9 April 2024 (with a small announcement)

A meditation arrived this morning, after a Lilith Walk, but first this: the earlier meditations of this year didn't work well on their own, so I printed them out, took scissors to them, arranged the pieces of paper, read that version, didn't like it, and so arranged the pieces backwards. The result, "Or, if writing is what needs to be done," with photographs, will be published by David Need in his journal, MiddleLost, later this year. Anyone who labored through three or so months of my nattering will be relieved to read the shorter version. And here is today's meditation:

9 April 2024

It is especially desirable to be careful with the words IN and UP. Contained and not, it helps to visualize them. The old Mason jar has trouble in it. No one speaks of mobility any more, as that direction closed to traffic. A book on my dresser is titled Stepping Up. To, not in, the plate. To hit an RBI now is to “plate” a run. The runs come in; the catcher no longer stands up on the plate. Prepositions have caused injuries in the past, so we’ve made rules to shift “on” to “beside.” Block the plate’s neighborhood, but not it. A runner scored standing up, which meant he arrived in time. Out of mind or out of your mind don’t resemble each other. A pronoun steps to the plate to cause good trouble. He hits, she hits, they hit. It’s a hit means it’s popular, as any triple must be. The Triplets of Belleville is a great sports film; we showed it to our guest with large calves and an affection for bikes, if not frogs. Is digression up or in? Dickens was the best poet of the 19^th century, James Wright wrote, but only in his digressions. Is that my digression, or his? The advantage of meditation is that it’s all extramural, a three body problem that can’t end, though it orbits the spot between the eyebrows. Look at the black screen of your eyelids, the yoga teacher says, and I see nothing, being aphantasic. Fantastic blank, though when last she told us to see emerald, I saw a spot of blue like a cloth hanging behind the window of Chinese Restaurant across the street. That cloth was the color of dirty cream. Mind doesn’t see, but it edits. It helps in taking photographs, as there’s nothing between me and what I shoot no interfering image, no plot, no novel spinning out of well furnished rooms. Because I don’t see in, I can see out. Out of mind, out of body. Ask me to see a well that leads to a cave, and I can remember it. Images not generated, but regurgitated. The ruminant in her room is neither goat nor cow, though if her mind is considered stomach, hers is busy with its grasses. Metamorphosis pushes up, as does enjambment. I gave it up as now I try to give up coffee through the headache’s screen/scream. My brain has rooms I’ve never seen within the skull’s walls. Build a fence, and they will come. Build a wall, and your purity’s certain, or so you think.

Note: first sentence is from The Cloud of Unknowing.