How to Change a Tire: Part III

No one who reads these words or who reads those of one who has read them will be anything other than a person already initiated into and likely irretrievably condemned to the strange practice of caring for unnecessary things. I do not question words, or language, but I wonder at the authenticity of the motives of the person or persons expressing themselves on any occasion, for any practical or impractical reason. Using the tools I have, I examine whether the blanket covers the body.

For all the pain and trouble visited on the Initiates into Unnecessary Things over the past however many years, you would think we ourselves would abandon the language of purity. But, no, for there is always it seems a newer, purer purity suggesting itself. The purity may be a politics of care; a poetics of sound; a family of agreement; a lifestyle of Green. What I do is position myself - socially, of course, for no one is Alone - in a kind of teleologically spinning armchair where my morning coffee, the newspaper, my mental notes, the cruelties of my family, and the sayings and perorations of a thousand acquaintances are as at my mental fingertips. When I speak, I speak through the filter of the pure, so that what emerges from my mouth is right, honest, and interesting. I cannot help but reflect that which has absorbed me, for I am above all else fair & kind, and am determined to leave nothing behind that will incriminate me or suggest selfish motives.

Where I am silent, I have spared you; where I raise a fuss - laugh along with me! Freedom is nothing if not conversation.

The sounds we make, taken as a force of nature, have a meaning as demonstrating a departure from silence. I am skeptical of all content; I am fond of any form. A sound created in form indicates a source which has come to the foreground with open hands, as it were. I appreciate that effort. I am prepared to match movement with movement - to duel: my understanding, your message. Form announces itself through form. I am instantly provided with a subject: the form of the message. What the message provides I may care for today, or tomorrow, or neither.

I have heard many messages and retained those that mattered. A novel form indicates another auditor who potentially recognizes what I do: that the human imprint on the message is what gives content meaning.

Form instantly imprints and conveys. I show up, time and time again, offering box-shaped poems because I offer box-shaped poems. You may like the poems - but don't let yourself be fooled. The form is my true offering. It is not pure, but it is true.