Friday, December 27, 2019

It Is Undone Business I Speak Of, This Morning

  • Some post-giftmas post past I wrote about sitting on sofa drinking coffee thinking I need to shave but not moving to get up and shave, redux 2019
  • Log, Rachel Carson Trail, yesterday, all I want to do is hike with Earthgirl




  • I am not aghast, on page 10 of new black lighthouse, I do not remember the order of colors of the three previous lighthouses (I know the last was red/orange) though I did, last night, trying to fall asleep, playing one of the games I play to shut-off brain, in frightened preview at my future memory's failures via the maternal line, need to look up the name of the river through Zanesville, Ohio, Muskthis, Muskthat, google told me, on my fumbled in the dark phone, it's Muskingam
  • Rest in peace David Riley:











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

4 comments:

  1. Your link to working for silicon valley goes to something other than it's supposed to I'm guessing. I did work in silicon valley for years. Too bad the bay area has become such an awful place, back in the sixties before the advent of silicon valley it was a great place to live. Of course the Democratic Party is the enemy. Over at Black Agenda Report they call it the more efficient evil. I think that's right.

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    Replies
    1. My apologies, that's at least twice in the past week, sideways a bit, not double-checking like usual. Fixed now

      Delete
  2. this morning i encountered an interview with kurt vonnegut done in 1985 - interesting, to me at least

    i had the pleasure of hearing vonnegut talk in public twice - once at a unitarian gathering in upstate new york in the 1980s, in which he deplored reagan's use of the air force to kill muammar gaddafi's daughter*, once at johns hopkins university in the 1990s - he had a major influence on my theological outlook, even if part of that is something i was reading into what he wrote, rather than what was actually there [or maybe i actually grokked it - sometimes i think so]

    https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/27/kurt-vonnegut-anarchist-and-social-critic/

    *it's not quite clear what really happened to this particular person - accounts differ - see

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hana_Gaddafi

    so it goes

    https://tinyurl.com/kevinpotteronreadingvonnegut -

    I then remembered what Vonnegut once said to a group of students at Case Western Reserve University. After asking what life is all about, he delivers the answer: “We are here to help each other get through this thing … whatever it is.” ... This echoes, as well, the beautiful phrase Malachi Constant utters in The Sirens of Titan: “The true purpose of life, no matter who is in control, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”

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  3. kevin potter, quoted in my previous post because he was quoting vonnegut, is described as


    a lecturer and doctoral candidate in the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Vienna. He is originally from the U.S. and has lived abroad in Europe since 2013. He teaches courses on dystopian fiction and researches the intersection of migration, cultural politics, and critical theory.

    may he be healthy, wealthy, and wise

    ReplyDelete