What Silver World Mirrors Tarnished Lenses

•  2020 I'll remember as the year we, and by we I mean me using the cheap plastic toys Earthgirl got me for giftmas for this express purpose, my favorite giftmas present ever we both agree, began installing our own tree shrines in the knotholes of mostly beeches on the trails of Mocomaryland
• 2020 a far better year than 2019 personally, as in better for living loved ones, and I say that not hugging my daughter since March 8 2020
• We walked around Detroit that trip, ate in restaurants, spent an hour in a  narrow-aisled multi-leveled used bookstore sardine-chocked with old fucks like me
  
• I do not miss eating in restaurants, I don't drink in bars, I sorta miss used bookstores but feel sure I'm getting over it
• I have no idea why blooger is only displaying this post on the front page, not done by me and the settings still say the last five should be visible, goddamn my free blooging platform
  
• The vet says Fleabus is possibly in the early stages of old cat renal failure but with a change in diet and and medicine she will make it into 2021 which is two less than made it into 2020
• I'm three days away from 2021 but discover I can't take White's Ferry into the New Year, it's as loved a personal mocomonolith as any, my first date with Earthgirl, she can vouch, hiked Sugarloaf, rode back and forth across the Potomac on White's Ferry

I have little doubt, knowing what I know of the local lore of the ferry's owners, that while Rocklands may be assholes too, the ferry's owners are Bundyites and trumpstubborn	Here is Rockland's lawyering statement that the owners of White's Ferry have always been and still are whack assholes	Reminder: when Rockville, the county seat, removed it's Confederate Soldier statue, White Ferry's owner had it moved to White's Ferry	Reminder: the ferry itself is named the General Jubal Early, and for the first 50 years of my life three flagpoles one USA, one Maryland, one Stars and Bars	Reminder: when I posted the Poolesville Trump Store the weekend before the election I thought of the Confederate statue at White's Ferry
Driving to and from hike today WTOP made White's Ferry it's just before the top and bottom of the hour hard breaks tease for what came first after the hard breaks	It's 35 miles between Beltway bridge and Point of Rocks bridge but the impact is intensely local, for some Mocos Leesburg's the closest grocery store	Will be resolved, maybe not for months, years, even if there was the new bridge VA wants that's a ten year project, at least, yes? plus I *will* take a riot police club in the head in failing to stop it	Like you could show me wonders in your tiny box of tiny boxes I can show you mocospots you'd never know twenty miles from ground zero in a nuclear war	I have not pulled a car on and off White's Ferry, turned it off, got out, and stood by the side in almost ten years, so fuck me

 

The Triumph of Lunacy	<<<< "A left that had not been trained to hate itself would not have voted for Joe Biden."	Red are links, italic dark green w directional arrows & quotation marks are direct quotes from the link indicated by arrows, black is me	"A weak Biden Administration, unable to address the virus and the economic chaos it has caused, will quickly remind voters of the reasons why some of them opted for the former reality tv star in the first place." >>>>	Multicultural Neoliberalism versus Macho-National Neomercantilism
The Conservative Misunderstanding of Liberty	<<<< "Once you make human life out to be a competitive struggle to sink or to swim, you’re implying there’s no such thing as morality in the first place; hence, liberty becomes something other than a moral foundation."		“There are two symmetrical questions for the materialist left: (i) How to be antiracist without playing into the hands of the neoliberal wokewashers? (ii) How to be anticapitalist without ignoring the more than residual racial stratifications in contemporary capitalism?” >>>>	What's new about woke racial capitalism?
The End of Efficiency	Imagine thinking the entire political establishment "forgot" the average American instead of algorithmizing the average American and choosing profit first and always	^^^^^^^^ New giftmas hat Planet made me!	Life Beyond Markets	<<<< "The second takeaway from neoliberalism literature is that we should understand these policies not just as creating a certain kind of economic outcome or market, but also a kind of citizenship. They create market dependency through law and through political action."
"They moved ahead with executions in the middle of the night. They left one prisoner strapped to the gurney while lawyers worked to remove a court order. They executed a second prisoner while an appeal was still pending, leaving the court to then dismiss the appeal as “moot” because the man was already dead. They bought drugs from a secret pharmacy that failed a quality test. They hired private executioners and paid them in cash." >>>>	American exceptionalism execution-style		"Capitalism has a high threshold for needless death" >>>>>>>	Why the boss is happy to see you die
Maggie's weekly links	Greatest Creepiest Store Ever (especially the basement level)	^^^^^^^^ New installations via Earthgirl giftmas to me		Why should I bother?
{ feuilleton }'s weekly links	Poetry 2020	<<<< I vouch for the Göransson and the Gizzi, will check out the rest	Maximus born 110 years ago yesterday	^^^^^^^ "I’ve found some solace in something I’ve outlined lately–that most people I speak to in real life don’t buy into woke bullshit and actively despise both of our wretched political parties."
Tom Disch VILLANELLE FOR CHARLES OLSON		Another Blegsylvanian tradition worth remembering even if I don't participate any longer >>>	<<<< Jon Swift did me major multiple Kinds six Blegsylvanian centuries ago, if you are Kinding me but me not you let me know

 

HYPOSTASIS & NEW YEAR

Peter Gizzi

For why am I afraid to sing

the fundamental shape of awe

should I now begin to sing the silvered back of

       the winter willow spear

the sparkling agate blue

would this blade and this sky free me to speak

      intransitive lack –

 

the vowels themselves free

 

Of what am I afraid

of what lies in back of me of day

these stars scattered as far as the I

what world and wherefore

will it shake free

why now in the mind of an afternoon is a daisy

      for a while

flagrant and alive

 

Then what of night

of hours’ unpredicated bad luck and the rot

       it clings to

fathomless on the far side in winter dark

 

Hey shadow world when a thing comes back

comes back unseen but felt and no longer itself

       what then

what silver world mirrors tarnished lenses

what fortune what fate

and the forms not themselves but only itself the sky

by water and wind shaken

I am born in silvered dark

 

Of what am I to see these things between myself

       and nothing

between the curtain and the stain

between the hypostatic scenes of breathing

and becoming the thing I see

are they not the same

 

Things don’t look good on the street today

beside a tower in a rusting lot

one is a condition the other mystery

even this afternoon light so kind and nourishing

a towering absence vibrating air

 

Shake and I see pots from old shake

       and I see cities anew

I see robes shake I see desert

I see the farthing in us all the ghost of day

the day inside night as tones decay

       and border air

it is the old songs and the present wind I sing

and say I love the unknown sound in a word

 

Mother where from did you leave me on the sleeve

       of a dying word

of impish laughter in the midst my joy

I compel and confess open form

my cracked hinged picture doubled

 

I can’t remember now if I made a pact with the devil

       when I was young

when I was high

on a sidewalk I hear “buy a sweatshirt?” and think

buy a shirt from the sweat of children

       hell

I’m just taking a walk in the sun in a poem

      and this sound

caught in the most recent coup