Finished *Light in August* this past Saturday, ends weakly but first 19/20ths kablam, now I'm stuck, what to read next, search here and send me the permalink of what I should try to read next, I've failed the three novels I've tried since finishing the Faulkner, (a) it's too soon, I should know better after reading a kablam and (b) my clusterfuckitus raging, that encounter with a former favorite professor Sunday past still pinging in my head, all I can do for now is angrily blurt on canvas and bang out a grid with an even higher percentage of clusterfuckingfurious links than normal
The offer of the birthday card that suddenly wasn't has been claimed, you know who you are, it's now in the mail. Since the pints last Sunday and subsequent post Monday I've had three distinct opportunities, two at work and one in real life, to engage in clusterfuck conversations w rejuvenated and enthusiastic kamalapostles and chose not to share my kamalapostasies and not because, as with the person I'm related to by marriage, I did not want to yuck their yum but because I did not want to wreck my ruin. Reminder: Style Council > The Jam
THE LOON
James Tate
A loon woke me this morning. It was like waking up
in another world. I had no idea what was expected of me.
I waited for instructions. Someone called and asked me
if I wanted a free trip to Florida. I said, “Sure. Can
I go today?” A man in a uniform picked me up in a limousine,
and the next thing I know I’m being chased by an alligator
across a parking lot. A crowd gathers and cheers me on.
Of course, none of this really happened. I’m still sleeping.
I don’t want to go to work. I want to know what the loon is
saying. It sounds like ecstasy tinged with unfathomable
terror. One thing is certain: at least they are not speaking
of tax shelters. The phone rings. It’s my boss. She says,
“Where are you?” I say, “I don’t know. I don’t recognize
my surroundings. I think I’ve been kidnapped. If they make
demands of you, don’t give in. That’s my professional advice.”
Just then, the loon let out a tremendous looping, soaring,
swirling, quadruple whoop. “My god, are you alright?” my
boss said. “In case we do not meet again, I want you to know
that I’ve always loved you, Agnes,” I said. “What?” she said.
“What are you saying?” “Good-bye, my darling. Try to remember me
as your ever loyal servant,” I said. “Did you say you loved
me?” she said. I said, “Yes,” and hung up. I tried
to go back to sleep, but the idea of being kidnapped had me
quite worked up. I looked in the mirror for signs of torture.
Every time the loon cried, I screamed and contorted my face
in agony. They were going to cut off my head and place it on
a stake. I overheard them talking. They seemed like very
reasonable men, even, one might say, likeable.
https://wrlc-gu.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma991005321439704111&context=L&vid=01WRLC_GUNIV:01WRLC_GUNIV&lang=en&search_scope=WRLC_GT_CI&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&isFrbr=true&tab=Everything&query=any,contains,master%20and%20commander&sortby=date_d&facet=frbrgroupid,include,34660293424216438&offset=0
ReplyDelete1/what to read next - tom murphy, recovering astrophysicist, praised this book highly in one of his "metastatic modernity" talks - https://tinyurl.com/restlessjackson
ReplyDeleteit's not a novel, however
2/early in the summer I was looking at some material on Dialectical Behavioral Therapy - the central concept is Radical Acceptance - "it is what it is" - we don't have to like "the way things are", but we can see that right now things are that way - and we need not give outside conditions control over how we feel inside - easier said than done, of course - but that's the human condition - one could say "this glass is three-sixteenths full"
3/there's a bruce cockburn song "if i had a rocket launcher" - but i don't, do i?
4/the new aldi's opened in the last couple of weeks at the southern end of frederick road in g-burg - it has NO self-checkout stations - who knows if it's good or bad?
Bob Jensen wrote a fantastic book called The Restless and Relentless Mind of Wes Jackson. I was truly impressed both by the deep insights developed by Wes, and by the organization Bob brought to the book in distilling many years of scattered conversations into a coherent worldview. It may be the best book out there for conveying the full scope and origins of our predicament in a plain-spoken way.
ReplyDeletehttps://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2024/08/mm-13-a-species-out-of-context/#more-8537
Re: The Free Market @ Libertarians: you can always tell when a "grassroots movement" is fronting an Overlord goal: when the "grassroots movement" *actually makes things happen* (even if some of the "things that happened" are kind of good, the Bad outpaces and overwhelms the Good very quickly, like a screaming, fanged, blood-red horse running a 400m race against terrified Kenyans)...
ReplyDelete(To be more prosaic: I had a Libertarian in my Faceboot for nearly 4 years, very nice guy, a Libertarian Christian, I held back on my opinions until he died, but I did point out that a "Free Market" without a level playing field is a truly Lewis Carrollian-notion)
Re: Gaza: maybe the message is "actually, we (those in power) no longer give much of a fuckshit about what you (those who are only powerful if you unify in your billions, and how bloody likely is that to happen? ) like or don't like... so, yeah: watch or don't watch or whatever, Serfs. We like killing, we're good at it, you may be next."
I think the awful outrages are feeding the furnace of your Art Witch. Your Art Witch is already making fin de siècle statements and we just started this century of a fucking runny-shit-slog up the bloodclot slope of viscera(l) milestones. I watched a grinning bourgeois Aussie in a McDonald's service suit buleme (I invented that verb this moment) all over one of the jewels in the crown of a famous congenital underclass culture and stumbling upon your latest runes/spells helped immeasurably. The kids don't appear to be capable of fighting this war so here we are, intellectual cannon fodder, old as a Simon and Garfunkel medley, into the breach once more!
(i swear that entire outburst coheres from certain angles)