A clarification: I was baiting my friends who are Breaking Bad advocates, especially the ones who won't shut up about the show. I've no doubt that once, had I watched, I would have quickly become enraptured in the show, I'd watch the five seasons over the course of a few days then watch it again and then torment you here regularly with sillyass Breaking Bad allusions to signify the religiosity of my adoration. It's what I do. Did you see the Robert Pollard post yesterday? I've only so many hours and days and so many Gods to worship.
Fewer now though, so this yodel again: Tonight in Salt Lake City DC United plays Salt Lake for a major trophy (the second most important trophy in professional club soccer in the US) with a trip to CONCACAF's version of the Champions League on the line and I don't care. I couldn't watch it if I cared - it's on a network that was dropped by most cable companies and refuses to allow streaming - unless I went to a bar in Arlington or Capital Hill, but I don't care. As I type this Monday evening, the latest shutdown kabuki ticks towards kaboom (and in this parenthesis it's Tuesday morning and kaboom happened and I don't care) and I don't care, not only don't care but don't care I don't care. I care about fewer and fewer things that I used to eagerly spend damn on. Part of me wonders if I'm not afraid that I'd become a zealot of Breaking Bad but that I wouldn't.
- The sparks of rebellion?
- The deeper poison of the NSA revelations?
- Fall colors, climate change, planetary governance.
- The ideology of incremental improvement.
- The in/visibility of peace.
- The history of fear, continued.
- Liberosis.
- Nobel countdown: Jon Fosse?
- Weldon Kees, for those of you who do and those of you who should.
- Thomas Lux, for those of you who do and those of you who should.
- Moreover.
- Kim Gordon interview.
- A playlist from Greyhoos.
AS YOU NEVER BOTHERED TO RETURN MY CALL
August Kleinzahler
What I had wanted was to be chaste,
sober and uncomfortable
for a sprawling episode on a beach somewhere
dirty, perennially out of fashion;
let the smell of cocoa butter drive deep memory wild
as the sun went down, a parti-colored blur,
examined through a bottle of pop
some kid gave up on only half-way through
and left to go warm in the sand.
The train ride would be long and hot,
and you, you've had it with men.
Me . . .
I'm sickened by the pronoun.
Tenderness seems as far away as Sioux City
and besides, it would have cost too much.
But you should have called,
if only since a preposterous little episode like this
is just the stuff to scare off extra friends,
like soaking their laps with corrosive fizz.
And us . . .
What an impertinence, us.
We could have played gin rummy and taken a stroll
into town or along the boardwalk, maybe,
with dear old Godzilla,
the first one, the best one, the 1954 one,
reprising his role this one last time, raising himself up
over the horizon at dusk,
and hurrying us to a place we never would have
dreamt of
going.
