Posts in: Chance

Something interesting is happening with my daily chance ops poems: I’m not actually doing them daily. Instead, I put it off for as much as a week, then write anywhere from three to eight of them in a row, in quick succession.

I am still sticking to my plan of not looking back at any of them until I have at least fifty written (about six more to go, if my count is right), so I can’t say if each poem feels like an isolated piece or a section of something longer. At this point, I can’t even guess what I’ll find.

Chance Operations

Last week, I finished the Random Walk through my home library. Let’s review what we’ve learned, explore some underlying ideas, and then I’ll open the floor to questions. (Ha! Me? Answer questions? Are you kidding?) Ask the next question. —Theodore Sturgeon Before studying Zen, men are men and mountains are mountains. While studying Zen, things become confused. After studying Zen, men are men and mountains are mountains. After telling this, Dr Suzuki was asked, “What is the difference between before and after?

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Today was the last day of my Random Walk, and I thought I’d take a minute and describe my process. Randomness, after all, takes a lot of planning. Stay tuned.

Also: starting in June, and for the rest of the summer, this will be a weekend thing.

28

The Face of New York by Andreas Feininger and Susan Lyman and The Tulip by Anna Pavord

45:5, 16:5 Tulips and New Amsterdam. (The NYC book was published in 1954. Absolutely amazing photos.)

27

The Vineland Papers edited by Green, Grenier, and McCaffery and Aion by CG Jung

22:13, 44:6

From a certain angle, this is so me. I could have carefully chosen seven important books for last week’s challenge. But 62 books (two a day all month), picked completely at random, seem to be working just as well at sketching an outline of my identity.