finding the right comma: an approach

4 June 2008, Amy Sahba

SUGGESTED APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING THE WRITING OF (me), A LIST
(thanks for the idea Gol (especially since you sabotaged the last post))

1. Stop thinking. it is no longer required. __Some people's writing requires you think, mine does not- it gets in the way. If you're thinking, you're offtrack. I promise.
   
   SubPoint 1; I WRITE FOR YOUR: (A MINILIST)
   ____ -eyes
   ____ -soul
   ____ -heart
   ____ -fingertips
   ____ -sheets/blankets at 3am when you cannot sleep and read blogs aimlessly
   ____ -imagination
   
   
2. Don't try and understand. __Understanding is rarely achieved by staring at the enigma, you need a different approach. Here's one I think works best:
   
   Subpoint 2; APPROACHES: (A MINILIST)
   ____ -let the images work on you. I know there are many, and they are all varied, and they don't seem to hold together. Think of it as writing in collage, (honestly, I'm attempting kaleidoscope).
   ____ -think of the little phraselettes as brushstrokes. Impressionist painting, the words are brushstrokes, and it's fine to enjoy them, but you won't see any of the 'ideas' till you walk back, further away, away from me, away from you... away from this our world.
   ____ -if you can see it, or empathize with the situation, then you're on the right track- my ideas are feelings not really conceptions.
   
   
3. Float. __Float from image to image. __A dream. __A train of thought. __A mismanaged journey (life). __A mistimed firework (love). __the problem with trying to summarize things, is the soul does not exist in pluralities (eg: i am 12% happy, 14.5% miserable, 0.5% hopeful, 33% turning into a bird, 40% rather be turning into a tree- those are better). The soul exist as one single absolute, since the soul has no need to deconstruct a moment.feeling.hope.aspiration.despair into components.reasons.excuses, it simply accepts the cloud as a cloud, and has a strange facility for the interpretation of clouds. We as half-formed-but-slowly-improving-dust-heaps-called-(wo)men do require this deconstruction of a whole into pluralities (into little bits that we can fathom and understand that work-on (yuk)). So how do i write about absolutes (since that is what my soul is feeling.thinking) and still use dust-heap-words? I try my best. Try and form a cloud out of them, sift myself- combining organs, and unraveling dreams into their spectra. __follow them, but don't look for the steps.reasons.links, just... don't. __just follow (your soul will fill in the gaps with stardust)
   
   
4. SOME SIMPLE RULES
   ____-for words adjoined by periods (.) assume that any or all possible meanings are true, appropriate, and intended. Thus: into components.reasons.excuses means:
   
   ____(a) into components
   
   _____________and/or:
   
   ____(b) into reasons
   
   _____________and/or:
   
   ____(c) into excuses
   
   It has 4 meanings. It has meaning (a), (b), (c) and (a+b+c) (simply because different people will grasp at different words more or less, depending on their own little journeys).
   
   ____-for words.phrases contained in parentheses: these are usually secrets. Things one should know, but without the need to necessarily read 'out loud'. If one is musically inclined: they are the markings on the score that you attempt to make clear as you play, but I play a Rachmaninoff prelude, and miss the syncopated accents (but i know what he meant, even if i can't always manage to express it). (also it's little offshoots. things i might giggle at, but not say out loud- perhaps martha will give me a dirty look, or ashtree will say: not_cool. Q! not_cool! (which means what i said was probably not cool).
   
   
5. The images themselves are too often derived from my own personal memories. I have certain symbols for individuals i've love(d) romantically (notice that i presented that as a secret). I have only ever seen one shooting star; as a child someone threw a green apple at me and hit me in the face and that's the only black eye i've ever had; in africa a black and gold spider the size of my head lived in our backyard and my dad would take me out to look at it; haifa usually = heaven, where i left my soul (as a jacket) and cannot find it again; etc.
   
   
6. THEMES I AM CONCERNED WITH (A LIST):
   
   Eternity; ____love = everything (how?);____ time = i don't know... i grasp at it sometimes, but is made of water and slides away; ____gravity (everything that pulls me and entices me, and i lose to); ____God ( w o w ); ____Redemption; ____the tides of Memory (what i remember, what i forget, why sometimes i can remember something(s) that most of the time i've forgotten, where do they go when they are not with me?; ____self-destruction; ____self-pity; ____how time changes (everything); ____how love changes (everything); ____my dead-grandfather who i suddenly feel close to; ____my sister; ____Music (my soul cannot speak English. s.he (notice it's not a secret, it's a duality) speaks: Brahms, wind, hands-held, hands unheld rubbing themselves to sleep, monotony of trains, rhythm of breaths of beautiful women asleep on my chest, grass in the sun, the silence of snow, Stravinksy lives on in rain, women's bare feet lounging on couches when all i can hear is the sound her book's pages being turned every so often with a slight hmm; ____everything i am sorry i could not be- because i am sorry to not be everything i could be; ____3am is its own universe, everything that i know i learnt then; ____loneliness (Monz, most of it is gone, the only species of it that's left is the one that derives from having no peer or equal who understand what it's like to be 50 years old and have to walk around looking 25. also, no one can know the places i have been, because they are too far into a circumstance's scribbley web); ____infinity (which i cannot understand); ______everything
   
   __________________see?
   
   
7. another explanation is here
   
   
8. all i want is to not be a man.
   to fit neatly on a page.
   sit that still and that silent.
   (and always in palms, where i am not alone)
   
   i am finding...
   ___there are no words