Conspiracy of Air, Conspiracy of Ice, the Silver Trout Is Thirsty for Morning, the Prairie Dog Shivers with Sweat

• Late today, dentist appointment early, then lap filled above with Rosie and Stanley instead of laptop.
• The Democratic Party as voter suppression tool of the GOP: I've been thinking about Earthgirl not voting this past Tuesday. Yes, the old conspiratorialist in me would have suggested that Triskelions ordered Team Democrat to suck this much - I mean beyond standard Triskelion orders that Team Democrat suck this much - in the two years between POTUS 12 and the 14 mid-terms to demoralize the Democratic base in a massive (and massively successful) voter suppression campaign. Planet and I have talked Democrat's suckful complicity in expanding, deepening, and accelerating the clusterfuck at Earthgirl relentlessly it's true, but Earthgirl is of her own well-informed mind (and people can vouch), and for her to say Fuck That and not walk the one hundred yards to a voting booth and not vote for the first time she's been eligible is a remarkable development.
• Actually, the old conspiratorialist in me was saying in early 2009 that the Obama presidency was ordained to lay the groundwork, under the banner of professional Democratic Liberalism, for the GOP demolition crew in 2017 and that Obama's last two years would be devoted to ensuring the death of the legacy of New Deal Democrats.
• On reading what he wrote 35 years earlier: Things are worse today, of course. The rise of Fox News, Bush Junior’s war crimes, Barack Obama’s disastrous entrenchment and expansion of the Permanent War State, the now-total takeover of society by the 1-Percenter Kleptocracy, the utter degradation of the national ‘debate’ and democracy itself:  the past's rough beasts have grown gargantuan, the lies are higher and wider, the rot is deeper. But in another sense, nothing had changed; and certainly, despite expending millions of furious words, I had changed nothing, nothing at all.
• Grapefruit moon with murmurations.
• WFMU has released it's Winter schedule. Good news! Hazleton and Jarnow and McDowell are back on the schedule! Bad news! Bodeh and Julie and Faye are gone. I wonder how this works - are DJs given the option to go or stay and all changes made according to those DJs who no longer want or are no longer able to do the show? Does Station Manager Ken look at fund-raising totals for individual DJs and say, You, get out! or, in one of his daily apoplectic fits scream I hate you, get out? When will I get my three hour show?

FOUR QUESTIONS CONCERNING THE DREAMS OF ANIMALS

Susan Stewart

1. Is it true that they dream?
  
      It is true, for the spaces of night surround them with shape and purpose, like a warm hollow below the shoulders, or between the curve of thigh and belly.
      The land itself can lie like this. Hence our understanding of giants.
      The wind and the grass cry out to the arms of their sleep as the shore cries out, and buries its face in the bruised sea.
      We all have heard barns and fences splintering against the dark with a weight that is more than wood.
      The stars, too, bear witness. We can read their tails and claws as we would read the signs of our own dreams; a knot of sheets, scratches defining the edges of the body, the position of the legs upon waking.
      The cage and the forest are as helpless in the night as a pair of open hands holding rain.

2. Do they dream of the past or of the future?

      Think of the way a woman who wanders the roads could step into an empty farmhouse one afternoon and find a basket of eggs, some unopened letters, the pillowcases embroidered with initials that once were hers.
      Think of her happiness as she sleeps in the daylilies; the air is always heaviest at the start of dusk.
      Cows, for example, find each part of themselves traveling at a different rate of speed. Their bells call back to their burdened hearts the way a sparrow taunts an old hawk.
      As far as the badger and the owl are concerned, the past is a silver trout circling in the ice. Each night he swims through their waking and makes his way back to the moon.
    Clouds file through the dark like prisoners through an endless yard. Deer are made visible by their hunger.
    I could also mention the hopes of common spiders: green thread sailing from an infinite spool, a web, a thin nest, a child dragging a white rope slowly through the sand.

3. Do they dream of this world or of another?

    The prairie lies open like a vacant eye, blind to everything but the wind. From the tall grass the sky is an industrious map that bursts with rivers and cities. A black hawk waltzes against his clumsy wings, the buzzards grow bored with the dead.
    A screendoor flapping idly on an August afternoon or a woman fanning herself in church; this is how the tails of snakes and cats keep time even in sleep.
    There are sudden flashes of light to account for. Alligators, tormented by knots and vines, take these as a sign of grace. Eagles find solace in the far glow of towns, in the small yellow bulb a child keeps by his bed. The lightning that scars the horizon of the meadow is carried in the desperate gaze of foxes.
    Have other skies fallen into this sky? All the evidence seems to say so.
    Conspiracy of air, conspiracy of ice, the silver trout is thirsty for morning, the prairie dog shivers with sweat. Skeletons of gulls lie scattered on the dunes, their beaks still parted by whispering. These are the languages that fall beyond our hearing.
    Imagine the way rain falls around a house at night, invisible to its sleepers. They do not dream of us.

4. How can we learn more?
  
    This is all we will ever know.