Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Day 1 —One Word

from One Word Basic

When I attended high school my basic winter outfit—a black long skirt, a cable black sweater, dark gray knee socks, and sneakers. Since I went to Music & Art High School that outfit was worn on days that I didn't have a studio art class. On those days I wore jeans with the cable black sweater. Everyone dressed in a similar fashion. I think we thought the outfit made a Bohemian statement.

Some days four or five of my fellow art students wandered down to Greenwich Village, sat in a coffee house and talked about Sartre, Camus and existentialism. I envisioned myself as far more sophisticated than friends who attended the local high school.

I'm not certain what basic means—perhaps it's the underpinnings of everything. It's what you have when everything else is washed away. Sometimes I think that if I could rid myself of all the peripheral items that encroach on space—be it bookcases hugging the walls or shelves tottering under the weight of things—I'd be left with what I really need.

Once I collected rocks— not geologic specimens, just ordinary rocks. I filled a large mason jar with these rocks and stored the jar on the floor. The rock from the Davidson River in North Carolina reminded me that I waded in those icy waters until my toes shriveled and turned a blue-red shade. At first I brought home offerings to the deities of memory—rocks from every mountain and trail.

Small lava balls and rocks from the southwest filled another mason jar. One day I took all my southwest rocks out and laid them out on the rug —a phalanx lined up and ready. When I couldn't tell which rock came from which canyon or which trail or what year—no longer a canonical journal—I brought them outside and created a miniature rock garden. One rock remained as a talisman.

Now to approach the task of simplifying with a goal of stripping down until an item represents the whole. Five notebooks of quotations gleaned from reading refined down to one basic quote. In medias res.

Foundational

Prefatorial

Basic

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