Earthgirl, Planet, Air and I spent part of yesterday in Ann Arbor, first at Art Hop, a festival of local artists (where I found the cat above), then at University of Michigan's Museum of Art and then the Museum of Archeology.
My second time in Ann Arbor, it remains the sole location I've visited that thoroughly disorients me north, south, east, west-wise, the primary reason I love Ann Arbor, though I've a few.
Yesterday morning in the breakfast lounge of the Comfort Inn in Chelsea Michigan two 70+ hunters wheeled in on their walkers and proceeded to each phone their respective deer-dresser and shout,
No, says one into his phone, steaks, not burger, no, shouts the other into his phone, tomorrow won’t work, I need you dress it today.
This morning in the breakfast lounge of the Comfort Inn in Chelsea Michigan two traveling kids ice-soccer teams throw waffles at each other while the coaches and parents heartlessly mumble, Nolan, stop.
I told the hunters' story to Planet who tells me some of her art
students use their love of hunting in their art work, how she need smile
despite her own aversion to hunting, noting almost all hunters here eat
the meat, many of them out of economic need, which doesn't diminish the joy (they have just sat down, the same two), as in highlight of their year, killing deer.
(They are bitching this morning about roundabouts, the socialist government of Michigan imposing roundabouts on state highways.)
I could live in Ann Arbor with that disorientation.
The TV in the breakfast lounge of the Comfort Inn in Chelsea Michigan, tuned to CNN, shows video of protesters in a Kentucky restaurant yelling at Mitch McConnell and other diners in the restaurant then confronting the protesters in McConnell's defense, and then CNN pivots to video of Trump last night at a rally spouting GOP's 2018 Rallying Cry, Democrats Create Mobs, Republicans Create Jobs, and the ice-soccer children stop throwing waffles at each other and their coaches ignoring them and all start chanting, USA! USA! USA!
I am the alien in the breakfast lounge of the Comfort Inn in Chelsea Michigan.
I wish I'd taken a photo of the cards Planet bought from the woman who sold me the cat sticker, two of them I could flash at these ice-soccer fools and hunter fucks, so it's best I didn't take a photo of the cards Planet bought from the woman who sold me the cat sticker, though I didn't have the hunters in mind when I didn't take the photos.
I'm in a hotel in Chelsea Michigan, home of Jiffy Mixes, the flour company, go look on the shelves of your local grocery, remember seeing it in your grandma's kitchen hoosier?
Chelsea, according to my daughter Planet, who is why I am in Chelsea Michigan, says people who work but can't afford to live in Ann Arbor live in Chelsea, those who work in Chelsea, like Planet, can't afford to live in Chelsea and live, like Planet, next county west.
As I type this I could be seeing Guided by Voices at Black Cat in DC but chose to be in Chelsea Michigan instead.
As I type this I could be seeing Lindsey Buckingham at Warner Theater in DC but would have chose to see Guided by Voices who I chose not to see so I can be in Chelsea Michigan.
This is my third trip to Michigan, my first since Fall 2015 when Planet worked a year at Adrian College as an Art Dept assistant.
My first impression of Michigan from the first trip is still true: it's fucking flat.
Between my second trip to Michigan and this trip to Michigan Planet lived in Baltimore for two years.
I have no other impression of Michigan since the first trip than flat, though I'm told I'll see pretty this weekend.
This trip is the first trip of dozens and dozens of trips to Michigan for the foreseeable rest of my life.
Fucked Up! as in the band! I don't have the new one yet, the old four appeared on shuffle in car yesterday, hopefully today and tomorrow and Monday too.
We dined Tuesday night with SeatSix, Oakton, talk turned to phones, cameras on phones - I like my iphone's camera enough mumble, even with battery pack back-up the phone holds a charge no more than a few hours of not using it.
If you live near Gaithersburg, which is next to everything yet is 50 miles from anywhere in Moco (you get from Gaithersburg to Olney, train station to 97/108, five miles by crow, in half an hour), Thai House on Snouffer School, yo.
Olney is half hour from Olney.
If I didn't use my iphone's camera the iphone's battery would last three times as long, the battery pack charger too, which still isn't long.
I have a colleague at work, a plus-advanced amateur photographer, she tells me her newest superduperest android, while not a hobbiest's camera, is effing excellent.
SeatSix concurred on android's camera's effing excellence while pointing out my bullshit opting out of google when it doesn't inconvenience me too much makes buying an android problematic.
The best photos I took, and by best I mean in this sentence the best color saturated crispily pixelated sweet mysterious quality regardless the composition of photos by camera I've owned, was Maine two summers ago when I had the lowest end Nikon point-and-shoot. Look.
I am not buying another phone until this one dies. Revolution, fellow fucks.
Like all cameras I've owned I loaned last camera to someone who lives/lived in my house and I never see/saw it again, every few months I find an abandoned camera battery charger in a box or on a shelf.
Earthgirl and I fly to Michigan early Friday morning to visit Planet, I will not have a new camera with me, I am bringing my battery pack and my power bank, which saved me in New York City a month ago and will save me in New York City six weeks from now.
I did buy a new camera, a Canon PowerShot G7, I will be in Michigan so waiting for next week's delivery won't be so bad.
Bad news: more photos here, the other place especially.
Good news: less photos on twitter, the twenty-two in three minutes of a meadow in Virginia.
Bad news: we're hiking in Michigan this weekend, so probably both until the new camera arrives.
That I won't read the new camera's manual repeats one of my Stations of the Tablets.
The person who lives in my house who isn't me can use the new camera on hikes with me, and all I want to do is hike with her, but she can't take it painting by herself.
You have to take Snouffer School from Gaithersburg to Olney, but depending where you pick it up it might call itself Brink, Wightman, or Muncaster Mill.
Our Overlords despise and fear your ungrateful ass, will Khashoggi your ass, though I suspect this was just intramural elite ratfucking.
For argument's sake say the Saudis meant to kidnap Khashoggi and properly torture his infidel ass then kill him, the if that's the case OK our mutual future.
I think this a pilot of a new Overlord series, Who Disappears Tonight!
I joke, I give our bludgeoning Overlords too much credit for innovation,
while this case is a work that (perhaps) went sideways the lesson the Overlords will learn is there's no public backlash for brazenly disappearing people (as opposed to openly disappearing people but denying it), it will be an ad campaign by the 2022 midterms if not sooner, Who Disappears Tonight! theme song, think Ultimate Tax Relief's jingle.
Joe segued into Voice of Beehives from this Kate Bush song, go listen, so good....
HISTORY WILL DECIDE
Anne Waldman
All writing around the sides the persons a galaxy all writing resounds a
hot history. All writing is in fact cut-ups history will decide games
heated and heated economic behavior. To rise up scene all sounds of
Tahrir and inside supply side threatened. A long delineation. Longer
than I would be counting. This, a whisper, this the end of whisper time.
Rise up and wiser this the streets of the world. Commission overheard
in spin a soldiering one. What streets of the world to spin rubric’s yes
yes commerce, no, a no, no. Tanks of the blown-off world. He is my
beautiful offshore a caw caw of major spills and elsewhere no, no. Cut
the dialect the binary the dear word so precious and forbidden. They use
the machines to take the streets of the world. Horizon my headwater cut
cut the cable my beignets my else an appetite “poor politics, poor poor
pols.” Waters of the world in media cut cut the lines manipulate desire
and show the word show the Man show the tablets a Paleolithic grab all
the twilight fields of discontent that shadow governments rise up people
of the world of many wounded galaxies of discontent. And hear you,
people of the word. What room? The gray we reach to. Assume that the
worst has happened deporting Rom explicit in the gypsy purge meeting
with Popes in the streets of the world. Subject to strategy poor poor
pol a scrutiny. Its link its drill its Bandars. Condemn Salazar and the
interior ministry of fisheries and assume the worst in writing cuts his
exterior of life the glib industry, the selves behind the tyrants. My
loaves and fishes in deep deep water. Is at some point classical prose,
my no, Bulgaria my no Romania my Haiti my Egypt, and gypsy environment
come to this coastline America ruptured pipeline to awe caw Gulf Stream
is seated cut cut to other fields ripple effect and your domino will
fall. And the bomb fall down. Cutting and rearranging factor your
opponent your domino history will gain introducing a new parity binary
Assange dimension your strategy. Will history decide “caw caw caw.” How
many Rom yes yes discoveries sound to kinesthetic a gulf of everyone.
She wanted to soldier a gulf of anyone. She wanted to soldier out of
here her long delineation longer than would be counting. Cut through
this leak of revolution the future will come out. We can deport Rimbaud
now produce accident to his color “Voyelles.” Exit the colors you drain
me of. And new dimension to films cut cut Sarkozy cut Hollande the
senses the place of sands, gambling Rom scene all sounds all colors
tasting sounds, France, France smell all streets of the world. Wake up,
all colors of all the burqas tasting sounds of the shadow world. Cut cut
when you can have the best all: Anthropocene. Welcome to the
Anthropocene. Rom the gypsy in everyone. In a collage of words read
heard decipher, Rom arise outbreak of military strategy, sound of voice a
pitching wail will sear the wall will wall the sound will break the
word will suck the variation clear and act accordingly history will
decide the streets of the world. Caw caw introduced the cut-up scissored
remembered gulf renders the aroma in memory of my despotic elders.
Aroma of Rom. Let the dolphins in and act accordingly. If you posed
entirely of prearranged cut cut determined by random leaders no Merkel
cut cut G-20. A page of written words no advantage to leak from circular
Salazar. Interior from knowing into writer predict the move the mood,
no go back will step down will will step down. Circumpolar water and
denizens within arise. Streets of the world arise. The cut variation
images shift Rom sense advantage in processing to sound sight cut cut
sound to arise. Visit of memories New Orleans Florida have been made by
accidents is where Rimbaud was going with order could live could
systematic derangement of the gambling scene, cut cut in with a tea
party lullaby then hallucination: seeing and places that arise the
streets of the word. A long line’s delineation to random future streets
of the world. And they our nuclear future to deny deny. Our man in
rendition and cut cut the torture oh streets of the world arise to cut
back forms else mammals suffer a dead Mubarak. Rearrange blunt the word
and image to other fields Rom, no France France rise to streets the USA
the USA of the soldiering world. We’ll see how calm politics will
become. G-20 outbreak of temper Germany. Of temper BP. Condemn the
masters UK France corpse or carp on it but no longer predict the move,
cut cut other fields than cuts your writing Egypt your Yemen your Syria
your Libya your Mali.
I've not tried mead though I see it in MOMs, shelves of it, never thought more about mead until I needed to watch a Bud Light commercial before I could post the youtube below last night.
A kind and benevolent king walks into his castle mess and orders free Bud Light for all his guests, but one Resistance member asks for mead, autumnal mead, mead the new Volvo, the mead-drinker placed in the stocks, Dilly Dilly.
Earthgirl away painting, I did a long loop by myself at Little Bennett, joined for two miles by
Chance. He adopted me in the high meadow of This or That Trail, walked with me two miles to where his owner picked him up, Chance's orange collar sharpied with phone number.
Chance seemed a good guy, well-fed and happy, the owner, what do I know, I could put words in his brain and call it a short story, but all unhappy families....
While I'm delighted I'm not nagged by moral imperative to post this song as once I'd be, I'm also not embarrassed to post the obvious and never will be:
I only write about what I always write about and anything spun of worth spins from there.
Copying and pasting from Neverote blows.
Reading Murnane again, Barley Patch, the only novelist I seem currently capable of reading, when I try someone else I find myself three forgotten pages later thinking of Murnane.
Murnane says over and over in every one of his fictions he learned early as a child he hasn't the imagination as imagination is imagined in authors who claim to know what their characters think.
I know my own tenets make this inevitable, and I don't know, will never know, if Murnane read Ashbery and visa versa, but they are synoptic gospels re: my coding.
I forget how I got to The Specials Do the Dog between the previous sentence and this sentence but it pleases me I'm learning to not worry why.
At first it came easily, with the knowledge of the shadow line
Picking its way through various landscapes before coming
To stand far from you, to bless you incidentally
In sorting out what was best for it, and most suitable, Like snow having second thoughts and coming back
To be wary about this, to embellish that, as though life were a party
At which work got done. So we wiggled in our separate positions
And stayed in them for a time. After something has passed You begin to see yourself as you would look to yourself on a stage,
Appearing to someone. But to whom? Ah, that’s just it,
To have the manners, and the look that comes from having a secret
Isn’t enough. But that “not enough” isn’t to be worn like a livery, To be briefly noticed, yet among whom should it be seen? I haven’t
Thought about these things in years; that’s my luck.
In time even the rocks will grow. And if you have curled and dandled
Your innocence once too often, what attitude isn’t then really yours?
