Wednesday, April 13, 2011

the voice of a desultory fragment of speech now, talking about "state" and "union" how darkness turns at the wrist

This is the gif from the post I mistakenly posted meaning to save. I'm better now, thanks. Serendipitously I found it at the oldblog when looking for the post where I talked about almost dying while driving home after dropping Planet off at Earlham, which I only did Sunday because Planet was committing to K Monday and I was posting about that. Once I remembered the gif, there was no way I could go as long as Wednesday before using it: consider this post induced; I mean, even more than usual. The text from that post has been dispersed into The Delete.




These dark, seething moods are different in flavor and heat than any I indulged when a younger, more optimistic rube. I only speak for me that when I read what I wrote about power when I first started blogging it embarrasses me. I had just graduated with a masters from a (what passes for radical at Hilltop) cultural studies based English program, and none of the professors forecast that by 2011 the idea of societal and economic progress as defined from the Left would be dead, discredited and bankrupt. 2025, maybe 2020, was the concensus.




It was the gigagillionth time being asked why I burn my peat on motherfucking blogging that kindled the dark and seething. It's not blegangst; the seventeens of you, bless you, someday there may be eighteens of you. People get what I'm doing or don't, are Kind or not. And Blegsylvania be dying, yo, though that's hardly cause for dark and seething. I'm not so vain I think I can kill it by myself. Besides, I read and write poetry. Snorkling in dead water for golf claps from other cat owners with garden statuary who argue gleefully about everything is what I do, on-blog or off.




No rube like an old rube. Like an apostate, I've adopted the faith that is the antithesis of the apostate's lost faith. I've mentioned a couple of times that the apostasy ripples out from the young to the old. Now that I've converted my ex-priests of the old faith - now that I mentored my mentors toward my state of despair - why I burn my peat on anything is an accusatory question.









MATRIOT ACTS, ACT 1 [HISTORY OF MANKIND]

Anne Waldman

you no longer believe in anything
movement of train, mauve waves
grammar's anomie
gets you down or
war at the back and crown of head
PsyOps, o chicken little the sky! the sky!
o the fallen sky an edge of blue
hanging but
still breathing those colors?
a garden broken & restored many times
how often trying to leave it, bend away
words from that beautiful throat
listen or break or oscillate or
clamor as opposed to "read about"
could you be my model human being
up there on the dais?
o you, she...maybe he's the one
& we came back from the cinema
glow behind our tears
and you saying a woman, a woman!
how tragic to be such slender thread of a woman
where was I being led?
more people thick in space
in constant motion
twisted around a clock
solar wind, solar heat, sociable matrix
it's an atavistic mixed-up dream
and stirs the branches
high in Freedom Park
it was the voice of a desultory fragment
of speech now, talking about "state" and "union"
how darkness turns at the wrist


12 comments:

  1. Thanks for the kind. I didn't realize I was bleggalgazing until you pointed it out and you are right. Still, I hope someone will explain that show to me someday.

    You asked at some point over the last week or so about who to read. You try Houllebecq yet? If yes I am curious as to your thoughts. If no, I suggest reading the first two in order ("Whatever" then "Elementary Particles") before forming a full opinion. They are short books.

    I would avoid reading reviews before reading. He has a way of angering a lot of people. Most of those people seem to be pretty tied to the way the world works now, even if part of their function in this world is to fulminate against it.

    I plan on posting some excerpts once my home computer is up and running again.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Will the USA collapse before there's a Metro line to Dulles?

    Place your bets, Star Trek fans!
    ~

    ReplyDelete
  3. How the hell could they have left off a pre-Kiss Wicked Lester? Still would have been a crap band, but with a cool moniker. I blame Star Trek allusioning peat bog mummies.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Why not skip novels and read short fiction? Ever read Barry Hannah? Try Bats Out of Hell.

    To cross metaphors, I think there is danger in poetic focus, it would be like being a golfer who cares only about his sand trap game. The sand game arguably is the whole field play (tee up to the green, pre-putting) condensed into a single shot. In the fairway, a bunker shot of more than ...let's say 130 yds... is hell to hit unless you are a very refined swinger of the club. One could get bogged down in his sand game, fearing the loss of strokes there. But the fun is in the game as a whole.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The poetic focus is not voluntarily - it's imposed. It's also a phase; I know myself well enough to know my cycles.

    I went through a BIG Barry Hannah binge thirty years ago (I was reading and rereading Breece Pancake's one collection at the same time, I remember). I know he died last year and meant to go revisit then got distracted. Thanks for the nudge.

    I read Houllebecq's "Elementary Particles" when it came on ten years ago. I have a vague memory of it as Meh+....

    Garciasong, that would be an interesting bet to propose to a William Hill bookie when I'm in England in two months.

    Randal, if it's bleggalgazing, it's michigan peat.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Wasn't trying to be bossy up there. Just thinking out loud. Introspective people tend to overdo introspection and detail-worry during times of existential stress. It's one of the workplace hazards of an introspective life.

    I would suggest this: the inability to read a novel right now, that's due to the clusterfuckingly maddeningly bizarre social seismic shifts underway right now. So many conceived Social Progress moves (and movements) are being exposed as frauds, thus undermining one's confidence in the matter of existence. In such times, who can sit down and focus on 500pp (or whatever) of an author-created universe?

    What I'm suggesting: everyone who's introspective, aware, and at least semi-intelligent (redundant; implied by the two preceding terms) will be struggling with sustained focus right now.

    ReplyDelete
  7. No worries, I didn't think you were being bossy, I thought you were being Kind.

    And yup.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Houllebecq as literature is surely meh but as mean-spirited polemic against everything it soothes me somehow... was thinking it could do the same for others.

    Karl you have just described exactly why I seem to be able to read nothing else but hard-boiled detective stories lately.

    ReplyDelete
  9. :-P,

    I hear you... I like James Ellroy for propulsive reading when I can't get motivated. But I can't really be bothered even to read most days these days, Ellroy or not. Also pretty good for motive storytelling is Jeffery Deaver. I kinda like fiction you can read at half-conscious levels of focus... read plenty of Ludlum when I worked a lab job that had 25 to 40 minute downtime blocks. Sure it was the same story set in different locations with different beautiful women, but it was better than contemplating the dullness of the lab job, or the stupidity of driving 50 minutes to work such a dull job. Heh.

    Besides, since I got my degrees in science and in policy/rhetoric, I'm not expected to stick always with High Literature!

    ReplyDelete
  10. GAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    That'll have to do. You know the rest, it's unkind, and I trust that I've been sufficiently communicative. I'm not sure which of us is Doctor Asperger and which of us is Captain Phallus, but I'm pretty sure I got through, yes?

    Now? I'm going to beat you to a Gazette link.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Heh. But I'm better now.

    It could have been much worse. Joining us Monday was the CCT teacher who likes talking with me about blogging.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Oh. Damn. I don't think Tuesday the 26th will work, and if United wins that game they play on the road against I Forget, but Planet and I will go back.

    ReplyDelete