Sunday, January 16, 2011















The problem with writing isn’t what to say but the reverse.

Every topic is a Pandora’s Box with seemingly endless parenthetical statements, or footnotes, waiting to be attached.*

It might be easier to write in 3 dimensions, with tangential points affixed in a more direct and less tedious manner.**

Of course there’s always editing.

But then the twisted-form-that-is-the-beauty-of-the-bonsai-tree is lost.

The form of a thing, its constraints, helps define its beauty - note the Sonnet or Haiku.

As my father would say, “it’s like life itself.”***

And in this case, he may be right.****



*Miles Davis is said to have mentored a young and talented but overly prolific George Benson:

“Ever feel like you could play anything at any time?”

“Yes.”

“Now don’t.”

**Come to think of it, a 3-D story sounds kinda cool – each line or individual thought, typed, cut and shellacked onto a dowel, with adjoining thoughts attached at varying angles, like the branches of a tree - they could be
handwritten, or expressed with images, or notes of music! Hmm…


***Yet another of my father’s seemingly throw-away but perhaps deeply ironic lines -Could be an inane and nasally intoned, “plastics, my boy, plastics!” or it could be more like Voltaire’s Candide with “it is the best of possible worlds!”

****Not that D.O.D. aka "Dear Old Dad" is oft wrong, but, the finite span of one’s own life - book-ended by oblivion – what could be more beautiful, terrible and poignant? : )

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Text

life is easier to digest in bite size pieces

whenever I try to cram the whole thing in my mouth

well

obviously it doesn't fit