Saturday, October 3, 2015

The Air's Glass Jar Seals Each Thing In Its Entity




  • Lindsay Buckingham is 66 today. Forgive me, I love some of Buckingham's Mac songs and most of Buckingham's solo songs.
  • Civilizations.
  • We were in Politics and Prose last night. As I walked in I recognized the voice on the PA system - Robert Reich was promoting his new book, Saving Capitalism. He finished his presentation (he believes in America, believes Americans will rise to the occasion to defeat big money's political dominance because "it's what Americans do, what they've done before") and then solicited questions. The first: "If asked, will you serve in a Sander's cabinet?" Reich danced around the answer of course. We were there for maybe half an hour. Reich bemoaned Citizens United and praised Bernie Sanders for making his one litmus test for SCOTUS nominees that candidates support for overturning Citizens United. He was asked about Tea Partiers (despite their inclination to populist fascism they share some of the anti-big money sentiment of more enlightened progressives) and about engaging a new generation or progressives (something about his sons), but in the entire half an hour there, he never mentioned Inevitability nor was asked about Inevitability.
  • Inevitability defends big banks for 2008 crisis.
  • Dark laughter.
  • Das Buddelschiffgesprach.
  • Three C.K. Williams poems (plus more).
  • Road-tripping with Denise McCluggage.
  • The Confession of St Jim-Ralph.






GRAVELLY RUN

A.R. Ammons

I don’t know somehow it seems sufficient
to see and hear whatever coming and going is,
losing the self to the victory
   of stones and trees,
of bending sandpit lakes, crescent
round groves of dwarf pine:

for it is not so much to know the self   
as to know it as it is known
   by galaxy and cedar cone,
as if birth had never found it
and death could never end it:

the swamp’s slow water comes   
down Gravelly Run fanning the long   
   stone-held algal
hair and narrowing roils between   
the shoulders of the highway bridge:

holly grows on the banks in the woods there,   
and the cedars’ gothic-clustered
   spires could make
green religion in winter bones:

so I look and reflect, but the air’s glass   
jail seals each thing in its entity:

no use to make any philosophies here:
   I see no
god in the holly, hear no song from
the snowbroken weeds: Hegel is not the winter   
yellow in the pines: the sunlight has never   
heard of trees: surrendered self among
   unwelcoming forms: stranger,
hoist your burdens, get on down the road.



4 comments:

  1. Thanks, Jeff. See what beauties await you on your NM trip.

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  2. Did you see potential new Speaker of the People's House mention Inevitability, and how they'd manipulated the investigative process to combat her presumed Inevitability? Of course you saw it. McCarthy-ism, anyone? I'm sure you approve given your attitude about Inevitability's inevitability. No? I know you don't, but what do you do when you find yourself uncomfortably in (political) bed with such corruption?

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  3. That bed is the inevitable distraction (as in, you can count on it like clockwork) from what is really wrong with "Benghazi" — which is we never should have been in a position to have it happen in the first place. That Hills has got winged by it on behalf of the entire government doesn't change that fact and, anyway, nobody actually rejects her because of adventures in the Middle East or northern Africa. The bed is a bed that wingers share with their putative opposition, all rhetoric that would claim otherwise notwithstanding. I really don't see our host in that bed, metaphorically, politically or otherwise.

    What maintains inevitability is arguably a worse form of McCarthyism — utterly excluding a whole range of non-viable from the process. If apparatchiks from either party were willing to do something to change that fact, I might not feel the way I do. But they don't care.

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  4. Of that which one cannot speak, one must remain silent. -- attributed to a 20th century philosopher

    the fact that neither reich nor his audience brought up FLOTUS/Sen./Sec.State Inevitability is not too surprising

    for someone who wants to keep the option open of working w. hill and/or bill, or advising them in any capacity, it is essential that "never is heard a discouraging word" - reich, and the people who buy their books at at p&p, and gentle readers here, know that the clintons play politics for keeps

    it would be surprising if there is ever a sanders cabinet - but lots of surprising things happen - have i mentioned i was surprised that my sanders refrigerator magnet bumper sticker wouldn't stay on the back hatch of my car? - which must be made of non-ferrous metal - so i put it on the side (left side, rear - the opposite side from where the gas tank hatch is) - fine metaphors abound






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