thinking space

Bachelard, from The Poetics of Space


"For the house furnishes us dispersed images and a body of images at the same time. In both cases, I shall prove that imagination augments the values of reality."

"We are never real historians, but always near poets."

"Through poems, perhaps more than through recollections, we touch the ultimate poetic depth of the space of the house."

"Thus we cover the universe with drawings we have lived. These drawings need not be exact. They need only to be tonalized on the mode of our inner space."

or the spacial geography of
the unintended
opportunity
a counseling
or the movement shiver
of water across a puddle
under sun
we tried once
a topographic understanding
inhabited by mountains of image
and decor
but the specific leaf wanders
across town in search
of any new way
to see

brazil aug 2007

visiting belo horizonte, brazil for 2 weeks to co-teach a seminar at UMFG (University Federal at Minais Gerais)...

the hostel:

the hostel has breakfast and finally today we got up for it...
yesterday i slept 'til almost 10 i think... pretty tired... and today
we were up and out in better time... there's an open patio
between the "dining" room and our room with many plants, trees, vine growing vegetation,
some little palm trees, flowers... sort of tropical...
and the dining area (also where we sit to use the computer and work) has a big
glass door that just stays open to the outside patio...
a nice cool but fresh breeze blows around the patio this morning... temps in the 70s, sunny, perfect...


the hostel room:

tiny room with tiny little beds and a tiny little bathroom... also include a little refrigerador and a little tv...


portugese:

no one speaks english. portugese is not like spanish. sometimes i can communicate a sentence or an idea. but i can't understand any of what is said back to me. i listen to the portugese cds and read the phrasebooks... but by the end of 2 weeks i'll no little more than how to order beer and food from a menu.


the seminar course:

critical geography, globalism, urban experience... sounds good.... we're still figuring out how/what we're talking about... spending today reading and preparing to begin the class tomorrow... will post some interesting or relevant quotes that might help focus/locate the ideas for the course... selmin is good and smart and insightful... and i can talk and make things up... so i think we'll get through it alright...


writing:

i don't know if i can write any poems here. i will record my thoughts. consider images. take notes... the actual writing always comes later, on the verge of forgetting...


photos:

to come.

Cell Fragments: a reflection in color

1.

First, choose a word…paper, word, lipstick…the sky this morning breaking through before new fall light, before snow… tile, face, sound…books piled around, the Marx readers are always red. Red. Like Communism. Or Bricks. Or Christmas. Fire engine red. Infra-red. True-red. Apple Red. Red Cross. Red Herring. Pirates. Stop.

2.

The record of a language painted, textured, smeared in the history of presence, forgotten or pushed aside, its pages crumbling, turning to ash and flame. Can you remember this moment already happening, again.

3.

European revolutionaries in 1848 adopt their color, wave red flags. Later it becomes the color for Communism in Russia, China, it spreads around the world. Then fear spreads around the world, a color becomes derogatory. Commies painted red.

4.

“Reach out and sneer: Dem radicals speak to the Red States” The Register

“After reading this article, it occurs to me that Blue America sees Red America the same way Red America sees Iraq: A basically backward place full of nice people unable to destroy their own tyrants without our enlightened help. Also, the fact that they are unable to do this imperils our safety as much as it imperils their own. Perhaps this is why we are making no headway in either place...

Also, both places are dusty and full of oil.”

--punningpundit.com

5.

The red dragon on the flag of Wales. The country motto: Wales Forever. Welsh band Super Furry Animals sing “It’s not the end of the world / why?”

6.

And Redcoats. Marching through the woods. Not so camouflaged. Or the Red Badge of Courage. Stay and fight, or run away, the color of blood, and war. Or the courage of not war, other-than-war, the red badge of a future that does something different from history.

7.

Sunday, March 11. Two people (women) try to drive across some rail road tracks and don’t make it. The get around one train and collide with another. They die. Trains are held up for hours. Our 8pm train is cancelled. Getting hit by a train doesn’t get you where you are trying to go any faster. Two teens trying a challenge? Two drunk women not paying attention? Two people with music playing too loud to hear the second train? What about the flashing red lights, the white and red striped arm that you have to drive around strategically if you are trying to beat the train. Two mothers no longer waiting for two someones to come back home.

8.

Blood no longer looks like blood when the bodies from which it falls are mutilated and destroyed so completely.

9.

“Two Petaluma store employees and a shopping center customer were beaten by reputed gang members, apparently for wearing red clothing, police said Tuesday.”

“”Not all the kids wearing red clothing are committing crimes,” Captain O’Rourke said.”

“Due to its extreme nature, wearing red clothing during a negotiation or confrontation is never the best choice.”

“In the US wearing red clothing is promoted by some groups to symbolize support for or opposition against the Iraq war, or to spread awareness about heart disease. See: Red Friday.”

10.

The set sun sends back rays reflected against the sky the last moment of a spring day constructed out of time.

11.

Red and yellow hammer and sickle logo tee: $16.95 on merch-bot.com. “The logo…makes a bold statement or no statement at all, depending on the attitude of you, the wearer. This is a must for the back of every angry youth on the planet.” (note: the “logo” is on the front of the shirt, but I guess angry youths across the world can wear this shirt “on their backs.”

12.

To invoke or embody. To call a color your own. The smell of dry grass as the summer wears on and ice cream trucks slow their rounds through streets ghostly without the sound of children. Different trucks, in different shades of cool and refreshing.

13.

A wedding in India.

Chinese New Year.

A Hmong funeral.

14.

She said she has emotional memory. She sees a scene from her childhood and knows, feels exactly how she felt at that moment, watching from the window, for example, the look of the street below. He says he remembers details. Every number of every player’s baseball card from the collection he had as a kid. I remember only bits and pieces of images, some of which seem to be in my mind because I saw them in photographs. According to my mental record, I couldn’t have had much of a childhood. But on the contrary, it was full of events and emotion. I can at the moment recall the huge red sun dropping in the sky in summer when we rode in the boat across the lake, returning from an impromptu dinner picnic on the small island in Muscamoot bay. Always that huge sun seeming to stand still in our western vision, keeping the evening sky lit and timeless.

15.

A moment, spatial, layered, a spot of time etched perfectly into this immediate suggestion that generic history is peppered with particular drops of

from an essay on the color red...

VIII.

She said she has emotional memory. She sees a scene from her childhood and knows, feels exactly how she felt at that moment, watching from the window, for example, the look of the street below. He says he remembers details. Every number of every player’s baseball card from the collection he had as a kid. I remember only bits and pieces of images, some of which seem to be in my mind because I saw them in photographs. According to my mental record, I couldn’t have had much of a childhood. But on the contrary, it was full of events and emotion. I can at the moment recall the huge red sun dropping in the sky in summer when we rode in the boat across the lake, returning from an impromptu dinner picnic on the small island in Muscamoot bay. Always that huge sun seeming to stand still in our western vision, keeping the evening sky lit and timeless.

"when i touch your skin, or hear singers in the dark, i get so electric..."

--mei mei bersenbrugge from Heat Bird



some summer writing exercises...see below....

story

she runs right in front of the car at the moment i am spitting a cherry seed out the window, juice slipping down my face, no time to reach for a tissue or find the brake quite fast enough. she came from out of no where, like a drunk at the corner of cass and the fisher freeway yelling at no one and stumbling into the street to fight with the hood of my car (last week). this week: wildlife. my metal and her fur collide and then separate in an instant. i slam the brakes just as she looks at me to realize the mistake of her impatience, like the ipod clad pedestrian causality in nyc who knew only after stepping too confidently off the curb. unlike the oblivious urban trekker though, she is down and then back up in an instant. the stop is immediate and skid-free, the hit quick and short, the closest thing to blood shed is the cherry juice dripping from my lips to my new fancy summer shirt. but unlike the drunkard without reflection, she picks up, carries on, goes back to warn the others about their future of impending technological doom.

night school

fluorescent light blocks out the dusk that threatens to put us all to sleep, notice broken clouds grey in part illuminated in part almost pink above the tree dusk creeping around the clock while we try to fit in every story before parting. what evening light comes between vertical blinds, at an angle, blowing with air from the fan, clanging plastic blinds disturb spontaneous conversation, or a question, addressed out loud, while what was clearly lit by dry warm sun all afternoon turns soft like under the gaze of a particular lens, and buildings melt together with their contexts, while we listen to explanations of mysterious stories convoluted by language and movement in multiple directions, like on days I pack bags with folders and books from places all across town.

the broken clouds remind me to sleep fast, run slow, learn to wade through the moving dusk

paste

groove

solid

red brown earth tone

laminate

tea

shimmer

perpendicular

wonders across blue

waxed fingertips hair-free

shimmery passage of stinging

skin the dry humid pressure

against aging veins of

my hand pull

at an exoskeleton

(external)

ragged and cringing

parsley

or some solid caffeine

sliced

a thermometer laced with fruit

mint

whiskey

cold and chewy

against the heat swimming

through a pita

with cheese

knees sweat in every direction

basil, garlic

circulate

through what is left

keeping me from

melting

apart

a walking measurement

a spider

a text

who forgot walking or light

intervals, and the king

of missteps

in france the bald examine light

interpret intervals

measure traffic and

the spiders who forget

how to breathe

the plush must be worn away

--lyn hejinian, from My Life

green leather, felted, ragged, having forgotten any specific time of day. the photo, of the girl, on her couch. light damages the color, (dis)articulation. an image disconnected from its own story. wears thin like the tales you give of someone’s history, and call them my own. the indeterminate color of overused age. it can only be this, without a fuzzy understanding of where we once were.

returning to chaato street

after ashbury’s leaving atocha station

the cold sugar crackled under the book

disturbing color and reminding her

above all

listening for it –

we later…

and the layered ducks

the can, falling over trees, in order

for aggression and religiosity

to fold

inward over particular participants…

strike

the yard is your resting place

and broken layered green

a visual dog calls out

for compensation discomfort

or my inexact concrete pounds

explode earthly change

and flowers

in opposition to

across from the morning

hauling chemical abuse

the sink falling from the wall

slowly they separate

chewing the pipe

before we realize electricity –

cars enable sight

orange buckets of rain

one drop holding fast to the lens of her red glasses

every morsel crumbling to the bottom of the foil bag

intricate beaded sparkling stones lying at my feet

ink falls in straight and curled lines across a day

tile floor spilled thick with cherry coke

the gel pen lingers on canvas, sparkle language flows

on carla harryman’s memory play

dreams of an adult

thinking she is a child

thoughts – characters – animals

in vivid detail

memory stored inefficient – computer development of memory – evolution in world –persona – characterization – original creatures – memory moving through time

instruction – patterns – separating parts – fish from bowl

child recalls an event

traumatic etc. memories

movement between child – adult – understanding – language

language poetry goes disney

the way you say vs what is said

or

the articulation of self in context

the shot sent scratch across a highway

march 3

a shot, a highway,

and the eggplant shaded,

a frog, mingle around

the billboard –

await jose

and scratch at the dirt

3 poems

after Bin Ramke and others

plastic lice bisects an uncle skewed

blind dust

toil asparagus lice

skid blind

what have you

uncle

botanical blackbird

is the same as

or circulate among

electric

blind uncles spend light

a botanical apparatus skews

the well-groomed toil

dust skids across

the image of a blackbird

bisecting lice

grass

infinity

what you can’t see

smell

asparagus

asparagus dust

and the mention of

skid

skew

a blackbird

what the blind uncles couldn’t have known

toil botanical

lice and light spent

bisect the grain

of plastic wood

from PAMELA: A NOVEL by Pamela Lu

“…since the main challenge of contemporary life rested not in going out and identifying the “there,” which was everywhere, but in discovering a “here” that wasn’t “there,” for this “here” was slippery and always seemed to be somewhere else” (21).

“For what other reason would cartographers design a building map with the highlighted phrase “You Are Here,” accompanied by a large arrow indicating the place you were supposedly standing…Where does this map get off, telling you where you are or aren’t at the moment…Or consider the point itself: Where exactly is “Here”? At the exact point indicated on the map?...And consider the ever-present tense of the phrase “You Are Here”: If you walk away from the map, are you still “Here,” as the sign says? If you leave and come back in a week, does this mean you’ve been “Here” all along?” (22)

“…we continued to examine the situation from all points of reference while we were still inside that very collision and even after we escaped it, which in actuality we never did, since we were perpetually moving from one near-collision to the next, or finding ourselves in situations of existence which, no matter how hard we tried, made no sense at all. This sensation of whiplash suggested that we were moving much faster than ourselves when in actuality we could barely keep up with ourselves, and when in fact our generation was, by all popular accounts, going nowhere” (23).

from "META-LIGHT ON FILM"

in response to / a conversation with DuPlessis' DRAFTS

4 (IN) Which

"How white "all color" the color / of luminous death"

white death radiates unleavened

lifting cities elide the spectrum

of language spoken

"articulate a blank blanked space, a dotted dotty line"

moves by way of perception on a page of noted / pieces flake

onto, fall off the edge, eliminate margins what refuses here

to circulate circumnavigate

the binary

"each line is an inter; there is no action"

interstice / interstitial

in which there is no (character, plot, life-changing ring tones glittering) but think "otherhow" (yes I know you are listening)

digress in order to depend on sentiment -- in other words the shimmering ink spreads under the puddle dissolves each word

"inside the paper of the page / the iris watermark I suck"

" a brush flick of / shimmer" (I swear I used this word before turning the page)

"amid which nuzzle worms and shaking dew."

"cherry words" sprinkled over salad homemade dressing tells each story of how we came to be clever ugly cruel each crack in the sidewalk undisturbed (I can see the words before they appear control the page with my thoughts) patterns reflect moods of sky and social action

"on which words could be feeding the cow / inside the ruminant middle."

but the images clash here as I trip over the waves of possible action beheld in subsequent syllables others following others following ourselves folding our words into the palms of hands de-coded, uncolored

"the whole structure of transcendence" (show this)

BOLD BRAVE

a nice image is, simply, nice

show the juxtaposition of intersection and blasting

simultaneous. Require the detail of specific spots of memory

a scene I have constructed to pull toward

this present

an instant horizon imagines how to change what has already

but may not have to

always

to blast this or she

was never listening

when the original events were told

in verse

form

(pause: how to work in space of breaking

out of this pale face)

(the words fall off the edges flakes slipping away to the floor or where

blow around float away)