Tuesday, August 16, 2022

45

To explain the project is to undo it—but what if the project is itself an undoing? New sneakers with overly complicated shoelaces or frayed fabric with a thread hanging out, teasing a pull. In the undoing, I’m trying to find you again—a breeze or the memory of warm wind that keeps showing up the moment before a word is written. A pause. The project, at one point, was a series of letters, each reaching outward from a shared center: at once the ocean and the cliffs at its edge. Each letter fanned outward like the petals of a flower. To iterate implies progression—a means of getting closer or the lie of improvement. What I want is a breaking open, what Shira Erlichman calls, “crab walking.” Shifting the poem side to side, like how I learned to set up a shot when I was 17: put the camera somewhere, then move. Sweep the image around, become small, become bigger, become the you that would have started out two steps to the left. Then point the camera at the bridge and everyone’s commute. See how everything changes or nothing does. Perspective is an invention that must be remade continuously to maintain its hold. Attention, too. Ursula K. Le Guin: “Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”

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73

Look, this made me think of you. Beneath a few oak trees, N and I watched a whole lifecycle, worms crawling along bark, moths midair, empty ...