………………………..
……………………………………… ………… Cut grass

……………………………………. in sprinkler water

………………………..on a wet patch of concrete.

……… ……………….Rains tugs,

………………. ……….. Warm fumes,

……………………….. ………..wrought clouds,

……………………….. ………..wrought … freshets.
………………………..

11th Street. I’m digging in my backpack for a pencil probably when a person passing me calls out. “Heh are you the guy that works over there? [Points in the direction from which I’ve just come.] Do you still work there?” (I make sounds of assent. I recognize him.) “And you still walk home, what is it, ten miles?” “Three — three miles,” I say. “Amazing,” he says, as if three miles were as many as ten, “just . . . amazing…”

What’s truly amazing, I think as I leave, is that I believe that me and this very same person had this exact same encounter about ten years ago. Exactly the same only two blocks to the East where my route went then. He looks greyer now and I know I do, which gives an “eternal return” type absurdity to the event.

Joggers’ steps are exact quarter notes against the whole notes stuck by the song in my head, four to one.

..
c………………….
e…………….
a……….
…..a………s
ρῷ 1we are but …………….l……..ρῷ 1we are but ………..
ῥέειnow, R but………….e…….ῥέειnow, R but………
, ἀand whe A\ t………..e ……., ἀand whe A\ t…….
μw e ha ve b.……..s………μw e ha ve b.……
6 φὶbeen fo Zr…s ……… 6 φὶbeen fo Zr.
δὲ κfive ye .Aa..e……… δὲ κfive ye .Aa
swin…ang…ines …..…… swin…ang…ines
W I M P L E , C O R N E T T EEPeirc
…The last doge was Ludovico Manin,
…who abdicated in 1797, when
…Venice passed under
…the power of
…Napoleon’s
…France

……………

Unfailing goodbye gesture of the regular customer: as if he were going to salute but his hand never makes it above the height of his shoulders, his fingers remaining relaxed, extended but not straight. His arm and hand are frequently in the position with which one might reach for the nozzle of a gas pump — or tender a blessing to the crowd below.

Wouldn’t it be unexpected if after five plus centuries of spiritual and intellectual turmoil, “we all” (that is, western society) went back to being Christian Under a Single Universal Church again, the Reformation having failed, Science having failed, Enlightenment having failed, Capitalism having failed, Democracy having failed, Technology having failed, because all the liberties and inventions and efficiencies and marvels don’t add up to a reason for people in general to take heart and have hope and live. (This is somewhat Naptha’s position in Magic Mountain. Michel Houelbec will seem also to argue in that line in Submission.)

Michael Gerson, a couple days before Christmas, on the unexpected quality of hope as seen in the nativity story: the king of the Jews was not a warrior but a child; the real grounds for hope and change were not “secret wish fulfillment,” that the world and my life would be as I’ve wanted it — that I didn’t have cancer, that I was a success — but would reveal we’ve been wishing for the wrong things — would result in a change of heart.

Attendant told story of having been attacked by a bird while taking his exercise near the airport. Blue jay. Must have mistaken his grey head for the mangy fur of the badger.

Customer, seeing her total, said oh my god tha’s my birthday. Five twenty six was her total. Customer, seeing his total, said it was really funny because that was the airplane he flew. (Could have been a 7.67.)

Customer said he’d be jetlagged as hell, leaned water tank over to fill his cup with the last drops of it.

Like the statue of Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial sat the customer, attendant wrote.

What were the ‘periods’ he went through… ? tried to think. There was the write-as-much-as-you-can-period, ten pages a day like Dostoyevsky, Trilling was it, Trollope actually, and watch as “beneath the dull paper mass a mighty fire rages.” “Unexpectedly from out of the dull soggy thatch the spark of two words becomes a flame of three phrases–”

( Never wrote more than 1/2 antireciprocal “mot-wrong” flaubert pages a day during the “writing for real period”;;)

Then there was the Only Read period: don’t even bother with writing — you can’t– and writers, famously devoid of volition, are, like function machines of which no one knows the function, only capable of determining what will be put into them, not what will come out or when. Therefore, perform such a mass of reading that the “dark diamond” must emerge and, and — you simply “wake” to find yourself writing.

(The results exactly resemble those of the write-as-much-as-you-can period.)

Then the “consolidation period”: despite all you’ve written and read to this point (a small fraction of what ambition requires), what have you achieved? what but fragments hard-ended as rocks which, inchoate and undeveloping, will never do more than begin? Give up therefore and sit unmoving like a monk, until the thread that runs through all you’ve done is plucked attained — or just smash these blasted things together! Because surely they must — somehow — go — together . . .!

Passing in the meantime:
— discarded police tape in curbside. “In its yellow-black furls and curls are the grass clippings of the previous day’s rain’s.” [no, I don’t accept “furls and curls.”];

Trying to memorize the serial numbers of a lamppost as I pass it — three or four digits — and getting mixed up before I’ve even looked away (as if the attempt to remember has pre-garbled the perception of which the memory was to be made);

In my imagination — really an anti-imagination — a hysterical voice absurdly taking a woman to task for opening her car door and pouring out liquid on the street (“it’s only water” she says “yes — but your backwash” — ridiculous — space junk– my imagination at its most inadvertent and extraneous) Months ago I’d seen someone pour out the contents of their water bottle on this spot.

Thinking, I need to write this down, all down, but am still about a mile from work. By the time I get there I will have forgotten and, like all of the best writing, it will fail to have been written — and it was.

…………………q……g
……………….au………..ra
………………..lia…..P……vel
………………. swin…ang…ines
………….. ging..siron.. sand
………… Maryof Egypthami
……… rrida bashitru Mar
….. gUAr dnnelS o-da
…BubbsaltpanBubb..
…Bubbetyc.ooBubb….
………edirbong……..mohananeyillsuion
……………….hane………..piboncontinental
ha os benth ici..
es se l..eess..
.s altp a n..
..ty.oo….
============
============
.BubbsaltpanBubb..
..Bubbetyc.ooBubb….
………edirhang……..mobonneyillsuion
……………….bone………..hapicontinentall
rawnbenthicspal..
Soda-l— —|ard..

Trying to give place names to points of insignificance: “San Francisco View” (view of steep hill with wood houses in pale colors) — “Old John’s Manse” (where John used to rent) — “Pineapple Place” (has ornamental stone pineapples flanking the front steps — though in my imagination there’s only one of them, and they may be bananas) — “Bike Saddle Rock” (a triangular road median with that kind of curvature, accessibility ramps on opposite sides, though in my imagination, erratic as dream, it points the other way) and so on…

x X ,……………… ………………..
x………………..lacia………...v v ………iR
x………………….u h h..,,,…e a ……..,,,,,.v a v
.…………………r a a..,,…. hl……………,,,,,a i
i……….,,,,,…..b v l..,,…..ta…………..,,,. A R I
a……………….o i w….,,…..e. c ………..,,,,,.v a
.…………..d o e………,,,……m h ………….i r…
x….ytg…………,,,…..o. i v airvair
xx . .x ..y t gx.x .x.x . X
|……………|……………|
|………….|………….|
|…………|…………|
|………..|………..|
|……….|Ret….|
|………|………|
M i D……………………………….
f ………..d L….,,,…..….. A. a I
a……………..O.,,…....v v ………iR
f………………,,,th…e a ……..,,,,,iv a v
f………………,,,….. hl……………,,,,,a i
a………………,,,…..ta…………..,,,. A R I
b………………,,,…..e. c ………….,,,,,.v a
o………………,,,…..m.. h ………….,,,,,.i r
u………………,,,…..o.. i …………..,,,,,.vair
o l dK ey PALLE o Gha N DU MPale of ff