11 January 2017

It isn't the quantity of metal that matters, but the quality of alloy. A quartz rock placed in a stream to attract salmon amounts to false consciousness. Conscience doth make cowards. Or cow herds. It's real solitude, this looking after. Attend to the particular grasses goats eat and those they turn down. Some sites are named after their relationship to us: can we walk between rocks, or does water pass through? During walking meditation I saw ants navigate cement cracks, small pinkish petals nested on gray, swirling shadows around a red pole. Objectivism gets included in the anthology as a subset of the avant-garde. Be shocked by the ordinary. It's as sturdy as a rock in a stream. We've removed the word “stream” from the dictionary and replaced it with “streaming.” The water from my faucet picks up a small roach and disappears it down the drain. My daughter's dean's name sounds like roach, though she denies anyone calls her that. Not with a cock. The yellow shower trees ought not remind me of a Moscow hotel. Nature calls, but it's fake news when it does.

--11 January 2017