Sunday, December 8, 2019

An Ancient Woodland Indicator Called *Dark Dog’s Mercury*

Rose River Loop, Shenandoah National Park, yesterday with Earthgirl, an old favorite, saw bears first two times but none yesterday, not even scat on the trail, we only saw one beech out of thousands that still had ochre leaves, lordy, the light




  • The television set in the breakfast lounge of the Holiday Inn Express in Woodstock Virginia Sunday morning is tuned to CNN, the first lounge in three or four not tuned to the Weather Channel
  • Woodstock in Shenandoah Valley, northern end, between Harrisonburg and Winchester, good for access to Shenandoah, Massanutten, and George Washington hiking
  • Edinburg, five miles south, home to Sal's Italian Bistro, a family run restaurant in an old general store that makes good pizza (me) and great eggplant parm ( Earthgirl), Woodstock our current Virginia base of hiking-operations
  • One mother asks her kid if he wants sir-rup, another asks her kid if she want sear-rup
  • UPDATE! Dave? Dave's alive? or, *this* is why I keep cemeteries at the shitty blog, to see the awakened zombies!
  • All I want to do is hike with Earthgirl




  • On the television set in the breakfast lounge of the Holiday Inn Express in Woodstock Virginia tuned to CNN I just saw for the first time Pete Buttigieg move and speak and *this* is the fuck our sociopath overlords want to run in 2020 after Biden dies of stroke and our overlords assassinate Bernie?
  • Today in motherfucking Democrats
  • UPDATE! The head of Center for American Progress endorses Boris Johnson, or: crackers earn contempt, Democrats earn hate
  • Harvesting the blood of the poor, or: Our Sociopath Overlords Are Vampires 
  • Maggie's weekly links
  • I now know how to say Death to the Either/Or in Deustch: Schluß mit entweder/oder
  • Meanwhile at my twice Alma Mater and employer, John Thompson University, which can't raise a penny for new library but got $50M for an upgrade to the football field at a basketball school
  • Head yapping now on CNN tells me Cory Booker is SURGING! especially vs Sanders 
  • I vouch for Black Leopard, Red Wolf, I'd loan you mine but I gave it to SeatSix who, since he's said nothing since, hasn't read it or tried and hated it
  • The cusk of the matter, or, me too, adding, I thought I'd think about it more than I have
  • { feuilleton }'s weekly links 
  • Dogs Are Shakespearean, Children Are Strangers, or: Delmore Schwartz, born 106 years ago today
  • Thirty-nine years ago tonight I was lying in bed with my equally tripping girlfriend when WGTB (from John Thompson University) announced during mic break this guy had been shot, yes, this is the John song I always post






WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE
 
Forrest Gander
 
As grains sort inside a schist
 
An ancient woodland indicator called dark dog’s mercury
 
River like liquid shale
 
And white-tipped black lizard-turds on the blue wall
 
For a loss that every other loss fits inside
 
Picking a mole until it bleeds
 
As the day heaves forward on faked determinations
 
If it’s not all juxtaposition, she asked, what is the binding agent?
 
Creepy always to want to pin words on “the emotional experience”
 
Azure hoplia cockchafer, the caddisworm, the bee-louse, blister beetle, assassin bug
 
The recriminations swarm around sunset
 
When it was otherwise quiet all the way around
 
You who were given a life, what did you make of it?

4 comments:

  1. one of my paper dictionaries gives two ways to pronounce syrup, but my canadian dictionary does not

    the latter, the concise canadian oxford dictionary, notes that sirup is a particularly american spelling, and defines a newfoundland usage of the word to mean "a fruit-flavoured drink of water and syrup; a cordial"

    in addition to noting the word's arabic origin, and its relationship to sherbet, the ccod also suggests we compare it to the second sense of the word shrub - "a cordial made of sweetened fruit juice and spirits, especially rum" - see our friends at wikipedia for more information - they note that

    As used here, the term "shrub" is a metathetic variant of the word "shurb", derived from the Arabic word sharāb meaning "to drink"

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrub_(drink)



    it also gives a definition

    ReplyDelete
  2. Speaking of beech trees. Over Thanksgiving, as is our wont, Wisdoc and I went to the local thrift store near my mom's home in NC. I wound up buying three shirts I liked—very cheap, well-fitting, super comfortable, recognizable durable brands, like new. Two of them listed something called "Modal" as the chief ingredient. Never heard of it. Googled. Turns out it's made from BEECH cellulose. GTFOH. Who knew? ref. goodonyou.eco /material-guide-ethical-modal/

    ReplyDelete
  3. One thing after another...for three months straight, I was making paper in my basement. My music options were playing CDs or radio. The CDs would need to keep being changed, thus interrupting the paper making riddim, and the only channel that comes in decently on the radio is Classic Rock. I went for the Classic Rock, as the repetition of songs mirrored the repetition of paper making. I heard Steve Miller Band's The Joker 17 times, thought of you.

    ReplyDelete