It has been a while since my last post, about 6 weeks. Two factors, in retrospect: crazy work (up to 60 hours/week) but also winding out/down from the four mss I wrote/published from August 2011 to August 2012. I have painted a painting during this interlude, finished the one-year through-the-Bible reading goal I set, and with this and that was able to clear the decks so that I could look over the books today and reacquaint myself with where I was, think anew, or mull over where I am.
If I look back at previous postings I will see some plan for a long ms, and here before me is a print out of the 4 pages that served as a start. I don't see that idea being carried out, though what I might do (because we process always in new ways) is work out this fragment with the few other poems I have written since August, and publish a very brief ms - say 12 pages, which would be a nice riposte to the inflated notion of a 100 page ms. I mean to say that I do not have a clear idea of anything, but at least I am free to look, and looking, and considering what to do, rather than feeling lost in exhaustion and worry, etc. One thought I have is for a crown of sonnet style ms, or I might look in at the Princeton Poetics guide for another form or shape that wold suit this undefined occasion.
But whatever the shape, I will need a word for non-definition, and that word is contentment. I am content, or largely content, or happier than I can recall, or more at peace then I can remember. With where we (my family) are now, and our prospects, I have nothing that seriously concerns me, except to say that I am almost always concerned and for no real reason at all. I do not know why this is, or why I have fallen into the habit of feeling happy yet looking rather grim. I do not know why this is.
Looking back at the last four ms, I read poems by a man under a spell, driven, and strangely unconcerned, though I was certainly more concerned as an individual with myself and my world then. So there is no explanation of where I am and what is next. None. I take this as a kind of knowledge which, being inapplicable, is perfect - a kind of divine joke. More of my life may fall into this sphere of pure entertainment as the years unfold - so to see.
For now, the word is "Time to form the word that serves in all places at once." Not to make due or save time, but as a word can serve and perhaps must. That word is love, of course. As named, as perfected, serving for truth; not in its stead, but to a purpose.
