Sunday, September 25, 2016

The Alphabet and the Cello Can Represent Horses but I Can Only Pretend to Be a Dog Slurping Pudding




SeatSix brought us these from the family home in Republic soon to be sold in the aftermath of my uncle's death. Steve's gas station was long ago sold - it's now a Marathon.

Today is Shostakovich's birthday - I am failing his music today, my fault the piano sonatas, fugues and preludes, trios, quartets, and quintets don't, failing the cello sonatas. It is also Mark Rothko's birthday. I thought of taking the ice-scrappers, those three plus one more yellow, turning them horizontal, two reds atop two yellows, atop a yellow piece of paper in tribute, but fuck that, fuck me. Fuck this. Getting closer.





  • So, Olive, yesterday. It's the composition I wanted, didn't mean to crop the ears, she would neither sit still nor make the face again despite my pleas(e).
  • Capitalism and representation.
  • HRC ❤ Goldman Sachs. Bill too. Obama. Motherfucking Democrats.
  • Motherfucking Democrats ❤ Netanyahu.
  • War criminals versus Trump. Sponsored by Bank of America.
  • Nobody knows what happens next.
  • Democracy! To recap, the Clinton campaign offered a front row seat at the debate to one of Trump’s longtime critics, and Trump, who himself has a long history of extramarital affairs, responded by indicating he might retaliate by seating Hillary Clinton’s husband’s former mistress in the front row, presumably in an attempt to gain some kind of psychological advantage over Clinton, the first woman to become a major party’s presidential nominee in American history.
  • One of my Hillaryite Colleagues tells me I have a moral obligation to watch tomorrow's debate. 
  • Tomorrow's debate will change not a single person's mind.
  • Today's Gass:




  • Not going to be a daily thing. I think.
  • We were in Second Story on Parklawn last night (Hamster - Eddie 948 works there), didn't find a used copy of Gass' The Tunnel (there was no Gass at all, novels or essays) though I did spend a buck on a Bantam mass market of Gravity's Rainbow, let me know if you want it. You are not obligated to finish it, though you are obligated to start it.
  • I also found a mass market of Gaddis' Recognitions. You can't have that.
  • Ghosts in the Land of Plenty. From 2014, tweeted out by friend just now, still (always) pertinent.
  • Lyttonsville. The one reason not to build the Purple Link is that bridge.
  • The bridge will be torn down, the Purple Line will never be built. Fine metaphor abound.
  • Maggie's weekly links.
  • { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
  • News of a new Pere Ubu album!
  • Oh, OK:






[A straight rain is rare]

Lyn Hejinian

A straight rain is rare and doors have suspicions
and I hold that names begin histories
and that the last century was a cruel one. I am pretending
to be a truck in Mexico. I am a woman with a long neck and a good burden
and I waddle efficiently. Activity never sleeps and no tale of crumbling cliffs
can be a short one. I have to shift weight favorably. Happiness
can’t be settled. I brush my left knee twice, my right once,
my left twice again and in that way advance. The alphabet
and the cello can represent horses but I can only pretend
to be a dog slurping pudding. After the 55 minutes it takes to finish
my legs tremble. All is forgiven. Yesterday is going the way of tomorrow
indirectly and the heat of the sun is inadequate at this depth. I see
the moon. The verbs ought and can lack infinity and somewhere
between 1957 when the heat of the dry sun naughtily struck me
and now when my secrets combine in the new order of cold rains
and night winds a lot has happened. Long phrases
are made up of short phrases that bear everything “in vain” or “all
in fun” “for your sake” and “step by step” precisely. I too can spring.


2 comments:

  1. 1)
    pudding in the poem
    pudding in the prose passage

    - make mine butterscotch, please

    2)
    war criminals versus trump -

    if kissinger endorses hillary, that would settle it for me and induce me to join with the majority of my countrymen in voting for our next president - better the devil you don't know than the devil you know

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great music and poetry. Thank you!

    ReplyDelete