Go There and Rest from the Ragged and Rapid Pulse

• My giftmas present to myself. They're gorgeous. They go w/me to My Sillyass Deserted Island.
• My apologies for recent angry binge farting.
• Neoliberals used to call themselves New Democrats.
• Urp: motherfucking Democrats.
• Anyone who bitches at Trump for breaking kayfabe wants kayfabe restored.
• An Atheist's Explainer for Roy Moore: Discovering one does not know the plan is undermining in a supremely powerful way, since it rubbishes the story one tells one’s self about her life. Think of the narrative you use to explain all your decisions to yourself, the cause-and-effect you take for granted as your autobiography. According to God, all that is wrong. It’s a distraction, and it needs to be ignored. This view of religious faith sees normal consciousness as a kind of mental illness, a firm and decisive break with God’s reality. “But to this day the Lord has not given you a mind that understands or eyes that see or ears that hear” (Deuteronomy 29:4). And you never know what kind of story God is using your life to tell, since even His own son had a violent end. This mystery is the madness at the heart of all religion. Roy Moore should know that.
• Substantial planes.

 

• Condor Wing 10. (Please click back once for previous episodes there, I've been derelict here.)
• The Fascist bestiary of the Alt-Right.
• His Pannetone.
• Dan's 2017 reviews.
• What is a rescued poem?
• New Anne Carson interview.

SWELLS

A.R. Ammons

The very longest swell in the ocean, I suspect,

carries the deepest memory, the information of actions

summarized (surface peaks and dibbles and local sharp

slopes of windstorms) with a summary of the summaries

and under other summaries a deeper summary: well, maybe

deeper, longer for length here is the same as deep

time: so that the longest swell swells least; that

is, its effects in immediate events are least perceptible,

a pitch to white water rising say a millimeter more

because of an old invisible presence: and on the ocean

floor an average so vast occurs it moves in a noticeability

of a thousand years, every blip, though, of surface and

intermediacy moderated into account: I like to go

to old places where the effect dwells, summits or seas

so hard to summon into mind, even with the natural

ones hard to climb or weigh: I go there in my mind

(which is, after all, where these things negotiably are)

and tune in to the wave nearly beyond rise or fall in its

staying and hum the constant, universal assimilation: the

information, so packed, nearly silenced with majesty

and communicating hardly any action: go there and

rest from the ragged and rapid pulse, the immediate threat

shot up in a disintegrating spray, the many thoughts and

sights unmanageable, the deaths of so many, hungry or mad.