on gertrude stein

This week was the first time I ever truly tried automatic writing.

And I wasn't supposed to be.

When asked to write like Gertrude Stein - with attention not to semantics, but to sound - it was the only method I could find.

And because it was automatic, I am a little less shy about sharing.

Box.

A box is made of the things inside it. No future, only past, pass, passed between times. It is the cave stocked full of prized possessions, memories too endangered to fall, fall, fall out of mind.

Cake.

Nature melted and solidified, shaped and sculptured. It is all taste from one palette and texture from the sun. The comforted dilation of one nostril, a swimming tongue, a tightened tooth. Metallic sounds of a baking tray; tickled heat; diluted. There is expansion and a rise; a swell over a paper casing.

Photograph.

Social interaction is bottled, bunged. A staining of colour undertaken in a darkened room. Why can we not see its immortalisation? Precision reduced to a square frame captured by a sound that clicks and flashes. The senses are blurred, lines crossed, lanes swerved. We do not know what it will see or where we will be when we see it. It is guestimation, a random act of natural kindness.

Pen.

A blue vein, a black bladder. Possibility poised against a paper ledger.

Hammer.

Jerk its movements. Repeat, repeat, repeat into the peat of a wall.

Chair.

It is teak.

Or pine? You don’t know, can’t know, can’t count the rings of the trunk buried in the earth. The earth of our God, your God, my God. The earth of the earth that we both walk upon. Bare feet, two feet, six feet under.

It is brown marbled softly across a skeleton stern with your lazy effort. A posture perfected over years of doing the same thing once, twice, three times. All it sees is different carpet, tile, floor. Its legs break, never under weight, but of age. A snap and a break, splintered like the twig of the branch it birthed from.

~

I probably won't be posting tomorrow simply because I have two essays to write and edit in three days. (And two seminars, under-prepared for).

I hope you have a lovely weekend!