Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Like a Length of Coiled Rope Which Does Not Disguise in the Final Twists of Its Lengths Its Endings




Found that in files, shot three, four years ago, had forgotten about it. So, Never Let Me Go isn't working. It is my least favorite Ishiguro, so it was desperate stab. Ed's sheer delight in reading Pynchon's Against the Day makes me happy and envious, so after an anniversary dinner at our (until 6:30 last night) favorite Indian restaurant we walked the block to a Barnes and Noble to spend Earthgirl's gift cards. I sent my copy of Against the Day to someone (I don't remember who) after I finished my second reading early in 2012, I thought, it's my favorite Pynchon (yes, more than Gravity's Rainbow), it's three years ahead of scheduled rereading but why not pick it up and see what happens. Not on shelf. What was on shelf was the novel photoed below, I remember the buzz when it came out, it was mentioned in The Millions favorably in the past week, so what the fuck, 40 pages in all good, but this is me I'm talking about so I'm betting against me until I lose a bet.

















A BOOK OF MUSIC

Jack Spicer

Coming at an end, the lovers
Are exhausted like two swimmers.
Where Did it end? There is no telling. No love is
Like an ocean with the dizzy procession of the waves' boundaries
From which two can emerge exhausted, nor long goodbye
Like death. Coming at an end. Rather, I would say, like a length
Of coiled rope
Which does not disguise in the final twists of its lengths
Its endings.
But, you will say, we loved
And some parts of us loved
And the rest of us will remain
Two persons. Yes,
Poetry ends like a rope.



8 comments:

  1. I wonder how long the NSA's Walter Pincus file is?
    ~

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    1. Probably longer than ours, at least according to a friend who asserts that collecting everything doesn't mean analyzing everything - considering what Pincus does and who he talks to, there's no doubt more everything there than there's everything in our Stringtown, for instance. Another acquaintance says that collecting everything is far more democratic than selective gathering anyway, an angle I admit I'd thought I'd hear earlier than I did.

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  2. a block walk from an indian restaurant to a barnes and noble - downtown? bethesda? clarendon? enjoy the b&n while you can - who knows how long they've got left

    which reminds me of "dead reckoning" - as the people you knew (those who knew you, and also those you knew of) go away, one way to think of it is that they have "passed on" to somewhere which is also your destination - emmy lou harris, wayfaring stranger

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7kZrssy7KQ

    or, more existentially, there's the firesign theatre perspective about the future -

    "THIS is the future. You got to LIVE it, or LIVE WITH it."

    on the other hand, nostalgia "is now recognized to counteract loneliness, boredom and anxiety — making life seem more meaningful"

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/science/what-is-nostalgia-good-for-quite-a-bit-research-shows.html

    i was waxing nostalgic the other day, listening to a tune from my college days while reflecting on the fact that most of the guys i would toke up with to this record have been dead for 20 years

    but i am not - although i will be in the not-too-distant future

    Maurice Nicoll, British psychiatrist...states (in Psychological Commentaries On Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, Vol. 1, published in 1941), "The hypnotism of life is very powerful. The object of Nature is to keep man asleep and to keep him based on violence, so that he serves the purposes of Nature."

    William Hutton goes on to summarize:

    Nicoll explains that humanity on this planet is in a strange situation. Looking at history, man has not really developed. Yet people are prone to imagine that passing time means progress, and that any contradictions to this perception are exceptional. People usually regard war as exceptional, but most of history deals with war. Indeed, history repeats itself because groups of individuals attract again and again the same circumstances, feel the same things, say the same things, and so on. But almost nothing actually changes because people's beings have not changed. We need to realize that each of us is at a different level of being. However, a higher level of being lies immediately above each of us at this very moment, now. It does not lie in the future of time. All work on oneself deals with stopping negative emotions, not being identified with one's personal troubles, with not keeping accounts ["keeping accounts" = holding grudges - mc], and with self observation; that is, with actions that can take place NOW.

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    1. Bethesda. Himilayan Heritage on Bethesda Ave. Walked in, entirely different wait staff and, unfortunately, perhaps a new kitchen too. Shame. The things it used to do with cauliflowers.

      I was stunned to find that novel in the B&N. I expected a ghost town, but the fiction shelves are still stocked to the gills, as was the poetry shelves. But yes, two years max before B&N death.

      Thanks for links and stuff.....

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  3. The comments on Goff's numbers yield some interesting points that Fullback has been making for years when things have gone unusually well; regression to the mean is reasonably likely.

    Which is, sadly, very different from "United doesn't suck."

    Here's a reality check: Which dies first, B&N or 232?

    Sorry about your crappy Indian food. I mean yours and hers, personally. I fucking hate Indian food. But I wish nothing but Indian food you find palatable for you and yours.

    Shoulda gone to...wait for it...Foong Lin!

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    1. 232 - if ownership keeps trending in current direction - isn't in dire danger of disappearing yet, though I see dire direction on the horizon. (And I know it's a perfect metaphor for my self-absorption's ability to extrapolate universal symbolism out of personal inconvenience, but the 7:00 start time pisses me of so fucking thoroughly beyond everything else Thorir Fuckstick is doing....)

      Foong Lin be gone. Going to be a big hole soon where another condo goes.

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  4. First of all, Greenaway: How can anyone EVER forget nude Helen Mirren in "The Cook, The Thief..." I mean, c'mon!

    Second, for your dining pleasure the greatest website ever:

    http://www.wherethefuckshouldigotoeat.com/

    Be sure and click "Offended" over and over. And you have to imagine the printed words to sound like either Landru or Wisdomie.

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  5. I found that Pailhead EP on cassette as a defunct thrift store in Kent, Ohio. I need to dig that out again.

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