In a Corner of the Labyrinth of Fences

• The candidate for Associate University Librarian for Scholarly Research and Collection Development has, in the case of one department, less experience in that field than the least who he would supervise on the day he would start. That department is to a soul (but one, who's lukewarm) adamantly against the candidate's hire. Obviously details aren't forthcoming, and this is a gross simplification of complex and informed opinions of people (some - a few - who I like and respect), but this particular argument I hear fascinates me: you want a boss who starts convinced he knows more than you about what you do and might be a jackass adjusting to your culture and/or worse is an asshole who makes everyone adjust to his? You don't want to hire someone who has excelled in what he knows and has learned (so I assume his references will say) what he needed to in an impressively compressed time so you have the chance - a chance: it's a risk, he may be a dick - to train him to help you do your job better and with better resources? Whose success on the job doesn't hinge on your success? There are legitimate concerns about this guy - this shouldn't be one, and shouldn't blind your judgment on more legitimate concerns. But I'm obodynay. Fine metaphors and fart. So the gif, now saved to all hard drives, now to be posted every time I want to write directly, secondarily, tangentially, fart-whiffingly about work and stop myself. See new tag.
• And thus complicity: if it can't get Kind, I wank for Competent in the slaugherhouse, neofuckingliberal me.
• Oh, this is my second ride through this committee, the first: O fuck....

Yes, I've been using this gif forever, the assignment is new, I have plans, gif plans, to create a language that uses only gifs, I..

• Gifs stolen from Station Manager Ken's playlist. But you knew that.
• Szymborska: a word on statistics.
• In which they fail to mention that.
• The pain of the children.
• How can a new social subject come to exist?
• This week in water.
• I have no idea why I woke up with Starflyer 59 in my head, but good!

THE LIBRARIAN

Charles Olson

The landscape (the landscape!) again: Gloucester,

the shore one of me is (duplicates), and from which

(from offshore, I, Maximus) am removed, observe.

In this night I moved on the territory with combinations

(new mixtures) of old and known personages: the leader,

my father, in an old guise, here selling books and manuscripts.

My thought was, as I looked in the window of his shop,

there should be materials here for Maximus, when, then,

I saw he was the young musician has been there (been before me)

before. It turned out it wasn’t a shop, it was a loft (wharf-

house) in which, as he walked me around, a year ago

came back (I had been there before, with my wife and son,

I didn’t remember, he presented me insinuations via

himself and his girl) both of whom I had known for years.

But never in Gloucester. I had moved them in, to my country.

His previous appearance had been in my parents’ bedroom where I

found him intimate with my former wife: this boy

was now the Librarian of Gloucester, Massachusetts!

 

                         Black space,

                         old fish-house.

                         Motions

                         of ghosts.

                         I,

                         dogging

                         his steps.

                         He

                         (not my father,

                         by name himself

                         with his face

                         twisted

                         at birth)

                         possessed of knowledge

                         pretentious

                         giving me

                         what in the instant

                         I knew better of.

 

                         But the somber

                         place, the flooring

                         crude like a wharf’s

                         and a barn’s

                         space

I was struck by the fact I was in Gloucester, and that my daughter

was there—that I would see her! She was over the Cut. I

hadn’t even connected her with my being there, that she was

here. That she was there (in the Promised Land—the Cut!

But there was this business, of poets, that all my Jews

were in the fish-house too, that the Librarian had made a party

I was to read. They were. There were many of them, slumped

around. It was not for me. I was outside. It was the Fort.

The Fort was in East Gloucester—old Gorton’s Wharf, where the Library

was. It was a region of coal houses, bins. In one a gang

was beating someone to death, in a corner of the labyrinth

of fences. I could see their arms and shoulders whacking

down. But not the victim. I got out of there. But cops

tailed me along the Fort beach toward the Tavern

                         The places still

                         half-dark, mud,

                         coal dust.

                         There is no light

                         east

                         of the Bridge

                         Only on the headland

                         toward the harbor

                         from Cressy’s

                         have I seen it (once

                         when my daughter ran

                         out on a spit of sand

                         isn’t even there.) Where

                         is Bristow? when does I-A

                         get me home? I am caught

                         in Gloucester. (What’s buried

                         behind Lufkin’s

                         Diner? Who is

                         Frank Moore?