Yesterday's post title made Charley think of this Scorpions' song. I don't know Scorpions, I know the name and have surely heard songs, I couldn't pick them out of a line-up or pick a song out of the air. It is not currently a discretionary choice, I've only two ears, one brain, so many hours, I've made so many errant yes-or-no snap-judgments, rash decisions made of first song I hear, first poem I read, there's another song on the radio already, the world doesn't lack thin books of poetry. I am always hearing music or reading poets I blithely dismissed decades ago as crap and am reminded constantly what a dope I was, am, and will be. I think this thought - is smaller bigger than big? - daily if not constantly. You may or not have noticed. Charley's comment yesterday made me think of this Gass excerpt from The Tunnel, I usually save it for his birthday (he shares one with one of the three musicians with permanent spots in my Sillyass Deserted Island Game, she's the song below). It was either post this excerpt or dig out and copy and paste this, which I thought of first, so have the excerpt:
The other large carton unpacked in the same way - box into box - but the feeling it gave me was the opposite of that suggested by the endless nest of Russians dollies in otherwise resembled, for what I was opening was a den of spaces which now covered the floor near my feet. It was plain that every ten-by-ten-by eight container contained cubes which were nine by nine by seven, and eight by eight by six, and seven by seven by five, and so on down to three by three by two, as well as many smaller, thinly sided one at every interval in between, so that out of one box a million more might multiply, confirming Zeno's view, although at that age, with an unfurnished mind, I couldn't have known of his paradoxes let alone have been able to describe one with any succinctness. What I had discovered is that every space contains more space than the space it contains.
- To be honest, I didn't like that Scorpions' song, though to be fair, I don't like ballads in any genre.
- EFF.
- An EFF sticker on Snowden's laptop should have disqualified him from clearance says security expert.
- UPDATE! Intelligence, corporatism, dance of death.
- Disciplining Terrorism: How Experts Invented Terrorism.
- A Froomkin tweet: The elite media’s identification with the ruling class, rather than the public, has never been more obvious than in reaction to Snowden.
- UPDATE! My newest musical crush!
- What % of each anti-Snowden tweet is sub-consciously motivated by desire to have obedience on file when archived account eventually searched? I tweeted yesterday. I added the second E in searched for this post, the sentence here has 141 characters.
- The counter, of course, is what % of each pro-tweet is consciously a pathetic little Fuck You to a vacuum cleaner in Annapolis Junction Maryland.
- PRISM, privacy, politics with a small p.
- Internet spying: a tip from the Gypsies.
- Elite denial of corruption and inequality.
- Tis of thee...
- I like to put a song between the cataloging of clusterfuckery and the cataloging of music and reads, and will continue to do so, but while the clusterfuckery not only never ends but always increases, even during the Blog Days of Summer, the cataloging of music and reads always slows during the Blog Days of Summer, not by choice but by the reduction, for whatever reason, I suppose Summer's academic hiatuses primarily, of available fruit.
- Suggestions solicited please for new places to find music and reads.
- Jack Gilbert interview from 2005.
- The principles of concealment.
- Frank O'Hara.
- PDF of Malone Dies via Anthony.
- Praxis and poetry.
- Complete destruction.
- More Hawaiian Life of Jim.
DREAM IN WHICH I MEET MYSELF
Lynn Emanuel
Even the butter's a block of sleazy light. I see that first,
as though I am a dreary guest come to a dreary supper.
On her table, its scrubbed deal trim and lonely as a cot,
is food for one, and everything we've ever hated: a plate of pallid
grays and whites is succotash and chops are those dark shapes glaring up at us.
Are you going to eat this? I want to ask; she's at the stove dishing up,
wearing that apron black and stiff as burned bacon, reserved for maids
and waitresses.
The dream tells us: She is still a servant. Even here.
So she has to clean our plate. It's horrible to watch.
She pokes the bits of stuff into her mouth. The roll's glued shut like a little box
with all that sticky butter. Is this all living gets you? The room, a gun stuck
in your back?
Don't move, It says. She's at the bureau lining up bobby pins.
Worried and fed up I wander to the window
with its strict bang of blind. My eyes fidget and scratch.
And then I see myself: I am this dream's dog. I want out.
