Tag Archives: 2019

Even if I keep the Ashbery book this weekend, I’m not sure I have time, inclination, or mental energy to read it. On other hand, I did feel last night that maybe there was something the book could teach me. And I so seldom feel that about most books these days. On third hand, maybe I just buy a copy of book. And yet, the book is here, now. But if I’m more prepared to clean up than read—oh, and we gotta go get me a tux, and maybe I go to Ogle Co. Historical Society.

Dog tapped for in, after he was rolling on his back on the deck in the sun not more than couple minutes ago. (I’m back after letting him in (and then peeing)).  He tapped a 2nd time. I said, as if I were him, “I know my rights, I know the procedure.” He waits a certain number of seconds, then taps again to be let in if I haven’t moved fast enough to get him. He was all roasty from being outside.

I mean, my question about this Ashbery book is whether it really does have wisdom for me. So many books don’t seem to these days. I mean, most assertions seem banal to me now. I’m 45, and not that I know all languages or other esoteric systems (like modern physics), but I’m, well, am I looking for wisdom in other authors’ texts? Or maybe I’m just awaiting wisdom (good title, that phrase) to come to me as I write.

I heard a bit of music as I walked dog at about midnight last night. And that reminds me that I’m glad I’m not working at Byronfest this year.

[From journal of Sat., 13 July 2019, Journal 305, page 184-5]

Will Leitch praised three people he knew in their pre-success days. He quotes something as saying how your adult life is shaped by choices you made as a teenager—well, sure, but I don’t feel I was blindly holding on, in years after, to some dream I had as a teen. I feel more like I was becoming—well, finding and becoming, sorta simultaneously—who I was, and sure, I write, as I did in high school, but not the same thing, nor the same way. But somehow I wasn’t jealous of these people Will praised—even if he almost seemed like he was jealous, his praise too effusive.

Anyway, yeah, this notebook’s paper definitely isn’t as thick (or ready for water color) as the 130-lb. paper of previous journal. But that’s OK, too. I went really light on the water today, too, and still it seeped into page below.

Will’s formulation that these three he praised kept going when others fall away from their early plans seems a little facile, I’d say.

I walked dog to park on this chill morning—we left here about 7:40, breeze from east, I had my C____ coat on and put hood up. And I got a little upset in my own mind about a dude—the owner of ___ …, letting his dog off leash (as I’ve seen him do before), and I saw his dog poop in northeast corner of park as dude walked ahead, not picking up the poop nor even seeming to see it.

And I’m venting here in journal rather than yelling at dude in real life. And I could let this whole thing go, but let me say this: I talked myself down from being upset. What worked best was to note that I felt upset and not try to say I was wrong. I was bothered by the thoughtlessness—others use this park, too, buddy—and the unfairness—I pick up my dog’s poop—everyone should do his and her part.

But I didn’t really wanna cause a scene. We all live together. I don’t want to dread seeing him in park in future. Also, my yelling at him—or even any gentle correction of him—wouldn’t likely improve his behavior. So, yeah, I debated this as I walked the last 2/3 of the trail. On the first third, I’d picked up (in a bag already containing some Sam poop) some small-dog-asshole-gauge poops. And I started thinking I was a good person for picking up after that neglectful dog walker. But I told myself to do the good deed (if you choose to do it, do it) without condemning (mentally to myself) the person who did the wrong thing.

[From journal of Sat., 5 Oktober 2019, Journal 310, pages 4-5]

A couple times I’d prepared, within 30 or 40 seconds before the 5:00 minute mark on the countdown, to give the “You have 5 minutes remaining on this section” announcement and then forgotten when the time got closer. C___ was the “Room Monitor”—I was technically the “Proctor”—and she did the announcement once and she reminded me a couple other times.

I’d feel this was a sign of bad (or worsening) memory except that I don’t think that’s what was happening. I think this was one of those situations where I’m a new mind at each moment of consciousness—that I awake with a new mind, and that new mind doesn’t include the old mind’s thought/intent. By “waking,” what I mean is that each crystallization of a new thought (an image/metaphor I’ve used before) is a new mind, is a new moment of consciousness. Each thought is a new mind, rather than a mind having/hosting/birthing a thought.

Shoot, I had another thought I had wanted to write—but then, as I just wrote, my mind awoke to/crystallized around a new thought (in a new moment, or just a new moment?) and that previous moment’s mind is gone—and yeah.

I see pinkish-orange (quite pastel) stripes across the northeast sky. I pulled a journal (#205?) from March 2015 to read while I pooped this morning. It’s chatty, not super intense or direct-to-the-point (whatever the point may be). But that chattyness is what makes the journal seem intimate.

[From journal of Weds., 10 April 2019, Journal 299, page 189-90]

I read article last night at The Atlantic that referred to an idea that hunter-gatherers used their teeth harder to chew rough foods (harder than the agriculture types later) so maybe their jaws didn’t line up with overbite like ours now so maybe they didn’t have “f” & “v” “labiodental” sounds—which theory would be a challenge to linguistics, which has had this idea that there aren’t new basic sounds—originalism?

[From journal of Fri., 15 March 2019, Journal 298, page 117]