come down jiffy by shake

• If two years in a row on April 18th make an Egoslavian tradition, new Egoslavian tradition
• I had written something gratuitously snippy about the NYT's article on Neera Tanden
• I had written something gratuitously snippy about the people giving money to the Catholic Church to fix Notre Dame who flip off beggars at traffic lights on 355
• This is the snippy sentence I write right now about the shitty Mueller kabuki
• 31 miles from my house to Frederick, 52 miles from Frederick to Pennsylvania border, 180 mile from Maryland-Pennsylvania border to Pennsylvania-Ohio border, 185 miles from Pennsylvania-Ohio border to Ohio-Michigan border, 55 miles from Ohio-Michigan border to Chelsea Michigan, so 503 miles from my stoop where Napoleon knew we were abandoning him to the Jiffy Factory on Michigan 52 in downtown Chelsea. 

• I was not sitting the in the breakfast lounge of the Comfort Inn in Chelsea Michigan when I wrote last year's April 18 post
• I am sitting alone in the corner of a breakfast lounge with fourteen tables, mine the remotest, in walk a family with three screaming kids, they choose the table closest to me, fine metaphors abound
• Today's plan: Hudson Mills MetroPark with a world class disc golf course and multiple bridges gardens places for Earthgirl to paint and draw, today's weather forecast: Hard Rain All Day
• Tomorrow's plan: drive to Chicago with Earthgirl and Planet and Air and walk to cool places, tomorrow's weather forecast: Hard Rain All Day.
• Saturday's plan: walk to all the cool places in Chicago we couldn't get to Friday, Saturday's weather forecast: Hard Rain All Day.
• Sunday's plan: drive home so we can go to work Monday, Sunday's weather forecast: Sunny, pleasant, mid-60s, fine metaphors abound.
• Here is this April 18th's photo of Olive, light, mirror, taken Tuesday night before I knew there was a tradition April 18th Egoslavian blogpost:

• We crossed the Ohio - Michigan border and shazam, dozens upon dozens of dead woodchucks, raccoons, possum, fox, the animals of Michigan are not stupider or more suicidal, Michigan doesn't remove the car-slaughtered corpses from their roads
• Michigan won't provide clean water to the biped animals of Flint
• The family leaves, I am alone in the breakfast lounge for two minutes, an arguing couple come take the table next to me
• Blegsylvanian rhythms - look at the blogrolls, I know I focus everything through the lens that is me, but Blegsylvanian rhythms are real
• I am telling you three times we train and retrain ourselves
• and can't quit

SONGS OF WEIGHTS AND MEASUREMENTS

Martha Silano

For there is a dram.

For there is a farthing.

A bushel for your thoughts.

A hand for your withered heights.
               

For I have jouled along attempting

to quire and wisp.
           

For I have sized up a mountain’s meters,

come down jiffy by shake to the tune

of leagues and stones.
           

For once I was your peckish darling.
                 

For once there was the measure

of what an ox could plow

in a single morning.
                

For once the fother, the reed, the palm.
          

For one megalithic year I fixed my gaze

on the smiling meniscus, against the gray wall

of graduated cylinder.
                

For once I measured ten out of ten

on the scale of pain.
         

For I knew that soon I’d kiss good-bye

the bovate, the hide and hundredweight.
                   

For in each pinch of salt, a whisper of doubt,

for in each medieval moment, emotion,
                 

like an unruly cough syrup bottle,

uncapped. For though I dutifully swallowed

my banana doses, ascended, from welcome

to lanthorn, three barleycorns at a time,
                       

I could not tackle the trudging, trenchant cart.
                        

For now I am forty rods from your chain and bolt.

For now I am my six-sacked self.

What Will Survive Us Has Already Begun

Today - soon - I walk from my house on Saul to Franklin to Beach to across Rockville Pike to Grosvenor to Old Georgetown to (Flipping Pizza for as decent a slice as Moco can) to Democracy (for cheap irony) to Fernwood to Westlake Terrace behind Montgomery Mall to Motor City Drive to pick up the rental car Earthgirl and me drive to Michigan tomorrow to visit Planet and Air through Sunday, there may be posts from the breakfast lounge of the Comfort Inn per Egoslavian tradition on trips to visit Planet. Today is also Ian Mackaye's 57th birthday.

• Update: 3.25 miles, 50 minutes by foot from house to Montgomery Mall
• Plans are we're gonna Chicago Friday and Saturday weather-permitting, so photos too.
• Update! one immediate difference between Manhattan and Chicago - we couldn't get a hotel room Downtown, and I mean downtown Downtown, for a hundred bucks a night in Manhattan but we did for Friday in Chicago
• Not an accident. 
• Rebump: all in the family debt, or, it's not an accident.
• Confronting neerapodestas.
• Crackers be crackers, but Democrats are the enemy.
• VAR DIV MISC.
• Sparks, why the hell isn't more Sparks played here? 
• Poetry, politics, internet. 
• Dynamic positioning. 
• The Dam. 
• The Appalachian Trail and Benton Mackaye. (h/t Hamster)
• O, click the Fugazi tag below.

ADVICE FROM ROCK CREEK PARK

Stephanie Burt

What will survive us

has already begun

Oak galls

Two termites’ curious

self-perpetuating bodies

Letting the light through the gaps

They lay out their allegiances

under the roots

of an overturned tree

Almost always better

to build than to wreck

You can build in a wreck

Under the roots

of an overturned tree

Consider the martin that hefts

herself over traffic cones

Consider her shadow

misaligned

over parking-lot cement

Saran Wrap scrap in her beak

Nothing lasts

forever not even

the future we want

The President has never

owned the rain

Charges Across the Desert Cognizant of the Futility

I received decent news on my eyes and a decent performance evaluation at work on Wednesday and since have been in my foulest mood in months, the foulest since the last time I got double decent news on a day. Was wonderful yesterday, spleening on Democrats, but, foul mood vented if not satisfied, I wave the Egoslavian Flag of Futility

• I *do* hate motherfucking Democrats, but I need a better hobby.
• Democracy dies in empire.
• Eat the young, student loan edition.
• A thousand milliseconds of peace.
• Avedon's occasional links.
• A quick quiz to make a point.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• Express lanes for the rich.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• The narcissism of contemporary poetry.
• I am also going on vacation this coming week, while I love *being* on vacation I hate *going* on vacation, my cats.
• The business of poetry devalues poetry.
• Lowell George was born 74 years ago yesterday:

SHAMANISM 101

Dean Young

Like everyone, I wanted my animal

to be the hawk.

 

I thought I wanted the strength

to eat the eyes first then tear

into the fuse box of the chest

and soar away.

 

I needed help because I still

cowered under the shadow of my father,

a man who inspected picture tubes

five out of seven nights,

 

who woke to breakfast on burnt roast

except the two weeks he’d sleep

on a Jersey beach and throw me

into the gasoline-sheened waves.

I loved him dying indebted

not knowing to what,

 

thinking his pension would be enough,

released not knowing from what,

gumming at something I was afraid

to get close enough to hear, afraid

of what I was co-signing. So maybe

the elephant. The elephant knows

when one of its own is suffering

up to six miles away. Charges across

the desert cognizant of the futility.

How can I be forgiven when I don’t know

what I need forgiving for? Sometimes

 

the urges are too extreme: to slap

on the brakes and scream, to bite the haunch

of some passing perfume, so maybe my animal

is the tiger. Or shark.

 

Or centipede.

 

But I know I’m smaller than that,

filling notebooks with clumsy versions

of one plaint, one pheromonal call,

 

clamoring over a crumb that I think

is the world, baffled by the splotch

of one of my own crushed kind,

almost sweet, a sort of tar,

following a trail of one or two molecules,

 

leaving a trail

of one or two molecules.

From Any Point on the Periphery, Advancing Always Toward the Body

Photo from a stool 7:15 yesterday morning, the periphery test, chin on pad, forehead on bar, one eye covered with a pirate's patch, green box dead center, jeopardy clicker, bright lights not seen, worse score each time

• Aargh, I said when I saw they were going to make me do this and make me wear a pirate patch but before the kid gave me the pirate patch, don't think the kid got it
• Good news: meds are working, eye pressure under control, no medical reason to at least laser surgery now, your constant loss of sight has slowed significantly says eyedoc
• Bad news: meds are working, eye pressure under control, but the side-effects of meds working too, weakening the muscles  holding the     eyeball   in place
• Do you know Odo from Deep Space Nine, eyedoc asked, yes I said
• eyedoc said, one, two more years of these meds and you're eyes will sink into your head like Odo's and you're getting the surgery in three years one way or the other at the latest and *might* avoid a knife (and certainly as deep a knife if knife necessary) if you laser now so anyway think about it
• Will it keep my eyes from getting more and more tired faster and faster when I try to read? I asked
• No, he said
• Do I get to have shapeshifter sex with Kira Nerys, I asked
• No, he said

SIX FURTHER STUDIES

Keith Waldrop

I

     

In heaven there is no more sea, and houses no longer need a widow’s

walk. And no more widows, there being neither marriage nor giving

in marriage. How the air hangs lower and lower on this—I hope

—hottest day of summer. A faintly rotten scent the ground gives off

brings to mind lilacs that have budded and blossomed. There are no

more blossoms, perfume and purple gone for a year, as if forever. In

heaven there are no tears, salt water wiped away entirely. One moment

I breathe contentment. And then unreasoning sorrow pulses through

me, an imperfect tension, as if unending. I have time on my hands. In

heaven there is no more dusk, dark, dawn, meridian. And what I know

now and for certain: neither the day nor the hour.

     

    

II

    

It seems clear enough that there is in the brain a particular pain-center,

where sensations of every variety check in, to emerge as anguish and

hurt. Thus there is not, as we might suppose, a multiplicity of pains,

like an arsenal deployed against us, but one pain which puts on, as in a

ritual theater, different masks.

         It need not, even, be a great number of masks, some few faces

peopling an endless repertory. From one fairy tale to another, is not

the witch the same witch, whether poisoning an apple or fattening the

children?

     

     

III

   

The doctrine changes, blows here and there, hot, cold. One more

notion sweeps across the state in gusts, fiercely at first, settling then

into a mild rotation. It puts things in motion. It dies down, while

pressure somewhere else is building.

         Called to, across a chasm of thin air, I shape the air to answer. My

moments force themselves apart.

         Breathe out. Breathe in. But as long as you are alive, there is a dead

space in your lungs, never emptied, never needing to be filled. The spirit

there, stale and sustaining, holds open every possibility, urging none. Ghost

money: money to burn.

     

   

IV

   

On the earliest known sundial, the finger of shadow moves through

symbols of the cosmos, but there are no lines drawn to mark off the hours.

It does not, in the modern sense, “keep” time, but celebrates its flight, its

recurrence, its brightness.

   

    

V

    

Hermaphrodite, sleeping. Predominance, in the visible, of the right hand

—but the eyes now closed. What could there be to dream about, for one

already complete? A perfect asymmetrical stability. No need to see or even

to look.

         To know, without having to ask. From any point on the periphery,

advancing always towards the body. Both sexes. And both asleep.

     

   

VI

    

A scream from outside broke our argument and I ran to the door, rushed

out onto the sidewalk almost, I thought, before the scream had ended. The

night sky, above the street lamp, had a sheen of some dark metal.

         Sirens—which seemed this evening more frequent than usual, and

more strident—state the theme, you have said, of our instant: the howl

of a machine hurrying to disaster. And all day, in the violence of delivery,

ordinary trucks rattle our sashes.

         The street lay empty, mercury lit, silence giving us no indication of

which way to turn.

Eyes the Color of Ripe Apricots

• I met Earthgirl in a bookstore. 
• I got promoted to manage a bigger branch of a local chain bookstore, when I started Earthgirl was Third Key there. 
• When she gave notice I asked her out and subsequently met her for dates at the part-time job she took when she started grad school, Behnke's Nursery, going out of business after ninety years. 
• We stopped Sunday at the Beltsville location (she worked the Davidsonville) on way to an art thing at Montpelier
• bought a paw paw and (blooming below) an apricot tree

• Mike Gravel? Sure, I like the First Episode!
• Life in the Only Reaction I Get These Days Is By Pissing Off My Closer and Closer Allies Ocene 
• Shit ain't gonna get fixed
• On Pete Buttigieg.
• Two days late, my fault, Maggie's weekly links
• Two days late, my fault, { feuilleton }'s weekly links
• Littybits
• Excerpt from Anne Boyer's upcoming book on her cancer
• Shostakovich, her grandfather, and the Chimes of Novorosssiysk
• Good thing: When I think paw paw I hear

A POEM FOR DADA DAY AT THE PLACE APRIL 1 1958

Jack Spicer

I

The bartender

Has eyes the color of ripe apricots

Easy to please as a cash register he

Enjoys art and good jokes.

Squish

Goes the painting

Squirt

Goes the poem

He

We

Laugh.

  

II

It is not easy to remember that other people died

          besides Dylan Thomas and Charlie Parker

Died looking for beauty in the world of the

          bartender

This person, that person, this person, that person

          died looking for beauty

Even the bartender died

  

III

Dante blew his nose

And his nose came off in his hand

Rimbaud broke his throat

Trying to cough

Dada is not funny

It is a serious assault

On art

Because art

Can be enjoyed by the bartender.

  

IV

The bartender is not the United States

Or the intellectual

Or the bartender

He is every bastard that does not cry

When he reads this poem.

What Is the Person Made of the Second Substance?

• I don't know if yesterday's post was the first with zero content by me, I'm certain it's why I had no choice but post today, fuck me
• If you haven't read the Anne Boyer poem-essay from yesterday I urge it upon you again, best Duh of Our Clusterfuck and the square you sit on I've read
• (and if you didn't read the comment I posted, ask me nice and if I like you I can get you a copy of the book the essay is from)
• Found the fountain pen SeatSix gave me two giftmases ago, I'd put it away when I enacted new tablet and pen rules (it's what I do)
• pen juuls single cartridges for each color ink, suck up honey from inkwells, I'm a klutz self-tattooed
• IHTWTGADTLWLIPTD

• So blue lighthouse, filled more than halfway with nothing but black ink, new rules apply
• speaking of tablets, above photo bigger at other place
• Kill the rich.
• The capitalist takeover of higher education.
• One of many I don't write here my employer (and alma mater), Eorgetown Guniversity, I don't think I violate my rules when I vouch the above link mostly true.
• Meritocracy isn't.
• Motherfucking white men.
• State propaganda will make more noise over Sanders' taxes than Trump's (or Biden's)
• The social novel at the end of society.
• A cat is a black box.
• New Richard Youngs!

AT LEAST TWO TYPES OF PEOPLE

Anne Boyer

There are  at  least two  types of people,  the  first for  whom the  ordinary
worldliness is easy.  The  regular  social routines  and  material  cares  are
nothing too external to them and easily absorbed. They are not alien from
the  creation  and  maintenance of the world, and the world does not treat
them  as  alien. And also, from  them, the efforts  toward the world, and to
them,  the  fulfillment  of the  world's  moderate desires, flow. They are ef-
fortless at eating, moving, arranging their arms as they sit or stand,  being
hired, being paid, cleaning up,  spending, playing, mating.  They are in an
ease and comfort. The world is for the world and for them.
  
Then there are those over whom the events and opportunities of the every-
day  world wash  over.  There  is  rarely,  in this  second type, any easy kind
of absorption.  There  is only  a  visible  evidence  of having  been made of a
different  substance,  one that  repels.  Also, from them,  it is almost impos-
sible  to  give  to  the  world  what  it will  welcome or reward. For how does
this  second  type  hold  their arms?  Across their chest? Behind their back?
And  how  do  they  find  food  to eat  and  then prepare this food? And how
do  they  receive  a  check or endorse it? And what also of the difficulties of
love  or  being loved, its  expansiveness,  the way it is used for markets and
indentured moods?
  
And what is this  second  substance?  And how does it come  to have as one
of  its  qualities  the  resistance of the world  as it is?  And also,  what is  the
person  made  of  the  second  substance?   Is this a  human or more or  less
than one? Where is the true impermeable community of the second human
whose  arms  do  not  easily  arrange  themselves and for whom the salaries
and  weddings  and  garages do not come?
  
These are, perhaps, not two sorts of persons, but two kinds of fortune. The
first is soft and regular. The second is a baffled kind, and magnetic only  to
the second substance, and made itself out of a different, second, substance,
and having, at its end, a second, and almost blank-faced, reward.