Some Thoughts
"So much that can neither be written nor kept inside!"
-Tomas Transtromer, Lamento
Some thoughts will hound you to the grave.
There is no refuge from them.
In your dreams they will taunt you.
In your lover's bed they will fondle your imagination.
Running out of places to hide, overmatched and near madness, you retreat to a drawer in the attic where a lifetime of forgotten prose resides. Resting among the pocket calculator, the pocket comb, the pocket compass, the pocket knife, is the pocket notebook you have not seen in nearly half a century. You open it carefully, lest the brittle brown pages come from together, and on the first blank page you find you write: Some thoughts . . .
When asked if there were any writers he turned to now and then for "nourishment," poet John Ashbery mentioned Holderlin, Celan and De Quincey, and then James Tate "who has a pizazz that always gets me started writing." (From an interview with Sarah Rothenberg.)
Strangely enough, I've also used Tate's "pizazz" to get me going first thing in the morning. Usually it's something from Lost Pilot or Memoir of the Hawk, the latter being my favorite of all Tate's work if one excludes the selected poems volumes. Someday I will tell you why.
Otherwise I will turn to my older notes. It has a two-fold benefit: It allows me to 'warm up' to the sound of my own voice without doing damage to the day's work; and it sometimes happens that it gives me new insight into the older piece. That would be on 'good' days. The above fragment is such an older piece. Rather than leave it in the notebook I thought to use it here as an introduction to the day's post.
And now I am in that quandary referred to above. But nothing seems to work. Do I begin tearing out pages with the hope that something will strike a chord in me? How about this: "Thundersleet and thundersnow." No, no. Weather related. Doesn't everyone have those?
Or: "Windstorm overnight. The chairs are in a little gathering at the north end of the deck. We wonder if there is some kind of rebellion at hand." I remember finding that humorous. A keeper, I suppose.
Sometimes the entries are bits of dialogue out of context, sometimes in a context that I probably fully intended to develop later:
My father died several months ago. I have just learned it today from Mother:
"You are where? Peru?" "Yes," I said, "Lima".
'Well, I wanted to tell you that Jack died in August sometime," she said. I've been meaning to tell you for quite a while, but it just kept slipping my mind."
I will do that one. It is close to me.
From a newspaper article: "Now imagine talking holograms and avatars, working for you, listening politely as you blab on and on about some silly passion." There were times when I would have found that pleasing, but this one goes to the trash.
"I am still plodding along with Leaving Kansas, but intend to finish before I am 70." . . . So much for good intentions. Trash.
The children of anonymous sperm donors. They search for their fathers. All across the country the 'fatherless' children go. . . . Keep. . . . Maybe before I am 80.
The old farmer in overalls hanging from a barn beam. --Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End
That is how my great grandfather died. Of his ten children, the youngest, a girl, was killed in a buckboard accident. One of the twins died in a shootout with Oklahoma police. And one, the quiet one, grew murderous and was institutionalized for the rest of his life. My grandfather fled to Kansas where he married a lady, my grandmother, whose husband, a one-legged man, had "run off" with another woman. . . . A keeper, of course.
What I have learned today (August 2007): The Palouse earthworm is a lily-scented white earthworm, now very rare, that grows to three feet in the Palouse region of eastern Washington. . . . When I was through there as a boy nearly 60 years ago, the Palouse was miles and miles of rolling, open terrain. Now it is heavily farmed and the farmers are fighting government efforts to 'protect' the earthworm.
What becomes of the man whose whole being is focused on becoming a successful writer? "You must believe," said the fighter, "that you will prevail. If you do not believe, then you will surely be defeated. Believe and the world will be open to you."
Champagne aspirations and a beer intellect. We have to work within our limitations. Beer intellect? Then let's forget the champagne and write about beer. Cheers!
And now I am in that quandary referred to above. But nothing seems to work. Do I begin tearing out pages with the hope that something will strike a chord in me? How about this: "Thundersleet and thundersnow." No, no. Weather related. Doesn't everyone have those?
Or: "Windstorm overnight. The chairs are in a little gathering at the north end of the deck. We wonder if there is some kind of rebellion at hand." I remember finding that humorous. A keeper, I suppose.
Sometimes the entries are bits of dialogue out of context, sometimes in a context that I probably fully intended to develop later:
My father died several months ago. I have just learned it today from Mother:
"You are where? Peru?" "Yes," I said, "Lima".
'Well, I wanted to tell you that Jack died in August sometime," she said. I've been meaning to tell you for quite a while, but it just kept slipping my mind."
I will do that one. It is close to me.
From a newspaper article: "Now imagine talking holograms and avatars, working for you, listening politely as you blab on and on about some silly passion." There were times when I would have found that pleasing, but this one goes to the trash.
"I am still plodding along with Leaving Kansas, but intend to finish before I am 70." . . . So much for good intentions. Trash.
The children of anonymous sperm donors. They search for their fathers. All across the country the 'fatherless' children go. . . . Keep. . . . Maybe before I am 80.
The old farmer in overalls hanging from a barn beam. --Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End
That is how my great grandfather died. Of his ten children, the youngest, a girl, was killed in a buckboard accident. One of the twins died in a shootout with Oklahoma police. And one, the quiet one, grew murderous and was institutionalized for the rest of his life. My grandfather fled to Kansas where he married a lady, my grandmother, whose husband, a one-legged man, had "run off" with another woman. . . . A keeper, of course.
What I have learned today (August 2007): The Palouse earthworm is a lily-scented white earthworm, now very rare, that grows to three feet in the Palouse region of eastern Washington. . . . When I was through there as a boy nearly 60 years ago, the Palouse was miles and miles of rolling, open terrain. Now it is heavily farmed and the farmers are fighting government efforts to 'protect' the earthworm.
What becomes of the man whose whole being is focused on becoming a successful writer? "You must believe," said the fighter, "that you will prevail. If you do not believe, then you will surely be defeated. Believe and the world will be open to you."
Champagne aspirations and a beer intellect. We have to work within our limitations. Beer intellect? Then let's forget the champagne and write about beer. Cheers!
glwarren, 2014
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