Hart's goatee

Hart took a spill on the sidewalk yesterday and grazed his chin but
good. A big scab there now that makes him look like a beatnik with
goatee. Especially when downy fuzz from his sweater embedded in the
wound and hardened there. Tonight at 2 Boots some tomato sauce from
his ravioli got mixed up in it too--a greasy twinkle of a scab--a
mixed media work in progress.

The Inner Friend

He was a gregarious nature and therefore needed to cultivate "inner"
friends, people who were socially maladroit and withdrawn. This
helped give him balance. The "inner" friend himself waited for the
chance to be "inner" with his gregarious friend. He knew that was
his role, to be the opposite of superficial, to trawl deep in thought
and contemplation. Of course the pose was a superficial as any.

The Nasty Couple & Their Friend

The nasty couple had a friend who seemed not to notice their
nastiness. They thought she was precious, the only one who
understood them. She of course did notice their nastiness, but,
saint that she was, wanted to help them out of their nastitude.

If you want to make an omelette

you've to break some egos

My Metaphysics at Last

It curls a certain way
Hews to humidity
And my belly du jour.
But just look as the earth and air
Urge on the trees' reaching
And the waters' lenticular slipping lives
And ply these forms ever repeating
Like for like
As if something were being rehearsed.

This place is confecting minds in the end.
It's a place that does that.
No reason given, none ventured
But I am beginning to wonder, say,
About whether I
Am not the final Santa obsolescing
And oh how much wiser to slip free
And converge to the fold of whatever
Ever has in mind.

The urge to make beautiful

Isn't that the response, to even the worst things, especially great
loss? How can I make this beautiful... The problem comes when the
making beautiful is somehow injurious. But isn't that just
invitation to do it somehow better? Not to rail against the whole
project of making beautiful anymore than it would be right to outlaw
breathing air. Which after all worsens global warming! It's a baby
and bathwater thing.

The literary release

You see this in Bellow after "Dangling Man" with Augie March. Ceding
the excruciating amount of thought and control--basically
"knowingness" for the liberating confession of not knowing, not
HAVING to know. It's a marvelous empowering thing. It opens your
eyes, like music. Since when does music have to know a damn thing...