Shantigar and of the barn are in shock and grieving. It is, someone said, as if a beloved old village church had burned down. The barn was built in 1895, and the children of the original builder, now in their eighties, have been desolated too. The barn was exactly six weeks from having its restoration-renovation complete. People who have taken workshops at Shantigar or made plays here or meditated here are united in feeling grief.		V e s t i n a m b u l a

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March 29 bittergreen
I built a great structure of artifice today. Laughing. Getting all enthusiastic about an Excel spreadsheet. Trying to convince a candidate that my job was reasonable and I really liked it. Sucking up system information and asking piercingly intelligent questions, apparently really wanting to know. And I had to give the car guy a hard time. He wanted to know if I didn't have a husband or a boyfriend who could pick me up so I could leave the car overnight. (Did he actually say that? This is what people in Trumbull are like.) I got all hesitant. Then I finally blurted out (pathetically) "but I don't HAVE a husband or a boyfriend." This act made me wicked happy. Surroundings seemed strange. The trees had turned strange colors overnight, cloudy pale red and yellow green. The clouds seemed made of marble, but everything solid like buildings or bodies seemed ready to disintegrate into atoms like in De Rerum Natura. My monitor at work glowed a dark pink. My monitor at home became almost too dim to see. The strange surroundings don't scare me. But the act does. No -- the act doesn't scare me. But it's painful. No -- it's not painful. It's numbing. It's too painful to think about numbness obliterating spring. Oops. No longer numb. Spring is killing me.		V e s t i n a m b u l a

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March 30 riverclear
My car is fixed. The poetry journal is done. We've got milk. I picked up the car at lunch time. I drove down to Old Mine Park and got out of the car and went to stand on my rock in the middle of the Pequonnock. The river is phenomenal, the river is my place. I tried to set myself up to clear my mind. Instead I got a flood of vengeful thoughts, shameless fantasy, and egotistical nonsense. But there in the middle of the water, it didn't matter. In fact, it doesn't matter here now nor has it ever mattered, after 1992 at least. Dawn said looking for patterns, finding meaning in everything, a life swarming with metaphors and coincidences -- it's a sickness. A habit. We talked about this more later in the context of "surprise." First it was a surprise finding patterns; now the surprise is in finding no pattern. And what a RELIEF.		V e s t i n a m b u l a

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March 31 unrelated writing
I picked up the journal at the printer's today. The woman on the cover has lips, thank God. The journal looks half-amateurish, which I guess is better than entirely amateurish. It was only a partial shipment. 243 copies out of 250. Why? ~~~~~ The best thing that happened today was the woman I did the song and dance for on Wednesday accepted our offer. Whew. At least someone is buying my brand of shit! ~~~~~ This year I can recognize blooming pussy willows. They're everywhere. I don't remember ever seeing them before. They're just madly dusty and fuzzy with yellow pollen. ~~~~~ I'm not doing well with the human forms of God. I've been praying to river and flame. And trying to participate in the stupider forms of faith, hope, and charity. (I mean simpler.) ~~~~~ I know. I'm an idiot. It's been pointed out to me in so many ways. ~~~~~ Clarice Lispector's words, which sank in and then came out in unrelated writing: The violet is introverted and its introspection is of the deepest sort. They say it hides because it's modest. That's not it. It hides to be able to find its own secret. Its almost-not-perfume is muffled glory but it demands that people seek it out. It never ever shouts out its perfume. The violet says frivolous things that cannot be said. ... The chrysanthemum is profoundly happy. It speaks through color and dishevelment. It's a flower that impetuously controls its own savagery. From The Stream of Life		V e s t i n a m b u l a

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