Thursday, October 9, 2014

Some Kind of Solitude is Measured Out in You





John Lennon was born seventy-four years ago.

So, faith. I still listen a lot, it's ride home from work sing and dance in my drivers seat what remains of my air guitaring listen to, but only George's great two songs off Yellow Submarine and no other Beatles songs: long-timers can vouch, I've always loved George best - and I've no desire to hear any other Beatles song now, I don't need to - my apologies, I've said before will say again - I can play any Beatles' song in my head any time I want. So yes, despite goddamn Macca, John gets his birthday.







  • That's effing good ham, Dad.
  • All songs via request except this one, the one John Beatle song I almost would listen too despite I don't need to, it's in my head, I can listen to any time I want, of course from Yellow Submarine.
  • Melt the guns.
  • The collapse of political complexity.
  • That does beg the question: what is the over/under year in which America, Triskelions' bell-cow, formally says, Fuck the self-image of benignity, Empire, bitches? 2019, +/-?
  • Minimal ethics for the anthropocene.
  • This way out?
  • A conversation last night w/BFF (who requested She Said) reminds me to remind me and remind you that my Natinals' (sic) episode completely sparked by listening to Charlie Slowes and Dave Jageler doing local Natinals' PXP on the radio. Sssh, this is true: you are supposed to see fifteen games live every season and then listen to all other games on a quality local radio network - Bob Prince doing Pirates, Ernie Harwell doing Tigers, Jon Miller doing Orioles, Slowes and Jageler doing Nats - and see the game in your head.







  • I guarantee that if Joe Angel and Fred Mothra were doing Nats radio I would not be listening.
  • I'd like to pretend this was all set up to make an inside baseball Fred Mothra joke, but that's not even Serendipity, just a sloppy free-associative happy accident.
  • Sloppy free-associative happy accidents buzz their own charm.
  • I believe I've amply demonstrated I'm stupid for uniforms and branding: I fully approve of the rebranding of that Yellow Team from Ohio in the city that's a suburb of Delaware, home of Buns Restaurant, a traditional stop on the BPE tour of Ohio three or four times a year.
  • Patrick Modiano?
  • Ashbery & O'Hara for those of you who do, for those of you who do.
  • Three hours of my early twenties!
  • More vapour trails.
  • Vapour Trail.








THE WOUND

Tom Sleigh

When I woke the darkness was so thick,
So palpable and black that my eyes
Seemed blind as stone staring into stone.
The blade that I had dreamed, efficient and quick
As it cut into my thigh, cleaning a gangrened
Wound infected to the bone, seemed poised
Above my throat: Close-grained, impenetrable,
The blackness rose before me like a wall.
And then off in the next room, nervous, light,
A soft padding as of an animal
Raced like my heartbeat in my temples
Round and round, trapped, stealthily desperate
As if hunting its own track, terrified
And captivated by its own odor.
Skin cool in the night air, eyes drilling
Through the dark, who I was before I
Slept had burned off like a vapor
So that amnesiac and pure, witnessing
My terror that I no longer recognized
As my own, my mind floated beyond me
To confront that frantic, closing footfall
As Jacob dreaming met his dark angel—
Though in my wrestling nothing blessed me
Or promised any blessing; but was a mask whose eyes
Were all black pupil, blind as molten tar.
I strained to see what paced there, my eyes burning
Through the dark until a pair of eyes blazed
Back across the blackness, an insistent, glazed
Staring that shimmered and disappeared.
The shining blade plunged at my throat, my mind
Stretched and twisted, its wires tightening
And turning as the creature lunged back and forth
And with a deep-throated yowling, thrashing
And thrashing to fight clear of its own circling,
Cleanly leapt away. I reached for the knife
But gripped only air, my eyes pressing
Deeper and deeper into the night’s black stone,
Cutting the way the knife had cut into my wound,
Probing for the white shining of the bone:
What had I become? What darkness had my dream
Led me down into? Too frightened even
To move, I lay bound and sweating in
The sheets, the moon a warning-bell beating
On the glass, its light carving out the curtains
Like the shadow of a wing across the windowpane.



3 comments:

  1. I knew you wouldn't put three Beatles songs in the mix (I say that not blamefully--thank you for the tremendous amount of attention-pimping in a single post). FTR, otherhomies, my other two requests were Norwegian Wood and Run for Your Life. But even I don't get to hog all the space.

    Baseball: Claim what you will. I assert that you're just lording it over Jim. Not that he didn't provoke you.

    Columbus: Whatevs. We still all laugh at a yellow football team. And I sure wouldn't argue that their original branding made any sense whatsoever. And yeah, tribalism, But still...ole. Ole ole ole ole.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So I lied. Blessed Serendipity was indeed responsible. Thanks for getting the joke. It's why I do this.

      Delete
  2. from the book on minimal ethics for the anthropocene

    "This book was inspired by Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens’ wonderfully provocative wedding to Lake Kallavesi at the ANTI Contemporary Art Festival in Kuopio, Finland, in September 2012."

    ReplyDelete