Rowdy Howdy

So, we're off to california very soon, and hopefully moving into a good year of poetry, and sound, and the smell of bay laurels, and crackling dry summers. ah.

i've been reading this denis johnson book (already dead) which is awesome. one of the paragraphs ends thusly:


"*Californian*: that was his epitaph."

heartening.

i haven't written much recently, first b/c we're moving and the household disarray warps the eye's potential. and also, i think, b/c i'm trying to reconcile what really begins to feel like the end of american democracy - that is, all of this frightening and intense smugness on the part of politicians. i'm trying very hard to focus on aesthetics as a way of being, that is, mind 'n' generative wandering, but nihilism is always close at the door. whitman was my nursemaid for too long, and i had really become convinced sometime in my youth that democracy really meant something, and it doesn't, anymore. anyway, it never did, but the new boldness of its unraveling somehow demands a more social reaction.

i have these night sweats about the strength of convictions, and the fear of the same. i had this dream last night in which i stopped paying taxes.

so, so, so,

i want poetry so much.