The Burrough's Proceedings
In the summer of 1994 I continued with an experiment I have been working
on for a while...where I randomly highlight interesting words on a page
of a book, then create sentences/poems using those words.
The phrases in italics are the original phrases I created,
everything else is new, I'm adding to it now as I create this page.
The Burroughs Proceedings Volume One
the juxtaposition of disappointment with the happiness we have
worked hard to find, leaves us morose and maybe a little bit melancholy:
caught in the warm glow of reminiscense as well as the haunting chill of
our pasts.
it was the unexpected phrase that caught my eye, yet it was the
unspoken beauty which made sweet music to my ears.
feels familiar catching up (to him) like i've done it once
before: like i've been catching up to him all my life. following in his
footsteps and growing in his shadows...
it is like catching up, when you've read it once before, and
you're not sure where to be, how far to have gone: caught in a literary
catch-22 and there's no one to show you the way.
the phrase feels familiar, retracing our steps to places we have
long wandered away from. what was once familiar is now quite forgotten, and
what is now close to home is miles away from where we were born.
it becomes a grossly exaggerated level of knowledge, something
from the mad proffessor's lair, something the cat dragged in.
where we expect misunderstanding we find instead an odd sense of
understanding. we shake hands with everything gone misunderstood as they
are now our closest friends.
the misunderstanding and juxtaposition of meanings caused the
young dictionary to lose confidence in who he was, and the words feel
from his eyes like tears, with pronunciations spilled at his feet and
definitions soaking his sleeves as he tried to wipe them all away.
stepping back to drag them all down, catching them by the ankles
and pulling them down to the backwards world we find ourselves walking
like a pack of zombies.
Remember the nightwhen the text studied you. Your face asleep on
the ink-stained pages, as through some sort of osmosis, the facts and
figures crept in through your pores and right on to your brain.
when they are not really the same meaning but just doppelgangers
of our imagination.
into the snares of highly-refined text dove the brain-heavy
professor as we sat silent in his audience, waiting on our toes ready to
catch the nuggets of wisdom he dissected and threw towards us.
inherent in that distinction was his sudden death, yet for the
life of us, we couldn't figure out the cause.
therefore, deeply assume he wrote words entirely foreign and impossible
to quickly learn, know, and understand
words influenced tens of present tense thoughts with flashbacks to
countless futures gone astray.
with success guaranteed quickly, we learn to rely on reading each
of the manufacturer's warnings and guarantees.
wordreader can be one step away, i hear her stopping at periods
and sliding down commas.
in his sudden death was, therefore, a deep -- the best -- approach
the tie between the word and know became strenuous at best as we
moved further into territory we never knew existed: the pages turning
faster then we could blink.
a fascination with words and the entirely foreign and impossible
meanings led me into an esoteric world full of brain-heavy guardians
of day-old consciousness and long-gone karma.
"a fascination forced to drop its
subscription"
it would be and all the ones around it as well, but where would
that get us in a world of make-believe and pay=per-view tv.
to relate the absurdity of a story inherent in that distinction
where quickly, we learn to rely on things we were never taught,
but quietly picked up by osmosis.
we end up misunderstanding half of what we say and forgetting all
that we have listened to.
for words influenced tens of rereads, sentences forced hundreds of
reprints, and the book caused the world to collapse in on itself.
after finally grabbing hold of definitions
rest a glimpse and climb higher
has created a newer reader
one-step perspectives are called into question
and pictures beg to be examined
one begins to notice that understanding
it can also drag them all down into the snares of perspective
to lead readers to a higher sense of absurdity
the question next to rely on
to believe that there is a "reality" in the sense of understanding
does that assume he wrote words?
we are discovering that trust can help itself
into the snares of everything
that what is inherent in that distinction is ludicrously wide of the mark
being all the ones around it as well
on his toes forever being and all
even forced to drop our subscriptions, we don't skim over
to rely on reading definitions rests a glimpse of misunderstanding
drag them all down into the snares of disappointment to lead readers to a higher...
with all these words, we level knowledge
knowledge of the phrase feels familiar
quickly we learn misinformation from the handbook to life they
hand us at birth and expect us to have memorized by puberty.
for words influenced tens of definitions, my punctuation sparked a
stream of controversy, and my diction had the world on end.
Ignorance can be one step into the snares of know and understand
yet still call the realm of shadows and silence home.
I wake up each day with the reassurance that I havemisunderstanding and
disappointment to rely on.
all these words we inherit bury us in age-old ways we never stop
to understand nor dare to prevent.
We slowly came to realize that understanding it can also be entirely
foreign and impossible.
assume he wrote words that are not really the same, merely oddly
vague and familiar at the same time, and maybe we can call him genius.
Matthew William Elsbernd (c)1994
Matte
Elsbernd - melsbern@tuba.aix.calpoly.edu