11.14.2005

before heading home

I assembled 25 boxes this afternoon. Some long and thin – for architectural drawings. Some fat oblong cubes for administrative files. Into these boxes went information pertaining to the construction and modification of a variety of courts, hospitals, universities, and secure treatment facilities (department of corrections) throughout California.

Prior to this, I composed a long associative poem, the type often thought of as “a meditation”. This usage is the western version of what might be better termed “a contemplation”. I want to distinguish the mystical sense of meditation – which involves no action beyond letting go, and is an active process of being passive – i.e. of practicing non-attachment – from the object-focused work, often taking a literary form, known as a meditation. From some perspectives, particularly for those not concerned with meditation-as-practice, this distinction might seem unnecessary. Another, softer way to make the distinction is to describe zazen as “meditation” while other forms, whether worded, imagistic, or purely conceptual, could be termed “meditations on”, hence bringing their object into the named fold. St. Augustine’s meditations are surely “meditations on”, in which objects emerge and fade, and each path leads to God, and to His realization in a particular life remembered discursively. Zazen, and other forms of meditation-sans-object, have a different approach. Writing is not possible from this place, just as writing is not possible from a coma, or a dream, or death. Trance-states form a boundary region here, and I am down enough with Herzog’s Herz aus Glas to consider that intriguing. Yet, lit-wise, its wicked old fashion, its Surrealist digs, and folks these days prefer other types of the minor. Fashion is relentless, but Henry Darger and Hannah Wieners show a continued interest in this territory. Once these get too trendy, I am sure the head of the moving column will be found elsewhere.

The poem was concerned with space, with inhabiting space, and the difference between experiencing and fixing that experience. It strayed from and returned to these concerns, to avoid being fixed by them. I’m interested in work that charts desires, work whose liveliness has a slightly uneven, unpredictable quality of attending. I doubt this is news to anyone who has read much of my work (all 12 of you) but its coming clear to me, and, today, its spilling into other areas of my life. Cracks of light on a beautiful fall day turned evening.
Now Sarah is here, and I am a gonna go.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

the most delightful bit about this posting is the line about sarah is here and you're gonna go. i love that. i do that all the time with nicole. i used to do it with resentment but now i put away my pen/keyboard/pencil when she comes home or enters the room and the best bit is i do it with pleasure and willingness.

i have begun to realise that the stories i want to show on film begin and end with the sense that space is the only constant, and that the human drama is a droplet of water within this constant.

i'm not sure if this is the same for my writing, ie. prose....hmmm....upon reflection i think, yes, it is.

marlowe

ps. today's mystery nonsense word: tqphul.... fuckin' wicked!

11:08 PM  
Blogger Pirooz M. Kalayeh said...

I love your writing.

This is very clear. It's water.

10:11 AM  
Blogger jwg said...

Last night i watched a funeral at the temple. didnt know what it was. seemed just singing and playing flutes and drums. didnt know until the parade began and a picture of the dead was held. What does this have to do with meditation? Isnt there always someone in the room?

3:57 PM  

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another small chapter in los dialecticas pobre