Many cloudy days this month started dramatically. 6 March 2023.
Sometimes, when I have a conflict with someone, I want the victory, the revenge, as if I want the story to play out soon! But I also know that there is no story. There’s no story to live — conflicts take time, which most stories edit out, and we see the story only afterwards. Do what you need to do, but otherwise, relax, lay back, watch what happens. I remind myself, “we’ll see” [the story told in Charlie Wilson’s War]. [6 March 2023]
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Many cloudy days this month also ended dramatically on the sky-screen. 7 March 2023.
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Lots of birds on the roads or road sides this snowy morn. [10 March]
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A pheasant who greeted me on several afternoon home-commutes at nearly the same spot on a rural road. 8 March 2023.
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Lovely snowy scenes this overcast morning. I kinda want to take pics but also, I’m enjoying just being in, seeing, this scene, this version of physical reality. And photos are just images — they can’t convey being there, being in the snowscape. [10 March]
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Snowy March road. 9 March 2023.
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Sometimes I think I could/should sort thru my photo files (digital pics) and get rid of the extras — and yet, it came to me tonight, I might as well keep them — they’re the raw material for when I go back and look at old stuff. I mean, if I didn’t keep my old writings and art, etc., I wouldn’t have the raw materials I use (sometimes — not all the time) to find things to publish, to re-edit (crop, etc.). My photos and writings are like the fabric mom saved for her play costumes, or wood my stepdad saved for carving — I don’t want to get rid of my stockpile of materials! [12 March]
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A copper birdhouse among snows. 11 March 2023.
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It’s lunch time, during which I’d been looking at a poem and some pocket pages notes online. I’m an artist whose medium is ideas (and texts, ideas as expressed thru texts). Sometimes visual artists will say they need an idea — but if they get an idea (say, of what to sculpt — an apple, say) and make clay into an apple shape, then that thing they made, though, doesn’t need to be an idea. It’s now a sensory object — an object perceived not necessarily as an idea, but as a sensible object. [13 March]
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Dramatic color contrasts in images — perhaps this is similar to juxtapositions in literature? [13 March]
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Contrasty afternoon sky. Ogle Co., Illinois. 13 March 2024.
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An idea slipping from my grasp [14 March]
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“This is what I do” — I try to be humble in any claims I’d make about what my art could do for others. But I like my art — writings, pics, drawings — and I’m pleased that I have found who I am as an artist — I’m pleased that I like what I’ve made. [14 March]
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Silence could be congruent to darkness. But also, maybe not. [14 March]
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Roadview west, nuclear generating station in background. 14 March 2023.
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A student asked why do we have bad words. I could’ve said, do you want to hear your grandma say the “eff” word? If she does, she’s tough. You may wish she were nicer. I’m reminded of how I wanted my farmer grandparents to be able to dress up [for certain occasions — and they did. By acting normal, fitting in, they didn’t let me down]. [14 March]
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I had to be dissatisfied (in my 20s, 30s) — being dissatisfied with what exists and seeking new sorta is my niche! I wished, in my 20s and 30s, I could find an art, a practice, I liked, found satisfying. It took me ’til my mid-40s to do so (to recognize that the journals and pics I was already doing and making was my art). But that’s OK! In retrospect, I was doing what ended up in me being satisfied. [14 March 2023]
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I can acknowledge that I’m not special within certain contexts (Jeopardy contestants, say). But I am still special (if I want to think of myself that way, as special) as a living, conscious person, as an artist, a sensibility, an observant thinker and writer. [16 March]
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A few years back, I liked the idea of samizdat literature — tho I didn’t want the repression that made it necessary. But the commercial publishing system in the U.S. is something too that might need to be undermined by samizdat, not merely because it’s a big commercial system (and ideas and feelings shouldn’t be controlled by any system), but because … most of the ideas of this publishing system are filed down to pablum — sharp edges of ideas worn down, chopped off in order to fit a text into a known form. I don’t even mean political ideas are repressed, though maybe they are. I mean existential ideas! Personal ideas are ignored! Why shouldn’t each person have one’s own literature? My body of work as a whole realm of texts only few have seen — and maybe that’s cooler than having a mass-market book. I make my books one at at time and make one, maybe two, copies. I can have a readership that way. And I should correct what I said. I don’t want to do a technique or project just because it’s cool (though cool — as new Quality! — is a factor). I like the idea of a whole alternate — or many alternates — to the mainstream ways of thinking and knowing all writing! (This note may seem manifesto-ish. It feels like a manifesto to me!) [17 March]
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I’m not sure it really is samizdat lit that I want. Maybe what I want is to leave behind any and all interviews, profiles, all that persona-of-the-writer bullsh*t. [17 March]
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Ice near creek. 20 March 2023
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When someone else seems to like me as a person, it feels nice — that person seems to see me as being almost as valuable, important, as I see myself! These are social values? [23 March 2023]
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Beaver-bent tree near an Ogle Co. creek. 20 March 2023.
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My journals, my other writings (school assignment freewrites, etc.) — my writings as a body may seem fragmented. It maybe seems whole in my mind but only recent stuff does? I forget the older texts I’ve made. A historian, after my death, would have the whole body (more-or-less the whole) body of texts to look through at once. [23 March]
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All my history-thinking (what it was like in earlier eras, why certain things happened, etc.) is a bit magical as compared to freewriting my journals, stream-of-consciousness being alive! [23 March]
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My kindergarten purples.
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How shallow are merely clever (and mock-epic, mock-genre) works. Journals at least are honest — a person thought those. [23 March]
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All the time, remember to say less — especially less lecturey-telling. Let people find things (draw conclusions) for themselves, as a former writing mentor of mine once advised me. Iconoclast: to be a writer who says little. [30 March 2023]
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My pheasant friend and a nuclear generating station. 30 March 2023.
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Living — continuing to live — is messy. Our houses, animals’ burrows: we need food and water from the physical world and we need to poop into the world. [31 March 2023]
MonkeyMoonMachine 
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