decay on my mind

dreams have been busy

So, based on the date of the last posting, I have been away from this blog for too long. I have been writing daily, but keeping it in my notebook or computer. 

Now, as spring emerges, so must I. I'll shed my snowy mantle, and slough off damp layers of soil, and bust through, stem, blossom, and all. 

What I have been reading: Rebecca Solnit's Fieldguide of Lost Things, and Elizabeth Royte's Garbageland were my books of choice in January and February. I have not finished them yet. Now I have been picking up The Tears of Things, The Melancholy of Physical Objects by Peter Schwenger. I am forming a book list for specific study to embark on a new writing project with a long history. Some of the authors I'll look at again are Vladimir Nabakov, Kobo Abe, Julia Kristeva, Gisele Prassinos, and others. I am also thinking of Borge and Rimbaud whose works I have never read.

I have been musing and writing about many things, especially my favorite subjects: dirt and decay, remnants and loss, simultaneity and juxtaposition,  the liquid and the body, process and indeterminancy, etc. Of course, Bataille is ever present,  (since I last wrote, the blog site has added new features and details and I was able to upload this image, which I made last summer. It is inspired by two toys from my collection.) I have been working with a mentor, who is working with me on writing exercises and helping me through this process of beginning in ernest. I have always written, but now the call is urgent, and I can no longer ignore or relegate my writing practice to some dark shelf. It has to be addressed now. Writing is of the body, fluid movement of language that flows through me when I wake, and when I go to sleep. I am constantly thinking of words, making lists, writing in my head. Now it is time to put it on paper, pen to paper.

It amazes me how urgently the writing calls, and how powerful it is. Is it the gloss of metaphor, the hide-and-seek games of overlapping meanings and juxtapositions. These are things I learned in college, and perhaps in eighth grade, my first Shakespeare, As You Like It, with Mrs. Whitely, right up here in Maine. She must have been in her mid-seventies and had such a passion for the stuff, it was infectious.

One thing I have been working on is to examine the works of two artists who use the natural to talk about boundaries, simultaneous growth and decay, cycles, and inverting conventions to expose the contradictions and ambivalences humans experience around existence, the body, and nature. We are not comfortable in our own skin, yet we depend on it to keep us intact, alive, and fluid. I am also writing about a contemporary, surreal film I saw recently that deals with life, cycles, games, journeys, exchange, language, and the mind, and will complete my review and thoughts soon to post here.