My book is ready, or so I have assumed, perhaps out of impatience–I do not think so. I am still waiting for the final proof to arrive–how long should that take. I do not get what the publisher is saying or not saying–the not saying having more to do with what I do not get. There is nothing for me to understand; I always hold up air when I stand carrying nothing. This is taking now nearly three weeks to come, and this is too long for me, which is the only basis for whether or not something is unendurable, no? Who else am I supposed to listen to when I find something unendurable? Perhaps we should get out of our heads once in a while–we are all of us too often inside ourselves, a solipsists paradise we create for ourselves, each us does. What do I know of each of us, unless the us I am referring to is the we I am; I am we, me, us . . . the many selves Self I and my creator and his other creations have talked about, discussed, referred to in one or another piece of writing . . . I have ben writing now for how many many years, I think I can see the first notebook of stories and poems I collected, interspersed with journal entries.
Maybe how long it is taking is how long it should take, but I am beginning to imagine other nefarious reasons–most of them not actually imagined but literarily imagined, said to be imagined for the effect they might have in this very minor piece about my first book of poems, at least in print as we mean when we say published because I have had several books before this one in MS form, printed from printers or pressed in some bound version from a printer/photo-copier, never really releasing them because I have been the great drop out of western civilization, and I am not going to debate the term or the idea with anyone who doubts or denies the existence of what has been called and could continue to be called western civilization.
I will email the publisher later. I have kept journals, still keep journals, think blogs are . . . what do I think they are. I have a blog and have blogged about blogs, what I think they are, what I think they could accomplish, what I imagine their defects are, either in the nature of the thing in itself or the examples I sample time and again, now and then.
What else should I say other than I am still waiting, impatiently now, for the final proof of my book. I hope they do not fuck the whole thing up–which is what I keep imagining and will do so until I get the book in hand . . . and it is not as if I think I have to, that I have no other choice but to think as I have been thinking, no. I just know that I will not avoid thinking this for however long or short a time I do–mostly short, my penchant for exhausting possibilities, following tangents into extremes.
The Falling Leaf Review 