Installment Radio

You think it is a matter of money or time or energy. You form an idea and take it for a walk, but really you are shopping. You go shopping and make a couple calls on your cell phone. Nothing has changed at the stores and, by the time you get home - nothing has changed there either.

I have been thinking about what you said or wrote. Even so - and it may be right - I am all caught up here with this project. It is not a project such as has a beginning and an end. It is not a work or even a series of works that cue off one another. I may write a title, or I may forget my place and have to start over. I cannot be confident of a final report.

The central problem here is the predominance of centrality. So what I want you to do is stand up and go straight out that door and keep walking until you find you can't go another step. This will be your life's destination, so be careful to give it a name you can remember.

No doubt, I have been given a name or names. But then I can't find in myself to ask what those names might be or to make guesses. I have already left the spot where I introduced and abandoned this point, which inevitably continues a line of thought I have never bothered to describe.

Even if I say "ritual" or when I use that word - "ritual" - I feel like I have sat down somewhere, my hands in my lap, while the world continues to operate more or less as is, exchanging handshakes and meaningful glances and generally passing me by.

Someone says, "it is time." This is a signal. People who signal are a burden to those who are willing to accept signals. All signals are equal in the eyes of those who are accustomed to work. I manage resources, energy, and anxiety. I am open to grace.

I look at decisions like air or water, in the same manner. My eyes are directed at a portion or aspect of the sky; now at an area, a point of a stream, and I can sit here forever, but I will never have anything more to say than that which I am capable of relating now.

What I describe is knowledge of the sort that is constituted of description and admits of a person's ability to put thoughts and feelings into words; providing this restriction, that the very desire to speak colors and indeed helps to form the ideas themselves - in the first and final draft, or as we cry out our slogans or seek understanding or relief.

What is parallel to another thing is not necessarily its equal; so you can see where all the questioning comes from.

Form is to thought as seasons are to memory.