I rather like the simple counting of hay(na)ku. it is enough to keep my attention in a beam, but not enough to sway from the writing mind. in "Soaring Kierekegaard" (I realize this is of local concern, just hit the Who Cares button and move on), I partly found myself pulling lines from that philosopher guy, the book being handy. not all the lines, and in cases I twiddled what I found. but the point being that with the count in mind, simple statements are recontexted. I remember Robert Grenier once being excited, I think, by a traffic sign, something we wouldn't usually think about, but the words as read by him awoke into something entirely unprosaic. of course Grenier had his own rhythm, very precise and down to the note. I like hay(na)ku for its aptitude of attention. which, I must restate, is not my method so much, or not my speed. but I like the exercise of slowing down, without having to go slow.

on another note, I finally got the goods from a no longer functional computer. a great deal of work on that computer had not been backed up, or else I did so but the disks crapped out on me, or I somehow managed ditziness in the process and didn't get all the parts. so many ways to screw up!!! so I've retrieved some very long manuscripts, and this and that that I haven't looked at in years, like since I typed the last letter, etc. the alien thing below is one such. I didn't know if the missing work could officially be retrieved until I pulled the files from the cd (or maybe they weren't even on the computer to begin with). I can't say I worried overmuch about it, I'll write more, tho one long manuscript is, so far as I can tell, my masterwork, but I was curious about a number of pieces that returned to my mind. wondering if they were any good, up to the feeling I had about them. I'm just wandering around a point here, I see. last year I sent to archive most of what I writ because I was never going to do an excavation. older work is albatross or millstone 'round the neck sometimes, certainly if you are not wicked organized, which I am not. it's a wrong feeling, perhaps, but still: you feel like you are discarding part of you if you toss the old stuff out. Kierkegaard his own self perspicaciously (or not so very) elided entries in his journals, burned his letters. Henry James toasted some of his correspondence, and I am sure there are other examples. it doesn't appear that Olson did any such thing, and I am sure the stuff he left required a pitchfork to deal with. the thing for me, I demarcate 1999 as the new beginning and don't care about what I did prior. hopeful learning process, proem, proloque, what the heck. now is it.