Judith Butler

Although we are compelled to give an account of our various selves, the structural conditions of that account will turn out to make a full such giving impossible. The singular body to which a narrative refers cannot be captured by a full narration, not only because the body has a formative history that remains irrecoverable by reflection, but because primary relations are formative in ways that produce a necessary opacity in our understanding of ourselves. An account of oneself is always given to another, whether conjured or existing, and this other establishes the scene of address as a more primary ethical relation than a reflexive effort to give an account of oneself. Moreover, the very terms by which we give an account, by which we make ourselves intelligible to ourselves and to others, are not of our making. They are social in character, and they establish social norms, a domain of unfreedom and substitutability within which our “singular” stories are told. (Giving an Account of Oneself 20-21)

from The Geographical History of America

by G. Stein


Volume I

Money is what words are.
Words are what money is.
Is money what words are
Are words what money is.
There can be no romance without nature, there can be no money without words.
There can be nature without words.
Nature is here used in the sense of natural scenery and what land is.
And so nature is not what money is. (461)

indiscriminately

or wander

each space according

fragments

having not been

an array of detail

layered placing claims

each settled point

lingering

wander

complete

ancient timing
unraveled
whisper
over
colored flags
the unheard
stuck in my throat
smoke
flawless
i am always falling down
toes
or radiance
unhinged
bend at the waist
further
into the earth
whisper your
treasure
laden
cartoon
images
the narrator
translates broken scenes
recalled (remember take back etc)
her character hitchhiking across
states angles colors
of flags
whispering
prayers
against time
disperse

from Writing Down the Bones

by Natalie Goldberg

Go Further

Push yourself beyond when you think you are done with what you have to say. Go a little further. Sometimes when you think you are done, it is just the edge of beginning. Probably that's why we decide we're done. It's getting too scary. We are touching down onto something real. It is beyond the point when you think you are done that often something strong comes out.

lucid dancing scattered

an orchestra leaves

whipped pasted wet

against ambition

faltering flagrant attempts

he said

consume or be

wasted return over time petals fall

over his tone marking time

one leaf or

another

lift lament red petals against

horns sound the dramatic finish

fall scattered dances where

otherwise would waste

intention carefully

orchestrated until such time

minus attention

muted shades

falter

or

cling

rapid

an arc of orange

cleverly layers a wild

union

of sorts dangling

just before

array

misplaced

a road map of any

state

curls over layers

colored

blank

a voice solid

deep

in a memory

still happening

arc among

wild blades

hue

pasted

clever

orange

before

voice (mis)heard

that once

winding off the map

flames

behind ever having

announced

union

curls

solid

clever

a blade leans

await

past reflected

here

intonation

sound of

a greek myth

set to

voice

kickin

a new tale

recitation

against lyric

flow

make each word

stand slam

consonant

sliding

assonance

alliterate

characters

quenching

kickin

beat this

barely

listen

off

the

page

Gertrude Stein

more from the Geographical History

Now you take anything that is written and you read it as a whole it is not interesting it begins as if it is interesting but it is not interesting because if it is going to have a beginning and middle and ending it has to do with remembering and forgetting and remembering and forgetting is not interesting it is occupying but it is not interesting.
And so that is not writing.
Writing is neither remembering nor forgetting neither beginning or ending.
Being dead is not ending it is being dead and being dead is something. Think of any crime of course being dead is something.
Now and that is a great American contribution only any flat country has and can be there that being dead is actually something.
Americans are like that.
No Europeans and so no European can ever invent a religion, they have too much remembering and forgetting too much to know that human nature is anything.
But it is not because it is not interesting no not any more interesting than being drunk. Well who has to listen to anything. Any European but not any American.

Gertrude Stein

from The Geographical History of America or the relation of Human Nature to the Human Mind


Part IV

The question of identity


A Play

I am I because my little dog knows me.
Which is he.
No which ishe.
Say it with tears, no which is he.
I am I why.
So there.
I am I where.


Act I Scene III

I am I because my little dog knows me.


Act I Scene I

Now that is the way I had played that play.
But not at all not as one is one.


Act I Scene I

Which one is there I am I or another one.
Who is one and one or one is one.
I like a play of acting so and so.
Leho Leho.
Leho is a name of a Breton.
But we in America are not displaced by a dog oh no no not at all not at all at all displaced by a dog.

The Clem 2

The Clem 1

eclogue

in order to reciprocate

we were talking about concrete

details

an urban setting

history in the present

(he was shot for appearing just

so)

respond to each line

with a new image

oatmeal

butterflies

the problem with

trash

in the city

musical quality

of poems

about garbage

political demonstrations

give something back

when even words

sounding through spaces

keep us in relation

Ed Roberson from City Eclogue

Height and Deep Song


Pulled by the full disaster's view of thrown
upward to the look-out's level
crying

from that ledge the song of what it comes
down to
but unable to jump strapped in

with the wonder the words can come up with
stripped in the scramble of birth spill--
the speechless

cover binding
the know this
on the spine

the body arrives screaming written
all over it

what breath is
then writing

more of

each hot fuss pink kills

the lyric tangled goodbye

she wrote crisp turning

trees in wind step

in time instrumental montage

speeding a beat bodies float in sync

outside of

the abstract quality of

clear paper sliding across sand

a display of chaos

wind screeching across years

of misunderstood

she curls half underneath the covers

and I think

trains passing through the dark

sound less violent

fading instead

like images without photos

that disappear over distance

the imagined

the almost

the near

potential

an arc of voice

carried distant fades

splashing shades sing along

roaring flames

a coral touch

of leaf

crumbling under

constructed words sculpted

into shapes sleeping

unsent

only as close as parallel

lines on the horizon

from Daily Tao Tuesday, 29 September, 2009 :: 41

Thus it is said:
The path into the light seems dark,
the path forward seems to go back,
the direct path seems long,
true power seems weak,
true purity seems tarnished,
true steadfastness seems changeable,
true clarity seems obscure,
the greatest art seems unsophisticated,
the greatest love seems indifferent,
the greatest wisdom seems childish.

butterflies fall like stars

oatmeal, or the truth

stolen

crack an egg, sharpen it

carry bells and twist them

into glimmering silence

pocket, sleep, imagine

the sky burning

a breathing miasma

of crows

inflated, starving

catching individual seconds

lost and floating

against every passing

inclination

it becomes apparent
that in times
turned
keep twisting to the
apparently
move further with each
reverting to
keep breathing
a defense strategy
repeats
slow down that
even now freshly
slow
a new packaging
covers the same
try the other side
what matters
twist
release everything
always in retrospect
from the inside
apparently
still
stretch
scared
face the other way
unable to hold to