exacting unspecifications

i like thinking about the line so short you can't see it - and extending into other dimensions (the infra-thin) to grip it between calipers. out of my smithson cravings (and my formal envy of you folks), i've concocted my own little demons (protean, carried in sacks). w/the stuff i've been working on, i made this number pattern for it - seven poems, each of two pages (except the last), starting with six parts on the first page, one on the second/ then five on the first page, two on the second/ then four on the first page, three on the second/ then three on the first page, four on the second/ then two on the first page, five on the second/ then one on the first, six on the second/ then finally a one page concluding poem of seven parts. whew! part of the fun of it is figuring out how each group of however many bits is going to lie on the page - as i'm mulling and mulling, going over thinking about beginning, part of what i'm thinking about is how the shapes will constellate. i get these weirdly specific ideas that i then try to mobilize - yesterday, for the six of the one and six, i had this flash that i wanted it to be 3 groups of two, fairly long-ish lines, as close to half page for each as i could make them, so that the shapes would have a horizontal profile, but w/a very skinny column of space going down the middle to separate them. but, oddly, i haven't the foggiest _why_ certain arrangements are the proper ones, i just feel like they are, and i'm trying to create these arrangements by banging them out very sloppily on the typewriter (which sloppy jamming-together by eye i will try to then re-create when i type them into the computer).

anyway, it's funny when i do try to seperate myself and consider the why of this kind of formal mishegoss....what in the world am i thinking about when i'm writing? i can draw myself up and utter sounds about vantage point, etc. but when i tell my 3rd graders to 'use your imagination' (wearing my conventions-of-teaching hat) i think about what kind of very peculiar imagination i have apparently cultivated in myself. of the kind of imagination i tell the kiddos to use - metaphor-making, imagery, etc. - although i love it very much, i seem to have less and less of it myself. (instead i count and twist.)

in other exacting non-specifics, there is no weather in houston (and no quail neither). 'record high temps' in the 80s on saturday. and a cold front on sunday bringing cold rain! pls send escape hatch.