Diary #7
Night studies for who exactly
It is dark. The city is a vast bowl of black spangled with lights in the manner of deep-sea bioluminescence, as if numberless marine creatures are gathering in swarms for some secret purpose. An abyssal summit. This morning, the light reflected so intensely it shot a bright hot beam straight down the hallway, blinding me the moment I turned toward it open-eyed, not expecting the glare. At the heart of the building across was a white light that seared.
It is dark. I am transcribing the contents of a prior meeting. Behind me, someone is speaking, neither to nor about me. The word-streams join and part, conjoin. “She’s, how do I put it. There’s a certain quality that comes with experience. An ability to read the tea leaves, say. To put the pieces together. She’s not practical. There’s a pragmatism, with experience, and it’s lacking. She’s not seasoned.”
It is dark. I’m trying to find the right form. Finding a form is the center of any creating struggle. Once the shape of things to come has been found, things come easily. Determine the circumferences and the boundaries and one might expand relentlessly, finesse, run amok, safely within. Language is how the mind touches the world; whatever one sends out reaches for must have grasp, heft, a known-ness. Even if the interior is mysterious.
It is dark. There isn’t much to see beyond the glass apart from the nighttime urban spark-horde. One easily sees one’s own outline rearing out of the gloom. I wonder if I will ever show you this, if you will ever want to see. You’d probably laugh at me now; I certainly am.
It is dark. Once again, I am smuggling home the little language gland before it bursts, to wring it out like a lemon. It broods untouched by any maddening thing of the day, of which there are so numberless many. I consider the data I have gathered today, heaps of it, so little of which is worth analyzing. I consider that I would like to plot escape. I consider that “escape” is a silly notion, and to attempt escape of one’s essential self is a form of acedia, sloth before the obligations of one’s nature. I consider the squat pen, in the form of hands. I’ll cut with them.