A Faithful Account of Where I Live: The Letters of Cid Corman and William Bronk

13 Sep[tember] 68

Dear Cid,

We speak of seeing as though it were SEEING. All right; we know what we mean: we envy seers, as though there were seers. There aren't. Perhaps we don't envy them.

But I, as though, go into a dark room (go with my eyes closed, go blindfold-go somehow unseeing) and I feel the walls, the shape of the room, something in it if something is there, feel my own shape against the walls as though they were sheer and plumb-as perhaps they may be if there are walls apart from improvisation. When I was younger I thought of this as defining-describing anyway-the shape of the room or my shape as though they were something that had shape some formal reality even though not perceptible to our less blind senses: the spirit world and I the medium who worked perforce in the dark. Now I don't know. One describes an experience only-or one describes an improvisation as though it were an experience.

This may not be entirely different from your method though I think you may be more rational than I am-may believe more. Credes ut intelligas. (my latin conjugation may be wrong-you will recognize the root). I liked what you said. We are looking at equivalent if not identical experience. We may be looking at separate sides of it. But my invention of experience is not totally idiosyncratic. You have invented something apart and equivalent. There may be something there we both touch-or at the very worst we have each two legs-one crotches the other whether or not there be business between.

Circumstance. You give it more than I do. Oh, it is there. I shake it off. You draw it in. It gives you comfort. Its absence appals[sic] me.

[. . . .]

Affectionately

Bill