Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Rough night. Beautiful, though. The stars poking through the black bowl over my little hollow smack you in the eye with their fire of ice. I have great windows on three sides of the bed and when I awaken at midnight thinking it's morning they insist on being there for me; they won't be ignored. Odd dreams, convoluted and mashed together. My grandmother (step-grandmother, actually, but my truest relation, all the same) made an appearance in one. She had just come back from a doctor who confirmed she had an old-lady hump growing behind her right shoulder, and nothing could be done. She was very sad about this. This was the grandmother who I remember in real life at age seventy-something once said to me, "They want me to move to a retirement home. They want me to live around old people! They just don't understand that in my head I'm still 35!" Soon I must mount an expedition to see if I can find what's left of Yoda out there somewhere. He was too good for this world. I have not wept about this yet. I expect I will when I find some token of his passing. If I don't then I won't, until and unless I make a memorial somewhere. He was a key to my new life. Bringing his tiny limp body back to life over the first half of 2003 brought back my own; my strength gathered parallel to his. Lately his pale blue eyes could not handle the sun--he went around with his eyes closed during the day--and so he became nocturnal and insisted on being out all night. But his coat was so white I couldn't see how he'd keep from becoming someone's meal. Mornings you'd see him curled up in the llama's pasture, right in the center of that meadow, a bright white spot, something for the llamas to guard. If he'd come back to me I'd peel him a grape, I really would. I have some queries to send and research to slog through. I hope you are so happy today. 11:04:45 AM    comment []

Inspired by Dr. Omed and Dick Jones's similar occasional posts (or slavishly copying them), I offer some tidbits (without permission) from a column called "Out of Context" that runs in a little art monthly published somewhere in Nevada. I think the publication is called Neon but I can't be sure because I only saved out the one page and used the rest to start a fire in the woodstove, and they don't bother to print running heads or page numbers. Anyway, these are a select few. I'll use some others another day. A careless shoestring in whose tie / I see a wild civility / Do more bewitch me that when art / Is too precise in every part. --Robert Herrick apophenia: the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness in unrelated things. --William Gibson The workings of the brain more closely resemble a jungle than they do the activities of a computer. --Gerard Edelman All culture is luxury--what we do with energy left over after our material needs are met. --Georges Bataille There is no enduring emotion without syntax. Immortality depends on the grammarians. Fernando Pessoa Miracles become metaphors when we no longer believe in saints. --Adam Gopnick The truth marries no one.--Spanish proverb 11:03:55 AM    comment []