It might be Autumn. It takes awhile to know (here). In any case, the confusion is enormous, is bewildering, is sometimes stultifying.
Multiple persons – some who know me and some who seem like they do – all seem confident about it. About the book. About that “there is a book in me” just waiting to be born or written, composed or transcribed – however a “book” comes to be. I am certain of none of it, excepting that I love books, in fact I crave well-connected letters as much as (although differently from) my desire for love, for intimacy (or “satisfaction” – itself a kind of surprise and delighted exhaustion), for meaningful connections (being understood, acknowledged, beloved, and so on). Strange beasts, we. I. I-we.
The “I” is “we” if you take into account all the variance – the inconsistencies and variety and contextual divergences. “Bewildering” is the word I most usually apply to this business or blessing of living… of being alive.
Maybe that’s what this is about, like birthdays. The strange pivoting celebration of another year undergone or accomplished, simultaneous with its absence and cessation. Living, dying – same thing? The introduction that serves as farewell. A tightly romance.
Does “paradox” indicate two apparently incompatible things being the case at once? These are not flip-sides of a coin, but two things on the same surface, depending. Living/dying, suffering/joy, love. Now as before and after in the same instant, so to speak. I will always be battling the incapacity of words as the only things capable. Communicative paradox – language as, at once, in the same sphere/realm/scale/reality – that which reveals and conceals, says and does not say, speaks and remains silent, clarifies and obfuscates, signals and misleads…fails and succeeds.
So that every effort of greeting also grieves, and each introduction is yet another form of farewell.
I loved her.
Polysemic Stupor 
Beautiful. Regardless your sense of your battle against the adequacy of language, I love the distillation here: “Now as before and after in the same instant, so to speak.”
Autumn, indeed (and with such color in the decay.)
One book and its many reflections. Mitosis ( or meiosis, never could remember which was halving, which replicating, and anyway….). Settling with a partial view or staggering under the weight of clever alternatives, or maybe both. A tale of simple folk ( is a tale of those we have never met). A dissection of whys, a declaration of Independence ( one eyebrow raised at that),self examination and a tiresome topography of , a tying up in pretty-well untiable ( untyable? Untieable?) well, there it is, endless viewpoints, unequivocably equal in unlikelihood. A bedtime story with copious footnotes and referencing. A paradox: to whom do you speak ( so eloquent, so verbose, such colours, such emoting), and whose voice, and why, why should we listen at all with all our own congregations and nowhere near, no nowhere near, our own silences…. But, but, if the voice is urging, if the river flows rambling sounds, let us be its humble servant. We cannot guess the weight and landing of any word, what it might feed, what slaughter. We cannot guess if any purpose pushes us ( but can you not ever feel the thousand thousand thousands from the past thirsting for, not ever balk at the rigid arrogance of the present, questioning the need to listen at all, too busy, too rushed. Sitting still a curious sin, dubious, up to no good. Too smart to get carried away, to smart to get caught out by fairies and their fabricated gold (hoist, as it were, as we ever are, as the big man said)…..so rave on, rave on, regardless, regarding all, a dutiful sun, a brightness, a causation of shadows, a dreamer of delicious confusions, a surgeon of intents, a mycologist of hidden fruits, a wriggling squirm of human, dust singing.
Thank you for this Simon. How deeply you “get” my endless projects… I’ll keep this one for always…
Takes one to know one!