One Minute We Were Up to Our Necks in Rebelliousness, and the Next, Peace Had Subdued the Ranks of Hellishness

• His obsession with The Necks.
• I know better than to post on weekends yet post on weekends. I know better than to post on the Sunday of a three-day weekend and usually don't.
• Tomorrow is Lennon's birthday and I want to post The Necks because of that wonderful article above while I am spending the afternoon listening to my Necks CDs.
• I don't want to wait until Tuesday to post Necks pieces and I can't post them Monday.
• I don't listen to The Beatles anymore - I don't need to, I can hear any song - any Lennon solo song - in my head whenever I want and far too frequently when I don't.
• I have stupid rules about what I can and can't do and judge myself on moral adherence to stupid rules.
• Like what I can't write about here. Like what I can write about here but don't.
• There will be at least one Lennon song here tomorrow.
• Three new things I can't write about here the past two days.
• Two I understand, one I don't, as in, The fuck?
• Life in the Trollocene: new shit by the minute I can write about but won't.
• Thus: a post on the Sunday of a three day weekend.

• I also wanted X, Y, and Z off blogtop.
• Dear Life, our future is in your hands.
• The Eternal Return of Benign Colonialism: Does imposition make legitimizing colonization impossible? This is the question that Gilley and all those that proceed him are unable to bear. This is the doubt that must be ignored at all costs – even as it hovers low and bright on their horizon. It illuminates the tragic blemish on the Western self – a stain that can neither be removed nor admitted. 
• The Destruction of the Third World.
• Sing same: gun control.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• #742.
• Something wonderful may happen.

A WORLDLY COUNTRY

John Ashbery

Not the smoothness, not the insane clocks on the square,

the scent of manure in the municipal parterre,

not the fabrics, the sullen mockery of Tweety Bird,

not the fresh troops that needed freshening up. If it occurred

in real time, it was OK, and if it was time in a novel

that was OK too. From palace and hovel

the great parade flooded avenue and byway

and turnip fields became just another highway.

Leftover bonbons were thrown to the chickens

and geese, who squawked like the very dickens.

There was no peace in the bathroom, none in the china closet

or the banks, where no one came to make a deposit.

In short all hell broke loose that wide afternoon.

By evening all was calm again. A crescent moon

hung in the sky like a parrot on its perch.

Departing guests smiled and called, "See you in church!"

For night, as usual, knew what it was doing,

providing sleep to offset the great ungluing

that tomorrow again would surely bring.

As I gazed at the quiet rubble, one thing

puzzled me: What had happened, and why?

One minute we were up to our necks in rebelliousness,

and the next, peace had subdued the ranks of hellishness.

So often it happens that the time we turn around in

soon becomes the shoal our pathetic skiff will run aground in.

And just as waves are anchored to the bottom of the sea

we must reach the shallows before God cuts us free.