Thursday, May 24, 2012

Johnny, the Kitchen Sink Has Been Clogged for Days, Some Utensil Probably Fell Down There



I saw the revolting photo of Obama making some stupidass hand-gesture with a graduating Air Force cadet, read the quotes of his repugnant purple speech reaffirming American empire and I.... oh fucked it. What's the vile motherfucker going to say, we're an empire in terminal decline though I'll kill as many people around the world and circumscribe American citizens' civil liberties and militarize the police against peaceful dissent while gutting social safety nets in order to maintain the profit margins and lifestyles of our Corporate elite? This isn't to condone or excuse but, for the moment, to oh-fuck-it, why burn the aargh over motherfucking propaganda in an election year. So I was going to oh-fuck-it anyway, but luckily I was then distracted in comments to yesterday's post, hence the above photo, which references the discussion of tens and the below youtube which references the discussion of Serbian-Canadians. This guy follows up on the discussions too. For the record, my grandparents were Serb and Slovak on my father's side, Hungarian and German on my mother's.



















WHAT THE LIVING DO

Marie Howe

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell
     down there.
And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have
     piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat's on too high in here and I can't
     turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag
     breaking,

I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist
     and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We
     want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and more and then
     more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the
     window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:
I am living. I remember you.


6 comments:

  1. Oh shit. Thanks for telling about Paul Fussell. Great loss that is.

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  2. Yeah, his *Great War and Modern Memory* was hugely influential when I was first in college (don't know if it is now or not), but the book of his I think about most is his *Uniforms: Why We Wear What We Wear.* One reason every post here has a "My Complicity" tag.

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  3. Facts are for rubes. But sorry for the fact-fail anyway. At least the two ethnicities I cited were correct.

    Also: picture at top isn't loading for me in any browser.

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  4. Ha! Now it is. Weird. Really weird.

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  5. One of my roomies had some of Tegan & Sara's early stuff (which I did kind of like but really haven't followed them since), and I had the strange serendipity of seeing them open for Cake and Gogol Bordello in the company of two girls named Tegan and Sara, which was incredibly amusing to us.

    ReplyDelete