Kent Reads Alumni Author Series

is the series featuring me next week.  I'll be reading at Kent State University Library, 10th Floor, Room 1018, Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2-3 p.m. Am hoping peeps show up.  I'm planning on reading Zombie poems, Vanishing Points of Resemblance, Andswerving Fragmeants, and Overpainted Thresholds.  And there'll be, I'm told, a Q&A at the end.  I hope some of you come by.

"...its unseen back-side..."

"...every perception of even an ordinary object involves a series of assumptions about its unseen back-side, as well as about its background; on the other hand, an object always appears within a certain horizon of hermeneutic 'prejudices' which provide an a priori frame within which we locate the object and which thus make it intelligible--to observe reality 'without prejudices' means to understand nothing."

--Zizek, Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism

I'm very slowly wending my way through Less Than Nothing. Very slowly, but with great pleasure.  The bit quoted above is the passage I've been savoring this morning.  Savoring its acuity, as well as its erotic tinge.

*

We are
all inevitably

partial to
one another.

Yet the
parts we

are aren't
inevitably the

parts we
can read.

*

I'm struggling in this never ending political season with all the different spectrums of the truth at play in the world.  Certainties of any stripe tend to make me nervous.

*

I made a terrific Italian style soup in the crock pot yesterday.  It was composed of canellini beans, chard, fresh tomato, olive oil, onion,  garlic, chicken stock*, sage, salt and pepper. And homemade croutons.

The onion and garlic were cooked a bit in the olive oil before combining all the ingredients in the crock pot. I set the pot on high for an hour and then switched it to low for the next 5 hours.

 It was so good I ate the leftovers for breakfast.

*If you don't dig  chicken stock, vegetable broth or stock could be substituted.  Although that would probably make for a sweeter soup.

*

I am incomplete.

Reality is too.

Reality is too

Much with us.

Mess with us

And you’ll see.

"People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception."

--James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room



Beliefs of any kind are problematic.  I, for one, believe in a well-tempered skepticism about any statement of belief.  I believe I am hungover and horny.

*

"Realism does not mean that we are able to state correct propositions about the real world.  Instead, it means that reality is too real to be translated without remainder into any sentence, perception, practical action, or anything else."

--Graham Harman, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy

I believe that everyone's life is more or less fictional.  And that the  "more or less" is important. That being said, I am partial to you as you are partial to me.

*

Really happy with progress in Appearances today.  Feel like I've turned an important corner in the project. 126 segments written so far.  4 of them today!

That said, have been struggling with my depressive tendencies lately.  Which I'm thinking about a lot as I read the new biography of David Foster Wallace.

Depression, anxiety.  Have wrestled with them all of my life.  Since before I even knew what to call them.  This is not unusual, I know.  Small comfort though.

*

I'm 59 years old.  I retired from my job in public health at the end of last year.  After 34.5 years of service.  The idea was to shake off old routines, to get out from under the stress of enforcement work, etc., and to embark on the project of Appearances: A Novel in 365 Fragments.  The writing project was to be my new job, my purpose.

Of course nothing is ever simple.  Not an object, idea, plan or relationship.

Before I started Appearances I knew a little.  Not what it was going to be about.  I knew some of the elements of the constellation of characters which would populate it and I knew I wanted to try to stretch myself into a larger form than I ever had before.  To see if I could keep it up and make it interesting to myself, and--potentially-- others.  And if I could do that, perhaps I could do it one more time before I die.  That was quite literally my thinking.

It still is.

*

Reading and music have always been my salvation.  Writing threads a path between both worlds.

*

Sex is just a dream indistinguishable from writing.

*

I am a third of the way through my work in progress, Appearances: A Novel in 365 Fragments.  It's taken me 8 months to reach this point.  I'm off the pace I'd set for myself at the beginning of the year.  I doubt I'll have a first draft, as planned, by the end of this year.  But, then again, I've never seriously attempted anything on this scale before.  And I am determined to see it through.

*

Watched the great black and white noir classic D.O.A. this afternoon.

Also this afternoon found a decent used copy of Whitehead's Adventures of Ideas which I've been thinking I need to have a look at.

*

My poetry reading at Kent State is a couple of weeks away.  Am looking forward to the occasion with mixed emotions.  Trying not to psych myself out about it.

*

A pivotal question in Appearances:  "How much of one's life is fictional?"  I think it is a very important question.

*

Started, just barely, reading the new bio of David Foster Wallace:  Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story.  It looks promising.

*

Over the course of the last year I've entered two chapbook contests.  Clearly a mistake.  Kind of like playing the lottery.  I knew in doing it I was going to lose.  Still I did it.  How stupid was that?

*

At the gym this morning on the stationary bike I read the first 50 pages of the facsimile edition of William Carlos Williams' Spring and All.  It's been at least 30 years since the last time I read this text.  But I'm appreciating it at another level now.

*

Listening now to the B52s.

*

I really believe that the future of poetry is aligned with the future of philosophy.  I hope philosophy comes to realize that too--that it needs poetry and improvisation.  Of course both disciplines will need to flake off from institutional constraints and think more and more in terms of collaboration.

*

Thunder in the background.  The remnants of tropical storm Isaac have worked their way up from the Gulf.

*

The flame red gladiolas on our kitchen table mesmerize me.

*