Here's a Guess: We Will Sit on a Wooden Lawn-Chair in the Sun, and We Will Like It

Do people click all the links? Do they listen to all the songs? K asked me Saturday night at a Saturday Night Edition of Thursday Night Pints. I know, I said, some regularly do, most don't though I'd guess more click through to the links than listen to the music, I have one good friend who tells me he never listens to the music. L said, depends on the music for me, the experimental music, fuck that. That ended this week's questions about this blog. Minor wonderment at obamaclusterfuck that handed the GOP a lifeline after the GOP had its ass clocked in kabukifuck re: Obama's incompetence: real, fake, death to the Either/Or. L said, I've never seen incompetence so competently executed, it must be by design. Design, I said, as in Battling Tops. Huh? said K. He's old, said L. More music you don't like Sunday, I said to L, you'll like Monday's.

• And she will.
• The business of free speech: Freedom of speech isn’t freedom from the consequences of speech. Freedom of speech is not a protection against people telling you that your views are hateful. Freedom of speech doesn’t oblige other people or organizations to support you in your privileged position as a broadcaster, or journalist, or blogger. Freedom of speech isn’t a guarantee of permanent employment when the thing you are selling is your opinion, nor does freedom of speech compel the public to buy said opinion from you.
• New Inquiry's Sunday readings.
• A pandemonium of word demons.
• The staying away.
• Emotional.
• The NYT obit for Lessing. She was someone who I always liked what she was saying better than I liked the way she said it.
• List of Lessing links.
• Bump: I've still three tickets to Bonnie Prince Billy in Annapolis on Thursday that I cannot use and the YOU CAN HAVE FOR FREE.
• Iva Bittova documentary.
• Feldman and Beckett (yes, again) for those of you who do.

IN A LANDSCAPE: IV

John Gallaher

Now the scene changes, we say, and the next few years 

are quiet. It's another curse, the inverse of the "interesting times" 

the Chinese were said to go on so about. Nevertheless, there it is, 

as the emptiness needs a something in order to be defined as empty, 

which means we spend the next few years talking about other years, 

as if that's what's important. Maybe that is what's important. It was terrible, 

the hospital stay. The children. Not the children in the abstract way, 

but those times worried that this would go wrong, or that, and then things 

do go wrong and it almost feels like we'd wished for it to happen, 

so not only do we have to go through this terrible time, but we also 

have to keep reminding ourselves that we didn't wish for it. It's Problem 

One. And there's our two-year-old son strapped to a board with an IV, crying. 

And doesn't it feel like a formal device then? As if expecting it 

were the same--or is the same--as willing it, but then almost willing it anyway, 

saying something like, "Please God, or whomever, get it over with already . . ." 

if the world isn't going to be a museum only, as museums keep calling out 

that there's so much more to find in the past, like ourselves, for instance. 

The simplification of our forms. The question of why it might be important 

to save our dinnerware, or Yo-yos. We have these accidents 

in common: last night I was pulling a filing cabinet upstairs on a hand truck, 

and at the 90 degree turn it fell on top of me and I had to hold it like that, 

one wheel on the stair, one in mid-air. So I had some time on my hands, 

waiting for Robin to get home. They say that if you relax, lying there 

is 80% as restful as sleep. And knowing how to relax is key, they say. 

Here's a guess: we will sit on a wooden lawn-chair in the sun, and we 

will like it. We will run the numbers and think it sounds like a good 

proposition. We will consult a map, even ask directions. The sun's 

out right now, in fact, and it's all a matter of doing the next big thing. 

Driving home, say. And then it's a manner of having done something. 

Driving past the car wash. Yes, forcing a matter of doing the next 

thing, which is filling out the accident report, while the old man 

who hit my pickup is crying in the street. And then I'm walking around, 

picking up the fender and light pieces and putting them in the bed.