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BlazeVOX [books] |
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Intrusions like nails & thunder claps. We prefer to find those altruistic enough, who simply wish us well, if we do, find them, better hold on to them as friends. Right now I'm thinking of Mull Gill. Mull worked at Eastman Gelatin, where they create groundwork chemicals for Kodak film. Didn't Blaise Cendrars use the idea of Kodak snapshots as method for poems on long journeys, including Rio & San Paolo? Yes, shutter flash of words so fast on that little Olivetti he toted around, done. Birds swimming, done. Fish flying, done. Cigarette smoke between his eyes & a native beauty? Done. Menu of snails & ox tail? Done. I suppose we have Mull to thank for that. I mean the chemicals those guys concocted & mixed & dumped detritus from up in the swamps of Peabody, Massachusetts, or Rochester, NY. But when Mull asked me one time, big beer belly falsely Buddhaing out of his sleeveless tee-shirt on a hot night on Lynn Street just after I graduated from college, asking me what I wanted to do in life, he was ok with my wanting to teach, but when I added that someday I wanted to write, he mumbled something about the Peter Principle, the gist of which is what he saw in a guy like me. Mull Gill will never know he's one in a long line of inspirational naysayers. Now, I'm looking for a few more friends, the ones who’ll say that if that's what you want to do, give it a shot, what have you got to lose, a guy like you?
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what i wanted to do in life
robert gibbons |