Category: Circles & Squares

The Final Washout

He washed the final smell of his Alabama home from the last comforter

from the last divide of things.

It was now the Fall before the Winter.

It was the second winter he’d known there.

He couldn’t remember having needed so many blankets.

Maybe she really never did get cold.

But, he told her:

I’ll never be a forest.

Trees and plants:not for him.

Time in the forest moves strangely.

When she’d first shown the long lasting puddle

on the side of the trail,

She said:

It’s Black Pool. Notice how nothing really floats and nothing really sinks here? It suspends, I guess.

He thought he heard her say something else.

Cyborg Seadog tell me what you dream of!

Conversations.

Like technical conversations is what I recall.

Which I ace.

Sorry.

totally sloppy use there,

right?

breakdown (go ‘head & give it to me).

I diplomatically speak in rhetoric

lovely

pleasantly

cuz I’m learning by doing

no goal

well <one specific informal one>.

But my skill in the dream involves endurance.

Did you know:

Cacassius Clay was hit more than Sonny Liston?

Oh you did, dear.

You know him by Hammad Ali.

We both met him by Simon and Garfunkel?

He was in a flux then

a parallel life.

Perhaps, as we presently find ourselves

moth.

Fin de Siècle & Lebensraum (words on index cards you are trying to discern)

Fin de Siècle is French for “end of century.”

Reference the English idiom “turn of the century” (turn of the screw?)

Re: the closing of one era and the onset of another

Term refers to the end of the 19th century – period of ‘degeneration’ but simultaneously a period of hope for a new beginning.

Spirit of fin de siècle: refers to cultural hallmarks that were recognized as prominent in the 1880’s and 1890s

i.e. ennui, cynicism, pessimism.

Artists catalyzed this as impetus for movements like Symbolism and Modernism

Also, a general belief that civilization leads to decadence (see Freud. Civilization and Its Discontents).

Also, became a major influence on fascism. (?)

It’s Not A Stretch

Tendons turn before hips.

Calves cramp before pointes.

Ligaments lech over muscles.

Impeccable imbecile.

Lovely Repetition.

That is the first secret.

you tell me the second

(and third);

and, I’ll tell you if I already knew that

already

How do you deny what you have smelled for days?

Vitamin C(an) D(o)

My sister once (and repeatedly since!) insists Vitamin C by Can sums up the grey months in Seattle. She’s not wrong. Ok, fine. She’s right.

That’s hard to say as an older sister.

She also told me about this

Sadness Hides the Sun thing.

Too sad, sister.

Party foul!

Party fowl.

I’m chicken o’ that kinda sad.

Cut it out.

Now

Pitter Patter

There’s blue sky

and the sun’s jutting outta the grey

but it’s not gonna last all day!

Sometimes you gotta run at it

or walk at quickly

(seriously girl-don’t blow them knees out!)

ha

Troubadoursome

This is how she came to know he was Troubadour,

true.

She had loved fellows of music, letters, substances, and substance.

not quite men, yet.

She listened to their odes to women,

other.

Just as lovesome as anything else she had heard.

Love is effortless, but not always loving of itself.

(in-) sufficient.

(not) entitled.

(not) privledged

(dis-) content

At least there was content.

but troubadour’s don’t flee but rather

they incline to persue.

Perhaps it was a simple matter of time.

Some move through it more quickly than others.

She looked 150 years younger than she probably was.

(and still she felt she looked too old! ha!)

but, he had gotten it just right, at least in her eye.

What is a book but manual?

Is it just, using an alchemical apparatus within a story?

Just

an alchemical apparatus used to drive the plot, scaffold the story structure, and/or function, also, as a skeleton key?

Transmutate to into art.

The reader and/or audience undergoes the Cathartic process,

like enzymes provoke.

The Apparatus drives the substance of letters/words toward catharsis.

Our story’s technical equipment enables a bunch of words

to BeRead by an audience or reader of the collection.

In this way, words transmutate to a collection, set, Sum, somme

that somehow be-came greater than the sum of its parts

This alchemical thing is but primarily a piece of technical (albeit ‘unscientific’) apparati that is taken-up, in itself, and then applied to a bunch of words such that when those words are taken-up [sic. in the abstracted sense], an epiphenomenon emerges on a different level of scale.

Watch “alt-J (∆) Breezeblocks” on YouTube

tyight! Thanks for sharing and making

res ges’tae (Latin)

Inclination of the Needle

(dip of the magnetic needle)

illude

(trick, delude)

illudere

(promising)

illywhacker

(confidence trickster)

Illocution

(an action performed by saying or writing something. promise)

idempotent

( < math. an element of a set which is unchanged in value when operated

on by itself )

idem

( < Latin. ‘same‘ ; French. ‘somme‘ )

idée fixe

( obsession < French lit. ‘fixed idæ‘ )

idée reçue

( generally accepted concept < French lit. ‘received idæ’ )

Watch “Jay Baruchel on why he’ll always love the Montreal Canadiens” on YouTube

Thanks CBC and Q.

Upcoming book, Born Into It, by Jay Baruchel sounds great.

Really thoughtful interview.

Cheers.

Dream of a Dinner

My ex picked me up.
We picked his parents up. 4 people in a sedan.
I’m holding the pot of gumbo he made (it was good) on a towel on my lap in the front seat.
The lid is from another pot, and is too big.
The pot is filled high so I have to hold it just so as we drive to stop it from sloshing out.
He forgot the sourdough bread he bought.
He forgot to buy rice at all.
My parents had both on hand.

Resonant

adj. capable of returning sound; echoing back

n. resonant sound or body

Resonance

prolongation or increase of sound by means of sympathetic vibration

that property of objects having the same vibration frequency that tends to cause them to vibrate in sympathy

Resonator: anything that resounds

Curious and Capricious

Curious and curiouser.

you’ve heard that, right?

Do you remember Jacob and Esau?

How Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated?

That quintessential golden child and magical child.

Arch.

Jacob and Esau are both parts comprising Alice Ladder.

But, Alice Ladder does not reduce to the sum of her parts.

Alice Ladder is greater than the sum of her parts. constituency.

Did anyone tell Jacob and Esau that they were two sides of one coin?

Janus.

Bachus.

guarding the present now from the encroachment of past and/or future.

God/dess of doors.

Persephone

God/dess of staircases.

Someone let that poor girl out of the basement.

It’s the time of the season they let her out, right?

Scoop and abscond.

We have many more blind spots than the vehicles we proudly drive

It’s stupid, actually,

Kinda funny.

Like when people fall down.

Highlarious, I don’t care who ya are!

Bipedal locomotion is not the most efficient in terms of energy expenditure.

That really comes through when we fall down.

Just a bunch of stupid, lovesome monkies!

As Good as our Questions? (free write)

The question insisted on itself a little over 10 years.

Why do I do the things I do?

Why do I do anything?

Do I really know, moment to moment?

Am I just a meatbag at the end? Consume, reproduce, sleep?

What is my motivation to action?

My action under intent?

I could not say then. It was quite alarming to realize. 22 years of acting per the ways one should act.

I still don’t know (don’t contractions make confessional narrator’s sound so much more natural-less like a prick).

I believe the question is worthwhile for all us h. sapiens.

The question in my mind’s eye, by dint of everyone else’s minds’ eyes, is:

Do I need to be brought to heel? Or, is that what others believe should happen.

Beheeled?

When does anyone cross the line separating contribution from domination (or isolation)?

How do we know if our actions end up hurting people? Really, though. Do we / can we care? Is caring creepy nowadays? Rhetorical, and or to be discussed without me. Philosophical systems of morality bumm me out.

Maybe we should answer those questions ourselves and then compare answers. Not the other way around.

No, I don’t really think we can hate anybody.

Least of all ourselves.

Myself is the continuous thread which I may pull,

said Alice Ladder.

Yes.

I did think everyone hated me. I absconded to lonliness.

I did not know it. Could not dig it.

I let it hurt. Ha! I’m a dummy; that is how we do.

The way we get by.

That’s what it is.

Then, I did not feel it.

Isn’t that wild?

I’ve been considering errors in my judgement.

Error. Judge. Does not compute.

Try. How could I try harder? What did the recent “Tries” teach me? How can I use that feedback for my future “Tries?”

After failing, how long did it take me to be able to Iaugh at myself?

I’m effing funny as hell, so not too long. Hopefully.

Silence reduces, extrapolates,

assumes

You and everyone else knows what I might know.

I assumed no one knew my mind. or what it sees.

Before that, I thought my mind and vision were identical to everyone’s.

Unashamed of naivety.

I have rushed at folks, like a real nut, to try to speak it aloud.

Indicate it. You can indicate anything you want.

Shocker (not The shocker).

What I now know is that I know very little.

Groups, collectively, know much.

The appearance of secrets is sometimes more alarming than the secret itself.

People and folks are not different from me, us, and ya’ll-

Specifically, ya’ll privileged.

Us privileged;

NOT entitled.

Life is a dream of a game, but, yet; it’s not such to everyone.

emic. etic.

micro. macro.

Everyone is much more like you than you may think.

So, yeah, you, me, we, us, are NOT special.

Once we stop fretting about being what we cannot be,

we feel special

we feel alive and authentic.

I oscillate between cold-eye wolf stares;

wide-eyed, full of light, terror.

Complete absurdity (shit be funny. re: people falling down).

and curiosity.

and I remain open to be corrected; and,

have only headbutted a few people this week. improvement!

Passing Time After Cancelling Dinner with the Parents of your Ex ( i.e. Saturday getdown)

Anon, anon.

tried to guess different ways to write it.

she’s cagey!

Time to Revive Hartz & rexamine American Exceptionalism?

Embodying an absolute moral ethos, “Americanism,” once it is driven onto the world stage by events, is inspired willy-nilly to reconstruct the very alien things it tries to avoid. Its Messianism is the polar counterpart of its isolation. Americans seem to oscillate between fleeing from the rest of the world and embracing it with too ardent a passion. An absolute national morality is inspired to withdraw from “alien” things or to transform them-It cannot live in comfort constantly by their side.

Louis Hartz. American Exceptionalism. 1955.

Thoughts are with those hurting tonight after the violent events.

Let’s try harder to do better.

Watch “Joni Mitchell – You Turn Me On I’m A Radio – Live 1974” on YouTube

No rights, just homage

Live version of a song (if memory served) was not her fave.

A little corny? maybe.

Not here.

Just wait til she sings harmony with the guitar lead.

Wild!

A Pretty Beautiful Poem

Conviviality: C17 from Latin convivialis “a feast”

“fit for a feast”

(of an atmosphere or event) friendly, lively, enjoyable

potential. hy/Poten/use

potentiate

potent. pot. Portia (circa Antigone)

portent (n) ; portend (vb)

– portentious

port

porter

Deceit…. disgust

Conceit…. disguise. (dis/g -)

Receipt… despise

(- cei/P/t)

DISAMBIGUATION

Pretext: ostensible reason (false) used to justify an action.

Pretense: act of pretending, false ambitions / claim

Pretend: imaginative same / fantasy

Pretension: claim of aspiration to something pretentious

Pretentious: attempting to impress with falsehood

Prevaricate: act or speak in an evasive way

Prima facie: (law) at first sight [ / site / cite]; accepted as so until proven otherwise

The Old English spelling of pretty = prættig, meaning

‘cunning or crafty’ coming as it did from a West Germanic base meaning

‘trick’.

By the Middle Ages, pretty had come to mean ‘clever, skilful, or ingenuious’.

The sense development [ deceitful, cunning, clever, skilful, admirable, pleasing, attractive ] has parallels in adjectives such as nice.

PRETTY

1. attractive in a delicate way, without being truly* (common) * beautiful. *author’s change*

2. used ironically to express displeasure: fairly ; trinket ; (used condescendingly) attractive person.

Pretty is to prevericate in order to increase Prestige?

A pretty face is a prentious face?

Pretty is pretension?

Beauty is.

Is being pretty pretentious? or prestigous?

The pretension of the face being ‘pretty’ was pretentious?

Pretty is prevarication to gain? [Prevaricate and procrastinate have similar but not identical meanings.

Prevaricate means ‘act or speak in an evasive way’.

Procrastinate, on the other hand, means ‘put off doing something’.

Prestigious.

A face being pretty is a pretension.

That’s beautiful, that is, Pretty!

PRESTIGE entered English in the mid 17th century (tricksy, cuz it means the 1600’s) from French, and ultimately derives from the Latin plural noun praestigiae ‘conjuring tricks’.

It took on its modern meaning in the 19th century (the 1800’s) by way of the sense ‘dazzling influence, glamo/u/r’, which at first [only] had a derogatory implication.

Aren’t we beautiful, Pretties?!

Extra Credit: speak the 17 words below aloud. Wild right? They kinda stopped making sense after a while. Lovesome.

Pretty ; Prettify ; Prettifies ; Prettifying

Prettified ; Prettification ; Prettifier ;

Prettier ; Prettiest ; Prettyish. . . . . Prettyboy.

Prettily ; Prettiness ; Prettyish ;

Pretties.

Prettied.

Prettying.

* Knock Knock…Orange… Orange you glad the other (stars) astericks didn’t make you scroll all the effing way down here? Hyuck.

I. All words cited from OED Concise (pic below-citations take forever)

II. All 17 “Pretty” derivations were taken from 3 dictionaries.