a series of fragments & notes about Chance, Fate, Context & Intention by Dara Wier
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“It is an intuitive journey that takes us through the killing of a
parakeet with an ax, and the thinking of shrinking something out
of existence, and registering pigeons at a hotel, and a dog stuck
to the ceiling by its back, not to mention a room overgrown with
grass...But these are only stations of the journey. I'm not sure the
journey has a psychological end; it probably has only a mortal
end.” (a salute to Russell Edson, it's him talking)
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of the many many essential paradoxes poetry lets us live with, is the
one that involves the complexities associated with poetry's private
and public nature, in public it is the most private, its privacies would
not be were they not public
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as if anything written must or should justly represent, reproduce,
reiterate or reenact----- reality.
Though any writer or writing has often been praised most of all for
this recreation and reiteration, as if everything needs to be underlined
in order to be preserved for all time, or to be understood
while at the same time anything we introduce via combining anything
we gather by means of any means becomes and is reality
Which leads to our being so often asked to decide what's real---in
surprising ways this underlying broadly articulated notion keeps being
asked of anyone who writes (well not everyone, but too many)
what reality anyway......... is this one, that one, another one, some
other one..........
which quickly is answered: it depends on who you are
That is, that reality, that reality over there,
the one something written can point toward
or anyone standing can walk over to.
Writing's not ever only just been
or aspired to be just any superficial mirror.
But facing mirrors will land one smack in the middle of the illusion of
infinity.
(in the depths of the mirror though.......that will come on as another
story altogether) (a traditionally told looking-glass story)
(how our current rearview mirrors come with warnings that objects in
mirror are closer than they appear) (and in the convex mirrors, other
edges come near to us)
Referring to what in an everyday way, casual way, comes to us with
"real" or "reality" attached to it,
things related to that may turn out to be the least things
I've heard how people like to say, as if this is big compliment: she
really captured the reality of that
situation.....place......time...woman....man....animal...psychological
dynamic.....impossibly vivid situation
As if reality were fugitve, something feral, ever shifting, elusive,
maybe illusive-- as in now-you-see-it-now-you-don't
which it is
Still, there can be a case made for it being itself just as it is with no
need of capture or reiteration. Who ever says there is THAT need?
On the other hand, nothing beats saying the obvious when it comes
to seeming to say what's marvelous
Another case can be made that what writing should do in fact, for
ever for why not----is defy reality, is to transform reality beyond
recognition, to disguise reality, to trick it out or make it once again
strange
What's the point
of it all (one big huge time capsule----not to knock the concepts time
capsules embody) (a good time capsule is such a human thing)
if what's to be found in writing isn't something we find nowhere else?
It's not realistic, there's no evidence in reality, no justification to say
we are immortal and yet there are the writers in prose and in poetry,
in every kind of mixture.......hinting how after the first death there is no
other means nothing if not after the first death there ought to be a
clearly marked escape route, or at the very least a very good
consolation prize
and there it stands something behind which there is nothing
impossible
That writing can act as if we are immortal, or at least let us imagine
what forever and timeless infinity seems to be------
that we defy gravity, that time isn't the time that we experience in
everyday day to day ways
(and like, the depths of a mirror, the depths of time encompass
forever in the here and now) (and in like there is possibly everything)
(that mirror)
to not take infinite immortality literally, please as if it could
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if we lived before----what if we pretend we do, but we don't,
if we could, but we can't,
if we imagine we do, and we can--suppose
we lived before this sentence, not this one, the one coming, had been
composed and distributed: --before this sentence (a sentence about
how bad its author feels about Karl Ove's popular books):
"The novel strikes me as a giant selfie, a 3,600-page blogologue. Like
mumblecore or reality television, it’s premised on the notion that all
you need to do is point your camera at the world and shoot." (I think,
apologies for not knowing exactly, this was in THE NATION)
What if we lived without/before selfie, blogologue, mumblecore,
reality television and without going too much retro math, our camera--
- what would that sentence be saying? What if instead some other
things would have to be said? Because all that wasn't available.
What might these be?
(aside: the opening 30 or 50 or so pages of Ove's first book of his
many booked sequence makes for very very good reading and so
it goes, those few pages set a precedent by which all of the books
benefit from a boy's imagination, curiosity, nearness to mystery and
sensitivity or susceptibilities) (I'm a fan of those books)
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When ever I encounter in my mind, or see and understand to be
revealed
by the words of another,
how pervasively we can't do without this reminds me of, I worry.
I worry how thoroughly the high speed transformation of one thing
into another blurs both (also can highlight commonly embodied or
high contrast qualities, yes this same action produces some terribly
fine combinations)
Think of how fearfully one hears: you remind me of
your________________ (you decide who or what to denigrate
in this little verbal equation)........, your work reminds me of
____________________ and there it all disappears in that single
minded concoction.......
on the other hand....
(when is it good to recognize how two things, two people resemble
one another............) (it feels deep down animal instinct necessary,
say before we had names, before we had mug shots, before we had
human language, we still needed to recognize what it was we were
encountering...........)
if something doesn't yet exist, how foolish is it to speculate about it?
which makes no sense
making no sense, spending time in the zones of so-called
meaninglessness
why poets have especially loved how Keats said how negative
capability is.........of course.....of course a poem will doubt, will
embody uncertainty, will yearn to be near mystery...............it can't do
otherwise
without these qualities and be its better self...
it's a poem, for god's sake, it's going to be ornery, perverse, difficult
(as in difficult child not as in difficult class assignment),
impossible to pin down, annoyed by categorizations, willful,
dangerous, striking, arresting, purposefully inexplicable, resolutely
impossible to pin down, without a point, beyond understanding......
[To be understood......I realized while listening to two painters and
one poet adamantly say they do not want to know what is understood
that it was being understood that to understand is a deadend,
is a sign that something, once it is understood, is over and done with
and that is the problem with that, that it is over and done with
it would be better if instead of understanding being involved with an
immediate conclusion, it instead referred to an eternal action,
as in, understanding as continuous thinking
immediate conclusions can send any artist running away for another
territory....
....because when one is assuming something is settled ----there
isn't much to do with it.........that is the conclusion, and not the
situation.........
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