S'been awhile since a manic spastic shout (believe me), more below the first grid
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THE VILLAGE OF SLEEP
John Ashbery
Why, we must dye it then –
Would I like to stay here indefinitely?
We have trees to prune, cryptograms to decode,
it was all a blind running into the light –
She couldn’t say the word for ‘fish’. Nor are his genes undone
by what oafish submarines remain. Aye, sir,
Captain Nemo, sir, we’ve spotted the junk
in the roads up ahead. What! That spasm I created for my own diversion, now
it’s clearly emerging out of the octopus drool that so long enshrouded it,
while I, a nether spur to its district railway, am overrun with
coughing doubt for the duration, yet here I must stand,
a seeming enigma. Outside, life prattles on merrily,
like an embroidered towel, and would probably be too weak to object
if we decided to postpone the picnic until November.
I hear you; the arches under the embankment
are part of what I’m all about. I too was weaned from excess
in some silvery age now lost in a blizzard of envelopes.
How frostily jingle the harness bells!
It’s all we can do to keep up with the dunce’s velocipede,
while in a neutral corner of the quarry
the same binge of history is conning men’s eyes
into dogged superstition. So we must make sport of it,
reel in our catch while yet there’s time, but droplets
are exploding in the gutter. The gambling ship ferried us away
past larkspur, past concertinas, and the old name became visible again,
briefly, on the building’s dusty façade. I
thought we’d lost you. No,
I’m still here.
Do you want to jump out a shy window?
Little by little one took in the foxes’ keening:
It’s all right, it’s sober,
they chortled. This was just a plant,
it counts only for the next time,
and we in beach goggles, brilliant suspenders … The party beast
in me says let’s abandon, cooler heads say dive,
dive like a frog while famous night is coming on,
like the blistered exterior of a sigh.
1/i wondered if the democratic party is a granfalloon in the vonnegutian sense
ReplyDelete2/whether or not it is, it is certainly part of the MICFiC - a conspiracy to use, abuse, and confuse the people; speaking metaphorically, to milk, shear, and slaughter the sheeple - except that the slaughter is literal, not metaphorical
3/may peace be with us all, sooner or later, one way or another
4/grief is one of the phases of love
Nice Ashbery.
ReplyDelete1/the sad news about actor gene h. and his wife betsy a. is, when seen from a certain angle, a parable of our times
ReplyDeleteshe, in her 60s, died of illness and lay for a week on a bathroom floor - he, in his 90s and with greatly diminished mental capacity, died a week later without ever phoning anyone for assistance - a crated dog also died, while two other dogs were the only survivors in the household
2/a song todd rundgren wrote in his 20s - "too far gone" - ends as follows:
I'm too far gone, and it's no use pretending
I could ever forget what I done
I'm already too far gone,
I got no bridges left to burn
It's better to keep moving on
It's such a long way down, too far to fall
Too much trouble to turn back around
speaking of being beyond the point of no return, here's a recent statement from nate hagens - he is using the metaphor of "rocks in the river" in the same way that jackson and jensen refer to "a saving remnant" -
ReplyDeleteNate Hagens is the Director of The Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future (ISEOF) an organization focused on educating and preparing society for the coming cultural transition. Allied with leading ecologists, energy experts, politicians and systems thinkers ISEOF assembles road-maps and off-ramps for how human societies can adapt to lower throughput lifestyles. Nate holds a Masters Degree in Finance with Honors from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in Natural Resources from the University of Vermont.
[in early March 2025] I presented to the senior leadership of the International Red Cross, gave them an overview of the Great Simplification and the various risks and scenarios we had, coming ahead. In addition to the Five Horsemen that I usually talk about:
the financial overshoot,
Geopolitics,
Complexity,
the social contract and
ecological degradation,
I now explained the accelerated move towards artificial general intelligence and the increasing lack of governance and takeover of open society freedoms.
And you might be surprised at what I recommended to them as a response -- to an organization that has 20 million volunteer members around the world. My response was the same I give to individuals living in communities. I think it's too late now to tweak and, support the current system. Its days are numbered.
I think it's obvious to people paying attention. The calling now is to create rocks in the river, in your communities. In the case of the Red Cross, perhaps in lots of communities across the world where 2%, 3%, 5% of humans are mature, wise, have boots on the ground, can squint and kind of soften the gaze and see what's coming and act as anchors for when the water starts rushing faster.
They are solid. They have a strong foundation, and if there's enough of those anchors, enough of those rocks in a community, in a neighborhood, in a region, we support those around us, including ecosystems and those species that don't have a say. and if there's enough, we might even change the direction of the water.
[from PDF of Hagens "Snow, Singularity, and Rocks in the River | Frankly 88 - slightly edited for clarity]
for more, you could go to https://www.resilience.org/resilience-author/nate-hagens/
ReplyDelete1/my neural net interlocutors agree that the "rocks in the river" metaphor hagens is using is functionally equivalent to what jackson and jensen call "a saving remnant" in their book an inconvenient apocalypse - for a community with those intentions to be viable it must have access to water, ways to produce its own food, varied skill sets among its members, cohesiveness and team spirit that persists not just for weeks but for lifetimes, a location that minimizes its chance of being overrun during the "roving hordes of vandals" phase of the collapse, and so on - good luck, guys
ReplyDelete2/in terms of my own planning horizon, i now have tickets for spouse and self to see
WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW: The Bacharach Songbook Live (featuring Todd Rundgren and Rob Shirakbari) in annapolis next month - also included in the ensemble is wendy moten, veteran vocalist who finished second in a recent tv singing contest show (the voice), and even todd's long-time bassist kasim sulton - i am confident kaz won't get a chance to step up to the microphone
it may happen that one of todd's songs may be performed - not his biggest hit, of course - "bang on the drum all day" - and probably not "love is the answer" - the chatbots think it is likely to be either "hello, it's me" or maybe "can we still be friends", either of which would slot smoothly into the flow of the show - if wendy sang it that would be a welcome wink at us todd fans
and so this is my last currently scheduled concert attendance - let's make it a good one