Tuesday, November 23, 2021

The Radio Operator's Name Is Sparks

Slowest week of the Blegsylvanian year I type this week every year but wasn't going to this year though it's also the bleggalgaziest because it's the slowest, but then I just watched The Sparks Brothers which spent five minutes celebrating one of this shitty blog's two Bleggalgazing Anthems



People can vouch. If you like Sparks you'll love them after seeing the documentary, if you love Sparks like me you'll adore Sparks after seeing the documentary. 

O, hey! I have two tickets to see Sparks at Lincoln Theater on U Street on March 23, 2022 on the condition the world not destroyed by then! 2nd ticket gleefully claimed, happy laugh




I'm stupid for Sparks. Remember the guy who youtubed himself reading his poems that I posted here? Ran into him on campus and he turned and ran away, I had sent him Joyelle McSweeney's Toxicon & Arachne which he said he admired (I sent him some of my poems at his request which he praised then hinted to help me get published in small mags but I said no), and then I sent him Johannes Göransson's (McSweeney's husband) The Sugar Book, he emailed me as soon as he received it, called it an example of the disgusting disturbing trend in modern poetry (without elaborating further) and cut off all communication with me, not responding to my O, say more email, not sending another youtube of his poetry, now running from me when he saw me on campus, today in bleggalgazing (and fine metaphors abounding)



Haven't link mined since the last post and no grid today though do see this and this and this. The compulsion to post remains but the compulsion to post at regular intervals now feels like a job and fuck that. The recurrent complaint regarding the increasing duhiness of reiterating the accelerating pace towards and sheer volume of our impending death by duh depresses yes but doesn't shut me up mostly, this the slowest week of the Blegsylvanian year notwithstanding

I'm sideways too, reading Murnane again reminds me how his fascination with personal lodestar events and images is my fascination with personal lodestar events and images, when I knew I would write about the Sparks documentary past weekend I remembered the Silliman poem below so I'd have the title of the post but also remembered the last line of the poem which triggers my worse constant nightmare, the Humane Society tv ad I saw fifty years ago where a guy in a pick-up drives to a dead end, gets out of the truck with his dog, throws a tennis ball into the woods and when the dog races after it the guy gets in his truck and drives off, the dog comes back to where the truck was parked, the dog drops the ball, his tail stops wagging, there is not a single day I don't think of this and not a single dog I meet that I don't think of this and every time I think of this I'm thrown completely sideways, all my dark started then



YOU, PART 1

Ron Silliman


Hard dreams. The moment at which you recognize that your own death lies

in wait somewhere within your body. A lone ship defines the horizon. The

rain is not safe to drink.

In Grozny, in Bihac, the idea of history shudders with each new explosion.

The rose lies unattended, wild thorns at the edge of a mass grave. Between

classes, over strong coffee, young men argue the value of a pronoun.
 

When this you see, remember. Note in a bottle bobs in a cartoon sea. The

radio operator’s name is Sparks.
 

Hand outlined in paint on a brick wall. Storm turns playground into a

swamp. Finally we spot the wood duck on the middle lake.
 

The dashboard of my car like the keyboard of a piano. Toy animals anywhere.
 

Sun swells in the morning sky.
 

Man with three pens clipped to the neck of his sweatshirt shuffles from one

table to the next, seeking distance from the cold January air out the coffee

house door, tall Styrofoam cup in one hand, Of Grammatology in the other.

Outside, a dog is tied to any empty bench, bike chained to the No Parking

sign.

2 comments:

  1. there was dog mistreatment in a kdrama spouse and self were watching last night - 'come and hug me' - despite the title it is NOT a warm fuzzy kind of show, at least not at the beginning - but there was a statement on the screen that professionals had supervised the animal scenes

    Come and Hug Me wishes to tell the viewers that although life may not be full of miracles, there is still that small hope of its getting better. Such is life. Sometimes, you are grateful and happy that you are alive, but then you lose the reason to live when you gradually lose things or people that are dear to you. When you face hardship, you start to wonder if living just means you are walking down a path of misery. However, while you are walking down that path alone, there comes a time when you become desperate for someone's hand. That hand may save you from lingering in your own misery and may also spark the desire to live although life is full of hardship. This drama shows that exact moment when two hands reach out to each other and bloom, keeping one another warm and safe.

    https://www.viki.com/tv/35834c-come-and-hug-me

    ReplyDelete
  2. I wonder if the guy turned and ran away like that dog, i.e. to return and find you gone.

    ReplyDelete