You can’t eye can’t I can’t they can’t she can’t he can’t it can’t why can’t why can’t eye don’t no. Y’no? It’s im-poss-ib-al. If there’s one overwhelming iota that I’ve been shown by some auricle at some distant point in my youth, it’s that things that are written are written and things that aren’t aren’t. It’s not fair to me or anyone else (altho to b honest eye don ot really care about anybody else] to say that one thing in the world of written langu-age means anything. These words : certainly don’t mean anything.
A paper on Keats for Dr. Ault.
4/4/74 2:20am
This Living Hand
Please do not read the following until after you have read Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams and under no circumstance should you be listening to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
[First of all, wouldja like to call the cops? Do you think it’s time I stopped? Why are you running away? I spend entirely too much of my time here not asleep. And getting mad! about idiots and the faceless beings who pen (or, more probably, type, footnotes) the blitherings and blatherings about people who were never meant to be annotated in such a fashion. Par example : how in the fuck! does whowhever wrote the note on p.481
know that Keetes wrote stanzas 45-51 of The Jealousies “!AFTER!” he wrote This living hand, now warm and capable ?!?! Look at the top of this page. Now, tell me what your evidence is that would lead you to believe I wrote those lyrics from No Excuses by Alice in Chains before or after I wrote this sentence. Go ahead … tell me. Bullshit! You can’t do it, man. There’s no way you can say which was written first. If there was a 13,000 year difference of writingtimes, then you could carbon-date the ink/pencil of each and say which was penned first. But Keyts wasn’t alive 13,000 years so you cannot.]
You can skip this part:
First of all, there must be some significance in that when I, after being detained by other more pressing matters for a # of weeks, picked up an assignment from random, thinking, “I am going to go over there, sit down, and do this tonight even if it kills me,” somehow managed to select a poem that took less than 60 seconds to read (and immediately, (after a few other occurrencess) consumed my brain with things to say/write/type/express), handed it to a compatriot to read, she, upon taking the text in hand, dropped {literally} everything she was doing in a heap on the floor, exclaiming, “aw shit! you asshole!” and didn’t read This living hand, now warm and capable until after cleaning her mess – which included not only a textbook of her own, but also nowhere near two reams of notes, a cup of my finest coffee (Maxwell House), and an ashtray with at least one lit cigarette.
Also of note, the very moment I capped my pen, deciding to type rather than handwrite the remainder of this, a girl nearby was overheard to say, “Damn, the ink bled . ! .. ” which has to mean something, though I would not dare to say what.
It’s so hard to deal with the one sweet real they continually blow my mind they don’t mean to do it they don’t mean to do it we’re tearing each other apart tearing each other apart
Do you wonder what it means that I took stanzas 45-51 to mean lines 45-51 and couldn’t possibly see any connection between what was supposedly written on the same sheet (b-movie Mexican accent?) with what appears on p386? Wonder? wonder? wanda, I wander I wonder … everything seems to astound me sometimes, y’know? Have you ever felt like that; you can’t you know, say anything definite or even authoritative (in difference to the plethora of {& eye cannot even begin to tell you how offended eye was when you asked me in a miniature pencil if eye used a thesaurus to get the word desultory in the last paper eye handed in}editors and researchers and academia who would rather bleave otherwiiii) about meaning or themes or undercurrents or repressed fucking emotions or sexual imagery or what the hell was STC thinking trying to say in this work. You can’t eye can’t I can’t they can’t she can’t he can’t it can’t why can’t why can’t eye don’t no. Y’no? It’s im-poss-ib-al. If there’s one overwhelming iota that I’ve been shown by some auricle at some distant point in my youth, it’s that things that are written are written and things that aren’t aren’t. It’s not fair to me or anyone else (altho to b honest eye don ot really care about anybody else] to say that one thing in the world of written langu-age means anything. These words : certainly don’t mean anything. Do you know how long I could spend subverting things that I’ve read? Tell me, please, b/c that was a feeble attempt at hyperbole.
You may resume reading.
Where was I? O yes. Keats. This living hand, now warm and capable. Why do I keep thinking, typing, and then having to delete loving where I should have living? Can’t touch the bottom. If I’m wrong I’m write, rite? In the poem, which “appears”…can I say something about that? How does a poem appear? The footnoteer says that the poem “appears” (does he not). This, I think, Is a very interesting concept. But wait! I just saw that the footnote actually says the lines appear and not the poem. “The lines appear[.]” How, may I ask?, do lines appear? To me, they appear as a poem. Apparently the footnoter doesn’t feel this way for he calls them lines instead of poem. I don’t know what you can consider This living hand, now warm and capable if you don’t consider it a poem. Is it a fragment of a poem, as so much of this text seems to be? (This text or this text? Another important question which sould not be overlooked?) You may skip the following, too: You know, I hate to digest … mmm .. digress! but I just happened on the back cover of this text and saw that Jack Stillinger is Professor of English and a permanent mem-ber of the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois. That’s a rather interesting concept, no? (I find so much to be interesting!) Will he still be a member after he is dead and, presumably, buried? What if he is cremated? Will he then be a member? (Well, I guess he will, since that is what permanence implies, write?) The assignment, as assigned, is to ‘analyze’ and ‘consider’ This living hand, now warm and capable. I think someone. somewhere. should care that with the unavoidable prevalence of keyboards (Van Halen just hasn’t been the same since!) most writing now occurs through the activities of 2 (two) hands. This entire collection of type is nothing but an analysis of This living hand, now warm and capable, y’know? Both yours and mine. I will admit that Ketes was most assuredly correct in saying so haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights. I did not even know the content of this poem/lines but it has haunted me in its persistence in being an unfinished effort of mine that has been hindering my progress in this corse (that’s course, not corps). IF at all possible, listen, right now, to the little weird blurb of ear stimulation that comes after A Day in the Life at the end of Sgt. Pepper’s. Sound familiar? “It does not matter,” she said. Last night after I wrote that, I was sitting here staring at the, blank computer screen *it’s not mine but my xgirlfrnds who left it at my apt while she’s studying in spain* listening to Indifference and I noticed that I could actually hear my cigarette. Isn’t that wild? I could hear the little bits of tobac bristling like the sap in a log sizzling in a fireplace. It was just really neat. Maybe you had to be there. I certainly did. Do you ever rail? Keening, wailing, and gnashing of teeth (christ I hate silent g) that’s how I orphan feel. When you say orphan do you mean often, a person who has lost his parents or orphan, frequently? Don’t you ever feel as if none understands? As if theres something going on thats just a smidge above other peoples heads and theyre not receiving? as if as if asifasifasifasifasif a s i f do you know that the worst part is that you can’t even explain it to people? how do you explain to someone that they don’t understand something that they are not even aware of? the best I can ever do is get a one to understand that they don’t understand david and that’s not really a thrill, y’know. It would be a thrill if I could get someto hear or see or notice thing that I do or say hey yeah I know exactly whatyouretalkingabout. Like a bridge over troubled enitharmon
and then there’s stillthis persistent problem with analyzing that which was not meant to be analyzed. yes I can make that decision. I have every right to say, the four zoas is not intended to be analyzed. it’s just not it can’t be b./c I say & that’s more than enough reason for me. Listen, I don’t picture B sitting in a little room somewhere going, I wonder what they’ll make of this!? THIS living hand, now warm and capable….that’s what it is. it’s a means of expression a way to get something across to get even one person who reads it someday to say hey! Keatsbaby, I dig it, man. I see where you’re comin from, dude. Yeah, man, I feel like that all the time. a plea. another desultory philippic orhowiwasrobertmcnamaradintosubmission
