"...noise is metaphysical."
--Michel Serres

I have this week off and yet I'm full of anxiety. Truth is...I've always been anxious. A hundred books I want to read, writing projects I'm thinking about, and--you know--the countless details of everyday existence.

EXPOSURES, my long poem, a sort of excessive sequel to Vanishing Points of Resemblance, is getting closer to publication. I've read and re-read the proofs a couple of times. It's an impossible book, a book which may not win me any friends, but I believe in its unrelieved nakedness. To quote Serres again: "Whoever thinks is naked..."

I think and feel and yearn in halting ways.

Writing, for me, is an onto-epistemological project.

I'm always doing things I'm afraid of because I'm almost always afraid.

The one time I had a gun pointed at my head I went speechless. My boss who stood behind me spoke. I wasn't frightened until after it was all over. I had a similar response after being assaulted--literally thrown against a wall repeatedly-- by someone else years later.

Violence has figured in my life. I've written various fragments about some of the experiences.

I try to keep a sense of humor. I try to tamp my expectations down. I try to be kind. I often fail.

I was in a church yesterday for the first time in a long time. A niece was renewing her vows with her husband. It was a nice event but I am as allergic to religion as I am to right wing ideologues.

As human beings we live inside of all kinds of contradictions.

If I mirror you
you can't see me.

If you mirror me
what a fucking horror.