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Pardon the obligatory image; as I keep repeating, I packed up all my art supplies for our projected house-move, so I'm left having to share stuff like this, which is my attempt at proving the completion of one of the items on the list of repairs that we were given by the buyer after her inspection of our apartment.

Also, please note that the name of this entry is just the filler phrase that I gave to its draft copy, but once I added the above image, I noted that its post (the literal, wooden one) evoked the last word in that titular placeholder; so, like the God of the initial chapter of Genesis, I declared: "It's good enough."

Dear diary,

Help me center this entry so that it’s worth reading, because I feel that what I’ve been writing here lately is…

How does one center something? Isn’t it already centered, because it is emanating from yourself, and you are the heart of the world?

And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d universe… [“Song of Myself” 48]

Therefore, everything that one composes is, as it were, pre-centered. We’re all Midases of centeredness. (I added an “es” at the end, to make a plural of King Midas, who, rumor has it, was the first victim of the golden touch.) But, if this is true, then why do I still feel the need to center my center, to perfect what is perfect?

We know the mettle of our own being, but what we are is unlimited, not finished: we’re a fragment of something larger that never will stop; and we want to add our energies to the efforts of the nearest phase of that Endless Being. In my case, that phase is humankind. So although I accept that my individual offerings are adequate, it’s natural for me to want to move onward and outward: to attain a superior adequacy: superabundance. Thus I look to the productions of humankind and ask: If all humans were one Human Form Divine, what would be our finest accomplishments, so far?

This is why any given genius will care deeply for Shakespeare. This is why one doesn’t simply rest on one’s own strength and say “I myself am a genius, so I don’t need Dante.” It is not about need, for in some sense you ARE Dante; and, as such, you want to enlarge your center, expand your perfections.

La Divina Commedia. The Divine Comedy. Working backward from Heaven thru Hell, we see that, at some point in Purgatory the Roman poet Virgil joins Dante on his journey. I call it joining because we’re reading the epic in reverse; but, if we spin the tale forwards, we see, at a certain point, that Virgil takes his leave.

My point is that it wouldn’t be illegal for a mind trapped in the year 2018, in the U.S.A., to consider the ancient Greek Homer as one link in a chain, which connects to the link of Virgil, which connects to Dante… and eventually to see this chain as connecting to oneself and then beyond, to others, far past eternity. It’s not to bask in conceit or arrogance that one includes oneself in this series, but to give oneself purpose: to work with a team that is greater than one’s fragmentary power, and to fuse with a time that is infinite, unstoppable…

You don’t want to think that this shack in the desert where you live is all that there is. And you’re right. So you think about Dante, and you use his poem as a model: you ask yourself “Who would I place in the Virgil position, if I were called to compose my own apotheosis?” (Tho perhaps more key is the question: “Who is my Beatrice?”)

Isn’t it enjoyable to contemplate in this fashion? You get to say “Hmmm…” and strike the thinker pose. And there are a variety of alternates you’d place in Virgil’s slot, but you admit to yourself that you’re only choosing this one or that because it satisfies your Ideal View of yourself; but it’s not the Real You…

Now, since I can only speak for me myself (& Homer Virgil Dante & Shakespeare), my personal examples of the above conundrum will mean the world to me, while meaning little to you, O gentle reader, yes, you who wrote the future epic wherein I, even I, escort your character upwards to ultra-bliss. So I try on ideas like suitcoats in a boutique: I say, “How about Marcel Duchamp as my Virgil”; but straightaway I change my mind: “Harold Bloom… William Blake… Walt Whitman…” And for each I must admit that they contain too much of my Ideal Me, not enough of my Real.

It’s not that I’m attempting to say the worst thing possible about myself; I’m trying to get at the truth that has blinded me – the type of fact that is staring me right in the face, too obvious to be grasped without some dusty-serious self-righteous navel-gazing. Duchamp cannot be my guide because I’m insufficiently epicurean; I’m too much of a workaholic and control-freak. Plus he isn’t enough of a man of text. He’s almost text-free. I’m 100% text. And yet Bloom, Blake, and Whitman are TOO texty. They’re not illiterate enough. Also it wouldn’t be fair to have Bloom, the critic-as-artist, guide a bumbling artist-as-critic into existence; Bloom deserves better. And Blake would see me as an aborted fetus that refused to disintegrate: I’m like the hunter Gracchus of aborted fetuses. (Now mentioning Gracchus makes me want to add Kafka to my short-list, and of course immediately remove him because I’m lazy and immoral.) And similarly Whitman would glance at me and gasp: “Why’d you weld your heart shut?”

So now I’ve painted myself into a corner, cuz I’ve made too big a deal about this choice, so it’s like there’s trumpets announcing my news – but I don’t want it to be like that: I just wanted to say that I recently got my hands on a copy of the new bio-autobio of David Lynch, which is presented as an amalgam of dual concepts: an official biography written in a conventional way, plus a casual, personal reaction to that bio by the subject himself; so each chapter of the bio, penned by the biographer (Kristine McKenna), is followed by a responsive autobio, penned by Lynch. Lynch’s life and personality are nothing like mine—they’re almost totally opposite—but when I’m reading the book (Room to Dream is its title), even after getting only about a third of the way into it—so if it were Dante’s Comedy, I’d be just out of Hell—I instinctively remark to myself: “Here’s your Virgil; you can’t deny it.”

But if I had more time this morning, I’d pile up mountains of reasons why Lynch doesn’t fit me either. So my conclusion is: I just can’t find any heroes in my size. Yet one shouldn’t dream up a scripture wherein oneself inspires oneself to conduct oneself to the palm at the end of the mind. So maybe I should put out a classified ad for a yoga coach. Alright, that’s how I’ll end this, in hopes of disinfecting its priggishness.

Wanted: a good instructor who’s fit and trim, who knows all the ins and outs of this reality, and who can teach me meditation and ballroom dancing. Must be free on holidays. Must remain on call at all hours. Must be able to travel on foot over burning coals for at least fourteen leagues. I’d prefer you to own a breastplate with fine gems, and to pay lip service to Jesus while remaining ambivalent about his Father. At first, I will pay you generously for your services, but, as the years pass, you will eventually waive your fee and even end up paying ME for my companionship. You must be willing to relinquish your beliefs, and stop practicing yoga, and join me in my pursuit of art and literature: I will read poetry and essays and novels aloud to you; and you will help recruit fresh members for my cult. You will help me discover a vast amount of land, in some arid region not yet populated, where we can build a brazen mansion. We’ll run pipes underground, to irrigate our pleasure dome; and we’ll craft a whole fleet of robotic laborers that can’t commit suicide. You’ll then don your scientist smock and invent a pill from crushed cornmeal which will cure my fear of heights, so we can fly in my spaceship.