Wednesday, May 23, 2012

If This Is Wednesday, It's Trash Night

I'm almost halfway through Hilary Mantel's Bringing Up the Bodies, the second of a trilogy that started with Wolf Hall. Long-timers analog and digital can vouch I've yodeled for Mantel since whenever. (UPDATE! I got sick of the gif, decided to put up a header.) No one I've read has given me better insights into the human nature of power, its, um, ruthless amorality of pragmatism: you know, the people fucking you over honestly believe they're fucking you over in the greater interest of everyone. Meanwhile, things have suddenly gone off-key: Henry's jousting accident, Cromwell's assertion of authority in the emergency, and Anne's subsequent miscarriage of the heir have if not monkey-wrenched then cracked a fault-line in the commoner Cromwell's power England's peers consider usurped and illegitimate. It's a testament to Mantel's powerful imagination and skill with the language that I devour a historical fiction about Henry VIII when I detest historical fiction and despise shit about the English royalty. All of Mantel's fiction (which is, other than the current trilogy in progress and her very first novel, not historical fiction) is superb. Other than Richard, no one I've urged Mantel on and who's read a novel hasn't thanked me, and he likes Led Zeppelin.












LIVING

C.D. Wright

If this is Wednesday, write Lazartigues, return library books, pick up passport form, cancel the paper.

If this is Wednesday, mail B her flyers and K her shirts. Last thing I asked as I walked K to her car, “You sure you have everything?” “Oh yes,” she smiled, as she squalled off. Whole wardrobe in front closet.

Go to Morrison’s for paint samples, that’s where housepainter has account (near Pier One), swing by Gano St. for another bunch of hydroponic lettuce. Stop at cleaners if there’s parking.

Pap smear at 4. After last month with B’s ear infections, can’t bear sitting in damn doctor’s office. Never a magazine or picture on the wall worth looking at. Pack a book.

Ever since B born, nothing comes clear. My mind like a mirror that’s been in a fire. Does this happen to the others.

If this is Wednesday, meet Moss at the house at noon. Pick B up first, call sitter about Friday evening. If she prefers, can bring B to her (hope she keeps the apartment warmer this year).

Need coat hooks and picture hangers for office. Should take car in for air filter, oil change. F said one of back tires low. Don’t forget car payment, late last two months in a row.

If this is Wednesday, there’s a demo on the green at 11. Took B to his first down at Quonset Point in August. Blue skies. Boston collective provided good grub for all. Long column of denims and flannel shirts. Smell of patchouli made me so wistful, wanted to buy a woodstove, prop my feet up, share a J and a pot of Constant Comment with a friend. Maybe some zucchini bread.

Meet with honors students from 1 to 4. At the community college I tried to incite them to poetry. Convince them this line of work, beat the bejesus out of a gig as gizzard splitter at the processing plant or cleaning up after a leak at the germ warfare center. Be all you can be, wrap rubber band around your trigger finger until it drops off.

Swim at 10:00 before picking up B, before demo on the green, and before meeting moss, if it isn’t too crowded. Only three old women talking about their daughters-in-law last Wednesday at 10:00.

Phone hardware to see if radon test arrived.

Keep an eye out for a new yellow blanket. Left B’s on the plane, though he seems over it already. Left most recent issue of Z in the seat. That will make a few businessmen boil. I liked the man who sat next to me, he was sweet to B. Hated flying, said he never let all of his weight down.

Need to get books in the mail today. Make time pass in line at the P.O. imagining man in front of me butt naked. Fellow in the good-preacher-blue-suit, probably has a cold, hard bottom.

Call N for green tomato recipe. Have to get used to the Yankee growing season. If this is Wednesday, N goes in hospital today. Find out how long after marrow transplant before can visit.

Mother said she read in paper that Pete was granted a divorce. His third. My highschool boyfriend. Meanest thing I could have done, I did to him, returning a long-saved-for engagement ring in a Band-Aid box, while he was stationed in Da Nang.

Meant to tell F this morning about dream of eating grasshoppers, fried but happy. Our love a difficult instrument we are learning to play. Practice, practice.

No matter where I call home anymore, feel like a boat under the trees. Living is strange.

This week only; bargain on laid paper at East Side Copy Shop.

Woman picking her nose at the stoplight. Shouldn’t look, only privacy we have anymore in the car. Isn’t that the woman from the colloquium last fall, who told me she was a stand-up environmentalist. What a wonderful trade, I said, because the evidence of planetary wrongdoing is overwhelming. Because because because of the horrible things we do.

If this is Wednesday, meet F at Health Department at 10:45 for AIDS test.

If this is Wednesday, it’s trash night.


11 comments:

  1. I see Pierce made no mention of the families we're killing in the warren terra, or the assault on the few journalists who dare to report the facts of same.

    Doesn't help make his case.
    ~

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  2. Seriously, Thunder? That's the difference between success and failure of Pierce's case? That's fucking weak sauce, implying as it does that Romney, or generic Republican, or whothefuckerver, would've killed fewer noncombatants--a baldly ridiculous and irrelevant assertion. Please come on back if I'm misreading you, because I mean no disrespect to you here. And please note that I've stopped bothering to try to make the case Pierce makes; you buy it, you don't, not worth my blood pressure.

    BFF, thanks for the whale linkage.

    Also: that's not a fucking pome.

    No, it really isn't. No, it isn't, infinity plus one. Fuck you.

    Alsomore: Fuck you. No, no, I mean on the Balkan thing now, although it's still not a fucking pome. You relentlessly suck off the Montenegro and the Albino, and shit on the Serb? Fuck you, you bloody fucking Habsburg. In fact, I'm pretty sure your birthday present just became a jersey with Dejan's number and "BF Habsburg" for a nameplate.

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  3. I'm hot for tens. And while I like the Albanian fine, his contract's not up July 15. And while I like Serbians and I like Canadians, Serbian-Canadians? Fuckers all.

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  4. I know. We're all hot for tens. Fucking Bruce Arena converted us to Tennists and we get cold chills in our fucking intestines if we don't have a fucking ten and a backup ten. We're like fucking Buddhists with a dead Dalai, like fucking Diogenes, going around examining every fucking Barklage and Ginger Midget and probably even Justin Fucking Mapp and shining a light in their journeyman eyes and trilling, "Be thee the One True Ten?" Fat fucking Christian Gomez redux, tiny fucking Marcello Gallardo, even Stephen Fucking King, and His Brankotude, the Montenegro of Deliberation.

    Fucking suckass religion, if you ask me. Not that you did. And not that I'd have the balls to drop it. Fucking Tennism. Fucking 4-1-2-1-2. Fucking Bruce Arena. Fucking Saint Piotr. Fucking Saint Benny.

    Fuck.

    That, by the way, was pometry.

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  5. And yeah, shame I don't have a fucking blog, but then again, I just used up all the good stuff on your fucking comments section.

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  6. Just got my copy of 'Bodies' in the p.o. box from the big, strong, warrior woman .com. Can't wait to dig in, tho' I must, for I am in the middle of other readings now.

    Poem, story, proem: Landru, tell us what you really think. No, really. Also too what does Bo Derek have to do with footie ball? Seriously, dude, you should get a blog! How're the Caps doing, eh?

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  7. Better than the Thrashers?

    Shit, I prolly screwed that up, I'm guessing that you like the Carolina Whalers to the extent you like ice footie at all.

    More days than not, I confine my personal messages to Himself to the corners of my brain. Or his. Today, not so much. My bad.

    And the other: we should be ashamed of how chubby we got over El Muneco. Really, really ashamed. Absolutely no better (intellectually) than believing in the Magic Sky Dood, not one tiny little bit.

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  8. He had two world class goals early and for three, four games looked better than anyone on the field, then MLS teams decided to see if they raked him would he break and if he broke would he quit, and yes.

    Sheeyit, how many fucking auditions did I give the Russian Dyachenko that he failed. Heh, the google just told me he's playing for Samut Songkhram in the Thai Premier League.

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  9. It's terrific that I'm in a good mood or I'd tear Jim a new one for his less that hallowed reference to the Caps.

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  10. My last hockey team was the Winston-Salem Polar Twins. They were like the Slap Shot team in the league: on the verge of bankruptcy; almost no wins ever. You went for the fights, and sometimes a hockey game would break out.

    Deepest apologies to Landru and Sasha for that bit of cutesiness. One should know by now that one should never be cutesy about hockey. One can get one's ass kicked. Respect. I will say this, I don't watch much TV hockey, but I miss that streaky tail puck thing they had some years back before HDTV. Reminded me of my college days.

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  11. Thank you for stepping up Jim.

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