Like Folks and Fire

Several items vie for the top spot on today's agenda.

No one - and I mean NO one - works as hard as the ladies of professional rodeo.

Sortes Virgilium works as it did 30-odd years ago. It is I think my one remaining superstition and I would be hard-pressed to believe that you or God or his kid would hold it against me to be astitioned in this way. I interpret the results to indicate that I am advised to proceed as the Rutulians did, to battle as if the way were clear. This makes perfect sense as goodness knows {to mix metaphors} that I am my own barbed wire over the Belgian farmers' field of poetic conjecture, and am self-foretold that short of perfection there can only be a perfect futility. Fucking Virgil. Pre-Christian, causality-blind, bleating son-of-a bitch.

With a new manuscript comes a new though echoing silence. New, for it is birthed with hope; echoing, for I am the master of the time and place of its death.

With time comes understand and with understanding comes bafflement.

Let those who are in doubt visit Pendleton at the time of Round-Up, where prior to the Battles of the final Twelves, there will be the fly-by of the F-15's at an altitude that would strain credulity - first 4 - then 2, then 2, whereupon you will be glad they are yours, and vice versa.

Being of a piece is all I can manage for I cannot control what you imagine from your desk or front porch or what you will say tomorrow or the next day. I am largely incapable, in the classical sense of the word, halitosis.

I believe - meaning, I can only fully endorse or comprehend {though I can understand so, so, so much more} - poems and such that give every indication that they would provide themselves as apparent-in-themselves to intelligent readers now, 1000 or more years from now, and 1000 or more years past - either that or poems or friends, for I am still beating. In other words, Horace is our competition - always has been, always will be. I have seen nothing in the way of local or global critical or anecdotal information that persuades me otherwise. I of course am a pathetic case, having no job in writing, so I have no cause to cure. This may all be pathetic, which may be perfectly right.

Philosophy can be trusted only when uttered under duress, or in verse and absent considerateness.

I cannot recall a philospher whose signal works were not produced except under duress or, in a real sense, against their wishes.

I have noticed that writings about music are often a kind of evidence of something gone wrong, for ecstasy is a virtue among the thieves of virtue.

Another, a fifteenth book. Lord, do with me what you will. I am true to my failings and punctual at that. I see that those who know me smile at last as if having held back. You are entitled to do the same.