Monday, June 16, 2014

The Wine Tasted Like Sunshine in the Basement





That song and video break my heart each time. I didn't hike yesterday - I mowed the lawn, did yard work, my next weekend is booked, Saturday with something that will both spectacularly suck and be exceptionally entertaining, something I will dearly want to write about (and may, but not here), Sunday with something that will be nice and boringly entertaining that I will not want to write about anywhere, I thought, I may not get to the yard for two weeks better do it today. I'll try to sneak a hike in next Sunday morning, perhaps Earthgirl will be healed enough to join me. At dinner with my parents last night for Father's Day with Planet and SeatSix, SeatSix asked me why I just don't make it either a Sillyass Deserted Island Six Game or add a fourth permanent post in the Five. Silly SeatSix.







I don't do this lightly - it's been years since I swapped out a permanent seat. It's not that I love Guided by Voices/Robert Pollard projects less, it's that in this time in my mind in my life in my notebooks on my hikes on my drives when falling asleep nothing pings my chords, triggers cascades, more than Lambchop, now the third permanent member of My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game.








HAPPINESS

Jane Kenyon

There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
                     It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.



5 comments:

  1. swept the street fair ,not fair ,past week end .. with 'er foot(s).. .

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  2. and nice sweet slow tell of lamb chop ,.. of a number , said sh' never has a stain on 'er bottom as she walks away because sh' always swif s 'er hand behind looking back at as sh' gets up from the feath ground ,never in bars/club s , just wanders , / i did note that ..low .. will be playing in a bar /club ,the 'shoe ,this coming week, / i talked a little with this fellow on the street "treeotica "of past weekend , he reminded me of david byrne in talking , byrne also around this past weekend here , /this david was in an empty shop front like he was carved out of that alcove like a tree , still er , /if you look at him playing on a film clip take note of his using his mou th as well on the branc h

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  3. and of another ..of music that you like , blac' , and of the truth of who that man,dating from ca broad.. . ing, seeing because of the ca broad casting and someth. else , of the truth of who he looked like , i teased on .. mike scott because he kept calling while i was playing .. i on a.. , as i mentioned this ..he said of others pointing out his looking a little like over the years , i directed his attention to a photo black and wht of mike scott looking down ,with a hat leather maybe , that yes he did look like this man in that , and of the aging mike scott,/ but of more telling , one night as we sat in a tub and i adjusted my lucy worsley bare tte ..and called him oscar wilde , the truth is that he looks like.. if christian fennesz and mike scott aging had a baby , of poetic .. . , of men's faces , and of my noting how character and face are always so fitting .. . /now to more than an .. endless summer .. .

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  4. Seems to me the point of there being a "permanent" member...well, you know where I'm going with this.

    New poet laureate: beneath mention? Thoughts?

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    Replies
    1. When GbV bumped out XTC I never thought they'd be bumped as I don't expect Lambchop to be bumped. I know Kate Bush and Pere Ubu/David Thomas will never be bumped. And it's a small innermost circle of people/acts rotating through the two non-assigned spots, GbV safely - even permanently - there.

      I like some of Wright's poetry. I think the Poet Laureate stupid beyond idiotic. Anyone who accepts the position - even my beloved Tony Hecht - is diminished a tiny bit to me.

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