“how does a tired road become a songline?” (Martin Shaw)

Dear readers.

As i see “likes” occur again – dear, deep, sweet, long encouragers of my intermittent efforts in language – it is hard to describe. That you remain and are alive, and have the kindness to lend me moments, and even “like” what i cobble together, astounds me. Thank you. It would be very difficult to express what seeing familiar icons, remember many years of co-respond-ence has meant in my own strange life. Thank you.

My apology is intended more for my use of “categories” and “tags”. Returning to this site I am struggling very much with all the computable forms with which my scribblings do not seem to comply. The work of transferring my notebooks to this platte-form takes too much time. But when I view it rearranged to the proffered forms it is not at all what i had configured. [*especially my normally multi-colored spread across surface word tumblings I will probably need to upload as PDFs from now on, which still may not have the differing fonts and shapes from my hand*].

I do not consider myself a writer anymore, certainly not a ‘poet,’ ‘essayist,’ or any of those things. Trying again, I realize I do not compose* language, but rearrange it like pebbles I worry (or cherish), like the assemblages of rocks and feathers, bones and books all throughout our home… until they rest a little, or keep finding their lineage similarly, enough to let sit awhile. Then I take them up again, re-place, carry elsewhere, find. I don’t know what that’s called – but it’s not a genre or a poem or a song. It’s just the way I relate to words or letters. [*now i realize placing-with is the meaning of com-pose* alas]

Today I’ve been looking back through notebooks and journals from my past couple years – seeing repetitions, surprises, strange confessions and expressions that hardly seem (aside from the penmanship and the colors and shapes) that they emerged from “me.” Perhaps not. [*again, placing-WITH – this time beyond even letters and me, but all the world that provides them and you and rivers and sky and…]

Anyway, I’ll not be using categories or tags anymore, to be honest. Thank you all for your amazing gratuitousness in visiting me through these efforts of mine. It gives me courage that pebbles I find and arrange some others see something in too. I’m very humbled by this.