WhenWhen
shed
When
11.17.03
I started to keep this daily (or nearly daily) record of strings of words in couplets on the morning after California elected its second movie actor governor, and its first cartoon figure governor.
I thought at the beginning I would make this a "public site"; I was thinking that way out of a great revulsion and disgust for the state of my state and state of my country. But also out of sadness, and I wanted to "scream quietly".
Now over a month later, cartoon man has been sworn in as governor, and I am just now making this site public. In fact, however, there is little evident connection between any political event or events and the brief entries here. Time and the seasons pass.
I have wanted, each day, to say as much as I could in a very constrained space. On some days there are links to corollary thoughts, origins, or something visual. This is not a personal journal or a site full of contents and opinions intended to persuade.
I imagine continuing this "louche couplet" project for a year, a cycle of seasons, but I have already noticed that the time taken tending to it has had a detrimental effect on other writing. So I'll see.
At best this place might be a catalyst, the stuff of it slight enough to burn away and rocket a reader to some thought-worthy zone of her or his own experience, an uncluttered or unscheduled place to slow down and stay a while. But on second thought, that sounds pretty pompous. This is really just a personal experiement carried out in the small, silent public of a web site.
Maybe the most apt thing about what's here was said to me by a friend, a friendly warning really (not about the web site but "things in general"): "You've never been afraid to be obscure." Fair enough, but on some days when I am hearing these small phrases coming out of time like bird songs from trees or noise from clouds, the words seem very, very clear and startlingly acute. But only sometimes.
Perhaps part of the endeavor here is to attempt non-narrative observations of time's subjectivity. And perhaps best to read from the bottom up, since it's vaguely compounding, developmental and responsive to accreted precedence. And to the seasons.
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