A month ago I asked Amy if, when rescheduling our couples therapy appointment, she would “tell her” (Lesley, the therapist). Amy responded that she would tell Lesley that we were “broken up” and I responded that a better way to say it would be that I am “moving out”, and went on to justify this as a more accurate assessment of the situation; that “moving out” is literally what is happening, thus avoiding the dramatized “break up”; lives crumbling and tears flowing. I don’t think I could go through with moving out if I were to think in terms of finite separation, or terms that never made sense to me. I think it’s more complicated than that. And when complexity arises, I figure the best way to accurately represent a the situation is to explain only what one can see; to let the actions speak for themselves.

Two summers ago in New York, I went to Burning Deck’s 30 Year Anniversary reading. There I ran into Michael Gizzi, who I knew from graduate school, and he introduced me to an older poet whose name I don’t recall (sorry). I was telling this poet about my plan to move to California, to be with my long term love. Later in the conversation he asked when I found time to write, and I responded that I had so much free time living alone and working (painting) on my own schedule, writing came out of a kind of boredom. He pointed out that living with a woman would seriously hinder this kind of boredom. I laughed, unable to foresee the problem.

I remember my radio show in college, where at 1:45 AM Thom and I would stage the “1:45 Talkabout”, where instead of playing music we would talk to each other, take calls, play sound effects or what-ev; fill up the fifteen minutes until 2. Once, talking about a local scandal that neither of us knew anything about (the resignation of the student body president), a call came in telling us to quit talking about things we didn’t know about. The caller was angry and well spoken. We laughed and then changed the topic.

A Sunday when I was nine, my father laying on the bed watching 'This Old House', and the press of the impending parental switch in my mind: I walked into the room and declared "I am so bored" and laid down alongside my father and cried. He held me and this is all I remember.

I remember this feeling of emptiness, beyond nothing "to do" into feeling nothing inside of me: no direction or will, no 'spring' of life bubbling up from the platform of ourselves. I began to tell this story for the first time about three years ago to a therapist, randomly trying to get to the bottom of my relationship with my father.

The feeling could easily be confused with depression but I don't think a nine year old can be depressed, at least not in the way that I understand depression. But whatever this feeling was, it has stayed with with me. Psychologically (I think), what is at stake is not the feeling of emptiness but the fact of my perception regarding it. Inherently there is nothing wrong with nothing, right? I mean, how could "something" be wrong with "nothing"? Beyond semantics, nothingness seems to me the baseline for the universe and by universe I mean everything; that is, we return to it always hence the term "eternally generative void" (Wen Fu). That always, something emerges from nothing; our being being born and the silence at the end of a sentence, just beneath the surface of everything we do.

Psychologically, what is at steak for the science of, is the concern or direction and quality of my attention vs. this observation. In other words, why does this bother me? Why do I remember? What is the stress or what am I really talking about? George Oppen:

The self is no mystery, the mystery is
That there is something for us to stand on.

(from "World, World--" as found in the book This In Which)

Recently I’ve been thinking about the importance of community and the pointlessness of an isolated practice in anything. This is the short version. The long version begins with The Grand Piano, a series of “collective autobiography” books by the Language Poets about their experiences together in the late seventies. The books have been enjoyable, learning about their lives and the movement, but only yesterday, reading Barrett Watten’s passage in the 5^th book of the series, did their ‘thing’ being to clearly emerge. That is, a stress on group dynamics and honesty rather then on an individual aesthetic or the craft of a poem; coming up together or all boats will rise. Watten mentions the modernist movement as cementing the artist as individual, and in thinking about some of my favorite poets, like Wallace Stevens; the awe one feels when reading a Stevens’ poem seems built in, and results in a distancing effect. Never am I inspired to write after reading a Stevens poem, and if I try I fail, discouraged by the perfection of his words and ways in my mind.

Then again, other favorites like George Oppen harp on the notion that we live amongst each other by choice, and in reading him I feel as if I am gaining know how of what’s going on, akin to reading a newspaper or an essay that resonates. His form inspires me but his clarity of thought seems singular, though I’ve had more success after reading him than Stevens. I’m coming to realize that the emptiness that is showcased at the center of a lot of my writing (and myself), is not just a thing that happens to be there, but a result of the method by which I choose to write and live. I’m talking about the immensely competitive ‘best-writer-in-the-room’ mentality that I’ve been developing since college. Its affect, though helpful for producing fine tuned pieces of art and gaining individual recognition, is unsustainable as a way of life in a world where frequent if short interruptions/communications/events (think email, text messages) determine the rhythms of our lives, for better or for worse.

In a way, what I’m trying to say is that my mode of being is outdated. More importantly, I’m trying to say that living right as an everyday process and the value of living immediately and without compromise sustains people in the long run. That accord, though subtle and anything but spectacle, is a preferable way to live; the life as art kind of thing rather than the other way around. In terms of my past practices, I’ve willingly alienated myself in name of ‘art’. This seems wrong, not in the sense of an individual choice, but in a communal this needs to change if we want to keep on living, persevering.

To me this is what the language poets were suggesting, at least in The Grand Piano. In practice, who knows if that’s how it turned out. But I imagine that this is how the language poets could be read: that ultimately a book is credited to a single author and in this context, talk of community seems like lip service to an idea that ultimately showcases the individual: the individual as our most basic unit of our humanness, our dasien, our being; that can’t be transcended. How to co-exist as an individual and a member of a community seems to me, one of the more immediate questions that they raise.

Or, what’s more helpful and less Californicated to me, is the realization that 20^th century poetry is full of tragic stories and craziness. The idea that poetry must somehow trace the border of mental illness to be authentic has, despite our best intentions, stayed with us and our culture. Kurt Cobain, Nietzsche, Karl Marx, whatever infinity; the life of self/other-destruction. Instead, maybe it would be more helpful to look towards the long term model and use this as a basis for value. That the measure of an artist should not only be gauged by the work but by the artists ability to “be there”, or simply, to persevere and adapt. Robert Creeley, though some people say he did his best work when he was young, lived on and taught and was available: a model that changes and knows that there are other ways to be.