July 15, The Weather and I, Dancing

(I wrote a cathartic, painful letter to an ex-lover -- and the weather cleared a bit & then closed in -- and now the storm is above me, and I'm fasting, and the rain increases as I want to write faster and faster, not knowing even what I'd say -- just trying to let this stuff come through me -- what this weather resonates, what it says within me -- that I can't tell the outside from the inside -- that as I looked out the window of the lookout, I expected windshield wipers to come on and clean my view -- that that's a perfect analogy to my consciousness, that I even took a walk around the catwalk, but came back in. That it's raining outside. That I'm alone, and it's raining outside. That the current of a poem I heard a few times before is coming into my mindpan. That I can't, don't want, to control it. That the rain and thunder and dripping is a percussive orchestra -- that there are rhythms there, that I'm relating them, that they enter me, that I am relating them, that there is a rhythm here, that I want to express it.)

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I'm becoming ecstatic, I imagine myself listening again to that poem (I'll write down the name later -- I've got it on tape). I imagine it affecting my whole life's work; I imagine academics & professors discussing the influence, rationalizing it; that, when asked, I just scream out "Because it got it, it got me -- right in the gut. It got me right in the gut, and I stayed there, and that it gave me a hard-on, and it gave me a context when I was ecstatic."

And then I come to a realization -- there are forms of writing that I've read and only partially digested, that give the ecstatic experience context, aesthetic context. They give me a structure to let this feeling out into. They build structures that resonate and allow me to communicate when I'm ecstatic. That I need to read those that illuminate me most -- those that give me a stiffy.

Lopez comes first to mind. Erdrich poetry. Sometimes Rilke. I can't see the ecstatic crunching down into form and words as easily in Rilke sometimes. Who else -- who else do i walk away from with a hard on. Lopez -- man -- he gets me like few others. Lopez -- and someone else, there is someone else, who I can't think of -- who makes me pace & rant after reading them. I did that after Chaim Potok -- but that was mood, & company, & timing. Lopez always does that for me. Rilke used to. Erdrich can. I'm going to nap -- to dream.

w/love, Bp