(fleeting)

Finished in December

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Now playing:

Album cover for the Novak Quartet's recording of Bartók's six string quartets showing the overlapping shapes of two violins, a viola, and a cello, making a prismatic pattern in browns and oranges
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A snowy morning, and a snowy day ahead.

predawn view of my backyard with every branch of every tree outlined in snow
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Something just happened and, honestly, it’s taken me a few days for the reality of it to sink in. It’s of no consequence to almost anyone else, of course, but it’s rather a big deal to me.

Last week, I signed a contract with Unsolicited Press, which will be publishing my debut book of poetry.

More details soon, but first I need to attend to my chapbook, which will be coming out early next year.

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I spent the better part of 1992 through 1994 writing thousands of lines in iambic pentameter. Maybe it’s time again. 2023, the year of blank verse?

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It’s a Wayne Shorter evening.

“I Am Spartacus!”

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You know that scene where Faye is mailing letters and she hears “That Thing You Do” on the radio and she and the bass player run down the street screaming like lunatics and then they all dance around Patterson’s appliance shop?

Yeah, that.

Details to follow.

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Discarded email drafts account for probably 99% of everything I’ve ever written in my entire life.

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Now playing:

Cover for the jazz album Juba Lee by the Avram Fefer Quartet: Avram Fefer, Marc Ribot, Eric Revis, and Chad Taylor; showing a black stylized slightly cartoonish illustration of a human figure on an orange background with arms outstretched, holding what appears to be a fan in one hand and a rattle or magnifying glass in the other, wearing a long tunic with many small crescent moons or birds like chainmail
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This morning, my mind is like, um, it’s like, oh what’s the word? Something fancy and cool. And super smart. C’mon. Think. Quicksilver? A sieve? An abandoned power station?

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RIP Tom Phillips.

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Well. Isn’t that just some of the best news I can’t tell anyone yet.

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blue sky marbled with high cirrus clouds; the contrail of a transcontinental airplane passing left to right in the lower right; a faint sundog barely visible in the upper left
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Now playing:

Cover image for Brian Eno's album Ambient 1: Music For Airports
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Crescent moon through bare branches out my kitchen window this morning, unphotographable.

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Now playing:

cover image for the jazz album Opposites Attract by Ned Rothenberg and Paul Dresher
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Last, next.

90: Pitch Black (lined)
91: Snowy Evening (15,902)

Pitch Black, Snowy Evening
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Laszlo will have to wait. Tomorrow will be beyond imagining.

A copy of Susan Cooper's novel The Dark is Rising resting on top of Krasznahorkai's novel Satantango
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Now playing:

the cover image for KILN's album Meadow_Watt showing many horizontal lines of orange, brown, and dark yellow colors
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Cheer Up, You Melancholy Dane!

We just bought our tickets for the Guthrie’s production of Hamlet in April. We’ll be preparing by rereading some of our favorite monologues and — of course — rewatching the first season of Slings & Arrows.

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Now playing:

cover image for the avant-jazz album Void Patrol by Colin Stetson, Elliott Sharp, Billy Martin, and Payton MacDonald
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The books I brought with me, in case you were curious. (The Midgley is a reread.)

Three books in a stack: Without End by Adam Zagajewski, Satantango by Laszlo Krasznahorkai, and Science as Salvation by Mary Midgley
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My wife and I will be out running errands all morning, so — of course — I’ll have three books with me, just in case.

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Now playing:

Cover image for the album The Witch Doctor by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers showing Art Blakey in shadow, along with what I can only assume is meant to be an African witch doctor's mask
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Now playing:

cover image for the Sequentia album Dante and the Troubadors