Thanks for the news, Millicent, upsetting though it be. It is odd losing
contact with people you never meet. Adding my commiserations to whomever, I
have missed Lawrence's richly shambolic communications. Here is one such
from 8 or so years ago which I saved.
I have no snap. Again
I offer this to be continued piece of prose invoking the etc in our title
L
*
The first time she saw him, he was squatting at the far side of a half-lit
room, fussing with his suitcase; and she thought of a fire-damaged sofa.
There wasn’t any furniture near him; the room was almost empty; but she
thought of him that way, a severely fire-damaged sofa.
As she entered, so he stood, attempting to straighten himself; and, as he
stood, some of the flame-blackening left him, seen now as abandoned
shadow.
Jutting springs and crumbling timber explained themselves visually; and he
began to become a bipedal figure. Now she thought of him as a large baby
with a beard.
He walked towards her with a gawky expression, an extensive hand forward,
ready to shake any hand she dare proffer. He seemed for a tick to have a
multitude of limbs, but that was perhaps the way he lolloped as he walked.
Maybe, she thought, he isn’t that tall.
If she imagined herself ascended to a great height, far above the tallest
building, then he might seem to be less abnormal. Go higher still and all
was fine though much of him might seem mountainous when seen in the
context of mountains. That was his shape.
Accept the shape and the image of a baby returned. It was hard not to see
him that way. He was after all smiling or something like it. It might be
the best that he could do.
He needs a cat, she thought. It was an opinion that she formed whenever
she met someone who seemed not to own a cat.
There was no loose fallen fur visible on the jacket as that enormity came
close. He moved quickly, not quite jerkily, but everything about him had a
form of suddenness. He was furniture; and then he was rising; and the
briefcase hanging from his left hand seemed to be no larger than a
teaspoon in comparison; but that was because he had crossed the room so
rapidly.
It would have to be a psychotic cat, or a cat reconciled to developing
psychosis, if he did not change his demeanour.
-----
Lawrence Upton
Visiting Fellow, Music Dept,
Goldsmiths, University of London
New Cross, London SE14 6NW
----
Vale, Baby with a beard.
Bill
On Sun, 1 Mar 2020 at 04:05, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Thanks for this, Millicent, a good remembering.
>
> Doug
> > On Feb 28, 2020, at 4:29 PM, Millicent Borges Accardi <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > Characters in their own stories
> > Characters in their own stories intermix
> > on avenues of danger, those not in
> > the frame invisible.
> > Now, and then, one
> > flees from us, becoming unreadable
> > from a point of view. More’s discernible
> > of those who stay, skewing interpretation.We have fun at carnival,
> consuming that
> > which might have grown fat, fearing death. That fear
> > animates each. As we stir at our own fear.Some of us. Fragmentary
> godlike words
> > collide in test chambers where exponents
> > of lies and terror clamber round others,
> > anthropomorphic inhumanity,
> > clinging. Indolence provides the ground cover,
> > overwhelming fences, bridges, thoroughfares.
> > Stories get muddied, muddled; directions
> > change in direction in their fat middles,
> > adjectives turned eponyms. Apposition
> > personalises fragmentarily.Time for Herod to ponder Truth. We must
> > get moves on. Before we know, we’ll be back
> > at beginnings, every sphere windfallen,
> > every name half-lost; waiting
> > Lawrence Upton
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Tina Bass <[log in to unmask]>
> > To: POETRYETC <[log in to unmask]>
> > Sent: Fri, Feb 28, 2020 3:15 pm
> > Subject: Re: Vancouver Lights
> >
> > Apologies for interrupting as I have not been here for a long time. For
> those that have not heard, Lawrence Upton is dead. I have not got the
> energy to provide details but if you have energy there is a petition in
> place to preserve his works.
> >
> > Please sign if you are so inclined
> >
> > t
> >
> > https://t.co/IaH75uy0fk?amp=1
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> Douglas Barbour
> [log in to unmask]
> https://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
>
> Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuations
> 2 (UofAPress).
> Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
> Listen. If (UofAPress):
>
>
> Done in by creation itself.
>
> I mean the gods. Not us. Well us too.
> The gods moved into books. Who wrote the books?
> We wrote the books. In whose dream, then are we dreaming?
>
> Robert Kroetsch
>
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