Beloveds, What Do We Do but Keep Breathing as Best We Can This Minute Atmosphere

No, I didn't forget yesterday was Ian MacKaye's 52nd birthday, there was another post in the queue.

So, I did write the listserv re: goat-napping -

Hey, someone stole a life-size fiberglass goat from our frontyard. One of us is an elementary school art teacher, takes it in for classes occasionally, grazes it in our front-yard the rest of the time. We live on Saul across from KPES. If you've a child there you may have seen it. If you see our goat on any street but Saul across from KPES (our neighbors on Saul have a second of ours in theirs) please let me know so I can retrieve said goat while not pressing charges against the goat-kidnapper. No doubt if it's your jerk kid you know s/he's a jerk kid and thief, we just want the goat back.

• One response to the listserv email so far: I have seen that goat in your front yard and I hope you get it back. These are hopefully pranks and nothing malicious as we used to steal our rival fraternities mascots, hijack them to Florida and take Polaroid’s of them on the beach in Lauderdale with ransom notes. Ended up mailing them back freight collect. Let’s hope that somebody has a goat sighting soon. Smiley on Oldfield.
• Yes, I was all of these Fugazi shows.
• The End of Employment.
• Calling it an oligarchy isn't enough.
• The ideology of focus.
• The carcass of myself.
• Millennial Rising.
• Holiday weekend - Spring holiday weekend - upcoming, Dead Blegsylvania be even deader than usual, I no doubt will dedicate extra effort into blogposts that few will read.
• Juliana Spahr.
• Five questions for Juliana Spahr.
• Prynne week (via).

DECEMBER 2, 2002

Juliana Spahr

As it happens every night, beloveds, while we turned in the night sleeping uneasily the world went on without us.

We live in our own time zone and there are only a small million of us in this time zone and the world as a result has a tendency to begin and end without us.

While we turned sleeping uneasily at least ten were injured in a bomb blast in Bombay and four killed in Palestine.

While we turned sleeping uneasily a warehouse of food aid was destroyed, stocks on upbeat sales soared, Australia threatened first strikes, there was heavy gunfire in the city of Man, the Belarus ambassador to Japan went missing, a cruise ship caught fire, on yet another cruise ship many got sick, and the pope made a statement against xenophobia.

While we turned sleeping uneasily perhaps J Lo gave Ben a prenuptial demand for sex four times a week.

While we turned sleeping uneasily Liam Gallagher brawled and irate fans complained that "Popstars: The Rivals" was fixed.

While we turned sleeping uneasily the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of whether university admissions may favor racial minorities.

While we turned sleeping uneasily poachers caught sturgeon in the reed-filled Caspian, which shelters boar and wolves, and some of the residents on the space shuttle planned a return flight to the US.

Beloveds, our world is small and isolated.

We live our lives in six hundred square feet about a quarter mile from the shore on land that is seven hundred square miles and five thousand miles from the nearest land mass.

Despite our isolation, there is no escape from the news of how many days are left in the Iraq inspections.

The news poll for today was should we invade Iraq now or should we wait until the inspections are complete and we tried to laugh together at this question but our laughter was uneasy and we just decided to turn off the television that arrives to us from those other time zones.

Beloveds, we do not know how to live our lives with any agency outside of our bed.

It makes me angry that how we live in our bed—full of connected loving and full of isolated sleep and dreaming also—has no relevance to the rest of the world.

How can the power of our combination of intimacy and isolation have so little power outside the space of our bed?

Beloveds, the shuttle is set to return home and out the window of the shuttle one can see the earth.

"How massive the earth is; how minute the atmosphere," one of the astronauts notes.

Beloveds, what do we do but keep breathing as best we can this minute atmosphere.

Fifty-One Today

Was there. Ian MacKaye born fifty-one years ago today. Many many many many good nights of my life spent at Minor Threat and Fugazi shows.





Was there. Good days too. Hey! Prunella has a playlist too! both Fugazi and Minor Threat.  Hey! I was at all of these too!

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What Policy Might We Bring Forth on a Front-Yard Folding Table?

• Aquarium Drunkard put Fugazi in my head last night, had been a while....
• Autism Awareness Day.
• I am blogblocked and unconcerned while catching myself thinking about going to a baseball game and reading the new Joyce Carol Oates novel. Excellent.
• But here's the thing, the never-ending argument: Can you imagine how far the Civil Rights Movement would have gotten, had it been run entirely by complainers for whom nothing was ever good enough? To hell with integrating the Montgomery public transit system when the problem was so much larger! Let me hasten to add, fuck you, then hasten to reiterate, fuck you. The oldest trope in my quiver full of self-justification is the tug-of-war trope (not that I'm claiming I climb down from my complicity to tug on any rope, yo, I'm lard), if it wasn't for fucking radicals the Rebecca Solnits would be delivering the same sermon from six counties to the right. But wait, there's more! You don’t have to participate in this system, but you do have to describe it and its complexities and contradictions accurately, and you do have to understand that when you choose not to participate, it better be for reasons more interesting than the cultivation of your own moral superiority, which is so often also the cultivation of recreational bitterness. Yeah, you fuckwit.
• The untrustworthy and the trustful.
• Today in Motherfucking Obama.
• Why we slobber over Žižek.
• Why Krugman was wrong. Actually, he likes Arcade Fucking Fire: that calls into question any and everything he says.
• When culture is the best explanation.
• On the occasion of the removal of my girlfriend's dog's balls.
• Essential design principles for felines.
• Technoscience and existentialism.
• The Painted Library.
• On (dis)location.
• New Gass reviewed. I'm about a third through the new Joyce Carol Oates, I've Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red on my desk (looks fascinating), so I'll get to Gass, though not soon.
• BTW, that review may require a subscription. If yes, let me know, if you've been blogtrusty I can get you in (and into LOTS of stuff) if you ask nice.
• It's National Poetry Month, I'm so sorry. 
• Gah.
• Poet as condition, not profession. 
• Bittova!

THE END OF ANOTHER CREATURE

Susan Briante

Starlings in the magnolia tree crackle, static, lightening; a helicopter floats overhead. Harvest brings dove-hunting season, a great migration. For six days I watch monarch butterflies scatter across the Metroplex, dream their carcasses onto the highway, dream black beetles biting my fingers in your clasped hands. I feel a pilot light at the back of my throat, while the helicopter groans a few blocks deeper down Ross Avenue. And the magnolia tree falls silent, and the season concludes.

The Market migrate; the Market scatters across the Metroplex.
The Market dreams my carcass onto the highway, groans
a few blocks deeper into my neighborhood.

In the liquidity of the late afternoon sun, a truck on the avenue clips branches from elms. What policy might we bring forth on a front-yard folding table? Deposit insurance? The return of Glass Steagall? Pull over. Price what you see. Privatize this rush-hour traffic. Look disappointed. The helicopter answers: pulse, pulse, pulse. The fences make a triangle, a shed of mostly shadow and quiet behind the boxwoods where someone left chemicals.

Where Dogs Purr of Elastic

Leos Janacek was not born 110 ten years ago today like one of the birthday lists I use suggested, but seeing his name prompted this post's gag which was then written before I remembered to double-check the birthday list's accuracy, so here we are. A friend is reading Murakami's 1Q84, he knows why I typed this sentence. I read 1Q84 roughly a year ago, I still think about it daily when my eyes have drifted over a page and a half of Proust or Knausgaard or Melville or Pynchon or Gaddis or McElroy or Elkin as I futilely try to engage a novel, one I've never read, one I've read before and loved. The short story experiment I mentioned a couple of weeks ago was a failure. I did devour again Ishiguro's Remains of the Day a few months back, consider pushing ahead of schedule rereadings of When We Were Orphans and Never Let Me Go, I'm sure they would work, but I say no, strangely fearful they would work. It's odd, this disparagement of my rules in service of enforcement of my broken and disparaged rules.





Billy Zoom born 65 years ago today. Let me repeat that. Billy Zoom, born 65 years ago today. When I walk into the living room and Earthgirl is watching MSNBC I grab whatever novel I'm about to fail and keep my mouth shut as I head to another room. It's an outrage. What the one-percent heard. Royal bodies and the firestorm. 1988. Rather an attack on one's convictions. Scenes of life at the capital. Rally in Missouri! Struggling to survive: Puerto Rico once, twice. The Purple Line will never be built. Damascus! Towne Crest! My favorite dealer lived in Towne Crest! Boatloads of Blanchot, for those of you who do. Debord, for those of you who do. After abundance. Head in the clouds. Too brilliant to bathe. Lispector short story. New McElroy this summer. James McNew on Yo La Tengo as house band of The American Conservative. Prunella's latest playlist includes Fugazi (YAY!) and Jawbox (YAY!) and Soundgarden (GAAAAAH!). Quick! Poison Ivy was born 65 years ago today.
             



 
As for the bleggalgazing that must be farted before I can do anything else, if only build up new bleggalgas for another bleggalfart: no, no announcement of radical format change or impending hiatus: I like what I do (though I might do more of some stuff, less of other stuff depending on the weather), I don't know that I'm an irredeemable attention slut because I've never tried to not be an attention slut, but I need to write about stuff I can't-won't-don't write about here which I can't do in fair measure if I'm collating and aggregating here, so I might less here, at least for a bit. It doesn't mean I don't love you. Or most of you. If I'm collating and aggregating here I cannot fail more and more often at reading novels, I feel a need to either break through or fail utterly, fail successfully all the way to peace. It doesn't mean I don't love you. Or most of you. Joel Hodgson, one of only a few people younger than me whose birthdays I note, is 53 today.




  
SEASONS OF QUITE

Roddy Lumsden

With refreshments and some modesty and home-drawn maps,

the ladies of the parish are marshaling the plans in hand,

devising the occasions, in softest pencil: the Day of Hearsay,

Leeway Week, the Maybe Pageant, a hustings on the word   

nearby. Half-promised rain roosts in some clouds a mile out,

gradual weather making gradual notes on the green, the well,

the monument, the mayor's yard where dogs purr on elastic.

Everything taken by the smooth handle then, or about to be,

hiatus sharp in humble fashion. A small boy spins one wheel

of an upturned bike, the pond rises, full of skimmed stones

on somehow days, not Spring, not Summer yet. Engagements

are announced in the Chronicle, a nine-yard putt falls short.

Dark cattle amble on the angles of Flat Field. The ladies close

their plotting books and fill pink teacups, there or thereabouts.

It Is the Great Arguments We Are Proud of, Over a Nibbled Peach, Hair in the Comb, a Faulty Lube Job

THE DEAD REMEMBER BROOKLYN

D. Nurkse

It is the great arguments

we are proud of, over a nibbled peach,

hair in the comb, a faulty lube job;

the reconciliations were always naked

in borrowed rooms, sometimes in Queens

or Staten Island, we touched each other

shyly—we reminded each other

of loneliness and funk and beautiful pigeons

with oil-slick necks, cooing bitterly—

but there we lost each other

in forgiveness; keeping score,

being wounded even in triumph,

walking home down leafy avenues

etched with the faint double line

of extinct trolleys, caressing

carved hearts under a sheen of sap

with a ragged nail, sleeping alone,

choosing the dream of betrayal,

entering by the wide door

and waking dead—there

we were superb. In Brooklyn

we held our own.

 





Bonus Fugazi! for a fuck-it post on a deadblog Saturday. Going hiking.