How can the river continue
Without Heraclitus?
Meanwhile:
Note to self—
Build a nest
With pages from libraries
Splintered by war
**
I don’t know what I’m about
Mornings are cruel this way
“If I could tell you I would let you know…”
**
There are moments of clarity.
When I was 21 & first read Derrida
I thought: “nihilism is the only available academic future.”
**
I like some elements of who I used to be.
**
I want my students to be under the spell of books all their days. I want them to pause on a street corner in New York ages hence and think of Maya Angelou’s lines:
Curtains forcing their will
against the wind,
children sleep,
exchanging dreams with
seraphim. The city
drags itself awake on
subway straps; and
I, an alarm, awake as a
rumor of war,
lie stretching into dawn,
unasked and unheeded.
**
History is a Child Building a Sandcastle by the Sea…
There are weeks, whole months, when I read only the ancients.
There’s a cut off: Paracelsus is modern—he believes in the future.
I mean the dark one, the river compulsive,
A man who made clocks from string…
Time is a game played beautifully by children.
Lately this is all I can think of.
When I was very small I lived by the sea.
Nobody loved me and I wasn’t confused.
**
The morning is brightening steadily
But I typed “stepidly”
Which on balance is much better…
Planet of the Blind 