Sunday, May 20, 2018

The Green Rooms of the Abandonarium



  • Fifth draft, last draft, I promise myself. Bigger here.
  • A friend gave me a copy of Sergio de la Pava's new novel Lost Empress, I've been waiting impatiently, I'd heard good things, and admired if not exactly liked de la Pava's Naked Singularity, and I obviously agree with anyone who thinks motherfucking helmetball a Prime metaphor for the - this is the last time I do this until the next - American clusterfuckocene.
  • I'm 0 for 3 ABs v Lost Empress all on called strikes.
  • It's sloppy, self-indulgent, loud, disorganized, impressed with display over content, the fucker.
  • I cut the above page out of Tablet - I promised myself no more tablet talk here - and I cut it out without thinking about it - I thought, this is too close to the page gap, I'll never scan that right - but I just up and cut tablet, I am telling you three times....
  • Fourth at bat I broke my bat and squiggled a shitty infield hit, but it will still be a hit in the box score. 











EXTREME WISTERIA

Lucie Brock-Broido

On abandon, uncalled for but called forth.
                                                                              The hydrangea
Of   her crushed each year a little more into the attar of   herself.
Pallid. Injured, wildly capable.
A throat to come home to, tupelo.
                                                Lemurs in parlors, inconsolable.
Parlors of burgundy and sleigh. Unseverable fear.
Wistful, woke most every afternoon
                                In the green rooms of the Abandonarium.
                                                Beautiful cage, asylum in.
Reckless urges to climb celestial trellises that may or may not
                                 Have been there.
So few wild raspberries, they were countable,
                                 Triaged out by hand.
Ten-thousand-count Egyptian cotton sheets. Intimacy with others,
                                 Sateen. Extreme hyacinth as evidence.
Her single subject the idea that every single thing she loves
                                 Will (perhaps tomorrow) die.
High editorial illusion of   “Control.” Early childhood: measles,
                                                                              Scarlet fevers;
Cleopatra for most masquerades, gold sandals, broken home.
Convinced Gould’s late last recording of the Goldberg Variations
Was put down just for her. Unusual coalition of early deaths.
Early middle deaths as well. Believed, despite all evidence,
In afterlife, looked hopelessly for corroborating evidence of   such.
                                                                                          Wisteria, extreme.
There was always the murmur, you remember, about going home.



2 comments:

  1. 1

    i went to the 'african anthropocene' link, thought it made an excellent point, and left a comment - right now it appears there, but as it could be interpreted as racist - not my intent, i assure you, i am among the least racist people you could ever meet - it may be deleted

    it's the joke where tonto says, "what you mean 'we', white man?"

    2

    and speaking of '-ocenes' - and of the wild west - "home, home on the range...where never is heard a discouraging word" - some people have a tendency to overdue the discouraging words, in my opinion -

    speaking from my own autobiographical experience, in college a young woman with whom i was never physically intimate told me i was rather like the character 'eeyore' in the winnie the pooh books - over the course of years i came to understand what she meant and have tried to moderate this tendency

    2a

    as the applied philosophy collective 'monty python' pointed out, look on the bright side - of life, and of death [this relates, in a way, to matthew sweeney's current situation, discussed in your link 'posthumous oblivion']

    2b

    anyway, like the free range mom running for county council [danielle meitiv] i recognize that the situation is serious, but i consider that efforts to ameliorate it are still worthwhile, and so i have, for several days, wanted to find ways to express this - that it's darkest before the dawn, that there is still hope for truth, beauty and love in this cruel world


    2c


    and then, this morning, while reading a norwegian master's thesis on shantideva's most famous work - the BCA - i came across these words from the dalai lama, from a talk in january 2009 -

    The core of the Buddha’s teachings, he continued, is the concept of dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda), a term that would come up frequently throughout his explanation of the texts. In Mahāyāna Buddhism it is the idea that all things are interconnected, subject to causes and conditions, and on ultimate analysis can be said to be “empty” (śūnyatā) as they do not have independent existence. Its philosophical ramifications are dealt with specifically in the 9th chapter of the BCA. In his short introductory discussion of this concept the Dalai Lama brought up the challenges of global warming as a good example of this. Global warming, he suggested, is a result of humankind not paying heed to the effects our lifestyle can have on the environment. It is a worldwide problem and one that illustrates that our lives are all interconnected, and that no solution can be reached if the whole world does not work together to solve it. When we understand how interdependent our lives are we will easily develop compassion for our fellow beings who we see are in the same situation as our selves. In this short introduction then the Dalai Lama elegantly summed up the central teaching of Mahāyāna, the need to develop wisdom (prajñā), the insight into dependent origination, and skillful means (upāyakauśalya), compassionate techniques that can alleviate the suffering (duḥkha) of the world.


    https://www.duo.uio.no/handle/10852/24076


    2d

    interdependentocene
    skillfulmeansocene
    wisdomeocene
    compassionocene
    alleviationofdukkhaocene
    implementationofthepowerofloveocene


    2e

    q.how's the future of humankind, the biosphere, and the planet?
    a. compared to what?

    ReplyDelete
  2. ,linh dinh, at his postcards... blog, expresses an anti-academic opinion:

    To write, one should read very carefully, that’s all. See all the different ways Hemingway or Annie Proulx build a sentence, for example. Teachers and writing workshops aren’t just useless, for the most part, but likely harmful, for you’re prone to be learning from not just a failed writer but someone who’s hustling for a deeply corrupt and intellectually crippling institution, an American university. On top of that, you’ll receive idiotic inputs from your fellow students. Although people can learn directly from Celine, Paul Bowles and Whitman, etc., at minimal cost, many are still willing to go into suicidal debt to receive instructions from a cast of dishonest incompetents, and they do this because they’re much more interested in networking than writing.


    https://linhdinhphotos.blogspot.com/2018/05/ben-niespodziany-interviews-me.html

    ReplyDelete