Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Press Deeper, Touch the Little Bundle of Nerves Buried There, Buried in the Gristle, the Nerves that Make You Blink When the Light Bewilders You




  • Activating the Napoleon Alert System. Saw him Saturday, I normally wait a week without seeing him before alerting the signal but it's zero outside as I type this. Saw Momcat and Frankie this morning, they are in the shelter of straw, cardboard, and blankets we built on the back porch, but no Napoleon.
  • UPDATE! Works every time. As of 11:27 he's inside with Planet.
  • Wonderful dinner last night with Planet and Landru, the most fun thing I've done in what seems like weeks, so limited link-fishing for that, plus the death of two friends in the past week or so (both of liver cancer, fuck) occupy my mind so limited link-fishing for that, plus the hardest weeks of my work year put me in a vile mood so limited link-fishing for that too, plus a serious dose of blegitus so limited link-fishing for that too.
  • What boggles the image-nation?
  • From the above's homepage I see that Rob Payne is alive.
  • Snowden, Greenwald, journalism, progressive tone-police.
  • Taking inventory at the sex-shop.
  • Hagerstown.
  • Laughing place.
  • The Millions' Most Anticipated Books of 2014. Richard Powers! Sebald! Coover! Vollmann! Murakami! Only goes through August. Still no new Ishiguro.
  • :-P's 2013 songs.
  • Fell asleep, unsurprisingly to me in review considering the first and second bullets of this shitty post (minus the dinner with Planet and Landru), listening to Throbbing Gristle.







self-exam (my body is a cage)

Nick Flynn

Do this: take two fingers, place them on
the spot behind your ear, either

ear, the spot where your skull drops off

into that valley of muscle
& nerve—that is the muscle that holds up

the skull, that turns the dumb bone
this way & that, that nods your face up &

down when you think you
get it—press deeper, touch the little bundle of

nerves buried there, buried in
the gristle—the nerves that make you blink

when the light bewilders you, that make your tongue
slide in & out when you think you’re in

love, when you think you need a drink, touch
that spot as if you have an itch, close your eyes &

listen, please, close
your eyes—can you hear it? We think our souls live

in boxes, we think someone sits behind our eyes,
lording in his little throne, steering the fork to

the mouth, the mouth to the tit, we think
hungry children live in our bellies & run out with their

empty bowls as the food rains
down, we sometimes think we are those

hungry children, we think
we can think anything & it won’t

matter, we think we can think cut out her tongue,
& then ask her to sing.



3 comments:

  1. Somehow, I can't get as worked up about G.G. not doing the NSA expose the way Silber would have as much as I am about what the NSA is doing.
    ~

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  2. You're entitled to take a break, you know? Sorry about your friends.

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    Replies
    1. Yeah, I talked about that here. I could go on more (do go on more elsewhere) but don't think anyone wants me to do it here. As for today, I was seriously worried about Nap. He'd been inside a lot of nights this winter and I was concerned about the cold.

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