The tree outside the window wobbled and tossed off light, little sparks like Instamatic flashbulbs in the moonlight. Was it a wagon or a wheelbarrow that so much depended on? Either way, nothing depends on them now. I watched a dog creeping through the backyard shadows, stunned to still be doing God’s work early in … Read more
Before The Merciful Intervention Of Medical Professionals: And, Miraculously, After: Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better, which cannot, unfortunately, be said of this world. Give something away. Some thing, or some part of yourself. Take a moment and try seriously to imagine yourself in the soggy or non-existent shoes of those … Read more
I broke my brain. I’m not shitting you. It was joggled around in some giant, anonymous pair of hands and tossed end-over-end, without hope or desperation, down a scarred velvet table in a dark and nearly empty casino. Have you ever felt like a moth that has been pinned to a post and is … Read more
Pay attention. Let it be. Say exactly what you think, and what you mean. Stop pretending it’s so damn hard to be human. Show your teeth to God. Do what you can. Every time you notice the stars –and I hope you’ll notice them often– I want you to think of me alone in this … Read more
I apologize for that last entry. I apparently wrote [sic] it during the empirical blackout in which I have been lost the last several days. I confess that it makes absolutely no sense to me, and although it is not uncommon for things that show up here to make no sense to me in the … Read more
Knock, knock. Who’s there? Me. Me who? Whom? I don’t get it. We have a winner!
The world is a complex fatigue. —Hayden Carruth, “August First” Whatever asks, heart kneels and offers to bear. —Jane Hirshfield, “What the Heart Wants” Now of all voyagers I remember, who among them Did not board ship with grief among their maps? — Till it seemed men never go anywhere, they only leave Wherever they … Read more
Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. –T.S. Eliot, from “Burnt Norton“ It is terrible when the whole man resonates with echoes and echoes, none becoming a real voice. —Elias Canetti, Notes From Hampstead Broken world: How is it that … Read more
I received this message –or these messages– from my old friend Ruckert today, scrawled in his almost microscopic handwriting across the back of several subscription cards for a magazine called Country Living: Late last night, as I was in the basement digging around for a book on the Black Hole of Calcutta, I stumbled across … Read more
The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by … Read more