Dens-Laps Re-Coded

-They drew first blank.
-Confusion rings when the duck flies over the glass.
-Let's disgust this.
-The pits just keep on coming.
-Oh, I think Mosby's gonna be plain soon.
-That bowl is flaky.
-Brood, you love tree brinks.
-I have grew in the fiddle of the ice.
-Big heart, get to our flame here.
-Crawling rave by Noy-Verte.
-Burning their second flower play of the period.
-Tike Wean looks to the heavens.
-Pour but.
-Is when me lathe it away at the hew line.
-We will give us cheesy buns on the get.
-Laughter the mop of the puck.
-Pat sings the iron.
-Crumb the league office din Toronto.
-We can never tell if this buck completely flosses the toll line.
-Huck grew.
-I'm milling blue hoe up to fifty.
-If the Russian gores fear, he ends the maim.
-Fooling to stay hero.
-Won't flurry about mitt.
-To fled further gown the bench.

We'll wake up bright and early

Woke up this morning to the sound of coughing and the need to bang keys. That's the most beautiful sound I can think of, keys rattling against a bed of Nick Cave music. Sun coming in, but not streaming, more like trickling through the condensation on the storm window. Why is light always streaming in fiction that you read? Streaming is not the only mode of light. Keep those keys moving, no time to stop. And maybe that's what these fiction writers are thinking, they have to keep the keys moving. There is no bread on the table if the fingers aren't tapping. It's so much fun to hear them tapping as you watch the words march forth on the screen, as I am doing now.

JD does long form posts much better than I do; witness this one. This is the way the post ends Not with a bang but a whimper.

stacks

* Being in the library to work on a musicology paper that I had no hope of comprehending in my numbed, utterly distracted state. This was me. I'm still that person.

*The grimy desks are the same, the aged volumes institutionally bound are the same, the powerful musty smell of books has not changed. Why should it have?

*I remembered that I had loved this place powerfully as a sanctuary, a place to play at being an academic and reading and writing for long hours till the bubble of restlessness burst.

*It always feels good, still, to pick out a volume or two, take them home for free. They might never be read, but say, what if one day I take a sudden, strong interest in John Donne? I must equip myself ahead of that day that we await with faithful anticipation.

Sketch 1

W- The face of the popular girl from high school, thirty years on. The eyes still have the girlish twinkle. There are some lines around them, but not many. Even in her late forties, she still has kept some of that spark about her. She wears skirts short enough to draw the eye and introduce a vague question involving dress codes and seemliness, one that fades. She tends to say 'blahblahblah' to quickly gloss over something that doesn't need to be pounded out in detail.

Her whole aspect is a double entendre, and begs another question of how to interpret her. Is she the attractive older woman who has held her power to turn people's heads? Or is she rather the desperate fortysomething who has, frighteningly, never changed? [Would I be considered an anti-feminist boor in some circles for the manner in which I pose these questions?—A separate question entirely, you will agree.]

[bracketed digressive interspersals doing anything for you?]

I saw a shock of gray emerging at her hairline yesterday and was struck by how well the dye had done its duty: I never once considered how old she must be. It was all I could do not to stare at it after that. Does she know that I have guessed at her secret? [A hint here at the secrets we all keep in plain sight and we think people don't notice. They must have, though, no?]

These questions I'm inclined to pose about her make her one of the only people in the department who is truly interesting on her own merits. What happened to her? How did some part of her become arrested in a stage of growth, before it was fully mature [I am presuming, but what is life without presumption?]? I can only hope that it is not one of the darker mysteries that is hinted at by the evidence. Assumption: she married young to a high-school sweetheart, felt trapped, but stayed in it, and acts out in barely perceptible ways to assert her lost freedom. And who says you can't judge your elders and postulate their life stories based on appearances and surface perceptions?