Garretted

Sun through Frederick, Hagerstown, Hancock, Cumberland, then, half a mile over the Garrett County line, blizzard conditions to a half mile into West Virginia, then sun.

Also:

Anyone who drives through Bethesda daily knows that's an eternal project.

An Appointment Kept in a Private Sea

We mostly talked about Hilltop at Thursday Night Pints which means it won't be talked about here. POTUS 12 did come up briefly: I was not chided as a mittenabler (copyright!) when I took my turn cursing motherfucking Obama. I asked, if the elite know there's no there there, that shit times are coming, the only thing that matters is expanding the police state, and Obama's done his job magnificently, it could not have gone better, and he will be rewarded with a second term. Got me a pint. Sure wish I could poem the Hilltop discussion here though.

We'll be on that section of I-68 about three hours after I've plunged publish on this post, taking Planet back to Bamgier, so travelogue next two, three days. Earthgirl got a new camera for her birthday yesterday, I need some new paintings to post here. No time to read last night, this morning, so no links today. New Ivy?





APOCALYPSE SOLILOQUY

Scott Hightower

I hope my death is not stolen from me
by a fiery blast of Fahrenheit or Celsius      
or another calculatable accuracy.                       

I will gladly relinquish all the pleasures of daily 
bread, the pride and dreams of art—even pulse;
but I hope my death will not be taken from me.

Actually, it is a modest policy;
little there to discuss as to solace
or in the way of privacy.

A valued moment of self-possession? Might it be
something to embrace more than to expulse?
I hope my death will not be pried from me.

My end is not to be just a cause in a public sea 
of scientists teaming against a disease,
a private point in a welter of piracy.

After all, won't it fundamentally and rightly 
be mine and no one else's? I hope my death is 
not taken from me; better, it be 
an appointment kept in a private sea.

Born Eighty-Six Years Ago Today

Part two, part three.

On Morton Feldman.

Rothko Chapel one, two, three, four, five.

It - Money - Makes Sense: You Need a Better Tractor, an Addition to the Gameroom, You Prefer to Buy Your Beancurd by the Barrel

I was scolded three times yesterday for again reiterating what a motherfucking authoritarian tool motherfucking Obama is, twice with a version of the refrain, o, I suppose you'd like Mitt Romney president with Republican majorities, and I love you all sincerely, but fuck that cheap slur. Saying Obama sucks isn't saying Romney doesn't (and there's no fucking chance in hell Mitt Romney is going to beat Obama, there is FAR LESS PROFIT FOR CORPORATE IF A REPUBLICAN WINS THE ELECTION, it would slow up the demolition charges Obama can plant that a Republican never could). Here's where we differ: I think the greatest significance of Obama's presidency is his gleeful expansion of executive power and violent endorsement of continued empire by any bloody means and his assault on the civil liberties of American citizens and you don't, and I haven't changed your mind yet and you haven't changed mine and we're not going to change each others no matter how often we have this motherfucking argument over the next ten shitty months of POTUS 12 and, Hey, did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?

• It's true, and I've mailed off our season ticket payments, meaning we've done more this offseason than DC United!
• United will pick 7th in MLS draft today.
• At least one friend at Thurday Night Pints tonight will use the "so, I guess you'd rather have Romney win" slur; you can guess my response.
• Cognitive discourse. Yes.
• It's not terrorism is Americans do it.
• Occupy and the urgency of inclusion.
• I was shitting you people - a message from Ayn Rand.
• Fine representation.
• UPDATE! On the above.
• UPDATE! On the above.
• Why the Tea Party needs Mitt.
• Look at the far right go after Mitt from the left.
• Newt skullfucks Mitt.
• The situation in American waffles.
• Wheaton! as Adams Morgan?
• Purple Line!
• Why do libraries smell that way?
• Want some Bukowski?
• Comparing hatchets.
• Roxy Music remixed.
• Trailer for LCD Soundsystem's documentary on last show. This is true: Planet is dating the nice guy she is because, in a tangential way, she fell in love with LCD Soundsystem from listening to me play it in my car.
• Morton Feldman born 86 years ago today. More later, or not.

YOU GO TO SCHOOL TO LEARN

Thomas Lux

You go to school to learn to
read and add, to someday
make some money. It - money - makes
sense: you need
a better tractor, an addition
to the gameroom, you prefer
to buy your beancurd by the barrel.
There's no other way to get the goods
you need. Besides, it keeps people busy
working - for it.
It's sensible and, therefore, you go
to school to learn (and the teacher,
having learned, gets paid to teach you) how
to get it. Fine. But:
you're taught away from poetry
or, say, dancing (That's nice, dear,
but there's no dough in it). No poem
ever bought a hamburger, or not too many. It's true,
and so, every morning - it's still dark! -
you see them, the children, like angels
being marched off to execution,
or banks. Their bodies luminous
in headlights. Going to school.

Should We Bring It a Chair to Sit On and Offer It Meat?

• Woke up with that in my head, Serendipitously.
• Romney is Michael Dukakis, Fritz Mondale, Bob Dole, the sacrificial candidate. Pint bet that Obama's reelected stands. I wrote two fucking paragraphs saying what the first sentence says. Fucking POTUS 12. 
• Just ten months until the start of POTUS 16.
• Wetwork.
• On the above. 
• Actually, I wrote two more paragraphs for another post, which can be summed up, after viewing this, as jeebusfrackingcrisp, shoot me.
• Falguni Sheth versus motherfucking Digby liberals.
• Thinking person versus Obamabot.
• Twitter versus Google.
• Gingrich versus Occupy.
• Issahole versus Occupy.
• Editorial writers versus Citizens United.
• Krugman versus Chicago School.
• Bill Kristol versus crackers.
• NYT public editor versus NYT propagandists.
• Egyptian student versus Shitty Friedman.
• Shit Republican candidates say.
• The end of capitalism?
• Why banks back SOPA.
• Airport hearts Corporate.
• We are the hollow men.
• Things you might have missed.
• I haven't posted them all, but Stalin's Mustache continues his compilation of typology of scholars.
• Pynchon versus McCarthy.
• Be kind.
• Jay Farrar and Jim James cover Woody Guthrie.
• Snowed in at Wheeler Street.
• 50 Words for Snow gets better with every listen:

BEDTIME STORY

Charles Wright

The generator hums like a distant ding an sich.
It's early evening, and time, like the dog it is,
                                                                   is hungry for food,
And will be fed, don't doubt it, with be fed, my small one.
The forest begins to gather its silences in.
The meadow regroups and hunkers down
                                                               for its cleft feet.

Something is wringing the rag of sunlight
                                                            inexorably out and hanging.
Something is making the reeds bend and cover their heads.
Something is licking the shadows up,
And stringing the blank spaces along, filling them in.
Something is inching its way into our hearts,
                         scratching its blue nails against the wall there.

Should we let it in?
                                    Should we greet it as it deserves,
Hands on our ears, mouth open?
Or should we bring it a chair to sit on and offer it meat?
Should we turn on the radio,
                                     should we clap our hands and dance
The Something Dance, the welcoming Something Dance?
                           I think we should, love, I think we should.

A Dog Drops a Bone, Another Dog Snatches It

We've been told that Stanley and Rose are not purebreds (which is why they were in rescue as young as they were) but are definitely in some large fraction Maine Coons:

Maine Coons develop slowly, and don't achieve their full size until they are three to five years old. Their dispositions remain kittenish throughout their lives; they are big, gentle, good-natured goofs. Even their voices set them apart from other cats; they have a distinctive, chirping trill which they use for everything from courting to cajoling their people into playing with them. (Maine Coons love to play, and many will joyfully retrieve small items.) They rarely meow, and when they do, that soft, tiny voice doesn't fit their size!

While Maine Coons are highly people-oriented cats, they are not overly-dependent. They do not constantly pester you for attention, but prefer to "hang out" with their owners, investigating whatever activity you're involved in and "helping" when they can. They are not, as a general rule, known as "lap cats" but as with any personality trait there are a few Maine Coons that prefer laps. Most Maine Coons will stay close by, probably occupying the chair next to yours instead. Maines will follow you from room to room and wait outside a closed door for you to emerge. A Maine Coon will be your companion, your buddy, your pal, but hardly ever your baby.

Maine Coons are relaxed and easy-going in just about everything they do. The males tend to be the clowns while the females retain more dignity, but both remain playful throughout their lives. They generally get along well with kids and dogs, as well as other cats. They are not as vertically-oriented as some other breeds, prefering to chase objects on the ground and grasping them in their large paws -- no doubt instincts developed as professional mousers. Many Maine Coons will play "fetch" with their owners.

YES! it's like that. Rose is funny, Stanley's hilarious. Neither has meowed though they never stop trilling, it's wonderful. We've learned five and a half indoor cats are too many, so, not counting the inevitable rescue that will be thrust upon us, if these are the last two until they die in twenty years, yay me. Fleabus?

Loves to play with them until she sees us seeing her play with them and then she gets pissy. It's like she's playing POTUS 12 on a blog. O and twooter, look at the twootwhore I am, 500+ twoots in less than two months, what to call twooter angst, it can't be called bleggalgazing (though this guy bleggalgazes his twooter angst). Truth in some small fraction is that twooter makes burying links like acorns for harvesting for next post easy, but still. Twooteroscopy?

• All photos by Planet.
  
• Villagers love this shit. I bet Diane Rehm devotes an entire segment of her smarmy and self-congratulatory Friday circle jerk to it.
• Thought experiment.
• Behind anomie lines.
• Shoot the messenger.
• Has Occupy been a dream?
• Decay of perspective.
• Romney: The curse of the trochee.
• This ripe moment.
• Motherfucking Obama.
• From Mr Fish:

• The very real danger of genetically modified food?
• Purple Line promotional video!
• There is no try. Speaking of twooter, I replied to a Goff twoot re: the ominous silence of DCU's offseason and was followed within fifteen minutes by ten people. 
• Loft and turf and Elkin.
• Serendipity: I literally pressed Against the Day into P's hands yesterday.
• Markson on Gaddis.
• Two new Goldbarth poems.
• Embarrassingly bad!
• A quick one before I go.
• Kuupuu.
• New Xiu Xiu for those of you who do. I don't (though I hear why those who do do), but two loved ones do.
• New Shins for those of you who do. I almost positive it's their bridges that keep me from loving.
• One hour of gorgeous.
• Holyfuck, thank you! Dangerous Minds, I don't think I've ever of these two Queen vids before:

SUBURBAN

Peter Cole

Conformity caught here, nobody catches it,
Lawns groomed in prose, with hardly a stutter.
Lloyd hits the ball, and Lorraine fetches it.

Mom hangs the laundry, Fred, Jr., watches it,
Shirts in the clichéd air, all aflutter.
Conformity caught here, nobody catches it.

A dog drops a bone, another dog snatches it.
I dreamed of this life once, Now I shudder
As Lloyd hits the ball and Lorraine fetches it.

A doldrum of leaky roofs, a roofer who patches it,
Lloyd prowls the streets, still clutching his putter.
Conformity caught here, nobody catches it.

The tediumed rake, the retiree who matches it, 
The fall air gone dead with the pure drone of motors
While Lloyd hits the ball, and Lorraine just fetches it.

The door is ajar, then somebody latches it.
Through the hissing of barbecues poets mutter 
Of conformity caught here, where nobody catches it.
Lloyd hits the ball. And damned Lorraine fetches it.

So Hologramic

Two bits of good news! Planet has been aiming her eye and camera at Stanley, a wondercat, chirper, clown. More photos tomorrow!

Also, a friend found the TVC15 I spent hours looking for this past weekend!



David Bowie & Klaus Nomi - TVC15 & Boys Keep... by ZapMan69

People Smiled at Me and Admired the Goat. "It's Not My Goat," I Explained. "It's the Town's Goat. I'm Just Taking My Turn Caring for It." "I Didn't Know We Had a Goat," One of Them Said. "I Wonder When My Turn Is." "Soon," I said. "Be Patient. Your Time Is Coming.""

Yes I've purposely avoided directly commenting on POTUS 12. Fuck POTUS 12, it's gonna suck unto suck. This past weekend's Bowie at BLCKDGRD versus the second biggest NFL weekend of the year (with predictable results) cleansed one palette, and I was happily searching Bowie songs and missed, keeping my perfect record intact, yesterday morning's Republican candidate debate. Know who wants and is counting on me watching the motherfucking Republican candidates debating?

• Motherfucking Obama, that's who.
• Found the dog buried in a folder. Haven't used it at this site, must be at least a couple of years. What a fucking rube I was and am and will be, not there anymore by grace of constant self-scourging, but surely someplace else; I'm the type who poisons asceticism with self.
• The shit that will be flung at you the next ten months.
• Motherfucking Digby liberals.
• Liberal failure.
• The Santorum taint.
• Swallowing their santorum, rooting for Romney.
• Ken Starr says it's OK to vote for a Mormon.
• Jackhole Diehl says kill more Muslims.
• Occupy Bus.
• How Occupy benefits Corporate.
• Dance of the Marionettes.
• Living feminism. Welcome back, JR.
• University of Maryland priorities!
• Yes, I've posted the below Tate poem at least twice before.
• On Ishmael Reed.
• International repository of regrets.
• The Complete Works of Ennio Morricone.

IT HAPPENS LIKE THIS

Jame Tate

I was outside St. Cecelia's Rectory
smoking a cigarette when a goat appeared beside me.
It was mostly black and white, with a little reddish
brown here and there. When I started to walk away,
it followed. I was amused and delighted, but wondered
what the laws were on this kind of thing. There's
a leash law for dogs, but what about goats? People
smiled at me and admired the goat. "It's not my goat,"
I explained. "It's the town's goat. I'm just taking
my turn caring for it." "I didn't know we had a goat,"
one of them said. "I wonder when my turn is." "Soon,"
I said. "Be patient. Your time is coming." The goat
stayed by my side. It stopped when I stopped. It looked
up at me and I stared into its eyes. I felt he knew
everything essential about me. We walked on. A police-
man on his beat looked us over. "That's a mighty
fine goat you got there," he said, stopping to admire.
"It's the town's goat," I said. "His family goes back
three-hundred years with us," I said, "from the beginning."
The officer leaned forward to touch him, then stopped
and looked up at me. "Mind if I pat him?" he asked.
"Touching this goat will change your life," I said.
"It's your decision." He thought real hard for a minute,
and then stood up and said, "What's his name?" "He's
called the Prince of Peace," I said. "God! This town
is like a fairy tale. Everywhere you turn there's mystery 
and wonder. And I'm just a child playing cops and robbers
forever. Please forgive me if I cry." "We forgive you,
Officer," I said. "And we understand why you, more than
anybody, should never touch the Prince." The goat and
I walked on. It was getting dark and we were beginning
to wonder where we would spend the night.

He Laughed at Accidental Sirens

More and last songs for Bowie's 65th birthday:

Jim's Request!

Fish Request!

Sixty-Five Today

Fine metaphors abound. He's my favorite fraud. I love but don't trust the music, which isn't in the rotation for the two remaining spots of five in my stupidass desert island game but is on the soundtrack of my life.

The Shrieking of Nothing Is Killing

Re: Bowie's 65th tomorrow.

Sultry Moon-Monsters Are Dissolving

Finished Murakami's 1Q84 and will be thinking about it for months if not until I reread it in two or three years - it's now in the reread rotation. I urge you to read it - it is an astonishing feat of imagination on multiple levels, some which I'm sure haven't dawned on me yet, some which I'm sure will kaboom me out of nowhere in the years to come, some which I'm sure will never dawn on me even after rereadings. My initial takeaway: in a book about a parallel world with two moons in which Little People march out of a dead ogre's mouth, the redemptive power of love that saves the world is what seems most far-fetched, and that's not an accident.

• Bowie's gonna be 65 tomorrow. You'll hear a bunch this weekend.
• I was going to try to read Graeber's Debt next, but who the fuck am I fooling. I've said this ad nauseum: I will read the prologues and intros and conclusions of non-fiction to get the author's thesis, I've no interest in the author's meticulous (or not) arrangement of selectively edited and compiled facts justifying his thesis when there are novels and poems I could be reading.
• Where did the money go? 
• Madrick on how austerity is killing Europe. 
• The fall of the Third Hungarian Republic.
• Talking about my comrades.
• I'm afraid of Americans.
• Ron Paul and the propriety of criticism.
• GOP mendacity. 
• 2012 Obama fans shaping up to be worse than 2008's. 
• Norwood!
• I do have Tariq Ali's quick Idea of Communism which I hope to read this weekend as a sherbet between novels, then what? Beckett's Trilogy I'm not sure will work after Murakami, maybe Gass's Tunnel - it's on the 2012 reread schedule.
• Pound's Cantos for those of you who do.
• This is one of my ten most air-guitared songs ever:

FABLIAU OF FLORIDA

Wallace Stevens

Barque of phosphor
On the palmy beach,

Move outward into heaven,
Into the alabasters
And night blues.

Foam and cloud are one.
Sultry moon-monsters
Are dissolving.

Fill your black hull
With white moonlight.

There will never be an end
To this droning of the surf.

And in Moon's Eyes I See the Moon

• So, that's about a tenth of what I've been thinking about that I can't write directly about here. I need to work through new rules, including no rules, which is of course a rule.
• Occupy and space.
• Occupy and transformational strategy.
• Memetics, dissent, and doomed hierarchy.
• How the revolution went viral.
• Shredding the curtain of an enduring atrocity.
• Drones, spec ops, cyber war.
• White people need to shut up.
• Where do corporations live?
• In Montana, corporations aren't people.
• Motherfucking Corporate.
• Asking Romney if corporations are people.
• Overturning Citizens United.
• Fred Hiatt loves him any and all executive power grabs.
• Though he gives fucking Ed Meese column inches to disagree.
• Piles of piles.
• More domestic terrorism.
• Class war graphed.
• David Graeber is funny.
• Thomas Frank interview by Bat Segundo.
• John McCain sure can pick them.
• World's Shittiest Human loves him some Frothy Mix!
• Same day, YFWP and YFNYT run pieces on Frothy Mix's lobbying fortune.
• Myth and object.
• How the pope is chosen.
• Moly.
• Hilltop is rated one of the top ten hipster universities? My cubicle is 75 yards to the left of the statue.
• Twenty free albums.
• Fugazi live series.
• Some Gourds.
• I was looking for some Sandy Denny since she was born seventy years ago today and found this, pre-Denny Fairport Convention, and holyfuck, look at how young Richard Thompson was, how he'd already found his guitar's voice:

MOON

William Jay Smith

I have a white cat whose name is Moon;
He eats catfish from a wooden spoon
And sleeps till five each afternoon.

Moon goes out when the moon is bright
And sycamore trees are spotted white
To sit and stare in the dead of night.

Beyond still water cries a loon,
Through mulberry leaves peers a wild baboon
And in Moon's eyes I see the moon.

As We Go Up, We Go Down

Irwin generously responded to my email to him:

Just doing my part to clean up the airwaves. Now to get to work on banishing those 1-877-KARS4KIDS spots. The T&C hour will not be my premium CD, as I feel it has too limited appeal, but I will definitely give away a few as prizes during the fundraising mayhem.

But wait, there's more, a second email appeared two hours later!

I've put away the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner. Ten minutes ago I heard the original spot on a local AM station. I have heard another, completely different SQ spot, but it's been circulating for at least six months and rarely airs in these parts.

I wrote him back and told him it'd be OK w/me if he keeps wearing the jet pilot flight suit. Speaking of old men defiantly not aging gracefully:





Hey! Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?

It's true! and here's the just released 2012 schedule:

March 10: vs. Sporting Kansas City

March 18: at Los Angeles Galaxy (Galavision)

March 24: at Vancouver Whitecaps

March 30: vs. FC Dallas (NBC Sports Network)

April 7: vs. Seattle Sounders

April 14: at New England Revolution

April 18: vs. Montreal Impact

April 22: vs. New York Red Bulls (ESPN2)

April 28: vs. Houston Dynamo

May 2: at San Jose Earthquakes

May 5: vs. Toronto FC

May 12: at Houston Dynamo (NBC Sports Network)

May 16: vs. Colorado Rapids

May 19: vs. Toronto FC

May 26: vs. New England Revolution

June 16: at Philadelphia Union (Galavision)

June 24: at New York Red Bulls (NBC Sports Network)

June 30: vs. Montreal Impact

July 15: at Houston Dynamo (Galavision)

July 21: at Columbus Crew

Aug. 4: vs. Columbus Crew

Aug. 11: at Sporting Kansas City

Aug. 19: vs. Philadelphia Union (NBC Sports Network)

Aug. 22: vs. Chicago Fire

Aug. 25: at Montreal Impact

Aug. 29: vs. New York Red Bulls (Galavision)

Sept. 1: at Real Salt Lake

Sept. 15: vs. New England Revolution

Sept. 20: at Philadelphia Union (ESPN2)

Sept. 23: vs. Chivas USA (Galavision)

Sept. 29: at Portland Timbers

Oct. 6: at Toronto FC

Oct. 20: vs. Columbus Crew

Oct. 27: at Chicago Fire (NBC Sports Network)

Sure hope they have enough players. Quietest, oddest, off-season I can remember, getting rid of salary, no new players, not negotiating a new contract with reigning league MVP after announcing that United would, it's almost as if the owner doesn't want to spend any money because 2012 will be the last season in...... 

After a Couple of Faint Knocks at the Door, He Slowly Opens the Book of Blank Pages

Was driving around, heard a new Select Quote commercial, just a week after Irwin's magnificent Tullis and Clark Expedition (if you haven't listened, please try), dashed off this email to Irwin (who doesn't know me from bip on the ping chart Ken the Station Manager shows him, or doesn't):

Tullis and Clark are dead. Heard tonight on Washington DC radio a new Select Quote ad, an earnestly concerned mid-thirty timbered voiceover over bedded synth-harp concern muzak. I'm guessing it's cause they can't do the $21 a month shit anymore, but I'll give you credit if you give you credit for destroying Tullis, crushing Clark. Hope the hour is your premium this coming marathon. Thanks!

Also, sorry for the bad post last night - it was the start of this one and I'm a klutz. Also, busy, no time to read last night so three songs one poem but no links here today (a few @BLCKDGRD), maybe some later, more likely tomorrow.





MORNING ARRIVES

Franz Wright

Morning arrives
unannounced
by limousine: the tall
emaciated chairman

of sleeplessness in person
steps out on the sidewalk
and donning black glasses, ascends
the stairs to your building

guided by a German shepherd.
After a couple of faint knocks
at the door, he slowly opens
the book of blank pages

pointing out
with a pale manicured finger
particular clauses,
proof of your guilt.

Fifty-Five Today

That is either the most or second most air-guitared song of my life. Bernard (The Good) Sumner is fifty-five today. There is always a New Order song in my head.

The Goat of the Universe Believed What People Told Him About Universes and Came into Existence

Last night, when I was writing about something I won't write about here, the above song was suddenly, loudly, in my head. Furies and Serendipity, yo.

O, Ron Paul. He's yesterday's Occupy, the media-fueled rube's pumice that lets us kayfabe our dirty hands. He's the biggest sideshow ever in American political discourse since the last until the next! Oof! our presumptions have been challenged, we will vote the way we always vote but be more aware we wish there was a third alternative. Who wasn't a homeless schizophrenic sleeping in a city park or a crotchedy old koot who rants about the UN invading Texas and has a documented history of racism*, that is. Ten dreadful months and countless biggest sideshows since and until from now until the start of POTUS16.

• Everything's fine, everyone's fine, all is fine, all is good, in the house of the crazy people with nine cats and garden statuary.
• Thoughts on Graeber's Debt.
• A synopsis of the Clusterfuck.
• Conserving the self in a culture of productive narcissism.
• *For the record, I have no idea whether Ron Paul is a racist or a bigot. I'm glad he's in the race not because he pisses off the professional Right but because he pisses off the professional Left. Yes, I understand he serves Corporate re: his positions on, to name two, American militarism and the War on Drugs; demonize Paul, demonize his policies, reify common wisdom on American militarism and the War on Drugs.
• Ron Paul hysteria.
• Ron Paul calls Newt a chickenhawk.
• The tribe.
• The Apostate Paul and Iowa.
• The greatness of Ron Paul.
• On the above.
• Why are Democrats attacking Ron Paul?
• She who is as shitty takes credit for Paul's not winning, dances on Perry's and Gingrich's graves.
• Ron Paul has two problems.
• The obamafucker.
• More HRC and POTUS16. (h/t)
• Obama is the only true Conservative in the race.
• Obama versus civil liberties.
• The "truth" about Conservatism.
• Civility trolling.
• The collected jokes of Slavoj Zizek!
• MOCO speed cameras. Assuming that photo is of MOCO, identify the location.
• Church of Anthrax.
• Feminist music worlds.
• The 25 most powerful songs of the past 25 years?
• Yo La Tengo Hanukkah show.

THE GOAT

Aaron Fogel

If you are a goat, do you believe
What people tell you about
Goats, and eat
Tin cans?
There's no goat that foolish.
Or is there?
The goat of the universe believed
What people told him about universes
And came into existence.
Bang! How naive can you get?
Even the scapegoat is not as naive
As (God help him) the universe that
Agreed to exist.
A word to the wise: Don't eat tin cans.
Don't listen. Don't exist.

Forgot the song for New Years, forgot this video, I remember it from long ago but I've no idea why I never found it while looking for George songs like I always am. Also: I can simultaneously believe Obama is the worse malevolent fuckstick in American presidential history and believe he's the best malevolent fuckstick America will vote for in Pwoggles v Crackers, Corporate's reality game show, and believe Corporate will never break kayfabe though every move is made for the day Corporate can break kayfabe because it can. Also, it occurs to me that in the two recently written novels that haunt me the most, Littell's The Kindly Ones and Murakami's 1Q84, the protagonists are all pursued by Furies, it can't be an accident (that the authors employ Furies, that these are the two novels that haunt me). Also, what I can't write here, nothing to do w/here. I'm wrung. Regular programming resumes soon enough.

The Strength of Your Hand Will Give the Stroke Its Bone

As someone who bleggalgazes in each and every post, I believe I have credibility when I say that if anything can define bleggalgazing as an embarrassingly odious exercise in self-congratulation, this is it:

In one largish ballroom, a different sort of panel was happening. It featured the Dish’s Andrew Sullivan and two other men who looked like Andrew Sullivan — pleasant, bearded, round-faced men, which is a chic sub-style among many of the attendees here, optionally accessorized with square glasses and male-pattern baldness. The panel was called “From Philosophical Training to Professional Blogging.”

But the three men on the panel have done so, and splendidly, with varying degrees of national recognition for their thoughtful punditry on political and cultural issues. Besides Sullivan, who has a PhD in political philosophy and is known for his writings on conservatism and gay marriage, the other participants included Slate blogger Matthew Yglesias, who majored in philosophy at Harvard, and Grist magazine writer/blogger David Roberts, who has a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Montana.

Male pattern baldness and glasses. Gah. I have two regular readers in Missoula, one at the University of Montana, if it's you, David, Hi!

• Bleggalgazing! Once again, I must have been eleventh.
• Bleggalgazing!
• When your bleggal overlords clash.
• Blogwhoring.
• Blogwhoring: @BLCKDGRD - you get many of these links faster that way.
• Pastor Sanctimonious goes after Ron Paul. YFWP's Villagers have backed off their Gingrich attacks, probably feeling they've done their job and Gingrich is meat. If Paul finishes strong in Iowa, expect a week of YFWP Villager open-warfare at Paul.
• The reactionary mind.
• The view from an Iowan.
• Hitchens was an asshole. You knew that, but...
• You'd better sing the anthem Right.
• The church of the consumer.
• Bernhard, for those of you who do.
• Beckett, for those of you who do and shortly will. I need to decide - after Murakami (I'm almost done, and holyfuck, it'll take at least a week to think about before I read any more fiction) whether to first Beckett's trilogy or Gass' Tunnel.
• Silliman's astonishingly generous litlinks.
• Binge and purge.
• A band I love covers a band I hate. Song still sucks.
• Banned by the BBC.
• Destroyer covers New Order.

CALLIGRAPHY ACCOMPANIED BY THE MOOD OF A CALM BUT DEFINITIVE SAUCE

Dick Allen

Make your strokes thus: the horizontal:

as a cloud that slowly drifts across the horizon;

the vertical: as an ancient but strong vine stem;

the dot: a falling rock;

and learn to master the sheep leg, the tiger’s claw,

an apricot kernel, a dewdrop, the new moon,

the wave rising and falling. Do these

while holding your arm out above the paper

like the outstretched leg of a crane.

The strength of your hand

will give the stroke its bone.

But for real accomplishment, it would be well

if you would go to live solitary in a forest silence,

or beside a river flowing serenely.

It might also be useful

to look down a lonesome road,

and for the future

to stare into the gray static of a television screen,

or when lost in a video game

to accept you may never reach the final level,

where the dragon awaits, guarding the pot of gold,

and that you’ve left no footprints, not a single one,

despite all your adventures,

anyone following you could ever follow.

This Heavy Carcass I Derive from Yours Is Tutelage of Love, and Yet Each Year Though Older Another Notch I Still Cannot Stand to Reach You, or to Emigrate from the Monolithic Shadow You Left

TO THE GARBAGE COLLECTORS IN BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA, THE FIRST PICKUP OF THE NEW YEAR

Philip Appleman

(the way bed is in winter, like an aproned lap,   

    like furry mittens,

    like childhood crouching under tables)

The Ninth Day of Xmas, in the morning black   

outside our window: clattering cans, the whir   

of a hopper, shouts, a whistle, move on ...   

I see them in my warm imagination

the way I’ll see them later in the cold,

heaving the huge cans and running

(running!) to the next house on the street.

My vestiges of muscle stir

uneasily in their percale cocoon:

what moves those men out there, what

drives them running to the next house and the next?   

Halfway back to dream, I speculate:

The Social Weal? “Let’s make good old

    Bloomington a cleaner place

    to live in—right, men? Hup, tha!”

Healthy Competition? “Come on, boys,

    let’s burn up that route today and beat those dudes   

    on truck thirteen!”

Enlightened Self-Interest? “Another can,

    another dollar—don’t slow down, Mac, I’m puttin’

    three kids through Princeton?”

Or something else?

Terror?

A half hour later, dawn comes edging over   

Clark Street: layers of color, laid out like

a flattened rainbow—red, then yellow, green,

and over that the black-and-blue of night   

still hanging on. Clark Street maples wave   

their silhouettes against the red, and through   

the twiggy trees, I see a solid chunk   

of garbage truck, and stick-figures of men,   

like windup toys, tossing little cans—

and running.

All day they’ll go like that, till dark again,   

and all day, people fussing at their desks,   

at hot stoves, at machines, will jettison

tin cans, bare evergreens, damp Kleenex, all   

things that are Caesar’s.

O garbage men,

the New Year greets you like the Old;   

after this first run you too may rest

in beds like great warm aproned laps

and know that people everywhere have faith:   

putting from them all things of this world,   

they confidently bide your second coming.

NEW YEAR'S DAY

Kim Addonizio

The rain this morning falls   

on the last of the snow

and will wash it away. I can smell   

the grass again, and the torn leaves

being eased down into the mud.   

The few loves I’ve been allowed

to keep are still sleeping

on the West Coast. Here in Virginia

I walk across the fields with only   

a few young cows for company.

Big-boned and shy,

they are like girls I remember

from junior high, who never   

spoke, who kept their heads

lowered and their arms crossed against   

their new breasts. Those girls

are nearly forty now. Like me,   

they must sometimes stand

at a window late at night, looking out   

on a silent backyard, at one

rusting lawn chair and the sheer walls   

of other people’s houses.

They must lie down some afternoons   

and cry hard for whoever used

to make them happiest,   

and wonder how their lives

have carried them

this far without ever once

explaining anything. I don’t know   

why I’m walking out here

with my coat darkening

and my boots sinking in, coming up

with a mild sucking sound   

I like to hear. I don’t care

where those girls are now.   

Whatever they’ve made of it

they can have. Today I want   

to resolve nothing.

I only want to walk

a little longer in the cold

blessing of the rain,   

and lift my face to it.

TO THE NEW YEAR

W.S. Merwin

With what stillness at last

you appear in the valley

your first sunlight reaching down

to touch the tips of a few

high leaves that do not stir

as though they had not noticed

and did not know you at all

then the voice of a dove calls

from far away in itself

to the hush of the morning

so this is the sound of you

here and now whether or not

anyone hears it this is

where we have come with our age

our knowledge such as it is

and our hopes such as they are

invisible before us

untouched and still possible

REQUIEM FOR THE NEW YEAR

Mary Karr

On this first dark day of the year

      my daddy was born lo

these eighty-six years ago who now

      has not drawn breath or held

bodily mass for some ten years and still   

      I have not got used to it.

My mind can still form to that chair him   

      whom no chair holds.

Each year on this night on the brink

      of new circumference I stand and gaze

towards him, while roads careen with drunks,   

      and my dad who drank himself

away cannot be found. Daddy, I’m halfway   

      to death myself. The millenium

hurtles towards me, and the boy I bore   

      who bears your fire in his limbs

follows in my wake. Why can you not be   

      reborn all tall to me? If I raise my arms

here in the blind dark, why can you not   

      reach down now to hoist me up?

This heavy carcass I derive from yours is   

      tutelage of love, and yet each year

though older another notch I still cannot stand   

      to reach you, or to emigrate

from the monolithic shadow you left.

Fifty-Two Today

It Hurts, This Wanting to Give a Dimension to Life When Life Is Precisely That Dimension

This is to assure you that with the nine cats comes garden statuary. Everything's an art project. So far I've been banned buying a reflecting ball, a big cobalt blue one to sit next to the crepe myrtle, but Planet and I are determined. Yes, I posted the Ashbery poem below this past July and titled this post the same as that post.

• Unsatisfied.
• 2011: Thoughts.
• Answering machine.
• 2012: Already over.
• Nowhere is home.
• Work v kayfabe?
• Time is killing us.
• Typology of scholars: the scientist.
• Little mascara.
• Popularity of socialism!
• Here comes a regular.
• American robots.
• Achin to be.
• Panopticon.
• I will dare.
• ICC! 
• Seen your video.
• PSG unveil Carlo Ancelotti's eyebrow.
• Beer for breakfast.
• Year's reading list.
• We're coming out.
• Pore.
• If only you were lonely.
• On Kate Bush.
• Differences.
• Why am I playing Replacements' songs today? Look later.

VAUCANSON

John Ashbery

It was snowing as he wrote.
In the gray room he felt relaxed and singular,
But no one, of course, ever trusts these moods.

There had to be understanding to it.
Why, though? That always happens anyway,
And who gets the credit for it? Not what is understood,
Presumably, and it diminishes us
In our getting to know it.

As trees come to know a storm
Until it passes and light falls anew
Unevenly, on all the muttering kinship:
Things with things, persons with objects,
Ideas with people or ideas.

It hurts, this wanting to give a dimension
To life when life is precisely that dimension.
We are creatures, therefore we walk and talk
And people come up to us, or listen
And then move away.

Music fills the spaces
Where figures are pulled to the edges,
And it can only say something.

Sinews are loosened then,
The mind begins to think good thoughts.
Ah, this sun must be good:
Doing a number, completing its trilogy.
Life must be back there. You hid it
So no one could find it
And now you can't remember where.

But if one were to invent being a child again
It might just come close enough to being a living relic
To save this thing, save it from embarrassment
By ringing down the curtain,

And for a few seconds no one would notice.
The ending would seem perfect.
No feelings to dismay,
No tragic sleep to wake from in a fit
Of passionate guilt, only the warm sunlight
That slides easily down shoulders
To the soft, melting heart.

Sixty-Five Today

I was sixteen when I first heard Horses. We were at a party.* Towards midnight, after the requisite playing of Dark Side of the Moon and Morrison Hotel and Sgt Pepper and Zeppelin and Zeppelin and more motherfucking Zeppelin, this girl who had transferred to my high school took my turn at selecting the next album (it was our first date) and put on the album she'd brought with her. That I no longer listen to Patti Smith unless I hear her on the radio nor communicate with the girl who brought the album doesn't alter my self-hagiography that something changed that night.





*His ear lobe fell in the derp.

And While Certainly They Are Laughing at Me, and All Around Me Is Racket of These Cats Not Making It, I Make It in My Wicker Basket

Sorry, forgot to put up a header photo last night. Out to dinner last night with Planet and he who it occurs to me I haven't written about much less considered a nom-de-blog but nonetheless seems to be a good guy who makes my daughter happy and Earthgirl and Ilse and Landru, came home stuffed, played with Stanley, read 1Q84 (holyfuck), didn't even log in and check my statcount, what the fuck's up with that, I'm a fucking attention slut, I'm always checking my statcounter just like you do. I'll try to remember to post a header tonight.

Still, it reminds me that for all I gently badger Planet for new Fleabus photos, they aren't forthcoming. That phase is over. Up above is Napoleon, the domesticated feral, shot taken by me. Consider this the year end bleggalgaze: unless otherwise noted, any and all pheline photos displayed hence (which will include Fleabus, but also Nap and Stanley and Rose and Sara and Frankie and Mom Cat and Gray Cat and probably never Jess), including this one below, a recent night header and popular among two of you, are taken by me, with the commensurate dip in quality.

• Year end bleggalgazing: Catch It!
• Itinerant punk.
• O, while I always try to employ the wtf here - I'm still too cautious of it's potential alienating effects, though I hope to wtf the wtf - over at the other place, still in indecipherable calligraghy....
• Towards a typology of scholars.
• Hope in a cold season. (h/t)
• Working arrangement.
• Marginalizing Ron Paul.
• Down with all reactionaries.
• Crucifying Ron Paul. 
• Excommunicating Ron Paul.
• I'm not supporting Ron Paul, I won't vote for Ron Paul, it's grimly entertaining watching Corporate go after Ron Paul.
• I'd also point out that many of the Leftbots Snoopy-dancing the crucifying and excommunicating of Ron Paul by Rightbots would happily crucify and excommunicate a Left Ron Paul.
• Annals of nincompoopery.
• The miracle of solvency.
• Capitalism.
• The year in review.
• To be honest, I'd forgot about Sarah Hall. Time to remedy.
• Books read and not read in 2011. Look, someone else read The Recognitions in 2011, and Elkin. And I never got Auster - I assume that's on me.
• I feel obliged to post at least one link to Dove v Vendler.
• Apex 2011.
• Classical music's ethically challenged funders.
• Wanna hear a new song by Karin Andersson?
• 70 minutes of the New York Dolls.
• The Mekons interviewed.
• Asparagus Song live! You only think I play a lot of Yo La Tengo here. Wait till next year.

WICKER BASKET

Robert Creeley

Comes the time when it's later
and onto your table the headwaiter
puts the bill, and very soon after
rings out the sound of lively laughter--

Picking up change, hands like a walrus,
and a face like a barndoor's,
and a head without any apparent size,
nothing but two eyes--

So that's you, man,
or me. I make it as I can,
I pick up, I go
faster than they know--

Out the door, the street like a night,
any night, and no one in sight,
but then, well, there she is,
old friend Liz--

And she opens the door of her cadillac,
I step in back,
and we're gone.
She turns me on--

There are very huge stars, man, in the sky,
and from somewhere very far off someone hands
   me a slice of apple pie,
with a gob of white, white ice cream on top of it,
and I eat it--

Slowly. And while certainly
they are laughing at me, and all around me is racket
of these cats not making it, I make it

in my wicker basket.