Small Reprieves of Coffee and Birdsong

• Was listening to a playlist of WFMU Marathon DJ premiums while driving through Glouster Ohio Monday with Earthgirl and Planet. The song is Hana No Kajimaya by Shoukichi Kina on Rich Hazleton's Floating Around the World with Inflatable Squirrel Carcass CD. 
• Upon review, the rental car is actually a Ford Fusion, not a Ford Focus, but....
• No long drives yesterday - Planet had classes. Went to dinner, hung out in the room after, was wonderful. Finished Jake's book (Jake (IOZ) interviewed) - no reviews here other than to say it had both the strengths and weaknesses of most first novels, and I encourage you to try it  - then link fished while Earthgirl read and Planet wrote a paper.
• We leave to take Planet out for breakfast in minutes and then we abandon her. 

  

• Was it ever so simple? Is an obsession with the past the sign of a morbid disposition? Obsession in the case meaning a constant rehashing of past occurrences and achievements – done for the sake of assuaging an anxious sense of stasis, degeneration, impasse, or reversion in the present. I find myself wondering this in recent months, as the news offers an incessant series of anniversaries – of this or that landmark legislation, historical milestone, technological innovation, tragic event or horrific massacre, etcetera etcetera etcetera. This, admittedly, might simply just another example of the news cycle doing what it does – filling news holes and broadcast time with whatever it can, especially if that whatever is easier to explain than (say) what's going on in Syria or Crimea.
• Metaphors for an Age of Surveillance.
• Power cannot be talked into giving itself up: If privilege is a relation between persons, then it will not go away until those relations are changed. It is unrealistic to expect those who have advantage to surrender it. They cannot be shamed. They will not be persuaded. No volume of study will present a factual enough case to change the thinking of those who use power and feel its many desirable effects. The more facts are presented, the more likely they will be suppressed. No amount of inspiring narrative or good will or forgiveness will cause hierarchies to dismantle themselves.
• Food links. 
• Two Carl Dennis poems.
• Merrill, for those of you who do. There does seem to be a stirring of interest again after years of his fading from his once superstar status.
• Like a honeymoon suite. 
• Lifehacks with Doctor Turin Horse.
• Yes, the above link logistically belongs farther up, but it made me think of Turin Brakes and songs go here:

I AM LEARNING TO ABANDON THE WORLD

Linda Pastan

I am learning to abandon the world

before it can abandon me.

Already I have given up the moon

and snow, closing my shades

against the claims of white.

And the world has taken

my father, my friends.

I have given up melodic lines of hills,

moving to a flat, tuneless landscape.

And every night I give my body up

limb by limb, working upwards

across bone, towards the heart.

But morning comes with small

reprieves of coffee and birdsong.

A tree outside the window

which was simply shadow moments ago

takes back its branches twig

by leafy twig.

And as I take my body back

the sun lays its warm muzzle on my lap

as if to make amends.