Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Now that Everyone Who Yearned to Wear Long Pants Has Essentially Achieved Them, Long Pants, which Have Themselves Been Underwear Repeatedly, and Underground More than Once, It Is Time Perhaps to Cherish the Culture of Shorts

Resuming regular programming: I don't know what to do with Fleabus photos. What can I post? There won't be any new ones until Thanksgiving and probably not then, and to be honest, Fleabus' official photographer hasn't produced any new photos the wow of the old photos in a year or two, and YAY! FOR HER! she's brave and strong now for having gone out with friends instead of staying at home and taking Fleabus photos then! She txtd excitedly last night, on her first day of true adulthood and independence, she's having a blast.






Earthgirl's an artist, Planet's an artist, I'm a shitty poet - you do know these are poems, yes? - and I take photos of Fleabus too but because of my sillyass self-straitjacketing code of bleggal ethics can only post photos I've taken of Napoleon or Frankie or Creamy or Momcat or Sarah or Jess or Woof or Moo or the Cuddle-Slut Orange Cat of Middle Path, yes? with the above and below exceptions:




















THE DREAM OF WEARING SHORTS FOREVER

Les Murray

To go home and wear shorts forever
in the enormous paddocks, in that warm climate,
adding a sweater when winter soaks the grass, 

to camp out along the river bends
for good, wearing shorts, with a pocketknife,
a fishing line and matches, 

or there where the hills are all down, below the plain,
to sit around in shorts at evening
on the plank verandah - 

If the cardinal points of costume
are Robes, Tat, Rig and Scunge,
where are shorts in this compass? 

They are never Robes
as other bareleg outfits have been:
the toga, the kilt, the lava-lava
the Mahatma's cotton dhoti; 

archbishops and field marshals
at their ceremonies never wear shorts.
The very word
means underpants in North America. 

Shorts can be Tat,
Land-Rovering bush-environmental tat,
socio-political ripped-and-metal-stapled tat,
solidarity-with-the-Third World tat tvam asi, 

likewise track-and-field shorts worn to parties
and the further humid, modelling negligee
of the Kingdom of Flaunt,
that unchallenged aristocracy. 

More plainly climatic, shorts
are farmers' rig, leathery with salt and bonemeal;
are sailors' and branch bankers' rig,
the crisp golfing style
of our youngest male National Costume. 

Most loosely, they are Scunge,
ancient Bengal bloomers or moth-eaten hot pants
worn with a former shirt,
feet, beach sand, hair
and a paucity of signals. 

Scunge, which is real negligee
housework in a swimsuit, pyjamas worn all day,
is holiday, is freedom from ambition.
Scunge makes you invisible
to the world and yourself. 

The entropy of costume,
scunge can get you conquered by more vigorous cultures
and help you notice it less. 

To be or to become
is a serious question posed by a work-shorts counter
with its pressed stack, bulk khaki and blue,
reading Yakka or King Gee, crisp with steely warehouse odour. 

Satisfied ambition, defeat, true unconcern,
the wish and the knack of self-forgetfulness
all fall within the scunge ambit
wearing board shorts of similar;
it is a kind of weightlessness. 

Unlike public nakedness, which in Westerners
is deeply circumstantial, relaxed as exam time,
artless and equal as the corsetry of a hussar regiment, 

shorts and their plain like
are an angelic nudity,
spirituality with pockets!
A double updraft as you drop from branch to pool! 

Ideal for getting served last
in shops of the temperate zone
they are also ideal for going home, into space,
into time, to farm the mind's Sabine acres
for product and subsistence. 

Now that everyone who yearned to wear long pants
has essentially achieved them,
long pants, which have themselves been underwear
repeatedly, and underground more than once,
it is time perhaps to cherish the culture of shorts, 

to moderate grim vigour
with the knobble of bare knees,
to cool bareknuckle feet in inland water,
slapping flies with a book on solar wind
or a patient bare hand, beneath the cadjiput trees, 

to be walking meditatively
among green timber, through the grassy forest
towards a calm sea
and looking across to more of that great island
and the further tropics. 



11 comments:

  1. Be happy you're not the shittiest one. And there's ethics? And and am I the only person who hasn't heard more than 3-5 minutes of the Decemberists? Must be the shorts.

    Here's hoping the official photographer digs the college even if it is in this weirdo state.

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  2. At least she's not up by the burning waters of Clevelandistan, R.G.
    ~

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  3. Is weird state.

    1. Drivers take forever to make right turns.
    2. Waiters and cashiers resent your business.
    3. All roads lead to Coshocton.

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  4. Try walking around downtown Columbus, BDR.

    You're concerns about the speed at which the drivers check for pedestrians and make their rights-on-red will be answered with the phrase: 'on two wheels'.
    ~

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  5. Under no circumstances should you ever try walking around downtown Columbus. Trust me.

    How the fuck do you come up with 16 different combinations of uniforms that are all that fucking ugly? I mean, it defies probability.

    I miss the Fat Man already.

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  6. Yup, when sixteen uniforms make the old red Jets replica uniform with the retarded script *terps* on the helmet look good by comparison, that's major whorish ugliness.

    I was talking more about the cars that slow to ten miles an hour a quarter of a mile before turning onto another road or driveway out in the country. I learned in Vount Mernon pedestrians are invisible (or more likely visible and expendable).

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  8. Hope you and Landru (and both yours) survived the massive earthquake of 2011. Once I saw this pic of the devastation, I got concerned. We worry, you know:

    http://jmckinley.posterous.com/dc-earthquake-devastation

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  9. That's two in a little over a year. Got a text from Ohio checking up. All's fine.

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  10. Revolutionary Road works best if you've ever been married, and miserably so. And if you've seen suburbia threaten to drain you entirely. It's so fucking sad, and that's because it says more about the home myth than I've ever encountered elsewhere. It made me want to die. In that good way.

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