Friday, July 22, 2011

Thus, Our Bawdiness, Unpurged by Epitaph, Indulged at Last, Is Equally Converted into Palms, Squiggling Like Saxophones

No Thursday Night Pints. Two are out of town and the heat index was 117, and fuck that. All day yesterday I felt like I'd STOOD! outside in hundred plus heat index two-and-a-half hours the night before. It's stupid hot. So stupid hot I might not STAND! for a fucking exhibition game v Liverpool Juniors Saturday night. If it was a league game or Cup game or, HEY! remember when United suffered from motherfucking clusterfuckage and played in major international club tournaments? I'd have been required to STAND! in 117 heat index for one of those games if Kasper Payne hadn't fixed that problem. ripday, I'll email you still Saturday morning, but it might end up another night.

Like I do everyday I wrote yesterday about my latent bigotries and how they salve my complicity. I've seven or eight tablet false starts at following up - I need a new way to paraphrase it, don't you know - so until then I commend to you comments from Frances and KFO for sharp insights into the problem.

HEY! Know what's worse than a heat index of 117?






People who would soon be seen in New York reading French books were seen here reading Italian.

Over this grandstand disposal of promise the waiters stared with a distance of glazed indulgence which all collected under it admired, as they admired the rudeness, which they called self-respect; the contempt, which they called innate dignity; the avarice, which they called self-reliance; the tasteless ill-made clothes on the men, lauded as indifference, and the far-spaced posturings of haute couture across the Seine, called inimitable or shik according to one's stay.

 -  Gaddis, The Recognitions


































THE HIGH-TONED OLD CHRISTIAN WOMEN


Wallace Stevens

Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.
We agree in principle. That's clear. But take
The opposing law and make a peristyle,
And from the peristyle project a masque
Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness,
Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last,
Is equally converted into palms,
Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm,
Madame, we are where we began. Allow,
Therefore, that in the planetary scene
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,
Proud of such novelties of the sublime,
Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.
This will make widows wince. But fictive things
Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince.



9 comments:

  1. Hope they play Alice
    at RFK, old and new.
    I'm a jerk like that.

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  2. Goddamn Alice or
    motherfucking Soundgarden
    which band sucks the most?

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  3. Gaithersburg City Hall poised to be a better work environment

    Really? Sid Katz retired to Florida?

    Ba-dump-bump. It's great to be local.

    As much as I missed seeing you, we are definitely not coming to stand for Liverpuddle Juniors, especially since they've announced they're not playing Timmy Tourette.

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  4. I stumbled upon a copy of "George Mills" .

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  5. Elkin considered that his best novel. I like it LOTS (especially the Janissary section), though I love others more. Let me know what you think!

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  6. Grazie for the compliment/redirect! And you're to be commended for the self-examination, which more of us need to do, more often, more deeply, more thoroughly. We're all complacent! I am too. I'm too complacent about the uberfascists.

    118 heat index? Holy supersauna! Condolences to the entire DC metro area's residents, that's just a mean trick played by Mama Nature in her foulest mood.

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  7. I'm up to the point where Mr Mead just died, and Mr Mead's description of the process of his death is how I've always imagined it goes down, complete with the "others may feel differently" qualifiers!

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  8. OK, I'm in. Haven't read it in five years or so. Up next after I finish The Recognitions (which admittedly is a wonderful slow read).

    If you get a chance, read Elkin out loud, especially when his logorrhea is in full flow.

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  9. I'm laughing out loud in many spots, because in fact, I was at one time a homeless janitor, lulled to sleep in boiler rooms by the flow of burning gas.

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