Victor Tipota @apgrdn

Forgetting the parallels that demarcate consciousness,

I expect my dreams to reveal themselves peacefully.

I always wake up at any sign of trouble

and keep the ticket I was sold folded in my wallet.

Patient, I wait in line to make it out, 

Writing without the driving force of a sales pitch is a luxury many of us do not get to enjoy. Then, there are those who wallow so long in a lack of drive that the smallest carrot dangled just beyond arm’s reach gets the whole machinery going like nothing else and behold, the rebirth: Johnny is an advertising man. 

There is a guy down the road who stands every night under a lamp post for no apparent reason. He just stands there for a few hours, usually around 1am when the city is quieter. You can see him from the bridge, breath coming out in puffs of moisture. 

an infinite sky made of rolling waves of light in a diffraction grating 

monochrome

waiting on the bottom of the surrounding sea for the mood to thicken

and fade to black

the outside of the box is alight with the fires of everything else that escaped

and left

the outside of the box is a shell that on good days you trace with a finger or

a swollen lip

the taste of the salt is just in your mind and the splintering flesh is the work 

of the sun

waiting to taste what you make and make sense of wanting to taste the sun

for yourself

to break the circle and swallow the light back the salt the lip the shell the box

tumble

into the surf and its latent spectrum the soul of your worth in the sole earth

you’ve got here

wading your way through the ridges and twisting the world back through finely

drawn curtains

the program shows daydreaming spinning coronas which dance the dance now

as we call time

/

it listens

2.

Perhaps the thing is that we need other words. Is that a thing? Genuine question. I don’t want to turn this into a pun, but I have a feeling it is in the very way of the words that are at our disposal. Or perhaps it is in the way we use them?

3.

Of course: love, music, art, etc. But even there, we still manage to keep these phenomena curtailed for the comfort we feel in relation to being in the material world... Sigh. No, this is not going down the George Harrison route. What I mean is: we like that we can smoke a cigarette after sex (or whatever), Hollywood gets it right there, even if the cigarette is really a cup of chamomile tea or another game of whatever-it-is-you-do-on-your-smartphone. 

4.

Forget sex. Take another example. How many times have you had someone listen to “a song”, and played only 10 to 30 seconds of a track? This is not listening to music. There is little essential difference between this and, say, showing off a new pair of shoes. Nothing per se, just saying. I like songs. And shoes.

5.

An inkling of where this is going is coming to me. I think what I am driving at has to do with writing. Most things do these days. Did I mention I am supposed to be writing a phd dissertation? Yes, well. // Does art have to be artifact? Does writing have to become text? In the finality-imbued, systematic, structurally-sound sense-of-self way we mean when we say text... 

6.

We love things, I love things, who am I kidding. 

7.

And then there is the importance of process. These considerations are one-sided. Of course, we all inherently understand and connect with the concept of process. We all know, somehow, that nothing exists in a vacuum. That you do not become this, or become that instantaneously... Similarly, you cannot have this object, or that object, without that object coming from somewhere, from having been conceived, designed, built. We know this! 

8. 

What’s the problem then? 

9.

We must know better. Not more, better. This means so much, I could continue expounding exegesis until kingdom come or not come. You never are the thing you say you are, you’re always in the process of becoming it. This is why musicians paint, artists ..art, and writers write, a lot. It’s also why you clean your house. Learning to know means knowing to learn. It involves a feel for the change that brings us in and out of being, and being able to. We inherently know that an athlete does better in good conditions, and some of us know these conditions are fragile. Competition gives an obvious edge, or a shiny gloss to this issue, but it is essentially the same for everyone, all the time, more most things. 

10. 

X marks the spot. Put on your math caps. X is the variable. Basic algebra. Could be this, could be that, could be fucking anything -within reason that is (here read: realm of definition). Assume there is an X hiding behind everything. Or, come to think of it, assume there is an unknown function f(x)=somethingsomethingsomethingsomething hiding behind everything, which is even better. You must assume the curve is on the move: your little arse is cruising coordinates all the way up and down the Y and Z axes. And if this is confusing, just ask a 17 year old. 

11.

Axes is the shared plural form of nouns ax, axe, and axis, though it comes with different pronunciations. No one seems to care that much, however, if this /r/Showerthoughts/ is any indicator.

13.

When I write, I am able to get into the movement of things that are not things. This is interesting to me. This is where I seek, not what, just where.

14.

3.

And so, one adopts strategies. It occurs to me  that numbers work pretty well, and may even have a soothing quality on the soul for some, a strange thermometer for our times that, so why not start to using them? I figure milestones keep the mind satisfied it is making tracks, and it gives a breezier cadence to the breathing. Plus, long, bulky, paragraphless pages are a burden on the eye and you’d be better off reading War and Peace or some David Foster Wallace novel if you have the stamina. 

4.

A word of advice that I have filled the tank with on this one: 

Never put yourself in a position of having to defend the work before it is done. -- C D Wright

This is an adventure, a stomping ground, a place that would not have existed, a place to throw down thoughts and scribble a few lines. It’s a place I can work on the stuff that doesn’t fit into the other places I work on, and so on, you get it. These are not definitions. 

5. 

Obviously, this is a blog. But I dislike that word, and may never use it again if I can help it. If I do, then it’s proof I am a liar, or just a writer with flippant tendencies. The point of all this may emerge somewhere deeper in the Res, but at heart there is a desire to keep sharpening the knife. 

6.

The knife is useful for many things. I wash it after meals and use it to carve out words from the world. Another thing it can be good at if wielded right is put in verse pretty clearly by Wallace Stevens as a form of exhortation. In section XXXII of ‘The Man With The Blue Guitar’, the poet writes:

“Throw away the lights, the definitions,

And say of what you see in the dark

That it is this or that it is that,

But do not use the rotted names.”

I may write of this more elsewhere, and perhaps even in context, but for now I will try to let this resonate locally and declare: hoist the banners, empty banners, ready your knives! I have readied mine, and put it to use now. 

7.