2013/07/31

His Speech Obsessed with Oaths, Demons, His Tongue Calling Forth the Foul Fiend



Screenshot from 8:30 last night. No one expected a different outcome, the multiple guilty verdicts. No other outcome was possible, there was never a chance Manning wouldn't spend the rest of his life in jail, something Manning knew when he went to Wikileaks. Military prosecutors dealt striking rebuke? Here's how nuts I am: I suspect the aiding the enemy charge was made so it could be rejected, the resulting See! See! it's not an inhumane system for an Oathbreaker! Fucking Oathbreaker!  conveniently distracting reminders of Manning's previous torture before trial and subsequent miserable life in prison after. Not to mention distracting from what Manning revealed about what this country does. I also believe it entirely possible Power wanted Manning as damned as they could. Yes, I'd bet it's the latter, I've heard the defense that Power is so brutal in its inept execution of will I should stop confusing institutional violence with motive: power means well but oops. Still, I ask you, of those two choices, which is more proof of American decadence?











FABLE

Tom Sleigh

But where, oh where is the holy idiot,
truth teller and soothsayer, familiar

of spirits, rat eater, unhouseled wanderer
whose garble and babble fill rich and poor,

homeless and housed, with awe and fear?
Is he hiding in the pit of the walkie-talkie,

its grid of holes insatiably hungry,
almost like a baby, sucking in the police

sergeant's quiet voice as he calls in reinforcements?
Oh holy idiot, is that you sniffing the wind

for the warm turd smell on the mounted policemen
backing their horses' quivering, skittish

haunches into the demonstrators' faces?
Oh little village among the villages,

the wild man, the holy Bedlamite is gone,
and nobody, now, knows where to find him...

Lying in mud? lying caked in mud, hair elfed into knots?
Some poor mad Tom roving the heath

for a warm soft place to lie his body down,
his speech obsessed with oaths, demons,

his tongue calling forth the Foul Fiend, Flibbertigibbet
as the horses back slowly, slowly into the crowd

and he eats filth, he crams his ravenous mouth with filth—
and then he sits on his stool in the trampled hay

and deep-rutted mud, he anoints himself
with ashes and clay, he puts on his crown

of fumiter weed and holds his scepter
of a smouldering poker and calls the court to order.



2013/07/30

Fifty-Five Today





Hounds of Love has to be one of my three most listened to albums, and the song cycle of side two back in the days of album sides, youngsters, unquestionably the side of music I've listened to most. Dream of Sheep and Under Ice and Waking the Witch and Watching You Without Me and Jig of Life and Hello Earth and finishing with, and you must listen in order like I just did for full kaboom, holyfuck, I love this song:






The line between loving the music and loving the memories the music evokes (and there are ten formative years and three exceptional women - one of whom I'm still married to - when Kate Bush was on the daily soundtrack) has long blurred, but she's one of three permanent members in my Sillyass Desert Island Five Game for both reasons. Lordy, the rush when I first here her voice again after not hearing it for a week. Yes, I post this same post every year.

 


 

The above a request, as are the six below:




*



*



*



*


*

I Built, of Blocks, a Town Three Hundred Thousand Strong, Whose Avenues Were Paved with a Wine-Colored Rug and Decorated by Large Leaves Outlined Inappropriately in Orange, and on This Leafage I'd Often Park My Tootsie Toy Trucks, as If on Pads of Camouflage, Waiting Their Deployment Against Catastrophes Which Included Alien Invasions, Internal Treachery, and World War



William Gass is eighty-nine today. This is the traditional William Gass birthday post excerpt: from The Tunnel:

The other large carton unpacked in the same way - box into box - but the feeling it gave me was the opposite of that suggested by the endless nest of Russians dollies in otherwise resembled, for what I was opening was a den of spaces which now covered the floor near my feet. It was plain that every ten-by-ten-by eight container contained cubes which were nine by nine by seven, and eight by eight by six, and seven by seven by five, and so on down to three by three by two, as well as many smaller, thinly sided one at every interval in between, so that out of one box a million more might multiply, confirming Zeno's view, although at that age, with an unfurnished mind, I couldn't have known of his paradoxes let alone have been able to describe one with any succinctness. What I had discovered is that every space contains more space than the space it contains.

Like I said last year, that passage reminds me of a what I was trying to get at (much less successfully than Gass) with automocoblogography. Still, it's one of my favorite things I've written, and remember that template?





  • This is a High Egoslavian Holy Day! Kate Bush is 55 today, the traditional birthday post up this afternoon, Davidly has three songs up at his place, if you have requests get them to me by 1:00 PM EDT today. No need to send any for anything on Hounds of Love, it's been taken care of.
  • So, to recap The Weekend in Google.... know what, fuck the recap, if you've been playing along you know what happened, and this is the last post I'm going to mention it anyway. Leave it here: I am shocked, I never would have guessed on Friday when I figured out what happened the blog would be back by Sunday night. 
  • Today marks the end of Official Bleggalgazing the Incident.
  • I cannot change the dark green background or any color or any column layout here, the APPLY TO TEMPLATE button is dead, but more friends like the dark green than the white and ultimately I have loyalty to the dark green. I am, however, going to back-up this blog at the place I created when I assumed this place was gone, and since it's back-up into the future too I can c/p the code from new blog posts easily enough into a post field there, and the many of you who told me you much prefer dark type on light background can go there. 
  • Because what I freaked out losing wasn't what I've written, it was the music and poems and corresponding labels to them I use to farm myself. 
  • There is now a link in the upper left/corner anyone can click to read this blog in not-dark green but dark writing on white background.
  • I'm sorry, I'd double-column on the left if I could, I can't, now is not the time to curse my free blogging platform, but I love the photos overbleeding into the column, I know some of you don't, forgive me.
  • I am able to add content to the columns. Will update (or not) theme songs according, cause this blog doesn't load slow enough already with all the youtubes.
  • Anarchism, technology, and the petromodern state.
  • The logical and coming end to American empire.
  • The United States of Amnesia.
  • Metadata is incredibly intimate.
  • The selfishness of Snowden
  • Reminder: the liberal betrayal of Bradley Manning.
  • Christ, "For better or worse the Democrats are the only game in town." Posted not because pro-Nader, posted because anti-motherfucking professional liberals.
  • The progressive principle of collective punishment.
  • Capitalism! Muslim profiting on anti-Muslim sentiment.
  • Share a Coke with Stalin.
  • The horizon of narrative
  • Struggles with realism.
  • Prunella's latest playlist.
  • Please read the two sentence Gass excerpt below out loud for full effect.
  • You know who has a birthday day after tomorrow? Get your requests in, please send me links if possible. I know someone named after this song.






Excerpt from The Tunnel

William Gass

I built, of blocks, a town three hundred thousand strong, whose avenues were paved with a wine-colored rug and decorated by large leaves outlined inappropriately in orange, and on this leafage I'd often park my Tootsie Toy trucks, as if on pads of camouflage, waiting their deployment against catastrophes which included alien invasions, internal treachery, and world war. It was always my intention, and my conceit, to use up, in the town's construction, every toy I possessed: my electronic train, of course, the Lincoln Logs, old kindergarten blocks—their deeply incised letters always a problem—the Erector set, every lead soldier that would stand (broken ones were sent to the hospital), my impressive array of cars, motorcycles, tanks, and trucks—some with trailers, some transporting gas, some tows, some dumps—and my squadrons of planes, my fleet of ships, my big and little guns, an undersized group of parachute people (looking as if one should always imagine them high in the sky, hanging from threads), my silversided submarines, along with assorted RR signs, poles bearing flags, prefab houses with faces pasted in their windows, small boxes of a dozen variously useful kinds, strips of blue cloth for streams and rivers, and glass jars for town water towers, or, in a pinch, jails. In time, the armies, the citizens, even the streets would divide: loyalties, friendships, certainties, would be undermined, the city would be shaken by strife; and marbles would rain down from formerly friendly planes, steeples would topple onto cars, and shellfire would soon throw aggie holes through homes, soldiers would die accompanied by my groans, and ragged bands of refugees would flee toward mountain caves and other chairs and tables.



2013/07/29

While Here Wasn't Here, or: Posts Written Elsewhere When I Thought Here Was Dead

The first post below is from Sunday, the second from Saturday, posted here, set up while this place was disappeared by google, explanations and story later today, tomorrow maybe, (you can get most of the gist of the story by reading the posts below) but first, soak in this sentence: Google called me, admitted they screwed up, and fixed the problem. Repeating: Google called me, admitted they screwed up, and fixed the problem. Everything I believed in needs reevaluating.





Ashbery is 86 today. Someone thrust Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror into my hands 35 years ago and it changed the way I read. I say that every year and this every year (though this year I can't go back and copy/paste it from last year): I understand why people don't like and read Ashbery for the same reason I don't like and read Hemingway, we're punishing the originals for their legions of shitty imitators. A friend asked me recently whether I play the Sillyass Deserted Island game for poets like I do for musicians and novelists, I was surprised to discover I don't, I hadn't thought of it. I'm still thinking about it (actually I'm still thinking about why I wasn't thinking about it, then I'll get to thinking about the sillyass game), but Ashbery has a permanent spot.






The blooger thing. First, this is entirely my fault, if I hadn't been vain and thought, cool, I'll give google ten bucks a year to take their name out of my URL this wouldn't have happened. Second, now that it's happened, the regular readers who have seen this site OVERWHELMINGLY like this site's optics over the dark green of BLCKDGRD. I've been tired of the dark green for a while and pissed at blogger for over a year that I am completely unable to change anything on the template page. For those of you who know blogger, the APPLY TO TEMPLATE button is dead. I can vouch the bloger forum help page (which, feebly, I refuse to capitalize) is as fucking useless solving that issue as it's been solving the domain name issue. If BLCKDGRD comes back (and eNom assures me they can sell me the domain on August 14 if not sooner - though if I buy it and have to access google admin I'm fucked anyway), unless there's some way to migrate domain name to here where I can manipulate the template it's back to the old, cramped, dungeonous, dark green. Third, I'm enjoying fucking around on a new tablet. Fourth, fuck me, if there is a permanent new BLCKDGRD it will be here, not WordPress, I've not time to learn as much there as I know here (and I know little here) and they don't have the self-updating blogrolls. But what do I do if BLCKDGRD returns in an hour?





  • How's that for breaking kayfabe? I mean, compared to every other day? And you owe me L, that's two whole paragraphs, one yesterday, one today, written like you bet me I no longer could, I'm too sing-songy, PINTS!
  • Before you whole-throatedly vote for here, consider how much bleggalgazing moving here will produce than returning there.
  • Still, now's the time to get your preferences for this site's appearance in before google goes and disables the APPLY TO TEMPLATE button here
  • Yes, name of blog fixed, why it took me 24 hours is a mystery. Do you like the current header?
  • More about the blogrolls - please, send me URLs of people you read who you remember being here. I'm scouring your blogrolls (and not taking people I used to blogroll whose blogs have gone moribund (the burgermeister)) to remember, I'm sure to miss people.
  • Oh, the blogrolls - see disclaimer re: grouping them by dozens as I grab them. Should I need to consider and reject taxonomy I consider and reject taxonomy then.
  • Though I plan on making just two, one for each column, so the freshest new posts are at the top. Later today or tomorrow. 
  • Paradoxes and oxymorons.
  • In which I am mocked
  • The sequel, In Which You Are Mocked, or: Why You Suck but Your Blogging Platform Sucks More.
  • I'll bet a pint Obama names Summers over Yellen (I suppose he could name neither) and I bet two pints Digby's obamapostasy will never be ready. 
  • Obama's master class in demagogy
  • Tell it to the widows.
  • Post-scarcity economics.
  • { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
  • How soon is now?
  • Urban departures
  • Buzzard Point. Yes, I missed another home game last night.
  • Blasting the canon.
  • Eternity.
  • ValĂ©ry, for those of you who do. 
  • The Van der Graf Generator story.






THIS ROOM

John Ashbery

The room I entered was a dream of this room.
Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine.
The oval portrait
of a dog was me at an early age.
Something shimmers, something is hushed up.

We had macaroni for lunch every day
except Sunday, when a small quail was induced
to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things?
You are not even here.







Sunday post above, Saturday post below






Cross-posted from here:

First, thanks for all the Kind words and thoughts, it means a lot to me, and thanks for spreading the word of what happened. I'm going to try to not have to ask people to change their bookmarks on their blogs and please don't for the time being. I will be someplace - as I wrote a friend earlier this morning, My favorite novelist, Stanley Elkin, once diagnosed himself with logorrhea, a chronic and uncurable running of the mouth. I gots it. I'll keep you informed.

It's clear google is useless. I called Enom, a company I'd never heard of until yesterday when I found out they are the people who actually manage the domain name. The person I talked to advised me to send an email to Enom's google-handlers to see if some resolution can be found. Apparently google created a google app account for me and failed to give me both the login information and the password. The person was mildly hopeful. In any case, I'll be somewhere, here for the time being, though I will cross-post at BLCKDGRD EXILED, a joint I'm setting up so that I can install the self-updating blogrolls I - and some of you, some of you tell me - use as bookmarks. If I had blogrolled you at the green place and you don't see yourself listed there (or here if you're reading this there) please send me your URL. I'll be adding sites as I go, but please, email me or comment here or comment there if I still need add you to the rolls. Yes, it's another fucking blooger place - and if the green one is not recoverable the new fucking blooger place will be eventual home, it's the self-updating blogrolls, the one thing it does well. I'm not going to do much more work there until I know it's where home will be, but in the meantime let me know if you'd prefer dark type over light background rather than visa versa in case that becomes home. I'd rather the old place where - fuck my free blogging platform - the ability to change the template died over a year ago.

Have more Necks plus an Ashbery poem - his birthday is tomorrow, it's a High Egoslavian Holy Day and will be celebrated - and link farming will resume by Monday if not sooner.






MY EROTIC DOUBLE  

John Ashbery
 
He says he doesn’t feel like working today.
It’s just as well. Here in the shade
Behind the house, protected from street noises,
One can go over all kinds of old feeling,
Throw some away, keep others.
                                                  The wordplay
Between us gets very intense when there are
Fewer feelings around to confuse things.
Another go-round? No, but the last things
You always find to say are charming, and rescue me
Before the night does. We are afloat
On our dreams as on a barge made of ice,
Shot through with questions and fissures of starlight
That keep us awake, thinking about the dreams
As they are happening. Some occurrence. You said it.
I said it but I can hide it. But I choose not to.
Thank you. You are a very pleasant person.
Thank you. You are too.


2013/07/28

What the...?



Lordy, you only think you've seen bleggalgazing. What's happened in the 48 hours since this blog went dark? After there, tell me, knowing by the end of this sentence that I cannot change anything about the appearance of this blog, the colors, the fonts, the width, the button is dead dead dead, do you prefer the dark over the light? As for the story of how and how I need reevaluate everything I held to be true, tomorrow.

UPDATE! After twitter-polling past thirty minutes, GREEN is winning 7-0.

UPDATE! Funniest last two hours of my life since the last until the next. 

2013/07/26

The Afternoon Will Fold You Up, Along with Preoccupations that Now Seem So Important, Until Only a Child Running Around on a Unicycle Occupies Center Stage




Google kept sending me emails telling me to renew my domain name or lose it and the blog, I said last night at Thursday Night Pints to K's question of what the google drama was last week. Google was no help, I said, they provided a button to a link for supposed renewal but google wouldn't recognize my log-in and password. Their help forums are useless. A Kind reader gave me workarounds, they aren't foolproof, they rely heavily on google being both incompetent and indifferent - safe bet there, said L - and my due diligence. Bleggalgazing continued briefly, K and L each offered a version of should this blog disappear I'll live quite nicely and more profitably should I survive withdrawal. L said, there are other ways to be an attention slut, you know. Hilltop talk, much of which can't be shared here but discussion of Hilltop's expansionist ambitions in general and bid to build a campus on the old Walter Reed campus (I could add a link to the Hilltop blog with the story, but, er.... no, google if you're interested). I was given grief that my liberal Maryland congressperson voted no on NSA amendment, their liberal Virginia congressperson voted yes. I've always said, I said, I could live in the People's Republic of Arlington if I had to. L asked, I've seen new stuff at your other places, are you going to shut them down now that you think the main one is safe? Probably not, I said, maybe VNTY'SGRVYD (though I like the name), maybe the tumblr (though I like I can't see if anyone is reading it), not DRGDKCLB. K asked, are you going to link to them tomorrow? Are you going to post the new poems? Yes, I said, and probably.


















LIKE A SENTENCE

John Ashbery

How little we know,   
and when we know it!

It was prettily said that “No man
hath an abundance of cows on the plain, nor shards
in his cupboard.” Wait! I think I know who said that! It was . . .

Never mind, dears, the afternoon
will fold you up, along with preoccupations   
that now seem so important, until only a child   
running around on a unicycle occupies center stage.   
Then what will you make of walls? And I fear you   
will have to come up with something,

be it a terraced gambit above the sea
or gossip overheard in the marketplace.
For you see, it becomes you to be chastened:
for the old to envy the young,
and for youth to fear not getting older,
where the paths through the elms, the carnivals, begin.

And it was said of Gyges that his ring
attracted those who saw him not,
just as those who wandered through him were aware
only of a certain stillness, such as precedes an earache,
while lumberjacks in headbands came down to see what all the fuss was about,
whether it was something they could be part of
sans affront to self-esteem.
And those temple hyenas who had seen enough,
nostrils aflare, fur backing up in the breeze,
were no place you could count on,
having taken a proverbial powder
as rifle butts received another notch.
I, meanwhile . . . I was going to say I had squandered spring   
when summer came along and took it from me   
like a terrier a lady has asked one to hold for a moment
while she adjusts her stocking in the mirror of a weighing machine.   
But here it is winter, and wrong
to speak of other seasons as though they exist.   
Time has only an agenda
in the wallet at his back, while we
who think we know where we are going unfazed
end up in brilliant woods, nourished more than we can know
by the unexpectedness of ice and stars
and crackling tears. We’ll just have to make a go of it,
a run for it. And should the smell of baking cookies appease
one or the other of the olfactory senses, climb down   
into this wagonload of prisoners.

The meter will be screamingly clear then,
the rhythms unbounced, for though we came
to life as to a school, we must leave it without graduating   
even as an ominous wind puffs out the sails
of proud feluccas who don’t know where they’re headed,   
only that a motion is etched there, shaking to be free.


2013/07/25


*They* Were the Players, and We Who Had Struggled at the Game Were Merely Spectators, though Subject to Its Vicissitudes and Moving with It Out of the Tearful Stadium, Borne on Shoulders, at Last





I made that in 2009. The clown is quoting the ghoul Max Boot praising Obama for his warmongering in Afghanistan, the hipster quoting K-Punk (remember K-Punk?) ripping Sonic Youth. Thurston Moore is 55 today. Speaking of old gags, Serendipity yet again presents me with one of this blog's longest running gags (the ridiculously enforced connectivity between my politics and soccer): On the same day Obama pretends to turn economic populist and calls Republicans obstructionist assclowns the DC Government and DC United announce tentative agreement on a new soccer stadium. Finally, however, some separation: while I will still (assuming I'm still a season ticket holder - something never in doubt until this summer) dance a Fuck-Me-Jig in front of my seat in a new stadium, record it, post it here, so little faith do I have that a stadium will be built in DC, I guarantee I will do a Fuck-Me-Jig in Southwest Washington before Obama and the motherfucking Democrats ever earn a kernel of faith and respect out of me again.














SOONEST MENDED

John Ashbery

Barely tolerated, living on the margin
In our technological society, we were always having to be rescued   
On the brink of destruction, like heroines in Orlando Furioso
Before it was time to start all over again.
There would be thunder in the bushes, a rustling of coils,   
And Angelica, in the Ingres painting, was considering
The colorful but small monster near her toe, as though wondering whether forgetting
The whole thing might not, in the end, be the only solution.   
And then there always came a time when
Happy Hooligan in his rusted green automobile
Came plowing down the course, just to make sure everything was O.K.,   
Only by that time we were in another chapter and confused   
About how to receive this latest piece of information.   
Was it information? Weren’t we rather acting this out   
For someone else’s benefit, thoughts in a mind
With room enough and to spare for our little problems (so they began to seem),
Our daily quandary about food and the rent and bills to be paid?   
To reduce all this to a small variant,
To step free at last, minuscule on the gigantic plateau—
This was our ambition: to be small and clear and free.   
Alas, the summer’s energy wanes quickly,
A moment and it is gone. And no longer
May we make the necessary arrangements, simple as they are.   
Our star was brighter perhaps when it had water in it.   
Now there is no question even of that, but only
Of holding on to the hard earth so as not to get thrown off,   
With an occasional dream, a vision: a robin flies across   
The upper corner of the window, you brush your hair away
And cannot quite see, or a wound will flash
Against the sweet faces of the others, something like:   
This is what you wanted to hear, so why
Did you think of listening to something else? We are all talkers   
It is true, but underneath the talk lies
The moving and not wanting to be moved, the loose
Meaning, untidy and simple like a threshing floor.

These then were some hazards of the course,
Yet though we knew the course was hazards and nothing else   
It was still a shock when, almost a quarter of a century later,   
The clarity of the rules dawned on you for the first time.   
They were the players, and we who had struggled at the game   
Were merely spectators, though subject to its vicissitudes
And moving with it out of the tearful stadium, borne on shoulders, at last.
Night after night this message returns, repeated
In the flickering bulbs of the sky, raised past us, taken away from us,   
Yet ours over and over until the end that is past truth,   
The being of our sentences, in the climate that fostered them,   
Not ours to own, like a book, but to be with, and sometimes   
To be without, alone and desperate.
But the fantasy makes it ours, a kind of fence-sitting
Raised to the level of an esthetic ideal. These were moments, years,   
Solid with reality, faces, namable events, kisses, heroic acts,   
But like the friendly beginning of a geometrical progression
Not too reassuring, as though meaning could be cast aside some day   
When it had been outgrown. Better, you said, to stay cowering   
Like this in the early lessons, since the promise of learning   
Is a delusion, and I agreed, adding that
Tomorrow would alter the sense of what had already been learned,   
That the learning process is extended in this way, so that from this standpoint
None of us ever graduates from college,
For time is an emulsion, and probably thinking not to grow up   
Is the brightest kind of maturity for us, right now at any rate.
And you see, both of us were right, though nothing
Has somehow come to nothing; the avatars
Of our conforming to the rules and living
Around the home have made—well, in a sense, “good citizens” of us,   
Brushing the teeth and all that, and learning to accept
The charity of the hard moments as they are doled out,
For this is action, this not being sure, this careless
Preparing, sowing the seeds crooked in the furrow,
Making ready to forget, and always coming back
To the mooring of starting out, that day so long ago.



2013/07/24

"New Narrative" Is Judged Seditious




Found something I wrote twenty-five years ago while looking for something else. I thought it was gone forever, I'd been regretting its disappearance for years. It won't appear here, neither what I wrote or what a friend and mentor wrote in the margins. See tags for hint. Should I be more pleased than aghast or more aghast than pleased I recognize a younger me as my obvious predecessor? As mentioned yesterday, the objects of adoration change, the ardor of faith doesn't. Light reading elsewhere in any case, and an arrghfree day of links in celebration of surprise discovery and exhumation of previous self. Figures in a landscape. The above photo from a project from last year. In the shit. Serendipitously, new moleskin required two days ago. This is sand. Because reevaluation of old work requires reexamination of current work. Old rockers. I'd like to think it could appear here, it probably won't, though why it won't will no doubt make an appearance. No tears. Ashbery and Pasternak part one, part two. Working to change the equations which involves factoring damn on both sides of equal. RIP Faye Hunter. Ashbery's birthday in four days, I haven't forgot. The tennis-court oath. I realize I always approach the what-the-fuck and turn away, I'll see. The instruction manual. I haven't forgot Kate Bush's birthday is in six days.




 
...BY AN EARTHQUAKE

John Ashbery

A hears by chance a familiar name, and the name involves a riddle of the past.
B, in love with A, receives an unsigned letter in which the writer states that she is the mistress of A and begs B not to take him away from her.
B, compelled by circumstances to be a companion of A in an isolated place, alters her rosy views of love and marriage when she discovers, through A, the selfishness of men.
A, an intruder in a strange house, is discovered; he flees through the nearest door into a windowless closet and is trapped by a spring lock.
A is so content with what he has that any impulse toward enterprise is throttled.
A solves an important mystery when falling plaster reveals the place where some old love letters are concealed.
A-4, missing food from his larder, half believes it was taken by a “ghost.”
A, a crook, seeks unlawful gain by selling A-8 an object, X, which A-8 already owns.
A sees a stranger, A-5, stealthily remove papers, X, from the pocket
of another stranger, A-8, who is asleep. A follows A-5.
A sends an infernal machine, X, to his enemy, A-3, and it falls into
the hands of A’s friend, A-2.
Angela tells Philip of her husband’s enlarged prostate, and asks for money.
Philip, ignorant of her request, has the money placed in an escrow account.
A discovers that his pal, W, is a girl masquerading as a boy.
A, discovering that W is a girl masquerading as a boy, keeps the knowledge to himself and does his utmost to save the masquerader from annoying experiences.
A, giving ten years of his life to a miserly uncle, U, in exchange for a college education, loses his ambition and enterprise.

A, undergoing a strange experience among a people weirdly deluded, discovers the secret of the delusion from Herschel, one of the victims who has died. By means of information obtained from the notebook, A succeeds in rescuing the other victims of the delusion.
A dies of psychic shock.
Albert has a dream, or an unusual experience, psychic or otherwise, which enables him to conquer a serious character weakness and become successful in his new narrative, “Boris Karloff.”

Silver coins from the Mojave Desert turn up in the possession of a sinister jeweler.
Three musicians wager that one will win the affections of the local kapellmeister’s wife; the losers must drown themselves in a nearby stream.
Ardis, caught in a trap and held powerless under a huge burning glass, is saved by an eclipse of the sun.
Kent has a dream so vivid that it seems a part of his waking experience.   
A and A-2 meet with a tragic adventure, and A-2 is killed.
Elvira, seeking to unravel the mystery of a strange house in the hills, is caught in an electrical storm. During the storm the house vanishes and the site on which it stood becomes a lake.
Alphonse has a wound, a terrible psychic wound, an invisible psychic wound, which causes pain in flesh and tissue which, otherwise, are perfectly healthy and normal.
A has a dream which he conceives to be an actual experience.   
Jenny, homeward bound, drives and drives, and is still driving, no nearer to her home than she was when she first started.
Petronius B. Furlong’s friend, Morgan Windhover, receives a wound from which he dies.
Thirteen guests, unknown to one another, gather in a spooky house to hear Toe reading Buster’s will.
Buster has left everything to Lydia, a beautiful Siamese girl poet of whom no one has heard.
Lassie and Rex tussle together politely; Lassie, wounded, is forced to limp home.
In the Mexican gold rush a city planner is found imprisoned by outlaws in a crude cage of sticks.
More people flow over the dam and more is learned about the missing electric cactus.
Too many passengers have piled onto a cable car in San Francisco; the conductor is obliged to push some of them off.
Maddalena, because of certain revelations she has received, firmly resolves that she will not carry out an enterprise that had formerly been dear to her heart.

Fog enters into the shaft of a coal mine in Wales.
A violent wind blows the fog around.
Two miners, Shawn and Hillary, are pursued by fumes.
Perhaps Emily’s datebook holds the clue to the mystery of the seven swans under the upas tree.
Jarvis seeks to manage Emily’s dress shop and place it on a paying basis. Jarvis’s bibulous friend, Emily, influences Jarvis to take to drink, scoffing at the doctor who has forbidden Jarvis to indulge in spirituous liquors.
Jarvis, because of a disturbing experience, is compelled to turn against his friend, Emily.
A ham has his double, “Donnie,” take his place in an important enterprise.
Jarvis loses his small fortune in trying to help a friend.
Lodovico’s friend, Ambrosius, goes insane from eating the berries of a strange plant, and makes a murderous attack on Lodovico.
“New narrative” is judged seditious. Hogs from all over go squealing down the street.
Ambrosius, suffering misfortune, seeks happiness in the companionship of Joe, and in playing golf.
Arthur, in a city street, has a glimpse of Cathy, a strange woman who has caused him to become involved in a puzzling mystery.   
Cathy, walking in the street, sees Arthur, a stranger, weeping.
Cathy abandons Arthur after he loses his money and is injured and sent to a hospital.
Arthur, married to Beatrice, is haunted by memories of a former sweetheart, Cornelia, a heartless coquette whom Alvin loves.

Sauntering in a park on a fine day in spring, Tricia and Plotinus encounter a little girl grabbing a rabbit by its ears. As they remonstrate with her, the girl is transformed into a mature woman who regrets her feverish act.
Running up to the girl, Alvin stumbles and loses his coins.
In a nearby dell, two murderers are plotting to execute a third.   
Beatrice loved Alvin before he married.
B, second wife of A, discovers that B-3, A’s first wife, was unfaithful.   
B, wife of A, dons the mask and costume of B-3, A’s paramour, and meets A as B-3; his memory returns and he forgets B-3, and goes back to B.
A discovers the “Hortensius,” a lost dialogue of Cicero, and returns it to the crevice where it lay.
Ambrose marries Phyllis, a nice girl from another town.
Donnie and Charlene are among the guests invited to the window.   
No one remembers old Everett, who is left to shrivel in a tower.   
Pellegrino, a rough frontiersman in a rough frontier camp, undertakes to care for an orphan.
Ildebrando constructs a concealed trap, and a person near to him, Gwen, falls into the trap and cannot escape.


2013/07/23

8:53: I Think That. 8:54: I Don't



   
As of midnight this morning there are only 1173 days, 18,152 hours, 1,089120 minutes, 65,347,200 seconds until Election Day 2016. Kill me now. Or let me talk about the Washington Nationals. Three, four religions ago I was baseball devout. The ritual proclamations of proofs of faith aren't necessary here, remove whatever keywords of current faith in template and substitute keywords of baseball faith, it works. The Nats surprising success last season caught my attention. I remembered the cadence of a game catching myself listening at season's end, in the playoffs, I was listening live (I'd remembered, listen to the radio, don't watch baseball) and was thrilled at the call of this walk-off homer in the bottom of the ninth in a playoff game (Slowes and Jageler are really good, btw). But I talked myself down in the off-season, I renounced the rebirth before the Nationals sucked this season. Sometimes fine metaphors don't abound. Just to be clear, and to employ the baseball metaphor I always use, no matter whether the Red Sox or the Yankees win the pennant, the league wins. My anger at the Democrats in general and the president in particular is anger at myself because every time he or one of his advocates opens his mouth I'm reminded of how addicted to faith I am. Trying to stay sane in an insane world, part one and a viable leftist party in the US? and militarizing the Arctic and what about the hunger strikes and why the British monarchy doesn't exist and cats complain about authority to their diaries and what is a U.S. state? and earth, seen from Saturn and building public palaces and selling roots and an important distinction and does anyone know of the cartoonist C.F. and could you recommend where to start, please? and Booker longlist if you're interested in these games and of surf guitar and the East Side and Wallace Stevens' Rock and the death of Jerry Garcia - not sure why that was posted today, Garcia died on August 9th, more importantly, you'll hear some Garcia songs on August 1st, a Holy Day. Today though, Long Distance Poison.





THE YOU-KNOW-WHAT

Paul Legault

Despite itself,
the criticism is happening in time.

8:53: I think that.
8:54: I don't.
SPRING: Come get my chicken
DAZE: There is a difference

between waiting for the scenery to quit
looking at itself chewing on something

and not.
SEBASTIAN: What did you hide off into, Sebastian?

SEBASTIAN: And Elvis made entirely of pollen.
PINE: And an Elvis made of tissue paper

arm in arm
with the luminary.


2013/07/22

Hurling Bodies and Collapsing Lungs Used to Be Honestly Scripted Activities















NATIONAL ACCOUNT

Joel Craig

How do you recognize a lovely place?
The rotten anthropology of superheroes
hovers above the conference table, exhausted
on the idea of dazzling people. A plugged
organization of the moon like a turnpike
undecorated by barely legal children —
true stories end in the moody doctor city
but I always say the wrong thing. Away
from Las Vegas I spend too much time
at the whale facility. I’m bored with awakening
into historical X-rays
of the NO MOMENT. (What showmanship!)
Who does wear a cape underwater?
Now Egypt is miniaturized and it may never rain
again. Hurling bodies and collapsing lungs
used to be honestly scripted activities —
the stillness in the dream of important history.
From now on your stillness will be happening.
In the actual dream remember how the children
were modified, the sputtering, Russel Crotty language?
Friendly Calliope is no longer remedial
in the crisply American landscape. Even snowy
Vermont grows opaque, a diminished suggestion
in the desert mirror. I feel as if I’m speaking to a dear friend
but I’m saying the wrong things. I don’t like cockfights
or you’d rather be my daughter, deeply, authentically
factualizing our especially Southern roots.


2013/07/21

Disappear into the Recesses of the Cliff



  
  • It's been at least a month since a Feldman cascade, sorry.
  • I was going to write what you'd expect me to write - here, I tweeted it: My first thought was that the speech guaranteed Kelly's nomination. Prime the liberal loads w/Obamalube, then boom, in response to someone tweeting that Obama's Martin speech eliminated Kelly from contention - about Obama's Martin speech, offered "extemporaneously" according to a WaPo article I'm not going to go back and find (and besides, I've now used up my July allotment of free WaPo articles and if WaPo thinks I'm giving them money....).
  • And then it occurred to me to give you Morton Feldman instead to listen to while you read these links.
  • But listening to Obama's remarks on the death of Helen Thomas yesterday, it occurs to me that every sentence in your head about whatever Obama says about anything need end with the phrase, but what the fuck did you think he was going to say.
  • Improve your conspiracy theories.
  • Yay! Transparency
  • On the above.
  • Three degrees of separation.
  • Friend or fro.
  • Beltway stages thoughtful spontaneity.
  • Slate analysis.
  • America is a tinderbox.
  • For the record, I don't think Obama will nominate Kelly to be head of Cheka, not because Kelly is a racist authoritarian asshole (hardly disqualifying to Obama) but because of all the people who have spoken up for Kelly - Obama won't want to be seen as taking orders. Obama's vanity, not his humanity, will be the difference (on Kelly: America is full of racist authoritarian assholes, Obama can find another).
  • The Manning Show Trials: These Teachable Moments.
  • Education, neoliberal education, and the brain.
  • Today in Fuckface Hiatt.
  • Weekly reminder.
  • Prole for a Day.
  • King for a Day: 











    ON WHAT PLANET

    Kenneth Rexroth

    Uniformly over the whole countryside
    The warm air flows imperceptibly seaward;
    The autumn haze drifts in deep bands
    Over the pale water;
    White egrets stand in the blue marshes;
    Tamalpais, Diablo, St. Helena
    Float in the air.
    Climbing on the cliffs of Hunter’s Hill
    We look out over fifty miles of sinuous
    Interpenetration of mountains and sea.
    Leading up a twisted chimney,
    Just as my eyes rise to the level
    Of a small cave, two white owls
    Fly out, silent, close to my face.
    They hover, confused in the sunlight,
    And disappear into the recesses of the cliff.
    All day I have been watching a new climber,
    A young girl with ash blonde hair
    And gentle confident eyes.
    She climbs slowly, precisely,
    With unwasted grace.
    While I am coiling the ropes,
    Watching the spectacular sunset,
    She turns to me and says, quietly,
    “It must be very beautiful, the sunset,
    On Saturn, with the rings and all the moons.”


    2013/07/20

    Seventy-Five Today



    High Holy Day in Egoslavia. Diana Rigg, first, still best crush ever, is 75 today. The Avengers, the Honor Blackman/Katherine Gale years in b/w, the Diana Rigg/Emma Peel years, but especially the first Emma year, in b/w, first, best crush ever. Last year I was able to post some episodes, this year some company has claimed rights and blocked them, still have this:





    That still gives me toe-curling waves of nostalgic pleasure like nothing else does. I haven't mentioned this here in a while: I remember seeing the Flintstones in color, the first time I'd see a color TV, I was five? six? I don't remember whose house, a relative's presumably, I know it was in western Pennsylvania, but I am convinced that seminal event, followed by a decade of TV repeats after school, home when sick or faking sick, color then B/W then B/W then color then less and less B/W as the old shows fell out of syndication, and especially the shows in syndication like Avengers and Get Smart and Bewitched whose first years were in B/W then toggled to color, influence, for good and bad, how I apprehend and interpret the world still.


    2013/07/19

    Many Years Had Probably Gone By But I Remember Nothing of What Happened in My Sleep




    Brian May is 67 today and that's not only a Brian May song it's the Theme Song of my 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th years, I have someone who can vouch. I'll spare telling the story again, but it was first real love. Yes, even though it's a Brian May song I play it on Farrokh Bulsara's birthday too. Queen stole the show at Live Aid, by the way. Happy Birthday too to my and SeatSix's father. This is the first song of the first Queen album, a Brian May song:





    I cannot write a better monologue about the fucking fucked than pointing out that fine metaphors abound. I really should be enjoying the fucking fuck more than I am, or at least stop pretending I'm not enjoying the fucking fuck as much as I am. About face. Wish I'd seen this a week ago. He sometimes says very smart things, but Coate's obamapostasy will never be ready. Atrios' obamapostasy will never be ready either. In this love letter to Snowden, notice which motherfucker's name is not mentioned. Yottabytes! This is not an endorsement of Rand Paul, repeat, this is not an endorsement of Rand Paul: now Pastor Sanctimonious joins Jennifer Rubin in Fuckface Hiatt's jihad against Rand Paul. Repeat: this is not an endorsement of Rand Paul, so calm down, I just find it interesting to read the Post's GOP propagandists' anti-Paul diatribes, it's a sign of how much they fear Rand Paul. This is not an endorsement of Rand Paul. Meanwhile, on the same page, The World's Shittiest Human praises Obama's response to the Zimmerman verdict. Fine metaphors abound. Is your god a jerk? Lordy, Friday's in Blegsylvania during the Blog Days of Summer suck for link-fishing. Oh, I'm still here, I've no idea what blooger was threatening me with. But yes, I sense the recent manic phase here could possibly end, don't know how, don't know when, I've enjoyed it thoroughly, but. Fish sighting: was in Barca! The germantownification of Clarksburg out-Germantowns Germantown! Lordy, Strathmore sucks more often than not. Geoffrey Hill interview once and twice. Everything has a miraculum in it. Sonnet to Vauxhall. The sonnets of E.E. Cummings.






    WINDOW

    Czeslaw Milosz

    I looked out the window at dawn and saw a young apple tree translucent
            in brightness.

    And when I looked out at dawn once again, an apple tree laden with fruit
            stood there.

    Many years had probably gone by but I remember nothing of what happened
            in my sleep.