Nowe bus me wende.
started with bus journeys long and short, near and far.
couldnʼt remember much, trusted still less of that.
put the list aside.
buss.
a vessel of burden. fly-boat, used in the Dutch herring industry.
journeys distilled to
hum and gearbox chatter,
fumes and heat.
or cold. or the wrong bus.
hard to read. impossible to write.
others, near and far.
(We're all bozos on this bus.)
the effort merged with amnesia, a recurring theme.
buss.
a kiss, a smack.
to kiss.
The least contaminated memory might exist in the brain of a patient with amnesia... The memory and maybe the fact of every kiss start disappearing the moment the two mouths part.
— Sarah Manguso. Ongoingness : the end of a diary (2015) : 29
journeys that blur, blend, lose relief.
bus.
north dial. it behoves. moral or logical necessity.
must, ought : Nowe bus me wende.
and wend I did,
mostly far, mostly long ago.
nighttime long hauls or tired daytime light. dust.
dust. anti-amnesic dust, a memory that intrudes on the present, e.g. —
that which you wish to forget, but cannot, as when on a bus one suddenly pictures with absolute clarity a ball of dust in a closet...
— Mary Ruefle, My Private Property (2016) : 10
bus
amnesic —
this project in suspension,
(it’s still in suspension), a printout surfaced of
“Imagine if you could delete bad memories. Well, you can.”
Ed Cooke. The Guardian (9 May 2016) here —
“A new study shows that it’s possible to deliberately forget things.”
any things.
one need but intentionally discard context, and
memory decays.
bus journeys
kisses
balls of dust
musts and oughts
parenthetical
naughts.
Now bus me wende.
—
sources :
aforenamed, and
The Firesign Theater (1971) *
The Century Dictionary and Encyclopaedia : vol 1 (1906) *; and
A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles : vol 2, Axi-Byz (1887) *
(from which c1440 York Myst. viii. 148 Nowe bus me wende).
this, in revised form, an asfaltics post to the Guardian series Poster Poems
Bus Journeys (23 October 2016).
tags:
amnesia; bus; buss; etymologies; latihan; nowe bus me wende
Sarah Manguso; Mary Ruefle; The Firesign Theatre