Carte blanche is a wonderful potency; I become drunk on it, from time to time. To turn any way on a walk: total authority. Such power cannot apply beyond the realm of the personal, without forgetting (or repugnantly redesigning) morality. Even on a walk, the question of the empty intersection and the Do Not Walk hand arises. There is a vitamin consumed in the abdication of authority: vitamin (G)roupishness feeds a part of my human soul that cannot feast on the act of writing an entirely personal poem. Recognizing the influences that lead to a poem can make a slightly more group idea, but the difference between seeing influence and being a constituent of a group that one doesn’t control is the vitamin D difference between 10 minutes outside in December in Seattle and a full day of desert sun. “Surrendering” is critical to having Robin Dunbar’s second key to not dying (after avoiding smoking): friendships do not involve carte blanche, even if they feel perfectly natural. There is compromise and shared authority.
It’s late September and it feels like this project is drawing to a close. Or to another phase. Maybe these sentences will be removed when I bring the chapters together and figure out what kind of book may exist (or be on the verge of existing). Either way, a mechanism for framing and reconstituting memory has been established; I recommend pseudo-memoir in a semi-public forum, it has done the job it was asked to do.
Roman Ryan 