Blessed and motherfucking Serendipity fucks with me: I accept gratefully. First, I hear news that music from Pere Ubu's latest release Carnival of Souls is being used as incidental music on some motherfucking Fox motherfucking gratuitously violent shit show; second, I remember that tomorrow is Robert Pollard's birthday, and fuck me. Yes, My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game. Do I regret bumping Pollard out of one of the three permanent seats to make room for Lambchop? I'm seeing Lampchop five weeks from tomorrow night, opening for Yo La Tengo, Yo La Tengo being one of the bands in the innermost circle of bands that rotate in and out of the two open spots in My Sillyass Deserted Island Game. I do not regret removing Pollard from a permanent seat but I do regret installing Lambchop into a permanent seat. When I discovered yesterday that Pere Ubu (which has a permanent seat on My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game) is providing incidental music for a shitty Fox gratuitously violent and creepy show IT DID NOT PISS ME OFF. What the fuck is happening to me? I discovered yesterday that while I do not regret removing Robert Pollard from a permanent seat on My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game and though I do regret installing Lambchop in a permanent seat on My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game I don't feel like anguishing over the seat or anguishing over the stupid game, I feel like anguishing I am not anguishing over the motherfucking game. This is the root of my problem with self-enforced damnlessness: I am not always capable of selectively choosing where damn is decreased. My damn-switch raises and lowers my damn's volumn across most spectrums, and while by and large this is perhaps a plus in a process to find the correct balances, I find I feel the minuses more.
- Kate's permanent seat is safe as long as I can summon a smidgen of damn.
- One ticket remains for the Yo La Tengo/Lambchop show - it turns out Earthgirl WAS setting up Hamster, Hamster said no, credit Earthgirl for asking; whenever I am at the stoplight on Rockville Pike, heading north, at Tuckerman, looking at the Grosvenor station, I will remember the look on Hamster's face when he realizes he WAS being set up, I swear, Brother, I DID NOT KNOW!
- Involuntary simplicity?
- The posthuman and the information guerrilla.
- Relocation (the new ABCs).
- For the record, once I would have been furious if Pere Ubu provided incidental music for ANY mainstream production, not just fucking Fox - Clapton's Michelob commercial in the 70s: the outrage would have been as great if the beer had been Schlitz.
- Altschmerz.
- Thomas Pynchon pranks the National Book Awards (circa 1974).
- Well, I liked (and Planet liked) the Bob Ross/death thrash mash-up last night.
- RIP Galway Kinnell. While he didn't rock my world, his passing needs noting.
- Woke up with this Reivers' song in my head.
REBUS
Jane Hirshfield
You work with what you are given,
the red clay of grief,
the black clay of stubbornness going on after.
Clay that tastes of care or carelessness,
clay that smells of the bottoms of rivers or dust.
Each thought is a life you have lived or failed to live,
each word is a dish you have eaten or left on the table.
There are honeys so bitter
no one would willingly choose to take them.
The clay takes them: honey of weariness, honey of vanity,
honey of cruelty, fear.
This rebus—slip and stubbornness,
bottom of river, my own consumed life—
when will I learn to read it
plainly, slowly, uncolored by hope or desire?
Not to understand it, only to see.
As water given sugar sweetens, given salt grows salty,
we become our choices.
Each yes, each no continues,
this one a ladder, that one an anvil or cup.
The ladder leans into its darkness.
The anvil leans into its silence.
The cup sits empty.
How can I enter this question the clay has asked?
