This Is the Topic We Discussed in Your Kitchen This Winter

I confess, this post's tone needed changing after I read news last evening that for the first time in recent memory there is potentially positive news regarding United's short term and fuck-me-jig long term survival in DC. I acknowledge that news, if it proves true, represents nothing more than a reprieve; it's strange and terribly good how nothing more than the prospect of a reprieve feels. The original post was going to sourly and darkly tie in my blegangst - I'm running three different blegs for three different purposes, what the fuck am I doing? - with the predictable but still demoralizing reading slump since finishing 1Q84, a slump so deep I don't trust what I think about 1Q84 though what I think is that Murakami wanted me to not trust 1Q84. Weird fucking days. Anyway, I think I know a way out, though I'm going to try rereading - it's been four years - Mason & Dixon first (and it's working so far, the capitalized nouns aren't pissing me off), but it's been two years since I last read The Unconsoled, it chirps at me from the bookshelf next to my bed at 530 in the morning, and a cryptic tweet from Paris Review about Ishiguro soliciting suggestions for his almost finished new novel and....

• Can we synchronize our souls? This song will not leave my head. I blame Stevie Zoom. It's now BLCKDGRD - Theme Song 6. 
• Sanctions are to war like foreplay is to....
• Well, if Lindsay Graham, John McCain, and Joe Lieberman are for it, it must be a good idea.
• Syria's curious transformation.
• Of course.
• Robert Reich might have his obamapostasy yet.
• E.J. Dionne will never have his obamapostasy.
• Concerning violence and nailing jello to walls.
• You know, they are motherfucking crackers.
• On the above.
• Of course they're motherfucking crackers.
  
• On circumscribing the unspoken.
• Romney's billionaire backer hasn't risen to Greenwald's bait yet.
• I need confess I've caught myself thinking of going to a Nat's game or two this year.
• Littell on Blanchot.
• Duplessis is my next poetry assignment.
• Look at Rich's playlist, same set, Archers of Loaf and David Thomas and Two Pale Boys. Now look to the left column, click on the WFMU widget, throw them some coin, it's marathon time.
• Kathleen Edwards live.
• Peter Broderick.
• Stephin Merritt interview.

THE STRICTURE

Lisa Robertson

'The 69 heads of Messerschmidt cast in lead are not heaven.'
'The magnetic cures of Mesmer on the plastic soul are more
     difficult to characterize.'
'The heavens of Flanders are like textile in lustrousness -
     a bridal textile.'
'We see the classic theme of a woman suffering, with pearl-
     sized nipples, pink cotton billowing or nacrous skin
     spouting feathers.'
'Here is a perfume burner of Khorasan, a bird sitting on top.'
'Birds perch on heaven habitually. They are not certainty-
     seekers.'

I wanted to think into the stricture of appearances.
There was a time when I came close.
To help the problem I changed into a clematis, I changed into
     a dog, I changed into a perfumed smoke.
Some of my organs were outside history, which gave me an
     advantage.
Place here the idea of a necessary inconspicuousness.

'This is wrong'
'This is beautiful'
'This is social'
'This is not thinking'

It is the handiwork of appearing only.

This is the topic we discussed in your kitchen this winter.
I said I didn't know what thinking is.
You said you were trying to understand your sense of an
     inner voice, which was separate from thinking.
I didn't understand.
I let myself go blank.

I began by taking everything that was doubtful and throwing
     it out, like sand.