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.
