revised prose

I remember the smell of the yellow flowers across the dewy grass when waking as a child, a breeze that fell upon my chest through the perched summer window. And I really remember hearing my grandmother in the kitchen—cooking pancakes with blueberry’s and chocolate chips. It was summer—always summer, these memories. For what is life without eternity—these small moments when we are truly awake, yet dreaming. A dream that displaces that feeling of being out in the distance (maybe not far enough)…
For there is a drunken Indian on my aunts reservation where she works, as a nurse, who has wet tears crusting around his eyes—his last drop of bourbon emptying out of an iridescent bottle, burning his lips at 11:30 in the morning. For that last drop was never enough to console him about his dead wife, his obese children, and that worthless monthly government check that hardly bought him enough to tie one on—day after day…
And there he is a few hours later, as my aunt and I approach the family park in her blue State issued ford pickup truck—drunker than hell where it is still nice—nice with the yellow flowers, the sun at noon with the little clouds dancing through the sky, and a place to dream with the little Indian children who still have the ability to imagine fame and fortune—rocking back and forth into the sky, on the new swing set the federal government finally purchased. My aunt told me Elijah (the drunken Indian) was always in the park—face turned in, and breathing the gravel. It was better than being at home alone she contended. In a matter of fact tone she looked over at me from the driver’s seat and said “he got in a car wreck a few years back breaking his wife’s neck, and shattering a few of his bones as well—that’s why when he is sober enough to stand straight, he walks with a limp…” My aunt sighed and squeezed the steering wheel a little, and told me she had been his nurse when he woke a few hours after the incident—where he learned the full details from the state trooper who was the first to arrive at the scene, and see Elijah’s wife’s flipped dangling head, and crooked neck.
My aunt said in some manner sincerity had always been a virtue of Elijah’s, and on waking from the shock he asked in his first conscious moment about his wife. The topper discontentedly reposed, but gave it out of the long nights stress, and the honesty it was worth to the fragmented middle age man, on the white linen bed surrounded by hospital equipment…“When I was about 100 feet out of the wreck—I approached what I thought to be a couple of parked cars on the highway, with engine trouble.” Pacing around and gulping some ice water never making eye contact with Elijah he continued, “and I came upon it sir, your wife next you…she, I perceived to be dead.”
In his thoughts the white 23 year old state trooper with good intentions, for the Indian reservation, and its people, was still there…coming upon the sight of the burning orange lights in the distance—the flipped rear ended red dodge pickup truck on the side of the two lane highway; a green Honda civic totaled from hood to steering wheel, and a bleeding man kneeling next to the right front tire of the crushed green steel mess with his head in his palms…My aunt said a little bitterly, “the man who was driving the civic had been drunk”.
In the bed below the bright fluorescent bulbs and the cackling fan wafting around stale air, something faded in Elijah’s brown eyes. He had seen the photos—that seemed to fill in the hazy edges were the New Mexico state trooper could not…which my aunt reasoned looking out at him now from the glaring windshield (in a recollective sort of distance from me) broke him down so much he picked up drinking himself.
As I watched him in the hot sun asleep on the grass I knew he owed the world at least that favor. What was pious sober living worth if it had brought him thus far? I knew he would rather see the rest of his days in a shade being removed. A place like the one he found himself as my aunt and I sat in the parking lot; with the children who had not yet even thought of driving on long dark highways…
That place where a butterfly could touch upon those swaying yellow mariposa’s, and return to cover as the heavy summer rain soaked the grass—and Elijah’s clothes when he was too drunk to pick himself up—a place where rainbows formed with low dark moisture and sunshine, and a place where all who saw him really tried, but could never really care—in the shade and comfort of a summer dream.

What Is “It”

What is the feeling when you're driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? -it's the too huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.””
Jack Kerouac--my first writer who was idol.

As I said I would do in my last blog—my discussion continues. What I would like to expound upon for today is Giulio Camillo’s memory theater, and how it relates to my own memory theater.
So to start:

…I remember a few months ago purchasing The Art of Memory, skimming through it briefly, reading some of the passages and pondering what (exactly did Camillo’s centerfold mean)—and thinking to myself, that this semester was going to be a tough one. And I suppose it has—but has it really been in the traditional sense of what a contemporary college student equates with hard. I start with this example: cramming for a test—I am sure every college student knows what I am talking about. We all have been fortified in that sick mindset of fluorescent light twittering on and off above our head, sipping stale coffee repeating like mad a few irrelevant concepts, for a class you hate…and there a few hours later in a drawn out solitude at 11:45 the librarian’s snaps you out of that edge of insanity reminding you that things close, and your bed is always a welcome place. Godamnit I hate that shit...So In a sense you might say, I was delightfully surprised to discover that the artificial memory was in fact aesthetic—not a compulsory technique in the typical way we remember irrevelent college drool—but an engaging experience that is everything, and which—folds neatly into your mind.

Why I chose to continue with the muses for my theater is simple: the park, the dogs, and the smell the breeze had breaking through the park trees is poetry. If anyone can recall from the beginning of the semester, Doctor Sexson on assessing the importance of remembering the muses said: what does one really have to do on a day to day basis that is more important than remembering the nine. This stuck, and perhaps I might be a mystic, but patterns of poetry and the muses riding crests of awe!!!!!! are everywhere. Weather they are divine or not, I cannot say. I Just know, like Jack Kerouac defined “IT”, that “IT” is an unexplainable plane were we truly are and above the realm of flesh and bone. Yates in her study of Camillo says that when studying his theater and its dynamics she discovered that Camillo believed in the three worlds of the Cabalist: “the supercelestial world of the sephiroth or the divine emanations: the middle celestial world of the stars; (and) the subcelestial or elemental world.” She latter goes on to explain that in a sense this notion is Platonic, and that Camillo is using the sephiroth as eternal places of his memory. And I suppose in a sense, the muses and there explicit power to evoke are engrained in my memory as Sephiroth, or “It”. Camallio believed his organic association was constructed upon eternal truth, and I suppose this is not really what I seek as the cornerstone to my theater—or maybe it is—I do not know. But I do understand my need to use the muses as a barricade and graspable objects between myself and “IT”. Finally, in a mystic sense, the practicality of the memory theater in this occult Platonic sense to myself and Camallio is that “The theater is thus a vision of the world and of the nature of things seen from a height, from the stars themselves and even from the supercelestial founts of wisdom beyond them”.

God bless the rusted water pail
Teaming with soaked green grass nectar.
God bless the old wooden white house—
In slow years they rest
Nantucket
Were blue curled waves stand still—
in that moment of memory
Were not a shade of light breaks that silence.
God bless laying in the grass
Not a moment too soon—
When Grandma loved seagulls
And my eyes covered with the summers crimson lids.

The Magicians Tricks:

Well, I have not writin a blog in over a month. What this reflects is numerous things I suppose, but I really don’t want to expound upon them. Anyway for this blog, I wanted to talk about my memory theater and the techniques I used for its construction. This blog might seem arbitrary—because I have the impression that class time on Wednesday will be dedicated to this subject—but for the sake of clarity I prefer to write about it.
My memory theater that I used for my fifty things is a place anyone in our class can visit—don’t worry—the unwashed masses are still excluded. Here are the directions: walk to Cooper Park (it’s on Story and 8th) make sure to walk there on a sunny day so as to marvel at the sun breaking through the leaf less trees, the melting snow off of the sidewalk, the chirping birds ushering in spring, and really marvel at the pleasure you have locking at least a few fragments of the scene before you forever in your mind. Once you’re at the park walk toward the large tree in the middle that has a large stone next to it. Once your there face the tree at the angle of 8th being at your left hand, and the bronze incrusted history of the before you. Now that you are at this place recall the muses from our class room, and suppose they are dog handlers for the day. For me Erato is Erato of the terriers—and she is directly in front of me leaning on the tree behind the fencing when I am here. Her ten dogs are leashed in a sort of leash that connects them all and she is holding them with her right hand. The first of the terriers is an Airedale Terrier. This dog has a flowing drifting breeze constantly upon it and it is looking at the dog next to him, which is a black Russian terrier. This dog is wearing a soviet cap. There are 8 more embellished images of terriers for this set of ten that Erato is holding on to. The next muse that I decided to take to the park was Clio. And I felt the dog breed that best embodied Clio was the hounds she has a ten set like Erato her right hand. She is standing next to me in the park, reading the bronze commemoration. Urania is Urania of the working dogs, and she is to the right of me up in a lamp post with floating dogs and the leash firm in her right hand. And bellow her is thalia of the sporting dogs looking up at her holding her ten set in her left hand. Finally Terpsichore the tiny dancer is on a large stone to the right of where I am standing with her toy dogs starting with Affenphincher—which I envisioned to look something like a purse dog that pinch’s an attractive materlistic girls fans.
It is strange, every comment that I have herd from classmates concerning this assignment was something along the lines of this: “it was really easy, it only took me less than hour to do. I thought it was going to be much harder than it was”. I suppose the reason people seemed to float through this assignment with such effortless grace was that each memory theater was personal and reflective. By making objects worth while to be remembered it is in a cliché term cake. We are what we remember and what moves us to remember.
:Part II of my memory theater explanation will be more abstract. This discussion will be continued tomorrow.