See What I Mean

We go for a walk. The light on the lake is thin. It flirts with the docks and disfigures the water.

New doesn't happen to me often. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I'm so accustomed to being old that I tend to see everything as old. Except food. Our food is new. We discovered something new about food tonight. R got an app for a food delivery service called Ouroboros. We ordered dinner from a local teriyaki restaurant that specializes in delivery. After R worked out the details and sent the request I settled back expecting a wait of 15 or 20 minutes, quite possibly longer. But no. Seconds later the guy was here. R went out to greet him and get our meal, which had already been paid for, including a tip. This is new. And quite amazing. These services have been truly accelerated after the pandemic. Talk about paradigm shifts. This is one of the better ones. Tremors in the fabric of daily life tend more usually to be demoralizing and discombobulating, but this one is nice. The rest of the evening was modern, indelible, and kind.

I’m full of adjectives tonight but I don't know if I've got the energy to airlift them to safety. The nouns around here can get rough. Especially the hairy ones with fangs and appetites. Nouns like cloak and factory. The mesh of gears in the commission of thought. I get listless just thinking about the principles involved. If you mismanage a rhododendron the entire universe weeps. It doesn't require much. Just a few kind words, a tropical architecture, and a sprinkling of tongues.

Lately, I’ve begun feeling a deep sadness whenever I look at my books. This is not the world for which they were intended. They're as good as museum pieces representing a bygone era. This is not a time of reflection, of subtlety of thought or openness of mind. The times are barbaric. The babble of celebrities far exceeds the mutterings of a wise old man in a chair by the window. But I’ve known this for some time and it didn’t seem to bother me as much. For a few years people would gaze admiringly at them. I’d even have to worry about the inevitable request to borrow one. It pained me to lend books. I’d never see them again. So I learned French. Half my library is in French. Loaning books, meanwhile, has long since been a problem. It ceased being a problem at the beginning of the new century. Right around the time I started getting obsessed with poet Lew Welch. He felt it too. This poisonous obsolescence. For which there’s no cure but more immersion, a defiance in which the flutter of paper whispers light utterances on your face.

I often feel like a monk circa 793 AD gazing out of a window at Lindisfarne and seeing a Viking ship land ashore and the men getting out, a glint of light on a sword and wondering what the fuck, what are those shits up to.

See what I mean? The interface between sensation and image is a transitional zone where the actual, swarming materium of life becomes visceral. One must curve up and down like a wave if one is to expect anything to come of potash, or postulation. Step back, and watch it explode into handsprings.