In the morning, after I brush my hair and brush my teeth, I take my partial out of a jar filled with Efferdent and water and stick it in place between two upper molars on the right side of my mouth. Then I put my hearing aids in and I’m complete. Ready to tackle the problems of existence with a modicum of dignity and a crude understanding of empirical reality. It’s a process of assembly in which I put the parts of myself together with syntax and bombast. Put one foot forward, and head into the mist.
Sometimes, I think this
ache that develops over time is a true evaluation of life in one’s so-called
twilight years, a yearning with no definition, no familiar chords. Just enough
will to keep on keeping on and stow the fires and flutter one’s wings. Those of
us fated to live in the stratosphere learn, over time, that it’s better to nod
and smile in agreement than pontificate in the lumberyard. There’s more to the
fingering of little facts than meets the eye. The useless quibbling that passes
for conversation these days is better left to its own devices. It’s a drag on
the energy. What you want is a button to press, a napkin next to your plate and
a natural inclination with which to unravel in front of a fire.
Conveniences are good. I
don’t like being inconvenienced. But they do happen. Annoyances, encumbrances,
privations, delays. The tensions of air travel. You go to Paris. Your luggage
goes to Bora Bora. What I advise is to cultivate a philosophy, a mode of
perception that allows one to drift beyond the foam of surveillance and touch
the contrasting parts of an animal’s body without flinching. Get close to
things. Get intimate with the liniment. Take a hint from whatever can be picked
up or thrown. Try a little tenderness. It’s what sustains us.
Pay attention to a
woman’s mood when she gets out of the shower.
I’m pulling a word out of
the air to give it a pulse and a beat and a perpendicular choreography. Around
here, we cement the guidance of the local gods to soften it. There’s more to
prose than being nervous about it. If the writing goes too fast, it’s an
industry. If the mountains are near the house, it’s a force you can use.
Remember: the ear is close to the mind. You don’t need a paddle to make a cup
of coffee. Just a pot and a filter. Use patience. Stay loose. The mind dries
things. Eat a hammer and sew something. Embellish the things you esteem with
the grace they deserve. Let the colors on your nails clash with another like
boomerangs in an accordion. Cut to the energy, once you’ve created a situation.
It's good knowing my horses there, and a harness and saddle. You’ve got to be
quick out here. Alert for signs. Quick to spit. Slow to comply.
“Perception should lead
directly and immediately to another new perception.” – Charles Olson.
“Let the sense find the
element.” – Robert Creeley
“The cost of sanity in
this society, is a certain level
of alienation” – Terence McKenna.
“I feel stupid and
contagious.” – Kurt Cobain
It’s in the sounds, and
what they can grab. French dip sandwiches, the push of a good strong wind,
headlights coming out of the night like Van Gogh’s stars. A middle-aged woman
at the end of the bar bursting out in laughter. The peremptory gratification of
a boiling fingernail. Art for Art’s Sake. A YouTube video of Jackie DeShannon
singing “Over You” on Hollywood A Go Go. Ezra Pound staring out the window of
St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. The graces of the Eastern Mind. The scrapes of the
Western Mind. At 78 one should be on one’s way to more than mere conjecture.
The world gets real. Gets real in ways I never expected. And ways in which I
did expect it, for years, lying awake at night, searching for options. “And
around the mind the image is the darkness it can find.” Wrote Creeley. There
was a time when the hit songs were vital to one’s well-being and full of
prophesy. I remind myself that there’s still a possibility in the word
impossibility. Whatever words are capable of, the sum and substance of it will
be revealed where the sounds break, and the weaving in and out, the warp and
woof, reach out in different ways to sustain itself. What sleeping takes away
the light of day restores. And there you have it. A two room jewel in brick,
with a garden, heliotropes and hellebore. Guano on all the rocks. Swallows in
the barn. A sideshow balanced on predicates. And kinetics all over the place,
for the hell of it.
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