So He Smelled the Underside of His Own Arm

The NFL Draft was on all the television sets in the bar last night at Thursday Night Pints. Patrons were rapt, screaming at the sets. It's a fucking national holiday, K said. Johnny Football? L asked. I said, he won the Heisman as a freshman, from what I understand he's too small to play professionally but too talented to miss, or something. We were only there for the first hour, six or seven picks, but after every pick the cameras spent as much time on Johnny Football's face as on the person actually picked. Ritual humiliation? asked L. Wait, there's a trade! screamed some buffoon on ESPN, Cleveland has moved up! Another buffoon, one with a ridiculous haircut for a grown man, screamed, I've been screaming about Johnny Football since the first pick, surely Cleveland moved up to take Johnny Football, it's Johnny Football's time! It wasn't Johnny Football's time. ESPN kept the camera trained on Johnny Football's crestfallen face. Fucking national holiday, said K.

• Tim Geithner's side of the story. No surprise in his perspective, but it is an interesting read on his perspective. What's making all the noise, however, is this: [Geithner] cheerfully relayed a story that also appears in his book about the time he sought advice from Bill Clinton on how to pursue a more populist strategy: “You could take Lloyd Blankfein into a dark alley,” Clinton said, “and slit his throat, and it would satisfy them for about two days. Then the blood lust would rise again.”
• Oh my, I'm faint.
• The Dictionary of Untranslatables: Postmodern winks aside, The Dictionary of Untranslatables is a mad, encyclopedic tribute in the grand tradition of bizarre translation projects, with the official funding to match: Eurothink at its academic best. Why else would the culture czars of Paris and Brussels who’ve brought you the yearly European Culture Capitals (Umeå, anyone?) and Quaero (the mysterious, amply funded Franco-German search engine) pay theory buffs the big euros, if not to pedal soft power? The first translation of all this ­untranslatability, conspiracy theorists will remark, was into Ukrainian.
• Is The Intercept some kind of roach motel?
• Evil.
• The commodification of creativity.
• Identity politics.
• Mother's Day Lament.
• The beginning of the end of Eddie Johnson at DC United.
• East Moco, for those of you who pass through that Hell.
• The Aerosol Grey Machine.
• Colson Whitehead and poker: “I have a good poker face because I am half dead inside.”
• Lionize.
• The biography of the novel, or: Josipovici, for those of you who do.
• Woke up with Radio Birdman in my head.

LITTLE ETERNITIES

Mary Ruefle

When are we happiest? he asked her.
Not one of them could get the seats
to go back, not one of them really knew
what was in the glove box, though
everything there was theirs.

When they got to where they were going,
a park, a gray squirrel came jumping along.
Childhood! It was in one of the houses nearby.
Money! Every day it seemed to loose itself
from its lurking-place and drift away.

So he smelled the underside
of his own arm. And the squirrel
paused, one of those little eternities
never mentioned again.

Reading What Little Text There Is on the Graves

   

• Of all the songs on my massive WFMU DJ premium playlist that's the one I can't get out of my head, which is not a complaint.
• Thanks to those of you who've asked/offered good wishes for Napoleon. Vet is coming today at noon to take out Nap's stitches and start rabies shots. Will give update tomorrow.
• To cat or not to cat, that is the question.
• Thanks to those of you who've asked/offered good wishes for the Goat. No news, no new entries on the neighborhood listserv.
• Thanks to those reading. There are some new links added to blogrolls, please check them out as they float to the top. As always, if there is someone/thing you think I would enjoy reading please let me know, and as always, if you are Kinding me and me not you please let me know. 
• Futile Weekend Blogging starts today in Dead Blegsylvania.
• Via Agi, your Good Friday song.
• Two East German defectors walk into an art gallery....
• Black Dog bark bark barking. Not me.
• RIP Gabriel García Márquez. I'm not going to immediately promise a rereading, I'm not going to flood you with RIPs besides this one and the below link, though I will assert that whenever I see more than one butterfly in my eyesight I think of Gabriel García Márquez, especially if they are yellow.
• A compilation of Gabriel García Márquez links.
• Though please please please read this.
• Vollmann, for those of you who do.
• Muriel Spark on how to write a letter.
• Robert Fludd's Temple of Music.
• Fire Matt Williams!
• Always thus.
• Mary Ruefle draws a giraffe.
• Via the youtube below, sought for this reason, I've learned her name is pronounced ROOF-lee.
• I am on my second trip through her lectures collected in Madness, Rack, and Honey.
• If I played my Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game for currently working poets....

THE BUNNY GIVES US A LESSON IN ETERNITY

Mary Ruefle

We are a sad people, without hats.
The history of our nation is tragically benign.
We like to watch the rabbits screwing in the graveyard.
We are fond of the little bunny with the bent ear
who stands alone in the moonlight
reading what little text there is on the graves.
He looks quite desirable like that.
He looks like the center of the universe.
Look how his mouth moves mouthing the words
while the others are busy making more of him.
Soon the more will ask of him to write their love
letters and he will oblige, using the language
of our ancestors, those poor clouds in the ground,
beloved by us who have been standing here for hours,
a proud people after all.

Drawing Rain Over a Bridge and Over the People Crossing the Bridge

• Frank Bridge was born 135 years ago today.
• We talked about Blegsylvania last night at a Tuesday Edition of Whatever Night Fits All Our Schedules Pints. At this point, I said, I don't mind the obligations I impose on myself, but the fact I now see them as obligations means lights are changing. I'm not sparing you the rest, I just haven't formed the rest into coherent sentences yet, but at least I've put that great Mary Lou Lord song in my head, now yours.
• More chimeras.
• The Friends of Glenn. 
• Notes on Want To Start a Revolution?
• Food links.
• Midcounty Highway! Fucking Clarksburg, the developers especially, but the fucks who bought houses there too.
• The state of United. Planet comes home a week from Friday, home opener a week from Saturday.
• The 150 year hunt for the Great American Novel.
• Angel Olsen.
• Above two links via Hamster, thanks.
• Gentle resignation: Houellebecq, for those of you who do or, like me, never had and should. Not a conscious choice - I didn't decide I wouldn't read him - I just never have.
• Hymn to Life.

RAIN EFFECT

Mary Ruefle

A bride and a groom sitting in an open buggy

in the rain, holding hands but not looking

at each other, waiting for the rain to stop,

waiting for the marriage to begin, embarrassed

by the rain, the effect of the rain on the bridal

veil, the wet horse with his mane in his eyes,

the rain cold as the sea, the sea deep as love,

big drops of rain falling on the leather seat,

the rain beaded on a rose pinned to the groom’s

lapel, the rain on the bride’s bouquet,

on the baby’s breath there, the sound of the rain

hitting the driver’s top hat, the rain

shining like satin on the black street,

on the tips of patent leather shoes, Hokusai’s

father who polished mirrors for a living, Hokusai’s

father watching the sky for clouds, Hokusai’s father’s son

drawing rain over a bridge and over the people crossing

the bridge, Hokusai’s father’s son drawing the rain

for hours, Hokusai’s father rubbing a mirror, the rain

cold as the sea, the sea cold as love, the sea swelling

to a tidal wave, at the tip of the wave white.

If the Gods Implore Him to Hold His Saliva, He Doesn't Hear Them

• The traditional New Year's Song at this shitty blog.
• New Year's plagiarism!
• Today's Maqroll precept: Is it true we forget most of what has happened to us? Isn't it more likely that a portion of the past serves as seed, an unnamed incentive for setting out again toward a destiny we had foolishly abandoned? A crude consolation. Yes, we do forget. And it's just as well.
• 2013: It was a very bad year.
• Surveillance is so 2013. 
• 2014 predictions. 
• 2014.
• New term: flexian web, as in this is how the Flexians maintain continuity and control of important political and economic nodes in our Upwards Redistribution Nation. One big happy Flexian Family, which does not include us except as units of rent extraction.
• Don Durito's origins plus a bleggalgaze.
• Thoughts on a budding literary obsession. 
• Brad's 2013 reading list. I c/ped the Ruefle poem below from the post.
• HEY! Lee Ranaldo's new band:

SPIDER

Mary Ruefle

he spider can barely walk, his legs are so scared –
he’s got to get from the bar of soap to the uppermost
showerstall tile that is his home, and he has suffered
a betrayal so great he’s lost in his own neighborhood,
crawling on his hands and knees, so to speak, in and out
of the shadows of other tiles he’s passed before but
barely recognizes, given his state of shock and disbelief.
Spiders don’t hear very well — he can’t hear the rain
as it falls and cools his flaming legs, the distant screams
of another’s crisis means nothing to him, he can’t hear
his own heartbeat, an alarm casting his skeleton straight
into hell, his blood ignited by the bellows of loss.
If the gods implore him to hold his saliva, he doesn’t
hear them, he goes on crawling toward the one safe spot,
which has become, in his mind, the destination of his life
and this night rolled into one, a wet bag at the bottom
of which, were it to fall, would lie his demise –
too awful to discuss.

We Are Fond of the Little Bunny with the Bent Ear Who Stands Alone in the Moonlight Reading What Little Text There Is on the Graves

• Blogging protip: Goats and Liszt, BANGO! the pings roll in. Also, Wednesdays, what the fuck, always has been by far the slowest day of the work week in Blegsylvania, day with the fewest posts around Stringtown.
• DC Code: He Is a Cliche.
• The Feminine Divine: Jeju-Style.
• What I think is ephemera.
• The above three links to good blogfriends. I hope :-p makes it back to DC soon: I'm happy to have been in Ohio, wish I'd been in town. Both Mr Abonilox and Frances had been on blog hiatuses, it's wonderful to have new content, I don't know that it means more is imminent or not, is nice to read them again.
• A new ideology.
• The establishment makes sloppy love to the Snowden leaks.
• From selling hope to hawking insurance.
• Pro-Obama hate speech.

• The 29 stages of a twitterstorm.
• Three days late, New Inquiry's Sunday links.
• This person is a lifelong friend of Earthgirl's, stood for Earthgirl at our wedding.
• ICC.
• There is no North Bethesda. It's called Rockville.
• First snow of season in Garrett County, Augusta!
• What I can't post about real life.
• What I can't post about work.
• What I can't post about Blegsylvania.
• What I won't post about Blegsylvania.
• Because I was baited by a loved one: Mozart is The Fucking Doors of classical music. You're welcome.
• Abandonery.
• The three-legged dog at the heart of our home.
• Brock-Broido interview.
• Ashbery.
• Lonnie Holley.

THE BUNNY GIVES US A LESSON IN ETERNITY

Mary Ruefle

We are a sad people, without hats.

The history of our nation is tragically benign.

We like to watch the rabbits screwing in the graveyard.

We are fond of the little bunny with the bent ear

who stands alone in the moonlight

reading what little text there is on the graves.

He looks quite desirable like that.

He looks like the center of the universe.

Look how his mouth moves mouthing the words

while the others are busy making more of him.

Soon the more will ask of him to write their love

letters and he will oblige, using the language

of our ancestors, those poor clouds in the ground,

beloved by us who have been standing here for hours,

a proud people after all.

And There Are Kites Caught on the Wires Up Above the Street Lamps and the Storm Drains Are All Choked with Dead Branches

New Future Bible Heroes. Gonna go see them with Planet and Ari on July 26 at Black Cat. Anyone else want to go? Hamster, I'm looking at you. OK OK OK, have some links while they're fresh and since you won't get any tomorrow, though take my threats based on previous follow-through on said threats. Josh Marshall, megaload, says Daniel Ellsberg is old and stupid so don't listen to what Ellsberg says about Snowden. No link, go find or avoid on you own. Daily motherfucking Obama. Begging, charity, who we are now. We all need shelter. The symbolism of technology. New Inquiry's Sunday links. Yeah, United played last night, tied Colorado in Colorado 0-0, watched twenty minutes, went to bed. Apple just sent me an email telling me the best way to celebrate five years of Apple aps is to buy more Apple aps. New Coover coming, a sequel to his first novel, The Origin of the Brunists. Another riff on Against the Day. Three Mary Ruefle poems. Ashbery interview from 1983 - High Egoslavian Holy Day later this month. Circleville Ohio. Ligeti at the 50-yard line. Um, here's the real point of this afternoon brazen blogwhoring and attention-sluttery post: I HAD NO FUCKING IDEA WIRE IS PLAYING BLACK CAT THIS SUNDAY NIGHT!  $20. Anyone? Here, this song is easily one of the five most posted on this shitty blog ever.


    




PSYCHOANALYSIS: AN ELEGY

Jack Spicer

What are you thinking about?

I am thinking of an early summer.
I am thinking of wet hills in the rain
Pouring water. Shedding it
Down empty acres of oak and manzanita
Down to the old green brush tangled in the sun,
Greasewood, sage, and spring mustard.
Or the hot wind coming down from Santa Ana
Driving the hills crazy,
A fast wind with a bit of dust in it
Bruising everything and making the seed sweet.
Or down in the city where the peach trees
Are awkward as young horses,
And there are kites caught on the wires
Up above the street lamps,
And the storm drains are all choked with dead branches.

What are you thinking?

I think that I would like to write a poem that is slow as a summer
As slow getting started
As 4th of July somewhere around the middle of the second stanza
After a lot of unusual rain California seems long in the summer.
I would like to write a poem as long as California
And as slow as a summer.
Do you get me, Doctor? It would have to be as slow
As the very tip of summer.
As slow as the summer seems
On a hot day drinking beer outside Riverside
Or standing in the middle of a white-hot road
Between Bakersfield and Hell
Waiting for Santa Claus.

What are you thinking now? 

I’m thinking that she is very much like California.
When she is still her dress is like a roadmap. Highways
Traveling up and down her skin
Long empty highways
With the moon chasing jackrabbits across them
On hot summer nights.
I am thinking that her body could be California
And I a rich Eastern tourist
Lost somewhere between Hell and Texas
Looking at a map of a long, wet, dancing California
That I have never seen.
Send me some penny picture-postcards, lady,
Send them.
One of each breast photographed looking
Like curious national monuments,
One of your body sweeping like a three-lane highway
Twenty-seven miles from a night’s lodging
In the world’s oldest hotel.

What are you thinking?

I am thinking of how many times this poem
Will be repeated. How many summers
Will torture California
Until the damned maps burn
Until the mad cartographer
Falls to the ground and possesses
The sweet thick earth from which he has been hiding.

What are you thinking now?

I am thinking that a poem could go on forever.

As He Grew Older He Loved the Word Etcetera and Refused to Abbreviate It

• Progressive movement as PR front for rich Democrats.
• Pragmatic centrism is crony capitalism.
• The enemy-industrial complex.
• The elites' propaganda system.
• Resistance versus emancipation.
• Resignation or revolution.
• The thing is we're losing.
• To save everything, click here.
• The *P* in poetry is political, and I agree but so?
• So yes, reengaging the fuck it, a faith in faith's persistence and ability to find a bed at night, etcetera. To embiggen the above go here, click mosaic, yo, then click it again. Or not.
• Maggie's linkages.
• Sunday linkages.
• { feuilleton }'s linkages.
• Fuck me jig, yo.
• Reconsidering Richard Ford, who I read once but largely forget and not because of his poke at lit bloggers living in Terre Haute but because I don't remember the novels, just reading them, which is no doubt on me.
• Rat-sized house-eating snails?
• Paper versus screen.
• Stalin's library card.
• The 23 most beautiful solo piano pieces?
• Wowee! Archives of 1985 Throwing Muses concert. I was young once too.
• Via Edmond:

           
PERPETUALLY ATTEMPTING TO SOAR

Mary Ruefle

A boy from Brooklyn used to cruise on summer nights.

As soon as he’d hit sixty he’d hold his hand out the window,

cupping it around the wind. He’d been assured

this is exactly how a woman’s breast feels when you put

your hand around it and apply a little pressure. Now he knew,

and he loved it. Night after night, again and again, until

the weather grew cold and he had to roll the window up.

For many years afterwards he was perpetually attempting

to soar. One winter’s night, holding his wife’s breast

in his hand, he closed his eyes and wanted to weep.

He loved her, but it was the wind he imagined now.

As he grew older, he loved the word etcetera and refused

to abbreviate it. He loved sweet white butter. He often

pretended to be playing the organ. On one of his last mornings,

he noticed the shape of his face molded in the pillow.

He shook it out, but the next morning it reappeared.