Gatherings

Joy Harjo has a line in "The Field of Miracles" in The woman who fell from the sky: poems that opens the imagination to the strength of attentions to particulars:

the leaf a codex for the season of memory

The leaf, initial conditions. A codex, a limiting form. Memory, system.

Ergodicity: an attribute of stochastic systems; generally, a system that tends in probability towards a limiting form that is independent of initial conditions.

In a season of chance, poetry veers to the mapping. There are but two options: a stack or a layout. The leaves are either side by side as on a page or occluding each other in recto-verso relations. And in themselves leaves have a back and front; incorporate a minimum of codex characteristics.

The binding unwinds. Memory is all that holds the stitches, all that provides the glue. And memory provides the power to unwind the readings, fold them into other limiting forms. Release the leaves to the blowing winds.

And so for day 4
18.12.2006