The Mirror Image of Good Sense

I buy a day-pack and suddenly have an urge to hit the trail. Just keep on trekking and you won’t notice the trail is getting higher. Did I miss my turn off? I don’t give a damn. I just want to keep on hiking. Paddy automatically draws me a Doppel Weisen, No no, I say. I want something cold and light this time. How about an Albatross instead? He draws it. I shug it. Ah, that is it. After miles of beaches, sand dunes, ice plants, spruce trees and then  the concrete, I have been walking, walking, walking, in the heat. All along the way I had been discovering Bufanos. Four accidental Bufanos in a single day. It was a serendipitous triumph.

Young men were watching the new day dawn with old minds and traditional intentions – William H Gass – A Temple of Texts, 2006  p114

Sow not, least reap (Charles Bernstein)

Turn a silk purse into a sow’s ear

Time wounds all heels (John Lennon)

Weep not, want not (Charles Bernstein)

A terrible mind is a good thing to waste

All play and no work makes Johnny a poor boy

The information highway has no destination – William H Gass – A Temple of Texts, 2006 p170

The pack wants its prey; in the abstract it wants to balance its books, meet analysis' expectations for quarterly returns

Where they are sung and sung and sung and little have to have a hand and hand and two and two hands too, and too and two and handed too them, handed to them, hand and hands. Hands high – Gertrude Stein – Useful Knowledge

Lonely alcoholics

Find each other

They have lived

            A hard life

They have never

            Forgotten

And can't forgive

They have found

            Each other

            At last

Maybe they should

             Have not

They spend what time

            They have left

Making each other

Sad

They would be even more

            Miserable though

Without having each other
            Hard to imagine

I don’t know what

            To say

Our ashes get left

In the temporary custody

            Of strangers

Sex in humans is an imaginative act (we do not know what it is in animals) – Guy Davenport – The Hunter Graacchus, 1996 p257

And I’m not the center of anyone but my self’s attention. Is it a blessing or is it a curse. I choose to think that the glass is half full. I know that she knows and she knows that I know. But neither of us are going to say anything. Another night alone and another morning thinking it wonderful to have awoken alone. What will today be like? The prospect of adventure will get you out of bed. The disappointments will tuck you in tonight. The minutia of detail inhabit the in between. And I had made it home in time to watch ‘Cops’. A ton of messages was awaitiing me. I want to let you know that I’m not ignoring you. I just got back myself.

A name: that very often is all that remains for us of a human being, not only when he is dead, but sometimes even in his life-time – Marcel Proust – Tine Regained p306

Wide-Awakes liked Abe

They chanted

            “Little Doug [liked]

            Lots to Drink

            In his jug”

As they marched

All for probity

            And purity

On to the big house

All for the people

            Of and by them

            But not all of them

Interpretation replaces the original with the lamest sort of substitute. It tames, disarms. “Okay, I got it.” We say, dusting our hand, “and that take care of that.” – William H Gass – A Temple of Texts, 2006  p186

She is speaking in English, a language that I did not comprehend.  She is not making any wild gestures with her hand which would be typical of  a speaker of another language. It hard to get mad in English. But it's easier much easier to get shot, wounded, a causality than it is in any other language

Writers and scholars do not have role models, nor do they heed pipers; they have mentors – William H Gass – A Temple of Texts, 2006  p17