Journals 2008-2010

I'm posting some journal entries for perpetuity, for myself, to keep record of if these journals are destroyed anytime soon (With the Comprehensive History of Islam & Children's Books coming soon after a half a year of putting off):

Here's a preview of the History: "The Prophet's companions fled to Abyssinia - as Islam was spreading (Abysinnia - the sight of Rimbaud's tumor) - Djbouti with the recent fighting by Ethiopians/Somalians - will it (now) spread to the Horn of Africa - Will Muslims form two fronts - Pakistan across to Africa, South from Iran (tri-front?)?

{(Some high-lights are Peru & my Florida plans (that never worked out)}

I found this journal entry from a few years ago that makes little sense, but I'll put it in anyway:

"Why did I make the trip to L.A. - was it to use my heart, soul, & imagination and shed my senses?" / I've read the "best novels" of the 20th century, but let us think, for a moment, in canonical terms, then who would be tops on the list.

Stocking Day 2008 from "Stream Notes" Aquatic Sunset:
The sight of a ruffed grouse darting ascending and (free-fall) descending stirred in me a feeling of artistic motivation. The motivation from a portraitist point of view, the (newsworthy) painterly-worth of the scene was that it encapsulated all the bustling activity of morning with both young and old, rustic and ancient, history & prehistory of Pennsylvania wilds,
The moment, or series of moments of a so longed for eternal extension of viewing felt within me.
The (ruffed) grouse perched itself on a deadening stump of a part of a larger trunk that rose and bisected into a "V" shape, slightly askew. The point of divergence, slightly obtruding away from my vantage point, across the streams, across the bridge that crossed the stream, crouched snugly against Pohoqualine Fish Association, kept from my view the exact launchpad (& landing pad) the ruffed grouse used for its whims of flight & fancy.
In simultaneous fashing, the fireplace of the house in the foreground, of a similar model and possessing the same white-paint and green turrets and shutters as the club house, produced billows of smoke which mingled with the air and blended into the atmosphere above, unrelenting and all at once the full context of the house occured to me, that this was the house of my childhood, where I grew up, its insides a blur in my memory, its grafts in high relief subject to my (relief), the deadened stump no more remembered or considered for its artistic merit than the facade itself. And all at once, lovingly, bird species appeared, titmice, junkos darting to the ground for forage, so quick I could not identify, and I thought perhaps a group of bluebirds would sidle in and chirp the immalgmation (conglomeration?) away from the unbloomed trees of pre-spring.
I looked closer at the grouse-in-flight and decided it was close in resemblance to a pigeon (pigeon feathers - Updike), the / clever the way (aerodynamic way) they pumped their same bell-like head-to neck effect as the pigeon (does), however, with an almond-dark few possess, white tufts flecked with black at the sides of its fan-tail, half-opened oriental fan which tucked in-or-out as it came up-or down.
Around this scene, the remnants of a swinging gate, now clung to the stone bridge, opening into a stream path, where the rusted gate previously latched, an iron fence with triangular parabola-style spear points rising out of intermittent posts ran along parallel to the stone siding of the bridge & perpendicular to the stream path & McMichael's Creek.
The conjured up ecstacy of this outburst of activity, activated in me the intensity of an impression earmarked for preservation, my heart and chest tingled and waves of adrenalin mixed with the akilter rush of endorphin mix, senses (all-five) drifted & focused interlaced & emboldened, ethereal was my body, not my body ethereal, if that makes sense.
At first I had deployed my high-art critique, my artistic temperament, but I released deeply, commanded my body to feel the scene, snapshot the bustle activity before the apprehension fury of bustle of stocking fish & the interaction thenceforth, would was away the breath & life of scenic deciduous from my mind's eye.
Then appeared a cardinal, hide-and-seeking the sparse pine of the red-or-white order and have I dictated for you the sublime cries & communications, more like utterances, that pronouced daylight? Enter humanity. The beauty of the birds was silenced & breached by the commotion of carpooling Lexus's which turned past the far edge of the stone bridge and downward into the gravel driveway, still alongside the creek.
Moments later, Levin Prosser, the club president's son, tired of waiting for the unorganized members still embarking upon their stocking duties & the position of their fish boxes & filial utterances, coos, enthusiasms, excitement anew for approved members of the Club recently joined, Levin appeared walking up the gravel incline, patiently walking up the gravel incline, patiently waiting to cross & carefully snug his way across the stone bridge, who would appreciate aesthetitc beauty of my view, himself a martial arts undergraduate & fond of the artistic elements of Jung Fu (the most difficult karate style - fact check).
All these elements welded together, including, as i got back to viewpointing after a hand-wave to Levin I later decried, for its overtly facetious apologetic context, I having a history of walking around their property & felt responsible for spooky impression imparted upon he and his girlfriend, the tree stump chainsawed-up last year, dead for some years, its sawdust -color & dirt-clung presence created.
My eyes shifted upward upon a white pine. lopped off at the top but remaining attached by threads of ski-fibers, the scene nearly ended & vacuumed back into my imagination & skin and the rush of this tender painting apportional in my thought, with the last second addition of a mercurial (dare I say) deeply rain-soaked black-skinned tree draped from one end at its roots to the other side of the open field, occasioned by the rusted, shorn, protective metal iron, now castle-high in my thoughts, gates in the forefront, all seen from the sidewindow and windshield of a running Ford 4x4 muscle-of-a-truck gray w/ half lowered (window) in the Appalachian Poconos light.