I haven't posted any of Earthgirl's art in awhile, have a recent piece. I haven't posted any of Planet's art in a while, here have this:
I haven't posted any of my stuff here or the other place recently. I haven't wanted to. I'm actually not unhappy with recent work, just haven't wanted to post it and - this is the weird part - beyond this sentence haven't wanted to post what I've written about why I don't want to post it here here. Though of course I have, just not directly. Have an old photo of mine of Rosie in a tunnel:
- Liberals should stop and frisk Bill de Blasio. Also, Charlie's leaving the google collective for an outpost in the WordPress quadrant, so rebookmark if you're so inclined.
- Fuck these google guys.
- This week in water.
- I haven't followed MLS this year, not surprising considering my United withdrawal, but hearing that Gax and Metros and that fucking lime green team in Seattle have all crashed out of MLS's stupidass playoffs pleases me.
- Literature without style.
- Ashbery and the Pragmatist Sublime.
- The summation of Ashbery's great theme (or, more precisely, my favorite of Ashbery's themes) is this line from the poem below (the most posted poem, I'd bet, on this shitty blog): It hurts, this wanting to give a dimension/To life when life is precisely that dimension.
- Posted because it's the first time I've thought about or seen mentioned James Merrill in a decade. He never sang to me, but once he was a big deal.
- Greyhoos' excellent Lou Reed post.
- Joni Mitchell turned 70 yesterday. Here's a cascade. I like her music a lot but don't love it unto a Holy Day.
- Yoko Ono is a bad dancer.
- Have a pop song! features the late Faye Hunter (of Let's Active fame) recorded in the months before her recent death:
VAUCANSON
John Ashbery
It was snowing as he wrote.
In the gray room he felt relaxed and singular,
But no one, of course, ever trusts these moods.
There had to be understanding to it.
Why, though? That always happens anyway,
And who gets the credit for it? Not what is understood,
Presumably, and it diminishes us
In our getting to know it.
As trees come to know a storm
Until it passes and light falls anew
Unevenly, on all the muttering kinship:
Things with things, persons with objects,
Ideas with people or ideas.
It hurts, this wanting to give a dimension
To life when life is precisely that dimension.
We are creatures, therefore we walk and talk
And people come up to us, or listen
And then move away.
Music fills the spaces
Where figures are pulled to the edges,
And it can only say something.
Sinews are loosened then,
The mind begins to think good thoughts.
Ah, this sun must be good:
Doing a number, completing its trilogy.
Life must be back there. You hid it
So no one could find it
And now you can't remember where.
But if one were to invent being a child again
It might just come close enough to being a living relic
To save this thing, save it from embarrassment
By ringing down the curtain,
And for a few seconds no one would notice.
The ending would seem perfect.
No feelings to dismay,
No tragic sleep to wake from in a fit
Of passionate guilt, only the warm sunlight
That slides easily down shoulders
To the soft, melting heart.
