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McCLAREN_PARK

                                             June 5, 2002

                                MAPGAME
Some musing upon a round
of the mapgame, which took
me to McClaren Park.                       McClaren Park is
                                           one of the unsung
                                           treasures of SF:
   Cluster of purple flowers               A huge place, almost on
   in the shade of some pine               the scale of Golden
   trees, heavy laden with                 Gate park, but much
   cones.                                  heavier on the hills.

   Look closer: two clusters
   of different kinds of flowers,
   one bright grape purple,
   another lavender.


I recorded these words as a talisman
to bring back an experience.

Someone reading it who has not seen              And in fact it doesn't
it can't use it in the same way.                 work tremendously well
                                                 for me.  I recall the
(As a key, a handle, a short piece               experience better than
of information designed to tag,                  I would without the
point at, another)...                            words, but I can't call
                                                 up images with anything
So instead they're likely to get                 like photographic
a vague sense of pastorals, calmness;            accuracy.
"grape purple" - frivolous associations?
                                                     Cramming experience
A hint of some character?  Someone                   into a cracked and
who looks closer at flowers.                         fading memory...

          (And writes about things                   A fool's game?
           using pretentious cliches --
           "heavy laden"?)                               MEMORY

The beauty that ignores connotation
for the sake of pure experience
cannot be a part of the literary
realm.  It's all an art of connotation,          FUNNY
it has to work with an understanding
of *what* it is.

       Verbal description of
       experience without
       comprehension of the
       experience is impossible.


         Or nearly impossible.

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