I'm still thinking about the drive, I actually wrote out the entire thing but will spare you and me the bother, but this: we oohed and aahed the physical beauty of rural east-central Ohio, but then we drove into Coschoton, we drove into Newark, me and Earthgirl stayed, ate and drove through Zanesville, and what percentage of those still living in these dilapidated and deteriorating and abandoned by Corporate's inexorable hunger cities sympathize with Occupy much less doesn't loathe Occupy?
And my apologies, after reflecting, I won't post the dinner stories as promised last post, too bad, there are two good angles, if you ask me in person I'll tell you them both. Meanwhile, from the soundtrack of the trip:
- A different tribute to MLK.
- West arrested. This is one of the stumbling blocks to my embracing Occupy - when someone famous (as much as Cornel West is famous) makes an appearance, my default assumption is s/he's celebrity whoring.
- The Nixonification of Occupy.
- Addressing racism, oppression, and privilege in Occupy.
- Listening to Zuccotti Park.
- Strategies for the anticapitalist tradition.
- Occupy Columbus.
- Thank you sir, may I have another?
- Drones.
- Panopticon.
- Panopticon.
- Libera nos a malo.
- Yes, I did drop comments on Planet's video post, the first time I've ever closed comments. Whoever it was, die painfully, with or without my help.
- Whatever happened to modernism, continued.
- Dogechism!
- Bleggalgazing!
- The distinction between depression and melancholia.
- Earthgirl read this on the trip and loved it (and loved the kindle).
- Reading something significant.
- Hejinian.
- The Future.
- Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
THE PLANET KRYPTON
Lynn Emanuel
Outside the window the McGill smelter
sent a red dust down on the smoking yards of copper,
on the railroad tracks’ frayed ends disappeared
into the congestion of the afternoon. Ely lay dull
and scuffed: a miner’s boot toe worn away and dim,
while my mother knelt before the Philco to coax
the detonation from the static. From the Las Vegas
Tonapah Artillery and Gunnery Range the sound
of the atom bomb came biting like a swarm
of bees. We sat in the hot Nevada dark, delighted,
when the switch was tripped and the bomb hoisted
up its silky, hooded, glittering, uncoiling length;
it hissed and spit, it sizzled like a poker in a toddy.
The bomb was no mind and all body; it sent a fire
of static down the spine. In the dark it glowed like the coils
of an electric stove. It stripped every leaf from every
branch until a willow by a creek was a bouquet
of switches resinous, naked, flexible, and fine.
Bathed in the light of KDWN, Las Vegas,
my crouched mother looked radioactive, swampy,
glaucous, like something from the Planet Krypton.
In the suave, brilliant wattage of the bomb, we were
not poor. In the atom’s fizz and pop we heard possibility
uncorked. Taffeta wraps whispered on davenports.
A new planet bloomed above us; in its light
the stumps of cut pine gleamed like dinner plates.
The world was beginning all over again, fresh and hot;
we could have anything we wanted.
Obligatory 'kneel before Zod' reference. There's pretty in Ohiostan? Boy, I really need to get out of Callahooga County.
ReplyDeleteOccupado seems to have fizzled but a few youthful grizzlies were still toting signage around on Saturday last. Idealists.
Thanks for the link!
ReplyDeleteI've not made it to the Walhonding River, meself. Will have to try it.
~
Earthgirl made a slide show of the photos she took, if I can figure out how to post it I will. It's nothing spectacular, just beautiful rolling hills and great two lane roads.
ReplyDeleteThe Walhonding's not worth a special trip, though if it's within a reasonable radius of where you're going anyway it's worth a diversion.
I'm going downtown this coming Sunday to see Occupy - I need go at least once before I'm utterly convinced it will fail.
Am I to understand that somebody posted an obnoxious comment about Planet's video? The fuck?
ReplyDeleteTwo of them. Worse than obnoxious, toxic. No idea who - I'd never seen the IP address before, some asshole in Nebraska. I think it was a hit and run - he's not been back.
ReplyDeleteLoved Distance. Wistful. Confident. (Was she texting on the red thread like we used to use telephone cans and string for pretend telephones? If so, BRAVA! If not, why not?)
ReplyDeleteAgree re: Cornie West. But...without the Abbie Hoffman's and Jerry Rubin's, you know what I mean? Attention whoring can be a positive, especially for these kids who are assembling only to be defined, used, dismissed as irrelevant. I'm a fan. I want them to stay put. I want more att'n whoring, more people to try to define them and what they want, more people to use them for their own cynical (or not) purposes (yes, you a-a-a-and Corporate, too!), more serious and important people to dismiss them. And, through it all and beyond it all, I want them to stay put.
There was this thing back in these old Woolworth lunch counters in NC in the Sixties, sit-ins they called them. They, like Rosa Parks, just sat. This is Rosa's grandkids—and a buttload of them.
And here we've been lamenting this generation's lack of commitment, lack of paying att'n to what's happening, lack of concern. That'll show us.
Best,
Jim H.
BDR, have you yet begun (or finished) Mrs Unguentine?
ReplyDeleteJim, thanks for Kind words plus inspiration - your comment prompts tomorrow's response.
ReplyDeleteBrad, it was in my backpack this past weekend's trip but never made it out (both time and reading something else plus not reading fiction well right now). Starting Tuesday (with luck), will say yay or nay (if not why beyond a sentence or two or not) when done.
I don't care if West or anybody else is a whore if they get the thing on the teevee because otherwise Murdoch gets to control the conversation. It can be George Clooney or Lady Gaga for all I care. Jim H. said it better. But this all has to be on the Twitter and iPhone and teevee or it will "fail."
ReplyDeleteAlso. Re "before I'm utterly convinced it will fail." What would failure or success look like? If it pushes Obama to the left, even a little it succeeds. Also BofA discovered a substantial sum of money that it had been cheating me out of last Friday (at my insistence). I think that is success.
And. So sorry about the comment thing. She is lovely. The film is lovely. I dream of somebody inventing a way to electrocute people through the internet. I would gladly share.
ReplyDelete