All Work & No Play

1

This whole fucking project would be near easy
if he just fucking knew what he wanted.
But I sit here and sat there and spat on the windshield
and not one drop of rain got us further –
just falling with shadows cast on the seat
tiny dimples in unblemished upholst’ry
Remember when she sat there?
The veins of a leaf are the roads that I drive on
and nature has no destination.

The office is there, that nodule of cellulose,
that auburn spot is my house;
patches of green are businessless, nowhere,
stuck in between nature’s paths, preset and programmed,
perfectly carrying out an order
that no one has given and no one has heard.
For all its harmony and collective activity
no intention can be found, no free-will or proclivity,
for nature know no destination.

The leaf is trapped on the glass in front of me
the tinkling and cracking of drops in late day
the flat light and grayness make the green all the more
And where was I, when did she sit here?
I missed the office and I’m driving away.

2

I want to remain in a constant state of hunger
until this thing blows over.
I need the weight gone, and climbing to the top
I need the air, the water, and the desire.
The tower will not stand.
I told him I was going, and he told me it was nothing,
but he had not the youth to permit it.
So I left that day (the sun greeted me out
on the green lawn near the dusty yellow road.
Amazing how grass in a desert wind grows
when you water and water and water.)
Now the road chokes on dust and me with it,
I can’t see the way for the bees.
And nowhere, not nowhere, can a man sit down
if he is not in a constant state of hunger.
Rest is a motion, a noise, a momentum,
unchanging as it carries you onward.
I would like to get off, driver – but he looks away,
and through Arizona we leave behind the day.

Translucent brown and amber ought,
through thousands of a thousand years,
be finely cut and kingward brought,
but this perfect, humble, sweet sweet candle,
she lit it just for me.

We live not within the splendor, the world the world adores,
we live among the many things that things alone could savor.
We live among the wood, with oblong corners and nails and knots,
darkened grains are stories formed within the lofty, lumbering lots
and nightly lighted on our wall; our own short lives
do but despise the time the lines remind.
But this candle – see the candle, see her light it just for me.

A carpet floor, a carpet warm, a carpet that we found.
Before our door, the words make clear: you are not welcome here.
There is only so much carpet, see, the world to go round;
if we guard not goods and places found,
we haven’t the wealth to buy it.
But notice now a cinnamon smell, an odor over the musk,
over the dust, the pine, the reconscu alofting in the air –
we smell the sweet smell of the candle now,
that she lit just for me.

We live amidst the spiders,
up in their corners, hiding away,
patient and dinner will come-
We live in plain things, things that are what they are.
The robes we wear are fashion-free
and warm against the cold,
and the does often, unbidden, come, with the dampness
and the brute-strength boars of sickness, death,
But there, the perfect candle, she lit it just for me.

Close together, we warm our hands, on the body each provides;
these hands – was it these hands? These hands, they do not cry –
they haven’t the memory – time slips by unrattling, for them.
But I remember, I looked in the candle, that she lit just for me,
and I thought, “I should leave, to go outside,
the trails out there to walk,
to find the place where I have not gone – before I too have died.

(Chapter 1: The Child)

There was a child who lived in a clock tower. The whole thing was filled with gears and it was very complicated. For years it ran smoothly and quietly and the little guy didn’t know it was there. It did many complicated things he couldn’t even imagine and some of the things it did was deliver little cakes or visitors and show him things and help him to decide what to wear. But as he got older it began to break down. One day it made some noises and the child was astonished to learn that he lived in a clock tower.

(Chapter 2: He begins to take the panels off)

I want to write; I have ever since I was young. But, though ideas may have filled my mind until it would burst, action cannot be taken without motivation, and I could never find mine. I have spent countless breathes stating that I should write, but words are all speed and no momentum. Time goes by just as quickly when you don’t use it. Thirty is looming, and I have do something now or I’m going to be old – you might say thirty is pushing me. So, how to motivate myself? Like Richard Feynman, I believe the best way to solve a problem is to try something, and if that doesn’t work, try something else; but I haven’t been living up to it, even though I know, as an empirical fact, that if I continue to try, I will succeed, whatever it is I am trying. I wish I could try by force, or trying just for the sake of trying, but it’s just not me. Experimentation and discovery, though, are right down my alley, especially when I imagine my life as a wild experiment, and view myself as the subject. All of the sudden, everything I try has a purpose, and what’s more, I get to spite the conventional wisdom that says the subjective is separate from the scientific. So, I present to you:

Experiment 0: The Metaexperiment

Treat writing as an experimental science.

That is what this website has now become – my life as an experiment, a complete work of art as an act of subjective scientific investigation. And the first experiment in writing has already begun. With the help of my friend and dead-buddy Pat:

Experiment 1: Call and Response

One of us creates something, then the other creates something. Back and forth, each item in some way a response to what preceded it, creating one whole collective work. No communication is allowed outside the work – every response, including observations or mundane minutiae, must be included in the work itself. In keeping with the theme of this site, even play must be part of the work.

I have created a category for all things related to this experiment, and there is a link to it in the header of this page. We are using comments, it seems, as supplementary material to the blog entries, so please include them in your internal representation of “Experiment #1.” Thank you for reading. Pat?

I must give.

It is a strange thing to go through life knowing you need, and scrutinizing every face, every street corner, every whispered secret for a clue – what is it I need? You can never reach the point of trying for the thing, because you cannot even begin to identify the thing. Ten years can be lost this way; most likely, entire lives are lost this way regularly. But ten years is enough for me.

We all hear the platitude, “It is better to give than to receive,” but we do not think much about it. When the adults told us this, we understood that giving makes one a “good person,” and that this is something that the adults were trying to make us want to be. But forget all of that, assume that Jesus didn’t believe in good people, only good life, and read the sentence again. The statement is a paradox. The resolution is simple: giving is an experience, itself a thing that one can have, and you want to have it. You need it. So take it! (Or, rather, you know…) People will say, if you want to be a writer, just write. Perhaps this is good advice for one who wants to be a writer, but I do not think that is what I want. I want to give my ideas and my passion to others; I want to change the world. So I will just do that.

I had a dream last night that I was living at my mother’s house, and she was telling me some story about my “father’s phone call,” which she was angry about. I looked at her and told her she was insane, and I told her that she tries to force us to love her through anger and threats, and that her whole world was negative, and that I wanted nothing to do with it. And, of course, she told me I could leave her house then. I woke up as the thought crossed my mind, “How many times will I have to go through this? How can I not have escaped this yet?” After all, she has been dead for four years, and I told her ten years ago that I was leaving, never to return. But still she is in my head, in waking life as well as dreams. When I was fully awake, I wrote this essay.