What portends? What will the future bring? I do not know, I have no presentiment. When a spider hurls itself down from some fixed point...it always sees before it only an empty space wherein it can find no foothold however much it sprawls. And so it is with me: always before me an empty space; what drives me forward is a consistency which lies behind me.

Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, Soren Kierkegaard

What follows below is an attempt to explain, to flesh out actually, the process responsible for the birth of a series of poems grouped under the heading " the untitled..." This collection did not spring into the world of its own accord. Rather, it is the result of 53 years worth of assorted ups and downs. To say that they are "esoteric" would be an understatement.

To say "the untitled" is an emotional journey is to compare a carnival ride with a tornado. Mr. Dill opens one up like a can of tuna for a pack of wolves...yet in the end, everyone is well fed. It is traumatic,and exciting, but it is not a journey for the weak of heart. In facing his own truths, his own visions, he places you squarely in front of a mirror. If you are afraid of your image, beware.

comments on the untitled, 12.9.96

The fact that the poems have taken physical form at a time when I hope to graduate college is, I am thinking, not a coincidence. It is almost as if there were a funnel through which both the untitled and I have been squeezed...on the other side of the funnels' spout exists a different person, being, entity, what-ever-the-hell-you-might-wish-to-call-it with the untitled sitting on his/my/its shoulder. I am different now not because of the untitled. Rather, I am different because I have allowed the untitled their place in this world.

In order to "tell" this story (in order to relate the "process") I will use recollections, quotes...snippets, actually, which when collated should add "flesh" to the foundation on which the untitled rest.

In The Beginning there were bits and pieces, just as with any life. Snatches. Flotsam. The foundation of a cognitive journey constructed of this'-and-thats' each drifting slowly, floating randomly hither and yon until they came to rest, entirely by chance. So was born the thread of an idea...

Note (written by me in 1992):

I must have been in first grade for a memory has me laying in the sun in a field behind a Montrose, Pennsylvania home. I had found some cast off tarpaper - you know the stuff used to cover roofs before shingles are nailed down? It had to be in summer. No clouds. Warm sun. First grade. I lay on my back facing the sky. So nice it was. Pleasant. A point to which I can never return.

I see myself in that field, feet pointed towards our house, but I remember nothing after that -- gone the sun, the field, the tarpaper. A shutter opened quickly then closed. The frame gone blank.

I don't lay in the sun any more.

Snatches. Flotsam true. Foundations. What we remember, we become. So, now I sit and I construct. In shaping the untitled I have focused with deliberation despite the fact that I object to such corralling, such "planning," such "calculation." To act so is difficult because I have always considered that it is better to ramble, wandering here and there midst confusion, knowing that coherence would (might?) out.

While the deliberation pains, the desire to record, relate and relegate is strong. And, as I chose to heed that call I must now take responsibility for what has passed through the aforementioned funnel. No longer can I indulge an impetus self-supplied but, rather, must own up to a desire, a need actually, to draw in, excite, and interest those who I have always said mean nothing to me...namely you the general reader.

Note this written in 1974 when I was one year into what was to become a failed marriage:

To construct, to deliberate, to premeditate, to aim; are these not to be avoided? To reach without thinking. To do without aiming and yet have what is done embody all that I am. That is my desire. To be without being. To do without doing. To arrive without starting. Such is my wish.

And yet to wish this destroys the goal. To start is to forget...everything. Then too, to advance is to discard. To discard is to grow.

With the untitled I have attempted to weave a web which, by definition, is opaque. And yet I wish the reader to be able to "see" within...to be able to view, by their definition what I have addressed. The tools I used are words calculated so as to avoid the usual yet not confuse. Yet they must confuse just so because I have always believed that "outsiders" have no rights as regards me and must "work" a bit to pry open any door through which I might be glimpsed. This could be termed a "character flaw," an approach which has been taken so often now that I react by habit to all persons exterior to me. Basically put, I make "things" difficult for my fellows and kept this in mind when writing the untitled. I wished the reader to " do some work," to wrestle, consider, ponder what probably, at first, is perceived as inscrutable.

The untitled are founded in many themes - pain, failure, fantasy, reflections, dreams and sadness...all are bound loosely with a "sense," a "feeling" really, that each theme interconnects to form a synthesizing pool from which a modified "me" has wrested himself. I used these themes, this raw material, because I have always believed that pain is greater than pleasure and sadness greater than joy. I believe They are the greatest Teachers.

The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, Robinson Jeffers

Each of my brushes with sadness, each touch of tragedy and despair has cemented a portion of the untitled. Each failure, or success, has pushed me on to this now (defined to a degree by the date, December 2, 1996)...thence on to an isolation (a key theme of the untitled), to a cyber-world wherein I can electronically embrace the planet at the flick of a switch and provide for world-wide publishing at the "untitled" World Wide Web site.

Tragedy. Despair. Failure. Success. Isolation. An electronic embrace. How to tie these? How to show a connection?

You see, all my "working" life I have "related." In the Marine Corps ('61 - '65) I "read" news releases to my peers - an odd endeavor for an "infantryman" to be sure. In New York City ('67 - '73) I painted. At sea I wrote ('73 - '95) and was responsible for a newsletter.

Always there were transmissions of one type or another and each transmission contributed to the building of a breakwater of sorts. This breakwater built itself of its own accord and provided an insulation, a period of calm within which I was able to examine, reflect and determine what was really of consequence to me. The outcome of my reflection was a decision to leave the sea and move to Vermont...in my mind's eye I was returning to Montrose.

Just as in the beginning, now I am relating, albeit in a different medium, as I did many, many years ago. There is a thread. The connection is firm.

Co-incident with my first residency at Goddard came the decision to allow for access to the untitled via the Internet's World Wide Web (WWW). I created a WWW site at which individuals could expose themselves to the collection. At this site I solicited advice concerning the poems. In my opinion most readers find this material to be confusing and comments about the poems have been few and far between.

Can you imagine what it is to "know" that just beyond, just through the trees, there is a flicker, a dancer glimpsed yet never quite within reach? This, a phantom really. Perhaps never to be grasped but still...it's there, beckoning. Luring, to be precise. Arms open, for a very long time I have followed this flickering phantom.

Consider the following "forced" transition process:

...Bateson discovered that one could double bind a porpoise until schizophrenic symptoms were induced. For example, first teach the animal a series of tricks (flips, somersaults, etc.) and deutero-teach the context -instrumental reward- by tossing it a fish every time it performs a trick. Then raise the ante: reward comes after three tricks are executed.

Finally raise the ante to a level that assaults the entire Learning II pattern: reward the porpoise only after it invents an entirely new trick. The creature goes through its entire repertoire, either one trick at a time or in sets of threes, and gets no fish. It keeps doing it, getting angrier, more vehement.

Finally, it begins to go crazy, exhibit signs of extreme frustration or pain. What happened next in this particular experiment was completely unexpected: the porpoise's mind jumped to a higher logical type. It somehow realized that the new rule was, "Forget what you learned in Learning II; there is nothing sacred about it." The animal not only invented a new trick (for which it was immediately rewarded); it proceeded to perform four absolutely new capers that had never before been in this particular species of animal. The porpoise had become trans-contextual. It had broken through the double bind to what Bateson calls "Learning III." In Learning III we literally rise to a new level of existence, and then look down and recall, perhaps fondly, our past consciousness, fraught with what we thought was irresolvable contradiction. "Oh yes," we may say; "that's what that was all about." But the formal etiology of creativity and schizophrenia remains the same. The principle is synergistic, says Bateson; "no amount of rigorous discourse of a given logical type can 'explain phenomena of a higher type.'"

The Reinchantment of the World, Morris Berman

Yes..."In Learning III we literally rise to a new level of existence, and then look down and recall, perhaps fondly, our past consciousness, fraught with what we thought was irresolvable contradiction." I am much attracted to this relation about the porpoise.

As I interpret the exercise, the porpoise have been "forced" to evolve as "thinkers" by their "teacher." While my "education" has come to me in bits-and-pieces, so too in much the same way as evolved the porpoise there have been "frustrations" which served to "force" me to consider alternatives to the life I lived as a SeaMan.

In 1973 I "went to sea" at the ripe old age of 31. I worked hard and gradually wended my way to a position of consequence, that of Boatswain. Along the way I gained a reputation for hard work, fairness, and some degree of flair. I never hesitated to tell the truth and always believed in "definition." I believed that in working hard for the "Company," the Company would take care of me. While this approach was heartfelt, I always examined the workplace from my peculiar viewpoint. One certainly does form a "world opinion" by the time he is 31. I had been around and had very definite opinions as to what was what. I believed (and still do) in truth, fairness, and commitment. These beliefs directed how I approached both my fellows and my "superiors."

As with any workplace, some things I believed were wrong and I objected the issue of informers, stoolies, rats, and lapdogs. The following article was published in the March, '95 issue of the non-profit newsletter, Pick and Shovel. The "Preface" to the article was fiction constructed entirely by me. Six months after the publication of this article I (the newsletter's editor) was recommended for removal from federal service.

At the time of the removal recommendation I had over 22 years of active service as a civil service employee:

"He had been known to the crew for some time. That he ate better, went ashore more often, and received the special jobs was apparent, but who really cared? He stood alone and no one missed his presence. Yet, when he became the cause of pain, when his whispered advice to the Master caused the crew despair, ah... this was different. It had to stop. And stop it did. For over the side he went one night no more to curry, no more to pimp, no more to hurt his fellows.

"When cornered there was much screaming, whimpering, many appeals for mercy. He was sorry, was only trying to make things better for them all, would change and no more seek his own gain. But mercy was not to be that night. What was earned and deserved was given...

"As the Mate struck, his ankle twisted. Down he went. Hard. Stunned as he was though, he reached out his hand to his Rat. There was no other that might help him. No one moved. Eyes shifted and, knowing that the Mate could not rise, could no more protect, the men turned. To Rat. Quickly his arms were tied and as is the custom, each one shook his hand. Then, over the side, to sink below the wake. Slowly they returned to the Mate. Pain welled up and retribution was the name that rose to prompt their marlinspikes. Once more, as with the Rat, an account was closed.

"One thing know. When wronged, a SeaMan will not forgive...nor forget. Mind this well...always there will be an accounting."

Article

The continuing presence on certain ships of Liars, Stoolies, Toadies, and Lapdogs is an issue I've been meaning to address for some time particularly since I have extensive first hand knowledge of these poor, decayed souls. While such Shadows of Humanity will always be around, I herein give my word that I will do everything possible to insure that they are isolated, held up for what they are, and whenever possible given their administrative due.

A LiarStoolieToadyLapdog (LSTL) can be spotted a mile away. He slinks vice walking tall, shows his teeth in vacuous shoal-like smiles, averts his eyes whenever possible, observes from a distance, stands silent when you pass and is the bane of seagoing life. He is a man so filled with spite, malice, and modest ability, so wrapped in insecurity and a desire to cater to his master's every whim that he stands alone even when standing beside those who deign to use him. He is as old as time, a charade, Judas born with none to provide him comfort.

A majority of bosses will put the LSTL's to work as soon as they show their colors afloat. LSTL's thereby serve as access, a third eye for those not content to mind their business, those who must pry, ever hungry for niggardly desserts. A baleful match: the LSTL and the conniving, weak, petty, meddlesome boss.

LiarsStooliesToadiesLapdogs and their bosses have never learned that there are boundaries, distinct demarcations that one should cross only at great risk. They've never learned there are matters kept sacred, secret, arenas into which only certain groups or individuals are allowed. A LSTL will provide keys to those who have no right, those who by position and assignment are qualified for different privileges than those enjoyed by the men below. He creates a bridge, albeit temporary, a way by which his master can enjoy a forbidden look.

The LiarStoolieToadyLapdog is to be despised, isolated, defined for all to see. Held up as accountable, shown to be the betrayer he is. Though his actions are his right, it is our responsibility to define him in the light. Identify, locate, isolate, give due.

That's right guy, we know who you are and we're watching. Be very careful not to stumble...article end.

In response to my effort to address this "problem," the Government responded:

"Letter dated August 9, 1995

"Letter received September 12, 1995

1. This is to inform you that it is proposed that you be removed from your position as Boatswain with Military Sealift Command, Atlantic. If this action is affirmed, it will result in your removal from the federal service not earlier than thirty calendar days from receipt of this notice. The charge and specifications upon which this proposal is based is as follows:

"a. Charge: Violation of Charge #15-criminal, dishonest, infamous, or notoriously disgraceful conduct adversely affecting the employee/employer relationship (on duty or off duty)

"b. Specifications: On 19 March 1995, you issued the most recent edition of your magazine, the "Pick & Shovel." On page 2 of that edition, you printed two articles. The article on the right side of the page dealt with mariners who you have termed "Liars, Stoolies, Toadies, and Lapdogs." In this article, you intimated that certain mariners inform on their fellow mariners to the officers of the various ships of the command. You stated that such mariners are "to be despised, isolated, defined for all to see, held up as accountable, shown to be the betrayer he is. Though his actions are his right, it is our responsibility to define him in the light. identify, locate, isolate, give due. That's right guy, we know who you are and we're watching. Be very careful not to stumble..."

"The article on the left hand side of page two was written apparently as a compliment to the other article. In this article, you have indicated that mariners who give advice to the ship's Master (you term him a Rat) should be struck down, have his arms tied together and thrown overboard along with the Officer. This, according to your article ends the problem of the Rat (or the Liar or Stoolie or whatever other word you choose to use), and advises that "always there will be an accounting."

"Your words may be construed to constitute a threat. They therefore may affect the safe operations of ships and our mariners, by encouraging, albeit indirectly, that mariners, perceived to be "stoolies" or "liars" to be thrown overboard and drowned while a ship is at sea. Your articles intimate that this is an acceptable means of dealing with these so called "liars."

"The nature of the Maritime and shipboard environments demand that all mariners be held to a very high standard. Discipline cannot be maintained unless that high standard is adhered to. Your articles, which are distributed throughout the fleet and may be read by many mariners, undermine that high standard which must be maintained, and suggest that physical violence is the proper method for dealing with problems while a ship is at sea. Whether or not anyone actually takes your advice and throws someone overboard is not necessarily the point. Your articles suggest that such misconduct is proper. Thus, I find it reasonably constitutes a threat to safety and is disruptive of the Agency's mission and the efficiency of the service."

That the Government felt I was actually advocating violence I found incredible...this after 22 years of service. The ante had been raised and I was about to make a "vault" just as did the porpoise...

To find a voice, a terrain, an environment if not of comfort then one truly unique and of my own making...this is one of the points of the untitled. I have attempted to transform past and present experience into something new as per Ranier Maria Rilke:

Hasn't the fact that, for so long, poetry has been the echo of heartache, given it a pure dramatic tonality? ...This sort of derangement...must go into our work.

Lettres (Letters to Clara), Rilke

Yes...a derangement...this is part and parcel of what I write...and why I write.

Consider:

Writing is the hammer & chisel that breaks down the established way of thinking. A concrete event, then an abstraction. Finally, writing builds another establishment with the fragments. I would like to go farther...

Claiming Breath, Diane Glancy...Tsalagi Elder

Oh, yes...the Hammer and Chisel. This IS the untitled. Just as fire fragments and then reassembles, it is often the catalyst for change, the passing through. My cuts, my bruises, my darkness speckled with bits of hope have served as a springboard from one dimension to another.

For me it was this pushing, the nagging, the tragedy and sadness which proved to be the prods, the initiators of creativity. For I believe one must pass through a literal funnel...one must be passed through a fire of sorts. One must feel the pain. These act as initiators and serve to prompt creation.

In a world full of conflicted emotions, Jordan Dill's "The Untitled" gives a rare glimpse into the masculine side of issues of family, culture, our part in the spiraling depth of despair and enlightenment. Rare, because few men, allow exposure to this degree, either in the physical sense or print.

comments on the untitled, 12.9.96

Goddard's 1995 residency over, I drove South to Virginia, to an answering machine on which resided advice that my youngest daughter had just tried to commit suicide. Late at night...message delivered. This was to be the first of five separate attempts.

I poured myself a drink. There were no tears. No quickening of the blood. Only silence and, perhaps, a resignation. Almost a "So..?" Nothing more. I was untouched. Numb? No. Not numb, simply untouched. Why? This is a necessary question for I constantly search for "catalysts." Initiators. Prompts. Issues, occurences, happenings which, when encountered (or participated in), jump-start the creative process.

Recollections:

Aged nine and playing at the church after school. My mother called saying that my brother had cut himself badly while playing with a coffee can in his bath. I walked home slowly, stopping off to buy pretzels. His hurt meant nothing to me. Untouched. A first time yes, but in truth a herald.

Mother just dead of cancer, Father diagnosed with same. They were married for forty-two years. I begged him not to give up. To live for his grandchildren when, in truth, I meant that he must live for me. My Father knew that death was approaching and as I drove away after my Mother's funeral he stood crying quietly. I did not go to him...did not leave the car. Instead I simply gazed at a man so lonely who once did kick me when I was down. Repayment? No. Simply untouched was I. Again. The pattern, the intimation, had become a reality. The untitled, a flame albeit just a flicker, was gaining strength.

Failed this and that am I. Oh yes, we all are such. And me a failed husband, seeker, friend, lover, dreamer, sometimes liar and much more...these things all. Oh yes...but each has cemented some thing. Each failure, or success, has pushed me on to now...to this isolation, a cyber-world wherefrom I can embrace the planet at the flick of a switch. For with my entry into Goddard came full-time involvement with the Internet and the idea to allow world-wide access to my poetry. This access has enhanced those poems.

Consider this said by me in 1974:

I vacillate. Moving one way, then another. My constancies are unconscious. I give the things that are, no thought. That which I am able to think about is not.

For a long time I have fancied myself a thinker. How different life might have been if I'd never gotten involved with that illusion.

Of course, one is usually prodded. Molded. Lied to. Led to believe that to question, to analyze, to examine oneself is the road to salvation. Rather, it became the road to delusion. Oh, the years I wasted. All those times I considered myself on the right track due to forced deliberate self-examination. Such a precious waste of time:

Humanity is the mold to break away from, The crust to break through, the coal to break into fire, The atom to be split.

The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, Roan Stallion, Robinson Jeffers

Can you see me? See the one who would not go to his Father but instead left him in tears? The one who showed no reaction to the word suicide or his brothers hurt? Am I as I was?

It often seems to me that I have broken from the "mold." That I have, somehow, become a creature liken to my fellows only in appearance:

But I am not human! I'm here because they sent me. Sent me to watch and try to find out your meanings. Meanings that seem to US to be manufactured and having no basis in eternity. I am not real as you know reality. I am beyond you. For now, just a visitor.

J.S. Dill, 1977

This would explain the insensitivity, the insulation from the "norm."

Have I become what was written about so very long ago? Such queries I find chilling. For, if there's been no change...even from the earliest days, then I have been preordained and my path has been tracked. Am I moving, remotely controlled, with no freedom, chained in place, a burden welded to my spine? Or, rather, have I always understood that what "was," was.

"Come, I will tell you the perfect Tao. It's essence is surrounded with the deepest obscurity; it's highest reach is in darkness and silence. There is nothing to be seen, nothing to be heard. When it holds the spirit in its arms in stillness, then the bodily form of it will become correct. You must be still; you must be pure; not subjecting your body to toil, not agitating your vital force; then you may live for long. When your eyes see nothing, your ears hear nothing, and your mind knows nothing, your spirit will keep your body and the body will live long.

"Take the position of doing nothing, and things will of themselves be transformed. Neglect your body; cast out from you your power of hearing and sight; forget what you have in common with things; cultivate a grand similarity with the chaos of the plastic ether; unloose your mind; set your spirit free; be still as if you had no soul. Of all the multitude of things every one returns to its root. Every one returns to its root and does not know that it is doing so. If these knew that they were returning to their root, they would be consciously leaving it. They do not ask its name; they do not seek to spy out their nature, Thus it is that things come to life of themselves."

The Sacred Chao, Hung Mung

Yes. Definite anti-deliberation advice. To seek is not to do so. To want will not fulfill. To act as Hung Mung advises will cause "things to come to life of themselves."

But, in the beginning I had to have a "cause." I had to declare myself. Construct a mission. Be this or that. Do not all the young act so?. And was I not, to some degree, defined by these deliberate acts? Were they not necessary to whatever foundation came later? All the while Hung Mung was standing quietly, waiting, on the horizon...

A recollection:

Montrose, Pennsylvania. My friends and I were chasing someone. He was scared. I saw him climb into a hay loft, up a ladder. They missed his climb aloft and I let them run on by before I climbed that ladder. As I got to the top I found him shaking, scared, cornered. Despite my age of seven, this is something I could smell. I told him to be quiet, not to be afraid. I climbed back down, joined the other hunters and we ravaged on.

Eleven years later....In 1961 I barely graduated from high school. Prior to graduation I was given an ultimatum by my Father: "What are you going to do? Get a job or go into the service?" Having just a few weeks earlier seen the movie, "The DI" (Drill Instructor) with Jack Webb, and being too "good" to get a job, I chose the Marine Corps.

One day during boot camp at Parris Island I was "selected" to leave from breakfast early so I might to monitor my fellows for the Drill Instructor and report who was smoking.

As I look back on my life this was the first time I was really put on the line. On one hand I had the Drill Instructor, fully capable of beating me into the ground or killing me for lack of cooperation, and on the hand stood my peers, commoners just like me trying to survive the most notorious boot camp in the free world.

What to do? Well, I really had no choice, did I? I opted to side with my peers. The die had been cast. That night I was beaten badly for not doing as I was told.

Somehow I believe that the 1950 ladder incident (Montrose) and my failure to measure up as an informer (Marine Corps) are related. Connections, threads, interweavings, Montrose (where I first scented "fear"), Marine Corps (where I mastered fear's scent), Haight Ashbury (where the mastery of fear provided direction), New York City's East Village (a gateway to the Sea), Vermont (in my mind's eye a return to Montrose)...all are related. We are the result of our travels (or rather, our illusions?)...Where we have been affects our future.

In writing the untitled I have tried to do so without the type of deliberation one might normally associate with writing. I say this by explanation of the "how" of the process...Much of what has been referred to above has ended up in the Untitled and associated poems...whatever is written comes directly from experience...not much fiction there. But, of course, I am steeped in fiction...and the fiction seeps into me:

driven but never buoyed am thinking of the line to be drawn when no more is said to saying yes to this and that but rather NO, NO MORE I shout in response to moving backwards always backwards ...LISTEN, now I choose to say no more...the time has come to make a declaration in this the more consequential time of life...the wolf of dreams and wall hangings has become one with that child of sad eyes...that child who grew to become, what?

ah, poor grasshopper frittering here and there while ants do plod along all commonly secure in knowing that tomorrow is provided for...and who would have thought that this sad child marine miner driver lover thief and liar yearning always of a sun unbound by darkness was to become himself a grasshopper caring nought for anything but the instinct driven...

no...the time has come as there steals now a peaceful smile uncalled for in those days of mindless plodding...

Fall, 1996, JS Dill

I don't remember when untitled One was written. But it was some time well after the residency, after the first suicide attempt...September, 1995 perhaps. I hadn't made any conscious decision to not return to sea. In truth, though, I was not going to and will not now... Starting in Virginia and following me to Vermont, the untitled have been largely responsible for my decision not to return to sea.

In Vermont I ended up living over the Teago Country Store in South Pomfret. Two rooms for $300 per month heat included...a "garret" actually...I am proud of it, and me for being here...

When I sleep my head points toward the East...when I type I face to the North...immediately to the West the building is bounded by a stream...the triangular spit on which the store resides is bounded on its three sides by roads. This is referred to in some of the untitled as the " triangle."

A triangle...in the symbolism of numbers a triangle is equal to the number three:

Three symbolizes spiritual synthesis...it is the number concerned with basic principle, and expresses sufficiency, or the growth of unity within itself.

A Dictionary of Symbols, J.E. Cirlot

I am comfortable in this place. Am comfortable here in the triangle...a form which "symbolizes fire and the aspiration of all things toward the higher unity...". And, while one can't build his life upon symbols there must be direction, some reason, some purpose to all times and places. Such is the consequence of now.

For all the sorrow, bitterness, despair, there remains "The Dream" a psuedo-silent hope, goal. Even the youth, though painful, in display, still gives spark to future and dreams the unquenchable desire for betterment. Though ripe with tender agonies, the mirror shards remain....showing a brightness of future, or perhaps just the other side of each of our lives that we don't have wont to dissect.

comments on the untitled, 12.9.96

In 1948 I was five years old. My Grandmother took me visiting one day and I found myself in a small house in whose parlor hung a large (to my eye) painting. It was nightime and a lone wolf stood on a snow-covered hill. Down and to his left was a cluster of houses. Snow covered roofs and lights bright shining through the windows. The night is cold, or so I think/thought. The wolf is alone and knows that what resides below can not be for him...

This painting has followed me thoughtout my life. A tattered copy sits here now with me...I am the wolf. I am alone. But, I did not openly choose this lot. Such was decreed a very long time ago. Now, you tell me something. Did I choose the wolf or did he choose me?

The untitled are built upon a foundation...one steeped in William Blake, Kenneth Patchen, Robinson Jeffers, dear sick Keroauc, Robert Graves and Sir James George Frazer...not to mention Jorge Luis Borges.

That I have been drawn to relations of sadness and fantasy can be deduced by the writers referenced above. Need I here itemize their affiliations? Their affinities? Or, rather, can I not by definition direct you to them and through them see the me of me? Is this not part of your responsibility? You must do much of the work.

As to the foundation? What say I about that? What really is there to say of one who chose a lot all wrapped in sorrow, pain, and lingering want? Think you that I have never asked the WHY of this? That I've never considered there might be some "stain," some inherent " personal despair?"

But such questions are irrelevant. What is, is. Is that wolf on the hill going to change despite a longing, perhaps, for a different life. No, we are as we are. There can be no changes and as for me? Well, I accept the mantle given me for one reason or another. Rather than rail against this I have tried, via the untitled, to give life to a shadow world unchosen.

I am not an admirer of Robert Frost. Nevertheless, this poem speaks to me for I too have "...climbed the hills to view and have looked at the world and descended; I have come by the highway home, And lo, it is ended." I am finished with some things. The pendulum has swung. Still, "...[my] heart is still aching to seek..." Indeed. Still, I wonder about the "why" and, of course, " the whither."

Works of art always spring from those who have faced the danger, gone to the very end of an experience, to the point beyond which no human being can go. The further one dares to go, the more decent, the more personal, the more unique a life becomes...[But] Doesn't the poet put language in danger? Doesn't he utter words that are dangerous?

Lettres (Letters to Clara), Rilke

You see, in writing the untitled I have attempted (initially without deliberation) to give "form" to that which had none...:

To make inside concrete and outside vast is the first task, the first problem, it would seem, of an anthology of the imagination.

The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard

The Poetics of Space was encountered after the fact...well after the 25 untitled...but, the description, the philosophy(?) fits...I have attempted to...to...give form to "something." This " something" is driving me somewhere...driving one who has no faith...one who sees not beyond the horizon but instead strives to place each foot, in stepping, with deliberation and care all the time moving forward while causing as little damage to his surroundings as possible...

As I hope is obvious to the reader, in the untitled I have created a map of sorts...defined a journey(?)...but, is there a point? Does there need to be a point? Or, perhaps, am I only defining a part of my life:

...each one of us, then, should speak of his roads, his crossroads, his roadside benches; each one of us should make a surveyors map of his lost roads and benches.

The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard

Yes...this is all that I am doing...pure and simple...