Monday, September 12, 2011

If You Would Recover, You Have to Get Over the Shattered Autos in the Backwoods Lot to that Bridge in the Darkness Where the Sentinels Stand Guarding the Border with Their Half-Slung Rifles, Warned of the Likes of You




To honor F9U1C1K I slept in until eight in the morning, remarkably late for me, but I'd stayed up past midnight watching United beat Goats USA the night before. After I made coffee I wrote a post about the game (and I reiterate: fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck, adding, after reflection, fuck) in which I made My Official F9U1C1K Statement. I then took photos of Stanley and Rose, emailed some to Planet.

I've nothing to add to F9U1C1K other than note that Osama bin Laden didn't cause the converging clusterfucks but he sped up up the collapse, the inevitable serbianization of the United States, perhaps by a decade. Corporate saw 911 as as the greatest opportunity in a generation to crush balls, crushing it's own balls in it's greedy frenzy to crush my balls. just as bin Laden, or anyone like you, me, at our own paces, reflecting now, could have predicted Corporate would.

I'm warned against a teleological bent, but what's changed isn't Corporate's future but how they are speeding up the wringing of the last fucking drop of my profitablilty now that resources are short and deadlines are overdue before set. I'm asking: do you think Corporate wouldn't kill you for a cigarette? I've overseen the execution at 240 men, damn the DNA, and I'm running for President. I've killed thousands of women and children, ordered the execution of US citizens, and I'm running for reelection.

Maybe waterboarding wasn't scheduled to go mainstream until 2015 in Corporate's 2000 long-term plan and 911 gave Corporate the opportunity to rush the install, but fuck any moaning about fucking lost innocence: it never existed, and what was marketed to you as your innocence was never yours to lose.











WHAT YOU HAVE TO GET OVER

Bruce Smith

Stumps. Railroad tracks. Early sicknesses,
the blue one, especially.
Your first love rounding a corner,
that snowy minefield.
Whether you step lightly or heavily,
you have to get over to that tree line a hundred yards in the distance
before evening falls,
letting no one see you wend your way,
that wonderful, old-fashioned word, wend,
meaning “to proceed, to journey,
to travel from one place to another,”
as from bed to breakfast, breakfast to imbecile work.
You have to get over your resentments,
the sun in the morning and the moon at night,
all those shadows of yourself you left behind
on odd little tables.
Tote that barge! Lift that bale! You have to
cross that river, jump that hedge, surmount that slogan,
crawl over this ego or that eros,
then hoist yourself up onto that yonder mountain.
Another old-fashioned word, yonder, meaning
“that indicated place, somewhere generally seen
or just beyond sight.” If you would recover,
you have to get over the shattered autos in the backwoods lot
to that bridge in the darkness
where the sentinels stand
guarding the border with their half-slung rifles,
warned of the likes of you. 


13 comments:

  1. Happy birthday Arvo Part and thanks for the link. I wouldn't exactly call your argument teleological (and I don't disagree).

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  2. (PS what was marketed to you as your innocence was never yours to lose is damn good.)

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  3. You're welcome and thanks.

    Went to stacks and pulled the Federici. I'm horrible when it comes to reading non-fiction, (though I now recognize I read some of the book for a class eighty decades ago) but it looks fascinating and I'll certainly read the intro (and look at all the cool and horrific pictures) and see where I go from there. It's already reminded me what a misogynist pig Billy Shakes could be: "sulphurous pit/Burning, scalding, stench, consumption."

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  4. Snyder is the real winner of Nineleven®.

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  5. The fact that YFWP didn't deign once to mention either Dick Armey (COO) or the Koch bros (Board) in their 'analysis' of the origin of the Tea Party shows just how stupid they (think we) are. It is the marketing arm of the Republican party—selling patriotism, anti-socialism, anti-government/pro-Corporate politics.

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  6. I can't understand why you continue to give pols so much credit for planning and efficacy.

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  7. I prefer to think of it as giving power credit for its inexorability.

    Pols are just bus drivers who think they're actually steering.

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  8. See, I try to stay out of it when you go all Tim Robbins, but that is most explicitly not how you're presenting. I must chide Sasha briefly and mildly, though--the active subject/verb here is not just about pols.

    That said, her point is valid conceptually. There's no argument about the inexorability of power--I agree. But the way you present your argument very explicitly posits planning and conspiracy (as an act, not as a legal term). Three days in the private sector--or close dealings with it--should really disabuse you of the notion that such a thing is plausible. It's more of a systemic/organic coincidence.

    That's why I rail against the way you formulate this.

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  9. Got to agree with Landru. My current corporate collective can't effectively figure out how to provide coffee service in an eight floor building. Anything resembling conspiracy is a fleeting pattern in the chaos. The momentary synchronization of turn signals at an intersection.

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  10. The Federici's well worth your time, if you can do it, though I understand nonfiction nondoing.

    For those who think the powerful are incompetent, I'm not sure if I agree or disagree, but I will say this: maybe they can't provide you with coffee effectively, but have they stopped making money for themselves?

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  11. Not necessarily incompetent. More incapable of maintaining the cohesion necessary for a conspiracy. They are as small and petty as the middle school analogy implies.

    My own analogy is ants. Collectively they devour the dead mouse, but there's no conspiracy to strip the mouse bare.

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