But what do I know? (See yesterday's posting.) Not everybody's a mystic writing-adept like me. Which is why I am the greatest writer in the world! Ahem. Sorry.

I once had a UIC student come see me in my office. She was suffering from the Chi South Loop plague of Extreme Concrete Poisoning. She said she had just read Wandering Times [sic] and hated it. What didn't you like? I chirped. "It's so I went to the mountains and rekindled my soul," she sneered. Or my grad student who said, "I hate nature. Reeds. Deer. Nature is where you pee when you're driving between cities." So, like I said, what do I know?

You know, of course, that the city is also full of epiphanies, smells, light, revelations and delight. Horror, too. I like horror, as anyone who has read my Mexico/border books knows. (I always remember the nice woman who bought one of my fire-spitting border death tomes for her eighty year old mother, who opened the book and said, "Oh, dear!" and quietly put it back down, never to open it again. I love her!)

So, we need to see the city as clearly as I like to see trout streams. (No, I don't fish. I fish with my peepers.)

You will forgive me for sounding flippant (I am not being flippant at all) when I say this:

Writing is prayer, and writing is also a satisfying bowel movement.

Is crap holy? Let us ask the master, Issa:

even
crapping
the
nightingale
sings
a
prayer

I got Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy,
Deep in my heart!
Sing it, brethren.

XXX, Luigi

PS--here's that fine little poem on clarity I alluded to in the "Basho Bashing" post from last night. (You get two meditations today for the price of one.)

let a poem be
like a crystal bowl
full of ice
delightfully transparent
leaving nothing invisible
--Mori Ogai

# posted by Luis @ 12:22 PM