Stultifying with Its Threats and Tears, Dissembling Always Its Mad Obsession with the Blurred Distinction

I know myself well enough: I can rid myself of obedience to particular obsessions but not rid myself of the need to fill the vacuum of my obsessions. I run at a certain level; the level can rise, it's yet to fall. We went down to East Wing National Gallery yesterday because Earthgirl wanted to see the Albrecht Durer exhibition and realized yesterday was the last day (plus East Wing is closing for three years of renovations this coming January, we're going while we can). When we walked out of Durer, over the entrance to the next gallery over was a sign that read, Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, 1909-1929. We what-the-fuck entered.




 

• I mean, I had never seen these. I mean, I know the music, in some cases love the music, I'd never seen these.
• I have HUGE gaps, I don't know movies, I don't know theater, I don't know dance. I have only so many hours, too many obsessions.
• It will probably blow over. Almost all my new obsessions are infatuations I can't sustain.
• Which proves my addictions to old obsessions are strong.
• Though lordy, am I sick of an astonishing percentage of old obsessions.
• Homeland.
• A psychopathology of internet surveillance.
• A marker for 60-second Arendts.
• So yes, these ballet scenes discovered yesterday and watched all last night are substitute for any more yodeling and linking on that subject today.
• A strange place full of dragons.
• New Inquiry's Sunday links.
• Stoner, done for the autobiographical pun, of course, but also to vouch for the novel, on my short-list of re-reads if what I can't talk about less I jinx and oh fuck.
• The edge of the forest.
• The good earth.
• You have no core and it's good.
• Old games.
• On poetry anthologies.
• Immerse yourself.
• Enjoy yourself.
• Neil Young throws a shitfit.
• One of my favorite WFMU djs goes on hiatus, here is his last show, LISTEN TO THIS goddamn it from START TO END.
• Yes, he played the Rolling Stones. Lordy, that song sucks even by the standard Rolling Stone's suckitude, and Lordy, the Stones suck. Suck. Fine metaphors abound.
• A David Thomas piece each day of June: 

THE TRUTH ABOUT LOVE

Howard Moss

It seems to have traveled at night,

Supremely ironic, lighting fires,

Laying golden eggs in the midst of squalor,

Its outer garments, in the latest version,

Sumptuous, its linens more than shoddy,

Drunk, moreover, at a seedy party

The discriminating shunned, and, later, bawdy

In a run-down neighborhood, with whores and sailors

Chosen as companions while the queen went needy.

Now that everything about it is known,

Why does it come up purple or threadbare,

Thrashing all its sunsets in a fit of pique,

Or stripped, in the seamiest hayloft, ready

To repeat dull anecdotes the millionth time,

Its poise unquestionable, its voice unsteady?

It is brilliant, androgynous, and stultifying

With its threats and tears, dissembling always

Its mad obsession with the blurred distinction.

And yet who else

Is so elementary and badly needed

That fifty cultures rise at the merest rumor

Of its presence, and, finally, punctually fall

Whenever it departs, as if on schedule?

Interviewed, Monday, in the city dump,

Which turned, by magic, into a hotel tower,

Shedding poems and paintings for its bath

(It takes ten centuries of running water

To wash it clean), it then emerged, all dirty

Again, in a costume of ferocious splendor,

A hat some milliner in old Vienna

Sweated over, its pumps exchanged for sneakers,

And raced across the city, breaking records,

Just to prove its powers of endurance.

It lies down anywhere, and loves the country,

But is so unassuming it can even flourish

Beneath electric signs and in railroad stations

It goes to for the summer, estivating,

It says, near fountains that escape our notice,

And comes back in the fall, its ribbons flying,

Wheeling through the leaves, singing all the voices

Of every opera in the repertoire

Plus one no one has ever dreamed of writing.

Going about its gigantic business,

It masks itself as any shape or hope,

Appearing as a vicious telephone call,

Or a flat, disturbing message in an envelope.

It praises calmness but adores upheaval,

Is most to be desired when it apes composure,

And much to be distrusted when it boasts it has

The only fingerprint that can be changed at will.