I Don't Even Know Where I Am, I Said. You'll Still Have to Leave, He Said

• I scrolled through the cemeteries yesterday, I had happy cause to think of one of the below
• Still dead but remembered as buds: Seb and Departure Delayed (though Brad's on twitter and we yap occasionally there) and anarchurious and what the Tee Vee taught and The Crow's Eye and scattershot and Randall (who I'm told by Prunella, who knows him in real life, went Angry White Male, dammit)  (Prunella and I yap all the time via twitter) and New Crown Vic and Mandl Overboard (though we still yap on twitter) and The Chagall Position (Edmond died, dammit) and Multi-Medium and Being Toward Death and Montag and 100 Flamingos and and what will be left of them? and Fried Green al-Qaedas and fish (fellow mocomofo, we twoot at the other) and Ketchup Is a Vegetable and The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows and Tarzie and Bomb Party and Marooned Off Vesta and Roasty and Frances (though we still email, and I post her magazine articles) and Our God Is Speed and If You Can Read This You're Lying and Between the Hammer and the Anvil and Jake Backpack and Thudner and (I apologize if I missed your zombie-ass) I'm the outliar 
• (sic)
• I've not moved ::: wood s lot ::: from it's top of Feedless to cemetery 
• or Tom Clark from bottom of Because
• I cemetery voluntary v mandatory
• (not on purpose but I'm not surprised)
• leave you living if I know you're dead 
• leave you dead if I think you're living
• Gaddis born 96 years ago today, here's the standard Egoslavian Holy Day post.
• Third bullet old itch triggered by new Tate (with ands for saids)
• Ducks, James Tate and Ducks, there's your doctoral thesis topic, happy giftmas
• There's new last James Tate poems, release next July, 
• there are four in the latest Poetry, title poem this post:

I Have Had to Learn the Simplest Things Last

• Earthgirl bought the indoor cats a battery-driven dual lazer-beam distraction
• Now that Nap an indoor half-the-time cat 
• daily indoor-only cat ladder match's ordered results fucked 
• (and they won't shut up about it)
• battery-driven dual lazer-beam distraction for cats a blessing
• Olive photo by Planet, giftmas day's best gift

 

• Valuable duh: thread.
• How much of the internet is fake?
• The life and death business of being a dog-walker.
• The third person I've seen in last year to yap about Fanny Howe, good think I have access to a university library's stacks and interlibrary loan service.
• frammenti.
• Book design in contemporary poetry.
• Gaddis (whose birthday is day after tomorrow): too much plasticity.
• I opened expanded both cemetary blogrolls on a whim, all the dead who I forget.
• At the other place.
• Charles Olson, who I do not hear like once I listened, me, not him, born 108 years ago today.
• I do like this post's title sentence's dual meaning on *last.*
• VITAL REMINDER! >

MAXIMUS, TO HIMSELF

CHARLES OLSON

I have had to learn the simplest things

last. Which made for difficulties.

Even at sea I was slow, to get the hand out, or to cross   

a wet deck.

               The sea was not, finally, my trade.

But even my trade, at it, I stood estranged

from that which was most familiar. Was delayed,

and not content with the man’s argument

that such postponement   

is now the nature of

obedience,

               that we are all late

               in a slow time,

               that we grow up many

               And the single   

               is not easily

               known

It could be, though the sharpness (the achiote)   

I note in others,

makes more sense

than my own distances. The agilities

               they show daily

               who do the world’s   

               businesses

               And who do nature’s   

               as I have no sense   

               I have done either

I have made dialogues,

have discussed ancient texts,

have thrown what light I could, offered   

what pleasures

doceat allows

               

               But the known?

This, I have had to be given,

a life, love, and from one man   

the world.

               Tokens.

               But sitting here

               I look out as a wind   

               and water man, testing   

               And missing

               some proof

I know the quarters

of the weather, where it comes from,   

where it goes. But the stem of me,   

this I took from their welcome,

or their rejection, of me

               And my arrogance

               was neither diminished   

               nor increased,

               by the communication

2

It is undone business

I speak of, this morning,   

with the sea

stretching out

from my feet

70th, 69th, 78th, 108th, 68th, 96th, 76th, 72nd, 60th

               
Three days ago was Rick Nielsen's 70th birthday, two days ago was Adrian Belew's 69th and Jorma Kaukonen's 78th, day after tomorrow Charles' Olson's 108th, three days from today Alex Chilton's 68th, four days from today William Gaddis' 96th, five days from today Michael Nesmith's 76th, six days from now Patti Smith's 72nd, six days from today Paul Westerberg's 60th.
              
                  



Apparently I still do birthdays here, especially the end of the calendar year cascade.

I am old.

Bleggalgaze to follow in upcoming days, or not.

The Most Generous Contribution I Can Afford

• I do need to move Zappa from top of blog, I haven't posted enough Fleabus here lately.
• This, the ultimate in futile weekend blogging, two days before giftmas, there are more bleggalgazes this time of year whether actual bleggalgazes or year end lists, bleggalgazing for people who insist they don't bleggalgaze.
• Bleggalgaze: posting when I want rather than when I need has increased the pace of dwindling pings, and I'm pleased this distresses me barely at all as compared to once (thank
• you if you are still here, that means as much to me as always).
• Fleabus isn't fading quite but her elderly decline into frailty has started, best cat ever.

• She and Rosie the only two of five indoor who don't mind Napoleon conversion into indoor cat
• (Napoleon's second home, the trailer classrooms of the elementary school across the street removed last month (in the middle of the night, two weeks of night, two to five in the morning, weird) he comes inside as soon as temp drops below forty).
• It seems I don't know enough English history to fully understand what Eliot's sometimes on about in Daniel Deronda, though her sentences alone will keep me reading
• (I have no plans to do research). 
• Lush as Raffles is old already, as is Grandcourt as Causabon, chord-wise.
• MomCat comes in side porch door three feet, stays until Olive comes to greet, bye!!

  

• Endless war has been normalized and everyone is crazy.
• I do hate me motherfucking Democrats (though
• the podestaneera War Against Sirota makes me laugh).
• I do hate me motherfucking Democrats (Biden edition).
• How the company that provides my free blogging platform tracks me, part one, part two.
• I've switched to protonmail and use the vpn it provides and use Duck Duck Go when searching, still use my free blogging platform because fuck me.
• Human nature matters.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• Zappadan appeared on one of my blogrolls. 
• Victoria Williams is 60 today.
• On Bernadette Mayer.

   

THE TRAGIC CONDITION OF THE STATUE OF LIBERTY

BERNADETTE MAYER

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Give me your gentrificatees of the Lower East Side including all the well-heeled young Europeans who’ll take apartments without leases

Give me your landlords, give me your cooperators

Give me the guys who sell the food and the computers to the public schools in District One

Give me the IRS-FBI-CIA men who don’t take election day off

Give me the certain members of the school board & give me the district superintendent

Give me all the greedy members of both american & foreign capitalist religious sects

Give me the parents of the punk people

Give me the guy who puts those stickers in the Rice Krispies

Give me the doctor who thinks his time is more valuable than mine and my daughter’s & the time of all the other non-doctors in this world

Give me the mayor, his mansion, and the president & his white house

Give me the cops who laugh and sneer at meetings where they demonstrate the new uses of mace and robots instead of the old murder against people who are being evicted

Give me the landlord’s sleazy lawyers and the deal-making judges in housing court & give me the landlord’s arsonist

Give me the known & unknown big important rich guys who now bank on our quaint neighborhood

Give me, forgive me, the writers who have already or want to write bestsellers in this country

Together we will go to restore Ellis Island, ravaged for years by wind, weather and vandals

I was surprised and saddened when I heard that the Statue of Liberty was in such a serious state of disrepair & I want to help

This is the most generous contribution I can afford.