Abracadabra Cliches

On By Alias HarlequinIn Poetry2 Comments

“The outcome belongs to nobody,

the approach, however,

depends entirely on us.”

-Edmond Jabes-

 

The temple always crumbles,

this is not a complication.

The birds arrive from here and there, departing.

A canvas is made from canvas

composed of canvas still beyond.

 .

I’m writing words

knowing they are fashioned without meaning

until read by you or me

or still something further in,

between,

 .

making all of us disciples

and messiahs

in our gleaning expeditions

with embodied repetitions

re-membering in minds…

 .

recapitulations with their novelty

of time and place and person(hood).

 .

And our present filled by abracadabra’d clichés:

yet let’s meet there – (here) –

with wonder and amazement

and a just amount

of what’s familiar…

 .

to you and I and all of us

in now.

Revisiting “I”-dentity

On By Alias HarlequinIn Journallings, Reflections, WritingLeave a comment

01-diagram-complexity-of-place-ID1

“I”-dentity: and/or “I” is a product of the Other and the Us

 

I wouldn’t know how to tell you my story, though life knows I try and have tried (as if someone cared).

 

What is it to you?  And “I”?  Is “we”?  When the parts are estranged, differentiated – unknown and uncertain?  If the question of being is YouMe + We?

 

My approach to myself as an Other and Us.

 

Thinking in time with the seasons – their perceptible growth and decay.  Their relations.

 

For all the world in the sheer ice of January the wheat crop is dead… but it rises late in the Spring.

The drizzling, chill fog is burned off by the Summer.

 

I succumb to grief, and then joy, but grief will come again (and then joy…and then grief… and then)…

 

Fall and its gradual dying: discoloration, departure.  What we experience as lengthening quiet.

 

I thought it was over (this “I”), again and again.  But it always turns out it is ready to bloom and express, given certain conditions (the “I” and what blooms, as well as conditions – differing every time).

 

Not quite fallow – apparently.  The seeds and resources are there (that’s the HUMAN) – called out by consortial action.

 

So “I” is the product of the Other and the Us.  Always more than one and all their relations.  Sea, land and sky, our cells and their content-rich contexts.

 

I’ve been abandoned and resumed without loss each mysterious gain.  I’ve betrayed and discovered new friends.  We don’t remember where to categorize pain: is it “bad” is it “good” – but then simply it is just like we and the other and the us.

 

“I” dent.  I am in-formed while in-forming.  When I move, lie or make, I am changed.

 

It’s not fault of an-other, an outside, an “external,” nor “me” in my body, my space and my time, but the “we” is the cause – the “us” in relation: all is com-pound, com-plex, and co-herent (“co-here-in-it”?).  Here together we change and are changed.  And thus love.

 

And our fear.  And we forecast by memory.

 

“I” am not “I” as “I” was.  Nor like the “I” “I” will be.  Which “I” cannot predict for all its co-dependence.  Which we labeled “dis-ease” and no wonder – it makes us uneasy being out of control.

 

Yet we’re only an “I” in a context.  A context of other and us.

 

When the “other”s keep changing (be coyote or mountain, NY or SF, literature, germ, snail or partner) the “I” also shifts and adapts, becomes “else,” becomes novel, strikes a balance with all that is “us.”

 

So give credit where credit is due (or a “cause”): whatever your “I” equals a me + a you – and is describable in manifold ways – as a god or the weather, a child or a feather, and is probably always ALL AND.

 

So no “OR.”  Choice is an additive move.

 

TV news brought us the phrase “and now this.”  Exponentialed via World-Wide-Web, and most probably true (or maybe it’s real).  Connections incalculable, meshwork beyond comprehension, impossible untangling deciphers…now this and now this and now this = “I” (and “you” and “us” and “we” and “world”).

 

Terms are confusing.

 

We Are.  Con-fused beyond knowing.

 

There is no other way (then/than) To Be.

 

“I” as a product of Other and Us.

Siegel - Neurobiology of We

Where the Summer has Gone

On By Alias HarlequinIn Journallings5 Comments

GetOutWayJuly

WordPress peers and inspiring friends – new love, new work, busy summer offspring and the above explain my lack of involvement here.  Autumn approaches, new semesters, school year beginning, and so on.  I SO hope to be active in your company again.  I appreciate your comments and patience.  What a large thing life is.

As I catch up on your works – I am SO thankful for the talents, visions, expressions, idiosyncratic thought and emotion that each of you have found a particular and meaningful (and SIGNIFICANT in whatever medium) way to realize in this forum.  I appreciate it greatly and am truly humbled and grateful for these odd and generative connections.

thereading

image from the reading replete with lifeguard (son), hostess handing out favors (buttons, nipples), stewardess serving odd mixtures of airline snacks, a priest blessing and moving people around, a waitress and a dapper emcee, a basket of fortunes created by my daughter, and myself wandering the space reading pieces and climbing on things.

 

Naming Influences: In Retrospect

On By Alias HarlequinIn Poetry8 Comments

Naming the Influence : In Retrospect

.

Things designed to grow

often get away from us

 .

One look at my yard

or my children

would evidence why

this might be of concern

to me

 .

disease and debt,

dust and doubt,

all maintain this quality;

 .

It’s not a bad thing really –

imagination, desire,

patience and hope

are also items that accrue

over time and with attention

 .

It’s the sort of thing one,

well, simply notices:

that desire and decay

operate on similar terms

 .

both of which catch us unaware.

 .

“They feed they lion”

it’s been said

and I know

what it means

(at least in part)

 .

what we emphasize

while naming our influence

is suspect at least –

 .

“side-swiped” we declaim,

“should have known”

or “could have seen coming”

of this, that and other

ever going, growing,

right along, alongside,

 .

perhaps unseen,

perhaps simply ignored

(and that prior to perception)

 .

all our –isms, habits, beliefs

in their cumulative gentle violence

 .

what our mouths spray

our lives belie

 .

in retrospect.

Ever-Unprepared

On By Alias HarlequinIn Poetry1 Comment

It’s said that “readiness is all,”

yet the readiness required

has no subject, and its object

can be anything

which portends – what – ?

we do not know

which is the point

and is beside it

 .

Turns out that knowing

neither how nor when nor what

nor where nor why

can still be useful –

ever-unprepared is our preparing

for all we cannot fathom

 .

getting used to

every there becoming here

drawn by perception

and a yes however secret

she arrives

and I, unready

.

open eyes

and take her in

with an open-handed

readiness,

is all,

and I receive

these many things I cannot fathom

 .

into this here

where I, bewildered

and ever-unprepared

and open-handed

 .

allow her to arrive

and arrive

and arrive

in waves of all

and getting ready

ReMarking SelfAwareness

On By Alias HarlequinIn Journallings, Reflections, Writing1 Comment

Erasure

 

If I possessed the capability of remarking, I would.  Indeed, in that term resides my life’s work.  I am a Remarker.  I attend, scrutinize, mull and vacuum the world around me for occurrences, things, and events that are “remarkable,” and then I make every attempt to re-mark them.  Sometimes I succeed, and my re-marks trigger stimuli for re-marking in others; often I fail – both in the assessment of what (in fact – in a special – species/al – sense) is remarkable, and, in my ability to effectively mark something in relationship to itself.

Summer Recapitulation

On By Alias HarlequinIn Current Reading, Language, Philosophy, Poetry, WritingLeave a comment

Given the nature of things… withdrawal from school… disregulation of schedule / child-rearing / presences… obligated projects, desired collaborations, attempts… preponderance of labor… decrepitude and erosion of house, car, body…

Herein lies a revised Summer Reading List – old and new and recapitulatory…

“FICTION”

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“POETRY”

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“OTHER”

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Please Stand By…

On By Alias HarlequinIn Art, Reflections, Traces, WritingLeave a comment

…still working…

detail from "THERE IS A BOOK IN YOU" by Hallie Linnebur
detail from “THERE IS A BOOK IN YOU” by Hallie Linnebur

Eradicating Borders

On By Alias HarlequinIn Experimenctes, Writing1 Comment

A work in progress…

if i build it…perhaps it will come.

Writing: Impetus

On By Alias HarlequinIn Art, Experimenctes, Language, Writing3 Comments

writing-unthinkable-workshop-web-550x367

 

It’s hypnotic.  Illogic.  You may recall genetic components – a sentiment, experience, curiosity or sensation…the fabrication begins its own spells.  That plane where you drift from expression or fractaling inquiry toward Medium.  When plot is played out and the voices keep talking.  Or some other member begs a word.

You are no longer quite “author.”  When it begins I’m usually puzzled or amazed.  A vague and shifty core obsesses and eludes me.  I ponder awhile, do research, spawn a dialogue or few with available others…but eventually turn to writing.  A word inscribed in secret not only leads to more, but ricochets through spacetime like a pinball.  The versions of the brain call out over the callosum:  “Felt anything like this before?  Have we had an experience that resonates?” / and / “Say – it seems I’m in the midst of something – check it out!  Any words in your concordance for such as this?”  To and fro – attemps to signify and symbolize, reify, rectify, making truce with our immersion.

The “language drill.”  As it burrows metaphor, it fragments and splinters dust around the edges.  Retrieving as it leads.  Recalling through invention.  I use my handwriting to find out.   To find out.  Searching something, spelunking expeditions, a nettling curiosity blind-feeling hunches and perceptions.  Pulling them towards words in attempts to trick them into trap.  Building tunnels, margins, stairwells to aim the lights at.  As if  broad enough term-corrals might lasso and then spiral, slowly cinching it round, whatever “it” is.

But whoa then, hold on!  Once a breadcrumb trail’s discerned, it forges.  Makes its rhinoceric way in accrual and erasure.  Constructing as you follow, conundrum’d and deleting.  A word – and sources cling like filaments.  None of them accurate and all informing.  History, culture – traditions.  Intimate pain and joy.  Perception, conception and query.  Discovering bewilderment.  Creating the unsaid.

Victim and perpetrator both, you, author, artist, song.  Skewing and distorting in equal measures.  Changing as you change it.  This is the making.  The being-made.  Creator and created both.  The artist in her medium.

There is no “having done.”  Failure or not, it virals and contaminates.  The path is incompletion.  “The Artist’s Way…”  Never through, until it’s through with you, coincident with a life.

Who do we say that we are?

exploring mystery