#the unboundaried-ness of it all is just

[likeabxrdinflight]

I always talk to my parents on Saturday mornings and usually its both of them, but this week my mom had a thing so it was just me and dad

And I gotta say it is occasionally very nice to just talk to my dad without mom there, because we can bitch about her insane extended family and realize no, we're not the unusual ones here without my mom constantly justifying and defending their behavior...

[peaamlipoetrydoctor]

Re-encountering William Blake ('s grave...)

A turning point moment for me during London's first lockdown was happening across William Blake's gravestone when I was out for one of my once-a-day walks.

The gravestone lies in Bunhill Fields in what I now know was a notable cemetery for Non-conformists (also there - John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe, Susannah Wesley / mother of.../). At the time it just seemed like an atmospheric overgrown graveyard that I was slightly nervous to walk through.

Strictly, I didn't actually encounter the Blakes' gravestone - as in, this one - a smallish stone, standing erect, to both William and Catherine. I am came across a larger, later carved stone, just to the memory of WB, which has been added lying embedded, horizontal to the ground, by one of the main paths through the space.

This newer stone, clearly for display, intended to be seen, paused for. So my stumbling across it and being excited to see it there was in line with expectation. Not really at all any kind of cleverness on my part. I found the old stone later, when I actually went looking for it.

This was a turning point because I suddenly felt excited about where I lived. Motivated to take the neighborhood seriously in its own right. Rational or irrational (mostly the latter), I felt a jolt of connection. Someone I'd heard of! Here! Heck, he wrote my school hymn!

What a gift of a random encounter when the social environment felt so insecure, shifting so uncertainly in those early pandemic days. What encouragement to stay open to encounter. It got me looking.

And it's a turning point to come back to, because RN I feel like I'm struggling to see.

For instance - I started to read the journals mentioned by Maureen Thorson in the NaPoWriMo daily prompts and I've jolted myself into a kind of unboundaried wandering that has felt very uncomfortable. I find that I've lost the thread of what I was trying to achieve...

Am I trying to "get" every poem in the issue mentioned? (Some I do, some I - don't, really... I feel bad about that...) Am I trying to wander through the back issues until I come across a name or names I recognise? Do I want some sort of gold star for bothering to read work that others have offered into the world? (That does feel worthwhile but also ENTIRELY overwhelming...)

This is why I love structure (??) - because it replaces endless possibility with delineated task. With a feeling of done-ness. (??)

The ethos of the pyschogeographer might be helpful here. Might. Be.

First, they do absolutely have *some* kind of container - which seems comforting, even if the container is rather loose-form, taking the shape and size of "here", wherever "here" is understood to be.

Second, the less comforting part - the stricture that trying to control the experience is to miss the experience.

Third, some comfort once again - the magic *thing* that might happen is not necessarily far away, beyond mountains (like the city glimpsed in Soria Moria). I might have a moment of magical encounter just round the corner in my own neighborhood.

It's just a case of having nothing-too-specific in mind, no timetable to adhere to (being on a schedule will almost certainly kill this), and therefore, the luxury of being able to waste - time, attention.

It's starting to creep back round towards my personal favorite statement of (anti)-nihilist intent - from Nietsche, by way of Tim Minear, writing on Angel -

IF NOTHING WE DO MATTERS, THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS IS WHAT WE DO.