THE CHINESE NOTEBOOK
1. Wayward, we weigh words. Nouns reward objects for meaning. The chair in the air is covered with hair. No part is in touch with the planet.
2. Each time I pass the garage of a certain yellow house, I am greeted with barking. The first time this occurred, an instinctive fear seemed to run through me. I have never been attacked. Yet I firmly believe that if I opened the door to the garage I should confront a dog.
3. Chesterfield, sofa, divan, couch—might these items refer to the same object? If so, are they separate conditions of a single word?
4. My mother as a child would call a potholder a “boppo,” the term becom- ing appropriated by the whole family, handed down now by my cousins to their own children. Is it a word? If it extends, eventually, into general usage, at what moment will it become one?
Language is, first of all, a political question.
I wrote this sentence with a ballpoint pen. If I had used another would it
have been a different sentence?
7. This is not philosophy, it’s poetry. And if I say so, then it becomes painting, music or sculpture, judged as such. If there are variables to consider, they are at least partly economic—the question of distribution, etc. Also differing critical tra- ditions. Could this be good Poetry, yet bad music? But yet I do not believe I would, except in jest, posit this as dance or urban planning.
8. This is not speech. I wrote it.
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