Decajour III: Jan 23 - Feb 1

1/23
It might help my readers (um, both of you) to describe again the aleatory technique I use to figure out what to write and when.  Since I can never definitively choose ~trust me, I've spent weeks dithering~ I leave it to the great goddess Tyche (Chance) to light my way.   There are presently 4 projects in play - each title written on a piece of paper and balled up into a bead, indistinguishable (I hope) from its fellows.

Every 10 days I take out the jar, waggle it  while humming some gnostic melody, and pull out the focus for the next decajour.   Oh, and there is a fifth bead, marked "Wander Around,"  which means None-of-the-Above.

The other four can be characterized by the length of time I've been working on them:

The title for No. 1 [Annus mirabilis] has been rattling around in my world for almost 20 years - but  I only had a vague sense of its trajectory.  In the last two years, it has taken shape, definition and some sense of urgency. 

No. 2 [I Do Not Live with Five Men] is a contemporary tantra, but probably won't be read with any clarity until after my death.  The exegetical remarks will be written by a future self, but not if I don't get the damn thing finished.   This lifetime.  

No. 3 [Oneirocriticon] walks my particular method of art crit out of its woven shade.    

No. 4 [Liminal Script] looks at graffiti from an anthropological and evolutionary perspective.     With greatest respect for los que desafian de hacer/dejarlo.   (Look, there are things I can only say in Spanish -  and hey, why aren't you bilingual?) 

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D'jour III brought forth No. 5, the 'Wander Around' bead!   So today, this has meant a long meander through my files, finding opiilette* that are,  in the 140-character squish of contemporary human attention, practically novellas.    Tidied up and submitted,  शाबाश! 
*opus=work, opii=plural work, opiilette=small works

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As this 10-day period actually aligns with my interest/disinterest cycles, I'll just continue down this path until each work is complete.     

After that, I move to France and become a clocharde.  Or Baba Yaga.   

Better to be a baglady in Paris than an ign/oracle in Abiquiu.    

1/29
Over the last few days I have been roaming around in the biblioverse next door, online and up the street at the University.    Ordered a few books from here and there, esp. Elizabeth Abbott's trilogy on modes of relationship - her History of Celibacy; History of Mistresses and the elusive History of Marriage.  The last one is her latest in the set, and a bit harder to find as a loaner.   But the other two await me next door, so I am eager to see her treatment. 

Meanwhile, I've also been reading Diedre Bair's bio of Simone de Beauvoir, and continue to take little sips of Frans de Waal's The Bonobo and the Atheist.   Joined Goodreads a good while back, but am now actually *putting* those books in their list, along with a glimpse here and there of my impressions of the work.  

On Sunday a mild case of the flu put me on my back for a couple of days - reminding me how differently the brainbody of a writer works.   I read L. Durrell's bio a few years ago in a similar fog, and his story cut through it like a searchlight.  De Beauvoir's is sadder, but probably because I recognize so much of myself (and the Philosopher Husband) in its lineaments.  Though I plowed through 400 pages or so while in a febrile daze, could I make a cup of tea?  Barely.  

2/1
I did manage to dig out and polish up three pieces for submission during this cycle.   One poem, one oblivoir (the things I've forgotten this lifetime, so far), and a shortshort story --  all fairly self-contained.    Sent off to paying markets - as I dust off my old NLP trick of merging the infinite with the impossible - may their combustion light up my bank account.   

Backzephyrs: 20 years of digitized notes (to go with 6 boxes of handwritten notebooks).  In them I kept finding these fragments that are so funny and strange that they'll probably never properly fit into anything but their own polygonal niches.

Tonight --from godnose elsewhen-- I found this fragment.  I recognize the general umwelt:  my meeting with the  massive Pilot whale stranding in 1977, but the protagonist is a musicologist nun(?!).   What the hell was I thinking?  Anyway:

          "The barkeep moved slowly, toweling the wood as if warming up the spot for her drink.  “Tequila rocks, please,” she said.  “Do you have a label in mind?”  “Oh whatever’s on the bottom shelf; I’ve taken a vow of poverty.”      He noted the drab skirt and short-sleeved shirt, buttoned to her collarbone.    “No, uh… headthingy?” he swirled his hand around his head in that universal sign for  ‘wimple.’   “Not since 1969,” she grinned, “when we crept into the laundry and tie-dyed all the whites.         "The target of their attack turned out to be the veils, though the novices had been aiming for scapulars. But what did you expect?  It took place mostly in the dark, with puzzled whispering beneath a flashlight that never stopped flickering.   And dropping it repeatedly didn’t seem to help.    “Turn that damn thing off!  You might as well be standing next to Reverend Mother's bed with a foghorn.  Jeez.”      The next morning the Sisters of Mercy woke up to neatly folded, pink mantles with starbursts of plutonian purple spreading from the backs of their heads."  

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Preview of D'jour IV:  Tyche just delivered her next assignment: a third round with project No. 1!! Fortunately (or not), this persistence --and the research it compels-- confirms my suspicion that the proposal it sets forth is *way* overdue;  and that it needs to be funny and persuasive, yet dauntless.  In other words, perfect.  

Which means messy and imperfect... for a while, anyway. 
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