For twenty-four hours this past Sunday afternoon and Monday morning, driving around Pennsylvania Wilds, going out to dinner, breakfast, hanging out and talking with my wife and daughter, hanging out and not needing to talk with my wife and daughter, I wasn't sideways at the world and didn't realize I wasn't sideways at the world until I was sideways at the world again, for twenty-four hours I was
Above done the evening after getting back from Pennsylvania, below done two nights ago, sideways again. I remember my sideways at America's 911 Vengeance Tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as much less visceral than today's sideways, dope that I was then I could curse the Supreme Court for gifting Bush the 2000 election and Bush for the Vengeance Tour, yes I know major Democrats supported but enough major Democrats objected that I could pretend my (then) team not as bloodshitty as Republicans, jesusfuck, what a dope, I should have been as sideways then as now but now's sideways makes then's sideways seem a joy ride
- Friendly colleague, tenured professor (edited and paraphrased for brevity): But Hamas attacked first and Gazans getting just retribution delivered upon them
- Me: Sigh
- FC, TP: I didn't peg you for an antisemite
Sigh. Links today done before this typed, when I scream at this Israelamerican war of choice and its atrocities and its barkers and cheerleaders and bloodshitty backers and especially the shitlords who profit by it (reminder: if this wasn't in shitlords interest - and this war is about MUCH more than Gaza and Israel - it wouldn't be happening on this scale with these goals) I hope it will only be through links and in the grid, I'm done typing about it here and writing about it in journal
CURRICULUM VITAE
Anthony Hecht
As though it were reluctant to be day,
Morning deploys a scale
Of rarities in gray,
And winter settles down in its chain-mail,
Victorious over legions of gold and red.
The smokey souls of stones,
Blunt pencillings of lead,
Pare down the world to glintless monotones
Of graveyard weather, vapors of a fen
We reckon through our pores.
Save for the garbage men,
Our children are the first ones out of doors.
Book-bagged and padded out, at mouth and nose
They manufacture ghosts,
George Washington's and Poe's,
Banquo's, the Union and Confederate hosts',
And are themselves the ghosts, file cabinet gray,
Of some departed us,
Signing our lives away
On ferned and parslied windows of a bus.
i hadn't heard of the pennsylvania wilds by that name before now - it sounds like it could be a nice place to visit
ReplyDeletei should have said it is a nice place to visit
Delete1/my maternal grandmother was from there, and in my childhood my family of origin would go visit relatives there - my great-grandfather lived to one hundred, and my brother has his clock
here's johnny cash singing the relevant song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0o8A4RccUY
1.5/i was told that his wife was concerned that my infant christening at first parish (unitarian) in framingham, massachusetts - where my parents were married, soon after world war ii - did not qualify as a "christian baptism" - with water, in the name of the father, son and holy spirit - putting my fate in the afterlife at risk - later the catholic priest who married missus charley and i also inquired about this - our own wedding was NOT a mass, so there was no problem, and my protestant relatives did not experience exclusion from the eucharist
2/soon after that wedding - at st ignatius r.c. church, baltimore - spouse and self traveled to punxatawny - also in the pennsylvania wilds area - a pilgrimage in honor of the spiritual journey immortalized in the film atrapado en el tiempo, also known as "el dia de la marmota"
3/as i've been writing this comment, youtube has gone from "grandfather's clock" to "cortez the killer" to "heart of gold"
4/all things must pass away