Born One-Hundred Six Years Ago Today

DOLOR

Theodore Roethke

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplicaton of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.




THE SURLY ONE

Theodore Roethke

1

When true love broke my heart in half,
I took the whiskey from the shelf,
And told my neighbors when to laugh.
I keep a dog, and bark myself.

2

Ghost cries out to ghost–
But whose afraid of that?
I feel those shadows most
That start from my own feet.



THE WAKING

Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?   

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?   

God bless the Ground!  I shall walk softly there,   

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?   

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do   

To you and me; so take the lively air,   

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.   

What falls away is always. And is near.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

Floyd Atmosphere Had His Cups Repossessed

Paul Weller is 56 today. These are the songs I play every Paul Weller birthday, I love each and every one of them, especially and forgive me this Style Council song (it has a false start, give it a few seconds):







We did a five and a half mile, two out and back, hike at Blockhouse yesterday. There is a new trail in MOCO that follows Muddy Branch Creek from its mouth at the Potomac near Pennyfield Lock north to the bridge where 28 (near Casa Satanica) crosses the creek. This is true, people can vouch: one of the sources of Muddy Branch is a spring in my parents' back yard. You can stand on the rock top, it used to be our pitching mound. We parked at the lot on River and did the 1.5 of the 1.75 to almost Esworthy Road (the last quarter of the trail was a gas line cut full of uncut grass and presumably ticks) and back and then the 1.25 mile to and from the parking lot down to Pennyfield Lock. Nothing special, but nice enough for evenings when we've limited time and a need to get to woods.

Today we take two cars to South Mountain, park one at the parking lot below Weverton Cliffs, double-ride north to Gathland State Park, hike eight miles south on Appalachian Trail, with lunch on Weverton Cliffs, to car parked below Weverton Cliffs, then double-ride north to Gathland State Park to take two cars home. Monday's hike TBD.

A postscript to yesterday's post: it occurs to me that I didn't think about The Grand Budapest Hotel at all yesterday - it never came up in conversation on the hike or around the house - until I read yesterday's post before starting to write this one. I did, however, hear Durutti Column songs in my head as I hiked while thinking about the Stephanie Young poem I posted yesterday as well as the Robert Coover novel I'm reading as well as a poem I'm near abandoning and calling finished. Today in Earthgirl's backpack is a watercolor palette and block, in mine the Coover novel, a book of Clark Coolidge's sonnets (the Coolidge below not a sonnet) and a notebook. I took into consideration portability and practicality for going into forests forty years ago when setting my priorities.








SETTLED IN AUGUST

Clark Coolidge

Floyd Atmosphere had his cups repossessed
they were amethyst and the buckweed falls
I think it's arbitrary the poem
shaped by idiots rising like a sun
thinking the universe doesn't get it
Gogo Flam arrived home goose step by back stoop
I'll give the wall everything even blood it's higher
Spodumene Bob presiding draws mouth on glass
a highway to the moon the only bout they'll join
ugh said the centipede it's a classic!
and Monk names tunes by trying to name them
well we'll see but now the loquat is gone
no semblance even but plenty of mirrors
aren't the heroes nervous? psilocybin notation
to outright cry and be ready for the beach
scooter then the cash cow the bulk finagle
I watch TV I'm no longer a Cherokee
just a live impersonation till the ceiling falls
join you then join you in bed maybe
I live in a borrowed multiplicity
my brothers are the smoke

Is It Your Hermeneut's Helmet Not Letting Me Filter Through?

• So I wanted to get the hawk gif from the top of the page and return Momcat to her banner, so that's Reason Two for this post. Reason Three is the promised Stereolab cascade, Reason Four to post another Matthea Harvey poem. Reason Five is to give you these links, Reason Six because what the fuck. Reason One you know, it's the tag (besides My Complicity) that adorns each and every post.
• America's future.
• Foucault on how neoliberalism enters the soul.
• Why he wants to fuck Boris Johnson.
• Krasznahorkai, for those of you who do. I confess, I am not in shape for Seiobo, though I feel as if I'm getting there.
• I had forgot the havoc that cutting and pasting from Word can wreck on my motherfucking free blogging platform.
• We talked about death again at Thanksgiving.
• DT: I have no pastimes on the road. I sit in the van staring straight ahead. I go to the venue and wait until I have to soundcheck. Afterwards I sit in the dressing room and wait for the show. People bring me food. I do the show. After the show I wait to go back to the hotel. At the hotel I wait to go to bed. In the morning I wake up and go to the lobby to wait to get into the van. I don't have a book or magazine or newspaper. I don't watch TV. No radio or other music is allowed in the van. I don't talk to anyone in the van. I wait and I sing. My pastime, then, is waiting.
• Boulez. 
• WFMU's Winter/Spring schedule is out, Blumin and Berger and Ryker return, and other than Sue's Solid Gold Hell (she's taking a break) no one I will miss is gone. 

SAD LITTLE BREATHING MACHINE

Matthea Harvey

Under its glass lid, the square
of cheese is like any other element

of the imagination--cough in the tugboat,
muff summering somewhere in mothballs.

Have a humbug. The world is slow
to dissolve & leave us. Is it your

hermeneut's helmet not letting me
filter through? The submarine sinks

with a purpose: Scientist Inside
Engineering A Shell. & meanwhile

I am not well. Don't know how to go on
Oprah without ya. On t.v, a documentary

about bees--yet another box in a box.
The present is in there somewhere.

Wrapped Up in Yourself Like a Spool, Trawling Your Dark as Owls Do

• Conlon Nancarrow was born 101 years ago yesterday. I confess, after I watched that for the fourth time last night I almost broke my promise to myself not to post anything Sunday unless kaboom or Egoslavian Holy Day.
• RIP Lou Reed, but I'm not the person to eulogize Lou Reed. It's not hate, it's not love. VU has aged badly for me (but not for others), Reed's solo work by and large didn't interest me. That's on me. And there are plenty of links to eulogies, a sign that if Lou Reed didn't sing to me he sang to a lot of people whose music opinions I value.
• Here's one. Here's another. Here's a third.
• I promised myself I wasn't going to post yesterday barring kaboom, and Reed's death is not a kaboom to me, and I'm certain (and you'll have to trust me) that had I not promised myself not to post barring kaboom I wouldn't have posted a stand-alone RIP Lou Reed post. This did get me thinking of borderline kabooms. John Cale, KABOOM, but say... well I won't say, I'm sure, if I keep promising myself days off, I will be tested soon enough.
• Theses on austerity and how to fight it.
• Krugman's errors.
• Another lesson on proper whistleblowing.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuillton }'s weekly links.
• The New Inquiry's Sunday readings.
• Bernhard, for those of you who do. I confess, I don't do well with German novelists, acknowledged irony from a far shittier bleggalgazer, reading bleggalgazing sucks to me.
• But hey! bleggalgazing: I can! I can not post everyday! I'll see what tomorrow's blog-pressure numbers are.
• On Bach, for those of you who do.
• Bach defended against his devotees. (h/t guy in link above)
• Linda Thompson interview!
• Sylvia Plath was born 81 years ago yesterday. See kaboom and Nancarrow bullet above.

YOU'RE

Sylvia Plath

Clownlike, happiest on your hands,   

Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,   

Gilled like a fish. A common-sense   

Thumbs-down on the dodo’s mode.   

Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,   

Trawling your dark as owls do.   

Mute as a turnip from the Fourth   

Of July to All Fools’ Day,

O high-riser, my little loaf.

Vague as fog and looked for like mail.   

Farther off than Australia.

Bent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawn.   

Snug as a bud and at home   

Like a sprat in a pickle jug.   

A creel of eels, all ripples.   

Jumpy as a Mexican bean.   

Right, like a well-done sum.   

A clean slate, with your own face on.

Born Fifty-Four Years Ago Today, Sixty-Six Today

So who else's birthday is it, asks K as we just sit down for a very welcome Thursday Night Pints ten minutes ago. Kirsty MacColl and John Prine, I said. L said, I love John Prine, K said, I love Kirsty MacColl. Sweet, I said to K, I like both but don't love enough to birthday but loves of loved ones I'll publish as long as I don't hate, give me that MacBook in your bag, tell me your favorite songs and I'll post both in ten minutes if you buy me a pint. Not only do I get free pints, I don't have to buy their thimbles of ridiculously priced single malt Nyquil.

UPDATE! SeatSix reminds me that MacColl died in a boating accident in 2000. Post title has been fixed. He also requested a song, will post sometime over the weekend.

(Click "Like" If You're Against Extinction!)

• Sorry for the bleggalgaze yesterday, in my defense (a) it needed be vented and (b) it's a tradition on the first slowest day of the week the first week of the Blog Days of Summer. There's more above.
• Hey, help Zen win some money!
• Today in Fine Metaphors Abounding: The Spanish are fond of seeing football through a political prism, with what happens on the field often said to mirror what happens off it. So when Real Madrid and Barcelona conceded eight goals between them in 24 disastrous hours, eventually getting knocked out of the Champions League, the joke was inevitable and came laced with a bitter sting. Under the right-wing Madrid-supporting prime minister José María Azna, the joke runs, Real Madrid won; under the left-wing Barça-supporting José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Barcelona won; and under the current incumbent, Mariano Rajoy, the Germans do. The shift in power is complete and so, too, is Spain's subjugation. Economic and political power was one thing, but now this. No Spanish teams reached the European Cup final and none even got so far as the quarter-final of the Europa League. The Germans, by contrast, have two European Cup finalists, full stadiums, cheap tickets, rude economic health ... they'll even have Pep Guardiola next season. What have Spain got?
• Capitalism as protectionism.
• The climate of capitalism.
• Dennis the Peasant is 70 today.

• UPDATE! I meant to mention it, forgot, was reminded, it's this guy's 195th.
• Division by religion.
• Children are our future.
• Capitalizing on terrorism.
• US imperialism IFAQs.
• Obama's cowardice.
• Red lines. It's entirely possible if not probable that Obama serves Power as much by being a weak moron as a complicit widget.
• The self-description of my latest twitter follower says: I like self shots and I have many hot topless photos of myself on my blog. I'll take her word on it.
• Future.
• Urban permaculture.
• But yes, W & C, thanks, I heard, verily heh, who cares? plus it's a sign I've done something right.
• Someone else with a Sarah in his past. Seriously, the overlaps are remarkable.
• Maggie's awesome weekly links.
• { feuillton }'s awesome weekly links.
• The New Inquiry's awesome weekly links.
• Beckett, for those of you who do.

 

SESTINA: LIKE

A.E. Stallings

Now we’re all “friends,” there is no love but Like,

A semi-demi goddess, something like

A reality-TV star look-alike,

Named Simile or Me Two. So we like

In order to be liked. It isn’t like

There’s Love or Hate now. Even plain “dislike”

Is frowned on: there’s no button for it. Like

Is something you can quantify: each “like”

You gather’s almost something money-like,

Token of virtual support. “Please like

This page to stamp out hunger.” And you’d like

To end hunger and climate change alike,

But it’s unlikely Like does diddly. Like

Just twiddles its unopposing thumbs-ups, like-

Wise props up scarecrow silences. “I’m like,

So OVER him,” I overhear. “But, like,

He doesn’t get it. Like, you know? He’s like

It’s all OK. Like I don’t even LIKE

Him anymore. Whatever. I’m all like ... ”

Take “like” out of our chat, we’d all alike

Flounder, agape, gesticulating like

A foreign film sans subtitles, fall like

Dumb phones to mooted desuetude. Unlike

With other crutches, um, when we use “like,”

We’re not just buying time on credit: Like

Displaces other words; crowds, cuckoo-like,

Endangered hatchlings from the nest. (Click “like”

If you’re against extinction!) Like is like

Invasive zebra mussels, or it’s like

Those nutria-things, or kudzu, or belike

Redundant fast food franchises, each like

(More like) the next. Those poets who dislike

Inversions, archaisms, who just like

Plain English as she’s spoke — why isn’t “like”

Their (literally) every other word? I’d like

Us just to admit that’s what real speech is like.

But as you like, my friend. Yes, we’re alike,

How we pronounce, say, lichen, and dislike

Cancer and war. So like this page. Click Like.

Born Eighty Years Ago Today, Delayed Bleggalgazing, or: Kansas City 1, United 0

Both St Benny of Olsen and Goff called the game United's best performance of the year. OK, sure. They didn't score, it looks like they never will score. I'm OK with the defense and defensive mids, from wings to forwards it looks like they never will score. I've offered my Theory of Najar (he's missed far more than is mentioned), here's my Boskovic Corollary - if United can't score in the run of play they need to score on set pieces, with Boskovic they had someone who excelled in free and corner kicks, without him United has Chris Pontius, who both sucks at free and corner kicks AND is one of the few players who could score on well-delivered free and corner kicks. Maybe Boskovic wanted to go back to Vienna, had no desire to stay in DC even had United wanted him, there was a sub-story of family issues back in Montenegro, but I also get the vibe that United is going cheap until and unless they get a new stadium, was happy to get Boskovic's contract off the rolls. This week's story of United's TV contract with Comcast suggests United's going cheap, and dig this dig from Brandon McDonald last night on RFK: “The difference is, you look at our field and you look at [Kansas City's] field. RFK is a mess. It’s dry, it’s bumpy, there are holes everywhere. This is a real field. You can see the difference. We can play on a real field.” In any case, before full bitching, (for instance, the dramatic disappearance of Dwayne DeRossario's value as a soccer player and United's cheap decision to try and squeeze one more year out of him) I'll watch next Saturday's home game versus fucking Metros, and you know what? Frank Gorshin was born eighty years ago today.


 

    
I was a kid at the time when he was Bele and Riddler and I saw the episodes over and over, happily, I assign them higher cultural value than people who weren't a kid when Gorshin was Bele and Riddler and saw episodes over and over. Was going to make this a stand alone post, but in the spirit of bleggalgazing I enjoyed in three email conversations yesterday - thanks! and the answer to the question two of you asked is that the first one is harmless if eccentric, the second a fuckstick if a fuckstick - I suspend the usual blogwhoring and just post the Minor Egoslavian Holy Day here.


 

Born 140 Years Ago Today

* *

I Investigate So Much That in the End It Is For Form's Sake Only, Only a Drop Comes Out

Yes, I know whose birthday is tomorrow (meaning today) I said when asked by L last night at Thursday Night Pints, Shatner eighty-two today (meaning today). L held Planet when Planet was two and three years old, she suggested I add the St Clairsville video just now (meaning last night in another post) to today's (meaning yesterday's) Planet Birthday Cascade. Know who else has a birthday tomorrow (meaning today), born eigthy-seven years ago tomorrow (meaning today) I asked?


 


Yes, this Rostropovich bit is ceepeed from last May, apparently I forgot to wiki Slava's birthday then to verify the shitty lists I use for these gags is correct. I said then, Next to piano, I love cello most. Here's Rostropovich playing Shostakovich's Cello Concerto Number 1, first, second, third, fourth movements. Here's him with Benjamin Britten on piano playing Shostakovich's Cello Sonata Opus 40 first, second, third, fourth movements.

• Don't Spock and Frost share a birthday in a week or so, if I remember from last year, said D. Yes, yes they do.
• It's important to remember that even though we fucking hippies were right we were right for the wrong reasons and those who were wrong were wrong for the right reasons. The fucking hippies still need punching. All our former bleggal overlords now paid by Corporate demand order.
• Jesus, you hold a grudge, said K, getting up to buy a round for a twitter bet she made with me and lost.
• Why Mr Fish misses George W Bush.
• Wall Street, War Street.
• Some lies never die.
• Worse than Nixon.
• On my contributing to my surveillance.
• Culture of monsters.
• Maryland Wombat. Hamster sends, wants the youtube, at least the Divine, IT DOESN'T FIT THIS POST, or does fit this post but I can't get past my motherfucking format rules. Tomorrow. This is not the only time this post.
• Climate deniers and the cycle of abuse.
• Only Number Six?
• Number Six?

• Electric Fence.
• Berryman interview.
• Beckett, for those of you who do.
• Archie Ammons.
• Joanna Russ, for those of you who do.
• Celebrity Britten.
• HEY! Mr Alarum's band!
• HEY! Yes, we did see Nick Cave Wednesday night, there is a slideshow, tomorrow maybe, there's no room in this post. Here, a quick review of the concert. 
• Every day. And Happy Anniversary!
• (A) Good on Mark and (B) our last dog was named Rudy and (C) this is the fourth time in the past four days I was reminded of the James Tate's Yoko, posted below the Webern.

YOKO

Thom Gunn

All today I lie in the bottom of the wardrobe
feeling low but sometimes getting up
to moodily lumber across rooms
and lap from the toilet bowl, it is so sultry
and then I hear the noise of firecrackers again
all New York is jaggedy with firecrackers today
and I go back to the wardrobe gloomy
trying to void my mind of them.
I am confused, I feel loose and unfitted.

At last deep in the stairwell I hear a tread,
it is him, my leader, my love.
I run to the door and listen to his approach.
Now I can smell him, what a good man he is,
I love it when he has the sweat of work on him,
as he enteres I yodel with happiness,
I throw my body up against his,
I try to lick his lips,
I care about him more than anything.

After we eat we go for a walk to the piers.
I leap into the standing warmth, I plunge into
the combination of old and new smells.
Here on a garbage can at the bottom, so interesting,
what sister or brother I wonder left this message I sniff.
I too piss there, and go on.
Here a hydrant there a pole
here's a smell I left yesterday, well that's disappointing
but I piss there anyway, and go on.

I investigate so much that in the end
it is for form's sake only, only a drop comes out.

I investigate tar and rotten sandwiches, everything, and go on.

And here a dried old turd, so interesting
so old, so dry, yet so subtle and mellow.
I can place it finely, I really appreciate it,
a gold distant smell like packed autumn leaves in winter
reminding me how what is rich and fierce when excreted
becomes weathered and mild
but always interesting
and reminding me of what I have to do.

My leader looks on and expresses his approval.

I sniff it well and later I sniff the air well
a wind is meeting us after the close July day
rain is getting near too but first the wind.
Joy, joy,
being outside with you, active, investigating it all,
with bowels emptied, feeling your approval
and then running on, the big fleet Yoko,
my body in its excellent black coat never lets me down,
returning to you (as I always will, you know that)
and now
filling myself out with myself, no longer confused,
my panting pushing apart my black lips, but unmoving,
I stand with you braced against the wind.

It Was When the Catfish Were the Only Fish Left Living in the Monongahela River

One of my earliest crushes, my avatar's nemesis' partner, lover, mother of his twin children, code name Barbara Feldon, real name 99, was born 81 years ago today, oh my. I'd be curious how much Mel Brooks and Buck Henry say they consciously stole from and lovingly parodied the two Emma Peel Avenger years, at least 99 the first few seasons of Get Smart, but learning would entail research, and fuck that.

• Max quick, I'm weakening, dang, me never Max. One of my great sadnesses is that my avatar called in sick and was unavailable for this scene and Brooks and Henry had to bring in Corporal Agarn from Fort Courage Kansas, get him out of his Union blues and into my avatar's costume, had my avatar been there instead of crashed on mushrooms and Mad Dog it would make a far better, far sexier youtube than this one for 99's birthday.
• Canned laughter.
• Not the end of times but the end of time: We went from a future focused society to a present-based one. The leaning forward that had characterized our civilization since the invention of farming and text became more of a standing-up. I think this another facet of shock doctrine, this one more towards our conditioning for control by our owners rather than harvesting us for meat - America is still ten years behind Britain, twenty years behind Spain, thirty years behind Greece - but it reminds that because I got sick of saying and assumed long-timers were sick of hearing it I haven't been yodeling recently that the core of my rubiness is that until the past decade I believed unto a faith that in America each generation leaves the next generation a better America than the parenting generation was bequeathed. Cue violins for my daughter's future, it's an old and melodramatic gag, but what world will she live in when she's my age in 2046?
• Canned laughter.
• Life is cheap in the New World Order.
• Fucking Americans.
• Zizek on Chavez.
• One more idiot with a twitter account.
• So it seems I'm back to bullets, fucking blooger, it's the only fucking thing here it will let me change. If enough of you stop reading I can crash this and start start again elsewhere happily bitter at my involuntarily invisibility. Fuck me.
• Chance is a good librarian.
• What makes dogs dogs?
• A young William Carlos Williams writes a letter to his brother.
• OK, for MOCOMOFOs: a friend just tweeted that Bret Michaels (who the fuck is Bret Michaels?) likes curly fries. Ken Beatrice doesn't like curly fries, though he's told they're very good. Try the Jamocha Shake.
• At Matanaka Farm.
• Coetzee, for those of you who do.
• Roth, for those of you who do.
• Jim's latest playlist.
• I don't play enough Morton Feldman here.
• Holyfuck, forgive me, I love this below, this is the direction my ears are sprinting, I'm so stupid for it I can't believe you're not stupid for it too. Fine metaphors abound.

FATHER, IN DRAWER

Lucie Brock-Broido

Mouthful of earth, hair half a century silvering, who buried him.

With what. Make a fist for heart. That is the size of it.

                                                             Also directives from our  DNA.

The nature of  his wound was the clock-cicada winding down.

                                                            He wound down.

July, vapid, humid: sails of sailboats swelled, yellow boxes

Of   cigars from Cuba plumped. Ring fingers fattened for a spell.

                                                            Barges of coal bloomed in heat.

It was when the catfish were the only fish left living

                                                            In the Monongahela River.

Though there were (they swore) no angels left, one was stillbound in

The very drawer of salt and ache and rendering, its wings wrapped-in

                                                            By the slink from the strap

Of his second-wife’s pearl-satin slip, shimmering and still

                  As one herring left face-up in its brine and tin.

The nature of  his wound was muscadine and terminal; he was easy

                 To take down as a porgy off the cold Atlantic coast.

                 In the old city of   Brod, most of the few Jews left

Living may have been still at supper while he died.

That same July, his daughters’ scales came off in every brittle

                                                            Tinsel color, washing

To the next slow-yellowed river and the next, toward west,

                                                            Ohio-bound.

                This is the extent of that. I still have plenty heart.

Sixty Today

       
Robyn Hitchcock is sixty today. The above Soft Boys song is this shitty blog's Theme Song Seven. Today is a Minor, not a High, Egoslavian Holy Day: I love some Hitchcock songs, like some, meh some, especially the later offerings, but his music has been on my soundtrack for more than thirty years and deserves mentioning. Here's Hitchcock on Irene Trudel's show last Monday, interview and songs. Here's Hitchcock covering fifteen songs, including two Roxy Music songs and a Nick Drake song.