Under the auspices of the day, the moment…the journal, vademecum of the soul, the literary form of consciousness itself, through its rhythmic circumscription, reintroduces ritual to the abandonment of the lyric, plays moralist to the aesthete, secreting for awhile (until the next thing) the truancy of any higher illusion, any God or the big Self…

From The Journal as Art: “Impossible Text” by Victor Muñoz

What if you enhanced and amplified and structured the ritual elements of journalkeeping until the original simple act of writing became unrecognizable and only the empty forms remained?

tea ceremony without the drinking

architecture rain
ballet umbrellas
cluttered gutters
fountains impromptu
I bite my lip in
the cruelty of the city
although escorted
failing wet
sun strains
through gray shade
curtains common
sidewalk slates
blossom trashbags
amputee and afternoon

The Journal as Art: “Impossible Text” by Victor Muñoz

Between the Han dynasty, founded in 206 B.C.E., and the Sui, which ended in 618 C.E., Chinese authors wrote many thousands of short textual items, each of which narrated or described some phenomenon deemed “strange.” Most items told of encounters between humans and various denizens of the spirit-world, or of the miraculous feats of masters of esoteric arts; some described the wonders of exotic lands, or transmitted fragments of ancient mythology. This genre of writing came to be known as zhiguai (“accounts of anomalies”).

Strange Writing: Anomaly Accounts in Early Medieval China (S U N Y Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture) by Robert Ford Campany

Stamford to Vista via New Canaan
21.6 miles
early turtles sunning
no guilt

no potatoes today

not in the basket
not on the plate

we discussed pommes de terre after dinner
but only in the most abstract sense

as poetry so potatoes