Tuesday, December 29, 2020

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 trumpstubbornHere is Rockland's lawyering statement that the owners of White's Ferry have always been and still are whack assholesReminder: when Rockville, the county seat, removed it's Confederate Soldier statue, White Ferry's owner had it moved to White's FerryReminder: 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 BarsReminder: 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 breaksIt'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 storeWill 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 itLike 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 warI 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 EfficiencyImagine 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 linksGreatest Creepiest Store Ever (especially the basement level)^^^^^^^^ New installations via Earthgirl giftmas to me Why should I bother?
{ feuilleton }'s weekly linksPoetry 2020<<<< I vouch for the Göransson and the Gizzi, will check out the restMaximus 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

7 comments:

  1. Bottom line, they're both dicks because the ferry should be viewed as a public good. But as I told you privately, it's not hard for me to imagine the Maryland side walking away from trying to deal fairly, and you're sure not wrong about the wrongness that envelops both sides of the river up there.

    I am wondering about who in MoCo is closer to Leesburg (via Jubal Early) than to Darnestown (or Urbana), other than...hmm, people who live at that end of Whites Ferry Road, which is not a lot of people. But I admittedly don't know every crater and holler in the Reserve quite as well as you do. And it's unfortunate that capital doesn't think Poolesville can support a grocery store because of the intense competition from the Dollar Store and the Darnestown HT.

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    Replies
    1. I always forget about that Harris Teeter (it's kind of amazing how little we are at that stoplight considering how much hiking we do around there), in my mind the closest Moco grocery to Poolesville since Selby's shut down the Quince Orchard Safeway

      Harris Teeter sucks. More expensive, stupidass checkout stations

      Delete
    2. Disagree. HT isn't more expensive if you pay attention, the produce is better, and the QO Safeway is filthy and never has more than two registers open. Your formerly disgusting Safeway is now okay, as I recall. But I used to live at Four Corners, which murdered Safeway for me. On yet another hand, at least Safeway is a UFCW shop, which HT ain't.

      Delete
    3. We like HT, the QO Safeway is getting decrepit, and you will recall that (like you) I know a decrepit Safeway when I see one. HT isn't so expensive if you join the club and pay attention, and I now get the five percent senior discount there on Thursdays. Woot. What I will say for Safeway (and Royal Dutch Giant, where I also don't go any more unless it's convenient and I only need one thing) is that it's a UFCW shop, which HT ain't. That does count for something in my book.

      But it's a local thing that we have fierce feelings about our grocery stores, no?

      Delete
    4. Yikes. Didn't mean to double up that comment, thought Gargle ate the first one. Sorry about that.

      And yes, roll bass video, I was thinking about you and MOM when I wrote.

      Delete
  2. i like how you're finding ways of using the grid format

    i enjoyed your extensive coverage of white's ferry - it's gone forever, it might be back - who knows if it's good or bad

    after reading gizzi's poem i read in wikipedia about the farthing - it was not demonetized until 1961

    The purchasing power of a farthing from 1860 to its demise at the beginning of 1961 ranged between 12p to 2p in 2017 values.




    ReplyDelete