An excerpt from my field-notes: missing poetry apparently

Until this morning I hadn’t revisited my fieldnote books in months. The following excerpt is from the first page of fieldnote book #4.

 

“Today is the fifth of February.

 

In two days we will have been here for three months though this duration says little. As Michael Jackson woke in a fever of Malaria to remember the importance of poetry, so I have lately been missing the poetics of everyday life.

 

It is not simply a desire to read or write it (though I did look everywhere in the nearby mining town for a book of poetry – any poetry – on the last brief shopping trip), but missing the eye of poetry.

 

I am not familiar or comfortable enough with the language of everyday life (nor with everyday life itself),here –  to see anything through poetry. And it feels like some kind of estrangement.

 

But they say (they say), things get much easier after three months. Perhaps poetry will return to me again.”