Experiments...

As part of mopdo2014, that is a mooc course taught by Al Filreis and the talented group of TA's (teachers assistants). So I was offered Bernadette Meyers who had made lists about what to write. I got intrigued what would happen when I would just start writing. This was the result.

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Bernadette Meyers experiments

don’t dream
hardly sleep
do eat
       Do you have a recipe for Eiershekken
       Spending too much?
       Wind in November   -  Sun in October
Frost before leaving after mending house
Every day subjects – reading – beauty
        Found art
        Friends
        Hiraeth: the longing to return to a home that never was
        Travel tomorrow Thuesday arrive on Thursday
        Las Vegas – Antwerp
        do this-do that
        Sunsets every night
Write every day

Make every word 

new
        Change
        Dog days
        Change the course
Write while it happens:

Make every word 

count
*
The sun caresses
the tops of the Cerbats
stretching into shadows
in the valleys the light  can’t linger
darkness there
and silence
of the soul
so it is
caress
distance
            this
 *

The appearance of workers in the desert will happen again and coincidences of meetings will occur at random, a possibility. Yes Emily we all live in possibility, should be aware and use it wisely – always to remembering to gather paradise.
But a paradise without a snake, what would have meant that to humanity? The shadows have stopped in the tree covering the air over asphalt –
This happened – just now –
Did it happen as part of a biography...

The words in a poem most difficult
Most important
THIS and IT

The unidentified, open, abstract
This and all that remains is now

I walk this path
Coming going
Endless indivisible
Back and forth
Polder and desert

And
This

The process
Of then and now
And the road
All
This
***

I eliminated adjectives and I from the text I wrote, thinking again and again of 'This' and 'it'. The I gone, the text became independent, although flowing around the facts of life of the days I did the work and the essay: traveling with a small dog back to Antwerp, Belgium. My head filled with info about coincidences, chance, freedom... This type of thinking through the experiments was very liberating. Getting out of a comfort zone, feeling challenged and remembering all kinds of lines from poems studied... enjoying the task at hand.