Friday, September 9, 2011

In an Effort to Get People to Look into Each Other’s Eyes More, and Also to Appease the Mutes, the Government Has Decided to Allot Each Person Exactly One Hundred and Sixty-Seven Words, Per Day

I didn't watch or listen to Obama's speech, I said. L didn't either, neither did K. We don't know whether D did or not: he was at home hoping his get me through one more storm, Lord sump pump didn't fail. L said, I can't remember seeing greener grass, greener leaves in September, then we were all comfortably quiet. How's the semester? somebody eventually asked and the other two mehhed. No one felt like talking. No one felt compelled to talk. K's husband called: find a different route home, and soon please, the main route is flooded. I mowed my lawn this past Sunday, I said. The sun hasn't shined since Saturday, the grass is neon green and needs cutting. L's partner txtd, Canal's closed. That's my usual way home too. She had to go across a jammed Key to Wherever Virginia, I needed labyrinth my way through NW and Bethesda to Kensington, Beach Drive closed. No time for a second round; no one had a chance to win the night's ridiculously priced scotch. One quick, gently quiet round then spooky drive home, a great uncanny night I'll always remember.













THE QUIET WORLD

Jeffrey McDaniel

In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred   
and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear   
without saying hello. In the restaurant   
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,   
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.   
I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn’t respond,
I know she’s used up all her words,   
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line   
and listen to each other breathe.




16 comments:

  1. Hamlet doesn't belong on the existentialist list, but the rest make sense. In place of Hamlet, why not Ethan Frome or Silas Marner?

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  2. Of all the isms I can't define - and I can't define *any* - I can't define "existentialism" most. Though (inside baseball) Sampselle tried.

    Yes on Eliot, and I'd add anything by Melville, but especially Moby Dick and everything subsequent, Confidence Man most.

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  3. You certainly seem to be paying a lot of attention to fuck 9/11. I suggest...well, you know what I suggest, but the kindest part of what I suggest is that there is no 9/11 at the Loaf, right?

    I don't get it. It's only 129 words. Pomes suck at math, dood.

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  4. How to Make Your Blog Instantly Popular


    Butterfly pics!
    ~

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  5. BDR,

    Walter Kaufmann's works always seemed to come close to a composite definition. He's mostly known as the "good translator" of Nietzsche, but his anthologies of existentialist work, plus his original material, do a fair approximation of defining existentialism, as much as a school of thought disavowed by almost half of its exemplars can be defined.

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  6. Good luck with the floodwaters. We had all the bridges in town except one across the river closed 3 years ago, and you were taking your chances if you tried crossing the one.

    You're still taking your chances today when you cross all those bridges due to structural issues from age and instability due to erosion during the flood, but hey, it's football season and the University football coach is the highest paid employee of the State, so we have that going for us.

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  7. All this literature makes me want to watch football and grunt.

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  8. Bmpthnx for the Kind at your place Jack. I've read Kaufmann, both the Dostoyevsky to Sartre book on existentialism plus some of his stuff on Nietzsche both for classes and independently, and you're right, he's very smart and clear (and, I remember, very respectful towards his readers). My complaint was more my incipient disismism with a world in which I need an ism to reject isms.

    Thunder - I saw you commented there. She came by here to see where the pings were coming from and spent all of two seconds deciding I wasn't worthy. Not enough butterfly pics, I suppose.

    I imagine hiking trails on the Loaf are six inch deep mud by now, plus Sampselle!

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  9. Zen, thanks - Fredneck County usually opens up three or four sinkholes right along I-70 when it rains this much. And why does that university in your town wear Pittsburgh Motherfucking Stillers uniforms?

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  10. Heh, the logo is worse than the color scheme, like a parrot with jowls.

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  11. "I didn't watch or listen to Obama's speech, I said. L didn't either, neither did K. We don't know whether D did or not: he was at home hoping his get me through one more storm, Lord sump pump didn't fail. L said, I can't remember seeing greener grass, greener leaves in September, then we were all comfortably quiet. How's the semester? somebody eventually asked and the other two mehhed. No one felt like talking. No one felt compelled to talk. K's husband called: find a different route home, and soon please, the main route is flooded. I mowed my lawn this past Sunday, I said. The sun hasn't shined since Saturday, the grass is neon green and needs cutting. L's partner txtd, Canal's closed. That's my usual way home too. She had to go across a jammed Key to Wherever Virginia, I needed labyrinth my way through NW and Bethesda to Kensington, Beach Drive closed. No time for a second round; no one had a chance to win the night's ridiculously priced scotch. One quick, gently quiet round then spooky drive home, a great uncanny night I'll always remember."

    Look me in the eye, BDR. Is this part of a new novel you're writing by any chance?

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  12. There's not enough 9/11 porn here, I'm going home.

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  13. What, I'm supposed to show a chubby every time you use that magic search word?

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  14. And Jeebus, don't we have a professional soccer team or something, to relieve us of the harrowing sameness of forty googleplexajillion inch/feet of rain?

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  15. From yesterday's post:

    *Washington DC has a professional soccer team? It's true, they just haven't played a game in twenty-seven fucking years.* And the next two games are on the fucking West coast. 11:30 *this* Saturday. Don't bother txting me.

    As for the word, the only place I can use it w/o trolling for google hits is in comments, so twice.

    Frances, aw shucks, but I gave up on the notion I'm a novelist fifteen years ago. There *is* a novelist on route to you though.

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  16. Yesterday is so totally yesterday.

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