Paul Klee - Paintings

New Grass-Talk Talk

Blanket Statements

Your Bed Says You Are Down to Earth

Outward appearances are a concern of yours, but not your primary concern. You try to take care of yourself and your home, but it's not an obsession. You are an organized and disciplined person. You do the right thing because you want to, not because people expect you to. You are not very high maintenance in general, but you are high maintenance about a few things. In relationships, you tend to be quite dominant. You enjoy taking charge. You tend to be a down to earth, practical person. You think in terms of what is actual. You are a traveler. You are comfortable anywhere, and you rarely feel homesick.

What Does Your Bed Say About You?

New Moon

Which but for Vacancy

Again today the dream. But of what?
The dream like a long slim tunnel we lay ourselves down in --
the lilies in the dust, the face that seems to shine
in the linoleum --blue-- the thing we would strip down to if --
the melting snow allowing, the faint falling-sound receding...
But the nature of the dream will not appear for us.
It lightens the air immeasurably
as if it were itself
a kind of dawn,
but only its form appears,
a stillness too elaborate
for minds like roots, minds that are roots, to comprehend --
(when what we wanted most, of course, was to believe, be loved) -- oh
_________________________________________comprehension,
such a small hissing sound it makes on this still air, that
_________exhalation,
little path in its own right
the dream lays down.
Now light through shutters on the wall
is laying the spine of a serpent
down --bright vertebrate near-interlinking
bits --its sentence moving sideways, up --
while elsewhere now again and again move their own side-ways, up,
and yet elsewhere, again, the Lord God's forming something from the
________sea-blue lime
and forcing breath-of-life into its face
again.
A cracked pod calls.
The thing on my wall now, slowly grows little fangs, of gold,
where safety-latch and shutter enter into
shadow-play. And I feel the tunneling rivery needs of the dream
_______dissolving,
and I don't remember how I am supposed
to keep it, keep it...
Because you see the wind is sharpening itself on rocks.
The sun is rising up against the house.
The walls are yellowing with it.
Don't you hear the faint filling-sound it makes,
bringing its birds?
It looks gigantically down.
And the ribbony avenue of the possible dream frays, thins --
what gate, where is the gate? --
and the waiting which laid itself, also blue, down in that track,
hoping to be poured, hoping to be led out like a tongue,
the waiting which had ceased to writhe -- at least grant me that --
the hoping which had made waiting its combustion --
although still wanting --
starts to dissolve as the pictures come on, the distances,
its dearest tension foaming up a bit then drying thinly off, like foam,
______in sun,
saturated quite so suddenly by the apparent strengths of the story,
appointments and well-drawn fields and, closer-up, a saucer-magnolia
where one bud, today, has just begun to rip
into view.

Onto Writing Something Every Day (like the film, Adaptation?)

To reclaim or reject, and the abundant opportunities for trying again: Linda Goodman's Love Signs: A New Approach to the Human Heart.

Sun: Sagittarius; Ascendant: Scorpio; Moon: Cancer. How appealing to find one's personal portrait written there, in this manifest uncertainty of living while thinking. When the conversation crawls away, and just before each recoils onto the hereto unrealized dream the other person mysteriously assumes a role in fulfilling, there is astrology, and links such as these. File under really surprising magazine articles, last semester's multiple choices...the things that lead us to false conclusions?

"The first thing she learned after she shocked herself by loving him, was that she didn't make a mistake in forgetting all about caution when they met. Because this man possesses enough of the stuff to supply, not just her when she runs low on it, but the entire British Commonwealth. An endless source. She'd be happier, she discovers after a while, if he'd forget about some of his own caution--but not all of it. She kind of likes the way his caution keeps her steered in the right direction when she's sometimes tempted to be overly reckless (it's nice to be saved from yourself by someone who really cares about you) but a little of his caution goes a long way with the girl Archer. Too much of it can cause her to feel closed-in, smothered, therefore--restless. It's never a good idea to make the Horse end of a Centaur restless" (452).

"But not all casual observers are astrologers. If they were, they'd take care not to underestimate Scorpio's subtle, long-range strategies, the power gained by keeping motives hidden, the effectiveness of a surprise attack when it's least expected" (515).

"Likewise, Scorpios are so gifted with the subtle talent of of appearing to give in without actually giving an inch that it may be a while until Leo recognizes the situation as another Waterloo" (517).

"She's usually unaware of the cool poise and inner wisdom she projects to others with just a deep, deep look. Most recipients of her gaze simply cringe and look away immediately, to avoid--they're not quite sure just what--they're only positive they want to avoid it. Not so the brave, stalwart Lion. Her gaze fascinates him. Sometimes he feels he's drowning in the cool, placid waters of her eyes, sometimes he feels he's learning mystical secrets by an unspoken transfer of knowledge. At other times he feels dangerously close to being swept into the storm of churning, lashing waves behind her Scorpio stare, and to a Leo that's not spooky or Halloween-scary--it's downright exciting.
...
Being a Water Sign herself, no matter how much she may desire otherwise, the warmth she feels translates itself into some degree of detached coolness, even with those she loves the most" (521).

The Keen of Winter Swans, voles and grey foxes.

The arch lesson in survival this post presupposes is entirely a metaphysical one, if such one exists. Like all we ascribe to the scurrying, mate-guarding and brooding of swans, voles and grey foxes how so far does the human's tremendous physical and emotional need ache to be satisfied at almost any cost? What I am left with is this active sense, under difficult thriving conditions, an overwintering... I am spent this evening by Louise Erdrich's poem about finality, forecasts, and of course, "the weird sisters" ...

"Three Sisters" by Louise Erdrich

Arlene wore the eyes of an old man around her neck.
Scratched porcelain, washed down
with the hot lye of his breath.

Dalona rode love like a ship in light wind.
The sails of her body unfurled at a touch.
No one could deny her safe passage, safe harbor.

Thedda, the youngest, was shut like a bell.
The white thorns of silence prickled in each bush
where she walked, and the grass stopped growing where she stood.

One year the three sisters came out of their rooms,
swaying like the roses that papered their walls.
They walked, full grown, into the heart of the town.

Young men broke their eyes against their eyes of stone,
and singed their long tongues
on the stunned flames of their mouths.

It was in late August, in the long year of drought.
The pool halls were winnowed and three men drew lots
to marry the sisters, all six in a great house.

On the night of the wedding the wind rose on a glass stem.
The clouds lowered in live heat.
We tethered our dogs.

Some swore they saw a hoop of lighting dance down in their yard.
Toward dawn, we felt the weight of lead sinkers in our bones,
walked out, and caught the first, fast drops on our tongues.

Sestina

"Without protection, you are making love to AIDS. Protect yourself."

After the meal, your wrappered skewer points to the sexual--
Related places--on the rough map of the table. Memory jolts
The level of our glasses unless our legs sit, and stand the personal
A mixing it has come to mean, and a canceling equilibrium.
Sign up for a course in the genre, because we're here leading
The questioning to make way to the fore, and placement of yes

Yes, it will be enough, duly influences too little of the yesses
The chapped flint pieces nothing else will serve, but the sexual.
So that the fire is made universal, I feel it in my skin, the leading
Edge of our technology, I see it in your eyes like having taken a jolt
Of whiskey. Finally whisked into mutual adjustment, capturing equilibrium
Again, we hover off the mark of each other's adaptation of the personal.

Prying off this layer puzzled that we come again, to our personal
Effects: imagining ourselves in them expands into a story of yes,
And I will be found dead with a copy in my pocket if equilibrium
Chances to find me, if nowhere else the unpartitioned sexual
Encounter with all that we sacrificed for it, spilling out of us, if a jolt
Daliesque, we fashion each torso into a chest of drawers as leading

As a stare. Stay in hotels, in creative silence, until whose leading
The race against loss? Life's difficulties are dependably personal
That hungry. Until a French ad campaign finds us badly jolted
Out of that stance, and trapped among hinged legs. But for the yes
On my lips, and sucking the color-drenched dreams of the sexual.
Thinking about particular realities, a big sleep to come, of equilibrium.

Disarticulates the sting (in the wrong direction) of an equilibrium
We read and write by, and beyond the breaking of all things leading
Towards their long-anticipated end, we are claimants of the sexual.
Kisses to your pink parts--before the flush of exposure, personal
Or otherwise. Confinement to any particular locale or station of yes
Yes it's a shame it might come. I am not dismayed by clandestine jolts

Of electricity we loosed into the public arena, which is just another jolt
Felt as the visceral truths, the furtive in-betweens of life-giving equilibrium,
Your hands flex nervously, or in grief? Smoothing all deformities in yes
Yes, a death wish of the species, rather what befalls the vulnerable, leading
Five cardinal points encompassing the whole question of the sexual.
Similarly covered, we slowly recover from our shared view of the personal

It is this yes, yes sometimes humane or sometimes hairy leading
Us onto further shame to make us modest, beautiful, if jolting our equilibrium--
The sexual corrects a personal sense of being recognized as our own.

Past and Present Nests