Too Absent Herald

bill,

i’m sorry that i have not replied sooner. school takes
up more time than i would like, and what i would like
to do often gets buried. that said, thank you for the
story. i enjoyed [the story]. it has a cinematographic
quality about it. what are you doing with it? you
mentioned in the email that it is still being bulked
up. is this what the new tooabsent will carry? or
rather things like this?
——————–
Dear Moshe,

I could throw the same description of self-burial back to you. Einstein supposedly said that there are two ways of perceiving the world: That everything is a miracle, or that nothing is such. I remind myself of this when I find myself buried in something I want, or enjoy, at the cost of something I also enjoy.

i’ve kept your email (dated 1 Feb.) because I wanted to use it as a springboard for returning to this meta-diarism. So, with the proviso that I am going to plow through your questions, now, without reflection and I therefore reserve the right to amend -at length-, here goes:

With that story I have done nothing beyond re-think it everyday (which is one way I feel creative when I am buried with other things). To say I’ve gotten sidetracked is both a crudity and an understatement. The important thing, for me, is that I still feel “the quickening” and it does not take long. If I write three sentences, the fourth one begins to take on a lot of importance. I’ve begun another story. But I don’t have ther kernel in my sight, yet.

The new tooabsent, as you see, is barely sustaining its own weight. You know me well enough to know that I’ve said or thought omore funny, interesting things in the past five months than have appeared here. For a while, under the old rubric, I began to try to do what is commonly referred to as blogging. That is, I gave up trying to flesh out ideas, and simply put them, as brief as their nascence, onto a hyper-page. But that held far less satisfaction than changing the color of the border.
So, I would say that this will contain more of the “finished” piece. It comes to mind, having just read the latest edition, that this might be best described as a Green Lantern Newsletter of my mind.
The big impulse of getting the site and my own server space (thanks again, Martin) is to have room for putting much much more up. SO, if I can get on a schedule (school ends in two weeks, and I begin a much relaxed summer routine), that is indeed the way I would like to go.

In answer to your last question: Yes.
yours in the devotion to a number 3 grind, – Bill

I just missed my chance to TIVO “Cruising” on IFC. I’m thinking that the killer looks a lot like Ben Stiller. I’m also thinkng that that thought may be more depraved (or ingenious) than watching “Cruising” on a freaking Monday night.

This is awesome. Pacino trying to get “in” with the KY Cowboys… he’s in his little sweaty room lifting water filled weights!

I feel fine just lifting my own books, thanks.

I came up with that sentence, and the coda: “at my funeral” on the phone the other day. I guess that that sounds morbid. But everything we say is an exhalation. It is a breathing out that is necessary in order to get another lungful. I just caught the end of “Annie Hall”, and though I don’t want to say that that sentence is my new Mantra, but it does make me feel good. Focused. Calm. Yes calm. Because so much of the recent past has been full of regret for me. Regret, mostly, for what I gave up by leaving where I really was the coziest I’ve ever been.

Don’t get me wrong. I had to get out of Annapolis. I abhor sedentariness like nature abhors a bag vaccuum. But going back…

Going back to Annapolis is like being able to eat all those delectable deserts in the diner’s showcase, even after downing the entire left side of the menu.

The point I think I was getting at with the beginning of this post is that I have been racking myself, bastinado-ing myself. For I am far from alone, and I could not sever the bonds I have, stretched up and down the seaboard, even if I only continue to be the “wry” in the occasional martini, at the occasional party.

So I’ll get to explaining this. . . One of these days.

For now, the short version of how much fun it was to be in Annapolis is found at the right ->.

It was that much fun to see Loretta, Lou, Talley, Mac, Alex & Beth, Matt & Cameron, & Jo Ella. It was a joy I refuse to lose. Refuse more than I need to go to sleep.

The best example of “enjoying oneself” I ever saw was Gerard not even making it into the waltz party, because it was so much fun to just hang out on the railings.

Always lean on a railing. You never know when you won’t have one.