The desert as literature..

Post by **mnaz** » May 31st, 2008, 5:00 pm

None of this is true you know, the desert set adrift on my words. If you sit quietly on a buff mesa, slaked perhaps by a taste of foul, hot bourbon, and your scrawl gets lucky, starts to follow the spiritual contours of the place, it may feel as if your notebook and words are merging with the beaten ocher rims and starving light saturation, mapping indefinable space. But that space is not virtual. The desert has height, breadth and length. It is a coiled Panamint Red, one foot around, on a moon-bathed, cracked asphalt center stripe. It is the forlorn crunch of a withering white salt flat exactly three miles wide. Don't let my words fool you. The desert was never immune to mathematics, though it's always been much greater and more terrible than the sum of its parts.

Post by **Lightning Rod** » May 31st, 2008, 5:19 pm

up to your usual panoramic prose, mark
I can't wait to read the novel

(I would put a 'more' in front of 'terrible' in the last line)

Post by **mnaz** » May 31st, 2008, 5:35 pm

Thanks Clay... (and good editing eye).

came on like spatial therapy for me today... I needed to be there for a while, to go back.

Post by **westcoast** » May 31st, 2008, 11:27 pm

wonderful, expansive. i could feel the desert through the poem.

~westcoast

Post by **WIREMAN** » May 31st, 2008, 11:43 pm

for me the desert is a goddess....her undulating curves soothing me o- soooooo......her prickly cacti keeping me ever so warily tamed....all i can do is big cat growl....

Post by **saw** » May 31st, 2008, 11:54 pm

we need to trace those"spiritual contours"....an imaginative journey...
makes me want to read Carlos Castenada ....enjoyable read

Post by **Arcadia** » June 1st, 2008, 10:44 am

well, don´t worry... I never understood mathematics anyway... (and I´m not joking!!!!!

)

beautiful writing, mnaz!!!!!

Post by **hester_prynne** » June 1st, 2008, 4:40 pm

Mnaz I like this, I like the idea of a sum more terrible than it's parts, as well as parts more terrible than the sum.....a nice blade of grass to chew on while awaiting the sum of this book.....
H

Post by **mtmynd** » June 1st, 2008, 10:42 pm

nazzer! love the title. enjoyed the writing. keep going if it's in there. (no shit) (really).

Post by **judih** » June 1st, 2008, 10:48 pm

totally agree with cecil.
been enjoying reading and re-reading the title.
lush, lovely landscapes in this piece

Post by **Dave The Dov** » June 2nd, 2008, 11:31 am

Write you words in the sand and see what happens.
_________________
green crack photos