- Nick Cave is fifty-five today. That is officially the Egoslavian Bleggalgazing Anthem, it's been over there on the left Me and Mine blegrell since the day I first heard it. If I ever needed Serendipity to do me a major Heh and Kind and drop a birthday on me in lieu of no monologue today is the day. Here are the links I promised. We're OK, but this is hard.
- The waning of the modern ages.
- Right-wing roots of Occupy?
- A movement without demands.
- The hidden progressive history of income tax.
- History of Crackerstan.
- It's not an accident.
- Democrats.
- Revisiting lesser-evilism.
- More on tribalism.
- If you don't know the this the hard is modifying, go back few days posts. I like to think everyone is following along as this blog, if nothing else, doesn't play with episodic amnesia.
- 300K free art books.
- He's alive.
- Writer's block.
- End of the Bat. Damn. Thanks, Ed.
- Life-affirming reads.
- Fuck blooger. Fuck them fuck them fuck them. I don't have the time to reteach myself fuckshit so they can save fucking $.06 on the fucking dollar. I don't have the time to type out long poems because their fucking html won't take code and their fucking non-html won't take code. I don't have fucking time for the fucking html code to eat fucking youtubes. Fuck them. Fuck them fuck them fuck them. Fuck them. Fine metaphors abound.
- Gone native.
- A willfully idiotic genius.
- So I have found a workaround - c/p the poem into a google doc, format there, c/p here. Fuck gaagle, fuck blooger. Fuck me.
- Juliana Spahr interview.
DECEMBER 2, 2002
Juliana Spahr
As it happens every night, beloveds, while we turned in the night
sleeping uneasily the world went on without us.
We live in our own time zone and there are only a small million of
us in this time zone and the world as a result has a tendency to
begin and end without us.
While we turned sleeping uneasily at least ten were injured in a
bomb blast in Bombay and four killed in Palestine.
While we turned sleeping uneasily a warehouse of food aid was
destroyed, stocks on upbeat sales soared, Australia threatened first
strikes, there was heavy gunfire in the city of Man, the Belarus
ambassador to Japan went missing, a cruise ship caught fire, on yet
another cruise ship many got sick, and the pope made a statement
against xenophobia.
While we turned sleeping uneasily perhaps J Lo gave Ben a
prenuptial demand for sex four times a week.
While we turned sleeping uneasily Liam Gallagher brawled and
irate fans complained that "Popstars: The Rivals" was fixed.
While we turned sleeping uneasily the Supreme Court agreed to
hear the case of whether university admissions may favor racial
minorities.
While we turned sleeping uneasily poachers caught sturgeon in the
reed-filled Caspian, which shelters boar and wolves, and some of
the residents on the space shuttle planned a return flight to the US.
Beloveds, our world is small and isolated.
We live our lives in six hundred square feet about a quarter mile
from the shore on land that is seven hundred square miles and five
thousand miles from the nearest land mass.
Despite our isolation, there is no escape from the news of how
many days are left in the Iraq inspections.
The news poll for today was should we invade Iraq now or should
we wait until the inspections are complete and we tried to laugh
together at this question but our laughter was uneasy and we just
decided to turn off the television that arrives to us from those
other time zones.
Beloveds, we do not know how to live our lives with any agency
outside of our bed.
It makes me angry that how we live in our bed—full of connected
loving and full of isolated sleep and dreaming also—has no
relevance to the rest of the world.
How can the power of our combination of intimacy and isolation
have so little power outside the space of our bed?
Beloveds, the shuttle is set to return home and out the window of
the shuttle one can see the earth.
"How massive the earth is; how minute the atmosphere," one of
the astronauts notes.
Beloveds, what do we do but keep breathing as best we can this
minute atmosphere?
