Friday, March 18, 2016

The Options for the End Are Endless




Not only am I disloyal towards my moleskines and boorum & peases by my blind lust for my new Leuchtturm tablet, last Sunday night at 8:12 EDT the clasp of my seven year old Citizen eco-drive green-faced watch snapped, the watch fell onto a sidewalk, has not worked since. I am stupid about watches: I want the one I have to be the one I give to a great-grandchild thirty-five years from now. Once I buy a new watch to replace a hopelessly broken I use the new one until it breaks (they always break) then try to get it fixed (they can't be fixed). I tried to get this one fixed, was told the cost of fixing more than the cost of the watch and the fix probably wouldn't hold anyway, so much was the damage by the jolt to the sprockets and gears. So I abandoned green-faced watch, just like that, except I can't stop thinking about green-faced watch abandoned in a box on my bookshelf, alone, springs taunt, hands tied. I disloyally bought the new one, also a Citizen eco-drive. Me and fucking brand loyalty. I never liked the font of numbers on the old one, I like the font of the new one. I never liked the over-sized diameter of the old one, I especially didn't like the depth of the old one, I like the diameter and depth of the new one. I wish I was wearing green-faced watch right now. I feel like a grifter, the guy who drives his dog to the woods, throws a tennis ball, drives off while the dog thinks it's a game, a traitorous coward. Fine metaphors abound. I'm wearing the new watch: 2051?







  • Thus one of the pillars of My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game.
  • I reserve the right - I always do, but today is more likely - to edit the above into totally disloyal unrecognizability. And the right not to.
  • Also why I post my favorite posts between noon Friday and Sunday midnight.
  • That dog and tennis ball? I saw it happen twenty years ago at Edwards Ferry parking lot on C&O canal, brought the dog home, a neighbor's brother bonded with the dog, took him in. I dream about it constantly, the asshole throwing the ball then running to his car and driving off. 
  • Today's videos (and background) courtesy of Brooklyn Vegan.
  • Happiness.
  • Trump and the toxic appeal to "anti-fascism."
  • Trump is no troll.
  • GOP establishment thinks embracing Cruz will benefit him.
  • Death of a mannequin: Rubio's last day.
  • Here's who's destroying the GOP?
  • Heroes and villains.
  • Current Villager assessment of POTUS 16.
  • More on PJ's DC adventure. I wish I liked the new music more. Last time I said this about new music - forgive me David - Bowie died.
  • Kate Bush, Eno, Nick Cave, et al greeting cards.
  • The Borzutsky below is from his new collection The Performance of Becoming Human. Thanks to Brad for the heads-up on its publication.









DREAM SONG #17

Daniel Borzutzky

They took my body to the forest
The asked me to climb a ladder

I did not want to climb a ladder
But they forced me to climb the ladder

If you don't climb the ladder
we will bury you in the mud

I had to decide       should I di
by hanging       or by burial

I climbed the ladder and they wrapped
a belt around the thick limb of a tree

And when I could no longer breathe
they tossed me into a stream

And I floated to the edge of the village
where someone prayed for my soul

It's like this in a lullaby
for the end of the world:

The options for the end
are endless

But this is not really a lullaby
for the end of the world

It's about the beginning
what happens when we start to rot

in the daylight
The way the light shines on

the ants and worms and parasites
loving our bodies

It's about the swarm of dogs
gnawing our skin and bones

Do you know what it's like
when a ghost licks your intestines

To avoid the hole
the children must sing sweetly, softly

To avoid the hole
they must fill their songs with love




3 comments:

  1. I had a watch. A navigator's watch, I think it was called. It was a gift from an ex-in-law by way of a non-ex-non-in-law. It didn't still have that dially-ring on it and it was none worse looking for it. Better in fact. It had like yours the abbreviated DoW and date on it.

    I had changed the band to a twist-o-flex because I cannot be bothered to attach belts, clips, or ties or the like. It broke here and my GF got me another. The black with gold edge matched the worn black with gold underneath from the edge of the dial. I came to be attached to that watch.

    Every two years down to the week I'd have to replace the battery. Most recently, I went to a small electronics shop like the one I went to in Chicago and, as in Chicago, a guy behind the counter put the battery in and reset the time. All for a couple of money units.

    On one of my many excursions back to the US of A — on the return trip via Newark, to be more... accurate — just before I was gonna step through the security arch, still the previous style, not the "look how unshapely that guy is" thing from today that seems like outer space (that's a Get a Life reference), I realized I was still wearing the watch. As quick as one can do when in a major hurry, I slid the flex from around my wrist and dropped it into the gray plastic container that's too small to be a vomit receptacle, rushed through the arch and gathered my things and, after a near sprint to my gate, sweating and panting with a burn in my lungs, I arrived just in time as the stragglers were boarding. At that... precise moment I realized I'd left my watch where I'd dropped it and that it was gonna end up keeping someone else's time.

    I'll go to Ubu. Thanx for the tips over the years. A concert in the near future is the order. I lost a friend recently. At the wake, another friend told me how another friend, to get him to join him for a concert, had told him that having something to look forward to in the month or months ahead was the way to cope with the ticking of time.

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  2. 18 months ago, received a small stipend from the Place Of Witless Labour™, and purchased a Citizen Eco-Drive Nighthawk. Its black-on-black dial looked stylish and cool, as did the Ion-coated matte-black case and linked band. *Very* cool.

    Silly Rabbit; I am old and cannot easily distinguish where the little hands are on a black-on-black dial. Its a $390 paperweight; stupid Rabbit.

    I've gone back to wearing the Seiko automatic I bought at a PX in Nah Trang. We're both still ticking; that's something, I guess.

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  3. i feel some dissatisfaction with my current watch - it is a well-known brand - a casio - i had one before, but bought another one mostly as a symbol of defiance against the MICFiC

    www.theguardian.com › World › The Guantánamo files

    Casio F-91W, a cheap digital watch sold around the world, was taken as evidence of detainees having bomb-making training


    if a dvd of kate bush's most recent london shows came out, i would buy it - if it isn't released until 2051, though, i will probably not be able to do so

    thanks for drawing my attention to elizabeth drew's piece on POTUS '16 - i have always thought she was the most accurate, insightful, and objective of the villagers that write on the political scene - she expresses it well when she states

    On the other side, though it would take something exogenous and cataclysmic to prevent the formidable front-runner from winning the nomination, her opponent is determined to keep going to the end.

    i am, likewise, determined to keep going on donating to bernie until the end - there is still a chance for something exogenous and cataclysmic to happen (although one might quibble about whether "chickens coming home to roost" with regard to hillary's disobedience of laws about government communication procedures is really exogenous - calling her on it does require action by others, however) - and if not, perhaps we are in the early stages of the birth of the democratic socialist party of america - to paraphrase yogi berra, you never know when something surprising will happen

    the fellow who drove away while his dog was fetching a thrown ball reminds one of the parents who left their children in the woods in the grimm fairy tale

    but maybe there was a good reason for their time together to be over, and perhaps he hoped for - maybe even foresaw? no, probably not - the positive outcome for the dog that ensued, thanks to the kindness of a stranger

    may the creative forces of the universe have mercy on his soul, if any - and also our own souls, to the extent possible

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