Which Only Quiet Walking Ever Instructs

Six-miler around Catoctin yesterday with Earthgirl. From Chimney Rocks, the rock outcrop and view about two-thirds through, you can see Sugarloaf twenty-five miles to the southeast. Today is Corbin Cabin in Shenandoah with Planet and Air too. Also, Happy Birthday to my father (who reads this blog daily to monitor news of his grand-daughter and daughter-in-law) who got us the hell out of Ghost Town, Pennsylvania in 1964 for which I don't thank him enough. He's BBQing salmon tonight for us.

Saturday intermittent tradition is to post songs heard on Bryce's Friday show. Bryce was off today, fill-in host was Ira the K. Below the poem is Ira the K's band's latest single, first, the Morton Feldman piece Ira the K played yesterday:








RIVERS AND MOUNTAINS

John Ashbery

On the secret map the assassins   

Cloistered, the Moon River was marked   

Near the eighteen peaks and the city

Of humiliation and defeat—wan ending   

Of the trail among dry, papery leaves   

Gray-brown quills like thoughts

In the melodious but vast mass of today’s   

Writing through fields and swamps

Marked, on the map, with little bunches of weeds.   

Certainly squirrels lived in the woods   

But devastation and dull sleep still   

Hung over the land, quelled

The rioters turned out of sleep in the peace of prisons   

Singing on marble factory walls   

Deaf consolation of minor tunes that pack   

The air with heavy invisible rods   

Pent in some sand valley from

Which only quiet walking ever instructs.   

The bird flew over and

Sat—there was nothing else to do.

Do not mistake its silence for pride or strength

Or the waterfall for a harbor

Full of light boats that is there

Performing for thousands of people   

In clothes some with places to go   

Or games. Sometimes over the pillar   

Of square stones its impact

Makes a light print.

So going around cities

To get to other places you found   

It all on paper but the land

Was made of paper processed   

To look like ferns, mud or other   

Whose sea unrolled its magic   

Distances and then rolled them up   

Its secret was only a pocket

After all but some corners are darker

Than these moonless nights spent as on a raft

In the seclusion of a melody heard   

As though through trees

And you can never ignite their touch   

Long but there were homes

Flung far out near the asperities   

Of a sharp, rocky pinnacle

And other collective places

Shadows of vineyards whose wine   

Tasted of the forest floor

Fisheries and oyster beds

Tides under the pole

Seminaries of instruction, public   

Places for electric light

And the major tax assessment area   

Wrinkled on the plan

Of election to public office

Sixty-two years old bath and breakfast   

The formal traffic, shadows

To make it not worth joining

After the ox had pulled away the cart.

Your plan was to separate the enemy into two groups   

With the razor-edged mountains between.

It worked well on paper

But their camp had grown

To be the mountains and the map   

Carefully peeled away and not torn   

Was the light, a tender but tough bark

On everything. Fortunately the war was solved   

In another way by isolating the two sections   

Of the enemy’s navy so that the mainland   

Warded away the big floating ships.   

Light bounced off the ends   

Of the small gray waves to tell   

Them in the observatory   

About the great drama that was being won

To turn off the machinery

And quietly move among the rustic landscape   

Scooping snow off the mountains rinsing

The coarser ones that love had   

Slowly risen in the night to overflow   

Wetting pillow and petal   

Determined to place the letter

On the unassassinated president’s desk

So that a stamp could reproduce all this

In detail, down to the last autumn leaf

And the affliction of June ride

Slowly out into the sun-blackened landscape.

The Prevalence of Those Grey Flakes Falling?

Per occasionally observed tradition, Saturday's music via Bryce's Friday show, the best three hours of radio each week. These are the musicians but not the pieces Bryce played, except the Radigue - I couldn't find the pieces he played on youtube. This is why I write about rules. A blogfriend has recently returned from a hiatus, I asked him why the hiatus, why the return. I think about a hiatus, think I only think about hiatus because of Kindnesses not reciprocated or content here not being appreciated, but then I smack my self sensible: I mean, it's partially true (and to be honest, this bleg is, within the climate of Blegsylvania vis a vis the ten years of it's existence, doing fine, and thanks), but I've long known that I'm both niche and licorice, I've long figured out the patterns of Blegsylvanian busy and slow. My blogfriend was beaten silent by relentless clusterfuck, how to respond with proper arrgh to the awfulness of the daily duh. It's important to be reminded of the awfulness of the daily duh, aargh consisting of too fucking many reminders of duh. It's not that I think of a hiatus from blogging, I daydream of a clusterfuck-free blog - you, those of you still here, may notice - but I cannot rid myself of the idea of a bogus duty to acknowledge the awfulness of the daily duh not only here but in all iterations of my life. It's how I was trained. And now that I'm being desensitized daily by faster fresh reiterations of duh - there was a shooting somewhere a couple of nights ago, half a dozen killed, dozens wounded, or something, plus routine atrocities since - now that I'm being trained that the daily duh of clusterfuck is in fact routine, move along, and I do, I...

... can vouch for these pieces of music, tomorrow's a High Egoslavian Holy Day, tune in, rest assured, I'll never go longform aargh on you, there are much better than me, let me link to them, have more Ashbery poems.








HOW TO CONTINUE

John Ashbery

Oh there once was a woman

and she kept a shop

selling trinkets to tourists

not far from a dock

who came to see what life could be

far back on the island.

And it was always a party there

always different but very nice

New friends to give you advice

or fall in love with you which is nice

and each grew so perfectly from the other

it was a marvel of poetry

and irony

And in this unsafe quarter

much was scary and dirty

but no one seemed to mind

very much

the parties went on from house to house

There were friends and lovers galore

all around the store

There was moonshine in winter

and starshine in summer

and everybody was happy to have discovered

what they discovered

And then one day the ship sailed away

There were no more dreamers just sleepers

in heavy attitudes on the dock

moving as if they knew how

among the trinkets and the souvenirs

the random shops of modern furniture

and a gale came and said

it is time to take all of you away

from the tops of the trees to the little houses

on little paths so startled

And when it became time to go

they none of them would leave without the other

for they said we are all one here

and if one of us goes the other will not go

and the wind whispered it to the stars

the people all got up to go

and looked back on love

AS ONE PUT DRUNK INTO THE PACKET-BOAT

John Ashbery

I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.
Elsewhere we are as sitting in a place where sunlight
Filters down, a little at a time,
Waiting for someone to come. Harsh words are spoken,
As the sun yellows the green of the maple tree....

So this was all, but obscurely
I felt the stirrings of new breath in the pages
Which all winter long had smelled like an old catalogue.
New sentences were starting up. But the summer
Was well along, not yet past the mid-point
But full and dark with the promise of that fullness,
That time when one can no longer wander away
And even the least attentive fall silent
To watch the thing that is prepared to happen.

A look of glass stops you
And you walk on shaken: was I the perceived?
Did they notice me, this time, as I am,
Or is it postponed again? The children
Still at their games, clouds that arise with a swift
Impatience in the afternoon sky, then dissipate
As limpid, dense twilight comes.
Only in that tooting of a horn
Down there, for a moment, I thought
The great, formal affair was beginning, orchestrated,
Its colors concentrated in a glance, a ballade
That takes in the whole world, now, but lightly,
Still lightly, but with wide authority and tact.

The prevalence of those gray flakes falling?
They are sun motes. You have slept in the sun
Longer than the sphinx, and are none the wiser for it.
Come in. And I thought a shadow fell across the door
But it was only her come to ask once more
If I was coming in, and not to hurry in case I wasn't.

The night sheen takes over. A moon of cistercian pallor
Has climbed to the center of heaven, installed,
Finally involved with the business of darkness.
And a sigh heaves from all teh small things on earth,
The books, the papers, the old garters and union-suit buttons
Kept in a white cardboard box somewhere, and all the lower
Versions of cities flattened under the equalizing night.
The summer demands and takes away too much,
But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes.

And Will It Make Us Run for the Picklier Taste of Irony Rolled Around Protectively on Our Tongues Like a Grab of Greek Olives?

• Pat Paulsen was born 87 years ago today. The first time I was aware of POTUS and elections was watching his campaign on The Smothers Brothers Show in 1968. I'd vote for his corpse today.
• The List of Motherfuckers.
• Irony and Radicalism: But a funny thing happened to the radicals of the twentieth century: they began to combine their leftism with irony... In the West, by the fifties, no radical intellectual would think of making bombastic pledges about engineering the future without hedging them closely about with irony.
• Not doing is doing too: By not voting it would remove the legitimacy that the federal government hide behind. If everyone refused to vote it would shake the whole systyem to its rotten and putrid foundations.
• Communism is alive and kicking? Communism as political possibility and communism as philosophical concept mutually reinforce each other. Without the active movements in opposition to austerity, cuts, debt, and inequality, the theoretical discussions would have failed to resonate. They would have remained stuck in libraries and lecture halls, dusty remnants of past struggles rendered objects of scholarly reflection. Likewise, without the conceptual reemergence of communism as an idea, the movements of 2011 would not have appeared as a common struggle. The connections between education struggles in England, austerity struggles in Greece and Spain, and anti-foreclosure struggles in the U.S. would not have jumped from their local contexts and become legible as moments in the same struggle, a struggle against capitalism. (h/t)
• The Difference.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• unessence.
• The Good Bad Poet: An Extinct Species?
• I know I said there would be Kate Bush songs this weekend, but no, apparently there won't be, I spent last night with Swans, woke up with Swans in my head.
• To Be Kind is one of a dozen of my favorite album of 2014 so far.

SENTIMENTAL

Albert Goldbarth

The light has traveled unthinkable thousands of miles to be   

condensed, recharged, and poured off the white white pages

of an open Bible the country parson holds in front of this couple   

in a field, in July, in the sap and the flyswirl of July

in upper Wisconsin, where their vows buzz in a ring in the air

like the flies, and are as sweet as the sap, in these rich and ritual minutes.   

Is it sentimental? Oops. And out of that Bible the light continues   

to rush as if from a faucet. There will be a piecrust cooling   

out of its own few x’ed-out cuts. And will it make us run   

for the picklier taste of irony rolled around protectively on our tongues   

like a grab of Greek olives? My students and I discuss this   

slippery phenomenon. Does “context” matter? Does

“earned” count? If a balled-up fidget of snakes

in the underbrush dies in a freeze is it sentimental? No,   

yes, maybe. What if a litter of cocker spaniels? What

if we called them “puppydogs” in the same poem in that same hard,   

hammering winter? When my father was buried,

the gray snow in the cemetery was sheet tin. If I said

that? Yes, no, what does “tone” or “history” do

to the Hollywood hack violinists who patiently wait to play   

the taut nerves of the closest human body until from that   

lush cue alone, the eyes swell moistly, and the griefs

we warehouse daily take advantage of this thinning

of our systems, then the first sloppy gushes begin . . .

Is that “wrong”? Did I tell you the breaths

of the gravediggers puffed out like factorysmoke

as they bent and straightened, bent and straightened,

mechanically? Are wise old (toothless) Black blues singers   

sentimental?—“gran’ma”? “country cookin’”? But

they have their validity, don't they, yes? their

sweat-in-the-creases, picking up the lighting

in a fine-lined mesh of what it means to have gone through time   

alive a little bit on this planet. Hands shoot up . . . opinions . . .

questions . . . What if the sun wept? the moon? Why, in the face

of those open faces, are we so squeamish? Call out

the crippled girl and her only friend the up-for-sale foal,   

and let her tootle her woeful pennywhistle musics.

What if some chichi streetwise junkass from the demimonde

gave forth with the story of orphans forced through howling storm   

to the workhouse, letting it swing between the icy-blue   

quotation marks of cynicism—then? What if   

I wept? What if I simply put the page down,   

rocked my head in my own folded elbows, forgot   

the rest of it all, and wept? What if I stepped into   

the light of that page, a burnished and uncompromising   

light, and walked back up to his stone a final time,   

just that, no drama, and it was so cold,

and the air was so brittle, metal buckled

out song like a bandsaw, and there, from inside me,   

where they’d been lost in shame and sophistry

all these years now, every last one of my childhood’s   

heartwormed puppydogs found its natural voice.

The Excruciating Crawl of the World

• The Return of a Futile Weekend Blogging tradition, music today from Bryce's show yesterday. It's my favorite three hours of music each week.
• A constant tradition of Futile Weekend Blogging continues with Futile Weekend Blogging.
• Court and Caliphate: The rulings by the conservative majority on the Court are part of a relentless, decades-long effort to reassert control of women's sexuality. In this, America's super-patriotic, politicized right-wing Christians share a common cause with the Islamic sectarians they hate so much (and are so scared of). Women's sexuality is apparently the most volatile, dangerous force in the world -- much, much more dangerous than, say, nuclear war or the heat-death of the planet, which concern them not at all. The amount of time, energy, money -- and frenzy -- spent on repressing and controlling women's sexuality is truly extraordinary. Or rather, it is, tragically, all too ordinary, part of an effort that has been going on since homo sapiens first emerged.
• Chomsky's whitewashing: I am struck, first of all, by how bizarre it is that Chomsky addresses the perennial question, “What Can We Do?” not with concrete suggestions for political engagement, but with a starry-eyed assessment of the state’s ability to persecute dissenters. Above all, I’m struck by how mind-numbingly stupid Chomsky’s remarks are, and, also — in their obliviousness to Gitmo, drone executions, and mass incarceration — how racially biased.
• Fuck Europe and Fuck Zizek too: Zizek wants us to believe the choice is between the EU or UKIP, National Front, AfD and Golden Dawn, when in fact the UK, France, Germany and Greece are already historically obsolete. The choice we face today is between “Europe” and mankind — and this last doesn’t need treaties between states. Every attempt to save “Europe” is a cynical attempt by the nation states of Europe to maintain their death grip on the throat of mankind.

• Against mastery: Do we imagine that complete control over our biological fates will necessarily make us happier? Perhaps it will. But one can as easily imagine that there might be little room for uninhibited joy or exuberance in such a world. More likely it will be a tightly wound world, saturated with bitterness and anxiety and mutual suspicion, in which life and health will be guarded with all the ferocity of Ebenezer Scrooge guarding his money. Growing mastery means growing responsibility, and the need to assign blame, since nothing happens by chance. Some of the blame will be directed at the parents, politicians, doctors, and celebrities who make plausible villains, or conspiracy theories that explain why someone else is always at fault. But much of the blame will devolve upon ourselves, since in being set free to choose so much about our lives, we will have no one else to blame when we make a complete mess of things.
• Freedoom.
• Predating down the road: No more should one see analog's return in spite of it's not being wholly engorged by a more highly resolved depictionary. 
• Afro-Europe in the World Cup: This year, there will be two additional African teams in the competition: France and Belgium. If they are going to the World Cup at all, it is thanks to goals scored by the children of African migrants: Romelu Lukaku for Belgium, and Mamadou Sakho for France. I’m not sure if these old colonial powers deserve the help, but they’ve gotten it: Africa has come to the rescue. In fact, it might be worth giving new names to these two football teams: Françafrique and AfroBelgica, perhaps? (If we make that change, though, we also might need to make another: most of Algeria’s team is French born and raised: they similarly represent a trans-regional space, something like North and South Mediterranean-Algiers…)
• I really really really really wanted Brazil to not win this World Cup, but I didn't want them to not win (and they still might win) because its star player had his back broken. 
• At this point, but for Costa Rica, I'd just as soon Brazil win: the gloating will not be as insufferable as the whining if it loses. 
• That broken back, btw, is on the ref: if he'd shown a couple of deserved yellows early on in the match the two teams wouldn't have been kicking each other with sincere malice throughout the second half.
• Poetry and/or Prose.
• Bend or break: on diving in soccer and free verse.

EGO

Denise Duhamel

I just didn’t get it—

even with the teacher holding an orange (the earth) in one hand

and a lemon (the moon) in the other,

her favorite student (the sun) standing behind her with a flashlight.

I just couldn’t grasp it—

this whole citrus universe, these bumpy planets revolving so slowly

no one could even see themselves moving.

I used to think if I could only concentrate hard enough

I could be the one person to feel what no one else could,

sense a small tug from the ground, a sky shift, the earth changing gears.

Even though I was only one mini-speck on a speck,

even though I was merely a pinprick in one goosebump on the orange,

I was sure then I was the most specially perceptive, perceptively sensitive.

I was sure then my mother was the only mother to snap,

“The world doesn’t revolve around you!”

The earth was fragile and mostly water,

just the way the orange was mostly water if you peeled it,

just the way I was mostly water if you peeled me.

Looking back on that third grade science demonstration,

I can understand why some people gave up on fame or religion or cures—

especially people who have an understanding

of the excruciating crawl of the world,

who have a well-developed sense of spatial reasoning

and the tininess that it is to be one of us.

But not me—even now I wouldn’t mind being god, the force

who spins the planets the way I spin a globe, a basketball, a yoyo.

I wouldn’t mind being that teacher who chooses the fruit,

or that favorite kid who gives the moon its glow.

unFourth

Fireworks are like anything else in life, he said.

The Murder of William Remington
      

Earth Cafeteria

  
Romanticism 101

America Politica Historia, in Spontaneity
  

The History of America
  

  

Scene of life at the Capital
 

BONUS UPDATE! 7:22 PM EDT

Because I both love you and didn't think of this song until ten minutes ago:

Where the Paths Through the Elms, the Carnivals, Begin, or: Born One-Hundred Sixty Years Ago Today

Leoš Janáček was born 160 years ago today. An old blogfriend you should bookmark and read named his blog after the above, it's one of my favorite piano pieces, though the one I truly love is In the Mists. Murakami made the Sinfonietta the soundtrack for his novel 1Q84.

Holiday Blegging for a Three Day Holiday Weekend in Dead Blegsylvania starts now: there either will or won't be posts, those posts either will or won't have links. There may or not be Galaxie 500 here tomorrow, but there will not be that song. There may or not be X here tomorrow, but there won't be that song. No, I haven't forgot my Kate Bush and John Ashbery threat, Ashbery poems below the Sinfionetta, Kate will show up over the weekend.








LIKE A SENTENCE

John Ashbery

How little we know,   

and when we know it!

It was prettily said that “No man

hath an abundance of cows on the plain, nor shards

in his cupboard.” Wait! I think I know who said that! It was . . .

Never mind, dears, the afternoon

will fold you up, along with preoccupations   

that now seem so important, until only a child   

running around on a unicycle occupies center stage.   

Then what will you make of walls? And I fear you   

will have to come up with something,

be it a terraced gambit above the sea

or gossip overheard in the marketplace.

For you see, it becomes you to be chastened:

for the old to envy the young,

and for youth to fear not getting older,

where the paths through the elms, the carnivals, begin.

And it was said of Gyges that his ring

attracted those who saw him not,

just as those who wandered through him were aware

only of a certain stillness, such as precedes an earache,

while lumberjacks in headbands came down to see what all the fuss was about,

whether it was something they could be part of

sans affront to self-esteem.

And those temple hyenas who had seen enough,

nostrils aflare, fur backing up in the breeze,

were no place you could count on,

having taken a proverbial powder

as rifle butts received another notch.

I, meanwhile . . . I was going to say I had squandered spring   

when summer came along and took it from me   

like a terrier a lady has asked one to hold for a moment

while she adjusts her stocking in the mirror of a weighing machine.   

But here it is winter, and wrong

to speak of other seasons as though they exist.   

Time has only an agenda

in the wallet at his back, while we

who think we know where we are going unfazed

end up in brilliant woods, nourished more than we can know

by the unexpectedness of ice and stars

and crackling tears. We’ll just have to make a go of it,

a run for it. And should the smell of baking cookies appease

one or the other of the olfactory senses, climb down   

into this wagonload of prisoners.

The meter will be screamingly clear then,

the rhythms unbounced, for though we came

to life as to a school, we must leave it without graduating   

even as an ominous wind puffs out the sails

of proud feluccas who don’t know where they’re headed,   

only that a motion is etched there, shaking to be free.

ELECTIVE INFINITIES

John Ashbery

Thirsty? They race across ampersands,
scrolling. He isn't sure it's his head.
There's a delay right now. Smoke backed up.
Ladies please remove hats.

It was all over by morning. The village idiot
was surprised to see us. "....thought your were in Normandy."
Like all pendulums we were surprised,
then slightly miffed at what seemed to be happening
back in the bushes. Keep your ornaments,
if that's what they are. Return to sender, arse.

At the intersection a statue of a policeman
was directing traffic. It seemed like a vacation,
halloween or something. Process
was the only real thing that happened.
We wove closer to the abyss, a maze of sunflowers.
The dauphin said to take our time.

As In an Abandoned Railway Car

• I was asked this past week why I post so little Residents. I didn't have a good answer. There, have forty one minute songs.
• Some blog maintenance this weekend - loading is slowing up again so I'll check the blogrolls for sites that have either not updated for three or more months or have disconnected their feed. Not-updating blogs will be moved to Moribund, dead blogs removed.
• There are a number of new joints in New Here and Newest Gags First and Second. Please check them out as they float to the top of the blogrolls. As always, please send me sites you read you think I might like. As always, thanks for reading.
• So, World Cup. I love it. Forgive me.
• A dance of light and shadow.
• This bloody, beautiful World Cup.
• A Colombian on The Best World Cup Ever.
• This could be The Best World Cup Ever? 
• Well, the group stage was the best I remember and I understand your joy at three exhilarating wins if you're Colombian: if knockout plays at, or, please Baal and Diablo, exceeds the level of group I might never lose this fucking habit. 
• The Global Game (subscription required, but you should be reading Harpers anyway):  The World Cup at which I first grasped the fading of old-style nationalism was 2006, in Germany. That summer you could see a shift to a kind of carnival nationalism: people from around the world dressed up, each in their own national colors, and then watched games together on public squares with giant screens. Oliver Bierhoff, the German team's general manager, remarked with surprise that fans had become less interested in results. Above all, they were out to have fun. It was no longer a matter of national virility, or life and death... 
• I don't buy in whole the essay, but worth a read.

• Inside the new stadiums you could be anywhere: Inside Brazil’s stadiums of old—the original Maracanã, the Mineirão, Castelão, Verdão, etc.—there were no clocks, just crappy scoreboards with broken lightbulbs. Everyone knew to look at their watches or listen to the radio if they wanted to keep up with the time and the score. Indeed, many of the best known, most beloved stadiums in Latin America are minimalist structures designed to hold tens of thousands of people for two hours as they jump up and down, light fireworks, and tumble over each other. They are not be the most comfortable places to watch a soccer match (or do anything else), but they are actual places. Stands are for standing. If they weren´t, they would be called something else. The new stadiums are cleaner and more comfortable, but they are non-places. These Brazilian stadiums could be anywhere, which makes them feel as though they are nowhere in particular. Once inside, the outside is closed off and the spectacle is secured.
• Luis Suarez, former street-sweeper.
• USMNT is on the far easier side of the bracket. And it's a shame there can be, at most, only two South American team can make the semifinals, Argentina one, one Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay, whichever survives that sub-bracket. So yes, Brazil v Argentina in the finals is still the chalk bet.
• My counter to my anti-Bradleyism: yes, considering that Bradley has spent the last five years of his life training to pop balls over offside traps for a true striker it's entirely possible his suckitude is a direct result of Altidore's injury and that he and Dempsey, in current roles, don't talk.
• RIP Allen Grossman. 
• On Josipovici's new novel (for those of you who do) on/about/considering the life of Joseph Cornell (for those of me who do). I ordered it last night.
• As well as Carson's pamphlets on Albertine. I'm telling you, please Baal and Diablo, I'm not taunting you, if I'm somewhere where I can read without distraction Clamors Erupt works, which is one of the themes don't you know.

TOWN ON THE WAY THROUGH GOD'S WOODS

Anne Carson

Tell me.
Have you ever seen woods so.
Deep so.
Every tree a word does you heart stop?
Once I saw a cloud over Bolivia so deep.
Mountains were cowering do you ever?
Look in the quick you see the secret.
Word inside the word?
As in an abandoned railway car.
One winter afternoon I saw.
The word for "God's Woods."

What Really Kills Me Is Standing in the Need of Prayer I'm Standing in the Need of Jokes That Come Back

• Found my Go-Between stash yesterday while looking for something else.
• Here, some links fished Sunday morning before Act Three of My Brother-in-Law's wedding.
• Acts One and Two were fine, highlighted in Act Two by an old man who looked like Gauron who posted himself beside the open bar and didn't move the rest of the night. 
• Yes, 30% of the motivation for this post was that gag. I knew it the instant I saw him.
• I didn't realize Rob had reopened the shop.
• The cybernetics of Occupy: an anarchist perspective.
• More defenders have meant more goals: All defenders make mistakes. On Thursday, Gary Cahill’s poor positioning and misjudgment of the flight of the ball left Luis Suarez with a free run at goal to score the 86th minute goal that chucked England out of the tournament. But Cahill will always find forgiveness from English fans because not only is he a talented defender, but he has the short back and sides, steely-eyed seriousness and complete lack of adventure that assures the English that their goal is being defended by a good, honest, straightforward sort of chap. When Luiz made mistakes for Chelsea, these were invariably taken as symptoms of profound personal failure as a center half. Not only had he been caught out of position, or risked dribbling past an opponent, but he had done so with a trademark mop of long curly hair and an unmistakable sense of personal style.
• Fine metaphors abound: the above applies to more than half of English language lit-bloggers when judging English language lit-bloggers too. Though I'm bald. 
• Adding, this blog may indeed be shitty, though the above bullet is true. 
• The ninety-minute anxiety dream: The positive lesson to be learned from the negative dialectic of England’s failure can be summarized in two words: Costa Rica. Los Ticos have shown tactically how soccer should be played. They maintain a high defensive line, they are incredibly well-organized by their passionate and very shrewd coach, Jorge Luis Pinto, they are physically fit, young, and strong, they relentlessly close down the opposition in midfield, they have great passing accuracy and are fast on the break into attack. Costa Rica didn’t just win against Italy, they completely dominated the Italians in every part of the game.
• Catenaccio is dead! Or at least resting. Hardly any buses have been parked – most matches, with a few exceptions, have been free-flowing. Among the explanations so far: sides are trying to emulate Spain’s one-time-dominant tiki-taka; the heat is causing more gaffes; formations are more fluid; the international talent gap is closing; and the spate of early strikes has forced sides to attack. The goals per game stats are the best since 1958 – which was also the last time England folded in the group stage.
• England out? What did you expect?
• Secrets of the keeper.

• Lit-links.
• Full metal Zizek.
• Serendipitously if inadvertently, the same author mentioned in the above is mentioned here. I have access to a university library's stacks and will check out said author, though I am sure to fail the scifi test again.
• Meanwhile, sssh, 2013's failed Year of Reading Calmer Stupor is resurrected and 2014's Year of Reading Car Elm Sprout is proceeding calmer, without stupor.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• Adrienne Rich poem.
• Another poem that's not Auden's on Brueghel's Icarus.
• I had picked up John Taggart's In Music three or four years ago, the book got buried on my desk, it needed to be returned to the consortium school I had borrowed it from and I unforgivably forgot about it. Good thing I still have access to a university's consortium loan services.

ALL THE STEPS

John Taggert

     1

Those who hear the train they had better worry worry

those who hear they had better worry worry.
 

     2

No disgrace to worry to have the worried life blues

might do some good to be worried in the hour of our need.
 

     3

Run run run away going to run run run away

there are those who think they’re going to run away.
 

     4

To hear and to be facing and to be facing what is heard

to hear and to be face to face with what is heard.
 

     5

Run run run away they’re going to run run run away

there are those who think they’re going to run away from the train.
 

     6

Fort built to protect the community from desert raiders

community thought to protect itself from raiders.
 

     7

Those who hear the train they had better worry worry

better worry worry about a gift of tears.
 

     8

Those who are gathered in the fort had better learn

they had better learn how to cure their wounds.
  

     9

The train with its poison and its tongue

the lurking train with its poison and its tongue.
 

     10

Those who are gathered better learn to be insensitive

learn how to put on a show of being insensitive.
 

     11

Danger of its poison and of its tongue

danger of its poison and of its tongue against our teeth.
 

     12

Had better break the habit the habit of prayer

better let the jokes come back to us when we’re at prayer.
 

     13

What really kills me is standing in the need of prayer

standing in a gathering in the need of prayer.
 

     14

Don’t if we don’t if we don’t break the habit

we will be made to climb all the steps of the ladder.

     15

Brood over someone else’s dream: three-story red tower

beneath the tower the train is always departing.
 

     16

Danger of its tongue for those gathered like a group

gathered like a group of all virgins with their downcast eyes.
 

     17

There is this problem with cutting off the prayer hand

there is this problem with the other hand.
 

     18

How insensitive is how those who hear better be

how insensitive how unmoved and cold they had better be.
 

     19

You can call him you can call him up and ask him

if we had only asked for “Sleep Walk by Santo & Johnny.
 

     20

Red tower green sky three-story tower against green sky

beneath the tower the train is always departing.
 

     21

Don’t break it be made to climb all the steps

we don’t break it we’ll be made to climb all the steps.
 

     22

Ant on the floor the small ant on the kitchen floor

the small ant anticipates by sound or shadow.
 

     23

Light turns out in the kitchen when somebody pulls on the string

those gathered not able to anticipate the danger.
 

     24

If we had only stayed in the school of the prophets

in the school of the prophets who catch thoughts from words.

     25

Ant on the floor the small ant on the kitchen floor

those gathered not able to anticipate the danger.
 

     26

Those who are gathered are fondled and taken by the hand

taken by the hand and made to climb all the steps.
 

     27

Perfectly built fort bound to make the community unhappy

bound to make those in the community unhappy.
 

     28

What really kills me is standing in the need of prayer

I’m standing in the need of jokes that come back.
 

     29

Standing in the need of prayer in a perfectly built fort

bound to make you unhappy bound to make me unhappy.

     30

Not broken the habit of prayer not been broken

those who are gathered better learn how to cure their wounds.

Nothingness Unseamed Itself for Me Too

Bernie Kopell is 81 today. I loved Get Smart, especially in black and white. I yodel always, TV toggled to color when I was a kid, a toggle that chimes me. Here is Siegfried's traditional Egoslavian High Holy Day decree, copied & pasted from last year's.

Siegfried has been this shitty blog's and my digital avatar since Blog Day One. Bernie Koppel, Siegfried on Get Smart (and Ann Marie's neighbor Jerry Bauman in That Girl and, unfortunately if more famously, Doc on Love Boat), was born 80 years ago today, his birthday noted every year here.

This is true: I have my iPod set to shuffle the 2000+ songs, driving home Thursday night (this is serendipitous but not as serendipitous as if it happened last night) the Second Egoslavian Bleggalgazing Anthem (lyrics) came on and I realized what a colossal fuck-up by me for not posting it on The Annual Egoslavian Bleggalgazegasm three weeks ago, so shazam! how's this for futile weekend blegging and brazen blogwhoring and attention sluttery in Dead Blegsylvania?

• My brother-in-law is getting married today. We have to go to the service this morning, then a dinner tonight, and then a brunch tomorrow morning. This is proof I love my wife. Further proof: I will not write about it beyond this.
• Links below from friends, blog friends, blog comrades, mostly. Sorry friends, if patterns hold this will be the deadest weekend yet this Summer in Blegsylvania.
• The Left/Right Spectrum is bogus.
• BroadSnark's things you might have missed.
• But you must write. A bleggalgaze of sort.
• Binging on Anne Carson.
• Dang! 15th again.
• Becoming language here and now.
• The pattern of tides.
• A lifetime of watching England lose.
• Here's the Feldman yesterday's mention of Rothko made inevitable here, with bonus Feldman below a new to me Szymborska poem.
• Since My Sillyass Deserted Island Game seems only to include bands and acts the could be sloppily classified as rock Morton Feldman isn't included in the game, though Morton Feldman is going to the island with me. Click the tag in footer for LOTS more.

A POEM

Wislawa Szymborksa
Translated by Clare Cavanaugh

Nothingness unseamed itself for me too.
It turned itself wrong side out.
How on earth did I end up here—
head to toe among the planets,
without a clue how I used not to be.

O you, encountered here and loved here,
I can only guess, my arm on yours,
how much vacancy on that side went to make us,
how much silence there for one lone cricket here,
how much nonmeadow for a single sprig of sorrel,
and sun after darknesses in a drop of dew
as repayment—for what boundless droughts?

Starry willy-nilly! Local in reverse!
Stretched out in curvatures, weights, roughnesses, and motions!
Time out from infinity for endless sky!
Relief from nonspace in a shivering birch tree’s shape!

Now or never wind will stir a cloud,
since wind is exactly what won’t blow there.
And a beetle hits the trail in a witness’s dark suit,
testifying to the long wait for a short life.

And it so happened that I’m here with you.
And I really see nothing
usual in that.

Small and Stupid, Too Slow to Get Away, It Was Only a Promise I Had Made to Myself Once and Then Forgot

I'm leaving shortly for an eight-miler on the Appalachian Trail, Crampton's Gap to top of Lambs Knoll and then down again, again without Earthgirl, she thinks she's a couple of weeks away though her leg is much better. When I get back to the car after the hike, a decision will have been made. There have been changes in the permanent three spots on my Sillyass Deserted Island Game before: twelve years ago I dropped XTC from a spot into the innermost circle of bands and artists who take turns in the two rotating spots in the Sillyass game to elevate Guided by Voices into a permanent spot. (Kate Bush and Pere Ubu/David Thomas had, have, and will always have permanent spots.) Have I ever mentioned how much I love Lambchop? It's not that I love GbV any less than ever, it's that I love Lambchop more than ever. I need two rotating spots and six circles, in ascending order, of bands and artists who cycle through the rotating spots. No, I cannot make it a Sillyass Deserted Island Six Game.

• Notes on conspiricism: This is not to say that there are not operatives in our midst giving the system a nudge here and there. It’s a testimony to the extent of our indoctrination, that in light of this country’s history and a year of revelations about mass surveillance, people still roll their eyes at any suggestion of organized state deception and malfeasance. Certainly Graeber is well aware of the extensive state interference with Occupy, so presumably he is intimating only the looniness of implicating him. But there is little profit in focusing on this aspect when the end result is the same. It doesn’t truly matter what compelled Graeber to knowingly run interference for defamation and red-baiting. What matters is that he did.
• Surveillance, capture, and the endless replay.
• On the war on teachers. Full disclosure, my wife is a teacher, my parents were teachers, my favorite aunts and uncles were teachers, I have beloved who are teachers. I am ridiculously biased.
• More on the above.
• Broadsnark's things you might have missed.
• Baffler's week that was.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• Main character syndrome.
• Pale notes on friendship.
• The most difficult and painful turn.
• Go west in that case.
• I have an inkling the decision has already been made.

BROKEN PROMISES

David Kirby

I have met them in dark alleys, limping and one-armed;   

I have seen them playing cards under a single light-bulb   

and tried to join in, but they refused me rudely,   

knowing I would only let them win.   

I have seen them in the foyers of theaters,   

coming back late from the interval   

long after the others have taken their seats,   

and in deserted shopping malls late at night,   

peering at things they can never buy,   

and I have found them wandering   

in a wood where I too have wandered.   

This morning I caught one;   

small and stupid, too slow to get away,   

it was only a promise I had made to myself once   

and then forgot, but it screamed and kicked at me   

and ran to join the others, who looked at me with reproach   

in their long, sad faces.

When I drew near them, they scurried away,   

even though they will sleep in my yard tonight.   

I hate them for their ingratitude,   

I who have kept countless promises,   

as dead now as Shakespeare’s children.   

“You bastards,” I scream,   

“you have to love me—I gave you life!”

I’ll Get a Library Card at Last and I Won’t Pay $100 for It Feeling Tired but Only as Tired as One Would Normally Feel at Sea Level After, Say, a Five Hour Hike

Earthgirl's leg is (a) better (b) worse (c) we have no fucking idea. (Background here for those who don't know/are curious why Earthgirl's knees are on the blog - short version, she took a bad spill on the trail last Sunday - and there were updates during the week.) The bruise migrates. She wouldn't have been able to hike today regardless because of a school project with the 5th graders but she wouldn't have be able to hike today because of her leg. She hopes she can hike next weekend. I'm out the door in ten minutes to do a seven mile circuit on Sugarloaf. I wish Earthgirl could join me. I love hiking by myself.

Have I been talking about electric cigarettes on this blog? I don't recall talking about electric cigarettes on this blog, but in the past week I've sixteen comments complimenting me on this blog's design and content and offering me links to discount pricing on top of the line electric cigarettes. I guess the bots have concluded they've solved my discount Viagra problem for me. It occurred to me that it was about this time last year that I enabled moderation in comments (and not for the comments the spam filter doesn't block) and looking back in archives it is. I was right to enable moderation, though I apologize for the delays that sometimes occur between when a comment is made and the comment is posted. Thanks to all who still play.

Meanwhile, in New Mexico:

• :-p's Life Lessons.
• I've yodeled about this before, have a long yodel written and in the digital freezer, but Thunder's comment yesterday on the Death of Liberalism draws these sentences out of me: I know honorable Liberals who, while not putting it this way themselves, feel that Liberalism went further in America then could have been dreamed of a hundred years ago, that Liberalism's retreat is inevitable, that advancing a Liberal economic agenda is impossible, and that the most achievable goal for current Liberals is to preserve as much of the economic gains vis a vis Robber Barons as possible. My opinion is, how should I put it, incoherent.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• The Baffler's week that was.
• It's crap like moving a game to motherfucking FedEx field that's killing my United damn.
• On the difficulty of reading poetry in translation.
• Faye reminded me last night of Bogshed:

[HOME WHOSE NAMES ARE PRODUCED BY MOTION]

Lyn Hejinian

Home whose names are produced by motion   

is where people go (one following

the next as she hums to herself or he hums to himself   

at some risk to all) to stay in a family plot   

the tales of which are spinning like blades   

on a pinwheel wafted by my desire to talk to you. Fate   

and desire, chance and intention, from time to time   

converge. Most people want things to be good   

but taking a programmatic approach to getting it

would be despicable and none of it would ever get to you   

except via a raucous garage sale. The owner of the pharmacy

at this very moment is screaming in jubilation   

at a silver toaster, I want it

even if it doesn’t work! Two firemen have broken down   

mid-sentence and gone out to look, you know   

the ones. The purport comes all at once   

at the end in such a way that one is thrown back

to the poem again to carry out the ”again“ that the poem is

about. I’ll get a library card at last and I won’t pay $100 for it

feeling tired but only as tired as one would normally feel at sea level   

after, say, a five hour hike, and it was the same

when it was just getting light—a murky gray

that never brightened. I don’t know you well enough to break   

away from my conversations in order to barge in   

on yours and give the illusion that I often know   

where I’m going or where I want to go with certainty   

of motive to propel the prose

or some version of certainty of my own, not knowing   

where one is going but going anyway. Perhaps the trip

will be purposeless. Destiny is simply a good excuse for experience.   

There are birds chirping, smoke is rising

from kerosene-splattered barbecue briquettes, it is summer   

and now, humiliated (I am so damned naive

sometimes), swinging the hips to the right to avoid the edge   

of the worktable, then to the left to avoid toppling the cactus   

I shout, “Things! Things! Get out of my way!”   

I’ve never lost my capacity for being angry. I feel   

that it is justified, even necessary, though I admit that   

after the first hour my improvisations contribute nothing   

but motion to the composition.

I Predict a Fiasco - and a Fiasco with Catcalls

• Sperm-inspired robots controlled by Magnetic Fields. Well, aren't we all?
• So yes, a resistless gag prompts this Saturday post. Links below were going to appear tomorrow.
• Facts and fabrications: responding to a Greenwald smear.
• Do Liberals believe in Liberalism anymore?
• Karl Polanyi, for those of you who do.
• Lance & Friends.
• Parasites in Eden.
• On location (slight return).
• New - and perhaps permanent - blogheader and new/old stuff at Hollowtide (which I sensibly didn't pay for a domain name).
• The photo in the new header taken yesterday at my niece-by-marriage's graduation at the National Basilica. Planet and I stood for the beginning of the graduation next to a giant bowl of Jesus Chips. I remembered all that creeps me out about a Catholic church, a Catholic mass, all that still mystifies me.
• Bill Watterson sighting?
• Henry Green, for those of you who do.

SOFT HAIL

Keith Waldrop

Afterward, to tell how it was possible to

identify absolute space, a matter of great

difficulty, keeping in mind always

that not all old music is beautiful and

therefore it’s necessary to choose. Ice

loading and unloading as the ice caps

wax and wither. Brutal and uncouth from the beginning

even unto time, space, place, motion.

How are we to obtain true motion? I

predict a fiasco—and a fiasco

with catcalls. Wind circulation in the

case of plants, predators in the case

of animals, affecting their distribution on

the ancient land masses. And

who will conduct the chorus and

orchestra? Many things exist at once.

Predilection and preference. Begin

with the storm. A very agile, beautiful

voice. With tremendous temperament. The earth’s

magnetic field weakening. Even the princess

is drawn into the violence of the action,

extremes of joy, mad ravings, almost

requiring the conventions of opera. Thus,

thus; we parted, thus to meet again.

Thus in a ship, under sail, since the sun

itself is moving, supposing Infinite

Space to be (as it were) Sensorium

of the Omnipresent. Reduced to a

few feet of ground, we begin with great

delight to plant a garden. The Czar is in

that garden. Quiet eruptions, safe enough to attract

tourists. We suppose other bodies annihilated.

Upon any conditions supposed, taught to describe

accurately, I detest everything that smells

of theory. If we look at similar

coral reefs, the past location of the same

precise environment can be traced. But

there the comparison breaks. And from these

relative motions will arise the relative

motion of a body on the earth.