stories I tell myself

When I was seven, I embodied the pop ethos of the day: Batman on a bike with boxing gloves - I had only begun to face off with the army of signifiers that "want to stuff the subject" in Lacan's terms. Inherently I understood the truth of Tao - to do without doing - that the very act of attempting consciously would be defeat. Taoist Batman doesn't use violence to fight, instead acting deferentially he undermines the kingdom of violence through strong kindness and moral imagination

my great great great grandfather was crossing the Atlantic when he was swept over board in a fierce storm. When he regained consciousness he discovered himself in a house in Philadelphia - being cared for by Quakers. He had forgotten his family in Devon, forgotten the wife and infant son left on board the Intrepid (which eventually reached Savannah). He grew up trading in dry goods - eventually marrying and raising a family - the first 25 years of his life a mystery he never penetrated

I developed a method of test taking where I ceased studying at some long interval before the test; I realized that anxiety took energy I needed for thinking and recollecting. The answers were always there when I let my mind relax. Frenzy, obsession and worry are too often credited as studying - I found staying clear of people psyching themselves out to be helpful. Finally I discovered that I could love any subject, no matter how foreign, and loving it helped my mind embrace even the obscure and difficult elements, so called. It helps to stay away from people who complain how they hate a class or a teacher. At test time, take a moment, breathe, listen for the first seconds of frenzied scribbling and paper shuffling, close your eyes and descend with pencil upon the page like a swallow landing on a sill

I wait and move the brush along; waiting should not preclude painting, making marks; waiting moves even as I wait - that I should find something more than a mere answer. Blanchot's remark that the answer is the malady of the question obtains now more than ever: the world is full of answers for questions only half understood; we are fountains of answers for people we only half know. Alexander's answer to the Gordian knot cut short the beauty of the knot - why people in all their problematic existence find in the problems beauty? Stroke after stroke, wash upon wash, lines hatching thoughts.

visiting Cezanne again today to see what he has to tell me - last week this watercolor told me of its life on the wall, how it tried to translate the state of nature into broken planes of color with slight over laps and gnawing fissures - it alluded to something Deleuze said about sense and surfaces - and non-sense. I was reminded of a time in my youth, alone in the woods behind my great grandfather's farm - an odd path where the road went before it was re-routed and paved: and it told me that we're always having to learn to see and how important translation is in that seeing - to find the proper sequence, the tonal phrase: so that I might describe what I see, not vaguely repeat what some ancestor said

he describes himself as flowing from the promitories of habersham to the diversionary canal of the intercoastal waterway in glynn gary glenn ross

This morning I put on a beige sock and a brown sock; when it was pointed out that my socks were mismatched, I responded, "yes, I believe that they are on the wrong feet."

On the way to the farm in Tennessee, aware that we'd need bloody Marys during the holiday, I surmised that the Krystal we stopped at must be near a liquor store. My intuition proved correct. When I was telling my sister-in-law, she remarked that Krystals seemed to be located near liquor stores in Nashville. So it could be that I have this intuition because for whatever reason there is a symbiotic relationship between tiny hamburgers and vodka - still, correlation is not causation: or so I tell myself after a bloody Mary or two

Washington was famous for chopping down cherry trees. The story goes that valley forge was clogged with cherry trees, wagons couldn't get through, people were trapped - starving, whole families - and then Washington, like a beaver with his wooden teeth, buzz sawed a path to freedom for the beleaguered forgers. No lie

after many years I can sit in a room full of people and the thing is loneliness is not even a factor - instead I feel a satisfaction, a completeness; Part of that is the realization how weak anyone is, myself included, as a placeholder of personal validation: most authorities hope to weld power over the child in us - in the end, as imposing as they seemed to us when young - they can send no one to hell, their sweaty, arm around your shoulder in confidential manner was scant cover for the seething impotence birthed inside them - and that is your principal, your preacher, your scout leader, your first boss, the dean of students et al - even as they're "bringing down the hammer" they've got nothing. Grave on their tombstones - "this is going on your record"

It's odd how Schleiermacher has come to be my favorite theologian - reading him, he's nothing like what others have described ; when I was very conservative I used to read "the other side" on a slippery slope too. A slippery slope is no where to live. I used to point out how other people's ideas put us on a slippery slope - then I discovered that I was the person on a slippery slope. What if everyone's favorite fallacy used as intellectual bludgeon turned out to describe themselves more than their targets. This holiday season I'm using the "excluded middle" so I can wear my favorite pants again.