I Thought of Developing Interests Someone Might Take an Interest In. No Soap

Today in me and fine metaphors abounding: above, fresh gouache on brick from last night, below same brick this morning dried. Regardless of worth or merit, nothing I make retains its peak color dried

Only using brushes now for undercoating, rest of gouache and watercolor ink washes delivered by pipette onto wet canvases (undercoating on brick displayed here pipette-delivered). For example. For example. You didn't look. Neither example as bright and vibrant as when wet. Can't stop making them despite foreknowledge they will dry to fail, only door to peace of mind at end of day I have to myself now

"The American government gives the most help to those who need it least. This is the true nature of our welfare state."
How shtlrds loot public education
On the Chicago mayor's race related to above link
Balko's links on mthrfckng igspay
All pgs are bstrds. Every single one of them.
Trump WANTS a perp walk, dude
This mthrfckng crckr/chrstr looks exactly as you'd imagine
I like far more about Hilltop (I work at Hilltop) than I dislike, but this mthrfckng ghoul and war criminal is sainted here and that's a sin and disgrace
Understanding What's Happening in France							⬇️
"What would you say is the biggest problem facing France at the moment? You might think of inflation, of the sharp rise in the cost of food, and the vertiginous increase in fuel prices that is forcing some restaurants and shops to close, and makes it increasingly hard for people to stay warm. You might think of unemployment, poverty, factories closing, jobs sent abroad, corruption in political life at all levels, the effects of uncontrolled immigration, the catastrophic decline of the education system and the collapsing health service. Oh, and you might include global warming, the continued effects of Covid and the consequences of the war in Ukraine. So, of all of those, which subject or subjects is the main priority of France’s President, Emmanuel Macron? What keeps him awake at nights, and what subject is he prepared to stake his reputation and even political survival on? Well, if you’ve been paying attention you will know that the correct answer is “none of the above.” Macron’s obsession, since well before his second coronation in 2022, has been with making poorer French people wait several years longer before they can collect a pension."
Marxism for the Age of Climate Emergency
"In this environment, the only available policy option was for the Fed to ride to the rescue. This was the only response the American political system was capable of generating. At this point, the Fed is not merely the most dynamic part of the American economic policymaking, it is the only part that exhibits any dynamism at all. Whether the Fed is to blame is beside the point. The Fed is the only part of the system that can quickly change its behavior. Because the Fed is the only part of the state that can act, it is always as if the Fed is to blame. Insofar as ought implies can, only the Fed can do anything, so only the Fed ought to do anything."
Worshipping at the altar of The Fed
Dating apps			Cards from Hell			HIGH
⬇️	TODAY'S MONOLOGUE!						⬇️
I was thinking about rereading Karamazov until this reminded me of the scene where asshole kids feed a dog meat with a pin embedded, no, no no no no no: every fucking thing reminds me what ASSHOLES humans are. Every fucking thing.
Review of the new collected Portis (I seem to have been born without the gene, or didn't read when the gene was active, but....)
Getting googlebot and applebot and multiple Chinesebot crawled, lordy, I'm NOBODY, but gonna drop the vowels and/or pig latin crtn mthfckng wrds gng frwrd
I'd bet money it's a coincidence, but this started after the tweet about ghoul and war criminal Mdln Lbrght
LARK'S TONGUE IN ASPIC IS 50 TODAY!
I strongly suggest you should be listening to Jenny Hval

THE HISTORY OF MY LIFE

John Ashbery

Once upon a time there were two brothers.
Then there was only one: myself.
 
I grew up very fast, before learning to drive,
even. There was I: a stinking adult.
 
I thought of developing interests
someone might take an interest in. No soap.
 
I became very weepy for what had seemed
like the pleasant early years. As I aged
 
increasingly, I also grew more charitable
with regard to my thoughts and ideas,
 
thinking them at least as good as the next man’s.
Then a great devouring cloud
 
came and loitered on the horizon, drinking
it up, for what seemed like months or years.

Thirty

Thirty 

Two weeks from today we'll be with her and my beloved son-in-law in Michigan

Thirty

THE WRITER

Richard Wilbur

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

All the Wolves in the Wolf Factory Paused at Noon for a Moment of Silence

First bluebells of 2023. I've links for you and tomorrow's post is one of two a year not tagged my complicity so if I don't post the links today they'll (some of them) be stale by the time I would (if all goes as planned post after tomorrow's will be photos from a disc golf course in the Laurel Highlands and/or on the Laurel Highlands Trail). Bluebells will be bursting this coming weekend, park on Turkey Foot where it meets Query Mill, take Muddy Branch Trail south 1.6 miles and just after crossing second small creek ford take side trail to right, Bluebell Heaven, here's L hiking that trail Saturday past along the creek that's spring is in my dad's backyard

The Incredible Disappearing Doomsday
Aside from Bush & Cheney who is at fault for the Iraq War?
The Function of Marianne Williamson’s Candidacy
Hierarchy of excuses				SHITLORDS!
Geopolitical Rumblings Leave U.S. Behind
THE GOP’S WHITE SUPREMACIST FANTASY WORLD
Maggie's weekly links					FRESH HELL
Yes, I'm back on an Ashbery bender
Avedon Carol's occassional links!
Serif or sans serif				{ feuilleton }'s weekly
LIVE YO LA TENGO (scroll to bottom)
Listen to this			Anne Boyer on WCW
Easily one of the ten most posted songs here							⬇️

LAUGHING GRAVY

John Ashbery

The crisis has just passed.
Uh-oh, here it comes again,
looking for someone to blame itself on, you, I....

All these people coming in...
The last time we necked
I noticed this lobe on your ear.
Please, tell me we may begin.

All the wolves in the wolf factory paused
at noon for a moment of silence

His Subject Had Decided to Remain a Prayer

Not applying not because I hate juried contests though I do and not because zero sum though I'm programmed for zero sum and have been since birth and yes because I hate competing though and because I'm the most brazenly and passive aggressively competitive fuck I know but especially because nothing gives me more joy and concentration and happiness besides hiking with L now and I don't want to fuck it up by inevitably losing and really don't want to fuck it up by impossibly winning but most importantly I just want to hike with L today and tomorrow not debating whether to enter the contest or not

THE PAINTER

John Ashbery

Sitting between the sea and the buildings

He enjoyed painting the sea’s portrait.

But just as children imagine a prayer

Is merely silence, he expected his subject

To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush,

Plaster its own portrait on the canvas.

So there was never any paint on his canvas

Until the people who lived in the buildings

Put him to work: “Try using the brush

As a means to an end. Select, for a portrait,

Something less angry and large, and more subject

To a painter’s moods, or, perhaps, to a prayer.”

How could he explain to them his prayer

That nature, not art, might usurp the canvas?

He chose his wife for a new subject,

Making her vast, like ruined buildings,

As if, forgetting itself, the portrait

Had expressed itself without a brush.

Slightly encouraged, he dipped his brush

In the sea, murmuring a heartfelt prayer:

“My soul, when I paint this next portrait

Let it be you who wrecks the canvas.”

The news spread like wildfire through the buildings:

He had gone back to the sea for his subject.

Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!

Too exhausted even to lift his brush,

He provoked some artists leaning from the buildings

To malicious mirth: “We haven’t a prayer

Now, of putting ourselves on canvas,

Or getting the sea to sit for a portrait!”

Others declared it a self-portrait.

Finally all indications of a subject

Began to fade, leaving the canvas

Perfectly white. He put down the brush.

At once a howl, that was also a prayer,

Arose from the overcrowded buildings.

They tossed him, the portrait, from the tallest of the buildings;

And the sea devoured the canvas and the brush

As though his subject had decided to remain a prayer.

The Oval Portrait of a Dog Was Me at an Early Age

Will I submit work to the contest? If yes I need do it by this coming Sunday, here are my last seven days: Thursday March 9 - definitely no / Friday March 10 - no, probably / Saturday March 11- no, no, no / Sunday March 12 - yes, maybe / Monday March 13 - definitely yes / Tuesday March 14 - not on my fucking life / Wednesday March 15 - why don't I burn all of these motherfucking doodles / today - I did promise L I would but I've broken promises before, yes? My daughter turns thirty Wednesday next week, this is side two of the card I made her.




9.5 x 10, ballpoint ink, gouache, sharpies. Other side you won't be shown, much less submitted to the contest, the side with words in color to my daughter. It's been a few years since I typed this here, in my head each post IS a poem

A major issue: while I like my recent paintings (while acknowledging their amateurishness) I don't like what I'm writing when I force myself to write and idiot that I am I think I can't use poems I wrote that I like but were written before I knew of this contest, I'm convinced my strict adherence to rules I make to constrain my creativity is the portal to my dark, the painting below done recently, the words from a 2013 notebook, repurposed from a stanza of haiku, I know the judges at the contest don't care when I wrote it but I do and won't submit it, at least at this second in timeline

As often here, see the Ashbery poem at bottom of post for better explanation than I can provide for what I mean. Play the Goat Girl song LOUD! please
By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners
FBI Bookstore Spying in Chicago Eyes Abortion Rights, Cop City, Anti-Development Activists
Whenever I'm in Red Emma's I assume there's a narc watching							⬆️
February marks 23rd straight month of real wages decline for US workers
The Next Bomb to Go Off in the Banking Crisis Will Be Derivatives
It is absolutely true that I will watch just as much pickleball, whatever the fuck that is, as I currently do MLS, MLB, and National Ice Soccer League
Melting down left, right, and center about how to define the word “woke”
Commemorating Philip Roth means confronting his limitations head on
Hey, I scanned Elizabeth Hardwick's Melville bio for a friend, if you'd like the pdfs send me an email, blckdgrd at proton dot me
TWO CHAPTERS FROM SECTION THREE of my SWEEPING NOVEL-IN-PROGRESS KOOTCHIE TOWERS (featuring a cameo appearance by Harold Brodkey)
I know twitter's new algorithms have dramatically reduced the number of pings this shitty blog gets, though I'd like to credit my posting of my paintings too for fewer of you visiting, dammit
Phil Lesh born 83 years ago yesterday
Emergency Group - *Inspection of Cruelty*
"Exhibiting Poetry Today”. Collaboration and Politics in Thomas Hirschhorn and Manuel Joseph

THIS ROOM

John Ashbery

The room I entered was a dream of this room.
Surely all these feet on the sofa were mine.
The oval portrait
of a dog was me at an early age.
Something shimmers, something is hushed up.

We had macaroni for lunch every day
except Sunday, when a small quail was induced
to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things?
You are not even here.