I don’t write in a journal everyday, but I have accumulated many entries over the past 50+ years beginning in 1966. Some items evolved into longer works. Among the leftovers little pieces survived. I thought a collection of these with a piece culled from the same date in a past year would make an interesting yearbook. The consistencies and inconsistencies of mind, skipping back and forth across time, provide varied perspectives. It is difficult to remember the context of the past we’ve lived; we also make suppositions about times that predate ourselves.

The few alterations from original drafts were to improve clarity. The worst of my work is not included. There remains enough mediocrity and immaturity to make me feel humble and you feel smart. There are also moments of accidental insight and incidental humor.

Author Stephen Crane referred to his little pieces as pills…apparently they were small and somewhat hard to swallow, but good for you.


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Thursday, July 18, 2019

Real Work


July 18, 1992  (I was 47)

         Real Work
I am trying to formulate a metaphor
         (when it probably should be discovered)
a metaphor of small rooms and solitary occupations
         (not a metaphor of cells and incarcerations –nothing penal)
a metaphor of security and containment –doctrinaire
a clandestine smoky environment absolutely exclusive
There is pursuit involved that might be obsessive
         (if it were not pursuit of disinterest)
a pursuit too casual to be academic
too peripheral to be intellectual
         (yet time consuming nevertheless)
a pastime more of impression than expression
It is the lazy animal consciousness
of a mammal with a roof over its head.
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