Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Feathers Fluffed the Ashtray Bin at the Bottom of the Elevator

Blumen - back in the nine to midnight time slot his show deserves - played new Ashtray Navigations, I am allowed to play Ashtray Navigations when Earthgirl is in the car as long as she can use the dump switch on particular songs



Also too, Earthgirl's on a hot streak, her palette expanding, her technique evolving



Also too, when I sat at picnic tables every summer evening on Sugarloaf until just before closing and read - this was before the internet was all inclusive - and read in bed, and read in the daytime and before sleep, I kept a list of novels read (long since incinerated because tonsure's my pleasure). I don't finish novels anymore, and not just because of my eyes. I listen to music as voraciously as always, and I read poetry not as voraciously as once but daily until my eyes hurt, but I lose all forward impetus in every novel I start, I lose interest, it's not only my getting older faster the fuck with getting older faster and can't concentrate much less organize like once (though I am getting older and can't concentrate or organize like once), and strangest: I don't seem to care as an option for the first time, and worse, and/or better, I can envision abandoning my rule of fifty plus years that I must always be working a novel

The last novel I read that I finished that stayed in me beyond the day I finished it was Ishiguro's *Clara and the Sun* this past Spring, but the only first read novel in the past five years that imprinted on me and remains imprinted is Marlon James' *Black Leopard, Red Wolf,* the first in a trilogy, and I discovered yesterday the second of the trilogy, *Moon Witch, Spider King,* released this coming February (I stalled in Mantel's third of Cromwell Trilogy (and have no intention of going back) (when was the last time you thought about much less read the Deptford Trilogy? the Balkan Trilogy? I burned lists with multiple rereadings of both included)). Will attempt to reread *BL, RW* before reading *MW, SK,* no doubt fucking up my reading of both.

My friend H responded to my inquiry about Fleur Jaeggy, recommended, I got my hands on one, I have access to a university library, ten pages in I loved it, thirty pages in I'm done, fuck me





Permission and the fall of oligarchies?
The fascinating world of corporate sabotage!
Democrats ratfuck too
Influencer society and its future
Life in the Magic Kingdom
Remembering the crime of war
Pleasure and the genesis of anxiety
The Chorus#1221Mammoth
Tyme masheenThe foyer insideNobel odds



YOU CAN'T WARM YOUR HANDS IN FRONT OF A BOOK BUT YOU CAN WARM YOUR HOPES THERE

Fanny Howe

Feathers fluffed the ashtray bin at the bottom of the elevator. Feathers and a smeared black look littered the parking lot like mascara. A cage would glide back and let them out to merge with the other cars on La Brea. It looked as if a struggle had ended in tears between the bird and an enemy. She broke through the fear to examine it. No chicken claws, or comb, no wing, no egg. The neutrality of words like “nothing” and “silence” vibrated at her back like plastic drapes. How could there be a word for silence? A child’s lips might blow, the North wind bring snow, a few stars explode, boats rock, but whatever moved in air did not by necessity move in ears and require the word “silence” therefore. She had personally sunk to a level where she could produce thought, and only “violence” remained a problem. It was common in her circle. A bush could turn into a fire, or a face at a clap of the hand could release spit and infection. The deviants were like herself unable to control their feelings. Los Angeles for them was only hostile as a real situation during the rainy season when torrents ripped down the sides of the canyons and overnight turned them sloshy. Then they hid in underground places, carrying Must the Morgue be my Only Shelter?? signs. But the rest of the time the sort of whiteness spread out by a Southland sun kept them warm, and they could shit whenever they wanted to, in those places they had long ago staked out. My personal angel is my maid, said one to another, putting down his Rilke with a gentle smile.

1 comment:

  1. 1/that's a good looking painting of a house and fence

    2/this morning i experienced a moment of wonder - i came out of my own house at 6 a.m. to pick up the paper and looked at the sky - it was partly cloudy and the moon was partly obscured by one of the clouds/one of the clouds was lit by the moon - the trees, the other houses against the skyline - to me it was quite beautiful, reminiscent of magritte's 'empire of light' but i was in the middle of it

    2.5/there came to my mind the following text, which i have sung in church more than once over the past six or seven decades


    For the Beauty of the Earth

    Folliott Sandford Pierpoint (1835-1937)


    For the beauty of the earth,
    For the splendor of the skies,
    For the love which from our birth
    Over and around us lies:

    Source of all, to You we raise
    This our hymn of grateful praise.

    For the joy of ear and eye,
    For the heart and mind’s delight,
    For the mystic harmony
    Linking sense to sound and sight:

    Source of all, to You we raise
    This our hymn of grateful praise.

    For the wonder of each hour
    Of the day and of the night,
    Hill and vale and tree and flower,
    Sun and moon and stars of light:

    Source of all, to You we raise
    This our hymn of grateful praise.

    my source for this text is harvardsquarelibrary.org, a donation-supported site for unitarian universalist intellectual heritage materials

    they mention that the author, a british poet and hymnist, taught classics and served as a schoolmaster in southwest england

    wikipedia further informs us that he was a devout tractarian - an adherent of a point of view that developed into the oxford movement and anglo-catholicism

    i know from my own lived experience that the phrase "Source of all" - as it is uttered in unitarian circles - has been modified from the poet's original "Lord of all"

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