Red Thread(s)

Or "memory" or "thread." Things that recur. I'm reading with a certain lack of concern, not holding too tightly to judgements, as in "how will this stay with me?" There are some points of correspondence & affinity that I find unshakeable: Oppen, William Bronk, Woolf, The Book of Disquiet; Bresson, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Last Year at Marienbad...The processes of walking and making lists. Certain habits of mind & aesthetics: blank notebooks, index cards, my Olympia typewriter, dawn -- though for many years I thought I was a "night person." "For a long time, I went to bed early." It's a new month, with several volumes to go. Try not to think of it as a monument. A small flurry of snow this morning. A few pencilled notes in the margins. Slowness.

I have, at least, this past month, finished a small project; simply the effort of writing at something each day. I may get a page out of it, after the crossing-out is done. But some small effort. There's the reading, as well. But all I really wanted to write here was what I forgot to note on the bus last night and is now beyond me, and what, this morning, still delights: yesterday, the last of the month: spring snow.