Wednesday, November 12, 2014

"It's Either That or Pay Off the Kidnapper," as Neil Young Had It Back in the Mid-70s.





Neil Young is sixty-nine today.

This is how Serendipity works: it is true that yesterday's post's punch line re: My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game was bait for Landru, but only hours after posting did I notice the Serendipity in the title I gave the post - I usually use a line from the poem in the post for that post's title, but since there was no poem in yesterday's post I named the post with a play on the word trinity to mock myself for the time and energy and seriousness I put into MSADI5G. Thus Quintity. I don't know why I then chose the word Obtained. A Milton thing is my best guess. But, Quintity Obtained, quintity obtained, QO, where Casa Satanica, castle of Landru, is located. SERENDIPITY BE BLESSED! I swear I would fuck it up if I tried to do it on purpose! I do not believe in God but I have never given up on faith.






















IN A LANDSCAPE: III

John Gallaher

It appears that we’re living (which isn’t always the case), depending
on how one defines such things, in a “now you see it / 
now you see it” kind of way. We can say we’re working on our age,
as well, listening to Bob Dylan songs where people can age
in whatever direction supports the theme. “Too bad life doesn’t
get themes,” Robin says, and yes, that’s right, and then we can all go
do whatever it was we were going to do anyway. “It’s either that,
or pay off the kidnapper,” as Neil Young had it, back in the mid-70s.
There’s always an analogue, and someone to tell us about it,
how, no matter how fast you run, you can’t run fast enough
to get away from yourself. You could even call it a theme.

For instance, I was the first one to an eighteen-wheeler accident
on the highway once, in the early 90s. I didn’t know what
I was going to find. It was just tossed there on its side, across
both lanes. So I got out of the car and walked around to the front,
only to see the driver standing inside the cab that was resting
on the driver-side door. He was simply standing there behind the glass,
parallel with the dashboard, a little blood on his forehead, looking
as lost as I felt, looking back at him. All his things (magazines
and maps and cigarettes and pens and snacks) in a little pile at his feet.
When I left, a guy was hitting the windshield with a baseball bat.

You go to the room, and the place you like to sit
is missing. This is an opportunity to trust, I suppose, or perhaps
for blind panic, if one were to consider this a metaphor
for something. But say it’s not, say there are no such things
as metaphors for a moment, and where does that get you?
Presently, it gets me to a row of green and yellow plastic chairs,
those 1950s-looking ones I imagine Kenton would like
to collect. They’re joined together by shiny metal clasps, chrome,
and the whole thing is full of sunlight through the plate glass
window. It’s the kind of scene I think of as lickable, how everything
looks like cheerful candy, and I wonder if there might be a way
to be there or here without a beginning, or without an ending,
or if perhaps there might be a concept for no middle.



2 comments:

  1. Silly wabbit. We both know that Casa Satanica is located in a town that, like North Bethesda, does not exist, and for almost precisely the same reason. Seatsix and I live in the same zip code, not even 2 miles apart. His address is Gaithersburg, and he's within the city limits. Mine is North We're-Better-Than-Bethesda, as various people with software that checks zip code versus town name like to smirkingly remind me ("I'm sorry, Gaithersburg isn't right...where do you live, Sir?"). The location of the possibly apocryphal orchard machts nichts to the post office and the real estate peoples. I will offer this: if you look at my hood on the satellite thingie, it is painfully obvious which lawn is mine. Suck on that, real estate peoples.

    Thank you, as always, for the annual reminder that, instead of seeing Yes in the round, we could have been on the floor for the Rust Never Sleeps tour. If, at the moment of my demise, I claim no regrets, call me a liar and cite that one. Then dance and laugh.

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    1. The Orange Sunshine at that Yes concert was the cleanest, crispest, motherfucking best acid I ever. Since I got it from a friend in the parking lot before the show we made the right decision.

      I've always thought of QO as Darnestown and Darnestown as a suburb of Poolesville.

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