⊕ My dog, Gracie, was going around the pile to get [flying disk toy]. Her spatial powers, prediction. She tried one spot, couldn’t get there, didn’t try any others, went right to an opening on the other side of the wood pile, a little path in. [Page 3, 16 March 2006]
⊕ Random lists of words: There’s no meaning there, and yet, what’s valuable is the sounds of the words, the interesting juxtapositions and metaphors/comparisons, shaking your established concepts. [Page 83, 23 March 2006]
⊕ School trains people to be not-themselves, to play roles. That’s all others could do–no teacher is needed to tell you to be yourself. [Page 89, 24 March 2006]
⊕ “Earl” show last night was funny but didn’t really make me laugh. Intellectually funny, but is it possible to be intellectually funny? [Page 93, 24 March 2006]
⊕ If people go to the city to Become Somebody, to Make Something of themselves, maybe people who stay in small towns by choice are trying to Be Nothing, no one, to not make anything of themselves. Sure, some want some attention—big fish in little ponds. Maybe an ambitious person in a small town is an anomaly, square peg in round hole, etc. But maybe it’s not even that—maybe I’d like living in a smaller town, maybe I’m not really one of the Ambitious. I’d just like to live in a college town. Or maybe I am ambitious, in addition. [Page 73, 22 March 2006]
⊕ Coyote—heart, eye, C-section. [I think this note refers to memory of dissecting a coyote my uncle had hunted during my biology class in fall 2002. Guided by a biology teacher who knew far more about dissection than I did, we cut out and looked at the coyote’s heart and eyeball. A student in this high school class said the chest-cavity smell reminded her of her C-section.] [Page 87, 24 March 2006]
⊕ I was wondering if, in a sense, only ideas matter, if only the judgments of others matter–the taste-makers, the givers-of-cultural-value that the article on book prizes talks about: professors, critics, curators, etc. Books don’t have inherent (intrinsic?) value except as paper. Walking into grocery store this morning, I saw a newspaper and was drawn to it, to examine it, like it was a fascinating object, but it is just a paper with symbols. (This idea’s an example, an instance, of an idea echoing and rolling through my mind. Laundry was nice to do this afternoon because it was not mental.) [Page 127-131, 30 March 2006]
⊕ Tone—how people read poems, you can tell when they’re ending. [Page 85, 23 March 2006]
⊕ The experience of learning to write each poem: writing a poem is learning (attentively, recursively, inductively—you’re not telling the poem how to be, you’re learning what it is, trial and error) how to write that poem. You’re sorta passive—involved, attentive, but you’re not controlling the process, the experience. (This isn’t entirely my idea; I read someone else say that each book teaches its writer how to write it.) And it’s about the process, the learning—that’s the value, not in the poetry commodity. I wouldn’t have said this last year. Last year I would’ve been afraid to tinker with first drafts—but that’s missing the point of the experience. I think that I thought, until recently, that I wanted to have this Ability to Write Poetry—this talent, like Superman has flying ability, to whip out poems with a flick of the wrist. No: I now conceive of writing poetry as learning to write poetry, entering the creative experience, entering creative mindspace and playing. And somehow that makes it easier than thinking of writing poetry as an Ability, a thing either you have or don’t have. Being willing to engage the poem. And the other thing: being done all the time. Moving in wholeness. Not thinking I have to get the poem to some perfect level. [Page 47-57, 21 March 2006, 5 p.m.-ish]
⊕ It’s boring to see kids’ journals filled with same word over and over. There’s no surprise, no change, not even a possibility for meaning there. It’s boring to look at. Little value in looking back at those pages. Even dull pages that say things like “I’m bored today, did that yesterday” have at least some interest for me as a reader. [Page 69, 22 March 2006]
⊕ 5:33 How our first reaction to city is how different the people look (from people in the small town where I live)—handsome and trim and well-dressed and having real jobs. They look like the people on TV! (M said she had that reaction on a prior visit to Chicago; I had it this time.) [Page 155, 30 March 2006, I think]
MonkeyMoonMachine 