Things Conspire

I meant to just go to sleep. Goddamn goat-suckers got me up again. I had to pee and the light was wrong, moon behind cloud bank. Started thinking about what Thoreau said, February 8, 1841, about his Journals: -I bend the twig and write my prayers on it, then letting it go, the bough springs up, shows the scrawl to heaven.- Then again on August 4, 1841, Wednesday: -My pen is a lever which, in proportion the near end stirs me further within, the further end reaches to a greater depth in the reader.- I don't know what I'm saying. Dave Matthews says it better, Steven does, or Skip. I work with a limited vocabulary. Crossing boundaries is easier late at night, wearing black, slipping from shadows. Nothing is ever as easy as it seems. The politics of pleasure. A lubricated experience. Roy Orbison late at night, or something, a night-hawk. Occasionally I can project exactly what the next song will be. It used to scare me, but now I accept it as a matter of course. Sailing with the wind. Sure has been a long hard ride. Dylan. Everyone was there to meet me, when I stepped inside. The things of the world conspire to keep you involved, a banjo solo, Bela Fleck. Pack it up, sleep a while, beat it on down the line, the things I could tell you. We're right on time, water to wine. The soup is sublime. Yeah, right. Everything is perfect. I was below the floodwall and everything was collected in the usual eddies, I nodded, of course, it would be. No indignation, just the flow. I want to call Glenn but it's like three in the morning and I can't. There are limits. No one will ever love you for your honesty, but that doesn't mean you're not a nice person. The Indigo Girls. Then some serious blues. John Lee. Black Snake. I'll talk with you later. I hear these voices, soprano, wavering, they cut to the heart of me. A cello, that sustained note, you weep, how could you not? What does it mean? She moans, is that this thing or the next? Take it easy, move on down the line. You're right on the money, a tenor sax would be good here, maybe a soft female voice. Someone to scratch your back. Tried and true. Slept awhile, woke in the sweats of a dream, not pleasant, the scaffolding was falling. Big breakfast and yard work. Clipped until I cramped, collected a few morels. Pork tenderloin medallions, morel gravy, fried creamed corn with chilies. Very good meal. Whiskey and a smoke, back to you. The most enjoyable two to four hours I spend every day is writing you. I enjoy the four hours of reading too, it kindly primes the pump. Rereading a large format book, between my Thoreau sessions, that I refound buried beneath the phone books: The Art Of Written Forms. Excellent history of writing. My old friend Poggio, with samples of his work, and Niccolo Niccoli, also with samples, and we start seeing true cursive, where the pen is not lifted, and the italic is born. Personality starts to influence style. There are extant letters from Cellini to Michelangelo. They seem jotted off, real handwriting, not something carved in stone. Paper was, of course, the problem, that and illiteracy. I've made a lot of paper and known a lot of illiterate people, go figure. Making paper is so cool, it's one of the best things I know how to do, teaching someone to read ranks above that. That moment when someone can see a word, conceive an image, place in a context, is magic. Language is magic. That we understand each other mostly.