July 19
1. I got salt in the mail from you. It reminded me of King Lear and his misunderstanding of his daughter’s assertion. So I felt loved, though that was a misunderstanding of your intention. The salt was from Bali. I don’t know if it was from the north coast or not but I decided it was because that’s the story I preferred. For you the calculus was simple. A friend of yours was going. Whether he went to the north coast I don’t know (and maybe I doubt, given his rather obsessive focus on stone sculpture made in the central-south, that he shipped back home to stuff his yard, which, then, must have looked like a roadside stand selling sculpture. That may have been his interest I guess). Could he bring you a bag of salt so you could send it to me? So he did and you did.
2. Only a year ago, when you brought me handmade salt from the Caribbean, I felt loved though that was a misunderstanding of your intention.
3. The horizon line was barely discernibly aslant. I felt you were talking to me in the tilt like I was talking to you in the clouds.
4. We always understand love, and its abrogation, in private frames.
5. I found myself creating a hierarchy of intimacy, privileging ‘you’ over him or her or a proper noun to delineate others and their location. When I realized what I was doing, I began to consider how to codify it. Then I realized the logic was unnatural, that is, it was about you, or him, or a proper noun and against my feeling. I won’t do it. You are all you to me and I am you to you even if you will never read this. You will know yourself over all others if you find our shared story here, like Saint-Exupery’s fox, which made you weep or feel nothing special.
If you have forgotten, or were never aware, or remember it so differently that you think you are reading about someone else, does it matter?
My objective is to find personal truths, pure memories unmarked by layers of story-telling tracks. I am looking for the small thing, the tiny event and finding it hard enough.
What event is too small? Are any too small? Do I find this hard because I decide certain things are too small without a revelatory thought to go with them? Is a tiny event only always a thought?
6. The cat’s head felt smooth and warm under my hand. The cat purred (actually that’s a deception. The cat did not purr).
7. The snake felt smooth and cool and slim as it slid (is moved better? muscled? where does it get precious and over-determined?) through my hand.
And then the continuation, the expansion of the event:
I thought it wanted to get away as I barely detained it by passing one hand under the other, catching it, over and over.
Now the revelation that justifies the recordation:
What if it enjoyed the feeling of my hands as much as I enjoyed the feeling of its body and it’s simply the case that I perceive the snake moves away because I stay still, thinking that staying still has the capacity to coax the wild thing to choose me? What if the snake invited me to follow, to go with it places I want to go but can’t go (don’t go)? Am I not, then, imposing my logic? If you stop moving in your way and stay still with me, then I know you have chosen me. And if you stop moving in your way and move in my way, then I know you have fallen in love with me. But if you say you love me and neither stay still with me nor move in my way, do I believe you? Or do I deny it could be true? If this is the case, is love a form of violence?
Who is tamed in Saint-Exupery’s account of the fox and the little prince (and the rose)? And which am I, and which is you if we choose to occupy those subject positions? Do we both find ourselves in the prince and position the other as the fox?
8. The fly wove near me. I brushed it away. It wove and I felt harassed by it. So I held out my hands (what does this gesture look like?). It wove close enough. So I brought my hands together (what does that gesture look like?). And I killed it.
Tiny Events 