Clairvoyant Journal

Hannah Weiner. Reading Hannah Weiner and Bernadette Mayer always makes me hungry. There's something so earthy about the way they talk about food-- I want to eat English Muffins and chocolate pudding and drink beer and cucumber juice in my dungarees at a kitchen table in a kitchen with no a/c. I read this in the waiting room for the free clinic with Aaron (sinus infection) for hours and hours and got very hungry then a headache.

Weiner's writing down the words she sees, indicated in capitals and italics (though I'm still unsure of the difference between the two-- it must signal some difference, though, otherwise why not just use one method? visual interest?) So what she's doing is a sort of dictation, though she is also writing down her own thoughts (often trying to complete or make sense of the dictations-- "BErnadette") and recurring themes appear in both the dictated words and her "own" thoughts-- composers (esp. Phil Glass), friends (Bernadette, Noa, Jerry Rothenberg, Rhys [lover]), yoga and meditation, quotidian concerns (a dresser, an aspirin, a potential book deal, a retreat, pants from Bloomingdale's, alcohol consumption, weight gain).

The form was a little hard to get used to at first-- but once I got used to it, its feel of simultaneity (which may or may not have been the inspiration/situation) was really energetic and engaging. She's also hilarious (please excuse the transcription, much is lost):

then saw a chest of drawers write and ended up with the wrong one, a maple one, it looks 10 drawers too big in the bedroom So why didn't they help me get the other one, it did say HURRY a little while before the other woman came in and bought it back it had rollers on it wrong clean drawers used hesitated because the confusion was larger .... Fuck I'm pissed off at the furniture and them NOS VOICES .... I cant go back to the bedroom the chest is too depressing MAPLE FURNITURE what has that to do with it? bad vibrations

and later, in May, after having taken an aspirin:

They do the refusals They did obey YOU HEAR THE RADIO TURN IT OFF too late in aspirin bottle you kept seeing TAKE ONE ASPIRIN YOU TAKE A COCKTAIL PARTY ... TELL A DOCTOR CODE POEM BIG ASPIRIN Big is a must be Your liver friend YOUR OLD AGE ... You can't digest aspirin And you usually take Tylenol but you damp dont jingle bells in tylenol cream color by the sink YOU BROKE IT help your mother the bottle no aspirin in it you think GO TO THE BED The bed says IT ISN'T BED TIME YET BIG RHYS TOMORROW says pussycat GOVERNMENT Ever since you took that rotten aspirin you've got too much interference

She does refer to the words she sees as "interference" and interruptions:

How can I describe anything when all these interruptions keep arriving and then tell me I dont describe it well WELL forgive them big ME

and often receives instructions to OBEY and DONT EDIT-- but she is engaging with these texts as she's writing them (it's not just straight dictation) but maybe documentation?:

realise write something you are documenting it