days you do not have/ imperfectly composed

Teaching reminds me how alive I feel when I'm talking about what I love (poetry and making things) to other people. I'm a good teacher and that's mostly because of how good it makes me feel. I've also gotten more and more comfortable with being honest--in every way--with my students, including being silly, making a bit of a fool of myself, being very up front and direct in my criticism, and being the same with my praise. It feels so, so good to be back in a room talking about poetry.

And I'm also making new prints (and reprinting some old ones, for a party/fundraiser at LPW next week). There are little houses in them, gardens, telephone lines. Birds and foxes. Maybe foxes. We'll see. The fox--only rarely seen these days.

It's summer here, and it is wonderful, and tomorrow I'm having breakfast with a friend, then working in the printshop all day, and then going to get an armchair for my new house (which does not yet exist, but will). These days.

belgium

It was sunny and warm every day. We drove to Ypres (Ieper) and walked as far as we could on the ramparts of the city. At the Menin Gate I looked for the regiments from Nottinghamshire and read their names. The light came through the arches and lit the wreaths of paper poppies. We ate bread and cheese sitting by the city moat.

My favorite thing in Bruges (Brugge) was the Begijnhof, now a Benedictine cloister. It is a square full of tall trees, whose shade falls across whitewashed buildings. Some have green glass windows, like the one above the door here. The house numbers were painted on by hand. Bruges was full of little loops of painted metal reading AVE MARIA, tourists riding bicycles, waffle-sellers. I bought poppy candies in a little jar.

Later we drove to the seaside, to Oostende, where I found candy shaped and flavored like violets and sticks of rock caramel, and my first pier, and an arcade to make Mr. Benjamin proud. And the sea, of course, which was cold and full of big waves, and me. Later we went home, rode our bicycles, made a cake.

Now I am back in England, with many sweet things and many sweet things to recall.

bees, return, deconstruction

Lots of photos to come (we did go to the seaside and I saw my first pier, and we bicycled through the Belgian countryside, and I picked poppies in Ypres and ate a waffle in Bruges), lots of work to do--I start teaching a two-week workshop today for this. I'm reading a lot about deconstruction and music. Looking to prove the positivity, insofar as proof is ever possible. And thinking about bees, honey, hive, and comb, which I find everywhere (this is at St Pancras Station in London).

le train numéro ---, en provenence de Paris Gare du Nord...

...rentre en gare, quai numéro --, à 15h24. Bienvenue à Lille-Europe!

I'm in Belgium for the next few days (via Eurostar to Lille) visiting a friend...Ghent, Brugge, Ypres, maybe the seaside. I did a lot of work yesterday and feel better generally about the PhD, which is the way of it. And now I'm going to read articles on the train, write some ideas, and listen to new music. And write postcards, as always. And come home ready to do more work. As always.

reiteration

"When I say 'yes' to the other, in the form of a promise or an agreement or an oath, the 'yes' must be absolutely inaugural.... Inauguration is a 'yes'. I say 'yes' as a starting point. Nothing precedes the 'yes'. The 'yes' is the moment of institution, of the origin; it is absolutely originary. But when you say 'yes', you imply that in the next moment you will have to confirm the 'yes' by a second 'yes'. When I say 'yes' I immediately say 'yes, yes'. I commit myself to confirm my commitment in the next second, and then tomorrow, and then the day after tomorrow. That means that a 'yes' immediately duplicates itself, doubles itself. You cannot say 'yes' without saying 'yes, yes'. That implies memory in that promise. I promise to keep the memory of the first 'yes'. In a wedding, for instance, or in a promise, when you say, 'yes, I agree', 'I will', you imply 'I will say "I will" tomorrow'...otherwise there is no promise. That means the 'yes' keeps in advance the memory of its own beginning.... So 'yes' has to be repeated and repeated immediately. That is what I call iterability....The second 'yes' will have to reinaugurate, to reinvent, the first one. If tomorrow you do not reinvent today's inauguration, you will be dead. So the inauguration has to be reinvented every day" (Caputo, John D. Deconstruction in a Nutshell: Conversations with Jacques Derrida. pp27-28).

after-midsummer

Today it's grey in the bright-but-still-oppressive way that seems to be a speciality here, and I'm tired of working--the condition of the PhD seems to be that there is always more to do, and today I just don't feel smart enough, or hard-working enough, to do that 'more'.

Listening to some Grizzly Bear and plonking myself in front of my work (well, right after this) should help. I'm going to Belgium on Wednesday for a couple of days. That should help, too. I hope.

Back to it seems to be the answer--

collection

Magpie-like, picking up what glitters. (In the glare of your mind, be modest./ And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling.)

Surprised over and over by the beauty of the world, I want to show everything to everyone.

I hope I can bring my family here.

Money seems to be at the root of so many of my worries (where will I live, how will I afford it, what am I going to do for a job, I wish I could just buy pretty things when I wanted them).

--

Leonardo Boff:

It is not a "one" that is primary but the "three". The three comes first. Then, because of the intimate relationship between the "three" comes the "one" as expressing the unity of the three. Believing in the Trinity means that at the root of everything that exists and subsists there is movement; there is an eternal process of life, of outward movement, of love....that truth is on the side of communion rather than exclusion; consensus translates truth better than imposition; the participation of many is better than the dictate of a single one.

Believing in the Trinity means accepting that everything is related to everything and so makes up one great whole, and that unity comes from a thousand convergences rather than from one factor alone. We never simply live, we always live together. Whatever favors shared life is good and worthwhile.

--

Andrew Bird playing 'Souverian' live at the Orpheum Theater in LA:

The song 'K' by the Clientele (most of their music, actually). This is 'Saturday', another favorite:

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Norman Ackroyd's etchings. I would like to own something by Fiona Watson, someday. At the Royal Academy show I was too poor to buy a book with the titles and names, but I'm sure one of the paintings was hers. I made a sketch.

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I'm reading This Nest, Swift Passerine, by Dan Beachy-Quick, and it's alchemizing me. Along with the Juliana Spahr and Corrina A-Maying the Apocalypse. Trying harder, failing better.