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[Image: Giorgio de Chirico<\/a>, <\/em>Melancholy and Mystery of a Street]<\/em><\/p>\n From whiskey river<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n The River<\/strong><\/p>\n This is my formula for the fall of things: of corn and half-blown sunflowers. Now tell me there is a pause with our shadows never quite touching the river (John Glenday, from Grain<\/em>\u00a0[source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n …and<\/a>:<\/p>\n The logic of emptiness is wonderfully air-tight. Like all simple truths, its clarity is immediately self evident. We are. And there is no moment in which we are separate and apart: we are always connected — to past, to future, to others, to objects, to air, earth, sky. Every thought, every emotion, every action, every moment of time, has multiple causes and reverberations, tendrils of culture, history, hurt and joy that stretch out mysteriously and endlessly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (Norman Fischer [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n …and<\/a>:<\/p>\n An autumn night (Bashō)<\/p>\n Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n The invention [U-Write-It<\/em>] had been in the air a good twenty years, and one can only wonder that it was not implemented eariler. I recall the first model of that “literary erector set.” It was a box in the shape of a thick book, containing directions, a prospectus, and a kit of “building elements.” These elements were strips of paper of unequal width, printed with fragments of prose. Each strip had holes punched along the margin to facilitate binding, and several numerals stamped in different colors. Arranging the strips according to the numbering of the base color, black, one obtained the “starting text,” which consisted usually of at least two works of world literature, suitably abridged… You take Crime and Punishment<\/em> in hand, or War and Peace<\/em>, and do whatever you please with the characters. Natasha can go astray before the wedding and after it, too; Svidrigailov can marry Raskolnikov’s sister, and Raskolnikov can escape justice and go off with Sonya to Switzerland; Anna Karenina will betray her husband not with Vronsky, but with the footman, etc….<\/p>\n The quiet hope of the publishers had been that a considerable number of people would develop a taste for the new game. [Said the instructions,] “U-Write-It<\/em> allows you to acquire that same power over human lives, godlike, which till now has been the exclusive privilege of the world’s greatest geniuses!”<\/p>\n …No one cared to play with U-Write-It<\/em>, not because he nobly forbore to pervert quality, but for the simple reason that between the book of a fourth-rate hack and the epic of Tolstoy he saw no difference whatever.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (Stanislaw Lem, from A Perfect Vacuum [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n …and:<\/p>\n Looking For Each of Us<\/strong><\/p>\n I open the box of my favorite postcards (Linda Gregg [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n One of my favorite songs in the You left a hole in my heart!<\/em>\u00a0sub-genre has always been “Since I Fell for You<\/a>.” Like most Boomers, I assumed its history began and ended with Lenny Welch’s 1963 recording, which got up to Billboard’s #4<\/a> spot. But it was already eighteen years old then, and it’s still being covered now. Here’s a gem — from Bonnie Raitt’s first album<\/a>, released\u00a0in 1971\u00a0when she was twenty-one<\/em>. (The mind reels.) Don’t expect any fancy guitar work here: with sidemen like she had at that session, Bonnie’s voice takes the lead.<\/p>\n [Below, click Play button to begin <\/em>Since I Fell for You. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:06 long.]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Lyrics:<\/p>\n Since I Fell for You<\/strong> When you just give love, and never get love, You made me leave my happy home. My life has been such misery and pain. Well it’s too bad, and it’s too sad, I guess I’ll never see the light. Since I fell for you…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nwe come to a river we always knew we’d have to cross.
\nIt ferries the twilight down through fieldworks<\/p>\n
\nThe only sounds, one lost cicada calling to itself
\nand the piping of a bird that will never have a name.<\/p>\n
\nwhere we know there should be an end;
\nthen tell me you too imagined it this way<\/p>\n
\nand the river never quite reaching the sea.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\ndon’t think your life
\ndidn’t matter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nand turn them over looking for de Chirico
\nbecause I remember seeing you standing
\nfacing a wall no wider than a column where
\nto your left was a hall going straight back
\ninto darkness, the floor a ramp sloping down
\nto where you stood alone and where the room
\nopened out on your right to an auditorium
\nfull of people who had just heard you read
\nand were now listening to the other poet.
\nI was looking for the de Chirico because of
\nthe places, the empty places. The word
\n“boulevard” came to mind. Standing on the side
\nof the fountains in Paris where the water
\nblew onto me when I was fifteen. It was night.
\nIt was dark then too and I was alone.
\nWhy didn\u2019t you find me? Why didn\u2019t
\nsomebody find me all those years? The form
\nof love was purity. An art. An architecture.
\nMaybe a train. Maybe the shadow of a statue
\nand the statue with its front turned away
\nfrom me. Maybe one young girl playing alone,
\nhearing even small sounds ring off cobblestones
\nand the stone walls. I turn the cards looking
\nfor the one and come to Giacometti\u2019s eyes
\nfull of caring and something remote.
\nHis eyes are loving and empty, but not with
\nnothingness, not for the usual reasons, but because
\nhe is working. The Rothko Chapel empty. A cheap
\nstatue of Sappho in the modern city of Mytilene
\nand ancient sunlight. David Park\u2019s four men
\nwith smudges for mouths, backed by water,
\neach held still by the impossibility of what
\nart can accomplish. A broken river god,
\nonly the body. A girl playing with her rabbit in bed.
\nThe postcard of a summer lightning storm over Iowa.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n[audio:sinceifellforyou_bonnieraitt.mp3|titles=’Since I Fell for You’|artists=Bonnie Raitt]<\/div>\n
\n(by Buddy Johnson; performed by Bonnie Raitt)<\/em><\/p>\n
\nYou’d better let love depart.
\nI know it’s so, and still I know,
\nI can’t get you out of my heart.<\/p>\n
\nYou took my love, and now you’ve gone,
\nSince I fell for you…<\/p>\n
\nI guess I’ll never be the same,
\nSince I fell for you…<\/p>\n
\nThat I’m in love with you…
\nWhen you love me, and then you snub me.
\nBut what can I do, I’m still in love with you.<\/p>\n
\nI get these blues most every night,
\nSince I fell for you…<\/p>\n