Journal: June 1971

Some later Paul Blackburn: water, shade and glints of sun:

Men with shovels directed a stream

of sizable pebbles into the excavations

about young new-planted mountain ash trees

set mid-quad in the concrete

from a dump truck .

I brought back home

a single rhododendron bloom that had fallen .


Outside the cellar door, I spoke to a bee, he
danced before me, crotch to face, he checked me out, he
buzzed, I talked, he sat
in my beard for a moment . We
talked. I wanted to go inside . I told him
so . I did .

16.VI.71

Hemingway

“the long afternoon of sun”, is that from Hemingway? a short story? Farewell to Arms? or have I have imagined this or from who then? A walking route I take goes by a gated community, as I walk by the southern walls, on a late afternoon or early evening, I touch the walls and have felt the warmth, saturated into the stucco, from the sun, a simple yet compositely expressive phrase that I take stock of, passing, “imagist incisiveness” (Tanner), “if you can get to see it clear…then any part you make will represent the whole” (Death in the Afternoon).

Lo and behold

Basement Tapes, Matching Mole, front door open to the autumn evening, someone in my life, my mother’s second husband, has died at 87, I think we just live going forward, propelled, the past, that various field, is a dream where the dead are, Judee Sill singing of truth selling by the pound and she’s dead, too, her beautiful voice recorded, “it's the water in the drinking glass the tulips are in. It’s a day like any other.” (Schuyler), Hammett: "I stopped writing because I was repeating myself. It is the beginning of the end when you discover you have style."

The past month, more or less

Autumn is in the air now, and a crescent moon, too, Wilkie Collins (again), at work: data migration to open source Koha, Joe Brainard, a new James Buchan and hesitant to start, lots of blugrass and JSP Mountain Blues, Rington's tea, walking, need some more Josephine Tey (skip Ian Rankin), R. C. Hutchinson's Journey with Strangers was fantastic, lower back was out but osteopath put back into place--what a difference, other aliments remain in place, Hindemith's Requiem based on Whitman's poem, Tristan with a new mohawk, after last night's VP debate I now know who to vote for--neither.