old faces

I just got back to Boulder after spending the past week in San Francisco, mostly at the ATHE conference (www.athe.org) - the Association for Theater in Higher Education, one of the 2 big theater organizations and annual conferences in the U.S. Presented a paper that was received well. (Maybe more on that later when I'm not so exhausted.)

And I ran into a few former Cal PhD students from when we were undergrads -
Maya Roth, now dept chair at Georgetown (!)
Steve Tillis, now at St. Mary's in Moraga
Don Weingust, now at Tufts
Was quite lovely to see all of them again, now more as fellow "adults." Or something like that. Good people.

A Litany in Forgetting...

dreamt of an old fly last night...last thought was that of the other one in chicago...this, after the removal of all traces and sounds...O-- chocolate where art thou?

...had a chocolate croissant and cappuccino for breakfast...Dave Brubeck, Julian Barnes-keep me from talking strictly to myself...cocktail party at Joe's on Saturday...a good shot of Jack Daniel's...start reworking the script before New York...a trip to Reno next week...poker game midweek...a call from Oran...clean the room...sell the car...kiss the cat...goodnight.

bleeding off

i feel a wondrous bleeding...poison's draining off...

rusting

coming of age for the aged...ever read something your wrote and say...what?!

here's to being our worst critic. i feel the sentiment in the words but not the logic of the thought. but then again, when are feelings strictly logical? the most potent often defy straight definition...

i'll take a gander at this piece again at a later time and may be more appreciative for the slice of experience it tries to touch in the writing... it's attempting to fly with broken wings...ah metaphors, rusting metaphors...

"Lovers and Liars"

Jazz spills out from the radio with this song by Eldad Tarmu from the Aluminum Forest (1998) CD...followed by "La Vie En Rose" ...for those who insists a kind of intoxicating delusion...

Reminds me of a philosophical question: Truth VS Beauty?

Reprising Hunter Thompson...February 21, 2005

...despite chivalrian efforts...

"The man who makes a beast of himself escapes the burden of being a man."

Hunter Thompson

confederacy of dunces indeeD!

a slight ache upon waking ... two seconds later a recognition of a farce...

Please check out Confederacy of Dunces...the man committed suicide after writing something for us all to laugh about...

a clever way to unsentimentalize the pain of a farce...! VEY!

dreaming...

...herein lies the growth of new possibility...an abstract thought acts as the fundament of a new reality...all in dreaming...

lost and found

Had news...fish dead upon delivery...

coming of age for the aged--a segue

I could talk about the substance of success and the curse of the man squeezed in the middle of the pecking order; I could talk about the multiple pathways to self-recognition; I could talk about the disappointments of marriage, of the kindness of strangers, of the illusion of friendships, of the beauty of innocence impervious to the corruption of the love-starved, of hope in a song, as "Caterina in the Big City" Paolo Virzi's film debut captures glimpses of these questions enough to show us the folly of the structures on which we build our lives--for the plain truth resides in the question of power, its external and internal manifestations that govern who we are and what believe ourselves to be, insofar as these beliefs dictate our abilty to take hold of our lives in a meaningful way.

But, I won't talk about that, for I suggest you catch the film yourself at the Lumiere on California and Polk. I will talk about Chad--hanging out with Chad-- instead.

coming of age for the aged--the meat of it

Last night, shortly after the film, after the above-mentioned has been mentioned, the conversation bled into the events of the past year-- since I have been back in the Bay Area from Los Angeles-- and my next move to the east coast in a matter of weeks. In the past months, I have embroiled myself in...(how shall I put it?)...short, high-impact relationships, (go ahead, call it affairs, collisions, flings, but always at a cost, as they always do-- come on don't kid yourself.) Along this path, a significant part of me has become obscured by a notion of couple-hood wherein a deflated expansion happens. Understand of course that these people are people of substance--by that I mean, I recognized a depth in character and for most, this was not only exposed but explored and thus, gave the notion/illusion of intimacy, of a kind of recognition of two selves re-discovered in the weaving of a delicate contact. Now, as I am extricated from such alliances, (notice the passive voice) not rejected, not ejected, but unknotted, I look to what I have lain aside: my raw material, the strength of knowing what I know about myself that comes from not looking out but looking in. Understand as well, that I am no relationship-hopper. For a significant period I have stayed at my corner of the ring, kept to myself and steadied my life on the notion of the work I am capable of doing. This is who I am. Again, definitions are important, don't you find. So. Now. To once again find myself in the world of men and women, amidst questions of need, of self-expending desires, I traversed this road on clunky wheels; in short, it was a mess of a ride. Yes, there is beauty in it. I prefer Gioccometti's idolatry of life to art. He's right in my book: between the two, I'd pick life each time. As I seem to say these days: let these 'artists' starve themselves of the sun in order to approximate the image of light in a darkened room; I'd rather point my face at the burning orb with eyes closed watching the red-splotches of veins in my lids. Or, I'd prefer touch the veins on Fischer's arm and smile a bigger smile than nodding at Michaelangelo's David. These are the pleasures of breathing.

But onwards...the point of it is this...point...ah yes, no...yes: a balance must be struck about the gifts we give each other in that precise moment of recognition and the recovery of what we have forgotten about who we are in the boredom and quiet of our room.

coming of age for the aged--bones and marrow

Robin and I spoke at length about this one evening, as we attempted to unfurl our own longing for the men to whom we feel close but are far away. She kept at one point which I'll mention here: you must feel like a bigger person when you are with someone, not deflated, not shrinking. If you were, it indicates a place of fear and an approaching nothingness, both for you and the other person. You must be able to bet on the strength of the other person to pull through, and this means playing to lose, as if you have nothing to lose.

To this I volleyed back: Once our relationships end and we are on the point of forgetting, of denying, oftentimes we bury not only who they are but who we were with them; we rob ourselves of the power of the gift of having been seen at the apex of our charm. He said, 'You have a million dollar smile.' And so, you smile at the kindness of the words, not at your own beauty, never at your own beauty, but at the beauty of his recognition. You say thank you and you glow. Thank you, you seem to say, for pausing. Just for pausing. Everything gets jumbled in the rapidity of our ignoring. But then,time passes and minds change, disappointments are swallowed, anger fights to melt and you say, none of it was ever real. You sing the mantra of the disillusioned. In this song lies the greater illusion. It was real. The touch exchanged, as Grotowski questioned, is not something you wipe off or wash; it landed and so there it lives. Our mistake is in the act of purging rather than absorbing the power of what was once a touch of kindness.

Fischer you asked: would you do it again? I answered: In a second.
My answer stays, as it once landed. In a second.

Knitting up to unknottingness...

...green morphing into shades of marroon to shades of brown...that morphs into shades of green...on and on the evolution of hope to despair...back to hope again...

on a blue-skied day like this the 8-ball might be right. 'Yes' it says.

...affirmative to what?...answer morphing into question morphing into answer...on and on the evolution of hope to despair to...exhaustion.

Went to sleep last night exhausted from sweet remembrances of... an exhaustion.

Lifted

489: Friends in Need
'Sometimes we notice that one of our friends belongs more to another than he does to us, and that his delicacy is troubled by and his selfishness inadequate to this decision: we then have to make things easier for him and estrange him from us.--This is likewise necessary when we adopt a way of thinking which would be ruinous to him: our love for him has to drive us, through an injustice which we take upon ourself, to create for him a good conscience in renouncing us.'--Daybreak, Nietzsche



Now Joao Gilberto revisits on the radio...a parenthetical from a certain crossroads...

In lieu of a scarf

A Way to Love God
by Robert Penn Warren


Here is the shadow of truth, for only the shadow is true.
And the line where the incoming swell from the sunset Pacific
First leans and staggers to break will tell all you need to know
About submarine geography, and your father's death rattle
Provides all biographical data required for the Who's Who of the dead.

I cannot recall what I started to tell you, but at least
I can say how night-long I have lain under the stars and
Heard mountains moan in their sleep. By daylight,
They remember nothing, and go about their lawful occasions
Of not going anywhere except in slow disintegration. At night
They remember, however, that there is something they cannot remember.
So moan. Theirs is the perfected pain of conscience that
Of forgetting the crime, and I hope you have not suffered it. I have.

I do not recall what had burdened my tongue, but urge you
To think on the slug's white belly, how sick-slick and soft,
On the hairiness of stars, silver, silver, while the silence
Blows like wind by, and on the sea's virgin bosom unveiled
To give suck to the wavering serpent of the moon; and,
In the distance, in plaza, piazza, place, platz, and square,
Boot heels, like history being born, on cobbles bang.

Everything seems an echo of something else.

And when, by the hair, the headsman held up the head
Of Mary of Scots, the lips kept on moving,
But without sound. The lips,
They were trying to say something very important.

But I had forgotten to mention an upland
Of wind-tortured stone white in darkness, and tall, but when
No wind, mist gathers, and once on the Sarré at midnight,
I watched the sheep huddling. Their eyes
Stared into nothingness. In that mist-diffused light their eyes
Were stupid and round like the eyes of fat fish in muddy water,
Or of a scholar who has lost faith in his calling.

Their jaws did not move. Shreds
Of dry grass, gray in the gray mist-light, hung
From the side of a jaw, unmoving.

You would think that nothing would ever again happen.

That may be a way to love God.

Love,
Rocelyn