As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swampland; disturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance, by pulling off flesh from the living planet; as if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration

I'm disturbed I'm not more disturbed by my descent (or ascent) into the non-verbal, it's speeding up, both my descent (or ascent) and my being disturbed I'm not more disturbed. Life in a world without kayfabe where kayfabe is constantly broadcast, winkless, constantly understood as breaking itself, it makes me write horrible sentences like the first two in this paragraph. Here, let me put it this way:



This is a blog which exists to talk to itself, to me, and is worth no more than any vanity project, including art created in lieu of verbalizing the thought. I'm disturbed I'm not more disturbed by my dwindling interest in monologues here while quickly acknowledging that this joint still vitally assists me  processing life in a dangerous and weirdass world without kayfabe where kayfabe is constantly broadcast, winkless, and constantly understood as breaking itself in the act of reestablishing itself, hence the sanity-salving side-effects of the grids, the (other people's) poems, the music, but barking as if there is kayfabe that needs breaking? Getting if not gotten old. What I mean to say is


This the eleventh attempt at a monologue for this post, since I no longer write in my paper tablets, since I no longer type in my digital tablet, since I only type here and delete the proceeding draft when starting the next, what existed in the first ten attempts are archived in my increasingly non-verbal brain and may or not appear on this page in the future in their original form and may arise not from memory but as new thoughts, a good (or bad) thing: I'm disturbed I'm not more disturbed by such content for disorder and chaos. Here, last and bottom third of the self-portrait posted as alternative monologue to this post's typed monologue, you didn't go look at it when I posted a link to it in the last post

Deus in Machina: AI and Divine Rhetoric
There are no psychopaths?
Democrats won’t rule out giving Trump more money for Middle East war
Sovereign is he who does whatever the hell he wants
The Question of Whether this War is Legal is the Wrong Question
A Topography of the New Dollar Imperialism
We have reached the Triskalians betting quatloos on when and how you will die stage of empire
The Nihilism of Trump’s War Games
The Long March of Presidential Power That Led to War on Iran
We have reached the Triskalians betting quatloos on when and how you will die stage of empire
Obama Made the Legal Case That Trump Could Use to Attack Iran
We have reached the Triskalians betting quatloos on when and how you will die stage of empire
Techno‑Authoritarianism and the Death of Counterculture
We have reached the Triskalians betting quatloos on when and how you will die stage of empire
The NYT Style Guide				All the Ways Big Tech Fuels ICE and CBP
We have reached the Triskalians betting quatloos on when and how you will die stage of empire
The Right-Wing Nonprofit Serving A.I. Slop for America’s Birthday
We have reached the Triskalians betting quatloos on when and how you will die stage of empire
Cockblocking Anthropic			On Redistribution		You can just do things
Starting wars and spying at home
The part where we are fucked					Fool's errands
Proton Mail payment data helped FBI identify ‘Stop Cop City’ account holder
Faux discounts			Main character syndrome in wartime
The dry and the wet burn together
The rhetoric of freedom and the oldest swindle in the imperial playbook
Albanese, Gaza, and the Military-Propaganda Nexus Behind the US-Israeli War on Iran
Fourteen ways of looking at white
He heard the news today				Hollow opposition
Common ground			He saw his Marianne walking away
How Christianity Was Used By the Powerful and the Marginalized to Shape Post-Civil War America
Avedon Carol			THEC and the ISPR against THE UULFer
People I work with at both GW and American (especially) tell me trustworthy bosses up their chain of command are advising they look where to jump before the imminent push is delivered
For the Fossil Record				Joy Williams on Rilke
{ feuilleton }			A Bolivarian Republic of Letters?
William H. Gass’ *Order of Insects*
Henri Cole’s Bestiary				Almost no one makes it out
I'd forgot about american football and had no idea they were considered major and influential
Discombobulated			Alice's astral plane adventures
Seefeel Reveal First New Album in 15 Years!						Out in May, one song released now	☟

MOSS-GATHERING

Theodore Roethke

To loosen with all ten fingers held wide and limber

And lift up a patch, dark-green, the kind for lining cemetery baskets,

Thick and cushiony, like an old-fashioned doormat, 

The crumbling small hollow sticks on the underside mixed with roots, 

And wintergreen berries and leaves still stuck to the top, —

That was moss-gathering. 

But something always went out of me when I dug loose those carpets 

Of green, or plunged to my elbows in the spongy yellowish moss of the marshes:

And afterwards I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road, 

As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swampland;

Disturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance,

By pulling off flesh from the living planet;

As if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration.

I Keep a Dog and Bark Myself

DOLOR

Theodore Roethke

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplicaton of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.

*

• Born 113 years ago today
• I don't remember when (though I understand why) I first associated Roethke poems and Swans songs, I could look through tablets and search the blog's archives but that would be research and fuck that, and no, I did not fix this posts coding though I did rework this sentence. Thanks again to Pary Gittinger for loaning me his Collected Roethke forty years ago
• Six more Roethke poems, five Swans songs, one Siberry song below the fold

Even the Dirt Kept Breathing a Small Breath

DOLOR

Theodore Roethke

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplicaton of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.

*

• Born 112 years ago today
• Six more Roethke poems, five Swans songs, one Siberry song below the fold

I Keep a Dog and Bark Myself, or: Born One Hundred Eleven Years Ago Today

DOLOR

Theodore Roethke

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplicaton of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.

--

Lordy, Roethke. The traditional High Egoslavian Holy Day birthday post, new Siberry (added 2018) addition at end isn't an addition but an unforgivable omission corrected, updated for 2019 with biggerness for blind people like me.

Don't remember when (though I understand the why) I made the Roethke/Swans trill/symbient connection, I could find out but that would be research (and maybe I'll redo everything for 112th, years of copy/paste + additions coding mishaps, don't count on it), important thing is to read the poems OUT LOUD! and listen to the songs LOUD!

--

THE SURLY ONE

Theodore Roethke


1

When true love broke my heart in half,
I took the whiskey from the shelf,
And told my neighbors when to laugh
I keep a dog, and bark myself.

2

Ghost cries out to ghost–
But whose afraid of that?
I feel those shadows most
That start from my own feet.



 



ROOT CELLAR

Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,
Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,
Shoots dangled and drooped,
Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,
Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.
And what a congress of stinks!—
Roots ripe as old bait,
Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,
Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.
Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.



   

JOURNEY INTO THE INTERIOR

In the long journey out of the self,
There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places
Where the shale slides dangerously
And the back wheels hang almost over the edge
At the sudden veering, the moment of turning.
Better to hug close, wary of rubble and falling stones.
The arroyo cracking the road, the wind-bitten buttes, the canyons,
Creeks swollen in midsummer from the flash-flood roaring into the narrow valley.
Reeds beaten flat by wind and rain,
Grey from the long winter, burnt at the base in late summer.
-- Or the path narrowing,
Winding upward toward the stream with its sharp stones,
The upland of alder and birchtrees,
Through the swamp alive with quicksand,
The way blocked at last by a fallen fir-tree,
The thickets darkening,
The ravines ugly.







  
NIGHT JOURNEY
             
Now as the train bears west,
Its rhythm rocks the earth,
And from my Pullman berth
I stare into the night
While others take their rest.
Bridges of iron lace,
A suddenness of trees,
A lap of mountain mist
All cross my line of sight,
Then a bleak wasted place,
And a lake below my knees.
Full on my neck I feel
The straining at a curve;
My muscles move with steel,
I wake in every nerve.
I watch a beacon swing
From dark to blazing bright;
We thunder through ravines
And gullies washed with light.
Beyond the mountain pass
Mist deepens on the pane;
We rush into a rain
That rattles double glass.
Wheels shake the roadbed stone,
The pistons jerk and shove,
I stay up half the night
To see the land I love.




    
   
THE WAKING

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?   

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?   

God bless the Ground!  I shall walk softly there,   

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?   

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do   

To you and me; so take the lively air,   

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.   

What falls away is always. And is near.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I learn by going where I have to go.



 
EPIDERMAL MACABRE

Indelicate is he who loathes
The aspect of his fleshy clothes, --
The flying fabric stitched on bone,
The vesture of the skeleton,
The garment neither fur nor hair,
The cloak of evil and despair,
The veil long violated by
Caresses of the hand and eye.
Yet such is my unseemliness:
I hate my epidermal dress,
The savage blood's obscenity,
The rags of my anatomy,
And willingly would I dispense
With false accouterments of sense,
To sleep immodestly, a most
Incarnadine and carnal ghost.

He, in His Shrunken Britches

• Day two, new daypack, the life-purse daypack, the everyday daypack, not a dayhikepack
• Daypack of twenty-or-so years obsolete space in size wise pocket wise
• I broke honor with that daypack of twenty-or-so years I promised would be my daypack until it or me
• and I'm fine, fuck me, very cool with disloyalty, the new daypack I don't regret, *that's* new
• The fuck:

• No. What?
• A bidenite told my yesterday Pelosi's strategy of goading Trump by calling him names while forbidding impeachment is brilliant, said Trump is going to meltdown sooooo bad on TV that.....
• I, I said before bidenite cut me off to say, I know what you're gonna say, and yes, this *has* been the long strategy and it's gonna pay off
• Just kidding, I don't care, I don't have a TV and I won't pay for CBS online if you give me the money
• Three AM yesterday morning some kind of animal fight in my front yard, two screams weren't cat, screams gone by time I ran out in underwear, neither of us saw Nap or MomCat (saw Frankie) in morning and through late afternoon and evening, should I put up the Alert I think and shazam, so I've not jinxed Alert system, all that matters
• I finally got in, Is it possible, I said, we can have coffee once and not talk about this shit
• My Favorite Tweet Ever Since the Last Until the Next
• Tomorrow is Annual Roethke and Swans for Roethke's Birthday post, here's a song and a poem not in tomorrow's post, please play this and tomorrow's Swans songs LOUD! and please read today's and tomorrow Roethke's poem OUT LOUD!

PICKLE BELT

Theodore Roethke

The fruit rolled by all day.
They prayed the cogs would creep;
They thought about Saturday pay,
And Sunday sleep.

Whatever he smelled was good:
The fruit and flesh smells mixed.
There beside him she stood, - 
And he, perplexed;

He, in his shrunken britches,
Eyes, rimmed with pickle dust,
Prickling with all the itches
Of sixteen year old lust.

Cravens Cry Them Down

• The Omar War. 
• I only thought I hated Democrats before today
• HRC announced she won't run in 2020 by which she means fuck the primaries, brokered convention here I come, interesting timing, it's generating zero noise
• The shit also said she will be "involved" in determining the nominee, it's so gonna be her, they will never ever fuck off to the sea, so valuable to the elite are the fucking Clintons.
• Initially I'd pasted a fat excerpt from first article above, removed, schumer me, read the article
• Jake's too
• Daily I think my thinking I only thought I hated Democrats before yesterday silly
• Gaslight much?
• Read the Schumer quote, substitute Bible for Torah, falwell junior much?
• !IHMD! finally, the new label
• Democrats continue campaign to reelect Trump!
• I know this is duh, I still love my apostasies too much, I was raised on the creed of New Deal and Great Society, i....
• Democracy without God.
• Omar knew exactly what would happen when she said what she said 
• kayfabe's not dead but in one direction
• call fake broken kayfabe kayfabe

              


REPLY TO CENSURE

Theodore Roethke

Repulse the staring eye,
The hostile gaze of hate,
And check the pedantry
Of the inveterate

Defamers of the good.
The mock the deepest thought,
Condemn the fortitude
Whereby true work is wrought.

Though just men are reviled
When cravens cry them down,
The brave keep undefiled
A wisdom of their own.

The bold wear toughened skin
That keeps sufficient store
Of dignity within,
And quiet at the core.

Nothing Would Sleep in That Cellar

• If we were looking to buy near Chelsea Michigan - we are not looking to buy near Chelsea Michigan 
• we are doing reconnaissance for if and when we have grandchildren /
• can imagine a day we can retire -
• Jerusalem Rd, no, crap house next to a working lime field
• UPDATE! 2/19/19: house sold, guy who showed us houses emailed Earthgirl
• W Summit Rd, no, old, creepy, cellar with former torture chamber vibe
• - Cellars versus Basements: I never thought of difference until yesterday, I still thinking about today, it's more that dirt floor versus tiled floor, more later certainly, whether here or not TBD.
• Cavanaugh Lake Rd, meh, plain but new redone inside, yard a cattail swamp
• Hoppe Rd, no, charming but old, OLD! falling apart
• Self-reminder: I hate - hate - tools, upkeep, harry homeowning, hate.
• What I imagine The Committee for More Motherfucking Kibble doing as I type this now:

• Rigging Stockholm to the end of the shining seas.
• Pence and the Benjamins: an Eternity of Anti-Semitism.
• Howard Starbucks, the press, motherfucking Democrats.
• Economics After Neoliberalism.
• 51st State of Emergency.
• How shit works.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• Black and White in Colour.
• How had I never made a Roethke tag before, the fuck is wrong with me.
• New release of Laurie Spiegel's previously unreleased 1991 album!

FLORIST'S ROOT CELLAR

Theodore Roethke

Nothing would sleep in that cellar, damp as a ditch,
Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,
Shoots dangled and drooped, 
Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,
Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.
And what a congress of stinks! -
Roots ripe as old bait,
Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,
Leaf-mould, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.
Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.