Joni Mitchell Wasn't at Woodstock

Writing: the urge to keep building, making, meeting the urge to take away, diminish, tear down what's been built, what's been made, the most interesting juncture, the point where stamina comes into actual existence, when the substance of the real physical person--the writer him or herself--comes into contact with the concepts of what's right in front and what's far beyond.

If this is the case, and I propose that it is, Gertrude Stein was the very last interesting writer and remains the most interesting writer to this day, though she's not read as much these days as she is studied. Other writers are read today, a slew of them, supra-intelligent, well educated and well read themselves, who present capable, literarily responsible stories with the beginnings, middles and ends their readers seem to clamor for.

The stamina necessary to read Stein: not knowing what you're reading, knowing it's all there right in front of you and beyond you, and to keep reading anyway, to be a participant in the writing without having to be there attending to it so that the experience happens as language. Yes, perhaps it's better for the writer not to have been there at all in order to do the writing necessary for the reader to feel he or she is there instead.

Neighboring house directly to the north of the author's study, midnight, August 13, 2018.