Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1999 17:31:36 -0500 (EST)
From: Marsha Faizi <mfaizi-AT-rbnet.com>
Subject: Re: ink the night dawn lane


Donaldo wrote:

>As I see it, Marsha Faizi, you do not want to 'ink the night dawn lane,' no
you do
>not.  You want the night dawn lane to already be inked.  You want the lane
to be one
>very specific place without question, and you want your night and your dawn
>completely separate.

It is not that I want a very specific place. It is that there is a very
specific place. I can use my mind and the forces of my imagination to write
about all sorts of places, including a place to ink the night dawn lane. But
such an exercise has nothing to do with much of anything other than imagination.

>Well Marsha Faizi, it is not the same for me and I am almost glad of it.  

I can well understand that. Why would anyone want to give up what is
pleasurable?

>Yes, I
>think you penetrate some mysteries with your soldering of your truth to the
reality
>you locate in Auden, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, de Sade, Weininger, and other
words
>that, as you say, require a voice to be filled out.  No, I cannot deny that
you are
>often quite provocative and penetrating, and perhaps, like a haiku poet,
the more
>direct you are, the more exact, the more profoundly you are read.  Maybe when a
>writer writes close to the bone, we are better able to hear her voice.

That is my opinion. 


>What is important to me is what happens when the thought [or the desire
(like yours
>for A., for example)] of a particular goal goes beyond the present moment,
beyond
>immediate calculations.  It refers you to the idea of a much more distant
goal than
>a tactical or strategic one:  a goal that the writer (and to a certain
extent this
>defines the writer for me: someone who writes instead of merely being written)
>perceives in his loneliness.
>
>A writer must be alone Marsha Faizi.

That is also my opinion and there may be occasions when we do not wish to
accept that fact but it is a fact and, ultimately, must be accepted.


>I know a man who does crossword puzzles.  Everyday he does them, day in and day
>out.  Even though he doesn't seem to be inventing anything, or writing
anything, I
>know that he actually is.  It is in the act of doing the puzzles that he is
taken to
>a special isolated place.  Here he is, playing with the words of someone else;
>following their rules, and still he is able somehow to transcend the little
boxes.
>Perhaps it is important for me to add that this is not something he has
pointed out
>to me.  No, its something I have inferred.
>
>Anyway, a writer is someone who gets abandoned both by what is old and what
is new.
>Do you think that in these times anyone is admired for being alone, Marsha
Faizi?
>No, certainly this is not the case.  

Not at all. I don't think that there has ever been a time when it was
considered an honor or an attractive thing to be alone.

>If you are alone, people think there is
>something wrong with you.  

I realize that and I accept that, also. I think that it is a correct
assumption that there is something wrong with the person who chooses to live
permanently alone. What is wrong with me is that I select to live alone
permanently. That is enough of a wrong, of itself, to cause suspicion.

>Yet a writer must be alone or she is not writing.  That
>is the only point I want to make.  I don't care what people think.  Not
really.  If
>it were more popular to be alone... if for example, we were living in
ancient Japan
>and there were little open air tea places high in the mountains where a
person could
>go and listen to the wind and feel the hunger in her belly, then I would still
>maintain that to be a writer is to push limits.  You push limits Marsha
Faizi, and
>you can't pretend that you don't.

Then, if I push limits, that is another thing that is wrong with me. It is
no wonder that I must live alone.

>I noticed at the end of your last post that you show a certain impatience
with me.
>You long for A., you say, because he is more honest about the insanity he is
>committed to.  

Ariosto is honest about his insanity. That does not make him an honsest person.

>To your mind, he is more different than I am.  Perhaps you think,
>that while I am different, A. is unusual.  

What I initially liked about Ariosto was that he did not have a desire for a
big career and that he lived alone with his books and his computer. However,
he is very willing to relinquish his solitude quickly for the possibility of
love from a woman. I think that his ease of relinquishment is a weakness in
his character. But, then, I guess that sex is more important to him than
writing. Since this is the case, then, I would say that he is not unusual at
all but rather common.

>A. therefore, would be the better
>writer.  

Ariosto could, perhaps, be a good writer if he decided to care enough to be
a good writer. Even then, it would require work. He would have to become
serious about it and I am not certain that he is capable of that much
seriousness.

>I will not argue with you there, but you are not stuck with me Marsha
>Faizi.  You may be stuck without A., but you are never stuck with anyone
unless you
>are married to them.

I do not think that I am stuck without Ariosto. In some ways, it is a relief
to not have him here. I miss his presence once in awhile.

>You seem to accept being married to a particular way of making sense.  

I think that I have been forced to make sense. I am not sorry for that
forcing. It is better to have been forced to come to terms with my
existence, such as it is, than to have gone on down The Happy Trail of
Sorrow believing in all sorts of manifestations and fables. 

>Who is not?
>Who can escape this sentence?  Thanks to your input, I am beginning to
understand
>that persistence is meaningful: that it can make us feel the tension and
dazzle of
>something truly different.  All it takes sometimes is this persistence.

More than persitence, it is commitment. Total commitment.

>I am a little sad that you see me as a type rather than as an individual,
however.

Do you mean the time that I said that I think that you are more of an
intellectual than myself? I think that you are more of an intellectual than
myself. You are much more aware of writers and what they have written than I
am aware.

Ariosto is more of an intellectual than I am, for goodness sakes. I don't
know that I will ever read Heidegger. I did read Kant.

We had a big snowstorm here and I did not go to work today. We lost
electricity for awhile and I decided that I would read. I wanted to be
entertained so I read, entirely, *Holidays in Hell* by P.J. O'Rourke. It is
old and outdated but it was somewhat entertaining--his vacations in places
like Lebanon and El Salvador and Korea during the late eighties.

First thing that I have read in some time except Otto Weininger. 

>Here is a poem that I awoke with, and in writing thought of you:
>
>
>There I am, alone, returning to my
>
>place in the stand of trees, thinking, one day
>
>I will see something important.  One day
>
>I will find a body in the bushes or something,
>
>some evidence of some crime.
>
>
>I see the dish of cat food I had left
>
>at some distance from its accustomed place.
>
>
>Finding one wet sock, and then another
>
>where I dropped them earlier in the day,
>
>my ears ring like crickets as I move closer
>
>to the place I sleep.  There, I look for another
>
>clean pair of socks, thinking,
>
>
>one day I will find something in the underbrush, something
>
>that isn't supposed to be there.  Something important.
>
>
>                Have a solid day Marsha Faizi,
>                Donaldo


Well, I do spend a lot of time looking for socks. Socks are a mother's
nightmare. 

I think that, in the process, I do find some other interesting things
because I never stop thinking. Continual thinking is one of the subversive
pleasures of living alone. It is one of those things that make living alone,
somehow, wrong.


Thanks for the poem, Donaldo.


Faizi