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.
• Valéry, 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.