Exhausted Like Two Swimmers

I've enjoyed not-blogging two wholefucking days - it was far easier than I thought, it was far easier than I feared - and what has changed in the last two days in your opinion of your loved ones and hated ones you see only at Giftmas, because the world has changed that little that much.

 

Discussing colleges before lunch at my parents someone mentioned Pomona and Bromark mentioned Pepperdine and I said, they have the reputation of being the two most conservative colleges in the top tiers of USNWR Liberal Arts rankings, and my conservative aunt shouted O! God Forbid Planet go to a conservative school. I didn't mean it as an insult (too much). Same old good.

My niece-in-law Sam is smarter than her cousin and aunt thinks she is, but Sam's goodwhacked in a brilliant way and badwhacked in a brilliant way and trending hard badwhacked and is absolutely fucked for parents (both love her dearly but they shouldn't have married, shouldn't have had kids). Here's what I did during the dramatics: I shut the fuck up and sat the fuck down.

I shut the fuck up and sat the fuck down and felt both exhilarated and exhausted. Here was something I could have affected - not for the good, I could only have made things worse solely for the benefit of having my say - and I shut the fuck up and sat the fuck down, happily, voluntarily. This is the deviousness of our yodeling training: holler yourself hoarse against what you can't change so you're too happily tired to holler at what you can only fuck up.

• The military failure machine.
• Obama's liberty problem.
• Obamapologetics.
• Pathological Britain.
• The fading dream of Europe? 
• On a conceit (sort of) I haven't fully shed. 
• UPDATE! It's all about the rents, cont'd.
• The sheep look up. 
• UPDATE! Hedges brings the duh.
• Keep gatekeeping.
• Bewildering array of choices.
• In which Fred Hiatt doesn't call asshole crackers asshole crackers.
• In which George Macaca Allen isn't cracker enough.
• My lack of faith disturbs you.
• The 100 most beautiful words in English. Petrichor? Mondegreen? Riparian? I'm a smugfucker English major, I've never heard those words before.
• New Millhauser story. 
• UPDATE! Thirteen most overlooked books of 2010. I want to read at least three of them. (Did I post that link already? If yes, oh well.)
• Charles Olson was born 100 years ago today. He never shazammed me, but he shazammed people who shazammed me.
• I've heard 17 of these. Titus Androinicus is worth your time.
• I've heard none of these (though Nilsson is a god).
• Flaming Lips cover Frank Sinatra.
• New Flaming Lips coming.

A BOOK OF MUSIC

Jack Spicer

Coming at an end, the lovers
Are exhausted like two swimmers.  Where
Did it end?  There is no telling.  No love is
Like an ocean with the dizzy procession of the waves' boundaries
From which two can emerge exhausted, nor long goodbye
Like death.
Coming at an end.  Rather, I would say, like a length
Of coiled rope
Which does not disguise in the final twists of its lengths
Its endings.
But, you will say, we loved
And some parts of us loved
And the rest of us will remain
Two persons.  Yes,
Poetry ends like a rope.