Sedona

Sedona viewed from Jerome

Two miles in.

The bridge

Dogs swimming at the crossing below Cathedral Rock.

It's hard to take a really bad photograph here.

Schnebly Hill Road view.

Structure of Memory

If you work thirteen or fourteen hours per day for a few days in a row, sometimes you get tired.

All of the fascinating little details from the swirl of activities around you for these past days; well, things fade away. You sit at the keyboard and think that one thing you wanted to share which seemed so universally interesting, like breathe itself, has slipped away into the land of the bland.

That in itself is sort of interesting.

What are those little French cookies called? I forget. It think the word rhymes with porcelain.

A Kettle of Hawks

Jakob was telling me about reality:

"It's like five bucks," he said. "But that's not what it's worth," he clarified for me. "That's what it is."

*****

Then there was the woman who used to teach English and she tried to tell me that there weren't enough vowels.

"Well," I entertained, "If you take just the five vowels and combine them three at a time, that gives you a possible sixty combinations that could enter usage as your alternate vowel sounds, couldn't it?"

She looked at me as if I were crazy and insisted that it still wouldn't be nearly enough, and besides that it was just a ridiculous idea. She thought more alphabetical vowel letters should be created. That's when we silently seemed to agree to disagree.

*****

You have heard that dismissive expression "But you could get a Grand Jury to indict a ham sandwich!"

But just you try getting them to indict a Reuben. Then it's all "Oh no, can't do that" and suchlike.

*****

We were walking along the quiet section of The Avenue of the Pines in Saratoga Springs; the part where the pavement turns east but the old tree-lined avenue continues straight into town. It's all pine needles, shade, and big old trees.

"They sing," the person said, meaning the trees. They guided me over to a few trees, selected an appropriate one, and made me lean up against it, listening with the length of my back.

"Well I'll be," I said, "You're right."

I still hang out with that person a lot.

*****



*****

Nursing is all about the relationship between the patient and the nurse. If, for one reason or another, that relationship cannot be construed as therapeutic, then "nursing" does not happen. Instead it's some other sort of fucking miserable bullshit.

Le Marteau Sans Maitre

One of my art teachers from decades ago described this tool as a "many-headed hammer."



There are never two sides to an argument. Or rather, there are never only two sides. That is why I crinkle and bristle every time I hear the phrase "both sides of the argument."

We all know that, yet the useage of the phrase persists and it is consistantly abused. Two opposing ideas are all too often inappropriately given equal credence.

For example, someone like Glenn Beck may assert that "the moon is full of laser-eyed Moslem beavers who pose an imminent threat to the safety of all good American families." An opposing voice says "no, it's a barren mini-planet and quite harmless, actually." And so the discussion may proceed, as if each idea were equally respectable.

It does not matter that we consider two sides to every story, because we all know there are as many sides as there are heads on the carver's hammer. What really matters is that the hammer has a master...

Not a clown wielding it.

Bourreaux de solitude

Le pas s'est éloigné le marcheur s'est tu
Sur le cadran de l'Imitation
Le Balancier lance sa charge de granit réflexe.

*****

Executioners of solitude

The step has gone away the walker fell silent
On the face of Imitation
The Pendulum throws its load of granite reflex.

Rene Char, 1934.

This text was used by Pierre Boulez in his 1955 song-cycle Le Marteau Sans Maitre.