You'll Need a Spieliologist's Desire for Rebirth and a Miner's Paranoia of Gases

Jeabus, sorry, those of you on readers, I hadn't brainfarted and accidentally published a post before it was finished in half a year. The above Sonic Youth song played last night on Dan Bodah's Airborne Event (and all artists this post taken from past Airborne Event playlists), usually Monday nights nine-midnight, last night from his living room because Sandy knocked out the electricity to WFMU studios in Jersey City; DJs are broadcasting from home on their laptops through an MP3 machine, or something, WFMU-in-Exile! it's called. Irwin's going to do a four and a half hour show this afternoon (UPDATE! and because the show wasn't terrestrial but internet only Irwin was able to use his full vocabulary and imagination, pray that it's archived!). Sandy has also knocked out WFMU's three day record fair, a major source of income for WFMU, and today is the last day of 31 Days of October, their silent fundraiser. They are $200K short of money needed to stay on air and on internet (Dan's show last night, for instance, would have been archived for your streaming by now if not for hurricane). SEND THEM MONEY please and thanks.

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HOW TO LOVE BATS

Judith Beveridge

Begin in a cave.

Listen to the floor boil with rodents, insects.

Weep for the pups that have fallen. Later,

you’ll fly the narrow passages of those bones,

                                                       but for now —

open your mouth, out will fly names

like Pipistrelle, Desmodus, Tadarida. Then,

listen for a frequency

lower than the seep of water, higher

than an ice planet hibernating

beyond a glacier of Time.

Visit op shops. Hide in their closets.

Breathe in the scales and dust

of clothes left hanging. To the underwear

and to the crumbled black silks — well,

give them your imagination

and plenty of line, also a night of gentle wind.

By now your fingers should have

touched petals open. You should have been dreaming

each night of anthers and of giving

to their furred beauty

your nectar-loving tongue. But also,

your tongue should have been practising the cold

of a slippery, frog-filled pond.

Go down on your elbows and knees.

You’ll need a spieliologist’s desire for rebirth

and a miner’s paranoia of gases —

but try to find within yourself

the scent of a bat-loving flower.

Read books on pogroms. Never trust an owl.

Its face is the biography of propaganda.

Never trust a hawk. See its solutions

in the fur and bones of regurgitated pellets.

And have you considered the smoke

yet from a moving train? You can start

half an hour before sunset,

but make sure the journey is long, uninterrupted

and that you never discover

the faces of those Trans-Siberian exiles.

Spend time in the folds of curtains.

Seek out boarding-school cloakrooms.

Practise the gymnastics of web umbrellas.

                                             Are you

floating yet, thought-light,

without a keel on your breastbone?

Then, meditate on your bones as piccolos,

on mastering the thermals

beyond the tremolo; reverberations

beyond the lexical.

                                           Become adept

at describing the spectacles of the echo —

but don’t watch dark clouds

passing across the moon. This may lead you

to fetishes and cults that worship false gods

by lapping up bowls of blood from a tomb.

Practise echo-locating aerodromes,

stamens. Send out rippling octaves

into the fossils of dank caves —

then edit these soundtracks

with a metronome of dripping rocks, heartbeats

and with a continuous, high-scaled wondering

about the evolution of your own mind.

But look, I must tell you — these instructions

are no manual. Months of practice

may still only win you appreciation

of the acoustical moth,

hatred of the hawk and owl. You may need

to observe further the floating black host

through the hills.