Method Trivention: 2

When one is a certain age and a thing works, you may have the emotional latitude to suspend that operation and see what happens. This is fasting. You can fast or limit with respect to anything. The key is to technically suspend.

A certain age, and likely you do this to get healthy, or to see whether other, circulating ideas might apply in your case. You will do this once, then again. Not on a schedule, because that too would be a thing ripe for the fast.

No, the operation, the method, is a form you have adopted. But you put it to the side. You cleanse your life of this thing. If you can, you will live without it. You are determined to allow exactly this change. To live in the river of cleansing, the water - never pure, you understand, but more pure - rushing through you.

You have done this. You are clear. But neither do you write. This is a problem for no one other than the self that requires you write, for some variety of reasons, I can't say what they are.

There is a marvelous moment in the movie "Speed," where the the character played by Dennis Hopper says, 'If you do not allow a bomb to explode, you deny its being.' (I paraphrase from memory). This line elicits the sense, I think, that the speaker is both intelligent and insane, in the sense of living detached from consideration of the effect of his actions. It is a creepy thing to say. But, it is memorable and brilliant in the sense that it can be used to shed light, at least to someone who can use it in such a manner.

I mean to say that a poet is a kind of bomb, or exploding device. We may shower our surroundings (variety: cognizant) with pith and ellipses rather then metal shards, but explode we do.

The burst can be controlled, or not. That does not matter. What does matter is that one may find, in one's fast, no other way to light the fuse.

So, you return to your method. You light the fuse. For me, or in this case, it means leaving my house, walking three blocks to a neighborhood bar, having a couple beers, a couple cigarettes, and writing an unholy ton for a couple hours.

Life is good, and consists of many movements. Being true to oneself is constituted of multiple movements, each being true in itself.