I loved Alec, and I miss him. The last offlist note from him said that he was "quite well now"....That note came on 28 September 2002; I should have called him, instead of e-mailing back.
I checked chi-improv and found out that his musician friends organized a memorial gathering and performance in honor of Alec on October 27 (@ <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chi-improv/message/4462>).
***** Deception Is Deception
by Alec Ramsdell
1) I will satisfy myself. (You watch over us) --
This splitting second is Not such a safe place --
I think I'll practice for some peace of mind this morning Balancing a beaker on my head as I walk the walk Where no one's watching, where for miles and miles all there is is
Blistering deserts, deserted centers,
windmills shopping (Modern ones)
"Should I drop you here, or have you freed yourself already. I feel you are shaking my head already. You can't believe I'm here".
The Carousel horses felt the Same way, but they looked Thoughtful enough to weigh something, Clue me in on the Secret locked in broken barber
Poles and scarlet carapaces flaking: That we circle and turn And have no goal? That This path lay plotted slyly In advance? Just past the
Equator the shadows change direction? Wait a minute, shouldn't we Start, first, back at their Teeth mouthing all that sand (Knowing I don't talk the
talk of yesterday The footprince of childhood and adolescence conspire, with The weather, to turn the sand to tundra, to Turn.)?
2) When I was young I Dreamed tremendous appetites -- I sharpened My wits on books, made Love to Risk. I took Walks to the lake: yeah,
I did all kinds of Shit. And it all fed A singular vision but that All of a sudden I Discovered repetition, "simulacrum", and the
Moment postponed due into pseudoevent. Aghast I gaped (ghost mouthing), Fondling that poem by Robert Frost: "Love at the lips Was touch"' ... Touch! I couldn't
Touch that, not here, with These other appealing options presenting Themselves instruction manuals for self-utilization, Like so many colorful carnival Rides, reasonable thrills spinning off
In space in place. I Can't afford to put stock In only one order. When I'm older, I wonder, under Tremendous nothings, will the remembered
Pain of watching seven circular Tides gnash into jealous old-crank's Teeth (furious that I, Alec Ramsdell, alone should dare even Propose to touch the work
Of two) to ruin my Innocent Castle redress the Husk of what once hid Living proof that at one Point I traveled traversed by
Another whose words and such Words of others about whom And others fairly tormented me For, oh, a-night-and-a-half, with perverse Flowerings corrupting my extant draft
Of love and convincing me For the moment that, as I love the pleasure, I Must also love the pain?
3) Violets. Oranges.
Exactly. Perfect, perfect, perfect. That sounds perfect.
Yes, you can't just bang and whimper and expect the world to frame your gesture in one vast band of silence, a frieze, as if any sound could ever stick to a program. They do not always listen. Who wants to listen anyway? Though guffaw all you want ol' timer, unafraid laurel head, while the bottom line is not a line that is a field of knowledge that winds continually up elsewhere. Tradition he says. Winds or birds make off with that one that sounds perfect a moment ago through that other sleeve of night, so that now as always only the cleverest individual talents with the biggest brightest tools serve as organizational development consultants to what they want for what has been here. But how many times have we, yes, we, started now the same way, though always with what we liked to think were innocent enough intentions not to impose ourselves, to let what happens happen simply, simply become what happens, the way we read newspapers and menus and knew that that is not the way we must behave, though you will behave, oh yes, you will, we will see to that, so that criticism becomes a matter of distinguishing degrees, not kinds?
You and I see I can't be held responsible for the day I lost all innocence. Mother repeatedly warned me not to wander over to that part of town. In fact, I wasn't even aware of it passing until much later, after the fact had tossed things over into shadow, the present progressive's past as if to say: what are you having for me now?
<http://www.chitown.com/bigshoulders/archive/deception.html> ***** -- Yoshie
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