Sixty-Three Today

       
I've hit a run of birthdays for writers, poets, and musicians who I once and will always hold dear but whose work had aged badly for me. The one consistent here is me, so all fault is mine. The second consistent is this time through the cycle I remember why I once and always will hold them dear, so grace is mine. I say this every February 13, the November 14, 1982 Peter Gabriel concert at the Warner Theater, holyfuck, one of the best nights of my life. I passed him forward on his wave back to the stage. Here are the first four solo albums, the core of my Gabriel, I like Gabriel Genesis, I like some of what came after the four, but the four, Car, Scratch, Melt, Security, are what I listened to over and over.
                 

I'd Drop God's Irrelevant, Angry Tirade about Might and Majesty Versus Weakness

               
Taking bets on the next pope. I work at a Catholic university, talked yesterday with two theology professors, both of whom are friends, one whom was also my teacher, he hasn't been called by NPR yet but was frequently heard on Morning Edition and All Things Considered during the papal election after John Paul II died that brought in Ratzinger. Both think that what Ratzinger no longer has physical and mental strength for is a ticking bomb of scandal - Ratzinger wants the kaboom, if it comes while he is still alive, to not kaboom a sitting pope.  Both professors are convinced the next pope will be a white European as always. I said, why not elect an ultra-conservative 3rd World person of color, one who can safely reinforce the power of Church's elite behind the veneer of uniqueness of mannequin as progressive arrowhead. Nah, said one, maybe, said the other. There is a successful working model, I said. Fuck the motherfucker. Believe nothing. Shitty human delighted by North Korean nuclear tests. Are Republicans beyond saving? Unasked in Drew's column: Are Democrats? We must eat. The Anthropocene Project. Bethesda hates helicopters. Actual headline: Maryland Caught Off-guard by Pope's Resignation. Wheaton: The answer is no. Actual novels I've tried and failed to finish. Photos from Cleveland, w/playlist. The broader the generalization the better. Peter Maxwell Davies. Another Brown World Part One. Another Brown World Part Two. Stream Matmos. Today's Coil cascade (my apologies, it's been a while since one) prompted by Bodah playing this song last night:





EDITING JOB

Carl Dennis

I'd cut the prologue, where God agrees
To let his opponent, Satan,
Torment our hero merely to prove
What omniscience must know already:
That Job's devotion isn't dependent
On his prosperity. And how foolish of God
If he supposes that Satan, once proven wrong,
Will agree to forego his spite against creation
For even a minute.
         
I'd keep the part where Job disdains
His friends' assumption that somehow
He must be to blame for his suffering,
And the part where he makes a moving appeal
To God for an explanation.
I'd drop God's irrelevant, angry tirade
About might and majesty versus weakness.
             
The issue is justice. Is our hero
Impertinent for expecting his god
To practice justice as well as preach it,
For assuming the definition of justice
That holds on earth holds as well above?
Abraham isn't reproved in Genesis
For asking, when God decides to burn Sodom,
If it's fair to lump the good with the wicked.
                   
Let Job be allowed to complain
About his treatment as long as he wants to,
For months, for decades,
And in this way secure his place forever
In the hearts of all who believe
That suffering shouldn't be silent,
That grievances ought to be aired completely,
Whether heard or not.
             
As for the end, if it's meant to suggest
That patience will be rewarded, I'd cut it too.
Or else I suggest at least adding a passage
Where God, after replenishing Job's possessions,
Comes to the tent where the man sits grieving
To ask his pardon. How foolish of majesty
To have assumed that Job's new family,
New wife and children and servants,
Would be an ample substitute for the old.
           

See there re: the quiet here. Be back. Or not.

I'm a Locksmith, and I'm a Locksmith

               
High Egoslavian Holy Day, one for Old People, youngsters, and holyfuck, did I need a mail-it-in post today. Yes, I know: what did happen to DRGDKCLB? Leslie Nielsen was born eighty-seven years ago today. While the above makes me laugh every time, here, my favorite joke of all time.




             
Tina Louise was born seventy-nine years ago today. Let me repeat that: Tina Louise was born seventy-nine years ago. In the ubiquitous and sexist game of who would you rather do boys played in my school years, I always thought those who chose Marianne were either lying and/or dopes and/or chose her because she'd also cook their dinner and do their laundry.

Cough and Drone

On bad English. I hate the loss of the proper use and moral weight of enormity, as in "the enormity of the Baltimore Ravens' Super Bowl victory is just dawning on Ravens fans." The Ravens' Super Bowl victory may or not have been wicked, but in either case enormity was not used in that sentence to imply so. Here, the enormity of state power: the murder of Callion Hamblin. Return of the oppressed. Liberal stench. And again, the drone debate is a sapper. Notes on SOTU 13, part one. How to explain drones. Police state. Police state. False memories of fabricated political events. Flags and the politics of fantasy. The absurd luck of famous men. Via somebody on twitter, reference to Perry Anderson reviewing life of Oakeshott. The week that was. That's from one of several blogs added to New Here, check them out. Purple Line. There will never be a Purple Line. Fury in Fairfax! Grasses: an Elegy. The Role of Elegy (employs proper use of enormity). Plath. Metaphors. Flash. The art of painting a poem. Idiot Psalms. Songs about red shoes?






A WINTER DAYBREAK ABOVE VENICE

Jame Wright

The night’s drifts

Pile up below me and behind my back,

Slide down the hill, rise again, and build

Eerie little dunes on the roof of the house.   

In the valley below me,

Miles between me and the town of St.-Jeannet,   

The road lamps glow.

They are so cold, they might as well be dark.   

Trucks and cars

Cough and drone down there between the golden   

Coffins of greenhouses, the startled squawk   

Of a rooster claws heavily across

A grove, and drowns.

The gumming snarl of some grouchy dog sounds,   

And a man bitterly shifts his broken gears.   

True night still hangs on,

Mist cluttered with a racket of its own.

Now on the mountainside,

A little way downhill among turning rocks,

A square takes form in the side of a dim wall.   

I hear a bucket rattle or something, tinny,   

No other stirring behind the dim face

Of the goatherd’s house. I imagine

His goats are still sleeping, dreaming

Of the fresh roses

Beyond the walls of the greenhouse below them   

And of lettuce leaves opening in Tunisia.

I turn, and somehow

Impossibly hovering in the air over everything,

The Mediterranean, nearer to the moon

Than this mountain is,   

Shines. A voice clearly

Tells me to snap out of it. Galway

Mutters out of the house and up the stone stairs

To start the motor. The moon and the stars

Suddenly flicker out, and the whole mountain   

Appears, pale as a shell.

Look, the sea has not fallen and broken   

Our heads. How can I feel so warm   

Here in the dead center of January? I can   

Scarcely believe it, and yet I have to, this is   

The only life I have. I get up from the stone.   

My body mumbles something unseemly

And follows me. Now we are all sitting here strangely   

On top of the sunlight.

b) we're hypocrites

        
      
I've compiled a list of links between three or four snarky sentences regarding the currently raging debate on Liberal hypocrisy over Obama's imperial edicts but fuck that, at least today, the links are everywhere, if you want to read them they're easy to find, and it's not like anyone is going to change his or her mind. Liberal hypocrisy? Here's what's pissing me off today:

That's the view from the back porch of my comfortably upper-middle class Montgomery County Maryland Cape Cod looking upward at the fucking McMansion pop-up being erected in the yard behind my house. Below is our design for what the fuckers will see from their back windows and deck:

So, links return tomorrow, today just songs and a poem. Yes, I posted that Sir Richard Bishop and W. David Oliphant within the past two weeks, the re-posting signifies nothing more than I love it. Have another:
                        



                                  
QUIZ

Linh Dinh

Invaders invariably call themselves:

a) berserkers
b) marauders
c) frankincense
d) liberators

Our enemies hate us because:

a) we’re sadists
b) we’re hypocrites
c) we shafted them
d) we value freedom

Our friends hate us because:

a) we’re bullies
b) we hate them
c) we’re hypocrites
d) we value freedom

Pushed to the ground and kicked by a gang of soldiers, about to be shot, you can save your life by brandishing:

a) an uzi
b) a crucifix
c) the Constitution
d) a poem

A poem can:

a) start a war
b) stanch a wound
c) titillate the masses
d) shame a nation

Poets are:

a) clowns
b) parasites
c) legislators
d) terrorists

A nation’s standing in the world is determined by:

a) its buying power
b) its military might
c) its cultural heritage
d) God

A country is rich because of:

a) its enlightened population
b) its political system
c) its small stick
d) its geography

A country is poor because of:

a) its ignorant population
b) its political system
c) its small stick
d) its geography

A man’s dignity is determined by:

a) his appearance (skin color, height, etc)
b) his willingness to use violence
c) his command of English
d) his blue passport

Those willing to die for their beliefs are:

a) idealists
b) terrorists
c) suckers
d) insane

Those willing to die for nothing are:

a) principled
b) patriotic
c) insane
d) cowards

Terrorists:

a) abuse language
b) hit and run
c) shock and awe
d) rely on ingenuity

Smart weapons:

a) render hopeless and dormant kinetic objects
b) kill softly
c) save lives
d) slaughter by science

Pain is:

a) payback for evil-doers
b) a common misfortune
c) compelling drama
d) suck it up!

Humiliation is:

a) the ultimate thrill for bored perverts
b) inevitable in an unequal relationship
c) a fear factor
d) sexy and cathartic

The media’s job is:

a) to seduce
b) to spread
c) to sell
d) to drug

The Internet:

a) allows us to be pure minds
b) connects us to distant bodies
c) disconnects us from the nearest minds and bodies
d) improves illiteracy

Pornography is:

a) a lie that exposes the truth
b) a needed breather from civilization
c) class warfare
d) nostalgia for the garden of Eden


Correct answers: c,d,d,b,b,a,b,a,a,c,b,b,b,c,b,d,b,d,c.
—If you scored 14-19, you’re a well adjusted person, a home-owner, with and income of at least $50,000 a year.
—If you scored 8-13, you either rent or live with your parents, never exercise, and consume at least a 6-pack a day.
—if you scored 7 or less, you’re in trouble with the FBI and/or the IRS, cut your own hair, and use public transit as your primary mode of transportation.

Crocking the Way the Unfocused Photographs of Crooked Faces Do that Soil Our Coats

                             
Planet is seeing Yo La Tengo tonight in Ann Arbor (she is safely there - for those of you who tune in for Planet news - the car is good), Earthgirl and I and Hamster and Mr Alarum and Xtina see them a week from tonight at 930, I said last night at Thursday Night Pints., adding, !wOOt! Three more from the same session as above here. No, I don't hate KEXP, I said when K said I thought you hated KEXP after I showed her the above video. It's true, I said, they pissed me off over Beefheart and they play fedora-wearers' shit I don't want to hear, but I don't hate KEXP - El Toro's a Mocomofo ex-pat, we no doubt were at




                      
concerts together without knowing it in the early 80s, Zoom is a bud. We touched on the Brennan hearings, the obsolescence of the tug-of-war trope, of us, twelve-year-old golden retrievers with bad hips who whine at the bottom of steps. I said, drones are a soothing red herring, I mean, is there really anyone who doesn't believe Obama kills people all the time by various other means?

K asked about this shitty blog, I said I've got an idea for a lame-ass Star Trek allusion for my next post, I said I got a very Kind email yesterday morning, thank you very much. I was told I still have the rest of February and 2013 to meet the Proust requirement which would save me hundreds of dollars next year, I paid down the first January 2014 Thursday Night Pint's bill for motherfucking amber NyQuil last night. I mentioned an article on Marianne Moore to L, she's a major fan, the article serendipitously published in yesterday's ::wood s lot:: one day before Elizabeth Bishop's (born 102 years ago today) birthday, Bishop's birthday serendipitous in itself because what I said about X on Exene's birthday is true about Bishop re: the work aging badly to me - I blame me. D, you're missed, feel better. I'm afraid of Americans. This week in war. Fucking Christ, I just saw next week's Villager digital dinner will be SOTU sausage. The Moose. Police state. Idiocies. Pastor Sanctimonious on the holiness of drones. The transparency illusion. Visit to St. Elizabeths. Two ways to be wrong about the internet. Hollywood stars. My current and future hell. Bolano's five tips for short-story writing. Flowers in concrete. Badiou, for those of you who do. Incoming books. Mary Carr, I said when asked by L what I'm reading. Hejinian, Olson, nothing but poetry, I'm incapable of reading prose now. And tablet, asked K. Shit, I said, the fucking blog is tablet. Anthony's links of the week. One Art. Low: see Bishop and X. Feldman's Complete Works for Two Pianos (spotify needed). Apples and oranges. Oranges and Lemons. Stream the new Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.





SUICIDE OF A MODERATE DICTATOR

Elizabeth Bishop

This is a day when truths will out, perhaps;
leak from the dangling telephone earphones
sapping the festooned switchboards' strength;
fall from the windows, blow from off the sills,
—the vague, slight unremarkable contents
of emptying ash-trays; rub off on our fingers
like ink from the un-proof-read newspapers,
crocking the way the unfocused photographs
of crooked faces do that soil our coats,
our tropical-weight coats, like slapped-at moths.
                  
Today's a day when those who work
are idling. Those who played must work
and hurry, too, to get it done,
with little dignity or none.
The newspapers are sold; the kiosk shutters
crash down. But anyway, in the night
the headlines wrote themselves, see, on the streets
and sidewalks everywhere; a sediment's splashed
even to the first floors of apartment houses.
                    
This is a day that's beautiful as well,
and warm and clear. At seven o'clock I saw
the dogs being walked along the famous beach
as usual, in a shiny gray-green dawn,
leaving their paw prints draining in the wet.
The line of breakers was steady and the pinkish,
segmented rainbow steadily hung above it.
At eight two little boys were flying kites.

It's Not You Who Is Not Requiting Me, or: Honduras 2, USMNT 1

Didn't see it, Honduras scheduled the opening Hex-game in the middle of a tropical afternoon knowing USMNT either wintering in Europe or the States and I was at work. Didn't occur to me to take the time off. The game was on beIN, 726 on your MOCO Comcast, it's where GolTV was, it's better than GolTV, live French and Italian League games, so I could have taken the late afternoon off but I swear, before I started giving a lesser general damn about (most everything but me and mine) soccer I don't believe I took time off from work to watch a Hexagonal though I would make an effort in real life to catch a game in evenings and on weekends, especially against Mexico. I can't imagine I will this cycle. It's not newly discovered repulsion against gross patriotism in national team sports: I've long been complicit with that, comforted, true, by most American's indifference or hostility to soccer. I've bought my DCU season tickets and parking, but I'm not jonesing for season's start, I'm not jonesing about anything (but me and mine). Wait - holyfuck!




               
Oh, Spoon, there was a twitter spurt amongst buds re: Sleater-Kinney and their legacy in the Carboniferous Period, then later yesterday a friend tweeted the above Spoon song which sparked in me the same reaction. While I'm reyodeling: remember, the point of the White Paper is to routinize the process: imagine what's being done now that isn't planned on being routinized for another ten years. More. Toward the world of nightmare. Thirteen questions. Five questions. More questions. Drone go changing. Things you might have missed. Shitload of links. His generation's greatest academic fraud. I say that admiringly, though not as admiringly as once. Hail Columbia! Gaithersburg ethics! Alexandria! Darkness which may be felt. Phenomenological xenoarchaeology? Cause and effect and cosmology. O'Hara writes to Schuyler. Drummage. Jim requested this Eels song. Prunella's latest playlist (we strongly agree about some, strongly disagree about others). Playlist and photos and spotify access to a Richard Thompson show this past Tuesday night in Brooklyn. New Richard Thompson song:




             
THE CONSOLATIONS OF SOCIOBIOLOGY

Bill Knott

Those scars rooted me. Stigmata stalagmite

I sat at a drive-in and watched the stars

Through a straw while the Coke in my lap went

Waterier and waterier. For days on end or

Nights no end I crawled on all fours or in

My case no fours to worship you: Amoeba Behemoth.

—Then you explained your DNA calls for

Meaner genes than mine and since you are merely

So to speak its external expression etcet

Ergo among your lovers I’ll never be ...

Ah that movie was so faraway the stars melting

Made my thighs icy. I see: it’s not you

Who is not requiting me, it’s something in you

Over which you have no say says no to me.

Cleanse Whatever It Is That a Wound Remembers After It Heals

How we made killing easy. Motherfucking Obama, this surprises anyone? Proportional credit where due. This is not the memo you're looking for. Proportional credit where due. I don't yodel this as often as I used to - and I don't yodel about why I don't yodel as often as I used to as often as I used to - but everything being done is in preparation for doing it to you. Banality defined. Your Fucking Washington Post. Enhanced versus elongated. Global geographies of torture. >>Yes, there was, now not, I forgot to be Kind<<  bin Laden tax. Photographing God. Double negative. Bleggalgazing. Anyone know a MOCO public school teacher? Deleuze, for those of you who do. I was never a MBV acolyte though I liked them well enough, so one mention of the new one. OK, two. Marxist propaganda. New Ken Stringfellow. Classical music's glass, half empty v half full: hear Gerhard's 2nd String Quartet below poem. Eels cascade.




                         
SMALL PRAYER

Weldon Kees

Change, move, dead clock, that this fresh day

May break with dazzling light to these sick eyes.

Burn, glare, old sun, so long unseen,

That time may find its sound again, and cleanse

Whatever it is that a wound remembers

After the healing ends.

             

Difficult to Recall an Emotion That Is Dead, Particularly So Among These Unbelieved Fanfares and Admonitions from a Camouflaged Sky

             
Irene played that yesterday. Show includes a new Richard Thompson song. Skeet-shooting, let's argue about skeet-shooting and authenticity. Definitions and distinctions. Among believers. Triangulating utopia (h/t) The Rawlsian Veil of Ignorance. The American veil of omnipotence. The next Left? Wars that aren't meant to be won. Bring on the drones. Why the elite want you to fear robots. World War I. Violins on television. Gnossciene. Phantom time. Bleggalgazing Blogroll Amnesty Day (and bmpthnx). >>DB<< More proof MLS is minor league - gangsters don't think MLS worth bribing. Silliman's always generous litlinks. An anti-review of an anti-novel. Gaddis. Ashbery interview. Grateful Dead Kennedys. I am hearing ELO everywhere, gas stations, WFMU, everywhere. >>dBs<< And it's always been perturbing that the creator of ELO is named after my marriage. Baudrillard and The Minutemen (or members of). Gubaidulina, holyfuck, she is as devout towards Christ as I am profane, I'm cascading my ears, holyfuck the music, my pens are mute. The Ballads of John and Yoko. Obscure Sounds' Best of January (w/sound). Launderette. Two new Lips songs. New Nick Cave video below the poem.  I'm sorry, but I'm not sorry I like Beach House.





THE PATIENT IS RALLYING

Weldon Kees

Difficult to recall an emotion that is dead,
Particularly so among these unbelieved fanfares
And admontions from a camouflaged sky.

I should have remained burdened with destinations
Perhaps, or stayed quite drunk, or obeyed
The undertaker, who was fairly charming, after all.

Or was there a room like that one, worn
With our whispers, and a great tree blossoming
Outside blue windows, warm rain blowing in the night?

There seems to be some doubt. No doubt, however,
Of the chilled and empty tissues of the mind
- Cold, cold, a great gray winter entering -
Like spines of air, frozen in an ice cube.

Smug and Snarky as We Are, in Our Sophisticated and Subtler, Non-Tyrannical Tastes, It&#39;s Still Unsettling to Realize These Photographs Are Also Full of the Childrens&#39; Pictures Set on a Desk, the Wife&#39;s Diploma Proudly on a Wall, the Common Plastic Container of Aspirin, and the Bassinette with the Scroll of Linen Shade at the Ready in Case the Sun Is Too Powerful: Reminders of How a Graduated Continuum Connects These Uberoperatically Fat Interior Lives to Our Own

What he said. Post title taken from Albert Goldbarth's Photographs of the Interior of Dictators' Houses. Back sooner or back later.

I Am in Elaboration of Knowledge Impatient of Even the Patientest Immobility

Zen (see above) and Zombie and Bastard and Skippy remind me that yesterday was Blogroll Amnesty Day. Please note in the right column the NEW HERE blogroll. Please note that I limit the floating blogrolls to only the 25 most recently updated sites (for lamely aesthetic reasons) so please use the Show All option to see more if you haven't stopped by for a few days. As always, if there is someone you think I should be reading, for pleasure and/or insight, please let me know. As always, thanks for reading. As always, thanks for all the Kind, linkages and blogrolling. >>Deleted bleggalgazing<< As always, apologies or you're welcome (or both if you're not one or the other but both) for the >>Deleted bleggalgazing<< As always, if you are doing me a Kind and I am not reciprocating please let me know.




   
The Laurie Anderson/Kronos Quartet's Landfall: Scenes from My New Novel last night was wonderful, a special evening, made better by the discovery of a great Indian restaurant in Hillandale. No sound I can play here of the piece yet exists, so here's Kronos' version of Feldman's Piano and String Quartet - I know, I post this all the time, shoot me, I love it. Here's part two, three, four, five and six are below this block and below the poem respectively. President Douche. Oh, Wilbur. The Burger King Capital Beltway. This reminds me that on our trip to visit Planet last weekend, she asked me to loan her my copy of Infinite Jest. Oh dear, look who rich GOP donors fear. Poetry slam. Avedon's linkages. New blogs. Too little too late. Badiou, for those of you who do. Beckett, for those of you who do. Anthony's Links of the Week. The future of terror. Gerald Stern. A Chinese Finnegan's Wake. A Blissblog playlist. Matribute. It's nineteen-something-other-or-two.




KIND

Josephine Miles

When I think of my kindness which is tentative and quiet

And of yours which is intense and free,

I am in elaboration of knowledge impatient

Of even the patientest immobility.

I think of my kind, which is the human fortune

To live in the world and make war among its friends,

And of my version, which is to be moderately peaceful,

And of your version; and must make amends

By my slow word to your wish which is mobile,

Active and moving in its generous sphere.

This is the natural and the supernatural

Of humankind of which I grow aware.

       

We Undertook to Talk About the Phrase “Once in a While” Once in a While Noting the Vagueness Then Named “a While” and How “Once” the Phrase Recurs and Therefore Means More Than Once the “While” is Defined

This is true: Earthgirl and Planet found the above youtube last Saturday night in Bamgier. Earthgirl and I are seeing Kronos Quartet with Laurie Anderson tonight with Hamster!

I've sat on that youtube for a week. And to be fair, what fascinates us is not how or how much Hamster eats (he eats politely, he eats moderately), it's that we can't imagine him not trying something (I'll have the nutria-oysters in mule's-snot sauce). It's admirable. It's frightening. Here's KQ playing Irina Gubaidulina's 4th String Quartet:









Holyfuck. First two pieces this post taken from KQ's Night Prayers. This is true, when Earthgirl and Planet and I took our 2008 vacation to San Francisco, Napa, Fort Bragg, on California 128 between Mendocino and Cloverdale a DJ on a public radio station played that album from start to finish, holyfuck driving through the redwoods, up over the mountains, one of the best drives I've ever. I didn't know what it was, was out of range as the last song faded, never heard the subsequent mike break. I emailed the station, gave date, time, heard back seven months later, bought the CD then. Was your twitter hacked? The master meme. The elite losing sleep. Could have seen. Another scalp. Falling short. Holding education hostage. My "hip" future hell. Love toilet. It's Blogroll Amnesty Day. Be Kind, motherfuckers. One more KQ piece from Night Prayers immediately below, a Bongos song I heard last night beneath the Hejinian poem.





[COME OCTOBER, IT'S THE LAKE NOT THE BORDER]

Lyn Hejinian

Come October, it’s the lake not the border

that has been redrawn. Thinking

about the event afterwards, I realize how remarkably well-prepared   

the girls are. There don’t seem to be any slouches

among them. Please tell them I say hello and that we’ll need 14   

for the green salad and 14 for the apple tarts between

with some rapid washing in clear water I remember as play

and planning in childhood, preparing until the very last moment   

for a gripping narrative that was itself perpetually given over

to improvisations and asymmetrical collaborations that could run

for days. That makes another 14. It was ”the word“ or “the world” in 1981   

when we undertook to talk about the phrase

“once in a while” once in a while

noting the vagueness then named “a while” and how “once” the phrase   

recurs and therefore means more than once

the “while” is defined. We too are in “a while”   

and when “once” next occurs, if the basic design suits

you, we will need a bit of modestly biographical contextualization   

for November. I’m going to put some thought to something

implausibly contemporary which perhaps isn’t wise

since between then and now no new coincidences have been noted   

just one large color photograph of bespangled cowgirls

herding heavy bulls up the avenue that opens this week carefully   

wearing baby blue boots to take out the garbage

but it never rained. At the end of the month, Halloween should be clear.

Black Sleeps, Gold Bums

   
Exene Cervenka is 56 today. No band has aged worse in my bread-box relative to where it once was in my mwah to where it is now in my meh than X. I affirm the possibility that I was a rube who bought the hype, but once upon a time, young people, X was advertised as, and celebrated as, groundbreaking. I'd guess This Is the New World is one of my 100 most listened to albums ever even if I haven't listened to it end-to-end in a decade. I know Elric doesn't read this shitty blog anymore (I made him mad two, three years ago when we were arguing about Bradley Manning), but when I'd say this before about X not aging well he'd say X always sucked, but they didn't, don't, even I feel like a grandpa when I hear X now and think holyfuck, what was once fresh is now seems was always stale.
   




Bless Billy Zoom! And actually, this has been, for this old man, refreshingly ungrandpa sounding. Statism and the illusion of choice. Was there ever democracy? History condemns us. The future of the internet becomes something that is done to us. The usefulness of uselessness. Fuck Whole Foods. Shop at MOMs. Saint Benny of Olsen. Dudar to Switzerland. Where is the 21st C Lit? Best European Fiction 2013: In a European short story, anything can happen, whereas in an American short story, it is almost guaranteed that nothing will. I have the 2011 and 2012 editions at my desk. Where is the American novel about the economic collapse?: Is the bourgeois ennui of Jonathan Franzen really the best we can hope for? Novels are dead to me again, I'm going to try short stories as kick-start. Globus Hystericus. Throw me to the coyotes. Visitors. RIP Anselm Hollo. RIP Anselm Hollo. Beckett, for those of you who do. Tugboat. Flashbacks? Who and Mac and B-52 tickets on sale today. My favorite three hours of the week.





NIGHT FEEDING

Muriel Rukeyser

Deeper than sleep but not so deep as death

I lay there dreaming and my magic head

remembered and forgot. On first cry I

remembered and forgot and did believe.

I knew love and I knew evil:

woke to the burning song and the tree burning blind,

despair of our days and the calm milk-giver who

knows sleep, knows growth, the sex of fire and grass,

renewal of all waters and the time of the stars

and the black snake with gold bones.

                   

Black sleeps, gold burns; on second cry I woke

fully and gave to feed and fed on feeding.

Gold seed, green pain, my wizards in the earth

walked through the house, black in the morning dark.

Shadows grew in my veins, my bright belief,

my head of dreams deeper than night and sleep.

Voices of all black animals crying to drink,

cries of all birth arise, simple as we,

found in the leaves, in clouds and dark, in dream,

deep as this hour, ready again to sleep.

A Vagueness at the Center Whose Slow, Persistent Movements Some Sentence Might Explain If We Had Time or Strength for Sentences

 
Holyfuck, have I ever mentioned I love Roxy Music. Phil Manzanera is sixty-two today. Incredibly busy, I'd love to tell you about it, can't, won't - just links, music, poems today. Lying or stupid? I'll let Yves answer: The willful blindness of Good Dems continues to amaze me. Obama did not want filibuster reform. He didn’t want it because he wants to be able to blame the Big Bad Rs for selling out his base. That is his plan, not the result of a lack of will or foresight. Notice the lack of agency in this piece? “Democrats” not “Obama”. Losing the deficit war. Why anti-authoritarians are diagnosed as mentally ill (via Fellowjeff in comment at this guy's post). Federici, for those of you who do. Foucault, for those of you who do. Between ideation and agitation. Free Kathryn Bigelow. Things you might have missed (where perhaps Fellowjeff found the article above). This fat Frederick fucker wants to be governor of Maryland. Riffle Ford Road! You can see Seneca Hole 14 from there. I remember being told, Shut up, Najar's not going to Europe. Will be told Shut up, Hamid is not going to Europe this summer. Will Zlatan kick Beckham? Here's hoping. Looking for today's birthdays, saw Norman Mailer born 90 years ago today. That's the first time I thought about Norman Mailer in at least a decade. Imagine a jump. Reminded by Agi of the David Lee Roth Soundboard! Hours of fun. New Yo La Tengo video. A moment to mention FUCK BLOOGER! Hey, Philip Glass is sixty-six today, it's not love though major like and deep respect. Here's his most famous piece:





THE NEW INTELLIGENCE

Timothy Donnelly

After knowledge extinguished the last of the beautiful

fires our worship had failed to prolong, we walked

back home through pedestrian daylight, to a residence

                    

humbler than the one left behind. A door without mystery,

a room without theme. For the hour that we spend

complacent at the window overlooking the garden,
                     

we observe an arrangement in rust and gray-green,

a vagueness at the center whose slow, persistent

movements some sentence might explain if we had time
                              

or strength for sentences. To admit that what falls

falls solitarily, lost in the permanent dusk of the particular.

That the mind that fear and disenchantment fatten
                                   

comes to boss the world around it, morbid as the damp-

fingered guest who rearranges the cheeses the minute the host

turns to fix her a cocktail. A disease of the will, the way
                               

false birch branches arch and interlace from which

hands dangle last leaf-parchments and a very large array

of primitive bird-shapes. Their pasted feathers shake
                        

in the aftermath of the nothing we will ever be content

to leave the way we found it. I love that about you.

I love that when I call you on the long drab days practicality
                              

keeps one of us away from the other that I am calling

a person so beautiful to me that she has seen my awkwardness

on the actual sidewalk but she still answers anyway.
                              

I say that when I fell you fell beside me and the concrete

refused to apologize. That a sparrow sat for a spell

on the windowsill today to communicate the new intelligence.
                                   

That the goal of objectivity depends upon one’s faith

in the accuracy of one’s perceptions, which is to say

a confidence in the purity of the perceiving instrument.
                                                          

I won’t be dying after all, not now, but will go on living dizzily

hereafter in reality, half-deaf to reality, in the room

perfumed by the fire that our inextinguishable will begins.

We’ll Dismiss the Event as a Glitch in Transmission

Fleabus! Cats as killers: In a report that scaled up local surveys and pilot studies to national dimensions, scientists from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that domestic cats in the United States — both the pet Fluffies that spend part of the day outdoors and the unnamed strays and ferals that never leave it — kill a median of 2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion mammals a year, most of them native mammals like shrews, chipmunks and voles rather than introduced pests like the Norway rat. There is a full-on anti-cat war raging in my neighborhood, on the listserv I subscribe to, anti-catters have latched onto this article. I am remaining silent there, keeping an eye on our ferals for their safety. OK, I'm not going to do the whole XTC discography song by song here, at the time I proposed it it seemed like a worthy ritual, now seems a worthy ritual I can do in private with my earbuds. Weird, this not wanting to scream motherfucker in this post-inaugural cereal box shake, settling to bottom of box as my old reflexes finally crumble. Polanyi, for those of you who do. Liberty, feminism, equality. Capitalism. Slippery things. Bleggalgazing of a sort. The power of critical thinking. Unknown Brooklyn. Najar here, there? Musil, for those of you who do. Via Mark Woods, lots of Timothy Donnelly, who I haven't posted here in a couple of years, whose brilliant Cloud Corporation is below. Serendipitous to yesterday's post, Proust reviews Nyquil. Mantel's rules for writers. Jim has a playlist. Was reminded of Delta 5 yesterday. Rothko's Chapel in Rothko's Chapel.






THE CLOUD CORPORATION

Timothy Donnelly

1

The clouds part revealing a mythology of clouds

assembled in light of earliest birds, an originary

text over water over time, and that without which

the clouds part revealing an apology for clouds

implicit in the air where the clouds had been

recently witnessed rehearsing departure, a heartfelt phrase

in the push of the airborne drops and crystals

over water over time—how being made to think

oneself an obstruction between the observer

and the object or objects under surveillance or even

desired—or if I am felt to be beside the point

then I have wanted that, but to block a path is like

not being immaterial enough, or being too much

when all they want from you now is your station

cleared of its personal effects please and vanish—

not that they’d ever just come out and say it when

all that darting around of the eyes, all that shaky

camouflage of paper could only portend the beginning of the

end of your tenure at this organization, and remember

a capacity to draw meaning out of such seeming

accidence landed one here to begin with, didn’t it.

    

2

The clouds part revealing an anatomy of clouds

viewed from the midst of human speculation, a business

project undertaken in a bid to acquire and retain
                                                       

control of the formation and movement of clouds.

As late afternoons I have witnessed the distant

towers borrow luster from a bourbon sun, in-box

empty, surround sound on, all my money made

in lieu of conversation—where conversation indicates

the presence of desire in the parties to embark on

exchange of spirit, hours forzando with heartfelt phrase—

made metaphor for it, the face on the clock tower

bright as a meteor, as if a torch were held against

likelihood to illuminate the time so I could watch

the calm silent progress of its hands from the luxury

appointments of my office suite, the tumult below

or behind me out of mind, had not my whole attention

been riveted by the human figure stood upon

the tower’s topmost pinnacle, himself surveying

the clouds of the future parting in antiquity, a figure

not to be mistaken, tranquilly pacing a platform

with authority: the chief executive officer of clouds.

3

The clouds part revealing blueprints of the clouds

built in glass-front factories carved into cliff-faces

which, prior to the factories’ recent construction,

provided dorms for clans of hamadryas baboons,

a species revered in ancient Egypt as attendants

of Thoth, god of wisdom, science, and measurement.

Fans conveying clouds through aluminum ducts

can be heard from up to a mile away, depending on

air temperature, humidity, the absence or presence
   

of any competing sound, its origin and its character.

It is no more impossible to grasp the baboon’s

full significance in Egyptian religious symbolism
   

than it is to determine why clouds we manufacture

provoke in an audience more positive, lasting

response than do comparable clouds occurring in nature.
   

Even those who consider natural clouds products

of conscious manufacture seem to prefer that a merely

human mind lie behind the products they admire.
   

This development may be a form of self-exalting

or else another adaptation in order that we find

the hum of machinery comforting through darkness.

4

The clouds part revealing there’s no place left to sit

myself down except for a single wingback chair

backed into a corner to face the window in which
   

the clouds part revealing the insouciance of clouds

cavorting over the backs of the people in the field

who cut the ripened barley, who gather it in sheaves,
   

who beat grain from the sheaves with wooden flails,

who shake it loose from the scaly husk around it,

who throw the now threshed grain up into the gently
   

palm-fanned air whose steady current carries off

the chaff as the grain falls to the floor, who collect

the grain from the floor painstakingly to grind it
  

into flour, who bake the flour into loaves the priest will offer

in the sanctuary, its walls washed white like milk.

To perform it repeatedly, to perform it each time
  

as if the first, to walk the dim corridor believing that

the conference it leads to might change everything,

to adhere to a possibility of reward, of betterment,
  

of moving above, with effort, the condition into which

one has been born, to whom do I owe the pleasure

of the hum to which I have been listening too long.

5
    

The clouds part revealing the advocates of clouds,

believers in people, ideas and things, the workers

of the united fields of clouds, supporters of the wars
       

to keep clouds safe, the devotees of heartfelt phrase

and belief you can change with water over time.

It is the habit of a settled population to give ear to
    

whatever is desirable will come to pass, a caressing

confidence—but one unfortunately not borne out

by human experience, for most things people desire
      

have been desired ardently for thousands of years

and observe—they are no closer to realization today

than in Ramses’ time. Nor is there cause to believe
         

they will lose their coyness on some near tomorrow.

Attempts to speed them on have been undertaken

from the beginning; plans to force them overnight
            

are in copious, antagonistic operation today, and yet

they have thoroughly eluded us, and chances are

they will continue to elude us until the clouds part
          

in a flash of autonomous, ardent, local brainwork—

but when the clouds start to knit back together again,

we’ll dismiss the event as a glitch in transmission.

    

6
       

The clouds part revealing a congregation of bodies

united into one immaterial body, a fictive person

around whom the air is blurred with money, force
          

from which much harm will come, to whom my welfare

matters nothing. I sense without turning the light

from their wings, their eyes; they preen themselves
            

on the fire escape, the windowsill, their pink feet

vulnerable—a mistake to think of them that way.

If I turn around, the room might not be full of wings
           

capable of acting, in many respects, as a single being,

which is to say that I myself may be the source of

what I sense, but am no less powerless to change it.
          

Always around me, on my body, in my mouth, I fear them

and their love of money, everything I do without

thinking to help them make it. And if I am felt to be
          

beside the point, I have wanted that, to live apart

from what depends on killing me a little bit to keep

itself alive, and yet not happily, with all its needs
            

and comforts met, but fattened so far past that point

I am engrossed, and if I picture myself outside of it

it isn’t me anymore, but a parasite cast out, inviable. 

    

7
             

The clouds part revealing the distinction between

words without meaning and meaning without words,

a phenomenon of nature, the westbound field
            

of low air pressure developing over water over time

and warm, saturated air on the sea surface rising

steadily replaced by cold air from above, the cycle
              

repeating, the warm moving upward into massive

thunderclouds, the cold descending into the eye

around which bands of thunderclouds spiral, counter-
            

clockwise, often in the hundreds, the atmospheric

pressure dropping even further, making winds

accelerate, the clouds revolve, a confusion of energy,
          

an incomprehensible volume of rain—I remember

the trick of thinking through infinity, a crowd of eyes

against an asphalt wall, my vision of it scrolling
             

left as the crowd thinned out to a spatter and then

just black until I fall asleep and then just black again,

past marketing, past focus groups, past human
                       

resources, past management, past personal effects,

their insignificance evident in the eye of the dream

and through much of the debriefing I wake into next.