Note

Note. I’ll put up a note--a blue Post-It in this case. Can’t remember the circumstances-something urgent at the time, no doubt. Isn’t that the Buddhist ideal, “urgent at the time…”? Every moment precious--although I’m not sure that this is what the masters had in mind...

The writing itself was precious, though--you can see that in the script. My own brio, with some of the letters still showing a trace of Lloyd Reynolds' calligraphy classes at Reed--the almost-Italic “a” in the second line--how he demanded we work to perfect that shape--the counter, as he explained. The shape inside.

Frank Bidart: The wall inside the wall...

And then, only a few years later, freedom became the act of abandoning those very forms--returning to a less-trammeled world. Here I think of Ynot, my junior high school namesake (Tony written backwards, pronounced Eee-not), still fun to say--and by doing so, to claim again that possibility...

Isaac Babel’s grandmother: You must know everything. Whereas in Oceanside, a good five-foot wave at the Pier would do just fine…

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