art school teacher: on writing nonsense

as a way to discover rhythm in words

i suggest to the students: try writing nonsense

it's not as easy as you may think

writing whatever words rise to the surface

without having to make it make sense

i tell them i once made a habit of writing nonsense

months of months of nonsense

they stare at me

unimpressed

haiku masters, series A

it's raining icicles and

i'm dreaming about going to Japan

to make a documentary

on modern Japanese haiku

where it seems the most famous practitioners 

are all high level banking officials

do they have

haiku parties

haiku highballs?

haiku contests

haiku celebrations

haiku theatrics?

haiku mistresses

haiku hysterics

haiku antics?

who are these haiku masters

posing as banking officials?

how big are their desks?

how does it effect their

banking habits writing about

dragonflies and plum blossoms?

The Writing Life, Revisited

When in My Portrait Phase I Think

after the storytelling

a woman came up and told me how much she liked my story

i said thank you

she said she wouldn't have liked it if i wasn't such an odd person

and i believed her

oh dears

i know there's been an endless amount written about this topic already

but have there ever been any satisfactory answers?

can the central dilemma be solved with something as simple as 

a change of perspective, a missive, a bone?

how much help can it be, sitting here breathing?

and if i choose to write about it, to fill these notebooks with this topic

will that solve anything or just make it that much more complicated?

maybe that's the point.

how to understand that my arm is not mine?

how to understand impermanence when i feel so permanent?

River Memories

When I was a child, there was a grand river nearby

on the far side of downtown behind warehouses and train yards 

and fields of junk and thistle.

We only saw the river if we drove the bridge to Iowa 

or hiked through Fontenelle Forest.  The Missouri flowed fast and brown.

We threw rocks we collected from the train bed,

our reward for hiking.  Sometimes a tree limb floated by.

Mostly what I know about rivers comes from books, from Mark Twain

and John Hersey, Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, Rumer Godden, V.S. Naipaul.

I lived at the mouth of a river once, during the months I worked in Livingston, Guatemala 

where every few days I'd slip into a kayak and roll upriver to explore jungle creeks.

And when I got to missing Andrew, I'd hop a boat

that motored up the gorge to Rio Dulce where I'd catch the bus back to El Estor.

Preparing for Take Me to the River

halfway between rain and sea i know the river is

Five Year Blogiversary: An Inventory

It passed by without me noticing

though I had anticipated the date

wondering how to recognize

the fifth anniversary of my contracting

a terminal case of whimsy.

One of millions (billions?) of blogs

(this global revolution)

the pulsing heart of my practice.

Whimsy is what whimsy does!

The answer to every struggle

blog as rough draft for collections.*

I am grateful to the dozen or so

who follow along and to those

who don't but still cheer me on.

Thank you!

*

(all collections come with an accompanying album of improvised music with Tad Neuhaus and occasionally Matt Turner)

*****

A Terminal Case of Whimsy (313 pages)

an illustrated novel of conundrums, visions, and juxtapositions

including the series: Zen Ox Herding Pictures, Yiddish Lessons, Bragging Bubbies, 

A Personal History of Halloween Costumes, and Left Handed Musings

*****

Tiny Songs Chapbook (87 pages)

lyrics and illustrations to 43 tiny songs

*****

Improvisational Essays:  Art School Teacher and The Writing Life (196 pages)

an illustrated collection of observations, meditations, fascinations

*****

Preparing for the Improv 2020's (141 pages)

a zuihitsu look at an improvisational approach to music, art, and life

*****

Found Journal: On the Act of Submitting, part A (2014)

I read in the acknowledgments of the book I'm currently fascinated by, the places the author has published, some big magazines, some small, and think, I have to start submitting work to these magazines not because I think mine is better, but that it is just as worthy, even though it probably isn't.

I have spent many years submitting to magazines.  It took a lot of time and energy, to decide where to submit, to research guidelines, to correctly format, to prepare envelopes, to print, to mail, to track.

And that's to say nothing of writing the pieces in the first place, pieces I evidently believed were worthy of publication, even though I now realize were not.

I collected all my rejection notes in a file which got thick.  It was both heart-breaking and humorous.

And then on-line submitting changed everything, just as the copy machine once did.  Now, no envelopes, no printing, no stamps, no cover letters!  And because of the ease and the gross abundance of people like me, thinking our writing worthy of attention, the editors are so overwhelmed that many don't even bother sending a rejection, but simply state in the guidelines that if you don't hear from them, assume that's a no thank you.

How to know if anyone even read it?

And if someone did, who reads the slush pile?  A 23 year old unpaid intern dreaming of discovering the next Hemingway?  What chance do I have of charming that demographic?

When I see in the acknowledgements, all the magazines that have published this author's work, leading to the accolades and prizes and recognition and admiration and even some money, I feel a part of me tighten, thinking, I should really submit some work to those magazines.

But, in some of her pieces she writes about how the attention doesn't make her life easier, but just more complicated and stressful and how with all the requests, all the expectations that have come with publications and awards she now has little time to do what she really wants to do, that very thing that has won her fame: write.


Author's Note:

The book I was reading was most likely one by Lydia Davis, though why I didn't mention what book, is baffling.

In Search of Another Ending

banjo doppelganger

How can I know what I am going to write, until I sit down to write it?

How can I know what I am going to play, until I sit down to play it?

I am not on a train, but Joe Brainard is.

At the bar, I look out my banjo warning that I approach it as an experiment, that I played for two years before even trying to tune it properly.

My family bought it for my 41^st birthday.  Now I am 45.

After I played, a woman with mountain girl eyes told me how she loves my story, how she saw me play at Marcie’s two weeks ago.

That wasn’t me, I said.

Oh.  She didn’t seem that surprised.

You mean there’s another woman who looks like me, plays the banjo like me, and has my same story?

She nodded, smiling.  “Yes, but now that I think about it, she has glasses.”

Nothing is new but the path we choose.

Zuihitsu is a literary style of the late tenth century Japan, the practice of following the whim of the pen.

Boundaries dissolve.

The neighbor is cleaning his grill.

The boys are due back soon.

I remember thinking I was done.

I remember thinking there is no end.

banjo moon

What I was doing Instead of Teaching Tuesday Morning Yoga because I was Convinced it was Monday