An Essay of Ordinary Thoughts

Teresa Brinati allowed me to have this book. She presented it among others for me and others to take, and she allowed my taking.
It is a small book, published in 1989 and mailed to the Society of American Archivists in Chicago in 1990. The reason the author, Vichien Poonvoralak, sent the book is unknown. Why he sent it to a national association of archivists is unknown. Poonvoralak's process is (or was) to make his books and distribute them to people he didn't know.
The book is more of a pamphlet, but with a glossy cover. Inside, the paper is thin, flimsy. The type upon the book is small, as the clusters of words are small, and the clusters sit in different corners and sides of the book.
It is a book of conceptual writing (I would call it poetry), and it's opening page holds the first of the writings:


Conceptual though it is, it is also real. The question about the publication of the book is unnecessary since the poet has already published it.

Except that it's not. Some people may consider the book not worth publishing.

They are wrong.

This book is autobiographical, opening with a short chronology of Poonvoralak's work. The workrs are autobiographical, since they came out of a person's life:

I am a table, I am a robot, I am a pig etc. I can be all of them and find out that is is very ordinary to be them. but there is a thing that I can not be, that is to be myself.

this is a law of physics
nothing can be istelf
but everything can be something else

I read the poems, which go on in this manner, slowly, carefully. It is important for me to determine what is true. I feel a warmth of thinking about these poems as they think thoughts outside of themselves.

Sometimes, I think I can write a poem about this book. It would be a poem about writing a book about a poem about writing a book. I am writing it now, except that I'm not, because I am still asleep, except insofar as I have yet to fall asleep.

I have never slept anytime before in my life.

I am dead.

ecr. l'inf.