You Don't Notice the Birds Growing Silent or the Cold Towers of Clouds Moving In Because You're Explaining How Lovely and Cool It Was in the Woods

What is a pimento anyway, asked K (looking on her iPad at the above when it was header then) at a Thursday Night Pints none of us anticipated but JUMPED! at when L emailed. Was sweet. I don't get complementary colors, I said, the same green the same size as the red dot on a red dot the same size as the green is more than an opposite world. D said, sipping a martini, thanks in any case. K asked about everyone's Thanksgivings, all were quiet, subdued, only the skeeviest of third tier relatives tried to pick a political fight and were ignored, one true dick at D's, a wannabe true dick at K's. L asked, how much do you think Obama enjoyed serving lunch at the White House today to Romney on their playdate? What a fucking dick, said D. Romney too, said K. Then we talked about kids and grandkids. Congratulations, K. Please tell them YOU AND WHAT'SHISNAME DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE GENDER. It really is more fun that way.

• Evan Funk Davies played this Teardrop Explodes song Wednesday night, it made me think of the above, quite possibly my favorite song ever for many reasons including but not limited to whenever I hear it I get to think about some of my favorite memories ever.
• This week in war. 
• Rules.
• There's a drone in your future (if not present). 
• The invisible occupation.
• More on Obama's first post-election decision on the environment.
• Jesusfuck, Krugman's obamapostasy will never be ready.
• Pastor Sanctimonious sanctimoniously tells you to shut up and eat your austerity and like it.
• Things worthy of note.
• Sixty-one years ago.
• The way we argue about Liberal peacocking.
• Down the primrose path.
• I don't think I'll own a VW - the terms of my acquiring one would need be overwhelmingly favorable, I've heard so much they suck - but for a shirt logo, VW is as good as any.
• Silver Line!
• UPDATE! This tweet mentions today is Jonathan Swift's birthday, which reminds me of Jon Swift, a Kind guy. I wonder if there will be a Blogroll Amnesty Day this year (I forget when exactly it was held), there's been no noise of Zappadan, which starts tomorrow, yes? if there was one. Blegsylvania's changed, is dying. In any case, in honor of Jon Swift, be Kind, fellow motherfuckers.
• How to hide a stolen steamship. 
• A short film about Theodore Roethke. I remember a professor (the one who wrote the martini poem above) telling me about this, his loathing for Roethke profound.
• Who doesn't want a compilation of poems about loneliness and solitude.
• Pondering the glut.
• Zombie playlist. Post playlists, send me playlists, I'll post them.
• Also heard this P.J. Harvey song yesterday. Cascade in works, been a few months, if you've a favorite let me know.

LAST DAY ON EARTH

Lawrence Raab

If it's the title of a movie, you expect
everything to become important—a kiss,
a shrug, a glass of wine, a walk with the dog.

But if the day is real, life is only
as significant as yesterday—the kiss
hurried, the shrug forgotten, and now,

on the path by the river, you don't notice
the sky darkening beyond the pines because
you're imagining what you'll say at dinner,

swirling the silky wine in your glass.
You don't notice the birds growing silent
or the cold towers of clouds moving in

because you're explaining how lovely
and cool it was in the woods. And the dog
had stopped limping!—she seemed

her old self again, sniffing the air and alert,
the way dogs are to whatever we can't see.
And I was happy, you hear yourself saying,

because it felt as if I'd been allowed
to choose my last day on earth,
and this was the one I chose.

Feeling the Cold, Sinfully Unshriven

 
OK, I admit I'd never heard that song until yesterday on Irwin's show, what, it was wowee, I wasn't going to post it? I swear, blessed serendipity, I woke up this morning with the song below the Jack Gilbert poem in my head and then when link-fishing this morning I saw this, posted while I was asleep. Holyfucking weird. As for the Gilbert poem, I was surprised when I saw this obit/appreciation of Gilbert last night and realized I hadn't posted it during the Gilbert blizzard:


TRANSGRESSIONS

He thinks about how important the sinning was,
how much his equity was in just being alive.
Like the sloth. The days and nights wasted,
doing nothing important adding up to
the favorite years. Long hot afternoons
watching ants while the cicadas railed
in the Chinese elm about the brevity of life.
Indolence so often while no one was watching.
Wasting June mornings with the earth singing
all around. Autumn afternoons doing nothing
but listening to the siren voices of streams
and clouds coaxing him into the sweet happiness
of leaving it all alone. Using up what
little time we have, relishing our mortality,
waltzing slowly without purpose. Neglecting
the future. Content to let the garden fail
and the house continue on in its usual disorder.
Yes, and coveting the neighbors' wives.
Their clean hair and soft voices. The seraphim
he was sure were in one of the upstairs rooms.
Hesitant occasions of pride, feeling himself feeling.
Waking in the night and lying there. Discovering
the past in wonderful stillness. The other,
older pride. Watching the ambulance take away
the man whose throat he had crushed. Above all,
his greed. Greed of time, of being. This world,
the pinewoods stretching all brown or bare
on either side of the railroad tracks in winter
twilight. Him feeling the cold, sinfully unshriven.

• On the suckage of presidents. I don't know what Spielberg's motives were when he made Lincoln, though the combination of his full-throated support of Obama and my wild and profound distrust of Obama lead me to think Spielberg's making a comparison between Lincoln and Obama re: the noble sacrifices and hard choices each made and make in the face of racist opposition by enemies and rank political opportunism by friends. Forgive me if I can't equate ordering the death of hundreds of thousands of Americans for the emancipation of slaves with the impoverishing of millions for the saving of bankers' summer cottages in the Alps.
• Plus, as the great (I think so, the guy at the link above thinks so) Duane Ellison ( I took this guy's class years ago. I can tell you that this is hands-down the WORST teacher I have EVER had - so bad I never forgot his name. Rude and just plain creepy as all get out. Impossible tests. Over half the class dropped out before the semester ended. This man made me hate history. DO NOT take his class - you have been warned) taught, the Civil War was about (1) National Bank (2) sale and distribution of western lands (3) protective tariffs and (4) internal capital improvements and only became about slavery when the Union citizens collectively gave up the fuck about the top four.
• Devastation in meatspace.
• Obama calls on citizens to cut their own throats.
• Whistling past graveyard.
• The new, freed from running for reelection, free to be himself, progressive Obama!
• Progressive heroine. 
• Who has a conflict of interest.
• One evil motherfucker.
• Because killing raises less pesky legal logistical issues than taking prisoners.
• Reviewing United's roster.
• Even if United was hosting the MLS Cup title game this Saturday and I was there and would scream for a victory I would still shout that MLS playoffs suck. Cause they do.
• Zombie Doug Duncan!
• No no no, it's Ningland v Chivas.
• On the psychoanalysis of ruins.
• The greatest American artist you've never heard of? I hadn't.
• Two hours of Uncle Tupelo taking requests. Yes, this is a Wilco-free zone, but Uncle Tupelo played often (if not in a while).
• The rise and fall of the obscure music download blog.

And Certain Records that One Can't Hear without Breaking into a Smile I Refused to Listen in Order to Find Out What It Would Be Like to Be Cleansed of Enthusiasm, to Learn to Honor My Emptiness

 
The hehhing. My apologies about the recent melodramatic gazing navel and bleggal, not that it may stop, I'll see. I resort to what I always do when blocked on reading, listening, thinking fronts, turn to a Kazuo Ishiguro novel, this time bumping up the scheduled biennual rereading of Remains of the Day by six months:

I hope you will agree that in these two instances I have cited from his career - both of which I have had corroborated and believe to be accurate - my father not only manifests, but comes close to being the personification itself, of what the Hayes Society terms 'dignity in keeping with his position'. If one considers the difference between my father at such moments and a figure such as Mr Jack Neighbours even with the best of his technical flourishes, I believe one may begin to distinguish what it is that separates a 'great' butler from a merely competent one. We may now understand better, too, why my father was so fond of the story of the butler who failed to panic on discovering a tiger under the dining room table; it was because he knew instinctively that somewhere in this story lay the kernel of what true 'dignity' is. And let me now posit this: 'dignity' has to do crucially with a butler's ability not to abandon the profession he inhabits. Lesser butlers will abandon their professional being for the private one at the least provocation. For such person, being a butler is like playing some pantomime role; a small push, a slight stumble, and the facade will drop off to reveal the actor underneath. The great butlers are great by virtue of their ability to inhabit their professional role and inhabit it to the utmost; they will not be shaken out by external events, however surprising, alarming or vexing. They wear their profession as a decent gentleman will wear his suit: he will not let ruffians or circumstances tear if off him in the public gaze; he will discard it when, and only when, he wills it to do so, and this will invariably be when he is entirely alone. It is, as I say, a matter of 'dignity'.

Ah, better, a least a bit. Quotes daily until I finish the novel. I ask this on twitter every couple of months, I'll ask here, has anyone heard of anything about Ishiguro and a new novel? I read an interview he gave ten or more years ago in which he expressed fear that he'd be out of great novels by forty, out of novels by fifty, he's fifty-eight now. In any case, his meticulously crafted and mysteriously calm portrayals of the absurdity of one's self-definitions and one's self-serving relationships to one's self-deluding perceptions of an absurd world mesmerize me as well as unlock blocks, blocks caused no doubt by the absurdity of my self-definitions and their self-serving relationships to my self-deluding perceptions of an absurd world.

• Saw Lincoln last night - I was offered free tickets, asked Earthgirl out on a date. First time I've been in a movie theater in at least two years, Baal willing it will be another two years. I like movies when I see them, it doesn't occur to me to watch movies, but I do dislike movie theaters. Anyway. Schmaltzy movie - John Williams did the soundtrack, enough said. I was reminded, however, of Hilary Mantel's Cromwell trilogy, how the English can't resist retelling the Henry VIII story over and over as signature historical event, how Americans can't resist anything and everything about the Civil War. I also wondered why Spielberg cast Kramer as Lincoln.
• Stand still for the apocalypse.
• Keepers of the gatekeepers.
• Heh.
• Yes.
• Today in pigs.
• Today in rightwing assholes.
• Today in liberal assholes.
• Today in liberal assholes. Yes, linked yesterday too.
• Oh dear, now Tom Ricks is a bad guy.
• Today in motherfucking blaager: as I type this, when I look at this shitty bleg in Firefox the updating blegrells are dead, defaulted to alphabetical order, when I look at this shitty bleg in chrome the updating blegrells work. Also, since posting, the spacing between youtubes and words reduced by one in two places, increased by two in a third, ate one of the youtubes, now back.
• Is God happy?
• Manners.
• Instead of losing.
• HEY! Twitter friend @anotherspammer has heard no news of new Ishiguro but Kindly sends along this flowchart. Thanks!
• Coetzee, for those of you who do.
• Nocturne.
• How poetry makes things happen, or not. No, I'm not charging royalties for the gag line.
• I've read one of the novels and two of the books of poetry.
• The fogeycore invasion.
• UPDATE! Hey! the dog's tail is wagging. Literally. If you gave, thanks.
• New Nick Cave and Bad Seeds plus more.

NUMBNESS

Philip Lopate

I have not felt a thing for weeks.

But getting up and going to work on time

I did what needed to be done, then rushed home.

And even the main streets, those ancient charmers,

Failed to amuse me, and the fight between

The upstairs couple was nothing but loud noise.

None of it touched me, except as an irritation,

And though I knew I could stop

And enjoy if I wanted to

The karate excitement and the crowd

That often gathers in front of funeral homes,

I denied myself these dependable pleasures,

The tricks of anti-depression

That had taken me so long to learn,

By now worn smooth with use, like bowling alleys in my soul.

And certain records that one can't hear without

Breaking into a smile, I refused to listen to

In order to find out what it would be like

To be cleansed of enthusiasm,

And to learn to honor my emptiness,

My indifference, myself at zero degrees.

More than any desire to indulge the numbness I wanted to be free of the bullying urge to feel, Or to care, or to sympathize. I have always dreaded admitting I was unfeeling From the time my father called me ‘a cold fish,' And I thought he might be right, at nine years old And ever since I have run around convincing everyone What a passionate, sympathetic person I am.

I would have said no poetry can come From a lack of enthusiasm; yet how much of my life, Of anyone's life, is spent in neutral gear? The economics of emotions demand it. Those rare intensities of love and anguish Are cheapened when you swamp them with souped-up ebulliences, A professional liveliness that wears so thin. There must be a poetry for that other state When I am feeling precisely nothing, there must Be an interesting way to write about it. There are continents of numbness to discover If I could have the patience or the courage.

But supposing numbness were only a disguised disappointment? A veil for anger? Then it would have no right to attention In and of itself, and one would always have to push on, Push on, to the real source of the trouble— Which means, back to melodrama. Is the neutral state a cover for unhappiness, Or do I make myself impatient and unhappy To avoid my basic nature, which is passive and low-key? And if I knew the answer, Would it make any difference in my life? At bottom I feel something stubborn as ice fields, Like sorrow or endurance, propelling me

My Tongue Like a Monk in Wartime

I can't listen to whole albums anymore, if I'm not streaming the radio I'm shuffling the iPods, the idea of listening to, say, Forever Now start to finish seems inconceivable (plus I can do it in my head in a quarter of a second, why do I need to listen to it?). I can finish multi-movement solo, duet, trio, quartet, quintet pieces (depending on the piece) if I have to, but finishing a symphony feels like breaking two ankles still two uphill miles from the car. I'm incapable of finishing a novel, I've always distrusted short stories, the thought of reading a volume of poetry end to end in the order the poet intended, fuck that. I am dark and stalled, full and bored. Tablet's gone quiet too, pens stay capped. I am simultaneously bloated with gah and starving for gah, isn't this how rat poison works?

• Oh, and quintuple fuck blooger. I'm a tech dope, I admit, I'm not a tech moron. It used to be easy to blaager, it's a motherfucking pain in the ass to use blaager now, it motherfucking sucks. Google doesn't care. Fine metaphors abound.
• Yes, that's a fair assumption: Should we take it, then, that Obama had been having people killed abroad without clear standards and procedures?
• He is a motherfucker.
• Of course.
• More drones all the time.
• Bloody black comedy.
• I can has shared sacrifice?
• Clusterfucked no matter what.
• Liberal sincerity.
• But yes, the thought of motherfuckering motherfucking Obama (as Corporate's proxy), as much as the motherfucker deserves motherfuckering each day exponentially more than the last, for four more motherfucking years, crushes me...
• Avedon's links.
• Why Israel didn't win?
• What happens in Gaza.
• deep thoughts with James Atlas.
• Tactical persuader.
• It's the aggregating of links that brings the majority of readers back, the poems and songs will continue, the links probably too, but maybe not as regularly as the poems and songs as link-fishing isn't the bomb it once was (and is harder as more blogs die).
• Web-economy bullshit generator.
• de-comaed.
• Bleggalgazing.
• Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?
• UPDATE! Holyfuck! Kevin Payne leaving United. In the did he jump or was he pushed game, he was pushed.
• Gass.
• Mantel interview.
• Psychedelic Pill.
• Push the sky away.
• Return of darkblack's Weekend Overnight! Hopefully.

FIRE

Matthew Dickman
  

Oh fire—you burn me!Ed is singing
behind the smoke and coals, his wife near him, the rest of us
below the stars
swimming above Washington State,
burning through themselves. He's like an Appalachian Prince
Henry with his banjo
and whiskey. The court surrounding him and the deer
off in the dark hills like the French, terrified
but in love and hungry.
I'm burning all the time. My pockets full of matches
and lighters, the blue smoke
crawling out like a skinny ghost from between my lips.
My lungs on fire, the wings
of them falling from the open sky. The tops of Michelle's long hands
covered in dark spots. All the cigarettes she would light
and then smash out, her eyes
the color of hairspray, cloudy and sticky
and gone, but beautiful! She carried her hands around
like two terrible letters of introduction. I never understood
who could have opened them, read them aloud,
and still thrown her onto a bed, still walked into the street she was, still
lit what little fuse she had left. Oh fire—
you burn me. My sister and me and Southern Comfort
making us singe and spark, the family
ash all around us, the way she is beautiful in her singular blaze,
my brain lighting up, my tongue
like a monk in wartime, awash in orange silk and flames.
The first time I ever crushed a handful of codeine into its universe
of powdered pink, the last time
I felt the tangy aspirin drip of ecstasy down my throat,
the car losing control, the sound of momentum, this earth is not standing
still, oh falling elevator—
you keep me, oh graveyard—
you have been so patient, ticking away, smoldering—
you grenade. Oh fire,
the first time I ever took a drink I was doused with gasoline,
that little ember perking up inside me, flashing, beginning to glow and climb.

This Is My First Affair

Back soon, enjoying the day-off thing, I had no idea, no one told me.

If I Woke I Never Knew It

  
I'd promised a friend I'd post his Raincoats playlist next post which is this post, I'm pretty sure this is his second Raincoats playlist here, I thank him and encourage him to send me a third Raincoats or a first of something else. I beg each of you to send me playlists, I want to hear things I've never heard before and things I haven't heard in ages that reward a homecoming. Or don't, no pressure, never mind. I'm shouting out loud about adventures close to home while in love with odyshape and need go away. And will, at least until Monday, after a song I love, a poem I love (no, not this one, flashed into my head by this tweet minutes ago, though I love it) (yes, this one, I love it, but you try c/ping that in blogger), a song I love.







PSALM TO BE READ WITH CLOSED EYES

D. Nurkse

Ignorance will carry me through the last days,
the blistering cities, over briny rivers
swarming with jellyfish, as once my father
carried me from the car up the tacked carpet
to the white bed, and if I woke, I never knew it.

Difficulties in Reflection and Subsequent Amnesia

Yes, this is a repackaging of this morning's now deleted Penderecki post in celebration of his 79th birthday, shoot me. I'd written some bleggalgazing for this, THE slowest day of the year in Blegsylvania, slower than Thanksgiving Day even, but morning errands delayed the post, I thought I'd wait until tomorrow, then thought fuck that, then deleted all the bleggalgaze but this: There are some very good new sites now blegrelled in both Because Left and Because Right and in Listening, four of which included in links below. PLEASE check them out, and PLEASE let me know if there's someone you think I should be reading but is not listed in the blegrells (I use the blegrells as my bookmarks). I desperately want to read, hear, see, and think about something new (even if it's about the old) while I read, hear, see, and think about the old. Please. And while it's unlikely, if there was ever a weekend for a brief reappearance of my beloved noxzema-bottle blue, this is it, but most likely fuck that. Here, some links while fresh: This week in war and when the murder of the innocent no longer matters and the cable news heroism of Chris Hayes and war-gaming and what every soldier should know and how it works and Capitalist realism and the cost of opting out and a professional progressive's snoopy dance at Podhoretz's assholosity and Black Friday stampedes and shopping is a feeling and inside joke and Greeene Linez and jeebus I hate motherfucking blooger. Raincoat's cascade tomorrow via Pere Lebrun, he's requested In Love, Go Away, Odyshape, Shouting Out Loud, Adventures Close To Home, Fairytale in the Supermarket, please submit yours, or not. More Penderecki: Here's St Luke Passion. Here's complete cello concertos. Here's Penderecki with Don Cherry. Here's Capriccio for Violin and Orchestra (live performance). Here's Polymorphy. Here's the Viola Concerto (live performance). Here's the Seventh Symphony. Here's:







POINTLESS

Keith Waldrop

Cannot be aroused. Into the bright
light of day, where even no
tender shadow falls. Florid events.

Damp bench just under the ivy hanging
from the balustrade of the terrace. Dreamy
perplexity. Very few sensations appear.

Indescribably beautiful, with the colors
of springtime. Perceptions dim as
memories. Chilled and saddened.

Love, tenderness, triumph, ardor for war - nearly
the same emotions, but weaker, less complex, felt
by birds. Suggesting, continually, physical movement.

Nothing can be remembered. He she
forgotten him? Difficulties in
reflection and subsequent amnesia.

The act of thought no longer. Frightened
by recent rain, all psychic events
slowed down and much more difficult.

Things which we advance along steadily, things
to be followed from end to end. Just
now, as I dream it, all.

It's Unfair that While Rehearsing for Death They Actually Succumbed to It

• It's not Just War. I call bullshit on this season's episode of Gazan War, it was shameless kabuki, the schedule - start date, end date - set months ago. See above.
• To all the mewling pissants.
• Hardly an equal playing field.
• The duty to remain silent.
• Initiate terrorism to create terrorists.
• A slight detour.
• Even Earthgirl was LOLing at MSNBC in weeks before election.
• On "shared sacrifice."
• Phony cliff.
• Coercion.
• Design in the service of empire.
• An inconvenient truth about Lincoln.
• Kippers for breakfast.
• Wheaton! Rentbay Atesbay and Phavid Dillips both took classes at the Maryland College of Art and Design. 
• Hey, Crow, send signs of life please.
• I said yes I meant no.
• My philosophy of life.
• Intelligence.
• Designing Poetry over a hundred years.
• The use of poetry.
• Why I am a poet.
• Three Gilliam shorts for his bday yesterday. 
• Sixteen reasons why an album I could have to you would blow blows. Easily one of the shittiest bands ever. Jack Fucking White shitty.
• Saariaho's Lichtbogen.
• Benjamin Britten was born 99 years ago today.

CONFESSION

Norman Dubie

The General’s men sit at the door. Her eyes
Are fat with belladonna. She’s naked
Except for the small painted turtles
That are drinking a flammable cloud
Of rum and milk from her navel.

The ships out in the harbor
Are loosely allied
Like casks floating in bilge.
The occasional light on a ship
Winks. In the empty room of the manuscript
Someone is grooming you
For the long entrance into the dark city.

They’ll hang the General.
Then with torches they’ll search for his children.
Men and women
Are seen jumping from the burning hotel.
Journalists, in no hurry,
Elect to take the elevator. They walk
Out of the building, stepping over corpses. . .
You are listening to loud bells.

The corpses get up and follow the journalists.
It’s unfair that while rehearsing
For death they actually succumbed to it.
But no one sobs.
Shirts and dresses billowing as they fall.
Something inhuman in you watched it all.
And whatever it is that watches,
It has kept you from loneliness like a mob.

Our Slow Crop Is Used Up within an Hour

RIP Dick Whittington, my step-father-in-law. He was a good guy. We weren't close, we were tangents, tertiaries by obligation, but he was a good guy. I hope he thought me a good guy, I'm told he did, but what else are people going to say. He made it to his wife's memorial service two months ago (he was on a train to see her before she died when she died), summoned lucidity out of his alzheimered mind, movement out of his atrophied legs, was as much his old self in handling the necessities and services as he had been in years. In between their deaths a composer and poet who are touchstones died. I created a tag Death, wish I hadn't need use it so much since Death's tag's birth.

• On the both-sides-suck dismissal.
• Motherfucking Obama.
• American diplomacy.
• Definitions and distinctions part one, part two.
• Kiss of death.
• Who's your daddy?
• Terry Fucking McAuliffe? Fucking Democratic Party zombies.
• A few minutes with Ben Olsen.
• A few minutes with Dave Kasper.
• A few minutes with Kevin Payne.
• UPDATE! Goodbye, Branko, we hardly knew you.
• I, for one, mourn the loss of Maryland's traditional rivalries with Syracuse and Pitt.
• Your Fucking Washington Post: Stupid or disingenuous? Let me rephrase that: more stupid than disingenuous or visa versa?
• Silliman's always awesome litlinks.
• Ross' music links.
• Ammons and Hass.
• UPDATE! My formative years.
• Houses of the Holy.
• The only two things missing in Bach are randomness and sex. 

TEMPLATE

Jack Gilbert

Our slow crop is used up within an hour. So I live
effortlessly by the ocean, where the sun bestows
and bestows and I return nothing. Go cross-grain through
the fire and call my style lust. But the night forces me.
I get so quiet lying under the stars I can't regulate
the sound of owls altering me. In that dark in front
of the house, I often think of an old man at Sadler's Wells.
The only one left who had seen the famous dances.
When they did them again, despite the bad notation,
he would watch patiently, saying, No, no that's not the way
it was somehow. Until they got it right. But he died.

Thanks to Operation Memory, Each of Us Woke Up in a Different Bed or Coffin, with a Different Partner Beside Him, in the Middle of a War that Had Never Been Declared

Meredith Monk is seventy today. I've been posting Monk since I've been posting because love, but be forewarned - Hamster can vouch I've been saying this - my ears are trending choral, I hear where this is going. PLEASE, if there are choral pieces you think should be heard - old, new, any era, I spread for good music - send them to me. As for Blegsylvanian history, this bout of nostalgia prompted by (the slowest week of the year in Blegsylvania) Agi's posting this photo of the reunion of the gloriously defunct Agitprop, the second of two places where I group-blegged, which I joined late just before it died. Sorry. El Serracho in particular looks great.

• Candy bullets and moon.
• About the honor of being human.
• Our systems of disinformation are self-correcting.
• Beneath the layers.
• War in Gaza = war over $$$?
• Eliminationism.
• Motherfucking Obama.
• Motherfucking Obama.
• Motherfucking Democrats. 
• Motherfucking Washington Post.
• He's the one.
• Yes, it is.
• Courage in Hullabalooland: So don't expect a lot of coverage of the issue. Most of us don't want to take a lot of stupid abuse from nutty people for speaking powerlessly over an issue in which both sides deserve plenty of scorn.
• The gutless fuck above fails to link to the Chris Floyd article he references. The gutless fuck.
• UPDATE! Floyd responds to the gutless fuck.
• The practice of anarchy.

• Yes, I knew this.
• Bernhard, for those of you who do.
• Outlawing Shakespeare.
• Jack Gilbert obit from Britain.
• Gerald Stern interview.
• Candelabyrinth.
• Take the survey.
• List of potential Giftmas presents you can buy me.
• Going to a Lindsey Buckingham concert.
• Fuck, it's that time of year again.

OPERATION MEMORY

David Lehman

We were smoking some of this knockout weed when

Operation Memory was announced. To his separate bed

Each soldier went, counting backwards from a hundred

With a needle in his arm. And there I was, in the middle

Of a recession, in the middle of a strange city, between jobs

And apartments and wives. Nobody told me the gun was loaded.

We'd been drinking since early afternoon. I was loaded.

The doctor made me recite my name, rank, and serial number when

I woke up, sweating, in my civvies. All my friends had jobs

As professional liars, and most had partners who were good in bed.

What did I have? Just this feeling of always being in the middle

Of things, and the luck of looking younger than fifty.

At dawn I returned to draft headquarters. I was eighteen

And counting backwards. The interviewer asked one loaded

Question after another, such as why I often read the middle

Of novels, ignoring their beginnings and their ends. when

Had I decided to volunteer for intelligence work? "In bed

With a broad," I answered, with locker-room bravado. The truth was, jobs

Were scarce, and working on Operation Memory was better than no job

At all. Unamused, the judge looked at his watch. It was 1970

By the time he spoke. Recommending clemency, he ordered me to go to bed

At noon and practice my disappearing act. Someone must have loaded

The harmless gun on the wall in Act I when

I was asleep. And there I was, without an alibi, in the middle

Of a journey down nameless, snow-covered streets, in the middle

Of a mystery--or a muddle. These were the jobs

That saved men's souls, or so I was told, but when

The orphans assembled for their annual reunion, ten

Years later, on the playing fields of Eton, each unloaded

A kit bag full of troubles, and smiled bravely, and went to bed.

Thanks to Operation Memory, each of us woke up in a different bed

Or coffin, with a different partner beside him, in the middle

Of a war that had never been declared. No one had time to load

His weapon or see to any of the dozen essential jobs

Preceding combat duty. And there I was, dodging bullets, merely one

In a million whose lucky number had come up. When

It happened, I was asleep in bed, and when I woke up,

It was over: I was 38, on the brink of middle age,

A succession of stupid jobs behind me, a loaded gun on my lap.

It Could Be Hidden in Familiarity

• Fell asleep last night listening to Morton Feldman, woke up with Morton Feldman in my head. Jeebusfuck, but for three or four of you, NOBODY wants to read here about DC United. Expect more soon. Also, late this week, for the slowest week of the year in Blegsylvania, Blegsylvanian history. Or not. It's written, anyway, whether it appears or not being internally debated: how much do I love you versus how much do I really love you. Now, onto my complicity (and your links before they go stale): 
• Blogging and nothingness: It sure was a quiet weekend in the progressive blogosphere, where peace, justice and the alleviation of human suffering is an earnest, burning concern. At Eschaton, Atrios gave an amiable shrug and declared, "I got nothing to say." Digby and her co-pilot, David Atkins, did have a few things to say -- about Sarah Palin, General Pants-Down Petraeus, the grubby "Grand Bargaining" in the Beltway, and several examples of the stupidity and perfidy of right-wing Republicans. The posters at Daily Kos plied the same themes. If you were a follower of many of the major "progressive" bloggers, you could have passed the weekend blissfully unaware that the American-armed, American-backed Israeli military was busily raining death into the cramped and crowded concentration camp of Gaza. Children dying, old people being blown to bits in their houses, the Israeli government ordering a massive call-up of troops and reserves for a possible invasion; top officials from Egypt and Tunisia flying into the besieged camp to show solidarity, mass demonstrations across the Middle East, some meeting with violent repression, others threatening to escalate into revolutionary outpourings. On every side: death, turmoil, suffering, chaos, whole nations in ferment -- and Barack Obama standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Benjamin Netanyahu in defending assassination, aggression and the bombardment of defenseless civilians with massive military force. For many of our leading progressives, none of this was of the slightest interest. Even as the stage is clearly being set for a rerun of the "Cast Lead" operation in 2008-2009 -- a bloodbath that killed hundreds of innocent people and was followed by a strangulating blockade -- our earnest concerners could not be stirred to even a passing comment on the developments. The idea that someone somewhere was touting Sarah Palin for 2016 was obviously far more interesting -- far more concerning -- than the American-backed bloodshed in Gaza. After all, what if Sarah Palin did become president, huh? (Get your 2016 lesser evilism going now! Start early, avoid the rush!) Why, she might declare her full support for military assaults on civilian areas in Gaza, just like that evil George Bush did in 2008. And you know you don't want anyone like that to be president, do you?
• Elites will make Gazans of us all.
• The great trivialization.
• The infinite human capacity to deny reality.
• Ironist of history.
• On the above.
• The mandate of hell.
• Lessons from POTUS 12.
• American democracy's bad infinity.
• How to live without irony.
• The land that time and money forgot.
• Avedon Carol's latest linkages.

• Three hour conversation between Feldman and Cage.
• Maryland leaving ACC for Big Ten pissing people off.
• Of course it's about the money. What's isn't?
• Vendler interview.
• Memory traps.
• Mieville's 50 SF/Fantasy novels every socialist should read.
• Thirteen ways of looking at the pragmatist Ashbery.
• The Bungalows.
• Le Monocle de Mon Onkle.
• Further tales from the rural electrification files.
• One last Gilbert poem below in celebration of his life and work (until the next one).

SUDDENLY ADULT

Jack Gilbert

The train's stopping wakes me.
Weeds in the gully are white
with the year's first snow.
A lighted train goes
slowly past absolutely empty.
Also going to Fukuoka.
I feel around in myself
to see if I mind. Maybe
I am lonely. It is hard
to know. It could be
hidden in familiarity.

United 1, Houston 1, Houston Wins on Aggregate 2-4

Bigger, better season than I could imagine. United 2010 had 22 points out of 30 games. United 2011 had 39 points out of 34 games. United 2012 had 58 points out of 34 games and got to the Eastern Conference finals. Forgive me, I would have gave my figurative left nut for this season last March. Forgive me, I'm disappointed but not angry, this season was a success. Can you see us in the above photo? How about these? We're in red, right above the E in United. Here's my sheet of plastic.

Here's Goff, here's Fernandez, here's Shatzer, here's Wise, more if and when I see them. Too soon to write the season obit - and this being the slowest week of the year in Blegsylvania is added incentive to think for a few days before a season summation (and I'll post links to all obits I see too), but in 232 we were recalling 2010, The Year of Allsopp and Cristman and Morsink and Christian Castillo, the long slow death of Jaime Moreno, the year they were shut out seventeen times and, forgive me, I know about this year's team's flaws, I'll yap about them soon, but they had 58 points and made it to the conference finals just two years after being arguably the worse team in MLS history, I'm happy.

Did You Know Washington DC Has a Professional Soccer Team?

It's true. I've got an extra ticket for today's playoff game (second of two game aggregate, United down two goals after first leg) - Earthgirl and I double-booked Planet, got our times mixed-up, Earthgirl booked first so I've an extra ticket. Need to hear from you by one. Email or call. Game's at four, will meet at gate next to Lot 4 at 3:30. Metro sucks. Leave now.

He Meets the Raccoon Often in the Dark and Ends Up Throwing Stones

We left extra early to get to BWI to pick up Planet, fearful of Friday evening rush hour traffic on the Beltway to 95 and then north all the way on 95, but traffic was fine, we got to the airport with an hour and a half to spare. I tried to read a novel in the airport but couldn't for the noise and distractions (plane-load after plane-load of teen lacrosse players each in their club sweatshirts, there must be a club tournament this weekend in or near Baltimore) so I surfed web so here, have some links today. Above are Planet's 100 Goats, below an up-close of one goat. As for the never-ending reading slump re:novels (I don't need an airport full of screaming teenagers to be distracted), yes, this still applies but there's more: having unwanted but inevitable and machine-like narratives shoved down my throat elsewhere, I can't stand considering a novel's narrative in my mind on my free time even if it's a narrative that challenges the machine's narrative.

• Social media and Gaza.
• What's going on.
• My brother's keeper: What I and probably most thoughtful critics of Israel favor is not an Israeli defeat. What we favor is that Israel should stop its terrorist violence against the Palestinians and others. (A good parallel would be the US "defeat" in Vietnam, which only meant that the US had to withdraw its forces; it did not mean US surrender to the Vietnamese people, who did not then occupy Washington and take over the US government.)  The Israelis need not surrender, contrary to what the commenter and others assume. All they need to do is stop their abuse of human rights, their violation of every humane concern that arose after the obscenity of World War II and the Nazi crimes. There are more alternatives than the status quo and the obliteration of Israel.
• Essays on Israeli-American relationship. 
• Shortsighted? This is the long view.
• Repression.
• The new disorder.
• Tech nerds who won for Obama.
• Hurricanes, capitalism, democracy.
• Trafficking and civil liberties.
• Maps before maps.
• Maps. Yes, every chance I get.
• Yes, the irony of narrative and format and this blog's narrative and format has occurred to me.
• Yes, again, second day in a row, new Yo La Tengo:

• Easy to assemble.
• The flowers she sent and the flowers she said she sent.
• Or maybe just good luck.
• I think I need a new heart.
• Why atheism?
• When I cry.
• Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?
• You must be out of your mind.
• Re: comments - having looked around Disqus, fuck that. Regulars, the spam bombardment continues, the few of you who've told me how much capcha sucks (and I agree), the only alternative is to enable comment moderation, of the two sucks, capcha is preferable, yes?
• Please stop dancing.
• Guide to Arvo Part.
• Famous.
• Hey, look who the three of us are seeing tonight!

HARD WIRED

Jack Gilbert

He is shamelessly happy to feel the thing
inside him. He labors up through the pines
with firewood and goes back down again.
Winter on the way. Roses and blackberries
finished, and the iris gone before that.
The peas dead in the garden and the beans
almost done. His tomatoes are finally ripe.
The thing inside him is like that, and will
come back. An old thing, a dangerous one.
Precious to him. He meets the raccoon often
in the dark and ends up throwing stones.
The raccoon gets behind a tree. Comes again,
cautious and fierce. It stops halfway.
They stand glaring in the faint starlight.