There was a time when every post on this blog had a Fleabus photo. Here's an article about Maryland Tea Partiers wanting western Maryland to secede from Maryland. I can think of six primary and dozens of secondary snarkassholistic responses (including, wearily, this one) to bump the story, but fuck that. As Mr Abonilox told me last night as we discussed our respective cases of damnlessness, the "new zeitgeist is mental exhaustion resulting in passive acceptance of the fucked-uppedness of everything." And yes, as Jim noted yesterday in comments, "This doesn't feel like the standard aarglebaargle©®. Feels like something's afoot: change?" Here? Yes, no, I don't know. Earthgirl and Planet and me are fine, and these are the hardest weeks of work of the year and they always beat the fuck out of my mood, but here, and by extension the urge to wear colors and waive flags and participate in rituals like the indoctrinated bee I am? Yes, no, I don't know. I know I'm trying to write about it, so far twenty or so rejected first drafts. I tried link-farming last night - it's the links that drive the traffic here, the angrier and clusterfuckier the links the greater the traffic - but that sucked so I decided to write about why greater traffic here means something to me though suddenly, surprisingly, not so much, decided fuck that too, read 150 pages of Coover's Origin of the Brunists which I'm rereading in anticipation of the release of the sequel, best, most focused novel-reading in what seems like years. I put the book down when my eyes insisted, thought about writing about reading well, thought fuck that too. Strange days. More later, or not. Will I write about things tonight? Nope! tonight with Earthgirl and Hamster and Mr Alarum and Richard I'm seeing Pere Ubu, and while I'm not as excited as once I would have been I still have a pulse so at least I know my case of damnlessness isn't thoroughly comprehensive.
THE RAIN
Robert Creeley
All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.
What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it
that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me
something other than this,
something not so insistent—
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.
Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out
of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.
