Is it Ezra Pound who writes of the "word-hoard"? I remember Ol' Andy Schelling using that phrase. If he was a meaner cowboy, he'd shoot any man called 'im Andy.
Is the pistolero concealed in
a) a hollowed-out copy of the
Cantos?
b) the red checkered scarf! the scarf! although if he were a meaner cowboy, he'd shoot me and say "bandana."
Last night, Sara Larsen and I were comparingnotes on field composition. We were exploring that word
f i e l d -
a plane we cross, but which presents no particular path to cross except its own contours, and how they intersect with our body and its desires (two feet and i can get tired so i will follow the low road, and i can get hungry for a view, so i'll mount the high).
field composition may have eco-zones of transition (where forest meets plain, say), but it lacks clear beginning and end in the sense of a laid-out "start-here" path. It is not labyrinthian, or maze-like. It avoids that duality? Or is it more of a n-th degree labryinth?
There's a labryinth at one of the main SF cathedrals, its an Episcopal affair, so my English wife feels at home there (actually she is as shy as me in churches). They have an outdoor and indoor labyrinth, both set on top of Nob Hill. we chose the indoor one.
A sign asks you to take your shoes off. Some mad atonalist is doing slow buzz-saws on the organ. Its a massive pipe organ, the music is kaleidoscopic but quiet(ish) and the colors aren't so sharp as just shifting. It sounded more avant then big bourgeois cathedral music had any right to. Bouncing around that huge space, and then abruptly turning from mmmnnlll mmmmnn lllmmmm to whlrwhlrwhlrwhrlwhrlwhrl to scrrrrttttttt scrtttttttttscrtt sctrtttrtttt scrttttttt. Was i the only one who noticed? Sun Ra on downers? I took off my shoes.
The labryinth itself is a large circle in which is laid a winding path - not a spiral, but a more complicated journey back and forth through each quadrant of the circle, nearer and nearer the center, til you are one step away, and then the path winds (if it was a hike these would be switchbacks) out to the very edge, then across to the next quadrant, and repeat. We are not alone - some walk slowly, some fast, some together, most singly. I walk slowly, eyes on the floor. One couple is giggling and holding hands - they walk increasingly fast, distracted. A few race madly through the "contemplative space". Gi-gi-gi-gi-gi stabs of organ. I can't help butnotice how many of the 15 or so people here don't seem to be volitonally on the path. Yet all abide by the rules of that path - no one cuts corners. It reminds me of Seattle, where no one jaywalks - except people didnt seem as anxious of the lights to turn there. A wispy girl slides past. I slow down. Two midle-aged ladies make no effort to accomodate you as you pass each other on the narrow path. Once you have covered all 4 quadrants - literally walking everywhere, unwinding and exhausting the space - a journey of 10 or more minutes (surprisingly long), I arrive in the center. Sarah has just left, with her faster, if even, stride. The sign encourages you to use the center in whatever fashion appropriate - it is shaped as a rose is from above, a center with each petal offering a little half-circle node along the perimeter. Its maybe 6, 7 feet across. I pick an empty node and sit down. I have never practiced in a Christian space before, only visited. As the organ sails off into glissandos, I relax on the ground and breathe. Then I think about Sarah - there she is, walking past, how far along? - thinking about time, and I rise and turn and slowly walk back.
Yet in a Duncan, Olson, or Creeley poem, unless you are keeping track of the page count, it is not so easy to note where this center is, where the turning point is. The lay of the field is unpredictable, its not such a simple pattern - one is moving through, one is immersed - the lines are a series of turns, a series of nooks, alcoves, and jumps. The temporality of moving across a series of signs, inlines, on pages, is moe complex, more folded, than that of a clearly diagramed path in an open chruch-space. The reader is free to skip lines, double back, pause where they like. Of course, this also makes it more intimidating. It also makes it more rewarding - or differently rewarding. And yet both are planned spaces, both encourage this tight focus of attention towards the units - breath, morpheme, line, stanza, page, section, work,book - the multileveled units through which we readers move.
And, if its really necessary, go ahead and put on some Philip Glass organ music and read Maximus for the full "Episcopal" effect. But props to that - Grace - Cathedral (its name). They have a beautiful and somber alcove dedicated to the victims of AIDS, and a gorgeous, incandescent series of long, rainbow-hued translucent ribbons hung in slow, waving arcs from the (flying buttresedly high ceiling. Their shape suggests whalebones, or the ark, perhaps, although it suggests it now - writing - not then.
Field, through which movement, through which hunting and gathering. Sightings of rabbit, a clutch of rosehips. Ancient pasttimes of our ancestors, now printed on paper, now pressed to the page. Duncans misspellings - pay attention. The Native scouts who could tell that a cougar or fox had passed this way a week ago, and if it was hungry or not... the infinite and sensual suggestibility of language, its arc between the abstract and concrete, its play of noun and verb. The ironic tangles of Olson's orations, his addressing. Creeley's modest, lean lines, the white space... motions like rolling and kneeling dough.
Sara photocopied me a chapter from a book by the witch Starhawk. In it she recounts the (purported) lack of nouns in Native American languages. All places were worded as verb-adjective relations. I see her critique (and Melissa Benham's) of the place of the noun, its fixed, clunky, delusional bulk (and the disasters it encourages when it finally breaks open (levee)) yet I am comofrtable with the play of particulars, with the movement between rest and motion, solid and liquid. If some writers triumph yin over yang, or the obtuse over the sincere,
so deska (
Jap.: oh, , okay, i see/ is that so? I say so deska to remind me of the old couple in Ozu's Tokyo Monogatari). I don't blindly trust them - I don't know if their beliefs and practices work towards liberation or suffering - but I can let it be
que sera.... Whether ones actions bring ruination or joy, it is beyond me - I watch, add what I can, fight when I feel I must, but I move through this with not knowing. But the wise
upaya (skillful means) is to right the imbalance, to adjust for maximum flow, to note and dissolve the blocks. And, in our present culture, tilting towards the play of verb state in the dictionary, stessing it in the use of written signs, even in spoken ones, makes sense. As BobDoto's post on reading the dictionary points out, there are many strategies that allow this flux into the fixed museum of categories.
And yet for some individuals - better, in some particular situations - now is NOT the time for cultivating flux. Its possible to be fluxed-out, overwhelmed in the chaos of signification, sensation, mind-awareness. This can lead to a state of trauma which buries and worms its way through the entire body and psyche. Such people need the care, rest and regularity noun-states can provide - routine, support, discernment, discipline - the ability to stand up again and pilot through the world. Critiquing them for their slant this way is not-looking, is the blindness of prejudice and belief. I've been guilty of prescriptive mono-ideology, of assuming that one shoe fits all feet, at all times. Some fuckers have had their legs clean blasted off. Difference. Appreciating, respecting, intuiting difference - its a long fucking haul for a white kid from the suburbs.
So shephards, fruit-eaters, seed-pickers, tractor-slayers. So.
