Sunday, August 17, 2025
cycles, webs
Sunday, August 3, 2025
Chapter 2, Verse 47
Saturday, August 2, 2025
I Want It Back
Monday, May 3, 2021
Notes to Self, May
NOTES TO SELF
You like bulbs to poke out from between things with more body; the lonely pompom on a stick look is not it.
Come fall, move all the bulbs from around the edges of the banana bed. The double daffs into the spaces between the grasses; the tulips into the big bed.
The narrow bed shaded by the plum tree doesn't have enough light for narcissus. Move the lovely tiny singles with the red-edged cup into the banana bed.
The short tulips at the front of the big bed were magic there because of their stature. Now they need someone to grow up between/over/around them.
Went to the Wapato Island farm plant sale w A. Planted motherwort (hahaha, planting weeds/ planting medicine) next to the sage in the banana bed. Planted an artichoke in the paver circle. Skullcap back under the protection of beloved Western Red, who is thriving, growing so much. Marshmallow over by the fig in the South strip.
The lupine is so lush and huge so idea how long it will last.
Threw down saved strawflower and zinnia seeds last night in the West bed, and in the hole of the big bed on the right.
Want more red peonies there against the shrub backdrop.
Need to pull and distribute the narcissus that are pushed back into the anemone and under the mock orange. Can thread them into the dahlia spot maybe? Will they tolerate that?
After this bloom, need to prune the mock orange.
The South strip needs reconfiguring so that the path will work better for bikes this summer.
Worried the big vine maple will be squished soon between Cedar and Manzanita.
I am of the nature to grow old; there is no way to escape growing old
I am of the nature to have ill health; there is no way to escape having ill health
I am of the nature to die; there is no way to escape death
All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change; there is no way to escape being separated from them.
My deeds are my closest companions; I am the beneficiary of my deeds, my deeds are the ground on which I stand.
Saturday, November 21, 2020
SEASONING
Friday, November 6, 2020
Season of gorgeous death
Thursday, November 5, 2020
There is no way out of a spiritual battle
rant :: diane di prima
You cannot write a single line w/out a cosmology
a cosmogony
laid out, before all eyes
there is no part of yourself you can separate out
saying, this is memory, this is sensation
this is the work I care about, this is how I
make a living
it is whole, it is a whole, it always was whole
you do not “make” it so
there is nothing to integrate, you are a presence
you are an appendage of the work, the work stems from
hangs from the heaven you create
every man / every woman carries a firmament inside
& the stars in it are not the stars in the sky
w/out imagination there is no memory
w/out imagination there is no sensation
w/out imagination there is no will, desire
history is a living weapon in yr hand
& you have imagined it, it is thus that you
“find out for yourself”
history is the dream of what can be, it is
the relation between things in a continuum
of imagination
what you find out for yourself is what you select
out of an infinite sea of possibility
no one can inhabit yr world
yet it is not lonely,
the ground of imagination is fearlessness
discourse is video tape of a movie of a shadow play
but the puppets are in yr hand
your counters in a multidimensional chess
which is divination
& strategy
the war that matters is the war against the imagination
all other wars are subsumed in it.
the ultimate famine is the starvation
of the imagination
it is death to be sure, but the undead
seek to inhabit someone else’s world
the ultimate claustrophobia is the syllogism
the ultimate claustrophobia is “it all adds up”
nothing adds up & nothing stands in for
anything else
THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST
THE IMAGINATION
THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST
THE IMAGINATION
THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST
THE IMAGINATION
ALL OTHER WARS ARE SUBSUMED IN IT
There is no way out of a spiritual battle
There is no way you can avoid taking sides
There is no way you can not have a poetics
no matter what you do: plumber, baker, teacher
you do it in the consciousness of making
or not making yr world
you have a poetics: you step into the world
like a suit of readymade clothes
or you etch in light
your firmament spills into the shape of your room
the shape of the poem, of yr body, of yr loves
A woman’s life / a man’s life is an allegory
Dig it
There is no way out of the spiritual battle
the war is the war against the imagination
you can’t sign up as a conscientious objector
the war of the worlds hangs here, right now, in the balance
it is a war for this world, to keep it
a vale of soul-making
the taste in all our mouths is the taste of power
and it is bitter as death
bring yr self home to yrself, enter the garden
the guy at the gate w/ the flaming sword is yrself
the war is the war for the human imagination
and no one can fight it but you/ & no one can fight it for you
The imagination is not only holy, it is precise
it is not only fierce, it is practical
men die everyday for the lack of it,
it is vast & elegant
intellectus means “light of the mind”
it is not discourse it is not even language
the inner sun
the polis is constellated around the sun
the fire is central