2012/05/31

Fifty-Two Today




The Guy Under the Seats, BLCKDGRD's Patron Saint of Bleggalgazing, Avatar of Autoblogography, the above the most posted youtube in BLCKDGRD history, today a High Holy Day in Egoslavia.





And since I know at least two of you will ask, have Conspiracy Guy:


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2012/05/30

We Want, and If We Don't Then That's What We Want




Here's Scott Norton, who I link to frequently, on the New York Times piece on Obama the Executioner. While I don't always agree with Norton's conclusions I find him more reliably fair than the majority of writers who work for the old professional progressive warhorses. Please pardon the long extract:

The article also tackles the underpinnings of the CIA’s claims that there have been no, or at least very few, civilian deaths owing to drone strikes recently: “Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties. . . . It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.” We learn that this approach has been controversial within the administration, with some advisers noting that it seems close to a conclusive presumption of guilt.

This is a very important disclosure. On one hand, it clarifies the basis for the CIA’s no-collateral-damage claim. On the other, it puts the drone program on very tenuous grounds under the laws of war. The U.S. military in Iraq, for instance, has previously disciplined officers who issued rules of engagement authorizing the targeting of all military-age males. A person cannot be presumed to be a terrorist simply because he is male, of military age, and happens to be in the same village as some terrorists—he must be engaged in conduct that makes him a combatant. Applied to targeting, this presumption raises serious war-crime issues. As the Times reports, the administration is currently limiting its use to the counting of persons unintentionally killed when a legitimate target has been struck, which theoretically leads only to false information about the number of innocent civilians killed. But the distinction isn’t actually quite so clear-cut: in deciding on a strike, an estimate of collateral damage has to be included. And if all able males are deemed legitimate targets, that process is being seriously distorted.

The Times piece also considers the question of tactics versus strategy. Much of the controversy surrounding drones has swirled around the decision to target individuals, such as Anwar al-Awlaki, who have gained notoriety, and around the government’s willingness to aggressively deploy drones as a tool in the first place. Less discussed have been the broader consequences of drone assassinations:
[T]he strikes that have eviscerated Al Qaeda—just since April, there have been 14 in Yemen, and 6 in Pakistan—have also tested both men’s commitment to the principles they have repeatedly said are necessary to defeat the enemy in the long term. Drones have replaced Guantánamo as the recruiting tool of choice for militants; in his 2010 guilty plea, Faisal Shahzad, who had tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square, justified targeting civilians by telling the judge, “When the drones hit, they don’t see children.”
Dennis C. Blair, director of national intelligence until he was fired in May 2010, said that discussions inside the White House of long-term strategy against Al Qaeda were sidelined by the intense focus on strikes. “The steady refrain in the White House was, ‘This is the only game in town’—reminded me of body counts in Vietnam,” said Mr. Blair, a retired admiral who began his Navy service during that war.
Blair is correct to stress long-term strategy, and it’s a shame that the Times piece fails to develop his point further. Admiral Blair isn’t the only person raising these questions—so, too, is the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron P. Munter, who is mentioned in the piece as having complained that “he didn’t realize his main job was to kill people,” and has spoken out elsewhere about the CIA’s dominance in U.S.–Pakistani relations. The current meltdown in U.S. relations with Pakistan—long considered a vital American ally in the region—is directly related to the drone campaign. The White House, focused as it is on kill data from each strike, doesn’t seem to be paying much attention to the effect of heavy drone use on American relations with states in the region, nor to the broader dynamics of American operations against terrorist groups. Is a drone campaign that eliminates Al Qaeda but turns Pakistan, the nation with the world’s fastest-growing nuclear arsenal, into a bitter enemy really a success story?

OK? Clear? Here's Horton's concluding paragraph, the paragraph immediately below the above paragraph:

With the Times account, more important details about the Obama drone program have fallen into place. The disclosures will offer solace to Obama supporters who have qualms about the program, since the administration is shown scrutinizing individual targets and avoiding strikes that would affect innocent women and children. On the other hand, the drone operators continue to they make lethal misjudgments, and the government’s case for secrecy with the program looks more dubious than ever.

Asked honestly: what the fuck? Rimshot for obamapologists but rimshots for everyone, thanks for playing? And it's the smartest piece on the block? So fucked.










PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE INTERIORS OF DICTATORS' HOUSES

Albert Goldbarth

It's as if every demon from hell with aspirations
toward interior design flew overhead and indiscriminately
spouted gouts of molten gold, that cooled down
into swan-shape spigots, doorknobs, pen-and-inkwell sets.
A chandelier the size of a planetarium dome
is gold, and the commodes. The handrails
heading to the wine cellar and the shelving for the DVDs
and the base for the five stuffed tigers posed in a fighting phalanx:
gold, as is the samovar and the overripe harp
and the framework for the crocodile-hide ottoman and settee.
The full-size cinema theater accommodating an audience
of hundreds for the screening of home (or possibly
high-end fuck flick) videos: starred in gold
from vaulted ceiling to clawfoot legs on the seating.
Of course the scepter is gold, but the horns
on the mounted stag heads: do they need to be gilded?
Yes. And the olive fork and the French maid's row of dainty buttons
and the smokestack on the miniature train
that delivers golden trays of dessert from the kitchen
to a dining hall about the size of a zip code,
and the snooker table's sheathing, and the hat rack,
and those hooziewhatsit things in which you slip your feet
on the water skis, and the secret lever
that opens the door to the secret emergency bunker.
Smug and snarky as we are, in our sophisticated
and subtler, non-tyrannical tastes, it's still
unsettling to realize these photographs are also full
of the childrens' pictures set on a desk,
the wife's diploma proudly on a wall, the common
plastic container of aspirin, and the bassinette
with the scroll of linen shade at the ready
in case the sun is too powerful: reminders of how
a graduated continuum connects these überoperatically
fat interior lives to our own. We all desire
"more" and "better," Melville adds that final "e"
to the family name, and Faulkner adds the "u," in quest
of a signified gentility. My friend Damien
(fake name) won A Certain Literary Award, and
at the stellar after-ceremony party, in the swank hotel's
swank atrium, he found a leggy literary groupie
noshing caviar under a swankily lush mimosa,
and in under an hour his own swank room could boast
the golden statuette, the evening's loveliest woman, and
the silver serving platter of five-star caviar,
and if you think this story's moral lesson is
that satiation is ever attained, you don't understand
the protoknowledge we're born with, coded into our cells:
soon soon soon enough we die. Even before we've seen
the breast, we're crying to the world that we want;
and the world doles out its milkiness in doses. We
want, we want, we want, and if we don't then
that's what we want; abstemiousness is only
hunger translated into another language. Yes
there's pain and heartsore rue and suffering, but
there's no such thing as "anti-pleasure": it's pleasure
that the anchorite takes in his bleak cave
and Thoreau in his bean rows and cabin. For Thoreau,
the Zen is: wanting less is wanting more.
Of less. At 3 a.m. Marlene (fake name) and Damien
drunkenly sauntered into and out of the atrium,
then back to his room: he wanted the mimosa too,
and there it stood until checkout at noon, a treenapped testimony
to the notion that we will if we can, as evidenced in even
my normally modest, self-effacing friend. If we can,
the archeological record tells us, we'll continue wanting
opulently even in the afterlife: the grave goods
of pharaohs are just as gold as the headrests
and quivers and necklace pendants they used every day
on this side of the divide, the food containers
of Chinese emperors are ready for heavenly meals
that the carved obsidian dragons on the great jade lids
will faithfully guard forever. My own
innate definition of "gratification" is right there
in its modifier "immediate," and once or twice
I've hurt somebody in filling my maw. I've walked
—the normally modest, self-effacing me—below a sky
of stars I lusted after as surely as any despot
contemplating his treasury. The slice of American cheese
on the drive-thru-window burger is also gold,
bathetically gold,
and I go where my hunger dictates.


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Richmond 1, United 2




Can't really comment since I didn't see it: early round cup games are never on TV and dcunited.com didn't stream it, bastards. Here's Benuski, here are some post-game quotes (note that Neal started at left back), here's Goff. The red kits suck.

Here's the big news: United v Phunion at Soccerplex next Tuesday night. Planet says she's going! Woot! plus stanchion pron.


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2012/05/29

I Don't Know How to Not Participate




Iannis Xenakis was born ninety years ago today. I feel incapable of documenting my rage before today's clusterfuck, sorry, I know the day is particularly clusterfuckful even by current standards of daily clusterfuckability, motherfucking Emperobama. Here, have my new policy on posting gifs and fine fucking metaphors abounding and my fucking complicity. Don't know why effingblooger won't allow enlarging today after providing it for years but that's also fine fucking metaphors abounding and my fucking complicity. Also too, more Xenakis.




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2012/05/28

Someone Has to Get Mired in Scum and Ashes, Sofa Springs, Splintered Glass, and Bloody Rags




There's a new shitstorm from what I see on twooter. I've heard and seen the name Chris Hayes in  blooger and twooter but I couldn't pick his face out of a line-up or his schtick out of a soundbite. I confess I still find myself harnessed to POTUS 12, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna be tethered to motherfucking yapping heads on the plasma screen, help Corporate make money out of clusterfucking the clusterfuck. I heard Bob Schieffer on the local news radio station say, "I think the events of the next five months will determine who wins the presidency," and the morning drive-time morons said, "Good advice, as always, from Bob Schieffer," and I swore from that moment onward I will only listen to that station on the eights and only when I have to. Which I'd done countless times before.

Apparently Chris Hayes said something less than beatifying about those who volunteer to serve in the American Armed Services, and latest fucking shitstorm ensues. I haven't calculated this since the last time, but there are, as of noon EDT today, 171.5 days, 4,116 hours, 246,960 minutes, 14,817,600 seconds until election day, each one of them increasing by that second what you already believe to be true. All of which to say that instead of writing about that I'm going to marvel yet again at serendipity. Hamster sees a performance of Ligeti piano pieces a week ago, yesterday I remember it's the birthday of Rostropovich, last night I'm reminded that Ligeti was born 89 years ago today, here's his Sonata for Solo Cello:















THE END AND THE BEGINNING

Wislawa Szymborska

Translated by Joanne Trzeciak

After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won’t
straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.

Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.

Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.

Photogenic it’s not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.

We’ll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.

From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.


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2012/05/27

Fifty-Five Today









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Born Eighty-Five Years Ago Today




Next to piano, I love cello most. Here's Rostropovich playing Shostakovich's Cello Concerto Number 1, first, second, third, fourth movements. Here's him with Benjamin Britten on piano playing Shostakovich's Cello Sonata Opus 40 first, second, third, fourth movements.


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United 3, Ningland 2




That's the first goal, called, SeatSix can vouch. Branko assisted on the first two goals but, running the middle on breaking counter-attacks, still doesn't know what runs his teammates will run, but he's busting his adequate hump on defense and United has seven weeks to decide what to do with him. Here's a photo of the Perry Kitchen banner hanging off the front of RFK:




United doesn't play another league game for three weeks (and doesn't play at home for another five weeks) so now is the logical time for a detailed first half of the season evaluation but (while the House of Duras may perhaps rule the Klingon Empire again) not today, perhaps in a week or so. The wings are woot, the strikers are woot, Kitchen is woot, Hamid is woot, the defense scares two of those woots out of me for a net score of two woots, two woots more than I've felt since 2008, ten woots more than I felt in 2010. Here's Fullback, here's Shatzer, here's Webb, here are highlights:


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2012/05/26

You Can Read Almost Anything about Angels, How They Bite Off the Heads First, Copulate with Tigers, Tortured Miles Davis until He Stuck a Mute in his Trumpet to Torture Them Back




Here's Hamster's playlist, many thanks, for Miles Davis, born 86 years ago today, both above and below the fold. I've said before, I like but am not all that knowledgeable about jazz - there are only so many hours in a day, days in a life, choices are made. I can talk to you about poetry but not the theater, I can talk to you about novels but not movies. Anyway, when I opened the youtube below there was a fifteen second advertisement about the new Miller Lite can, you can punch a hole in the top of the can so the beer pours more smoothly. I guess the spiral in the aluminum bottle wasn't enough technology. Remember our fallen soldiers who died so we could enjoy such freedoms as Americans.










LUCIFER

Dean Young

You can read almost anything
about angels, how they bite off
the heads first, copulate with tigers,
tortured Miles Davis until he stuck
a mute in his trumpet to torture them back.
The pornographic magazines ported
into the redwoods. The sweetened breath
of the starving. The prize livestock
rolls over on her larval young,
the wooden dwarf turning in the cogs
of the clockworks. I would have
a black bra hanging from the shower rod.
I would have you up against
the refrigerator with its magnets
for insurance agents and oyster bars.
Miracles, ripped thumbnails,
everything a piece of something else,
archangelic, shadow-clawed,
the frolicking despair of repeating
decimals because it never comes out even.
Mostly the world is lava’s rhythm,
the impurities of darkness
sometimes called stars. Mostly
the world is assignations, divorces
conducted between rooftops. Forever
and forever the checkbook unbalanced,
the beautiful bodies bent back
like paper clips, the discharged
blandishing cardboard signs by the exits.
Coppers and silvers and radiant traces,
gold flecks from our last brush,
brushfires. Always they’re espousing
accuracy when it’s accident, the arrow
not in the aimed-for heart but throat
that has the say. There are no transitions,
only falls.












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2012/05/25

Fifty-Four Today/Born Eighty-Six Years Ago Tomorrow




Truth be, I like The Jam but like the post-Jam stuff as much or better. Also too, Miles Davis was born 86 years ago tomorrow. Hamster's promised to send along a playlist, but in the meantime:


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The Inexorable Sadness of Pencils Neat in Their Boxes

No Thursday Night Pints. All others, meaning anyone who could, have already checked-out until Tuesday for Memorial Day weekend. Here, from page 204 of Hilary Mantel's Bringing Up the Bodies:

In March [1536], Parliament knocks back his [Thomas Cromwell's] new poor law. It was too much for the Commons to digest, that rich men might have some duty to the poor; that if you get fat, as gentleman of England do, on the wool trade, your have some responsibility to the men turned off the land, the labourers without labour, the sowers without a field. England need roads, forts, harbours, bridges. Men need work. It's a shame to see them begging their bread, when honest labour could keep the realm secure. Can we not put them together, the hands and the tasks.

But Parliament cannot see how it is the state's job to create work. Are not these matters in God's hands, and is not poverty and dereliction part of his eternal order? To everything there is a season: a time to starve and a time to thieve. If rain falls for six months solid and rots the grain in the fields, there must be providence in it; for God knows his trade. It is an outrage to the rich and enterprising, to suggest that they should pay an income tax, only to put bread in the mouths of the workshy. And if Secretary Cromwell argues that famines provoke criminality: well, are there not hangmen enough?

El Serracho tweets, every day the news is the same. Yesterday's reciting of my four Whatever-American roots reminded me I'm American-American, faith in progress through American exceptionalism hard-wired: just count how many times I've typed Motherfucking Obama here in the past year as a salve against my complicity. And we know where Cromwell's head will end up at the end of trilogy, holyfuck, I cannot wait to read it in a few years but meanwhile reading the existing two of the trilogy during POTUS 12 provides much wry-smile-of-recognition awesomeness. Hey, I've got at least one, maybe two used Wolf Hall paperbacks I bought cheap, send me a please and I'll mail it to you. (UPDATE! One Wolf Hall gone. Act fast.)





  • Motherfucking Obama.
  • Motherfucking Obama.
  • Motherfucking Obama.
  • Motherfucking Obama: There are two broad narratives about Barack Obama from American elites.  On the right, there’s a racist narrative about Obama’s socialist Kenyan origins, with offshoot dishonest arguments about his policies.  He’s anti-corporate!  He’s gone on a government spending frenzy!  He’s going to cut the size of the military!  These are not true.  On the Democratic side, there’s an equally dishonest set of arguments.  He’s not bold enough!  Congress is holding him back from his progressive instincts!  We haven’t made him do what we know he wants to do!  The real Obama is hidden behind a racist veneer on the right, that he’s a Kenyan socialist, and a fake narrative on the left, that he’s not bold enough.  The third narrative, which you can find on this blog, is that Barack Obama is a great deceiver, with a charming and cool demeanor that mask his ruthlessness and bank-friendly neoliberal ideology.  It’s hard to talk to this third narrative, because Democrats overwhelmingly approve of Obama, and Republicans simply cannot countenance the idea that their socialist enemy is as friendly or even more friendly to corporate power than they are... The reality is that it is the strength of Obama’s narrative, and the lack of a left-wing analysis of who he is as a person, that gives Obama all the cover he needs to enact bank-friendly policies.  You can see this strength in the utter lack of an effective comedic impersonator of Barack Obama.
  • Vote for the cutest.
  • Slouching towards Serbia.
  • Canada too.
  • Motherfucking Democrats.
  • Old King Coal.
  • Duh.
  • Every day the news is the same.
  • Taxpayers.
  • Blithe.
  • Hey! Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?





  • It's true, and they've a home game tomorrow night - why United gets hit every year with a Memorial Day weekend game is a mystery - and Seat Three and Four are away on a short vacation, so I've a couple of tickets. Hamster? Anyone who wants to join me and SeatSix, send me an email. (UPDATE! One ticket gone. Act fast.)
  • Barry's Magic Shop to close. I used to go into the Wheaton location years ago when it was next to a head shop, but I never went into the Nicholson Lane relocation.
  • Your Fucking Washington Post tells MCPS teachers, you suck. Standard disclaimers of conflict of interest apply.
  • RIP Paul Fussell.
  • RIP Paul Fussell.
  • Reconstructing Harry Crews.
  • Theodore Roethke was born 104 years ago today. I had one teacher who pushed and pushed and pushed Roethke on me, and lordy I tried, and better than meh, never wow.
  • I had not heard of Skullflower until Fabio played that song yesterday. If only there was a long holiday weekend, the third slowest of the year in Blegsylvania, coming up so if I feel like posting what I discover no one will be listening anyway. Fabio played this Celestial Highway IV which you can hear on his playlist but I can't find for her, so have II:





DOLOR

Theodore Roethke

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplicaton of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.


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2012/05/24

Johnny, the Kitchen Sink Has Been Clogged for Days, Some Utensil Probably Fell Down There



I saw the revolting photo of Obama making some stupidass hand-gesture with a graduating Air Force cadet, read the quotes of his repugnant purple speech reaffirming American empire and I.... oh fucked it. What's the vile motherfucker going to say, we're an empire in terminal decline though I'll kill as many people around the world and circumscribe American citizens' civil liberties and militarize the police against peaceful dissent while gutting social safety nets in order to maintain the profit margins and lifestyles of our Corporate elite? This isn't to condone or excuse but, for the moment, to oh-fuck-it, why burn the aargh over motherfucking propaganda in an election year. So I was going to oh-fuck-it anyway, but luckily I was then distracted in comments to yesterday's post, hence the above photo, which references the discussion of tens and the below youtube which references the discussion of Serbian-Canadians. This guy follows up on the discussions too. For the record, my grandparents were Serb and Slovak on my father's side, Hungarian and German on my mother's.



















WHAT THE LIVING DO

Marie Howe

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell
     down there.
And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have
     piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat's on too high in here and I can't
     turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag
     breaking,

I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist
     and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We
     want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and more and then
     more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the
     window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:
I am living. I remember you.


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2012/05/23

If This Is Wednesday, It's Trash Night

I'm almost halfway through Hilary Mantel's Bringing Up the Bodies, the second of a trilogy that started with Wolf Hall. Long-timers analog and digital can vouch I've yodeled for Mantel since whenever. (UPDATE! I got sick of the gif, decided to put up a header.) No one I've read has given me better insights into the human nature of power, its, um, ruthless amorality of pragmatism: you know, the people fucking you over honestly believe they're fucking you over in the greater interest of everyone. Meanwhile, things have suddenly gone off-key: Henry's jousting accident, Cromwell's assertion of authority in the emergency, and Anne's subsequent miscarriage of the heir have if not monkey-wrenched then cracked a fault-line in the commoner Cromwell's power England's peers consider usurped and illegitimate. It's a testament to Mantel's powerful imagination and skill with the language that I devour a historical fiction about Henry VIII when I detest historical fiction and despise shit about the English royalty. All of Mantel's fiction (which is, other than the current trilogy in progress and her very first novel, not historical fiction) is superb. Other than Richard, no one I've urged Mantel on and who's read a novel hasn't thanked me, and he likes Led Zeppelin.












LIVING

C.D. Wright

If this is Wednesday, write Lazartigues, return library books, pick up passport form, cancel the paper.

If this is Wednesday, mail B her flyers and K her shirts. Last thing I asked as I walked K to her car, “You sure you have everything?” “Oh yes,” she smiled, as she squalled off. Whole wardrobe in front closet.

Go to Morrison’s for paint samples, that’s where housepainter has account (near Pier One), swing by Gano St. for another bunch of hydroponic lettuce. Stop at cleaners if there’s parking.

Pap smear at 4. After last month with B’s ear infections, can’t bear sitting in damn doctor’s office. Never a magazine or picture on the wall worth looking at. Pack a book.

Ever since B born, nothing comes clear. My mind like a mirror that’s been in a fire. Does this happen to the others.

If this is Wednesday, meet Moss at the house at noon. Pick B up first, call sitter about Friday evening. If she prefers, can bring B to her (hope she keeps the apartment warmer this year).

Need coat hooks and picture hangers for office. Should take car in for air filter, oil change. F said one of back tires low. Don’t forget car payment, late last two months in a row.

If this is Wednesday, there’s a demo on the green at 11. Took B to his first down at Quonset Point in August. Blue skies. Boston collective provided good grub for all. Long column of denims and flannel shirts. Smell of patchouli made me so wistful, wanted to buy a woodstove, prop my feet up, share a J and a pot of Constant Comment with a friend. Maybe some zucchini bread.

Meet with honors students from 1 to 4. At the community college I tried to incite them to poetry. Convince them this line of work, beat the bejesus out of a gig as gizzard splitter at the processing plant or cleaning up after a leak at the germ warfare center. Be all you can be, wrap rubber band around your trigger finger until it drops off.

Swim at 10:00 before picking up B, before demo on the green, and before meeting moss, if it isn’t too crowded. Only three old women talking about their daughters-in-law last Wednesday at 10:00.

Phone hardware to see if radon test arrived.

Keep an eye out for a new yellow blanket. Left B’s on the plane, though he seems over it already. Left most recent issue of Z in the seat. That will make a few businessmen boil. I liked the man who sat next to me, he was sweet to B. Hated flying, said he never let all of his weight down.

Need to get books in the mail today. Make time pass in line at the P.O. imagining man in front of me butt naked. Fellow in the good-preacher-blue-suit, probably has a cold, hard bottom.

Call N for green tomato recipe. Have to get used to the Yankee growing season. If this is Wednesday, N goes in hospital today. Find out how long after marrow transplant before can visit.

Mother said she read in paper that Pete was granted a divorce. His third. My highschool boyfriend. Meanest thing I could have done, I did to him, returning a long-saved-for engagement ring in a Band-Aid box, while he was stationed in Da Nang.

Meant to tell F this morning about dream of eating grasshoppers, fried but happy. Our love a difficult instrument we are learning to play. Practice, practice.

No matter where I call home anymore, feel like a boat under the trees. Living is strange.

This week only; bargain on laid paper at East Side Copy Shop.

Woman picking her nose at the stoplight. Shouldn’t look, only privacy we have anymore in the car. Isn’t that the woman from the colloquium last fall, who told me she was a stand-up environmentalist. What a wonderful trade, I said, because the evidence of planetary wrongdoing is overwhelming. Because because because of the horrible things we do.

If this is Wednesday, meet F at Health Department at 10:45 for AIDS test.

If this is Wednesday, it’s trash night.


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2012/05/22

I Had Not Thought That Something Had Such Undone




Those moments, only afterwards seeming necessary moments, when you hear a song the very first time and Holyfuck! not only is it Dance, Motherfucker but also a concise and encapsulating and clarifying and cathartic-when-dancing summation of what's swirled unsorted in your head? That Robert Pollard song above is now an Official Theme Song of BLCKDGRD, which makes Robert Pollard the first musician to have two Official Theme Songs of BLCKDGRD. Here is the first Robert Pollard Official Theme Song of BLCKDGRD:










THE PATTERN

Robert Creeley

As soon as
I speak, I
speaks. It

wants to
be free but
impassive lies

in the direction
of its
words. Let

x equal x, x
also
equals x. I

speak to
hear myself
speak? I

had not thought
that some-
thing had such

undone. It
was an idea
of mine.


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2012/05/21

The Truth Is in a Container of No Size or Situation




Hamster was at this concert this past Saturday (I knew of it, he'd mentioned it, but I had a date w/United) and sends along some Ligeti. Also too, I've gathered some links, but today bites unto bite, so tomorrow. Also too, Robert Creeley, whose poetry I once loved, then liked, then mehhed, then liked, and now love again, was born eighty-six years ago today.




CLEMENTE'S IMAGES

1)

Sleeping birds, lead me,
soft birds, be me

inside this black room,
back of the white moon.

In the dark night
sight frightens me.


2)

Who is it nuzzles there
with furred, round headed stare?

Who, perched on the skin,
body's float, is holding on?

What other one stares still,
plays still, on and on?


3)

Stand upright, prehensile,
squat, determined,

small guardians of the painful
outside coming in --

in stuck in vials with needles,
bleeding life in, particular, heedless.


4)

Matrix of world
upon a turtle's broad back,

carried on like that,
eggs as pearls,

flesh and blood and bone
all borne along.


5)

I'll tell you what you want,
to say a word,

to know the letters in yourself,
a skin falls off,

a big eared head appears,
an eye and mouth.


6)

Under watery here,
under breath, under duress,

understand a pain
has threaded a needle with a little man --

gone fishing.
And fish appear.


7)

If small were big,
if then were now,

if here were there,
if find were found,

if mind were all there was,
would the animals still save us?


8)

A head was put
upon the shelf got took

by animal's hand and stuck
upon a vacant corpse

who, blurred, could nonetheless
not ever be the quietly standing bird it watched.


9)

Not lost,
not better or worse,

much must of necessity depend on resources,
the pipes and bags brought with us

inside, all the sacks
and how and to what they are or were attached.


10)

Everybody's child
walks the same winding road,

laughs and cries, dies.
That's "everybody's child,"

the one who's in between
the others who have come and gone.


11)

Turn as one will, the sky will always be
far up above the place he thinks to dream as earth.

There float the heavenly
archaic persons of primordial birth,

held in the scan of ancient serpent's tooth,
locked in the mind as when it first began.


12)

Inside I am the other of a self,
who feels a presence always close at hand,

one side or the other, knows another one
unlocks the door and quickly enters in.

Either as or, we live a common person.
Two is still one. It cannot live apart.


13)

Oh, weep for me --
all from whom life has stolen

hopes of a happiness stored
in gold's ubiquitous pattern,

in tinkle of commodious, enduring money,
else the bee's industry in hives of golden honey.


14)

He is safely put
in a container, head to foot,

and there, on his upper part, wears still
remnants of a life he lived at will --

but, lower down, he probes at that doubled sack
holds all his random virtues in a mindless fact.


15)

The forms wait, swan,
elephant, crab, rabbit, horse, monkey, cow,

squirrel and crocodile. From the one
sits in empty consciousness, all seemingly has come

and now it goes, to regather,
to tell another story to its patient mother.


16)

Reflection reforms, each man's a life,
makes its stumbling way from mother to wife --

cast as a gesture from ignorant flesh,
here writes in fumbling words to touch,

say, how can I be,
when she is all that was ever me?


17)

Around and in --
And up and down again,

and far and near --
and here and there,

in the middle is
a great round nothingness.


18)

Not metaphoric,
flesh is literal earth.

turns to dust
as all the body must,

becomes the ground
wherein the seed's passed on.


19)

Entries, each foot feels its own way,
echoes passage in persons,

holds the body upright,
the secret of thresholds, lintels,

opening body above it,
looks up, looks down, moves forward.


20)

Necessity, the mother of invention,
father of intention,

sister to brother to sister, to innumerable others,
all one as the time comes,

death's appointment,
in the echoing head, in the breaking heart.


21)

In self one's place defined,
in heart the other find.

In mind discover I,
in body find the sky.

Sleep in the dream as one,
wake to the others there found.


22)

Emptying out
each complicating part,

each little twist of mind inside,
each clenched fist,

each locked, particularizing thought,
forgotten, emptying out.


23)

What did it feel like
to be one at a time --

to be caught in a mind
in the body you'd found

in yourself alone --
in each other one?


24)

Broken hearts, a curious round of echoes --
and there behind them the old garden

with its faded, familiar flowers,
where all was seemingly laced together --

a trueness of true,
a blueness of blue.


25)

The truth is in a container
of no size or situation.

It has nothing
inside.

Worship --
Warship. Sail away.


s
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2012/05/20

And We Can Stop Our Whoring and Put Our Smiles Inside




Bonnie Prince Billy (and all Will Oldham productions) is in the short orbit of rotating musicians for the two remaining open seats on my sillyass desert island game. He has a new release this June, remake/remodelings of old songs, including the above. When I heard of the project my first thought was Kate Bush (who has a permanent spot on the island) and the merely bad Director's Cut and Peter Gabriel (who, while not in the rotation, is an honored saint of Egoslavia) and the shockingly awful Live Blood, both albums that scream I've run out of ideas, you're a fan, you'll buy anything.* (Bush, I rush to credit her, has since released the magical and wonderful and all new 50 Words for Snow). I don't know why Oldham is remaking/remodeling, and even if he's doing it for the coin, the new I See a Darkness is clever and funny and different enough from the original that it feels almost genuinely reconceived rather than just differently recorded. I recognize my faith in my faithlessness in my faith's faithfulness has umpteen thumbs on the scale. Here's the original:





*Yes, I'm aware to the irony.
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United 3, Toronto 1



Gorgeous May evening, as good as it gets in DC. Yes, I'm tempering my woot until after Ningland next Saturday, but United's bought into St Benny of Olsen's system and work ethic. Najar is finally busting his ass at any position he's asked to play, Boskovic is busting his ass at any position he's asked to play. Benny's rotational positioning (at one point Wolff dropped to left wing, Boskovic to ten, DeRossario up top) is intriguing and effective. Tough night defensively (it's a good thing Toronto sucks, missing at least three sitters), but after Ningland game United has three weeks off until next league game and only five league games in the next two months, so the wounded, especially on the backline, have a chance to heal. And DeRossario is a joy to watch.

Here's Goff, here's Webb, here's Black and Red United. More later if and when or not. See if you can see us at 2:28 and 3:05 of the video!


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2012/05/19

Hot Convulsions of Distance, Bleats of Temporal Ignorance, Synapse of Morse but No Code




Joey Ramone was born 61 years ago today, Pete Townsend was born 67 years ago today, both were on the daily soundtrack for young years and deserve notable if not holy days here. Am tired of most boths' songs, thoroughly sick of the classics on radio or muzak: I don't want to be sedated and, yes, I know about new bosses. Still, I've always liked the above Ramones and I've always loved Quadrophenia, forgive me, even if I listen to each only once a year.










SATELLITE CONVULSIONS

Ben Doller

When I bend back to gaze at the satellite convulsions, I
am an aqueduct for twilit rain. Quite literally I stand

in the littoral zone: a lens--no an aqueous humor, my
feet on the land below the high-water mark, my hand

a glazed waver: hello light-purple lights, hello red spots,
you've beaten the stars out tonight but you're struggling with the


atmosphere, ain't ye? Over centuries the river became not
a river: Lethe's end crept together--self-scavenging sea

snake--& the middle filled with water--morphology dubbed it
a lake & now the moon swims in it & the moon orbits it &

the moon tidally tugs on it. The moon is a satellite in a fit
of paroxysm. One minute past, I emptied an aluminum can

of dull opiate to the drains to wash down my antipsychotics
& then Lethe-wards slunk I. There must be this wire shaking

loose in my mind, an unattended firehouse, a spasmodic
filament attempting to cool the baby planet but lacerating

precious gray matter. Thought leaves no vacancy for memory--
I forget & forget the rules, the thirst an auger, rain only whetting

it, I bend & lap some lake up, tongue it, suck the silty mammary
right where a light from the firmament meets it. I keep forgetting

the rules, a Ptolemaniac with stars & suns circling me; I keep
missing my cues, can't arrange the particles moments are made of--

and it's all good!--because when I bend seriously back & peep
at the satellite convulsions I am a sluiceway for night rain. If I love

at least I love aptly, terminally, like a man who loves his dinner until
he's done with it, then settles to the couch to easy pixilated dreams

(bounced off, yes, satellites, & beamed into a pale dish). And still,
even unfettered by history or hope, the world does not seem

shocking--simply something to fly a canvas balloon around, to
dig a hole in. To climb into. To allow to fill with water, perhaps

it is raining, perhaps you dig below the watertable; it gushes through
the dirt; your bath is drawn & in it are drawn (sputniks & stars) maps

& charts with which to constellate your body. Connect the dots.
A little ladle with four handles--a tiny light strobes in the cup, in hot

convulsions of distance, bleats of temporal ignorance, synapse of morse
but no code, blood but no pulse, the stream but no mouth or source.


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2012/05/18

Turning, I Spit in the Lock and the Knob Turns




Have you seen all the big wigs on campus today, asked K at Thursday Night Pints. It's graduation week at Hilltop. I said, I could have run down D.E. Jionne on 37th an hour ago. Have you heard, started L, then long loud laughing discussion of the dispute between the Catholic Church and Hilltop over Sathleen Kibelius giving a commencement speech this weekend. D wanted to look at my iPhone, his 2001 Fisher Price phone is dying, can I send something on your twitter he said, sure, I said, a friend sent me an email as D was thumbing the phone, the choo-choo alert noise startled him, what the fuck! ridiculously priced and just poured scotch knocked over. Motherfucking crackers and motherfucking Obamas exchanged. Family news. Health news. Daily grind news, bad news, good news. I said, these may be the strangest days of my life but that doesn't mean they are more or less strange than any given time past or future to somebody else. D said, I just sent a tweet on your phone to [at]tomtomorrow and [hashtag]ThomasFriedmanJeopardy saying What is his ass and two hands, Alex? Why isn't it appearing at the tic-tac-toe place? I said, they're called hashtags, I don't know why, I don't understand why hashtags work sometimes, don't others. D, said L, give him his motherfucking phone and go buy a motherfucking round, and he did.










MEDITATIONS IN AN EMERGENCY

Frank O'Hara

Am I to become profligate as if I were a blonde? Or religious as if I were French?

          Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there’ll be nothing left with which to venture forth.

          Why should I share you? Why don’t you get rid of someone else for a change?

          I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.

          Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don’t I? I’m just like a pile of leaves.

          However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. Do they know what they’re missing? Uh huh.

          My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up. It makes me restless and that makes me unhappy, but I cannot keep them still. If only I had grey, green, black, brown, yellow eyes; I would stay at home and do something. It’s not that I am curious. On the contrary, I am bored but it’s my duty to be attentive, I am needed by things as the sky must be above the earth. And lately, so great has their anxiety become, I can spare myself little sleep.

          Now there is only one man I love to kiss when he is unshaven. Heterosexuality! you are inexorably approaching. (How discourage her?)

          St. Serapion, I wrap myself in the robes of your whiteness which is like midnight in Dostoevsky. How am I to become a legend, my dear? I’ve tried love, but that hides you in the bosom of another and I am always springing forth from it like the lotus—the ecstasy of always bursting forth! (but one must not be distracted by it!) or like a hyacinth, “to keep the filth of life away,” yes, there, even in the heart, where the filth is pumped in and courses and slanders and pollutes and determines. I will my will, though I may become famous for a mysterious vacancy in that department, that greenhouse.

          Destroy yourself, if you don’t know!

          It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so. I admire you, beloved, for the trap you’ve set. It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over.

          “Fanny Brown is run away—scampered off with a Cornet of Horse; I do love that little Minx, & hope She may be happy, tho’ She has vexed me by this Exploit a little too. —Poor silly Cecchina! or F:B: as we used to call her. —I wish She had a good Whipping and 10,000 pounds.” —Mrs. Thrale.

       I’ve got to get out of here. I choose a piece of shawl and my dirtiest suntans. I’ll be back, I'll re-emerge, defeated, from the valley; you don’t want me to go where you go, so I go where you don’t want me to. It’s only afternoon, there’s a lot ahead. There won’t be any mail downstairs. Turning, I spit in the lock and the knob turns.


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2012/05/17

That Sea-Song You Hear When the Shell's at Your Ear? It's All in Your Head




Hamster reminds me that Erik Satie was born 146 years ago today and provides the first two selections. Thanks! Still waiting to hear about Dead Can Dance in August at Wolftrap from him, I think Mr Alarum and friend will be joining us, anyone else? We need to decide inside/outside, there are advantages and disadvantages to both. But yes, Erik Satie, another Holy Day of Egoslavia.










THE SOLIPSIST

Troy Jollimore

Don't be misled:
that sea-song you hear
when the shell's at your ear?
It's all in your head.

That primordial tide—
the slurp and salt-slosh
of the brain's briny wash—
is on the inside.

Truth be told, the whole place,
everything that the eye
can take in, to the sky
and beyond into space,

lives inside of your skull.
When you set your sad head
down on Procrustes' bed,
you lay down the whole

universe. You recline
on the pillow: the cosmos
grows dim. The soft ghost
in the squishy machine,

which the world is, retires.
Someday it will expire.
Then all will go silent
and dark. For the moment,

however, the black-
ness is just temporary.
The planet you carry
will shortly swing back

from the far nether regions.
And life will continue—
but only within you.
Which raises a question

that comes up again and again,   
as to why
God would make ear and eye
to face outward, not in?


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