the word of the day is amity.

i wrote language is mysterious and then read in the witch of eye the linguist merleau-ponty said language itself is the spell. he said there is no inner life that is not a first attempt to relate to another person. in this ambiguous position, which has been forced upon us because we have a body and history (both personally and collectively), we can never know complete rest.

...even in silence with dogs. 

each eye is in a different hemisphere and in the anatomical region between vision is made continuous even with eyes closed in willow water mist.

 

 

yesterday the fog burned off in the sun. today the fog drips down the fire escape. breathe earth, breathe sky. mist my face with willow water. waiting for the next session i read the witch of eye.

language is mysterious—from clear to opaque in the same book, the same essay, thinking, it's all the same conversation in different tongues. poems can be both. for moments it appears there's nothing to resolve. the snow is melting into fog, rising sighs rise, dirt breathes, underneath roots sending something vanishingly ordinary. see, the smoke from the smokestacks disappears. my upper body got as or more flaccid than my thought this pandemic winter, year of dog loss.

it's true though that i don't ask for or let myself be held much. there wasn't much touch with my parents and hugs when they came were awkward. i'm more comfortable touching than being touched, except with dogs, i touch them all over if they let me. bear gets squirmy, lulu swoons.

i have this core sadness and shame i don't know if i can grow out of. it's like i just need to be held like a child and i'm not a child, but i don't feel like a man or know what a man is or how a man feels.

it's arbitrary but specific what happens i suppose. there's a sense to what happens and who we align with even if it's hard and painful. when i feel joy it feels natural, but there's a center that is raw and sad. and it's not fair to bring that, but it's already there. 

this is comet by mary. comet is a loving sensitive boy and we might have grown older together, maybe til the end, but the pandemic changed our course. i'm still glad to see him and hope to continue knowing him. i think once you know a dog it doesn't stop.

you know how when someone dies you loved and you say if i could have just one more day imagine how hard it would be. i wouldn't want it. it was hard enough to choose one picture. scrolling down through time i passed quickly the last walk, and the last minutes are still in my mind. i saw film about old dogs and there was one who was 21, shuffling around the pet shop. if mister lived that long he'd still be here for 7 years. can't regret what doesn't happen any more than we can help imagining what if. i'm grateful for the times when i was sad and i could press my face into his soft fur and he would look at me soul peaceful, i'm grateful i can feel him now. 

i remember mister when i pause between books on a saturday we would have been together.

i miss you mister. i want to believe that when we die our souls live.

many are left behind to languish and die as de-joy says get used to me and we cannot and no one can and as de-joy goes so goes the world after the final bilious cloud of ignorant hate in this whatever what theft fuck trump-biden time.

the word of the day is eidetic: of visual imagery of almost photographic accuracy pertaining to a memory or mental image of perfect clarity as though actually visible or to a person able to see such memories.

 now i'm just going back and plucking the odd image from the random archive. now i'm going to keep my desktop clear. now millions of people have died from covid-19 worldwide. the next pandemic could be even worse as governments still allow our planet to be pillaged to line the pockets of shareholders. now i'm going to try to stretch my back and finish this nichols biography that i probably didn't need to read but i sped through to get to we run the tides.

 

i cleared a little space and the puter cleared the rest on the desktop. i know it's still cluttered behind the screen but it's clear enough for the moment. things are all fucked up and my lower back is sore. it does seem like gravity is increasing. maybe it's true in a way we're being swallowed up by our screens and forces beyond our control but what we call spring is coming. it may be different this time, it will be different than what the handlers say.

 can't always know what to save and what to clear but you can't hold onto everything always falling away or jamming things trying to come up and i know it's better to clear as you go but maybe better yet not to try to capture so much and believe fewer is clearer anyway this one's gone and see you down the road

 i think i did this right but once more for the feeling gone.

 i know it's not these images it's just consideration of what needs saving.

i forget to clear space and suddenly it gets overwhelmed with clutter. it froze and i turned it off and it came back black and i look and the screen is chock full of pictures i didn't clear and left behind as more poured in. i think i know i don't need so many it's just a kind of hunger that keeps me going and yet after a while i get overwhelmed and today i have to clear space.

i feel foolish and i think it's the way i am. i've tried to be calm and collected. i want to love but it's not easy. yet i've seen how love makes everything easier.

last night we saw nomadland. it's quiet, melancholy, beautiful. it's another in the realm of depictions of living that are between or both documentary and narrative. and it seems odd to even ask which. living is translated, narrated. the nomadic life is real, but the country has changed. there's a sad quality to the nomadic life. they don't say goodbye, but see you down the road, even when you die. but it feels like that song the road to nowhere. in the film some people stay in place and others can't, and they have a spirit that i cherish. inside i'm like the nomads, like i used to be, though i was a solitary nomad back then and though i stay in one place now.

 
 

 

For those of us who live at the shoreline

standing upon the constant edges of decision

crucial and alone

for those of us who cannot indulge

the passing dreams of choice

who love in doorways coming and going

in the hours between dawns

looking inward and outward

at once before and after

seeking a now that can breed

futures

like bread in our children’s mouths

so their dreams will not reflect

the death of ours;

 

For those of us

who were imprinted with fear

like a faint line in the center of our foreheads

learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk

for by this weapon

this illusion of some safety to be found

the heavy-footed hoped to silence us

For all of us

this instant and this triumph

We were never meant to survive.

 

And when the sun rises we are afraid

it might not remain

when the sun sets we are afraid

it might not rise in the morning

when our stomachs are full we are afraid

of indigestion

when our stomachs are empty we are afraid

we may never eat again

when we are loved we are afraid

love will vanish

when we are alone we are afraid

love will never return

and when we speak we are afraid

our words will not be heard

nor welcomed

but when we are silent

we are still afraid

 

So it is better to speak

remembering

   we were never meant to survive.

 

   

   a litany for survival by audre lorde

i went back and read it through and decided it should be whole. i think it's impossible to assert a poem. i went back to see if i felt it the way i felt the last lines and i do. it may only speak to you if you already feel the same way about life, and otherwise there's nothing to convince.

 why so heavy? my bones bend with the gravity. want to lay down in silence and wake up in light.

 i have a series of non sequiturs wheedling in the ethereal fog in my brain as i walk and ride the elevator and talk to the lu and by the time i get home and make a samich all i got is—humans talk too much anyway. still i think i'll always have nostalgia for the things unsaid.

 cops got paid overtime for terrorizing anjanette young in her apartment. jasper is back out of the closet.

 talking about how dogs sometimes won't look at you when you talk to them. like lulu. then r. says you're like a dog, you don't make much eye contact ether.

we got dog star coffee from orion, yum. i'm zipping through mike nichols a life. he's a weird dude. brilliant and also a failure, i like that. i've got a logjam of books which trips my heartrate but in a good way. i watched a lot of moodies with the cats while r. was gone dogsitting and now i'm a solid reader again. tonight we're going to watch nomadland by the maker of the rider chloé zhao. if it's as good as the rider it's great.

now jasper's slinking into the closet again. i hope he's not having another episode like yesterday, crouching and quivering and hiding.

elite hack saboteur louie de-joy declared the postal service into a death spiral, and like a strategic death spiral ceo, declared himself a maga bonus. the world's a funny place, maybe he's schizoid, maybe he's heralding his own inspiral death. how did we get here? can a bloated corporate criminal declare the death of democracy? the second word of the day is attrition. the third is cul-mi-nation. the last word is collapse.

 the word today is frazil; a collection of stray ice crystals that form in fast-moving water. i dint know this frazil, i only knew frazzle, damaged or weakened by strain or agitation, to drain emotionally or physically, a burnt fragment; a cinder or crisp, a frayed end. i might have known the muppet frazzle, a monster with a child inside desperately wanting love.

 maybe i should give it a rest. i guess maybe it's cultural to be obsessed with numbers and i don't like it. i purposely don't look for days and then i feel a pressure in not-looking because i'm avoiding seeing the number fall toward my own nullity. what do the numbers mean, when they swell or dwindle. is there some algorhythm that pertains to this site, to me? is it affected by what i say or don't say. i started watching a documentary series on worlds. the worlds look quaint, comprised of tentative searching. traces left of searching. people still go there to some worlds that are still supported by the server. the avatars there seem like weird time travelers in virtually abandoned spaces, and yet, and then, maybe some kind of hybrid reality is kindled. nothing's tangible yet something exists reminiscent of our inner space, our inner space made virtual somewhere else, some elsewhere we try to go. but when the numbers fall so low i get the feeling i'm a ghost, slouching in a bed and leaving no impression.

overwhelm and underwhelm at the same time. hunger keeps coming and you keep going.

someone wrote a note on the neighbor list about a great old catalpa that was between the rockefeller chapel and the oriental institute that was removed and it's the first i've heard anyone mention it so i replied that i miss it too. sometimes i get the feeling something's changed but i don't know what, and i walked around the place where the catalpa stood probably for 200 years and wondered if i remembered right. then i wonder how many things gone missing we feel without specific memory. walking around i feel a general loss occurring so frequently we fail to register.

i just saw a short computer generated film called the sky is on fire

i have no notion whatsoever how it was made. it combined images that looked "real" with things that didn't belong, and the whole thing seemed unreal but in an unsettling way. i had the feeling something funny is going on. i felt that way before the film, and the phrase has been floating around forever, but this feeling is different. in the film the guy who narrates keeps repeating "we're temporary, but all this, everything we create, will still be here, there are some who hate that they won't be here to see what happens in a thousand years, and they could be so spiteful they'd destroy the world." it made me feel queasy like the computer generated images always do, but the notion that it's a reality that maybe we get used to as we destroy more and more the old reality—that really creeps me out. i can imagine an afterlife stuck in that reality wherein i have no idea how to operate. the narrator says nothing is gone even deleted things, yet what will the traces we leave be without us.

i'm sorry, i can't speak very well. i hardly talk outside. i talk inside my head but there i usually just say something funny's going on. i have a lot to say but it doesn't come out in words. and pictures help but they seem to ask for words. things maybe don't need to be because they can't be explained but i need to be doing something, recording, illustrating, even though i can't say what's going on except some heartless crime and some mystic love i can't give any explanation for it or prognosis it remains anyway to be a partial and imperfect witness.

just saying to each other something funny's going on makes me feel better and not alone.