Sand and Snow-Capped Waves

Indulge the aargh and motherfucking vile mood by deploying this in multiple guises or lazyass blogging with lazyass snow theme. Best lazyass blogging and lazyass snow theme. Aargh and motherfucking vile mood later, or not, and probably not here but there. No, the poem will not be Stevens' Snowman, I know you think you know how I think, this sentence proves you're only part right. Click tags Beefheart, Kees, Galaxie 500 for more of each.

Also too, activating the Momcat Alert System. We haven't seen her since the storm.

UPDATE! Drove Earthgirl's car to shop for service, restocked at Safeway, just got home, deactivating the Momcat Alert System, it's uncanny and spooky how it works, it's a good thing.

UPDATE! That reduces some of the aargh, as does getting the car to shop, but can't concentrate to read either Deronda or Miss MacIntosh or more Kees, so have last night's and now's linkages:

• Computer-based sound poetry.
• That helped the aargh. A lot. 
• Against likeability. Some of the day's aargh is related.
• Last RIP call for Stuart Hall.  
• It's not our fault if it's a perfect storm. 
• We are trained to be in constant fear. 
• Neoliberalism's war on higher education. Some of the day's aargh is related - a bunch, actually - but must not write about employer, Complicit Bastard's Rule Number One.
• Josipovici and Delany, for those of you who do one or the other or both.
• Someone else read Maqroll this year. I've one extra copy left.
• Prunella's latest playlist.

LAND'S END

Weldon Kees

A day all blue and white, and we

Came out of woods to sand

And snow-capped waves. The sea

Rose with us as we walked, the land

Built dunes, a lighthouse, and a sky of gulls.

Here where I built my life ten years ago,

The day breaks gray and cold;

And brown surf, muddying the shore,

Deposits fish-heads, sewage, rusted tin.

Children and men break bottles on the stones.

Beyond the lighthouse, black against the sky,

Two gulls are circling where the woods begin.

That's Right, the Mascara Snake, Fast and Bulbous

From his show today, Fabio's Beefheart birthday celebration playlist continues below the fold. Always with the Beefheart, me. I promise this is the last Beefheart I post until the next time I post Beefheart.





*



*


*

Born Seventy-Three Years Ago Today

Love love love. Have a documentary. Please use the tag Beefheart to get more songs, stuff I've said that doesn't need rephrasing again. But this: I take My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game stupidly seriously (but not seriously stupidly). It started early: I remember getting into a slapfight with fellow seven year old Nadine Kneidler in 1966 when I insisted The Monkees were better than The Beatles and Mickey Dolenz a better songwriter than John Lennon. I was half right. So this: I've never included Beefheart - who rates a High Egoslavian Holy Day - in My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game. One of the three permanent members, David Thomas (he's over in the left column, Theme Song Two), wouldn't be the musician he is if he'd not heard Beefheart. I listen to Beefheart as much if not more than Pere Ubu/Thomas and the two other permanent members, Kate Bush and Guided by Voices/Robert Pollard, and I listen to Beefheart at least as much if not more than Yo La Tengo and Sonic Youth and Sea & Cake and Tindersticks and Lambchop and Roxy Music and The Fall and The Delgados and Juliana Barwick and Throbbing Gristle and Nurse with Wound and  XTC (well, maybe not XTC, I'm always listening to XTC) and the several hundred other members of the Inner-Most Circle of Rotating Act/Bands that temporarily fill (a void in me) the two non-permanent seats in My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game. I don't give Beefheart a permanent seat, I don't rotate Beefheart, he's not a participant in the game. He never has been. Is weird, I don't know why. I've a Sillyass Deserted Island Five Reasons Beefheart Isn't in My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game, only two seats permanent, and an inner-circle of dozens of reasons rotating through the three open spots. No, I'm kidding. I think about it on his birthday briefly and laugh at myself then don't think about it again during the year, a very small but still significant reason today is a High Egoslavian Holy Day. I punctuate my life with italicized and bolded landmarks, want me to tell you? You don't want to get me started on the algorithms for ranking Egoslavian Holy Days, for instance. But Beefheart.

It's Not Law but the Sprawl of Our Separate Wills that Keeps Us Flowing

Getting a start on tomorrow's High Egoslavian Holy Day.

Captain Beefhearts's 10 Commandments of Guitar-Playing:

1. Listen to the birds. That's where all the music comes from. Birds know everything about how it should sound and where that sound should come from. And watch hummingbirds. They fly really fast, but a lot of times they aren't going anywhere.
2. Your guitar is not really a guitar Your guitar is a divining rod. Use it to find spirits in the other world and bring them over. A guitar is also a fishing rod. If you're good, you'll land a big one.
3. Practice in front of a bush Wait until the moon is out, then go outside, eat a multi-grained bread and play your guitar to a bush. If the bush dosen't shake, eat another piece of bread.
4. Walk with the devil Old Delta blues players referred to guitar amplifiers as the "devil box." And they were right. You have to be an equal opportunity employer in terms of who you're bringing over from the other side. Electricity attracts devils and demons. Other instruments attract other spirits. An acoustic guitar attracts Casper. A mandolin attracts Wendy. But an electric guitar attracts Beelzebub.
5. If you're guilty of thinking, you're out If your brain is part of the process, you're missing it. You should play like a drowning man, struggling to reach shore. If you can trap that feeling, then you have something that is fur bearing.
6. Never point your guitar at anyone Your instrument has more clout than lightning. Just hit a big chord then run outside to hear it. But make sure you are not standing in an open field.
7. Always carry a church key That's your key-man clause. Like One String Sam. He's one. He was a Detroit street musician who played in the fifties on a homemade instrument. His song "I Need a Hundred Dollars" is warm pie. Another key to the church is Hubert Sumlin, Howlin' Wolf's guitar player. He just stands there like the Statue of Liberty-making you want to look up her dress the whole time to see how he's doing it.
8. Don't wipe the sweat off your instrument You need that stink on there. Then you have to get that stink onto your music.
9. Keep your guitar in a dark place When you're not playing your guitar, cover it and keep it in a dark place. If you don't play your guitar for more than a day, be sure you put a saucer of water in with it.
10. You gotta have a hood for your engine Keep that hat on. A hat is a pressure cooker. If you have a roof on your house, the hot air can't escape. Even a lima bean has to have a piece of wet paper around it to make it grow.

• Have I ever mentioned I love Captain Beefheart?
• Will there be a major announcement on My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game tomorrow? Probably not, more likely to be a clarification, but tune in anyway!
• Google is evil, he types into his blogger interface and plunges publish.
• So yes, three of this shitty blog's standard gags make-up the first three bullets of this shitty post.
• On losers. 
• Made you look.
• Google wants to live forever.
• The problem of resistance to the oligarchy.
• The unlearned lessons of American atrocities.
• Life in the panopticon.
• Forty maps that explain the world.
• Express - Tom's latest.
• I want to read Stalin Is Dead. Just ordered (from a local bookstore not an evil motherfucking oligarch's company, revolution! motherfuckers).
• 2013 - year of poetry plagiarism?
• Lobachevsky.

A PERFECT MESS

Mary Karr

I read somewhere

that if   pedestrians didn’t break traffic laws to cross

Times Square whenever and by whatever means possible,

      
the whole city

would stop, it would stop.

Cars would back up to Rhode Island,

an epic gridlock not even a cat

could thread through. It’s not law but the sprawl

of our separate wills that keeps us all flowing. Today I loved

the unprecedented gall

of the piano movers, shoving a roped-up baby grand

up Ninth Avenue before a thunderstorm.

They were a grim and hefty pair, cynical

as any day laborers. They knew what was coming,

the instrument white lacquered, the sky bulging black

as a bad water balloon and in one pinprick instant

it burst. A downpour like a fire hose.

For a few heartbeats, the whole city stalled,

paused, a heart thump, then it all went staccato.

And it was my pleasure to witness a not

insignificant miracle: in one instant every black

umbrella in Hell’s Kitchen opened on cue, everyone

still moving. It was a scene from an unwritten opera,

the sails of some vast armada.

And four old ladies interrupted their own slow progress

to accompany the piano movers.

each holding what might have once been

lace parasols over the grunting men. I passed next

the crowd of pastel ballerinas huddled

under the corner awning,

in line for an open call — stork-limbed, ankles

zigzagged with ribbon, a few passing a lit cigarette

around. The city feeds on beauty, starves

for it, breeds it. Coming home after midnight,

to my deserted block with its famously high

subway-rat count, I heard a tenor exhale pure

longing down the brick canyons, the steaming moon

opened its mouth to drink from on high ...

Annual Beefheart Memorial Post

2013 - I remembered the date as I was falling asleep last night. Forgive me, this post is a day late. Beefheart died three years ago yesterday. The news of his death, because of where I was at that moment in my life, sucker-punched me. I was quitting teams, spurting apostasies. As trite and self-absorbed as it is, the KEXP episode detailed below was a catalytic moment, listening to Beefheart at news of his death, in divesting myself of as many of the unexamined team loyalties I service as I could, can. I've more to lose than I've shed, of course, including annual memorial posts to dead favorite gods.

Anyway, I post the below - a collection of three posts from 2010 I gathered together as one post in 2011 - every year, a short streak true, but I will until I shutter this shitty blog. I haven't tried the links yet to see if they're alive, if they're not, fuck it (UPDATE! I've gone in and killed them, they were hanging the blog-loading, if you want them click back to original posts at the 1, 2, and 3), the youtubes of the songs still work. More songs for his birthday in January.

RIP, Captain Beefheart.

1/15/41 - 12/17/10
UPDATE 12/17/11: Zen Dave remembers too.

I'll post more over the weekend. No eulogy from me, I promise.

UPDATE! Another song.

UPDATE!

Please read and listen to this.


That's 1   here's   2





Another broken promise: here's my eulogy -

Whatever truths, myths, fables, lies about Beefheart's and Zappa's relationship - and I like Zappa, but I love Beefheart - in my cosmology they are bound, and it's apt that Beefheart died during Zappadan.

I love Beefheart, but I love love love Pere Ubu and all the other sounds that wouldn't exist if not for Don Van Vliet. No Beefheart, no Pere Ubu. I can't imagine.

And the uncanniness of serendipity - just as I'm falling in love again with Stanley Elkin, finishing up The Franchiser, the first novel in which he introduces his own battle with multiple sclerosis, Van Vliet's death from MS and the chance to fall in love again again.

• Goodbye, Captain.
• Captain Beefheart's innocent soul.
• Top 14 reasons why Captain Beefheart was a true American genius.
• Early performance.
• Rolling Stone obit.

3


I sent this email request yesterday morning (subject line = Beefheart) to the AM DJ of the station I listen to:

Get you to play a song or two? He's grandpa to at least half the bands you play.

All best.

No Beefheart, no return email.

Sent this email to midday host of the station I listen to:

Hi Chxryl, can I get you to play some Beefheart please, how about "Sue Egypt" off *Doc at the Radio Station* please and thanks.

I must confess, I'm shocked at how little air love Beefheart has got at KxXP. From what I can tell from looking at the playlists since the news of Beefheart's death there has been one song played (on Cole's show Friday).

I realize I'm older (by far) than many of the DJs there who may never have heard or heard of Beefheart, but half the bands and solo acts you all play are descended by some greater or lesser degree to Beefheart. Anyway, I dig the man and his music.

All best. Have a great holiday.

No song. No return email.

First, Sue Egypt:

I don't care they didn't play Beefheart - I'm old, they're young; they may know the name but not the music and don't feel comfortable playing something they've never heard; they may know the music and not like it; they may have had their sets planned out and couldn't find a good seque; whatever: I've never expected all my requests to be played; it's their show. Still, I've been listening to and interacting with and giving money to this station for a decade, these djs aren't friends by any means but they know that I'm a loyal listener. Acknowledge the motherfucking email.

I thought about bitching in a post then decided no, don't be petty, when into my mailbox came (I swear to St Benny of Olsen and will forward the time-stamped email to you if so requested):

’Tis the season. I watched A Christmas Carol with George C. Scott playing Scrooge as though it was the first time I’d heard the story, and thought, “Now there’s a great message, I’ve got to remember that!” (That guy can act!) So, now my heart is bursting with good cheer and thankfulness.

I’m thankful for KxXP listeners like Jenneviere from San Francisco, who recently wrote this to John Richards: “You routinely surprise me by seemingly reading my emotional landscape and playing music that is a direct reflection of how I'm feeling on any particular day… Without ever having met me, you, day after day, mix the soundtrack of my life, and have moved me to laugh, to cry, to dance, to sing...  I am most sincerely grateful.”

KxXP’s staff and volunteers work tirelessly to bring you these incredible music experiences. No matter where or how you listen, please support the music community that brightens your day and brings you hours of inspiration and enjoyment.

Why is it important to donate now?

Angriest year of my life. Every day a renewed apostasy, every day a replayed apostasy. I'm dumber today than yesterday. I can't see anything but angrier ahead.
   

What Was Needed Here Was Not as Much a Sharper Eye as a Higher Order Eye, a Whole Other Orb Altogether

• Yes, I know, Watford is Reginald Dwight's team, but I envy the Watford fans' joy, vaguely remember when I felt capable of it if never actually felt it.
• Well fuck me, fifteen minutes after posting the above video the copyright assholes took it down. Fine metaphors abound. I can assure you it was the greatest motherfucking youtube ever of one of the most remarkable one minutes in footballing history! Sorry you missed it.
• Best bleggalgaze ever, one I'm totally incapable of creating.
• Yes, my shitty soccer team lost over the weekend. The effort was better, the lack of talent was the same.
• Someone at Salon stole Abonilox's idea.
• Ask yourself, what kind of person wants to be a cop.
• Jamie Dimon profits!
• The ideology to end ideologies.
• Imagine Edroso's opinion had Benghazi happened on Bush's watch in which Edroso would mock the Right for not taking Benghazi as seriously as Edroso is not taking Benghazi seriously now. Verily, I'm the asshole because I think the truth lies somewhere between the inviolable doctrinal truths of the two motherfucking tribes.
• Adding, I'm the asshole to point out that had a story broke in 2007 that Bush's IRS targeted Liberal groups for special scrutiny the noise from Tribe Democrat would be equal to the current noise by Tribe Republican.
• The End of Liberalism.

• Purple Line.
• Anthony Brown is Maryland's Lt Gov, candidate for governor in 2014? Never heard of him.
• How to blog. Fine ironies abound.
• How not to blog: don't post birthday tributes to obscure dead novelists and forgotten dead stand-up comedians on gorgeous May weekends.
• New Inquiry's Sunday links.
• Maggie's weekend links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekend links.
• Anthony's links of the week.
• On kittens.
• Frank O'Hara.
• I can't speak to science fiction, whether these novels are good or not, but SciFi for Economists, for those of you who do SciFi.
• Auden.
• Excerpts from Blood Meridian.
• The Wipers.
• Nancarrrow.
• Three hours of drummage.
• This was going to be the blog's Theme Song for May 2013 but fuck that in celebration of fucking that.

WHY I NEVER APPLIED MYSELF TO POOL

Dan Brown

Not that I lacked an eye entirely,
But give me an oblique enough kiss
To visualize, and my eye said "See ya later."
A little practice might have sharpened it,
But what was needed here was not as much
A sharper eye as a higher order eye,
A whole other orb altogether.

Big-Eyed Beans from Venus, Don't Let Anything Get Between Us

Don Van Vliet, born 72 years ago today, is the only person who gets two High Egoslavian Holy Days a year. I Love You, You Big Dummy. Somebody in My Home. Abba Zaba. Metal Man Has Hornet's Wings. Beatle Bones and Smokin Stones. I Feel Like Achid. Zig-Zag Wanderer. Pachuco Cadaver. Sugar n Spikes. Grows Fins. Too Much Time. Best Batch Yet. Ice Cream for Crow. I'm Glad. The Dust Blows Forward 'n The Dust Blows Back. Ella Guru. XTC covers Ella Guru. Hair Pie, Bake One. Hair Pie, Bake Two. Big-Eyed Beans from Venus. Sonic Youth covers Electricity. Skeleton Makes Good. Her Eyes Are a Blue Billion Miles. Kandy Korn. Run Paint Run Run. On Tomorrow. When Big Joan Sets Up. Lick My Decals Off Baby. Woe Is Me Uh Bop. Low Yo Yo Stuff. Floppy Boot Stomp. Bat Chain Puller. A Carrot Is As Close as a Rabbit Gets to a Diamond. My Human Gets Me Blues. Ashtray Heart. Sue Egypt. Here I Am, I Always Am.

A One-Year-Old Post Composed of Three Two-Year-Old Posts - My Favorite Post Ever - Now with Updated Links, How I Solved *That* Stupid Bleggal Ethics Issue

RIP, Captain Beefheart.

1/15/41 - 12/17/10
UPDATE 12/17/11: Zen Dave remembers too.

I'll post more over the weekend. No eulogy from me, I promise.

UPDATE! Another song.

UPDATE!

Please read and listen to this.


That's 1   here's   2





Another broken promise: here's my eulogy -

Whatever truths, myths, fables, lies about Beefheart and Zappa's relationship - and I like Zappa, but I love Beefheart - in my cosmology they are bound, and it's apt that Beefheart died during Zappadan.

I love Beefheart, but I love love love Pere Ubu and all the other sounds that wouldn't exist if not for Don Van Vliet. No Beefheart, no Pere Ubu. I can't imagine.

And the uncanniness of serendipity - just as I'm falling in love again with Stanley Elkin, finishing up The Franchiser, the first novel in which he introduces his own battle with multiple sclerosis, Van Vliet's death from MS and the chance to fall in love again again.

• Goodbye, Captain.
• Captain Beefheart's innocent soul.
• Top 14 reasons why Captain Beefheart was a true American genius.
• Early performance.
• Rolling Stone obit.

3


I sent this email request yesterday morning (subject line = Beefheart) to the AM DJ of the station I listen to:

Get you to play a song or two? He's grandpa to at least half the bands you play.

All best.

No Beefheart, no return email.

Sent this email to midday host of the station I listen to:

Hi Chxryl, can I get you to play some Beefheart please, how about "Sue Egypt" off *Doc at the Radio Station* please and thanks.

I must confess, I'm shocked at how little air love Beefheart has got at KxXP. From what I can tell from looking at the playlists since the news of Beefheart's death there has been one song played (on Cole's show Friday).

I realize I'm older (by far) than many of the DJs there who may never have heard or heard of Beefheart, but half the bands and solo acts you all play are descended by some greater or lesser degree to Beefheart. Anyway, I dig the man and his music.

All best. Have a great holiday.

No song. No return email.

First, Sue Egypt:

I don't care they didn't play Beefheart - I'm old, they're young; they may know the name but not the music and don't feel comfortable playing something they've never heard; they may know the music and not like it; they may have had their sets planned out and couldn't find a good seque; whatever: I've never expected all my requests to be played; it's their show. Still, I've been listening to and interacting with and giving money to this station for a decade, these djs aren't friends by any means but they know that I'm a loyal listener. Acknowledge the motherfucking email.

I thought about bitching in a post then decided no, don't be petty, when into my mailbox came (I swear to St Benny of Olsen and will forward the time-stamped email to you if so requested):

’Tis the season. I watched A Christmas Carol with George C. Scott playing Scrooge as though it was the first time I’d heard the story, and thought, “Now there’s a great message, I’ve got to remember that!” (That guy can act!) So, now my heart is bursting with good cheer and thankfulness.

I’m thankful for KxXP listeners like Jenneviere from San Francisco, who recently wrote this to John Richards: “You routinely surprise me by seemingly reading my emotional landscape and playing music that is a direct reflection of how I'm feeling on any particular day… Without ever having met me, you, day after day, mix the soundtrack of my life, and have moved me to laugh, to cry, to dance, to sing...  I am most sincerely grateful.”

KxXP’s staff and volunteers work tirelessly to bring you these incredible music experiences. No matter where or how you listen, please support the music community that brightens your day and brings you hours of inspiration and enjoyment.

Why is it important to donate now?

Angriest year of my life. Every day a renewed apostasy, every day a replayed apostasy. I'm dumber today than yesterday. I can't see anything but angrier ahead.
   

• Re: that last statement from two years ago? I sense a trend.
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• UPDATE! 
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• UPDATE! Today's links later today or tomorrow. Or not.
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  

CALL ME ISHMAEL

Jackson Mac Low

Circulation. And long long
Mind every
Interest Some how mind and every long

Coffin about little little
Money especially
I shore, having money about especially little

Cato a little little
Me extreme
I sail have me an extreme little

Cherish and left, left, 
Myself extremest
It see hypos myself and extremest left,

City a land. Land. 
Mouth; east,
Is spleen, hand mouth; an east, land.

Go Because Only in This Way Will You Be Admitted to the Company of Cold Skulls

My apologies, tomorrow, not today, is a High Egoslavian Holy Day. I'm such a Herbert, I forgot to skip November 31st on my wristwatch, I didn't notice until December 8th, which I thought December 7th, I've never adjusted, this December being the shittiest December ever since the last until the next. I was convinced until last night that today was the 17th; it's not. So the choice: post a replay of my favorite post ever a day early or save it for tomorrow and employ silly ass Star Trek allusions today along with some links and songs and poems.





    

• Thursday Night Pints was Saturday Night Pints. What do you think we talked about? All the angles everyone else discusses we weighed both in combination with and against each other. No illuminating truths were revealed. All were in agreement absolutely nothing will change but for the worse.
• Witness the sanctimonious obliviousness of Garry Wills.
• UPDATE! Antidote for the above.
• UPDATE! Kuebiko.
• From Newtown to Kabul.
• The woes of an American drone pilot.
• The shameful exploitation of Bradley Manning.
• Defying gravity.
• Being terror.
• Appropriate.
• Thank you, teachers.
• Slaughter of the innocents.
• On the gun things I would just point out....
• Remembering a fuckwad.  
• Fuck blooger.
• Yes, it's his birthday: Eight part one, Eight part two. Hello everyone.

THE ENVOY OF MR COGITO

Zbigniew Herbert

Translated by Bogdana Carpenter and John Carpenter

Go where those others went to the dark boundary   

for the golden fleece of nothingness your last prize

go upright among those who are on their knees

among those with their backs turned and those toppled in the dust

you were saved not in order to live

you have little time you must give testimony

be courageous when the mind deceives you be courageous   

in the final account only this is important

and let your helpless Anger be like the sea

whenever you hear the voice of the insulted and beaten

let your sister Scorn not leave you

for the informers executioners cowards—they will win

they will go to your funeral and with relief will throw a lump of earth   

the woodborer will write your smoothed-over biography

and do not forgive truly it is not in your power   

to forgive in the name of those betrayed at dawn

beware however of unnecessary pride

keep looking at your clown’s face in the mirror   

repeat: I was called—weren’t there better ones than I

beware of dryness of heart love the morning spring   

the bird with an unknown name the winter oak

light on a wall the splendour of the sky   

they don’t need your warm breath

they are there to say: no one will console you

be vigilant—when the light on the mountains gives the sign—arise and go   

as long as blood turns in the breast your dark star

repeat old incantations of humanity fables and legends   

because this is how you will attain the good you will not attain   

repeat great words repeat them stubbornly

like those crossing the desert who perished in the sand

and they will reward you with what they have at hand   

with the whip of laughter with murder on a garbage heap

go because only in this way will you be admitted to the company of cold skulls

to the company of your ancestors: Gilgamesh Hector Roland

the defenders of the kingdom without limit and the city of ashes

Be faithful Go

The Interviewer Asked One Loaded Question After Another, Such as Why I Often Read the Middle of Novels, Ignoring Their Beginnings and Their Ends

    

• That's Planet's skunk, finished this past Thursday, goes with this semester's cat, cow, and goats. There were two phone calls I received for lockdowns, one when she was in fourth grade at Green Acres, one when she was a junior at Walter Johnson. I remember the jolt of the phone call. I can't imagine.
• Sowing scarcity.
• The market state in action.
• Moral choices, clearly made.
• Some observations on the gun control debate.
• Rabid dogs apologize for misidentifying food.
• Which is considered worse during these regular shootings, that the shooter had a political agenda, that the shooter didn't have a political agenda?
• The market state in action.
• The market state in action.
• The market state in action.
• How many Albert Halls does it take to fill a hole?
• Tomorrow is a High Holy Day in Egoslavia.

        

• Tomorrow's post written two years ago, reposted last year, my favorite post ever.
• A plea for empty ritual.
• #59.
• Sonnet (with Children).
• Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump.
• Stephin Merritt covers new Beck song. Like some Beck, never did love.
• Birthday song contest.
• Planet will be home a week from today. Yay! The cow for the front yard? Got a quote from an art shipper, their goddamn delivery man won't return our calls.
• Sharon Van Etten (and others). She's opening for Nick Cave in March, if anyone is a fan please aim me at places to start.

    

OPERATION MEMORY

David Lehman

We were smoking some of this knockout weed when

Operation Memory was announced. To his separate bed

Each soldier went, counting backwards from a hundred

With a needle in his arm. And there I was, in the middle

Of a recession, in the middle of a strange city, between jobs

And apartments and wives. Nobody told me the gun was loaded.

We'd been drinking since early afternoon. I was loaded.

The doctor made me recite my name, rank, and serial number when

I woke up, sweating, in my civvies. All my friends had jobs

As professional liars, and most had partners who were good in bed.

What did I have? Just this feeling of always being in the middle

Of things, and the luck of looking younger than fifty.

At dawn I returned to draft headquarters. I was eighteen

And counting backwards. The interviewer asked one loaded

Question after another, such as why I often read the middle

Of novels, ignoring their beginnings and their ends. when

Had I decided to volunteer for intelligence work? "In bed

With a broad," I answered, with locker-room bravado. The truth was, jobs

Were scarce, and working on Operation Memory was better than no job

At all. Unamused, the judge looked at his watch. It was 1970

By the time he spoke. Recommending clemency, he ordered me to go to bed

At noon and practice my disappearing act. Someone must have loaded

The harmless gun on the wall in Act I when

I was asleep. And there I was, without an alibi, in the middle

Of a journey down nameless, snow-covered streets, in the middle

Of a mystery--or a muddle. These were the jobs

That saved men's souls, or so I was told, but when

The orphans assembled for their annual reunion, ten

Years later, on the playing fields of Eton, each unloaded

A kit bag full of troubles, and smiled bravely, and went to bed.

Thanks to Operation Memory, each of us woke up in a different bed

Or coffin, with a different partner beside him, in the middle

Of a war that had never been declared. No one had time to load

His weapon or see to any of the dozen essential jobs

Preceding combat duty. And there I was, dodging bullets, merely one

In a million whose lucky number had come up. When

It happened, I was asleep in bed, and when I woke up,

It was over: I was 38, on the brink of middle age,

A succession of stupid jobs behind me, a loaded gun on my lap