soliloquy to J. D. Salinger

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meta-writing as self-begetting authorship, winter 2015—summer 2018

You may have thought I’m serendipitous in stringing together kindreds of ‘potpourri’, but it’s more than making a mélange of kindreds. I commonly write in view of a miscellany of notes that are brought together by some centripetal spirit of thematic belonging, a topical gravity that’s tropographic—a sense of topogeny that is tropological.

To wit: A mass of notes that became discards for writing the middle of “dear casual tourist” have a kindredness that could be named as some charactological (better than ‘characterological’) cohering.

Who is that guy?:

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interview silences troped with some confession

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After scrolling through Twitter stuff that turns up posts related to the filmmaker and seeing her Instagrams, I felt, as her, that I’m tired of being found “amazing,” etc.—weary of vapid praise.

“What I’ve done, I’ve done.”

I move on.

existential moment in light of a pole star

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I write letters that I don’t send. Below is one. Uncanny coincidence is that her last name is Martin, as I’m thinking (unspoken) of Heidegger, circa 1917, seeing boys returning from the front.

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Dear Professor Ann Martin,

A happy thing it is to find a dissertation online about Ulysses and WW-I.
My googling only anticipated some sentence or two about the matter somewhere, in some article, at best (a Wikipedia article, at worst—or maybe the worst is someone's blog). Since this was just a few minutes ago, I've only read your “Abstract” and “Conclusion.”

I suppose that the pole star for the stabilizing coordinates is “love beyond all reason.” Yet, the reconstituted security for the post-War reader is literally that text, whose love restores. One is saved by literary portability, renewing oneself through the mirror of the author finding himself through the severe uncanniness of the times, which spawns modernism. The literary mind entertains “inner monologue” and “stream of consciousness” (one and the same? surmises Britannica), always citing Ulysses as exemplar.

being there

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One’s being in “The Zone” is thrilling: as if being played. A tennis ball is hit
"perfectly.” A basketball itself finds “swish.” Thinking on her feet—the improvisation—was inspired. The jazz session was hot. My pen is conscious, and feels being penned. His creativity is in its own, and she’s the creating.