So, it is done then. I am actually a highschool graduate now, and frankly, I like it. Oh it feels so very delicious to be done with that sillyness and finaly moving on to the big time: the University of Chicago. And can you imagine? Well, that will be a very long trip, but hopefully not one gone awry. I am not sad about leaving. Not a completely true statement, but then again, there is so much to it. I do actually miss a few people already, but that is more because I was just starting to spend more time with them and it was seemingly cut short. Other than that, I am confident I will stay connected to the people I want(more or less, hopefully more...)and that makes it difficult to be too upset about. Plus, I needed to leave. And now, I need sleep. (I'm going to be a camp counselor this summer and I head out for that on Tuesday. I will be gone for june and july. I have no idea what I am getting into, but I have a great feeling about it.)

A Message Gone Awry

i overhear a man about my age say
"if not now, when?"
i wonder if he heard that first,
as i did, from peter marin,
with whom i taught at l.a. state
in 1964-65. he was right, of course,
some people postpone living in an endless
preparation for a life that leaks its fuel before it
fires from its launching pad.
prufrock, for instance, and john marcher.
newman's idea of a university:
make it as close to life as possible;
you only learn to live by living.
still, all ideas go too far: the wise youth
does defer a few things while arming
himself for the fray, takes his
lessons gradually, doesn't take foolhardy
risks, doesn't strike out to do battle
with or tame the sharks until he's
learned to swim. we inner-directed children of the
cautious 50's needed to be urged
to act, but all too many of the
very young have perished in the decades since,
impetuously, and from acting far beyond
their age, or any age.

- Gerald Locklin

Oh, for schools it will either be University of Chicago or University of Minnesota. I'm thinkin' Chicago...

Right, so welcome to spring everyone. I got my hair(s) cut on Tuesday night. Over ten inches gone, snippity snap. Just like that, all choreographed to the tunes of the softrock station they had playing over the speaker system. So yes, now I look like I am seven. A neat trick, and I will be sure to whip it out at opportune times in the future when I reach that inevitable age of desperation for anything to make me feel and maybe even look a bit less my age. But for now, well, let's just say it will take some getting used to. Today was the first thunderstorm of the year and it was smashing. I still miss watching snow fall, but I am ready to not have to build a chrysalis around myself at the mere notion of going outside. I had a wonderful time walking around the 'downtown' of my fair city today. It is one of my favorite places to find solitude. Also, there is nothing like watching the bus you wanted to catch pull away from the curb just as you get the walk signal from a particularly apathetic stop light. But it is nice to have rain and it is nice to have short(er) hair, and I am ready for summer. I have been cooking up a storm here (I am on Spring Break, woo hoo[or notsomuch]) and it has been delicious fun. I also remembered how much I truely enjoy studying in libraries. I am very excited for next year, being as homework is probably all I will be doing. And I will be paying for it, literally. And I look forward to it. I also look forward to bed and writing a very over due letter. Goodnight.

Waving Good-Bye

I wanted to know what it was like before we
had voices and before we had bare fingers and before we
had minds to move us through our actions
and tears to help us over our feelings,
so I drove my daughter through the snow to meet her friend
and filled her car with suitcases and hugged her
as an animal would, pressing my forehead against her,
walking in circles, moaning, touching her cheek,
and turned my head after them as an animal would,
watching helplessly as they drove over the ruts,
her smiling face and her small hand just visible
over the giant pillows and coat hangers
as they made their turn into the empty highway.

-by Gerald Stern


Byzantine Faces

i won't believe
i'm really
alive

until i'm gladder
to be alive
here now
than to have
been alive
there then

living in greece
i may be
thinking
i am, was,
alive there
then

some byzantine
time
some classical
time

why think
that good?

i should
know better

i think good
any time except
the eighteenth
century

(not too bad)

the nineteenth
century

(bad enough)

or the twentieth

really, i'm
glad to be
alive in the
twentieth

not only glad
to be just
alive

but even to
be alive
just now
right now

yes, but i keep
remembering
a light in the
eyes of certain
figures in
frescoes

certain figures
in mosaics

that made
me wish
i was living
then

as though
living then
were to
live

forever

some life
some liveliness
in the eye
that seemed
eternal
eternally
alive
eternally
infinitely
joyous
& penetrating

(warm with
the warmth
of life
exploding,
even, with,
the joy
of life)

yet there
forever

is it
that see
ing them
in some
mu
se
um

seeing
them still
preserved
still
living

made me
envy
their
state

?

not
sure

am
not
sure,
either,
that it
was envy
they gave
me, but
rather a
life

a spark
of living
to keep
alive

-by Robert Lax,

What is better for one's spirits than freshly self-made bread?

Space being (don't forget to remember) Curved
(and that reminds me who said o yes Frost
Something there is which isn't fond of walls)

an electromagnetic (now Ive lost
the) Einstein expanded Newton's law preserved
conTinuum (but we read that beFore)

of Course life being just a Reflex you
know since Everything is Relative or

to sum it All Up god being Dead (not to

mention inTerred
LONG LIVE that Upwardlooking
Serene Illustrious and Beatific
Lord of Creation, MAN:
at a least crooking
of Whose compassionate digit, earth's most terrific

quadruped swoons into billiardBalls!

-ee cummings


"a poem that he himself called a parody of the times in The Explicator 9.5."

Dear Sir--
please let your readers know that the author of "Space being(don't forget to remember)Curved" considers it a parody-portrait of one scienceworshipping supersubmoron in the very act of reading(with difficulties)aloud,to another sw ssm,some wouldbe explication of A.Stone&Co's unpoem
--thank you


E. E. Cummings
December 11 1950

I have realized that for the most part, I do not know most of my friends' favorite colors. I do not like that, not one bit. I mean, really, I should know what color connects to, well, (here comes some new-age-y spirit speak) their souls. And another thing that bothers me a bit is how things like ('little') favorites are often left out of biographies. I recently did a mini research project on e. e. cummings and I could not find anywhere his favorite food or color or smell or song or painting or feeling or experience or so on and so forth. I probably will not have a biography written about me, but if by the freak accident that one were, I sincerely hope that they would include at least my favorite color, because it is something that I hold very dear, actually, and I also take so much pleasure from it that it makes a difference in my every day life. I am not going to tell you straight out what it is, so if you really want to know that badly, you will have to ask me yourself. At least for now, who knows, I will probably wind up talking about it later, but then again, maybe not. I heard of this movie called, "The Taste of Cherries" or something to that effect, and I guess one of the characters was living or continued living for the taste of cherries, and I know that it is not this way for most people, but for me that is my favorite color. It is by far not the only thing, but it is certainly on of the things that I live for, for the feeling that I get when I see it. I wonder what e. e. cummings favorite movie was.