To begin writing there has to be a source. I don’t
know how to see it any other way. The sky is like pavement today.
If it crumbles, what remains? Prose is just a way of thinking, much like
being trapped in a body. From this distance the surface of the moon is
not visible, but it is there whether we choose to imagine it or not. In
the night we think otherwise. In the daylight, hunger vanishes & we
can resume our parallel skirmishes. If this is a letter, it is an odd
one, not being written to an occasion but fingering, perhaps, a process— a
means of looking in & out at the world while also writing in it. The
epistolary presupposes a ‘you’ which, as you know, is sometimes risky.
Yet what is risk but some mad form of hope, a joyful violence, & also the
opposite of what one expects? You do agree, I know. Life is longer
than one expects & yet moves too quickly— so that childhood may seem like
days ago. Yes, that’s what I’m saying: to proceed there has to be a way—
a hard road of fructuous starts. The novice, in some ways, has all the
fun— every day can be a new discovery, a rickety shangri-la, a hot tub in the
urban glen. Without that, we run the risk of usefulness. Would you
aim your slingshot at a lightbulb if you knew it wouldn’t burn your eyes?
To begin
writing, there has to be terror. To begin a letter, there has to be you. I know
you know the risks, but do you know the consequences? There is movement and
there is motion. There is tension and there is direction; there is artifact and
there is artifice and then there is this: distilled, that is. The phrase
"let's dance" comes to mind. Some mad form of content, some sad form
of contentment, some lack in the middle or in between. Freaky,
yet—inconvenient. No, to begin writing, there has to be an error. There has to
be, pardon me, a slippage or at least some cleavage or some sort of sundering
and so on.
To write you have to misstate the apparel without fear of being mistaken for what you already fear. Upon reflection, everything is solid glass, a piece of spittle. The you you are has already been mistaken for a character, some easy trope in the means which have no author. A dead bunch of names. Run with it. But if I summon, would you still transition to the means of pantomiming without much evidence? To heave the bulk of solid motion at an already tender word which frays it.
We leave the
bulk of solid motion behind. We believe it. We arrive or we depart; we have
already been mistaken for a piece of glass, for an easiness which belies our fraying.
And yet we stay. We are allowed to carry or we are allowed to extend, we are
allowed to misstate the evidence to the contrary. We set this aside and take a
deep whiff. Another time, we would have called this "home." Now we
call it anticipation. Ouch.
I'm doing
headstands and pushing things away with both hands. Tied behind my back. I'm
above it, below it all. I hope to escape soon. Meanwhile, the ocean pounds at
our primordial somethingorother I'm sure of it. Take me at my word.
