Bird Zone: Tonight's the Rodeo

Part Monday dischaaarghe, part Woot the Fuck, part Fuck It, part Fuck This, part fuck my free blogging platform, part bleggalgaze, part my favorite post ever, certainly part brazen blogwhoring and attention sluttery, this post. Above, a brand new Robert Pollard project, Circus Devils, Holy the Fuck. There are Circus Devils in your future, oh yes indeed. Below, new Pollard solo.

But He Oughtn't Meddle with the Powder Puffs on the Golf Links - They Have Their Own Goats to Tame, Dirigibles to Situate

Holyfuck, Lonnie Holley, what a voice. ALSO! Deactivating the Napoleon Alert System. Freaking uncanny. Earthgirl can vouch. God Cat demands an immediate Woot the Fuck post, new here, not the tribute to God Cat, the unabashed Woot.

Also, Seneca today:

1:9 = 433343333
10:18 = 343334333
19:27 = 353343333

Mind, every basket in 1:18 was in A, but since Seneca went from 18 to 27 baskets I have never broke 90. Missed one putt all day. I should not play for weeks at a time more often. Having never broke 90 at Seneca before I never thought to offer wootribute to God Disc, but for those putts that clanged down and not out? I don't know if demands an immediate Woot the Fuck post but it's getting one now and from now on.







A VAGABOND

Jame Tate

A vagabond is a newcomer

in a heap of trouble.

He’s an eyeball at a peephole

that should be electrocuted.

He’s a leper in a textile mill

and likely to be beheaded, I mean,

given a liverwurst sandwich

on the break by the brook

where the loaves are sliced.

But he oughtn’t meddle

with the powder puffs on the golf links—

they have their own goats to tame,

dirigibles to situate.

He can act like an imbecile

if the climate is propitious,

a magnate of kidnap

paradising around the oily depot,

or a speck from a distant nebula

wishing to purchase a certain skyscraper ....

Well, if it’s permitted, then

let’s regulate him, let’s testify

against his thimble, and moderate his gloves

before they sew an apron.

The local minister is thinking

of moving to Holland, exchanging

his old ballads for some lingerie.

“Zatso!” says the vagabond.

Homeless, like wheat that tattletales

on the sermon, like wages swigged.

“Zatso, zatso, zatso!” cries the vagabond.

The minister reels under the weight

of his thumbs, the vagabond seems to have

jutted into his kernel, disturbed

his terminal core. Slowly, and with

trifling dignity, the minister removes

from his lapel his last campaign button:

Don’t Mess with Raymond, New Hampshire.

But for Real Accomplishment, It Would Be Well If You Would Go to Live Solitary in a Forest Silence

• Activating the Napoleon Alert System. Haven't seen him since last Sunday, and this absence feels different than others. Earthgirl said so first while I was just thinking it. The neighborhood listserv is alive with two possible pertinent issues. First, there are roving gangs of raccoons the size of pitbulls that roam through the neighbor at dusk terrorizing humans and animals alike. Second, some kids, who have not been put to death despite my urging, were caught torturing cats in Rock Creek Park. I've urged their parents to move them to a witness-protection like disappearance.
• Bleggalgazing.
• 45 of the 136 blogs in Because the First haven't updated in more than a month.
• 61 of the 140 blogs in Because the Second haven't updated in more than a month.
• The History of Fear, part one and part two.
• Syria PSYOPs.
• Ivory towers and reflective powers.
• Fishing for informants.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• New Inquiry's Sunday reads.
• Again with the Xenakis:

• Happy Birthday Ilse!
• Strangeness and poetry.
• Calibrations.
• He will never understand.
• Pynchon's Mrs Dalloway.
• I'm 2/3rd done with Bleeding Edge. I won't say it sucks. I will say if it wasn't Pynchon I would have set it aside a hundred pages ago. I long ago gave up the moral standard that once I start a novel I am obliged to finish it. Pynchon has earned the right to be finished, but it is hard to believe this is the same author that wrote Against the Day.
• I was flipping channels Friday waiting to go out to dinner, saw an hour of Breaking Bad, an episode from season three, first time I ever saw one. Admittedly, I didn't know the background, the characters, the build-up, but holyfuck, suck. So glad people will be shutting the fuck up about it after tonight.
• Horrifying headline.

CALLIGRAPHY ACCOMPANIED BY THE MOOD OF A CALM BUT DEFINITIVE MOOD

Dick Allen

Make your strokes thus: the horizontal:

as a cloud that slowly drifts across the horizon;

the vertical: as an ancient but strong vine stem;

the dot: a falling rock;

and learn to master the sheep leg, the tiger’s claw,

an apricot kernel, a dewdrop, the new moon,

the wave rising and falling. Do these

while holding your arm out above the paper

like the outstretched leg of a crane.

The strength of your hand

will give the stroke its bone.

But for real accomplishment, it would be well

if you would go to live solitary in a forest silence,

or beside a river flowing serenely.

It might also be useful

to look down a lonesome road,

and for the future

to stare into the gray static of a television screen,

or when lost in a video game

to accept you may never reach the final level,

where the dragon awaits, guarding the pot of gold,

and that you’ve left no footprints, not a single one,

despite all your adventures,

anyone following you could ever follow.

Glimmering Brim Against Light Lifting There

As soon as I remembered Mark Rothko's birthday I knew I'd spend the next two days listening to Morton Feldman. I mentioned in the Shostakovich birthday post that I don't do my Sillyass Deserted Island Five game with non-rock composers but if I did Shostakovich would have one of the permanent spots. So would Morton Feldman.

• A quick FUCK YOU to google on its birthday.
• Oligarchs applaud Snowden.
• Chicken-shit US media.
• This past summer the North Pole melted.
• Playing with icons.
• Batch of links.
• Architectures of pedagogy.
• Contemporary research paradigms.
• Silliman's always generous litlinks.
• Investigations into the essence of daily writing.
• Internal Tough-Lock.
• Another review of Pynchon's Bleeding Edge archived here to read after I've finished, which will be this weekend if all goes as planned. Which means if there is content here this weekend, it might be just songs and poems and birthdays (if there are any worth noting). 
• Looking for each of us.
• Click on the Feldman tag below for much more.
• When Feldman met Beckett. Unfortunately, I can't find the whole opera, if anyone can please send me the link(s).

LINE OF DESCENT

Forrest  Gander

Against the backdark, bright

                              riband flickers of heat lightning.    Nearer

                hills begin to show, to come clear

                                                             as a hard, detached

                                                                                            and glimmering brim

                                             against light lifting there.    And here, pitched over

the braided arroyo choked with debris,

                                                             a tent, its wan, cakey,

                                road-rur color.    On the front stake, two

                green dragonflies, riding each other, pause,

                                             Look! cries the boy, running, the father behind him

                                 running too—

                                                               and the canyon opening

                out in front of them its magisterial consequence, cramming

                               vertiginous air down its throat—

                                                                                           to snatch him

                                                                    from the scarp.

Who Has Slipped from the Ferry or Leaped from the Bridge

Bryan Ferry is sixty-fucking-eight years old today. Christ, we're all old. High Egoslavian Holy Day, his music, solo too (some of it) but of course primarily Roxy Music, is in the inner circle of acts that rotate in and out of the two non-permanent spots in my Sillyass Deserted Island Game. Here's some kayfabe - I look back in archives at these birthday's to see the songs I want to repeat; a year ago today I was creeped out that Ferry looked too much like Mitt Romney. It wasn't fear of a Romney presidency - long-timers can vouch I bet pints in January 2009 that Obama would be reelected (and none took the bet) - I hated that any flavor asshole put music I loved in my head. If Obama looked like Kate Bush that would ruin a bit of her music for me too.

• I survived, I got over it, I had forgot.
• The Return of ScubaDog. I'd do that here if I could. Yes, I know it looks much better on a wide screen than a square screen. Fuck it.
• Which way to heaven?
• Swarovski Kristallnacht.
• We like Ike, man.
• This week in water.
• BRT!
• Purple Line! Of course Columbia Country Club won. It's only twelve feet, but fuck the Columbia Country Club.
• I don't care.
• Laytonsville! One of my vivid memories as a six year old was news of the fire that burned down the Laytonsville fire house - I was the kid who played fireman, who would take empty shoe boxes and make fire stations out of them. There was a photo of it on the front page of the Washington Sun that I saved, and Elric's father would drive us out every weekend to look at the ruins which smoldered for two months.
• SeatSix, who wasn't born yet when Elric's father would drive us out to look at the smoldering ruins of the firehouse (and wouldn't be for another seven years), remembering Ligeti's metronome piece, posted here often, sends me metronomes.
• UPDATE! Gaddis, for those of you who do.
• On Nobel lit bettting.
• Dear _______.
• White out.

SOUNDS OF THE RESURRECTED DEAD MAN'S FOOTSTEPS, #17

Marvin Bell

1. At the Walking Dunes, Eastern Long Island
   

That a bent piece of straw made a circle in the sand.   

That it represents the true direction of the wind.

Beach grass, tousled phragmite.

Bone-white dishes, scoops and bowls, glaring without seeing.   

An accordion of creases on the downhill, sand drapery.   

The cranberry bushes biting down to survive.

And the wind’s needlework athwart the eyeless Atlantic.   

And the earless roaring in the shape of a sphere.

A baritone wind, tuned to the breath of the clouds.   

Pushing sand that made a hilly prison of time.

For wind and water both move inland.

Abrading scrub — the stunted, the dwarfed, the bantam.   

A fine sandpaper, an eraser as wide as the horizon.

Itself made of galaxies, billions against the grain.

Sand: the mortal infinitude of a single rock.

2. Walking in the Drowning Forest

Pitch pine, thirty-five-foot oaks to their necks in sand.   

That the ocean signals the lighthouse.

Gull feathers call to the fox that left them behind.   

Impressions of deer feet, dog feet and gull claws.   

The piping plover in seclusion.

Somewhere the blind owl to be healed at sunset.   

Here is artistry beyond self-flattery.

A rootworks wiser than the ball of yarn we call the brain.   

A mindless, eyeless, earless skin-sense.

To which the crab comes sideways.

With which the sunken ship shares its secrets.

From which no harness can protect one, nor anchor fix one.   

He knows, who has paddled an hour with one oar.   

He knows, who has worn the whitecaps.

Who has slipped from the ferry or leaped from the bridge.   

To be spoken of, though no one knows.

Born 116, 110 & 107 Years Ago Today

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders. Knows remembers believes a corridor in a big long garbled cold echoing building of dark red brick sootbleakened by more chimneys than its own, set in a grassless cinderstrewnpacked compound surrounded by smoking factory purlieus and enclosed by ten food steel-and-wire fence like a penitentiary or a zoo, where in random erratic surges, with sparrowlike childtrebling, orphans in identical and uniform blue denim in and out of remembering but in knowing constant in the bleak walls, the bleak windows where in rain soot from the yearly adjacenting chimneys streaked like black tears.

William Faulker, Light in August.

Mark Rothko born 110 years ago today. And one more piece of Shostakovich, born 107 years ago today.

A Beautiful Cacaphony Flutters in the Brightness of the Dead Calm as True Objects Lost in the Politeness Fill the Grail of a New Primitive

• Dmitri Shastokovich was born 107 years ago today. High Egoslavian Holy Day. I don't play the Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game with composers, though if I did Shostakovich would have a permanent seat.
• You're stupid, therefore I'm smart, QED.
• I'm told an unprincipled elitish asshole is an ambitious hypocrite who cares only for his own political fortune, goddamn the health of the nation if necessary. Oh my.
• And now that bet is paid off, G.
• Robert Reich, Inequality's Intellectual Fraudster.
• Dear James Goodale: the culture of lying is a feature, not a bug.
• I am snubbed again.
• Deleuze, for those of you who do, or: Life and the writer again.
• Prunella's latest playlist.
• Alcohol + syndrome + painting.
• The argument over Coetzee.
• On hating Mumford & Sons. You could play me a mega-big Mumford & Sons song, I've no doubt heard it, I couldn't identify it. I have heard what the act is and have heard the hate.
• The dress code of Mumford & Sons.
• Mingus.
• Gaddis's letters. He's America's best unknown writer?

TRIPTYCH FOR BELIEVERS

Richard Tagett

I

Hung up on body parts in the particulate daylight, you step out of a Beckett play to find yourself in a memory resisting itself, as meat hits the fan so to speak against the white blanket of the grainy void. You never know where it’s going, the body, the boy swathed in bullets with those black eyes pissing a letter-opener in the desert mud near a disabled Mercedes. When things enter the room you think bazooka and check your hat. A puddle of warm ice-cream in anticipation. Here’s where Coney Island drops like a discarded napkin and you can’t go home again. Mucous brimming the banks, a cake of dust in the shape of a rocking chair ticking away. But soon it will snow as exquisite dogs languish from inside a sandwich tied to a parachute. No time for ballads, the table is set.

II

Light solidifies in cells, the keeper of lost keys. They don’t belong to anyone, the keys. Playing the game backwards reveals nothing a blind child could not guess by the hairs on his arm. The lips on old men are lockboxes in the terminal of no-knowing without gratitude for the despair of angels. You have to suffer, you have to fill up in order to implode, to be recognized for the necessities of commerce. They unhinge, finally, the doors you walk through into phantom stairwells in telephonic hum smelling of wet coal and doll’s hair. Precipitous adjectives gush from a cracked faucet in the chancellery restroom. Someone is stifling laughter from underneath a card table where an electric utility had fallen from his sleeve. They say that trussed birds derive no pleasure from the music of mangled wagons and that gas seeps like a well-kept secret imperiling dust mites in the spleens of hooded maidens locked away from the light. Everything is descending, even the scholarship of the ancient adverbs. Mouths twist into almonds and you wonder how the noise can drown itself out with nothing but nouns and dinner plates and gallows, with history a hiccup waiting to happen.

III

The music is an absence of colliding masses. You can cut your feet on the proverbial and be too close to hear it, the other music, the suffocation of things that can’t fly. A beautiful cacophony flutters in the brightness of dead calm as true objects lost in the politeness of daylight fill the grail of a new primitive. You choke on little candles and all through the night your legs cramp in the sweat of the moonlight. For no good reason a tenderness of geese is billowing in the curtains, as holes in the face open and close and paper scorches sky with futile encryption. Those armchairs foundering in the scum of the surf. Deafness craving disaster green in the spine, knowing the cocktail party’s over. Now it’s all red and your lips are trembling in believability, but it’s only a flickering image in the dark quadrant of your eye bending the light as they mow the daisies under the stars, for no good reason.

Speaker Holds Up the Talks Held Last

• Sonic Youth is no more, doesn't mean there's no new Kim Gordon music. Downloaded Body/Head yesterday, you should today.
• When the state floods the zone reform is dead.
• Metadata = surveillance.
• Cliff notes for a pile-on.
• Samantha Powers has a sad.
• The answer is no. What will save the university are bogus masters and certificate programs awarded for the students' checks clearing, or at least that what provosts are betting on. And yes, the provosts have a different definition of what saving the university is than you or me.
• How different is de Blasio?
• My future hell.
• Blimp hovers over Frederick!
• Silicon and surveillance. Another review of Pynchon's Bleeding Edge that I'm bookmarking here to read after I've finished the novel. Halfway, it's OK, I'd be lying if I said it was love.
• The Ideal English Major (h/t wood s lot)
• The boy with spirograph eyes.
• RIP Alvaro Mutis. I cannot recommend the novellas of Maqroll highly enough. I've two extra copies, who wants one?
• UPDATE! Here's on obit from The Guardian.
• Quick question.
• Love Song.
• Tomorrow is a High Egoslavian Holy Day. Get your Shostakovich request in soon. Or not.

THE COUNTRY AUTUMNS

Clark Coolidge

But it could not be brought to see what it

could be brought. And the leaves are

away again, teamed. A parent at the

last and a parent in the middle. And

as stones I thought it right.

Two plates, and on the other side all the

forest pieces. The clock says stay.

The books lower the earth, and in gardens

flat stones spin. The volume was of waiting.

Today is today, until the preposition taken up.

Next to the tree sways.

The sky in pieces the leaves part the

leaves piece together. To and from a hand

given all directions. The bark comes from

below. Takes from the books of the moves under

the sky. Speaker holds up the talks held last.

Motors the dust and the yellow syllables.

A slant on which was never here or

only partly.

Born 87 Years Ago Today, 107 Years Ago Wednesday, 68 Years Ago Thursday

This is to note I did not forget that John Coltrane was born 87 years ago today. What I did forget was to ask Hamster for his playlist more than 24 hours in advance; I gave him fifteen minutes after he'd already got to work, so my fault.

 





I should mention there are two Egoslavian Holy Days imminent, Shostakovich's birthday Wednesday, Bryan Ferry's Thursday, so if you've requests get them to me or, alternatively, not.

Watchable but Not Worth Watching

The Calico Cat Stretches Her Long Body Out Across the Top of My Computer Monitor, Yawning, Its Little Primitive Head a Cave of Possibility

• Nick Cave is 56 today, and that's this shitty blog's Theme Song Six and the Offical Bleggalgazing Anthem.
• Fourteen Nick Cave collaborations.
• Re: last nights post, for the record, I think the pattern of Napoleon's disappearing and the activation and success of the Napoleon Alert System is related to good weather, when there is a string of nice days for a cat, not hot, not cold, not wet, not scary, he roams. If the days string together we don't see him for days, after seven, six, five days I activate the alert, the changeability of weather running the about circuit. It was the thunderstorms and change in barometer that brought Napoleon home yesterday, not the Napoleon Alert System. I've not proof of the first nor proof against the second, mind.
• In defense of the humanities.
• Someone in the Washington Post said today what I said last Tuesday about the Navy Yard shootings (I'm not going to make you link back anymore, I know you don't link back, I said Navy Yard shootings, old news by Thursday except to those directly and secondarily affected, whose pain I in no means seek to minimalize).
• Dying for control: an exhausted culture, founded on psychological manipulation.
• What if the kleptocracy wants a default?
• Large predictions in history.
• Digestive apparatus of Babylon.
• Why is Canada so boring?
• Concrete Islands/Interstitial Sublime.
• New Inquiry's Sunday readings.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekend links.
• Hart Crane: general aims and theories.
• Peaches Shuttleworth has arrived!
• Dancing Kafka.
• How well does contemporary fiction address radical politics?

• SeatSix, who I love like a brother, is a big Concrete Blonde fan, today is Johnette Napolitano's birthday, SeatSix sends a playlist. I like most of the songs, really like a couple, really hate Joey.
• God is a Bullet.
• Take Me Home.
• Everybody Knows.
• Mexican Moon.
• Scene of a Perfect Crime.
• Someday.
• Someday (Letterman).
• When I Was a Fool.
• Dance Along the Edge.
• Joey, requested, would be here if I played Joey on this shitty blog, I won't play Joey here even for a brother.
• Lullaby.
• Darkening of the Light.
• Days and Days.
• Caroline.
• Tomorrow Wendy.
• As always, playlists are welcome whether for birthdays or any occasion. As always, feel free to Bartleby me.
• New Mazzy Star video! They are playing Silver Spring the Monday night before Thanksgiving, The Fillmore, $37.50, anyone? As always, feel free to Bartleby me.
• Live Ubu from 1980! Includes Thomas singing Oklahoma.

ZEN LIVING

Dick Allen

Birdsongs that sound like the steady determined tapping

of a shoemaker's hammer,

or of a sculptor making tiny ball-peen dents in a silver plate,

wake me this morning. Is it possible the world itself can be happy? The calico cat

stretches her long body out across the top of my computer monitor,

yawning, its little primitive head a cave of possibility.

And I'm ready again

to try and see accidents, the over and over patterns

of double-slit experiments a billionfold

repeated before me. If I had great patience,

I could try to count the poplar, birch and oak

leaves in their shifting welter outside my bedroom window

or the almost infinitesimal trails of thought that flash and flash

everywhere, as if decaying particles inside a bubble chamber,

windshield raindrops, lake ripples. However,

instead I go to fry some bacon, crack two eggs

into the cast-iron skillet that's even older than this house,

and on the calendar (each month another oriental fan

where the climbing solitary is dwarfed . . . or on dark blue oceans

minuscular fishing boats bob beneath gigantic waves)

X out the days, including those I've forgotten.

I Don't Know What It Is but There's Definitely Something Going On Upstairs

Most importantly, with always astonished celebration, I deactivate the Napoleon Alert System, he's home, happy. It has worked every time so far (see how I couched that), within 24 hours, sometimes less than 12, Earthgirl can vouch, though she can't vouch though I can it's the deactivation post and praise to Cat God that pleases Cat God most. Or at least me too most, fine metaphors abounding. Also, forgive me, I love Nick Cave's music, tomorrow's his birthday, if you have requests get them in please.

What Is Behind It? - Space, Plenty of Empty Space. And Who Is Talking Now? - A Man Asleep Under His Hat.

That's the photo I wanted to post the other day but pulled down because I fucked up the coding and photos displayed differently than before. It's looking east from Grove Church Road, Martinsburg Ohio, between Sycamore and Deal Rds, at 7:45 Sunday morning September 15, 2013 just after we'd abandoned our daughter at college. As I've written dozens of times, for over two years now I've been unable to change anything at this blog that requires the use of the Apply to Template button: I can't change colors, fonts, font sizes, layout, column widths, etc. Until I accidentally deleted a <div> code in a post earlier this week and ignored Blogger's warning and pushed publish anyway, when I posted photos wider than the center column the photos bled over the right blogroll, but since I fucked up the blogroll now lays over the photos. Laid. Fuck that, fuck it, fuck this. Right blogroll has been moved to left blogroll. The cemetery and soccer blogrolls have been killed. The number of blogs displaying in each individual blogroll has been reduced to the ten most recently updated. Since fewer and fewer people are updating their blogs you may not even notice even if you are one of the few who link out from the page, and if you are you can always click the Show All button at the bottom of each blogroll. My apologies for the inconvenience, but I was choking here between the two columns. Also, it's been five days since we've seen him, I usually wait a week, but Earthgirl has asked me to activate the Napoleon Alert System.

• Another reason for the change, an unimpeded signal.
• Multiplying in a column M by F.
• And youtubes will be bigger too.
• Neoliberalism depends upon and rewards one form of neurosis. 
• Grand Theft Auto and the extinction of being.
• All linkedin and nowhere to go.
• Krugman's obamapostasy will never be ready. Last time. Call me when Krugman writes a column asking why Democrats/Obama peg their shittiness to GOP shittiness. He knows why.
• Obama's "I am not a crook," moment.
• On the Ayn Rand apostle who called Lloyd Blankenfeld holier than Mother Teresa.
• I'm 80 pages into Bleeding Edge and more than meh, but not by much. I haven't read that review yet, btw, or any review (I want to read the book first) though I did read Kakutani's, I knew she'd hate it, knew she'd misread it.
• Psalm to be read with closed eyes.
• Breakfast with Thom Gunn.
• Bright day.
• Elliot Carter's Changes.
• Was going to post two more fever songs - I'm fine, this turned out to be, so far, fingers crossed, an intense but only 48 hour drive-by cold - this first song, serendipitously, posted here hours before SeatSix sent me a playlist in the middle of the night for Johnette Napolitano for her birthday tomorrow, he being a HUGE Concrete Blonde fan. I like, not love, but do love this song, especially with a 103 degree fever. Longtimers, hearing the below Concrete Blonde song, can probably guess what song's below the poem.

TAPESTRY

Charles Simic

It hangs from heaven to earth.

There are trees in it, cities, rivers,   

small pigs and moons. In one corner

the snow falling over a charging cavalry,   

in another women are planting rice.

You can also see:

a chicken carried off by a fox,

a naked couple on their wedding night,

a column of smoke,

an evil-eyed woman spitting into a pail of milk.

What is behind it?

—Space, plenty of empty space.

And who is talking now?

—A man asleep under his hat.

What happens when he wakes up?

—He’ll go into a barbershop.

They’ll shave his beard, nose, ears, and hair,   

To make him look like everyone else.

the vet who dissected the priest’s dog believes that the cause of death was probably a stone on the head

   

• Friend :-P asked me if I remembered the band Insides, especially their album Euphoria, and I had a vague memory of the name but had forgotten the music, so thanks for reminding me!
• Wanted to bump a photo by Earthgirl, this past Sunday morning at 7:45 on Grove Church Road between Sycamore and Deal Roads, Martinsburg Ohio, but no doubt - and I mean no doubt - user error fucked up something here design-wise (it involved a missing div-tag, I think), and oh well, one step-back for every one step-forward plus a stumble toward Fuck It and Fuck This.
• When I typed div-tag in this and the above sentence and blogger went to auto-save I got the blooger pink-bar of accusatory you fucked up you fucking moron. Forgave me both times.
• Is there a sense of optimism two years after Occupy? I'm sorry, but I'm a pessimist. I think a momentary braking on the overlords rush to extract the most rents possible of an increasingly burdensome citizenry might - might -  be happening now that the citizenry has noticed the brazen bloodsucking, but I see overlords poking until the living meat squealed, now is a pause for reassessment, that's all. The police will continue militarizing in the meantime.
• Jeremy Scahill interview: Jeremy Scahill, an investigative foreign correspondent whose first documentary, “Dirty Wars,” opens Friday, writes for The Nation and achieved his biggest success with “Blackwater,” a best-selling book critiquing security contractors hired by the George W. Bush administration. Neither of which keeps him from being labeled a right-wing stooge by detractors. “Most of my hate mail nowadays comes from liberals, not conservatives,” he said. 
• Scahill has more faith in people than I do: I don’t have any illusions about Congress changing things, but I have faith in people. If we debate about this in our society, Congress will be forced to do something about it. If we embrace assassination as a central component of our foreign policy and continue with the mentality that we can kill our way to victory — or worse, kill our way to peace — then we’re whistling past the graveyard. 
• A heart-warming letter: “Some media outlets have sensationalized the leaks to the press in a way that has called into question our motives and wrongly cast doubt on the integrity and commitment of the extraordinary people who work here at NSA/CSS—your loved one(s),” the letter suggests. “It has been discouraging to see how our Agency frequently has been portrayed in the news as more of a rogue element than a national treasure.” 
• But yes, the NSA will weather the storm, quite nicely in fact.
• A criminal -justice journalism manifesto. 

   

• Best instant pun of yesterday: I retweeted this tweet which read The Silver Line is nearing completion, but won't take passengers until February and within seconds blogbud Philip tweeted back: Not every silver line has a crowd.
• This week in water. 
• White Oak! Hamster emails: This is in Ol’ Hamster’s back yard. Well, the strip shopping center where the dude squeezed off 8-9 shots lies between this and Percontee Land. That undeveloped land was  great to (illegally) walk through, especially if it was snowing. I guess this will transition the local traffic from Percontee cement mixers and dump truck to your average Beltway-Type sprawl traffic. It’s the new Silicon Valley! Can’t wait!!
• You have pissed your life. 
• The evolution of useless things.
• Frank O'Hara, for those of us who do.
• I confess I've never heard of Icelandic novelist/poet Sjón. It's nice to have access to a university library stacks. I just recalled a book from Mr Alarum.
• A twelve-hour blind date w/Dostoyevsky.
• Heninen/Hakola/Kurtag/Koshinen: String Quartets. 

   
stones

Sjón

i’ve been hit on the head by a stone – my ex-wife has been hit on the head
by a stone in my presence – my old school friend has been hit on the head
by a stone – at noon today i saw a colleague hit on the head
by a stone – i saw a cat avoid a stone that was aimed straight at
its head – i saw a stone come through the kitchen window and land on
the cook’s head – i saw a bull die within quarter of an hour of
being hit on the head by a stone – the vet who dissected the priest’s dog
believes that the cause of death was probably a stone on
the head – the eldest son of a peasant on the farm where i grew up was hit on
the head by a stone and died – i encountered four stones in the main street yester-
day and three the day before – i am corresponding with members of the mineralogical
society in london – when they read my reports of
icelandic stones they doubt that they would survive one day in
reykjavík – i replied that I’m still hanging on so educated
men like them ought to be safe here too

For Though He Cannot Fly, He Is an Excellent Clamberer, or: What to Do with a 102 Degree Fever

JUBILATE AGNO

Christopher Smart

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon
**his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having considered God and himself he will consider his neighbor.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day's work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness
**he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction if he is well-fed, neither will he spit
**without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness when God tells him he's a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For every house is incomplete without him, and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.
For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of
**the Children of Israel from Egypt.
For every family had one cat at least in the bag.
For the English Cats are the best in Europe.
For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped.
For the dexterity of his defense is an instance of the love of God
**to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For he is of the Lord's poor, and so indeed is he called by benevolence
**perpetually—Poor Jeoffry! poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat.
For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better.
For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat.
For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in music.
For he is docile and can learn certain things.
For he can sit up with gravity, which is patience upon approbation.
For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment.
For he can jump over a stick, which is patience upon proof positive.
For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.
For he can jump from an eminence into his master's bosom.
For he can catch the cork and toss it again.
For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.
For the former is afraid of detection.
For the latter refuses the charge.
For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.
For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.
For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services.
For he killed the Icneumon rat, very pernicious by land.
For his ears are so acute that they sting again.
For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.
For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.
For I perceived God's light about him both wax and fire.
For the electrical fire is the spiritual substance which God sends from heaven
**to sustain the bodies both of man and beast.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, though he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.






FEVER 103

Sylvia Plath

Pure? What does it mean?

The tongues of hell

Are dull, dull as the triple

Tongues of dull, fat Cerberus

Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable

Of licking clean

The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin.

The tinder cries.

The indelible smell

Of a snuffed candle!

Love, love, the low smokes roll

From me like Isadora’s scarves, I’m in a fright

One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel,

Such yellow sullen smokes

Make their own element. They will not rise,

But trundle round the globe

Choking the aged and the meek,

The weak

Hothouse baby in its crib,

The ghastly orchid

Hanging its hanging garden in the air,

Devilish leopard!

Radiation turned it white

And killed it in an hour.

Greasing the bodies of adulterers

Like Hiroshima ash and eating in.

The sin. The sin.

Darling, all night

I have been flickering, off, on, off, on.

The sheets grow heavy as a lecher’s kiss.

Three days. Three nights.

Lemon water, chicken

Water, water make me retch.

I am too pure for you or anyone.

Your body

Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern——

My head a moon

Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin

Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.

Does not my heat astound you! And my light!

All by myself I am a huge camellia

Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush.

I think I am going up,

I think I may rise——

The beads of hot metal fly, and I love, I

Am a pure acetylene

Virgin

Attended by roses,

By kisses, by cherubim,

By whatever these pink things mean!

Not you, nor him

Nor him, nor him

(My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats)——

To Paradise.

INSECT LIFE OF FLORIDA

Lynda Hull

In those days I thought their endless thrum

   was the great wheel that turned the days, the nights.

      In the throats of hibiscus and oleander

I’d see them clustered yellow, blue, their shells

   enameled hard as the sky before the rain.

      All that summer, my second, from city

to city my young father drove the black coupe

   through humid mornings I’d wake to like fever

      parceled between luggage and sample goods.

Afternoons, showers drummed the roof,

   my parents silent for hours. Even then I knew

      something of love was cruel, was distant.

Mother leaned over the seat to me, the orchid

   Father’d pinned in her hair shriveled

      to a purple fist. A necklace of shells

coiled her throat, moving a little as she

   murmured of alligators that float the rivers

      able to swallow a child whole, of mosquitoes

whose bite would make you sleep a thousand years.

   And always the trance of blacktop shimmering

      through swamps with names like incantations—

Okeefenokee, where Father held my hand

   and pointed to an egret’s flight unfolding

      white above swamp reeds that sang with insects

until I was lost, until I was part

   of the singing, their thousand wings gauze

      on my body, tattooing my skin.

Father rocked me later by the water,

   the motel balcony, singing calypso

      with the Jamaican radio. The lyrics

a net over the sea, its lesson

   of desire and repetition. Lizards flashed

      over his shoes, over the rail

where the citronella burned merging our

   shadows—Father’s face floating over mine

      in the black changing sound

of night, the enormous Florida night,

   metallic with cicadas, musical

      and dangerous as the human heart.

The Word Being a Box with Four of Its Corners Hidden

It is September 17, 2013, 7:48 PM EDT as I type this sentence and Blogger has eaten the side-columns here and at the back-up blog. Should the columns be back eventually I hope you saw Green Blog uncluttered, wide, deep, not claustrophobic. If I was able to widen the middle column it would look even better side-columnless, but Blooger's apply to template button at Green Blog hasn't worked in two years so I can't. Oh well. This past summer the domain name renewal hassle freaked me out, pissed me off, it's why there's a back-up blog, I told myself, here, there, everywhere in life but me and mine, Jeff, learn Fuck It, learn Fuck This. I was indoctrinated to think Fuck It and Fuck This are cowardly quitting, an abdication of the moral imperative that one must always give a fuck (with it's equally indoctrinated rules of what one must always give a fuck about and how that fuck is to be administered). Look, here's the shirt I'm wearing as I type this:

I haven't been to a home game in months, for more than a decade until this season I never missed a home game unless impossible to miss for inescapable obligations both pleasurable and onerous, it was chilly in DC this morning, it was the first long-sleeve teeshirt I could find. It would help the case of Fuck It and Fuck This if United wasn't historically horrible, my Fuck It and Fuck This more credible if United had 56 points out of 28 games instead of 15 points of 28 games. United is asking me to renew my season tickets, I still feel morally compelled to own them and not go to games next year and every year until they're good again and then not renew them, so by no means am I saying I am one with Fuck It and Fuck This. Still, not freaking out about the disappearing side-columns encourages me, though I'm aware redirecting is not damming, nor not damning true damming.

• Since I'm too lazy to blog for him, Landru posts his favorite William Carlos Williams poem along with accompanying work of art.
• The columns on the Green Blog were back this morning, the column at the back-up place is still missing in action.
• Blooger has, however, fucked with the image gadget which is why Cropped Momcat is bigger than it was before and seems to be fucking with margins and is fucking with image gadgets in the side-columns. Fuck it.
• Cheap thrills: Bacevich eviscerates Brooks.
• The trouble with normal.
• Digital grotesque.
• How to pronounce Bethesda?
• MCPS, for those of us married to teachers and our wives.
• I grew up 200 yards from the B&O tracks (I now live a quarter mile from what are now CSX tracks) and trains in the middle of the night are a privilege, not a burden.
• Silently and very fast.
• Brenda Hillman reading.
• Partita for Sparrows.
• She's on the National Book Award long list.
• Prunella's latest playlist.

GLACIAL ERRATICS

Brenda Hillman

The last ice age had been caused by a wobble.

After it passed they made houses from stars;

Visitors would peer in

And see the tongs not slipping,

Roomsized pebbles having been moved far.

It’s like this more

When we speak than when we write;

Loving thus we have been

Loved by ground,

The word being

A box with four of its corners hidden;

Everything else is round.

When the Loud Eaves Rattle as with Waves Above Me Blue at the Prow of My Desire, or: Born One Hundred Thirty Years Ago Today

I mentioned I had never played my Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game with poets when I wrote John Ashbery's birthday post this past July and after much thought why I don't I've discovered it's simply because I always did it with music and musicians and can't stop though it's sillyassedness I celebrate and I never did it with poets - there was no Casey Kasem countdown show of poets on Saturdays, no poets Top Ten in the back of Rolling Stone - and don't want to start now. Still, if I was to create an inner circle of contenders for a Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game of Poets, William Carlos Williams would be in it.


TRACT

I will teach you          my townspeople

how to perform          a funeral —

for you have it          over a troop

of artists—

unless one should          scour the world —

you have the ground sense          necessary.

See! the hearse leads.

I begin with          a design for a hearse.

For Christ's sake          not black —

nor white either —          and not polished!

Let it be weathered —          like a farm wagon —

with gilt wheels          (this could be

applied fresh          at small expense)

or no wheels at all:

a rough dray to          drag over the ground.

Knock the glass out!

My God-glass,          my townspeople!

For what purpose?          Is it for the dead

to look out or          for us to see

how well he is housed          or to see

the flowers or          the lack of them —

or what?

To keep the rain          and snow from him?

He will have a          heavier rain soon:

pebbles and dirt          and what not.

Let there be no glass —

and no upholstery          phew!

and no little          brass rollers

and small easy wheels          on the bottom —

my townspeople          what are you thinking of?

A rough          plain hearse then

with gilt wheels          and no top at all.

On this          the coffin lies

by its own weight.

                  No wreathes please —

especially no          hot house flowers.

Some common memento          is better,

something he prized          and is known by:

his old clothes —          a few books perhaps —

God knows what!          You realize

how we are          about these things

my townspeople —

something will be found —          anything

even flowers          if he had come to that.

So much for          the hearse.

For heaven's sake though          see to the driver!

Take off          the silk hat! In fact

that's no place          at all for him —

up there          unceremoniously

dragging our friend out          to his own dignity!

Bring him down —          bring him down!

Low and inconspicuous!          I'd not have him ride

on the wagon at all —          damn him —

the undertaker's          understrapper!

Let him hold          the reins

and walk          at the side

and inconspicuously          too!

Then briefly          as to yourselves:

Walk behind —          as they do in France,

seventh class, or          if you ride

Hell take curtains!          Go with some show

of inconvenience;          sit openly —

to the weather          as to grief.

Or do you think          you can shut grief in?

What — from us?          We who have perhaps

nothing to lose?          Share with us

share with us —          it will be money

in your pockets.

                              Go now

I think you are          ready. 

THE MIND'S GAME

If a man can say of his life or
any moment of his life, There is
nothing more to be desired! his state
becomes like that told in the famous
double sonnet--but without the
sonnet’s restrictions. Let him go look
at the river flowing or the bank
of late flowers, there will be one
small fly still among the petals
in whose gauzy wings raised above
its back a rainbow shines. The world
to him is radiant and even the fact
of poverty is wholly without despair.

So it seems until these rouse
to him pictures of the systematically
starved--for a purpose, at the mind’s
proposal. What good then the
light winged fly, the flower or
the river--too foul to drink of or
even to bathe in? The 90 story building
beyond the ocean that a rocket
will span for destruction in a matter
of minutes but will not
bring him, in a century, food or
relief of any sort from his suffering.

The world too much with us? Rot!
the world is not half enough with us--
the rot of a potato with
a healthy skin, a rot that is
never revealed till we are about to
eat--and it revolts us. Beauty?
Beauty should make us paupers,
should blind us, rob us--for it
does not feed the sufferer but makes
his suffering a fly-blown putrescence
and ourselves decay--unless
the ecstasy be general.


POSTLUDE

Now that I have cooled to you

Let there be gold of tarnished masonry,

Temples soothed by the sun to ruin   

That sleep utterly.

Give me hand for the dances,            

Ripples at Philae, in and out,         

And lips, my Lesbian,         

Wall flowers that once were flame.         

Your hair is my Carthage         

And my arms the bow,         

And our words arrows         

To shoot the stars         

Who from that misty sea         

Swarm to destroy us.         

But you there beside me—         

Oh how shall I defy you,         

Who wound me in the night         

With breasts shining         

Like Venus and like Mars?         

The night that is shouting Jason         

When the loud eaves rattle         

As with waves above me         

Blue at the prow of my desire.