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Page 241

I juggle words, ideas. I feel like a nudist,
my balls always In the air. I just thought of that,
but having said it, I wonder if it isn't an ancient joke,
a bit of Internet flotsam. But here's one that HAS
to be mine, all mine – soon, sadly, yours: Zaftig ladies,
when they see me coming, flee, squealing "It's that
terrible jug leer!" I'm not so bad. I warn you when the worst
puns are coming. (That's like holding a flaming match
to my farts.) But I'm not bad, really – I just thought
of a far dumber pun, and I'm sparing you. But beware
of the puns. It's a juggle out there. (No, that wasn't
the really dumb one.)

That was me juggling ideas. Now for words (forward!)...
I mean, that was words. Now for ideas. Here's an idea
(or possibly a You-dea): Poet and reader as a juggling team –
I get the bowling pins, tables chairs, teacups, saucers
all circling through my hands, then toss them, one
at a time, to you, and you keep them in motion
between your two hands (or however many you have)
and occasionally a helpful toe or knee, and between
your hands and mine, a blur of ideas, only their arcs
of motion visible now, no way to attribute them
to you or me, nor could a bystander tell if,
when we stop, the table will be at the bottom
or rest on upside-down tea cups atop bowling pins
atop the elephant that stands on the back of the
tortoise...but what is this bystander business?

Toss him something – preferably a knife.
He's in or he's out. Only jugglers allowed here.
No standing by, of or for. If anything stands still here,
it and we may vanish.

[Can one vanish while moving? Certainly,
if one is feeling moving-vanish.]

[A groan is the sound of failing to vanish.]

Note: "Jug leer" – the leer of a man gazing at a zaftig woman's jugs (breasts). "It's a juggle out there" – that is, a jungle. The coinage "You-dea" substitutes "You" for "I" in "idea". It also suggests a Zionist group for kids (in the U.S.) called "Young Judea". (Does that still exist?), for which "You-dea" would be a good portmanteau. But I didn't try to work that in. I'm proud of my self-restraint. Perhaps I thought of Judaism because stanza one uses the Yiddish word "Zaftig" – soft and full-figured.

What stands still does vanish. What happens to matter at absolute zero (the temperature where all motion ceases)? I think the way small-particle physics encounters a continual shifting quality in matter, wherein what is treated as a particle turns out to be a wave and vice versa (like the duck that, looked at again, is seen to be rabbit – and vice versa) – I think this has to do with the way a particle is given persistence: It is created, created, created (no one creation, but a continual creating, but altered in some way with each creation. In a way, it IS change. In another way, it is IT. If you try to find a particle, you find a change (a wave flow). If you try to find a wave flow, you hit a particle. It's an endless tease, a persistence. In a more humdrum sense, stand around doing nothing and see how soon you become invisible.

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