Red Miscellany

What is it with red? --de Maupassant's splash of red (1887, "Le Horla"), Husserl's redness (1907, "The Idea of Phenomenology"), Heidegger's redness (1964, letter sent to Drew University on "The Problem of a Nonobjectifying Thinking and Speaking in Today's Theology"), Wittgenstein's red exists (1935-49, Philosophical Investigations). --Why not blue or yellow?

EMP. Stevens used purple and green.
Roger Miller's danged maple syrple goes with purple,
but red does not rhyme with "ice cream."

In this case GREEN is not a color but a flavor that RED does not have.

How is it with red--from whence and to wither?

It is: Roquentin's It exists!
Befuddlement: Wo?, Woher?, Wohin?
John's: In the beginning was the word
John's Empty Cup.

Vattimo: After he expressed his doubt to the man, his mentor asked, "Do you believe?" And V responded, "I believe so."

Essence may be
A Direction of Becoming,
The genuine Content of an object.

Contentment (contemptment, too) of Content is the figurative thing itself.
Verse composes the poem as a poem only after the line becomes verse.
Prose composes the narrative as prose only after the plot is assumed and shared.

I don't know about anything; I understand around here.


"Do you believe?"
"I have no idea?" [You tell me: What word receives the emphasis?]


NOTHING SPECIAL=the everyday itself emptied of itself,
bored with its everydayness; stewed. burnt.
come round.
there again.
produced.
end stopped.
Then and only then is it appropriated by zen practitioners and meditated upon:

What are you doing there?
Nothing special.

Says Socrates to Alcibiades.

----
I am reading:
Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, ed. Ben Marcus
Dreams and Stones. Magdalena Tulli
The Trial. Kafka
Daniil Kharms
Susan Howe
The Off-Centaur. Eugene Ostashevsky
----
I am writing short prose fragments and working on my novel. I haven't had time to work on that for, well, let's just say the DU "writing" program is short on time for writing. Not that I am complaining, much. But I haven't been able to spend time on my prose, and the working out of prose and verse interconnections significant for me until now. After this quarter, I have a third and fourth year left to write. (Yes, I it says poetics in the masthead, and the concept belongs. IT is all poetics.)

I am in a wonderful seminar titled Phenomenology and Theology, after Heidegger's essay of the same name. I'll share the reading as we move along. This is my last class--as a student in a program. I find that refreshing, the looking ahead to something new and unknow. I find it sad. "I can't go; I'll go on." Can't put that sentiment any better.
----


Rosy Fingered Dawn

I will write about my dog. And I will write about my fence.
I will list at least seventeen reasons On the Significance of Circumference
I will make manifestos, too, concerning Holes in socks,
Chocolate bars eaten in public restrooms, and

The spectacular patience in waiting
For angels to trouble the waters.

In this pool of mosquito-filth,
In a concave lump from my backyard,
It is my finger moves any waves moved.

--All from a new Adirondack chair, not broken,
Yet Miraculously Tempered.