Sunday, November 18, 2018

Summoned By This Self-Indulgent Ouija


  • From 2016, above, I have not voluntarily used a pen on paper in a tablet in months, at least two, I think four, maybe more.
  • Uwe Johnson? Annivesaries? Anyone? Deronda isn't working.
  • Trump photo-optd standing in California ashes, the forest wasn't raked enough, he said.
  • Everything you thought you knew about Western Civilization is wrong.
  • Empire's Racketeers.
  • How fascism happens.
  • Drifting rightward
  • On the problem of civility.
  • Cheated out of both Spring and Fall this year here, I didn't walk at lunch last winter like I walk at lunch now, I'm walking through this winter whenever able, configuring my shells now, and I need new boots to break in for Spring on dry days while I ruin the boots I own wintering wet.
  • They will never fuck off to the sea, and she or her corpse are running in 2020.
  • Notice how Kayfabe has withdrawn Trump's breaking? broke his invincibility...
  • Trump thinks Pence Trotsky,
  • wrong there, but Trump's soft Khashoggian ending now tops Power's agenda.
  • Maggie's weekly links.
  • >>                            <<
  • My handwriting now, I can't read it, is finest of skunky metaphors abounding...
  • I think it a better, or at least different fuckit than past Darks, bit I think the same about every new tablet
  • Leonard Cohen's afterlife.
  • { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
  • Horses is forty.
  • Wojnarowicz.
  • When Husker Du covered The Byrds.
  • I had cause to think of Minor Threat.





MY LIMBO

Roddy Lumsden

It doesn’t take the full-wind sickness,
just the mere, the constant threat of it,
just the salt trace, its faint knocking
to bring the spirits of chance and chaos
into this house - they stand in doorways:
quaint, foul allies, swivelling their ghost hips,
tugging at their gowns of transparency
and mischief. They buzz me with lust,
and I’m undone.
                        Remember these: the Cupid
who ducked up from behind a wall and aimed
an arrow, one evening on Broughton Street;
whatever grabbed my shoulder at Earlshall;
a sound of heavy boxes pushed up and down
the empty hallway; the past is the self’s ghoul.
What is it, Roddy, you know you’ve blocked out?
What left your brain so empty that it gushed full
with circus music and the safe bet of trivia?
Here I am swinging on the fence of fences, in limbo,
where the other world loves to try my pragmatism
and it’s I who have invited them, summoned
by this self-indulgent ouija.
                                        But what is it
that folds my clothes as I sleep and leaves them
on the edge of the bed? Who hides my slippers,
re-hangs the paintings? Deja vu. Did a minor
goddess filch me in Manila and follow me home,
prone, as they are, to easy-led mortal men.
And I’m easy, easy. So, come now, teach me
to believe in the soul. Hurt me with the truth. Press
me back down on this cheap, wine-coloured carpet;
let me know for once and for all how fucked I am.

6 comments:

  1. Hm. Interesting. Hadn't heard of him. He won the Büchner Prize the year after Thomas Bernhard.

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  2. i like paul street's phrase from the 'how fascism happens' article you link to

    The Inauthentic Opposition Party

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  3. speaking of circus music. as roddy lumsden does, i very much enjoy this musical and humorous cover of 'for the benefit of mr kite' by mila fá

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L09y7ia3urQ

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  4. roddy lumsden writes teach me to believe in the soul -

    and speaking of belief, and the soul, if any, a comment by me - on an op-ed piece in the nytimes about the crisis of the catholic church - has become the eighth-most-recommended comment on that piece, with endorsements from 94 readers -

    https://nyti.ms/2Ds8RpD#permid=29439892

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  5. The bad faith both-siderism of the Counterpunch article is as bad as, if not worse than, that of the Sabbath Gasbag Beltway pundits. It's whataboutism every bit as simplistic as a Trump Jr. blather. Once again, to equate Obama to Thatcherist/Reaganist neo-liberalism is a canard as bereft of truth as practically every Trumpian tweet. It's pure bullshit (vide Frankfurt monograph) designed to lure the disgruntled marginally informed into a false sense of smug superiority, give them talking points to shout down any real, meaningful, useful critique of the shortcomings of today's Democrats. In its self-defining 'pitchforks and torches' oppositionism to all things Obama/Clinton, it actually serves to prop up the current Trumpian shit show regime. (e.g., see the 2016 election) Whether this is its intent is certainly debatable, but whether this is its effect cannot be.

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  6. Cannot end well, man. Hike as much as you can.

    ReplyDelete