Tuesday, September 23, 2014

I Now Acknowledge The Red Moon, to Requite the Heart Alone Given Power to Recite Its Faith, What a Cradled Life Finds Emblematic




Activating the MomCat Emergency Alert System. It's been some months since necessary, but it's now been a week since we've seen her, and the neighborhood listserv is abuzz with news of hungry coyotes and asshole anti-cat fuckers calling the county to get uncollared cats trapped and executed.

Introductory and/or refresher course: MomCat is a feral who lived in our yard for two years before giving birth to three kittens in our shed eight years ago. The daughter, Grey Cat, came in and out of the house and was fully interactive with us before disappearing six years ago. One of the sons, Frankie (name is inside baseball only one of you will get) still will not let us pet him but he rarely leaves the yard and I fed him this morning. The second son, Napoleon, is in quarantine in one of our bedrooms for another eleven days - the Animal Control officer, at her last visit last week, said that as long as we can provide proof he is fully up-to-date on his shots she will sign his release on Saturday October 4. He suffered a bite wound - almost certainly a cat's - that became infected, and the vet contacted Animal Control which ordered six months of confinement against the slight chance Napoleon developed rabies. Napoleon is fully interactive and one of the best cats ever: his ear is squared to signify a fixed feral cat; he hasn't been a feral cat for seven years.

Activating the MomCat Emergency Alert System and, when needed, the Napoleon Emergency Alert System has worked every time over the past eight years. Whether we will let Napoleon outside and possibly necessitate the activation of his alert system is to be determined. It's been months since either has been activated. Here's hoping it still works.







  • I was there.
  • United signs St Benny to a long-term contract“I love this city. My [three] children were born in Washington, D.C., and I don’t want to move,” he (Olsen) said. “I told Jason in negotiations, ‘I don’t want to move. I want to be here. I want to be part of this club. I want my kids growing up in this city.’ Not the best negotiating tactic, but it’s true. From Day 1, I fell in love with this club. There was a lot to fall in love with early, and I feel a responsibility about pushing this club to the next level.
  • Yesterday on the Kojo Nnamdi Show, DC United's big boss (if not big owner) promised that Supporters Clubs (he did not use the term LOUD SIDE!) will be midfield in a new stadium.
  • I have no objection if my abandoned religions fight to keep me.
  • I don't want it to be easy. At least this one. I don't want this one to be as easy as abandoning motherfucking Democrats. I don't want this to be the same frequency as abandoning motherfucking Democrats.
  • I will go to at least one more game this year, not this Saturday afternoon if it's a nice day to hike, but I will go to at least one more game this year. I owe the faith at least that.
  • Should the spirit of protest occasion a crowd.....
  • From the neightborhood listserv: some of my neighbors are Kind, decent humans: MS who trapped kittens and cats at a Parkwood house that is to be torn down and got them neutered so we don't have a feline explosion, sent this information. If any of you are looking to adopt a kitten, here is a great opportunity to adopt a neighbor. All kittens are litter-box trained.
  • Robinson Jeffers, for those of you who do.
  • Hilary Mantel, for those of you who do.
  • Hey, anyone have anything to convince me to read or not read Emily St John Mandel?
  • A long meditation on a fantasy novel I couldn't get past fifteen pages and Earthgirl couldn't get past thirty. I'll take the blame on my part.
  • It's Coltrane's birthday.
  • I was there:








THE CRADLE LOGIC OF AUTUMN

Jay Wright

Each instant comes with a price, the blue-edged bill   
on the draft of a bird almost incarnadine,   
the shanked ochre of an inn that sits as still   
as the beavertail cactus it guards (the fine   
rose of that flower gone as bronze as sand),   
the river's chalky white insistence as it   
moves past the gray afternoon toward sunset.   
Autumn feels the chill of a late summer lit   
only by goldenrod and a misplaced strand   
of blackberries; deplores all such sleight of hand;   
turns sullen, selfish, envious, full of regret.

Someone more adept would mute its voice. The spill   
of its truncated experience would shine
less bravely and, out of the dust and dunghill   
of this existence (call it hope, in decline),
as here the blue light of autumn falls, command   
what is left of exhilaration and fit
this season's unfolding to the alphabet
of turn and counterturn, all that implicit   
arc of a heart searching for a place to stand.   
Yet even that diminished voice can withstand   
the currying of its spirit. Here lies—not yet.

If, and only if, the leafless rose he sees,
or thinks he sees, flowered a moment ago,
this endangered heart flows with the river that flees   
the plain, and listens with eye raised to the slow   
revelation of cloud, hoping to approve   
himself, or to admonish the rose for slight   
transgressions of the past, this the ecstatic   
ethos, a logic that seems set to reprove   
his facility with unsettling delight.
Autumn might be only desire, a Twelfth Night   
gone awry, a gift almost too emphatic.

Logic in a faithful light somehow appeases   
the rose, and stirs the hummingbird's vibrato.   
By moving, I can stand where the light eases   
me into the river's feathered arms, and, so,   
with the heat of my devotion, again prove   
devotion, if not this moment, pure, finite.   
Autumn cradles me with idiomatic
certainty, leaves me nothing to disapprove.
I now acknowledge this red moon, to requite   
the heart alone given power to recite
its faith, what a cradled life finds emblematic.



7 comments:

  1. Autumn Day
    by: Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
    translated by James Burnham (1948- )


    Lord, it is time. Summer was very grand.
    Now cast your shadow on the sundials,
    and loose the winds on the open fields.

    Command the last fruits to be full;
    give them two more southerly days.
    Force them into perfection and chase
    the last sweetness into heavy wine.

    Who has no house will not build one now.
    Who is now alone will stay alone,
    will wake and read and write long letters
    and wander up and down the streets
    restlessly, driven like leaves.

    Read more at http://www.blackcatpoems.com/r/autumn_day.html#OHuevPIHY5pbWLAf.99

    ReplyDelete
  2. If you abandon the Black and Red, does that mean you have to change your handle? Your identity? You dog.

    Maybe it should be RedCatWhite, given your experience (see supra) and your newfound love of the (G)Nats.

    Oooh! Orbs!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Landru can vouch, since he started it, that dog tag started long before there was a DC United.

      Delete
    2. Dear Jim,

      That's the silliest effing thing I've ever heard. Ever. He has, in the past, been a dog (of the big stinking variety, though not, as it happens, the archetype), and the original handle was Dogman, rendered properly, in his case, as dogma-N. And thus it shall remain, until I am ashes scattered. The end.

      With eternal love,
      Andy

      Delete
    3. Oh, and I was there too, on both counts, and they were two of the best damn nights of my grownuphood.

      Delete
    4. I'm thinking the Friday Oct 3 game v Kansas City, 8PM start for national TV. Then we'll see.
      I fully recognize I'm easily wooed by St Benny's calls for tribal loyalty and I realize Jason Levien is savvy enough to guarantee on a local radio show the only thing he's knows he can say about Supporters Clubs and seating at this stage of the stadium negotiations and quite possible is content in his heart with the knowledge rich folk go midfield, clubs go to endzones, but (a) I gave the motherfucking Democrats eight rounds of POTUS support and anguished five years over the .06% less-shitty debate before casting them to Hell, I can give United at least another game and another chance to rekindle faith and (b) I do love me my apostasy-angst, as those contributing to this blog's diminishing readership can testify.

      But yes, what Landru said, it's why I didn't say it myself.

      Delete
    5. Adding, while I wish I could claim prescience when choosing Bonzo Dog Band this morning I must, as always, heap love and praise upon Serendipity.

      Delete