Idling

Dear Friend,

I’ve been idling. Not idle. It strikes me this is a pause I habitually take when it’s time to perform public speech. I approach the front of the room and pause — an apprehending, a wavering. I hesitate. Inside it, if you’re me, a minute, breath-suspended sensation. I’m looking at you, you’re looking at me, it’s delicious, terrified and terrifying, and I wonder if now having written a sentence about it I’ll ever experience that delicate pause so naturally and so happily again, before diving in,

(I, I, I — I hate the word “I” in my mouth. Or do I?)

One thousand ideas percolating these last weeks. But to break the ice and break the chain of expectation, to break the habit of aiming for perfection, a rough exercise in ideas, sketched fast last Feb:

10 ideas

• 12 buckets, with a thin hose mounted above, modulated drips, amplified. This is outdoors. Then indoors.

• Amplified breathing of sleep, broadcast - where?

• The result of amplification rendered in language, but never published, never read.

• Tie a rope to a car.

• Tie a rope to a chair, a long thick rope,

• Let sleeping dogs lie.

• Trail stars together with rope, rope black as metaphor, dim stars cast into the deepest part of the metaphor of night

• Paint the bedroom an unfortunate color, paint it again, decide: was misfortune painted out of the room?

• Find solace in a color you hate

• Knit slippers for the shelter’s kittens

10 ideas

• Wrap the bed pillows in used paper bags

• Generosity killed the cat

• Draw a line from the roman empire to the star of David and back

• Empty the dishwasher

• Empty the coffee grounds every day for a week straight on to the floor

• An empty heart is not an empty mind

• Fill a space with pencil shavings

• Find solace in a gun

• Drive into the desert until the car runs out of gas; try to walk back

• Set your watch to somebody else’s standard

• Market teething rings made out of brass

• Mess around w/ Jim

10 ideas

• Refine your psychic spirit and rob a bank

• and From every book on the shelf, tear one page

• and From every page tear one line, place it in the book three over, or sometimes four, or throw it away or burn it

• or eat it

• or Surreptitiously record the sounds of other people’s shits

• or Set up a lemonade stand, but for saliva

• Trace every edge of the room w/ your finger tip

• Bake a cake

• Bake a cake and frost it

• Bake a cake, frost it, eat it

(or hear it on youtube)

if you’re reading this in your email and you hit reply, yah, it comes right into my inbox. write to me.

Your friend,

Suzanne