I Don't Mean Just Lost to *Me*

Stanley almost resolved my left eye problem twenty minutes ago. Slipped off window sill above my sleeping head, ripped my flesh, rzzzz. If my head was tilted a half inch to the right, if his claws had landed a half inch to the left..... Fine metaphors abound.

It's Bartok's birthday. Here's the traditional Bartok birthday post about my grandmother's house, I don't feel like putting it up this year.

• The Inhumanity Museum.
• The Lost World.
• Materialism, postmodernity, and enlightenment.
• Eclipsed.
• Guided by the beauty of our weapons.
• Gah bark gah bark gah bark bark.
• Bleggalgaze.
• #666.

POEM

Thomas McGrath

I don’t belong in this century—who does?

In my time, summer came someplace in June—

The cutbanks blazing with roses, the birds brazen, and the astonished

Pastures frisking with young calves . . .

                                                          That was in the country—

I don’t mean another country, I mean in the country:

And the country is lost. I don’t mean just lost to me,

Nor in the way of metaphorical loss—it’s lost that way too—

No; nor in no sort of special case: I mean

Lost.

Now, down below, in the fire and stench, the city

Is building its shell: elaborate levels of emptiness

Like some sea-animal building toward its extinction.

And the citizens, unserious and full of virtue,

Are hunting for bread, or money, or a prayer,

And I behold them, and this season of man, without love.

If it were not a joke, it would be proper to laugh.

—Curious how that rat’s nest holds together—

Distracting . . .

                      Without it there might be, still,

The gold wheel and the silver, the sun and the moon,

The season’s ancient assurance under the unstable stars

Our fiery companions . . .

                                     And trees, perhaps, and the sound

Of the wild and living water hurrying out of the hills.

Without these, I have you for my talisman:

Sun, moon, the four seasons,

The true voice of the mountains. Now be

(The city revolving in its empty shell,

The night moving in from the East)

—Be thou these things.

But Their Comprehensive Silence Stays the Same

   
The Official Egoslavian Bela Bartok birthday post:

Bartok born 134 years ago today. I've told this history before: my mother's grandparents are Hungarian, my mother's mother forbade my mother and her sister from speaking Hungarian. I learned about Bartok on my own; though my mother is an excellent pianist, her fingers never left the 19th century, though when I listen to Bartok I wish I spoke fluent Hungarian. Some version of this paragraph is posted every year.

This part is new My mother's father and mother built a freaky house in Fellsburg Pennsylvania up the hill from Donora in that weird finger of Westmoreland County that grasps for the Monongahela. My grandmother kept Time Magazines and remaindered books on the 1956 Hungarian Revolution on a dresser in the downstairs bedroom in the corner to the right of the window that looked down on the steep carport. I asked her why once, she gave me a look that said Shut Up. In that room I once was lying under the bed while listening to Bob Prince calling a Pirates game with my grandfather when my grandmother came in, didn't know I was under the bed, and cursed him out in both English and Hungarian for being the arthritic cripple he was when I knew him. I never heard Bartok in that house but when I hear Bartok I think about this. I made the link when I was thirteen, fourteen, first time I heard Bartok: it's a facile and tenuous connection, but it stuck. I've been trying to draw a floor plan in 3D of the three floors of the house since this past Saturday when I realized Bartok's birthday was approaching. I can't stop thinking about it. I have no skills to draw architectural floor plans in 2D much less 3D, though I promise a rendering tomorrow or Thursday at the latest if solely to rid myself of the motherfucking obsession. SeatSix, help. Hell, Elric, if today's the day you tune in, help. Oakton, you're the mathematician, I'll post a rendering of yours. Must be included: the broken stereo/radio in the front lobby; the piano in the living room as well as an arrow to the corner of the living room crushed by a car flying off Fellsburg Road; an accurate drawing of the stupidass hallway/dining room design, the point on the dining room table Frank sat at; the Philmore in the kitchen, the hoosier in the kitchen, the white radio on the hoosier tuned to KDKA; the basement, the root cellar, the door to the sky blue Ford Falcon in the garage under the back porch; the green and white davenport on the back porch; upstairs, the weirdest floor of all time, the captain's walk of the master bedroom, all the mazes of the attics, the secret kingdoms they lead to. I dream about that house to this day, last night. I was asked last week, what the fuck is with all the birthdays here? That paragraph written last year.

As promised, a rendering of the 2nd floor of the house built by my maternal grandparents, memories sparked by Bartok's birthday. Click, yo, to enlarge. There are at least two people I felt an obligation to follow through at least with this floor. This is obviously not to scale, so obvious my incompetence at architectural drawing. I could do the basement easily enough but I've found the 3rd floor completely impossible, not only the physical layout of the floor but the secret universes the maze of attics lead to are utterly unmappable.
Here are the keys:

• A - Chair except at Giftmas; Giftmas tree goes there.
• B - Corner of house wrecked when car flew of Fellsburg Road into side of house.
• C - Broken Philco record player/radio console/cabinet - my favorite toy.
• D - Small china cabinet.
• Star - Where my grandfather, crippled by arthritis in his knees, sat staring out the window hour after hour day after day after day.
• E - Philmore refrigerator.
• F - Double-sink looking out window at vegetable garden
• G - White radio always tuned to KDKA.
• H - Bag of candy, never eaten, pink, chalky mint, think fat Necco Wafers.
• I - Bottles of Lemon Blend.
• J - Left side of hoosier had large, built-in, flour sifter.
• K - Green and white sliding davenport. Summers I would sit on davenport with my grandfather and listen to Pirates games while he rolled and smoked cigarettes out of a red Prince Albert can.
• L - Bathroom closet where a box of Chinese Checkers and a game of Racko were kept.
• M - Kitchen stove/oven. Pilot light needed lighting each time. Oven door swung left/right, not up/down.
• N - Dresser where my grandmother kept the Time Magazines and books on the 1956 Hungarian Revolution - the start of all this.
• O - Creepy wooden mothbally wardrobe.
• P - Secretary.
• Q - Clock on piano that was broke at 1:35 forever, now on my bookshelf in my bedroom.
• R - Bathtub - no shower, no hot water - all hot water in house had to be heated on stove.
• S - End table piled with back issue of Readers Digest.
• T - Notice, no TV.

The three of you who know this place send me additional 2nd floor notations if you'd like and I will add them. As for the 3rd floor, I'm still trying to get my head around its vast and tiny distances and the mysteries of the attics' labyrinth and where it leads to, I doubt I'll ever be able to ink it down. That written. That drawing and photo and post a day after last year's Bartok's birthday post. Posted mostly to note I am no closer to able to draw the third floor than I was a year ago, though I try several times daily.








LEARNING THE TREES

Howard Nemerov

Before you can learn the trees, you have to learn   

The language of the trees. That’s done indoors,   

Out of a book, which now you think of it   

Is one of the transformations of a tree.

The words themselves are a delight to learn,   

You might be in a foreign land of terms

Like samara, capsule, drupe, legume and pome,   

Where bark is papery, plated, warty or smooth.

But best of all are the words that shape the leaves—

Orbicular, cordate, cleft and reniform—

And their venation—palmate and parallel—

And tips—acute, truncate, auriculate.

Sufficiently provided, you may now

Go forth to the forests and the shady streets   

To see how the chaos of experience

Answers to catalogue and category.

Confusedly. The leaves of a single tree

May differ among themselves more than they do   

From other species, so you have to find,

All blandly says the book, “an average leaf.”

Example, the catalpa in the book

Sprays out its leaves in whorls of three   

Around the stem; the one in front of you   

But rarely does, or somewhat, or almost;

Maybe it’s not catalpa? Dreadful doubt.   

It may be weeks before you see an elm   

Fanlike in form, a spruce that pyramids,   

A sweetgum spiring up in steeple shape.

Still, pedetemtim as Lucretius says,

Little by little, you do start to learn;

And learn as well, maybe, what language does   

And how it does it, cutting across the world

Not always at the joints, competing with   

Experience while cooperating with   

Experience, and keeping an obstinate   

Intransigence, uncanny, of its own.

Think finally about the secret will   

Pretending obedience to Nature, but   

Invidiously distinguishing everywhere,   

Dividing up the world to conquer it,

And think also how funny knowledge is:   

You may succeed in learning many trees   

And calling off their names as you go by,

But their comprehensive silence stays the same.

Bequeathing to the Groin a Pang of Distance

Bartok born 133 years ago today. I've told this history before: my mother's grandparents are Hungarian, my mother's mother forbade my mother and her sister from speaking Hungarian. I learned about Bartok on my own; though my mother is an excellent pianist, her fingers never left the 19th century, though when I listen to Bartok I wish I spoke fluent Hungarian.

This part is new. My mother's father and mother built a freaky house in Fellsburg Pennsylvania up the hill from Donora in that weird finger of Westmoreland County that grasps for the Monongahela. My grandmother kept Time Magazines and remaindered books on the 1956 Hungarian Revolution on a dresser in the downstairs bedroom in the corner to the right of the window that looked down on the steep carport. I asked her why once, she gave me a look that said Shut Up. In that room I once was lying under the bed while listening to Bob Prince calling a Pirates game with my grandfather when my grandmother came in, didn't know I was under the bed, and cursed him out in both English and Hungarian for being the arthritic cripple he was when I knew him. I never heard Bartok in that house but when I hear Bartok I think about this. I made the link when I was thirteen, fourteen, first time I heard Bartok: it's a facile and tenuous connection, but it stuck. I've been trying to draw a floor plan in 3D of the three floors of the house since this past Saturday when I realized Bartok's birthday was approaching. I can't stop thinking about it. I have no skills to draw architectural floor plans in 2D much less 3D, though I promise a rendering tomorrow or Thursday at the latest if solely to rid myself of the motherfucking obsession. SeatSix, help. Hell, Elric, if today's the day you tune in, help. Oakton, you're the mathematician, I'll post a rendering of yours. Must be included: the broken stereo/radio in the front lobby; the piano in the living room as well as an arrow to the corner of the living room crushed by a car flying off Fellsburg Road; an accurate drawing of the stupidass hallway/dining room design, the point on the dining room table Frank sat at; the Philmore in the kitchen, the hoosier in the kitchen, the white radio on the hoosier tuned to KDKA; the basement, the root cellar, the door to the sky blue Ford Falcon in the garage under the back porch; the green and white davenport on the back porch; upstairs, the weirdest floor of all time, the captain's walk of the master bedroom, all the mazes of the attics, the secret kingdoms they lead to. I dream about that house to this day, last night. I was asked last week, what the fuck is with all the birthdays here? More Bartok:

• Four myths about the surveillance state.
• The opaque politics of the internet: My hypothesis is that the public sphere – a space of centralising ideologies in which a general consensus can be formed, as proposed by Habermas -- becomes a network of differences when applied to the internet. Differences within the internet are broken down to the level of the individual and at such a micro-level that the macro, i.e. the political, has already disappeared. In the enhanced subjectivity of personal monitor space (Breen 110-111), ideology becomes subjective and individualised. In such a space, the unifying modality of ideology gives way to the differential processing of the algorithm which shapes social space as a controlled experiment, and which may be adapted to create different output results. I will argue that in its capacity to shape the social space of the individualised internet user, the algorithm has now become a more effective method of intellectual oppression than the ideology of the outdated mass media technologies.
• More links to above subject at yesterday's wood_s_lot.
• Fish surfaces to reiterate the Problem of -.06% Less-Shittiness: I get it, I really do. The Republican party is bugshit crazy. There are some areas on the margins where real relief to people is provided by Democrats. Things that cannot be trivialized. The lesser evil argument connects with a solid left. Here's the problem: If I accept this framing, if I accept that 1% less evil is enough, I embrace despair., nothing less. Because I do not see Democrats and Republicans as two teams fighting it out for what is right, I see a winch and a pawl, one party squeezing tighter and the other merely preventing the backslide. Voting for the pawl means I have accepted that this arc of history is inevitable. That the plutocrats will always win. I am Winston Smith after his treatments, toothless, impotent.
• Hi Fish! I agree! Fuck TBogg and Digby!

• Should you be in Albuquerque today. Back story here.
• Purple Line.
• Purple Line.
• Laytonsville!
• New bibliological definitions added.
• Bauhaus (the band) and jelly.
• Ashbery, for those of you who do and those of you who should.
• Krasznahorkai, for those of you who do.
• Fennesz cascade tomorrow, OK?
• Prunella's latest playlist.

DISAPPOINTMENT

August Kleinzahler

A faint smell of urine

embroidering that bouquet of mold the big cushions   

give off days the fog won’t lift,

and a shelf of bone

growing out over the eyelids like evening’s shadow   

across a field of corn—

The whole parade

leaking out from your shoulders, bequeathing   

to the groin a pang of distance;

then that metallic taste in the mouth   

and a voice you had let yourself believe   

was dead

close now by your ear, intimate and sweet:

                                  Well, well, well,   

look what we have here.

It Was Like Beating on a Blood Pie

Shecky Obama, ladies and gentlemen, he's here at the Disposition Matrix every night through January 2017 (don't miss Kill List Tuesdays! Happy Hour specials!). Oh, my soccer team sucks, think Kevin Payne isn't laughing? Oh, and hell is Brahm's First Symphony, I'd forgot what a transparent rip-off of homage to Beethoven it is, lordy does it suck, but a very small hell compared to being stuck on the fourth floor of a parking garage filled with 80 year old drivers all trying to leave at once, honking their horns. I'm going outside.





EPOCH AND SODA

Clark Coolidge

It was like beating on a blood pie        stopping
off for a gel cap rung 'round with ex-custard
applied just barely to the lip of the rosebud top
later suffering from nailover        on the mend?
not quite yet        so far so tight that
the windows jumped        the car barn snapped
pumpkins come with the own extinguishers
the hardness of a haberdashery complex
controlled experiment or else convulsions
let me at that piano a Pinkerton I believe
as Miles smiles reverses all his numbers
backing the vehicle into itself it manages
Ashley Montague in a lemon disposition
and don't spare the Unguentine        pass the carbons

closing can't live long in a can

• Jay Paleo Dirty 101 Arra Ol Bama, bud, recommends I add Rants from the Crib to Newest Gag. Thanks! Say Hi and send love to Old Salty for me please!
• John Abonilox, bud, recommends Conscious Entities to Newest Gag. Thanks! He writes about RIP George Jones yesterday. I don't know much about country music (which is on me), but I know who George Jones was.
• So that takes care of today and tomorrow. Suggestions solicited.
• Postcard from the End of America: Oakland.
• How to suck fascist dick.
• Related to the above.
• Long-timers can vouch I rate Elizabeth Drew as most honest Villager, so when she writes a column, even one I disagree with more than usual, I post it.
• And you're surprised why?
• Capitalism comes in many flavors?
• The terror of capitalism.
• Everything is rigged.
• DINOs versus a new platform? 
• Goldmines. 
• Deleted smallness on my part. Apologies. I'll tell the related story another time, or not.

 

• What's with the Bartok? United plays tonight in Columbus (minus Chris Pontius who pulled a groin, I remember turning to this guy and saying, why the fuck is Ben Olsen having a guy with a history of groin pulls take the free kicks?), I'm not going to watch because I'll be in Strathmore with Earthgirl listening to the BSO do that Bartok and Brahm's First Symphony.
• I had not seen this (thanks @AnotherSpammer) re: mandatory and compulsory patriotism at sporting events. I had been watching a Nats game in my determined pursuit of ending my flirtation with the disease, and apparently at Nats Park patrons are required to stand up some mid-inning and wave their hats in support of military.
• I've lived in suburban DC for 47 years, my twitter feed is exploding in angst over the firing of Jack Diamond, I have to ask: who the hell is Jack Diamond? 
• MOCO FAIL!
• William Gass interview.
• Anthony's weekly litlinks.
• He also recommends this interview w/Bernard Stiegler (who I was completely unaware of).
• Proust, for those of you who do (or wish they could).
• The Bartok piece only has three movements, so you get a Penderecki after the poem.

    
THE WAY CLEAR

Clark Coolidge

Now we're in superspace even the tiniest
rivet is sentient   participating
particle emptiness proximal set
it's got to be around here someplace and closing
can't live long in a can   space is
a continual enchantment of the nonoriginary
hello Mother               don't knock it
there are spiral pitfalls       a collapse below
the infinitesimal though limitless leeway
your thought does not persist on most levels
transfers not       much of anywhere
points you can hear the valences lifting
gear-pure but cancel even that
go back you forgot the cat
  

We Can Only Cleanse Our Bodies So Much Before We Realize It's Not Our Bodies That Need Detoxing

I dig Bartok, have since I first heard. Hey, tomorrow we Kensington to Frederick to Hagerstown to Hancock to Cumberland to Morgantown to Washington to Wheeling, whether we side trip from Wheeling up 250 then across 36 to Gambier (I've never driven 250 from Wheeling to Ulrichsville or 36 from Ulrichsville to Coshocton) or just Wheeling to Zanesville to Gambier per usual depends on how much snow in mountains last night and today, how soon we get on the road tomorrow. Beyond enjoying whatever minutes Planet gives us and publishing sucky slideshows of our daily drives, eating healthy on one of these trips for the first fucking time and exercising daily in the multiple state parks that grace Ohio, I've no set plans, though in my head the word I think of with desperate hope to describe my goal for tomorrow through when I walk in my house next Sunday is detox.

• Your God is too small.
• The collapse of time and space into search.
• Fine metaphors abound.
• Personality hunger and the regulation of consumptive choice.
• American oligarchy.
• Is Zachary Goldfarb a fooltool or a tooltool? Honest question.
• The New Inquiry's extraordinary Sunday Linkages.
• I don't watch much television (not for any righteous aesthetic motive, I just don't) so I'll not watch this, but I know a Zombie in Blegsylvania, he might be interested in how to tame a zombie. Or not.
• Some lateral thoughts, part one, part two.
• A person can dream Fuck This.
• Sebald, for those of you who do.
• Beckett, for those of you who do.
• Creeley, for those of you who do.
• Silliman's always generous litlinks.
• Godspeed, Jason Molina.

                 
DEAR CORPORATION

Adam Fell

                         I don't know how to
say how I feel politely, or poetically, or
without the jugular and collapse of the
immediate heart, so tonight, I won't
say anything at all. Just stare out the
window at our stunned little writhe. Hold
back the strongest urge to knock out a
few of the capitol's most critical walls,
replace its fiber optic cables with
lightning bugs, replace the investment
bankers all with bunker busters. I lock
eyes with the capitol's bright and empty
rooms and admit that, sometimes,
deep in my affluent, American cells, I
miss my body carved to projectile. I
miss trebuchet shoulders and knuckles
flaked to arrowheads, miss my hands
massive and molded from molten to
the bolts of ballistas. I miss blackjack
and cudgel and quarterstaff and
flintlock. I miss pummel and pike and I
am not proud of this. I know it's not a
healthy feeling. I try to un-arm, to
un-cock. I try to practice my breathing.
I try The Master Cleanse, The Stationary 
Bike, The Bikram Sweat, The Contortion 
Stretch, The Vegan Meatloaf, The Nightly,  
Scorching Bath, The Leafy Greens and  
Venom Television, The Self-Mutilation of a 
Winter's Run, but we can only cleanse
our bodies so much before we realize
it's not our bodies that need detoxing.

I don't know how to say how I feel politely, or poetically, or without the jugular and collapse of the immediate heart, so tonight, I won't say anything at all. Just stare out the window at our stunned little writhe. Hold back the strongest urge to knock out a few of the capitol's most critical walls, replace its fiber optic cables with lightning bugs, replace the investment bankers all with bunker busters. I lock eyes with the capitol's bright and empty rooms and admit that, sometimes, deep in my affluent, American cells, I miss my body carved to projectile. I miss trebuchet shoulders and knuckles flaked to arrowheads, miss my hands massive and molded from molten to the bolts of ballistas. I miss blackjack and cudgel and quarterstaff and flintlock. I miss pummel and pike and I am not proud of this. I know it's not a healthy feeling. I try to un-arm, to un-cock. I try to practice my breathing. I try The Master Cleanse, The Stationary Bike, The Bikram Sweat, The Contortion Stretch, The Vegan Meatloaf, The Nightly, Scorching Bath, The Leafy Greens and Venom Television, The Self-Mutilation of a Winter's Run, but we can only cleanse our bodies so much before we realize it's not our bodies that need detoxing. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/23243#sthash.Fjwa5uh7.dpuf

Egoslavian Holy Day Eve