Before the walk.
I spoke this out loud. All of it, in order, over a single walk through Bluestone Wild Forest in the Catskills, late May 2026, into the notes app on my phone. I’d just finished transcribing the original brown barefoot notebook, and I could feel that piece still running in me. This is its sibling, made the opposite way. Barefoot was written by hand while walking a path I’d built. This was spoken while walking a path someone else built, with no work to do but notice.
The mode is the subject. Barefoot was writing. This is audiation: thinking out loud, and letting the recording change the thought as it leaves the mouth. A few asides veer off the trail. Those are marked ///. The poems arrived where they sit. I’ve left the order alone.
Speaking into a notepad right now. A fascinating form of editing compared to recording stream of consciousness.
Every time you think you’ve reached the ultimate it shifts.
Every thought you have is sacred.
Every thought you have is completely legitimate, though not necessarily true.
I used to think structure was boring and content was everything. I wanted content, only content, and I wanted it fast. Now I think structure is the only thing that gives content any meaning.
Much of structure is space.