Monday May 20, 2019

Enunciate, craft, massage into shape. Learn by doing. Note down partial approximations of eidetic imagery. Thirty-one syllable word-clusters, as in the Japanese tanka. Bars of neon form an elongated “C,” the unfinished outline of a cursus. Diet remains for me a site of struggle, a point of contention. Cooking and eating from home have not yet become welcome parts of my practice of everyday life—nor has any decisive shift toward vegetarianism. Old, long-established eating habits are hard to break on a budget. Objects and textures pass rapidly through a set of multidimensional windows or portals, as would an array of illustrations on a picture wheel. Operating an imaginary View Master is a bit like exercising a phantom limb. But see with it we may. A food truck specializing in seedlings and nut bars pulls up in a park, an abstract crayon parrot drawn across its side. Golf courses designed like cakes dissolve and vanish. Front end to back end: “Folks, it’s not a screensaver I seek—it’s a quest, a vision, an account of an inward journey, magic everywhere.” Weird sonic matter wells up, giddy microtonal burblings and hijinks. Is a trope like a lasso? Is language like a rope, fashioned in a circle to ensnare? Or is it a sounding forth in song in response to the cosmos? Let us become like trees shining gently all around. Somewhere in my mind is the Incredible String Band’s “Painting Box.” Somewhere I sing it aloud to a child.