Monday, October 31, 2011

A Proxy Pain Stands in for the Larger Intangible



That's my complicit-ass torso on Metro riding home yesterday afternoon from Freedom Plaza. I was bored, playing with the settings and taking blind shots with my camera, thinking, Know what? I'm not giving up my comfort - my job, my house, my cars, my cats, my United season tickets. I am willing to give up the every payday Friday night Indian restaurant, and I still can't read anymore so why buy books, though I'm not giving up my Corporate wireless phone or my home internet connection at gunpoint - but I am going to buy some durable, no-frills blankets and take them Downtown this coming Saturday.

I punish the Indian restauranteur to assuage my guilt through paying proxies to protest my moral dispute with Corporate. See where my discretionary fund tugs my disposable money from? It's .06% less-shitty than letting my proxies freeze.










ENTERING THE OUSE

Paula Bohince

First the bad boots
give up their strength, then the toes lift
their anchors. The ankle
bones are broken,
and so on, until the bladder lets go, without
shame, and the genital
organ washes away, the ovum
and her fertile signals. A proxy pain
stands in for the larger
intangible.

Has nothing to do
with tufts of snow blown upon
the unforgiving surface,
but how I mistook the beauty of those particle
deaths, their of-the-world
stardom, as a kind of metaphysical river,
that if I looked long enough,
with enough reverence...

Let my waist, bled numb, stand in
for that miscalculation. And the severed
friendships in the current’s wake, the bloom
blown off the stricken
self. I saw formal water,
knowing my body wanted to go there.
My only child. How
I’ve betrayed you.


8 comments:

  1. If only you had access to a library. I still try to own (gasp!) a copy of something I'll read/reference often which I'm sure makes me ultra-complicit-consumer-deathbot, in which case, guilty & fuck off, but I'm doing much more ILL stuff than I used to.

    Jesus H P Lovecraft, I hate the MLS playoffs.

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  2. MLS has playoffs?

    I've gotten better about borrowing rather than buying, but I'm a margin-scribbler and under-liner and dog-earrer, and guess where I decide to take a moral stand.

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  3. Durable, no-frills? Why? Why not delicate and decorous to cover the bloomless, stricken selves? But even more curious...what is Dan Green doing in the backseat of The Apples' van singing Same Old Drag? And is that cat hair on the micro-fiber fleecie hoodie of your headless man? Are you lowering your usually impeccable standards during this reading slump? A cry for help...? Thank you for Ann Magnuson, whom I adore. The last show I saw on Grand Street was her Dueling Harps, both nights. She is without flaw, perfection incarnate, as near to a goddess as I expect ever to encounter. Bongwater's great, but Vulcan Death Grip's greater:
    http:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6f100ccLGw0

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  4. Actually, while I love Apples in Stereo, the lead singer's resemblance to Matty the Pwofessional Pwoggle creeps me out.

    Cat hairs? The fuckers wait purring when they see me folding clean laundry.

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  5. He looks a little like Ed Champion. YOU, folding laundry. Tell me another one!

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  6. I don't get the connection between adopting a vow of poverty and supporting OWS.
    ~

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  7. It's more a matter of making some small relatively painless financial contribution to OWS rather than disconnect myself from Corporate powerhouses Verizon and Comcast as means of salving my complicity.

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  8. Not giving up your cat hair either, eh? I see.
    [oops, should've read the comments first—good catch Frances]

    Maybe you could set up a library at an Occupy site. The People need to read, too. From what I gather, entire economies are sprouting w/in the encampments.

    But I like the idea of blankies. You're a good man, Charlie Brown.

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