NEEDLING

My friends from Paris, the two you saw in the picture hiding behind large bowls of noodles – Bowls for Brains! Noodles for Brains! Noodles for Bowls! Brains for Noodles! – have sent me an awesome care-package containing cd’s, books, cool engravings... music such as what I’m currently listening to by Philip Glass – just turned it on, turned it on, put it through the grinder, the wringer... having a slight moment of apprehension, as in: What’s Gonna Happen Next? (His music does that to you, amazingly enough, repetitive as it is, always seemingly going back to where it’s all ready been when in fact it’s slowly going forward, around, towards, in tight circles inside a spring which seemingly keeps going around back around itself but really doesn’t, moving slowly away from the source at a rate of umpteenth circles almost circling around the same space, one upon the other tightly held together ready to spring out any time... Are you ready?)

I haven’t written any poetry in a long time, but repetition has always been very important to me, whether the repetition of words, or of imagery, I think they somehow give you the time you need to get right down to business. I like Philip Glass for that. I wish I could do in poetry what he does in music. I cannot. But then again, I should practice more often. Now I’m ashamed to share anything with you. Nothing compares to this music. I’m sure Ezra Pound would have had something to say about the mater. Something like: Don’t quite your day job! For a long time, I worked on this long poem called Blueberry Hill and never finished it. Maybe some day. It takes place in an imaginary Maine, somewhere between Rockland and Bar Harbor. It’s the story of a man and of a woman who are in love. He is building her a house on top of a hill called Blueberry Hill. This takes place long ago before cars and computers. She is pregnant with their child. One cold snowy night before he gets back from pulling the lobster traps, she gets murdered by a horrible man. When he gets back to the campsite and sees both her body and the body of his unborn child dead in the snow, he boards up the house, and walks down to the harbor where he steps into the freezing water and drowns. But before he does that, he buries his wife and his unborn, builds a circle of stone around their grave, and blesses the ground, saying that all lovers that come to this place, will find what he has lost. The story is told by a young woman to a young man who are lying inside the circle of stone. The old house never inhabited is still standing on top of the hill, all boarded up. Big oil tankers are moving slowly far out on the harbor. But the two young people are oblivious to the world.

Maybe I’ll get back to it. Maybe I won’t.

The first time I started writing this poem, I was working in a poster shop in Paris right in front of the Centre Pompidou. The days were very long, and sometimes I would go more than one hour without seeing a customer. We catered mostly to tourists. We sold posters of famous paintings, postcards of the same paintings, and all kinds of useless little types of junk-shop stuff made in china, like golden Arc de Triumph, Eiffel Tower’s of all sizes, lighters in the shape of naked women, touristy maps of Paris on kitchy frames, mugs with all the monuments on them, et cetera. I became very broke towards the end of that summer, as I’m apt to do, and I had to sub-lease out my studio to stay alive, so I actually lived inside that store for a couple of weeks before flying to the USA for a six month leave of absence living out the Maine winter, then the Texas winter, and back to Maine, before heading back to Paris. Those poor people who owned the poster shop, they gave me 300 euros in cash so that I would buy some candies in the US unavailable in France, and ship them back to them, so they could sell them in their other store. I religiously stayed away from that money. But after a couple of weeks of having no car, not being able to go look for the candy in question, living in Portland on my friends’ couch, not having any money... after a few weeks, I started borrowing a dollar here, a dollar there... and before I knew it, the three hundred Euros were gone.

Maybe I’ll get it back. Maybe I won’t.

I told myself that living in Maine would be the perfect place to write a narrative slash fable-like poem taking place in Mystery Maine... but I was wrong, I didn’t even touch a word of it in the six months I was mostly in Maine. Mostly I drank beer at the Skinny – rock-n-roll club now defunct but opening back up soon I hear. I wrote an online journal for a select few, one I promised myself I would turn into a book before I died. I drank some more, hung out in coffee shops, several bars, met lots of great people, had some great times, but never got around to re-writing my poem. Back in Paris, I was way too totally broke to do anything but go around scrounging for food. By the time I found a job, it was too late and I – as now – worked such long hours that I was never able to concentrate or deliver any type of energy to my poem. So there it sits. So there it is.

Maybe someday I’ll get back to it. Maybe.

First thing first. Life gets in the way of creativity for those of us who aren’t disciplined enough. For creativity to be foremost, nothing else must matter. Nothing.

My friends sent me this wonderful package loaded up with books, music, and stuff. It’s absolutely great.

MERCI!