I

One of the first lessons of telepathy is that it changes very little beyond establishing the point of watercolor. Yes the cat understands that you are suggesting it is cold out or will be putting the saucer *there* but he is also subject to carrying out certain intentions already begun where sense makes a muscle tense to do, and so he takes the extra pace and circle. And this is true of humans as well—there are times of impossible intimacy as when you find yourself as green thought as a man on the bus musing among the day curb, perhaps trying to establish something as briefly directed and able as Springsteen or Aretha to arrest. And yet the distances, the so great distances that make any longer walk less likely, and the extraordinary joy when you see suddenly, that, unlike countless other plangencies this one will actually sustain for what will seem to anyone like a long time.

"When pacifists, or people trying to limit war, decide to forget that some men thoroughly enjoy war, they are making a bad mistake."

Doris Lessing "Alfred and Emily" p. 252.

"Women and children experience war and its nightmare. Their wardreams share with dreams of other kinds that they are occurences full of blown sand seaward foam in which disappearance fields expression. If fire drives out fire so does pity pity beside."

Susan Howe, "Frame Structures" p. 7

*****

Early during the Buddha's ministry, among men who had given up property to be with him, to be heroes who could give up desire, a conflict arose. The Buddha had restricted possessions to a bare few--a patchwork robe (so that one monk could not have a finer castoff than another), medicine, a begging bowl--and his followers had begun to quarrel over who had the finer bowl. Projections and accusations flew. The Buddha instituted a rule, among those most ambitious and perhaps prescient men, that bowls were to be circulated, passed on after a fortnight.

interesting that I cannot create spaces

poetry as by the ear, thus opens up a near space related to shape of ear

in this sense quotidian and local, evanescent like wildflowers--what bloomed this year

local and passing

***

strange to think I was drawn to Northampton & to draw the churches there & have left flowers for Mary

which one felt in the ground

--Susan Howe's "My Emily Dickinson" discusses J. Edwards and Great Awakening:

***

I was lessoned from, and left that rock—
abject as dice or savage
out ACROSS by time
the river meant must all disperse

***

I had to--terrible past—return

Was three times cut & ran that road—
her house burnt down—was seeing—past
in moonlit, in foxfire, in depth weight
I could walk those shadows

Did—return—of course
among blueberries and laurel--Sun--
scent’s gifts & constant wood reminds
the same land writ

different but known
despite lawns could erase
so other—brief paper weights
upon the old sloped leaves