Putting the poor before the profits and bling. Every Chavez obit in the Western press. Defaming Chavez. The British press on Chavez. Foucault's plague. Consider Phlebas, would have posted to read even without unintended allusion to Fleabus, photo above. OK, so drones. The debate is a red herring, can we bitch about drones and their potential surveillance use rather than their potential as snuff weapons? Here's the question Eric Holder needs to be asked: Can POTUS order a human - American citizen or not - snuffed? Can his assassination coordinator call Obama and say, how about we push Johnson in front of a Red Line Metro, and Obama can say, Sure, and shrug his shoulders wearily but .06% more nobly (in the opinion of loyal Democrats) than Romney would have wearily shrugged his shoulders? Not that we don't know the answer. John Yoo defends Barack Obama. Who are the children? What is to be done with the actually existing Marxist left? What should radical political operation look like? The role of urban social movements. Operation Condor and propaganda organs. Oh, no, there was no Thursday Night Pints last night; it's Spring Break at Illhoptay, two of four are away, one is still recovering from illness, I don't drink by myself. Paul Bearer is dead.
Are cats fooled by optical illusions? Snow is falling on the Age of Creative Writing. Illustrating Gravity's Rainbow. Christine Brooke-Rose, for those of you who do. I confess, I've meant to, just haven't. Suggest a good place to start? Coetzee, for those of you who do. Milton, for those of you who do. Carruth, for those of you who do. Murakami, for those of you who do. Russ, for those of you who do. Hey, we're house-cleaning, found my second copy of James Wright's collected, anyone want? (UPDATE! Hamster has claimed the James Wright, plus reminds me that Alan Hovhaness was born 102 years ago today: here's his Spirit of the Trees.) A short film about an accident about to happen. Stream a new video from The Knife? Radulescu. Six hours of Radigue. Thirty years of Blue Monday. Tomorrow is a High Egoslavian Holy Day, get your John Cale requests in, or not. Another great playlist from Prunella. Four minutes of power pop?
A WINTER DAYBREAK ABOVE VENCE
James Wright
The night’s drifts
Pile up below me and behind my back,
Slide down the hill, rise again, and build
Eerie little dunes on the roof of the house.
In the valley below me,
Miles between me and the town of St.-Jeannet,
The road lamps glow.
They are so cold, they might as well be dark.
Trucks and cars
Cough and drone down there between the golden
Coffins of greenhouses, the startled squawk
Of a rooster claws heavily across
A grove, and drowns.
The gumming snarl of some grouchy dog sounds,
And a man bitterly shifts his broken gears.
True night still hangs on,
Mist cluttered with a racket of its own.
Now on the mountainside,
A little way downhill among turning rocks,
A square takes form in the side of a dim wall.
I hear a bucket rattle or something, tinny,
No other stirring behind the dim face
Of the goatherd’s house. I imagine
His goats are still sleeping, dreaming
Of the fresh roses
Beyond the walls of the greenhouse below them
And of lettuce leaves opening in Tunisia.
I turn, and somehow
Impossibly hovering in the air over everything,
The Mediterranean, nearer to the moon
Than this mountain is,
Shines. A voice clearly
Tells me to snap out of it. Galway
Mutters out of the house and up the stone stairs
To start the motor. The moon and the stars
Suddenly flicker out, and the whole mountain
Appears, pale as a shell.
Look, the sea has not fallen and broken
Our heads. How can I feel so warm
Here in the dead center of January? I can
Scarcely believe it, and yet I have to, this is
The only life I have. I get up from the stone.
My body mumbles something unseemly
And follows me. Now we are all sitting here strangely
On top of the sunlight.
