I am here inside a place enough away from any other, hearing all but only my breathing, or what my breathing might become, or what becomes out of my breathing up inside of what I say. I can hold in my breath and will hear mostly nothing, or I can listen to myself when repeating the names. So if most of what I hear results in part from what I say, does each name that I repeat (overlapping all the others) seize up into itself a kind of hearing of its own? But what could be announced or even held inside a name that would not deform the name through its own sounding out? My body, at least, though hardly a place, might contain certain places by exhausting their names. But how do I exert from any place now inside me what was found to be lost (when I was inside the place) if at first it was a place that was somewhere outside? Any place, after all, is not defined by its naming, but instead by those things that it finally surrounds. Clothing, I think, or at least something torn, may inform through its being all a place could ever be. So if beginning must begin by first pushing through an object, then first (before beginning) I must recover what is lost. But will recovering what is lost move anything forward? Or instead will it halt what the past could only stall? In place of any answer I can only say this: Those years jutting out from inside of my body are the sum of a moment that was never followed through. I was always turned aside from the verge of nearly happening. And, as I turned, I would always look up, choosing only to see the most wide-open thing. Instead, what I saw (or narrowed out through my seeing) was too consumed into itself, or nearly too distant, to be said to be a thing that was even seen at all. But if my seeing fell away from overlapping the sky, it gained by avoiding all that lay underneath. Every definite seeming thing was what I pulled from in between. Or, let me say (though I recall it only vaguely) that both rising and falling from just above where I stood came the clarity of something up low enough to reach. But did I lean reaching out for what it was that was there? Or was I once again digging up inside all I wore? There was always something there, sticking out into my skin, which I could feel up throughout the empty bulk of my clothing. I was always touching and twisting at a knit. There was always something there that was burring in between. But I am nearly convinced, or am convincing myself, that as I dug into the snag of something down inside a pleat, I also reached up—unmeasured by balance—weaving levity and gravity into one opposing thing. But how can I know this was how it occurred? This clarity I mention—where is it now? Am I confusing what is said with memory itself? Or am I only trying to say what I cannot recall, giving shape to every hint that excludes any form?

not
illinois



david
mclendon