Not Only Will Things Go On But This Going On Will Repeat

Earthgirl and I went out to dinner two, three weeks ago with Earthgirl's cousin and her husband, I said at Thursday Night Pints. I then gave more background than is needed here, then said, I'd not met the husband: Earthgirl told me before the dinner he's a six-foot-seven practicing Buddhist from Seattle. I'm not sure what I expected but he seemed a decent, personable mid-50s upper middle-class white not-axe murderer. What did you expect, asked L. Not somebody who ate a sizzling pile of tandoori lamb and goat, I said. Did you talk politics, D asked. Earthgirl and Cousin kept bringing it up, I said, presumably because Cousin and Husband talk politics and Earthgirl and I talk politics so I think they schemed, Maybe we can get them to talk about politics since both are doing this dinner with you-owe-me-one reservations, but no, I didn't motherfucking Obama him, if that's what you're asking. K asked, so the husband, the six-foot-seven Buddhist, didn't want to talk about politics either? O, no, I said, he was cracker-this, cracker-that, Obama has to be reelected don't you agree as he shoveled lamb and goat into his mouth. Did you agree, asked K, or rather, how did you disagree? I asked him, I said, if he was a Seattle Sounders fan, and when he said no I talked obligingly about nothing.

• No rule of law.
• Corporate's manipulation of democracy.
• O Ye of too much faith.
• On Faith of the Faithless.
• Drones are paranoid androids.
• Our weird politics.
• Eugene Robinson says BE AFRAID!
• Hobsbawn remembers Judt.
• A short history of eggs.
• On some faraway beach.
• Bernhard, for those of you who do.
• Why couldn't Yo La Tengo open for Lambchop this past Monday?
• Magnificent obsession.
• Please rise.
• The man who loved beer.
• RIP Jonathan Frid. UPDATE! Link fixed.
• RIP Levon Helms.
• Shoot me.
• Paul Westerberg's song for Sylvia Plath.

[UNTITLED]

Lyn Hejinian

      Now in bed suddenly I remember having rescued a spider from the
bathtub this morning. I imagined that I had established rapport with my
environment. I observed the spider eerily. I was in harmony with my life and
times. Not only will things go on but this going on will repeat.
      After all, I can vow kindness in relation to something I cannot know.
      The spider, when it appears within a "range of alternatives," will be
rescued - dished out of the nicked and polished porcelain tub and knocked
onto the shrubbery just outside the open window.
      Of course, it will not be the same spider each time but one in a
sequence of spiders.