Friday, June 23, 2017

Someone's Bread Is Ripped Away





  • Dang! Throughout the twentieth century, argues Left-Wing Melancholia, from classical Marxism to psychoanalysis to the advent of critical theory, a culture of defeat and its emotional overlay of melancholy have characterized the leftist understanding of the political in history and in theoretical critique.
  • On the above.
  • Note toward the memes of production. Read this one if you read any of them.
  • The ever more futile politics of Left protest.
  • I never saw this before last night:





  • Hans Baluschek (German, 1870–1935), 'Arbeiterstadt' (Working -Class / Blue-Collar Town), 1920 via the incredibly generous @rabihalameddine.
  • Life and nothing more.
  • Ghost candidates are not enough, or: Motherfucking Democrats.
  • Psst - the Democrats would shove your wheelchair-bound grandmother with multiple sclerosis into a woodchipper for one upper middle class GOP vote in a district Democrats will lose anyway.
  • After using her as a fund-raising prop outside McConnell's office, of course.
  • Why yes, I was accosted by a Hillaryite yesterday.
  • Life in the Seethocene.
  • The lack of demand for equality.
  • A simplified political history of Big Data.
  • A (not-mine) bleggalgaze.
  • Mine: a friend chided me when she sent me a link & I said Thanks! but I already posted it, & she said when, & I said I added it to a day-old post. No wonder I didn't see it, she said. So - if you hadn't noticed, if I haven't posted on a day & the link is hot & fresh I add it - tagged with an UPDATE! - to last post.







SOME PEOPLE

Wislawa Szymborska

Some people flee some other people.
In some country under a sun
and some clouds.
They abandon something like all they’ve got,
sown fields, some chickens, dogs,
mirrors in which fire now preens.
Their shoulders bear pitchers and bundles.
The emptier they get, the heavier they grow.
What happens quietly: someone’s dropping from exhaustion.
What happens loudly: someone’s bread is ripped away,
someone tries to shake a limp child back to life.
Always another wrong road ahead of them,
always another wrong bridge
across another oddly reddish river.
Around them, some gunshots, now nearer, now farther away,
above them a plane sort of circles.
Some invisibility would come in handy,
some grayish stoniness,
or, better yet, some nonexistence
for a shorter or a longer while.
Something else will happen, only where and what.
Someone will come at them, only when and who,
in how many shapes, with what intentions.
If he has a choice,
maybe he won’t be the enemy
and will let them live some sort of life.

_
(Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)



3 comments:

  1. Sudden Infant's Joke Lanz has worked extensively with the noise music collective I belong to here.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Does that UPDATE! policy mean I have to read your blog twice a day now to make sure I don't miss anything? [/snark]

    ReplyDelete
  3. possibly of interest

    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/06/some-people-would-rather-have-1st-class-seats-on-the-titanic-than-change-the-course-of-the-ship.html

    ReplyDelete