Intergenerational Cultural Touchstones

Richard Sanger
Dark Woods

One of the pieces in this collection features the figure of a tree planter as recalled within the recollection of a father driving a son home...

[...]
the song I used to listen to at his age,
for him now, I imagine how he first heard it
in someone's tent, perhaps, and the whole next day
humming it as he stomps through the clear-cut,
sinks his shovel, twists the handle, plops a seedling in,
tamps down the soil with his toe, takes two steps
and does it all again, the same five actions
[...]

The hummed tune, the repetitive action ... tree planting as a meditative art?

The song btw is a Joni Mitchell tune.

And so for day 2167
18.11.2012

Mind Leaps to Spryness

Richard Ronan. A Lamp of Small Sorrow: Four Fu Poems.

Lucian Stryk in the preface concludes

But what impresses me most about A Lamp of Small Sorrow is not so much its closeness to Taoism or Zen, though the closeness is palpable and altogether present in each section. Rather it is the feeling that the sequence had to be written, and that the poet, seemingly lost and overwhelmed in a harsh impoverished landscape, rises above it through meeting it directly, honestly and with great sensitivity. Richard Ronan in this lovely book tells the story of a spirit encountering its absolute context.

A note of abstraction that would seem amiss were it not for the exergue on the facing page.

of sorrow let oil be made
let rags of sorrow
be made into wicks
mark out the stars
     for each season
make of these
     a lamp of small sorrow
be brave, old friend, be brief

And glowing in this body of work are illustrations by Bill Rancitelli each as suggestive as this one capturing the feel of spring: eyes shielded from the light and scanning the skies and an armful of pussy willows, dog sniffing the damp earth — all bespeak of anticipation.

Word and image moving the mind to contemplation.

And so for day 2019
23.06.2012

Lures and Sinkers

Sven Birkerts (The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age) generalizes from his experience with hypertext to characterize the hypertextual environment as counter to sinking into receptivity which is what book reading does according to him.

For the effect of the hypertext environment, the ever-present awareness of possibility and the need to either make or refuse choice, was to preempt my creating any meditative space for myself.

Odd. This call to the space of suspended judgement which is meditation is fine in itself but to blame the potential of choosing for wrecking any affordance for meditation seems misplaced. Reading is about making decisions. To my mind exercising judgment is present in all types of reading. Exercising judgment requires a pause and all along the reading experience are micro-moments where the reader decides to enter into the world generated by the text, continue on exploring such a world or exit from the world exploration.

enter	hold	exit
y/n	y/n	y/n

Independent Observations on Interactivity

There is reading and there is reflecting upon that reading: lures and sinkers.

And so for day 1713
22.08.2011

Backwards into E-evidence

The poet brings us through manipulation of the stuff of language to consider our investments. In particular, to meditate upon the meaning of evidence. Suffice it to say that his discourse on e-gap turns towards the end on agape …

Agape — as if the mouth were wide open — as if the page wide open — were ready for anything we might say or do to it — for it

Including the reverse reading we have encountered on preceding pages …

Page backwards spells a new word — egap — & we half-understand such e-words now

There is an egap in our relation to writing on paper this day — perhaps it has always been there

Example — what of the strangeness of electronic signatures — the hand has not been a shadow or weight on that page — the written has been photographed & clipped & pasted

There is an egap between the legend of John Hancock & the legend of rag-paper

Or what of the persisting cult of the signed copy — what is treasured is the evidence of the maker's body having been a shadow over that copy of that book — she wrote it & was here & left a tracing

Phil Hall Notes From Gethsemani: Inaugural Page Lecture - in Honour of Joanne Page Queen's University - November 14, 2012 Vancouver: Nomados, 2014. [The Gethsemani in question is the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky where Thomas Merton, worked, studied and prayed. And, of course, wrote.]

And so for day 1563
25.03.2011