Sunday, April 6, 2014

As Though It Mattered, As If You Knew?




That's Kenilworth to East Capitol to RFK last night. United won, a strange sensation, 2-0, over Ningland. So I dated it wrong. Oops.

Napoleon is home, quarantined in the small first floor bedroom. (For those just tuning in, background here). He's a sweetie. I lie on the bed, he doesn't know how to cuddle, just knows that he wants to. My face lower than his as he looks down on my head on the pillow, this is the first time either of us has had this perspective. I think he will be a kneader: he climbs on my chest and starts but is disconcerted and thrown off balance by the up and down of my chest's breathing. He love-knocks foreheads. He still hasn't figured out the litter box. Something's gonna give.

UPDATE! He figured out the litter box!

Our vet tells us MOCO Animal Services takes these cases seriously to the point that is we don't follow their rules for animals with animal bites exactly they claim the legal authority to seize Napoleon and cut off his head to check his brain for rabies. The vet called MOCO Animal Services from my house on Friday and repeatedly Saturday morning. I called MOCO Animal Services Friday and talked to a receptionist who filed a "Bite Ticket." I have not heard from MOCO Animal Services. No doubt MOCO Animal Services is short-staffed, under-funded, and overwhelmed. This is a mixed blessing: they are, after all, less-likely to seize Napoleon and cut off his head to test his brain for rabies over a closely observed violation on our part of their policies because they are short-staffed, under-funded, and overwhelmed. Fine metaphors abound.

Have some stanchion porn:






Mr Alarum saw this VITALLY IMPORTANT NEWS! yesterday and Kindly tweeted it to me, knowing I've been asking every day for several years if and when it would ever happen: Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel in a decade, The Buried Giant, will be released next March, his publisher Faber & Faber has announced. The book will be the first from the acclaimed author since 2005's Never Let Me Go, an unsettling examination of hope and mortality set in a dystopian near future. The Buried Giant was described by Faber as "sometimes savage [and] often intensely moving". The publisher would only reveal that the book, Ishiguro's seventh novel, will be about "lost memories, love, revenge and war". Stephen Page, chief executive, said that the book was "a truly sublime new chapter in one of the most significant bodies of work of anyone writing today". "It is as surprising, moving and brilliant as you could hope for, and we can't wait to publish," said Page. In 2008, Ishiguro told the Paris Review that he had "arrived at an odd setting for the novel I'm writing at the moment". "I'd wanted for some time to write a novel about how societies remember and forget," the author said at the time. "I'd written about how individuals come to terms with uncomfortable memories. It occurred to me that the way an individual remembers and forgets is quite different to the way a society does. When is it better to just forget?" Time to reread everything. No sure what order, just know The Unconsoled will be last.

This is the album that's playing in background of top video, David Van Tiegham x Ten's Fits and Starts:













TWENTY QUESTIONS

David Lehman

Why did the moth fly into the flame? Was it for the same reason
That Achilles died young? Who gets more fun out of sex,
The man or the woman? (Be sure to explain how you can tell.)
Which is more real to you, heaven or hell?
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? What causes the death of love—
The love of death? Did Adam and Eve have a choice?
Did the Virgin Mary? What are we afraid of, anyway?
Even agnostics have the right to say “thank god,” don’t they?
Looking at these dancing atoms, shall I say I saw a ring
Of pure and endless light? Or did I dream the whole thing?
Whom shall I say is calling? Are you in if it’s your wife?
Are you willing to relocate? Do you like your life?
What makes this night different from all other nights?
Would you say it’s your fate to be always,
Without exception, five minutes late? If you arrived
At 9:10, would the ceremony have started at 9:05
Though it had been scheduled for 9:15? As you walk down
The aisle, and the others rivet their attention to you,
Do you ask yourself what you’re going to do,
As though it mattered, as if you knew?



9 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Ningland, at least, shot on Ningland goal.

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  2. and .. i put this moment .. . here , of my last comment back by mail .. .,said wit odd er 'er

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  3. a) if i understand correctly, napoleon is used to living as a primarily outdoor cat
    this will be a tough adaptation
    my cats have from time to time paid attention to tv images of animals and in particular birds
    maybe he'd enjoy something like that

    b) 4 more questions

    where did we come from
    where are we going
    why are we here
    what is the best use of my time right now

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    Replies
    1. Yes, Napoleon was born feral, became domesticated but spent the majority of his time outside. Came into the house most days on the condition we let him out when he wanted. So far he's fine, though that might be as much his recovery from the infection than acquiescence to his new confinement.

      1. I'm from McKeesport Pennsylvania
      2. I'm going to an art show where Earthgirl has a painting on display.
      3. Speaking only for me, I'm an attention-slut.
      4. Reading Ishiguro.

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  4. Well, Jeff, you can be pretty sure that if you keep the door shut, none of those Mokes are going to be able to get in to bite or shoot or cut anybody's head off.

    Has no one ever read James Herriott? Vets in Scotland made house calls in all weather, and they wore (of course) protective gloves (much as those handling falcons).

    Confinement is simply impossible, as is quarantining. One adopted cat, so excited after getting out of the shelter he could not be contained, raced down into a no exit area, where there was a window... which he dove through.

    His first night with us, he was back at the vet's for surgery.

    Sweetest cat of all time. He had one of those not-to-worry unhealing wounds. Metastatic cancer.

    These are the ones who most need the love.

    Ferals differ from other cats only in that they have absorbed more cruelty and experienced more suffering. The least of these & c. Many of those we've adopted have come from mean-streets zones, where what care they got was often dispensed at no cost, perforce, when the "owners" ran out on the bill. Often these cats come with assurances that this or that unhealing sore is nothing to worry about. In two of those cases, it turned out there had indeed been something to worry about.

    No one ever died of worrying about a poor suffering animal.

    Here's to a long and happy life for Napoleon and those who care for him.

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    Replies
    1. right now an aunt of mine is a poor suffering animal with metastatic cancer - i visited her recently with my older brother who self-identifies as a conservative born-again christian - for example, he and i were discussing the story of noah, the subject of a recently released movie - i asked him, 'do you think that every mouse and snake and bird in the commonwealth of massachusetts is descended from passengers on noah's arc?' - he said, 'essentially, yes' - the use of the qualifying adverb let me know that on some level he knows it's contrary to reason, but his loyalty to a religious ideology prevents him from acknowledging it

      a few weeks ago he had the experience of waking up at three a.m. with a three point revelation from the holy spirit - that if he wanted to see this aunt alive again he had to visit her NOW, that she had been angry at god since since was crippled as a young woman, and that he should tell her very clearly that god loves her

      i was with them when he told her how he had been sent to convey the message that god loves her - she gestured to the pile of cards and letters on her hospital room windowsill and said she was buoyed up by the love she receives from her family and friends - the clear implication being - 'you have your invisible friend, i have my real friends'

      did a god who loves give her a life as a cripple, or allow it to happen to her? why do bad things happen to good people? rabbi kushner's best-selling book on the topic, still in print, says basically, "god can't prevent it, and suffers with you" [as i recall his message - it's been decades since i read it] and now, of course, she's dying from metastatic cancer

      it's all part of the way things are - recently louis c.k. was mocking the idea of heaven on 'saturday night live' - imagining god saying - 'not only did i create all this, you want me to create a whole other world too?'

      as my non-theistic edited version of the prayer erroneously attributed to st francis puts it, 'it is in letting go of a smaller self that we become capable of perceiving that we are part of all that is'

      may the creative forces of the universe be with us all


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  5. Category shift here maybe.

    Gods are invented by people, thus the disappointment of people, those dumb animals, when the invented gods evaporate.

    I have not yet encountered a cat who caused me to believe that gods exist... unless all gods are cat gods.

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  6. to mistah and tc, a comment on in my comment to j. today on his post above ,with the painting /and i hope that some day soon that brian cox and his friends can better fill in mistah's brother ..on the flow of instincts ,the able of the hum'n mind .. in there.. they're better at communicating than i .. of able ./ and .. cat's are gods ./ and of the reason that i'm here ..of mistah query to j. , of why ..i'm clearly more feral ./ and what was it i said about groupthink/thoughts .. .sh' wanders off ..

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