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Foggy Oysters, March 16, 2023“…those were the days of roses, of poetry and prose…”
Tom Waits - Martha
A poem draws the reader into the mood. A loner, anxious, on the sidelines. Choice anxiety, overwhelmed by a myriad options.
The poem, in its closing verse, promises comfort, soothing. A chance to see all options. Choice without choosing for it will all be turned back on itself.
Beautiful well-chosen prose drops you in the middle of a scene. A multitude of scenes, theatre stages next to each other to wander through. The setting is an expansion of Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, with its oyster bar, its foggy streets,…
But there! There is time. A minute counting back… Pressure to explore!
Until the minute has passed and all is restored, ready to revise.
The repetition renders the sixty seconds pressureless, devoid of tension. In effect, you have a free-floating minute, disconnected from external time and causation.
The result is a narratively empty (isolated from cause-effect, plotless), exploration-rich discovery of relations between locales and passages of text, streetlamp-lit alleys and overheard conversations. An endlessly revising everlasting minute wherein to choose all options and be returned to poetry.
A captivating, mindful experience.