tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-339860852024-03-08T13:35:19.902-05:00The Trial By ExistenceTo find that the utmost reward/Of daring should be still to dare.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger154125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-34224073253194974672024-02-26T10:08:00.005-05:002024-02-26T10:08:30.013-05:00Works Cited, Middle C<p><span style="text-align: center;">In the alleged state of nature, Joseph would begin, it is said to be a war of all against all. I know you are teasing, Joey. No one can go against gardens. So let me be with my beauties, at peace with nature and all this world’s tossing and yearning. Despite a pledge to cease and desist, Joseph heard himself repeat to his mother how unnatural gardens were, how human-handed every rose was, how thoroughly the irises were trained, how the prizes plants won in their competitions were like those awarded after a proud parade of poodles, each clipped like a hedge. She should not ignore the size of the industry whose profits depended upon fashions in flowers and fads that were encouraged by the press or those ubiquitous catalogs which provoked fears of diseases, worms, and insects that could only be controlled by the poisons, hormones, and fertilizers they recommended. Nor should she make light of the myths extolling the harmless healthiness of gardening, even alleging its psychological superiority to every other avocation. She should notice how the seed companies’ bankrolls grew more rapidly than their marigolds, despite extensive artificial breeding; she should also admit the plants’ reputations were puffed and as pretentious as their adopted stage names—moonglow, for instance. The garden, he felt compelled to suggest, was like a fascist state: ruled like an orchestra, ordered as an army, eugenically ruthless and hateful to the handicapped, relentless in the pursuit of its enemies, jealous of its borders, favoring obedient masses in which every stem is inclined to appease its leader.</span></p><p><span style="text-align: center;">Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (p. 271). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div><br /></div></div><br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-26753221395452680512024-02-25T11:10:00.004-05:002024-02-25T11:10:15.423-05:00Works Cited, Middle C<p>He had once thought that the many terrible deeds of men might be understood by positing some underlying evil working away in the dirt of each life like the sod webworm. Perhaps there was an unrequited urge at the center of the species, a seed or genetic quirk, an impulse, bent for destruction, a type of trichinosis or a malignant imbecility that was forever ravenous. It might be just possible that we were killing off the weak to make the species strong. The young men can shoot one another. Those left standing can rape and murder the enemy’s mistresses, whores, and wives. Dead men cannot fertilize, or dead women bear. Then maybe our wars worked to keep our increasing numbers in check. But that hope turned out to be Heinrich Schenker’s doing, who had put these ideas in Skizzen’s head by insisting that for every harmonic composition there ought to be such a hidden center—a musical idea from which the notes that would be heard emerged, and were thereby governed, the way words issue from a mouth when the mouth moves on account of a consciousness that is formed, at least in part, by a nature as obdurate as an underground god at his forge hammering the white-hot blades of his weapons.</p><p>Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (pp. 268-269). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-52796742325699779532024-02-24T12:34:00.006-05:002024-02-24T12:34:53.565-05:00Works Cited, Middle C<p>Begetting was so inevitable, Joey thought, it was as routine as dying, consequently it could be safely left to nature, and otherwise ignored, the way Portho’s presence was ignored even when he slunk indoors, even when he scattered magazines donated by doctors’ offices on one of the polished tables, even when he dropped off, even when he snored. In due course people were born, in due course they managed to walk, they learned to talk, they attended school, they got a job, partied, married, had kids, sold stuff, bought more, overate, drank to be drunk, were relieved to be regular, labored in order to loaf, lived that way a spell—its passage sometimes stealing years—coasting down due’s course—while they lost their hair, sight, hearing, teeth, the use of limbs, the will to live, until, in due course and as their diseases desired, they took to bed; they laughed their last; they said good-bye to the ones they said were loved ones—they curled up in a fist of aches—said good-bye to the ones they said were closest to them—complained about their care—said good-bye to the ones who came to kiss them off, said good-bye to comfort themselves with the sight of another’s going, said good-bye while the designated goer complained, complained of neglect, complained of fear, complained of pain, and disinclined going, but would go, go over, cross Jordan, nevertheless. They uttered last words that no one could understand; they curled up like a drying worm; they cried to no avail because weeping begot only weeping, wailing was answered with wails; they repented to no one in particular; they died as someone whose loss was likely to be felt no farther than the idler’s door, and dying, quite often, in debt for a cemetery plot, the service of a funeral parlor, in the pursuit of a false ideal. Joey didn’t see much to interest him in any of this. It was what was done between times that fascinated him, when due course was interrupted by dream or discovery, murder or music, though wars were, he had to admit, due course to a faretheewell. And he thought, more and more, that death, assuredly dire, was also something due.</p><p>Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (p. 257). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-69274536787174270702024-02-15T23:11:00.001-05:002024-02-15T23:11:05.754-05:00Works Cited, Middle C<p>Yes, it is true, this music will be keyless, but there will be no lock that might miss it. Atonal music (as it got named despite Arnold Schoenberg’s objection) is not made of chaos like John Cage pretended his was; no art is more opposed to the laws of chance; that is why some seek to introduce accidents or happenstance into its rituals like schoolboys playing pranks. Such as hiccups. Miss Rudolph’s cough. No, this music is more orderly than anybody’s. It is more military than a militia. It is music that must pass through the mind before it reaches the ear. But you cannot be a true-blue American and value the mind that much. Americans have no traditions to steep themselves in like tea. They are born in the Los Angeles of Southern California, or in Cody, Wyoming, not Berlin or Vienna. They learn piano from burned-out old men or women who compose bird songs. Americans love drums. The drum is an intentionally stupid instrument. Americans play everything percussively on intentionally stupid instruments and strum their guitars like they are shooting guns. But I have allowed myself to be carried away into digression. Digressions are as pleasant as vacations, but one must return from them before tan turns to burn.</p><p>Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (pp. 244-245). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-11320478115258828582024-02-13T18:47:00.002-05:002024-02-13T18:47:19.520-05:00Works Cited, Middle C<p>They … who are they, you ask? they are the chosen few, chosen by God, by Geist, by the muse of music: they are Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton von Webern. They chose, in their turn, the twelve tones of the chromatic scale and thought of them as Christ’s disciples. Then they sat them in a row the way da Vinci painted the loyals.</p><p>Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (p. 244). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.</p><br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-2242662904674971952024-01-28T21:39:00.003-05:002024-01-28T21:39:25.705-05:00Works Cited, Middle C<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Liszt, a fellow Hungarian, was an enormous early influence on Bartók. The man traveled the piano, coast to coast, like a coach. Late Liszt, my young friends, anticipates almost everything including the whole-tone scale. [……] Did you know one of his kids, Cosima, married Wagner? [……] She was a notable bitch. Isn’t that how you say it? Liszt made an enormous contribution to the very notation that composes a score, but I cannot take time for that here, or offer you juicy stories about his girlfriends though there is a shelfful, along with a lot of books.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Now listen to what he says—von Bartók, I mean—the words he uses: “The outcome of these studies was of decisive influence upon my work, because it freed me from the tyrannical rule of the major and minor keys.” “Tyrannical rule” indeed. Blame it all on the diatonic scale. Worse than an electric fence. What was at stake? Freedom, first off. From an imaginary limit. From the tyrannical State of Music. [……] Got that? </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Equality, second. For the composer, the instruments, the notes. “This new way of using the diatonic scale brought freedom from the rigid use of the major and minor keys, and eventually led to a new conception of the chromatic scale, every tone of which came to be considered of equal value and could be used freely and independently.” I won’t let anyone tell me that music isn’t political: this is the dictatorship of democracy. Down with the subordinate clause.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">You all know how the freedom sought by the French Revolution—revolutionaries take note—or was it carnage? revenge? was it bloodlust?—was usurped—was reversed by Napoléon’s emperorship, and [……] ah, you don’t know, do you? [……] Well, good for you, you have nothing to forget.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">So now we have to cope with the smarty-pants atonalists—Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern—Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern—Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern—who opposed the very romanticism that energized them—Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern—it’s only a scratch—to deal with their more specific dislike of Stravinsky’s eclectic modernism, et cetera. Lastly, nearing our station, we observe how the music of the folk as espoused by Bartók and Kodály got handballed from wall after wall of indifference: by the romantic music of Mahler, the intellectual regimens of the Viennese crowd—Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern—the turncoat classicism of Stravinsky, and the clangorous pauses of Cage and his crew. [……] You may make notes but not pass them. This isn’t kindergarten.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I could say simply that the Concerto for Orchestra is an appeal for peace, but that would make it sound simpleminded, and this piece is anything but. It is a mingling and clashing of competing kinds of music, the instruments that play them, and the totalitarian contexts within which large ensembles necessarily require their musicians to perform. A violin or cello concerto brags that, for a change, the rest of the world revolves around this one violin or cello and its simplest string. [….…]</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">This is only true of the genre, of course, instances vary. [….…] So, in the Concerto for Orchestra, various instruments enjoy their moment in the sun; turn and turn about, they are allowed to lead; and an ideal community is, in this way, imagined; one in which the individual is free, has its own unique voice, yet chooses to act in the best interests of all others. [……] The problem is: how to save Difference without making its members only frivolously different, like taking your tea in a glass instead of a cup.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (pp. 371-373). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-91689436179994354772024-01-19T23:35:00.003-05:002024-01-19T23:35:20.755-05:00Works Cited, Middle C<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Jesting! Jousting, rather. You heard the bray—the hee-haw—the yawp—and then the fairgrounds music? pretending to be a rodent running down an alley. Now, just because the second movement is designated, by the composer, “a game of pairs,” we mustn’t confuse it with boarding Noah’s ark—you know—bassoons two by two, oboes as twins, clarinets a pair, next two flutes, and, lest they be too overbearing and brutish, trumpets with mutes. Nor should we allow ourselves to be misled about the seriousness of these blurts. I was told that, while Bartók was composing the concerto, he heard a performance of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony on the radio and laughed when one of its subjects announced itself. He said it sounded like a Viennese cabaret song. This theme was so vacant of any real energy or significance that Bartók promptly borrowed it to use for an interruption he might ridicule. Why would he do that? Hands. [……] Hopeless. In the middle of a serious sermon, why would the preacher stick out his tongue? [… um …] Rather, my young friends, why would he stick out someone else’s tongue?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">What was happening around him when he wrote this work? Sorry—when he composed this work. [……] Well, yes, he was ill. He was dying. [……] Okay, he was also a pauper. But he had more important things on his mind. [……] What? His family I suppose. [……] Nothing more? [……] The world was at war, sillies. Everywhere. It was a very large war, deserving the name of “World.” It contained countless smaller ones, and the smaller ones were made of campaigns and battles, deadly encounters and single shootings, calamities on all fronts. But history can hold up for our inspection many different sorts of wars, and World War Two was made of nearly all of them: trade wars—tribal wars—civil wars—wars by peaceful means—wars of ideas—wars over oil—over opium—over living space—over access to the sea—whoopee, the war in the air—among feudal houses—raw raw siss-boom-bah—so many to choose from—holy wars—battles on ice floes between opposing ski patrols—by convoys under sub pack attacks—in the desert there might be a dry granular war fought between contesting tents, dump trucks, and tanks—or—one can always count on the perpetual war between social classes—such as—whom do you suppose? the Rich, the Well Off, the Sort Of, the So-So, and the Starving—or—the Smart, the Ordinary, and the Industriously Ignorant—or—the Reactionary and the Radical—not just the warmongers for war but those conflicts by pacifists who use war to reach peace—the many sorts of wars that old folks arrange, the middle- aged manage, and the young fight—oh, all of these, and sometimes simultaneously—not to neglect the wars of pigmentation: color against color, skin against skin, slant versus straight, the indigenous against immigrants, city slickers set at odds with village bumpkins, or in another formulation: factory workers taught to shake their fists at field hands (that’s hammer at sickle)—ah, yes—the relevant formula, familiar to you, I’m sure, is that scissors cut paper, sprawl eats space—<i>Raum</i>!—then in simpler eras, wars of succession—that is, wars to restore some king to his john or kill some kid in his cradle—wars between tribes kept going out of habit—wars to keep captured countries and people you have previously caged, caged—wars in search of the right death, often requiring suicide corps and much costly practice—wars, it seems, just for the fun of it, wars about symbols, wars of words—<i>uns so weiter</i>—wars to sustain the manufacture of munitions—bombs, ships, planes, rifles, cannons, pistols, gases, rockets, mines—wars against scapegoats to disguise the inadequacies of some ruling party—a few more wars—always a few more, wars fought to shorten the suffering, unfairness, and boredom of life.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (pp. 368-369). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-74320445147123333572024-01-15T17:35:00.002-05:002024-01-15T17:35:16.352-05:00Works Cited, Middle C<p> So, Bruno Schulz—you wonder what is the connection?—he was a writer and a draftsman after all, not a musician—so you should wonder at my claim to relevance. He wrote great Polish prose. He drew nudes—you naughties would like that. One of his drawings depicts a dwarfish man and a hurdy-gurdy—that exhausts his relationship to music. As far as we know. And how far do we know? Anyhow, Schulz is another example of what happens to greatness in this world of ours. Like Webern—shot as a dark marketer by some stupid corn-fed pop-singing assassin who at least had the decency to drink himself to death during the years that followed, from guilt, we may like to imagine. Only the Pole’s case was worse and more so. It happened—Schulz’s life—the lesson of his life, our lesson for today—it happened in Drohobycz which was a small provincial town like Webern’s Mittersill, but located in Galicia, not Austria—you know where is Galicia? nah, no hands—well, it is now the western Ukraine, a region also rich in composers, artists, scholars, and oh yes influential Jews including the founder of Hasidism, a movement of which you know? how many? show hands? nein? with a name like Bruno sewn on him you’d never think … of Jews. They slid slowly away from their faith, the Schulz family, in evidence of which I cite Bruno’s mother, who changed her name from Hendel to Henrietta, though what would be the use? what? well, I spare you Schulz’s low-level life, except he wrote wonders, pictured domineering women, drew men down around the women’s ankles like sagging socks.</p><p>Misfortune would not leave Bruno Schulz alone. Early in World War One—eh? … many hands for World War One …? six, twelve … congratulations … his house and the family store were burned, as they say, to the basement. In the middle of the thirties, his brother-in-law suddenly died, and Schulz became responsible for the welfare of a bereft sister, son, and cousin. But let us skip the merely syrupy third movement to enjoy the finale. In 1939 Poland is eaten by the two hogs wallowing in their sties nearby. The Nazis devoured the eastern half, and the Reds swallowed what was left in the west, including a little morsel called Drohobycz. This annexation ended Schulz’s publishing career, as meager as it was, for the Soviet Union specialized in propaganda and hero worship, neither of which our writer had any talent for. Two years passed—one wonders how—and the hammer and sickle was raised to affront the dawn and claim ownership of each dismal day.</p><p>Then the Nazis invaded Russia and the Huns came. They were far worse for the Jews than the Reds had been because the Gestapo sat behind the city’s desks and made dangerous its streets and corners. Among these minions was a man with a murderous past, a man alas from Vienna, a man named Felix Landau … one of many but one to remember … Happy Landau … called by some Franz, more acceptably German, Franz is … well … how fluid names were, then as now—people, places, identities, owners—no matter … whether Franz or Felix he was a man who eliminated Jews the way he moved his bowels. For a slice of bread and a bowl of soup, Bruno Schulz painted the walls of this art lover’s villa, including the nursery … Landau had commandeered the house from another Jew … it was later known as the Villa Landau, isn’t that—as you say—a hoot … and there he had multiplied himself, imagine … now his son had a room with a crib and a wall full of happy Felix-like scenes from the brothers Grimm … actually a princess, a horse-drawn carriage (Schulz had done a lot of those), two dwarfs (a lot of misshapen souls as well) … anyway, do not let the nursery be a surprise, they always do this—barbarians do—they go forth, they occupy, they consume, they multiply. Moreover, Felix bragged among his thuggish friends about the talented little slave who colored walls for him, a miserable painter who must have wondered what it meant to be actually a submissive man rather than a dreamed and drawn one.</p><p>Political criminals require accomplices—their power is based upon obedience, obedience upon dependency, upon bribes, threats, promises, rewards—consequently: so that his sister might live, Schulz acquiesced; so that her son would survive, Schulz said sir; so that a cousin could continue, Schulz kowtowed; and so that Schulz should gain a brief reprieve for himself as well, he took care to please his captor with his painting. On walls stolen from a Jew, another Jew depicted reassuring fairy scenes for the child of a man who murdered Jews and thereby earned a smidge of notoriety; moreover a man who, not as merely an afterthought, had a nice family he considerately looked after. Meanwhile, the Polish underground had not been idle. They provided the highly valued Bruno Schulz with forged documents designed to facilitate his escape from Galicia. He was to become an Aryan. His papers so described him. He was to leave Drohobycz, where he was known, and hide away someplace—someplace elsewhere—in the guise of a person of good blood and docile character who would therefore not write or draw or dream of washing a woman’s feet. Meanwhile, a German officer—a genuine Nazi, too, another Gestapo goon, with his Luger handy at his hip, a man whose name we know as Karl Günther—unlike the GI whom the Americans hid in anonymity—had grown envious of Landau’s gifted lackey, and, during a roundup of leftover Jews on November 19, 1942, shot Schulz in the head while he was bearing home a loaf of bread.</p><p>I have heard it said: All dead are identical. Do not choose but one to mourn. Broken toys are broken toys, and useless legs aren’t legs. </p><p>Thus Bruno Schulz—born an Austrian, raised a Pole, and about to become a Gentile—though a freethinker—died a Jew.</p><p><br /></p><p>Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (pp. 216-218). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.</p><div><br /></div><br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-16355153631785018162023-12-02T20:45:00.001-05:002023-12-02T20:45:02.209-05:00Works Cited, Middle C<p> <span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">Joseph Skizzen decided that given the constraints of the rabbi’s beliefs his reasoning was ingenious if not otherwise acceptable. Clearly, God had to be absolved. It was not he but Hitler who had to be horrible. Theodicy had excused many of the sufferings of the Jews by insisting that Yahweh was using the enemies of the Chosen as a rod to punish them for irresolution and waywardness. So that part of the explanation was ready-made. Then the rabbi simply borrowed a strategy devised by the wisdom of the East so he could conveniently claim that these persecuted, executed Jews had been previously alive and had died once before. They had been recalled to life by God in order that they might be punished—on account of sins committed in former times—in the hell our world would become for the occasion. It was to be, not the Last, but an Intermediate, Judgment. No doubt the ordeals of the countless slain would be cautionary and contribute to the perfection of the world, an aim of every righteous Jew.</span></p><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">The rabbi was sternly urged to reconsider his suggestion, and, to Joseph Skizzen’s disappointment, he rapidly did so, though with what recalcitrance was not reported. Surely the Holocaust victims did not deserve their fate. This was an objection most effectively aimed. That the rabbi’s solution required a resurrection in the midlife of the world was not an issue for the papers and was not reported, though it might have been raised. Surely theologically prepped reporters would have said that these Jews had been transmigrated, cleverly inserted into unsuspecting wombs by many an innocent but impetuous penis. After all, rotten karma had already humiliated, maimed, impoverished, killed the populations of the world many times by the ring of the bell towers. Professor Skizzen certainly approved of the idea that birth was our first punishment, and that there would most certainly be others. Camp guards who had lost their lives to old age were even now being readied for victimization on future killing grounds.</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (pp. 210-211). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-54611490639922717442023-11-30T17:01:00.007-05:002023-11-30T17:01:41.006-05:00Works Cited, Middle C<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">During the same week that Professor Joseph Skizzen was preparing his final lectures on Arnold Schoenberg’s<i> Moses und Aaron</i>, the newspapers were carrying reports concerning a celebrated Israeli rabbi who had, at last, solved the greatest theological question presented to the faithful by the Holocaust—namely, why? and six million times why? why? why? … why?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">There will be no Judgment Day until we undertake to celebrate it. There was a why for Jews, of course: what had their people done to breach the Covenant so utterly and so reprehensively as to deserve annihilation? There was also a why to trouble Christians unless they could forget that German Catholics and German Lutherans had murdered all those German Jews; unless they could somehow reconcile God’s bloodlust with their own thirst by viewing the Almighty’s malevolence as carte blanche to give heretics and Christ killers what they surely deserved—a punishment long in coming and therefore most acceptable. There should be a similar why put to the followers of Islam about Allah, the One and Only God, because to single out Jews to exterminate, as he obviously had, particularly Polish and German ones among countless equally deserving Spanish, Russian, or American specimens, not to mention oodles of additional infidels of all sorts, is … well … odd … Was Allah merely miming the Christian God Almighty, already an epic anti-Semite? The consequences were especially unexpected because the remnants wound up unwanted on the doorstep of the Palestinians—not, one would think, a result in Allah’s plans. No one has seemed similarly concerned that Joseph Stalin murdered many more millions than Adolf Hitler (Professor Skizzen had ample documentation stuck to flypaper in the south dormers). He had finally decided that the reason for this (apart from left-wing reluctance and unremitting Jewish propaganda) was the absence of an organized state campaign against a specific racial target. In any case, what were all these deities—G-d, Jehovah, and Allah—allegedly up to while their minions were slaying even one soul not to say massacring so many? because they were all responsible, weren’t they (those Gods, that is, that existed)? since their power and their wisdom were such decided particularities of their nature like our height and brain size; they were the culprits, surely, weren’t they? these Notables of the Sky? if not for turning on the gas directly, at least for closing their ears to the hiss, turning their backs to the passing trains, washing their hands lest they be stained, taking a snooze through repeated beatings … yes, every one of those Gods … silent bystanders to innumerable shooting parties held till the bodies of the dead lay in heaps like potatoes, and all that human consciousness, all that awareness—in each victim the very candle of the Lord, it was always said, the very Light asked for at creation—was snuffed … ah yes … snuffed … snuffed … —so that’s what the smoke was.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But Professor Skizzen had noticed that God was always excused. Any and every God. For any and every thing. A tornado might trash a trailer park and the poor wretches who survived would thank him for sparing them, as well as preserving a children’s plate and one photo of the family grinning at the Falls as if they’d pushed the water over by themselves.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Perhaps the Gods alternated fucking off. “I won’t interfere with the destruction of the temple, if you won’t prevent the crucifixion of the Savior.” The pagans, the Christians, and the Muslims had taken turns burning the Library of Alexandria, but it was a moment of rare cooperation. Most of the time the celestial bodies were at one another’s figurative throats. The thought of burning drove Joseph to his attic where there was nothing but paper, sticky strings of clippings, rows of books, piles of magazines, stacks of newsprint, rolls of placards and posters, so he was always frightened by any word that implied ignition. The fact that burning had occurred to him was significant. Set those mountains of painful testimony ablaze, shred the evidence, erase the stories: of the young woman who was raped by her judges in punishment for the adultery of her brother, for instance. Out of what dark corner of the human mind …? or is it all dark, even in the light? or do our murderous desires lie hidden in the closet of the entry? under the runner unrolled down the hall? or disguised as that spot under the dining table where the rug is stained? By whom are we ruled if not by our nature? Remove all signs of those murderers who now make movies of themselves going through their grisly motions; and there will remain the badgering of sweet maids by their horny masters or the drowning of babies in their baths. It is impossible to conceal all the evidence. Yet how easily we forget who we really are. Because it should give us the creeps.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (p. 208–10). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-73437287268961050042023-11-16T20:45:00.005-05:002023-11-16T20:45:52.794-05:00Works Cited<p>When you’re young, time is a puzzle, like interlocking nails. You wonder what you ought to be doing or what the future holds or how things that don’t seem to have worked out will work out; and in such a mood, even when you are focused on the future because you are yet to get laid, to bloom, to beget, to find your way, to win a tournament, you nevertheless don’t detail far-off somedays in your head; you don’t feel your future as you feel a thigh … because the present is too intense, too sunny, brief as a sneeze, too higgledy-piggledy, too complete, too total a drag already, whereas there is simply so much future, the future is flat as the sea three miles from your eye while the beach you are sitting on is aboil with sunshine and nakedness. The future is constantly killing off the present by becoming it. The future is too—thank God—vague to deal with. The future may not arrive. Yet that is all you value, all you hope for: fine future things; so you think, I’m not here at present; I’m just a movie made of slow-motion dreams; haven’t I always been, then and now? wondering about when: when the dust will settle and the sky clear, when I will hear cheers and I’m handed my trophy.</p><p><br /></p><p>Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (p. 130). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.</p><br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-20739622130259318852023-10-10T20:22:00.002-04:002023-10-10T20:22:14.572-04:00Works Cited<p> <span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">But there is one sort of heresy belonging to this class of which both the Catholic and the Protestant Churches have always shown a quite peculiar terror. It is that which consists in taking literally the very frequent allusions in the Scriptures to the wickedness and consequent damnation of the rich and the blessedness of the poor. This had been the crime of the Circumcellians, a militant sect of the fourth century which sprang up on the African latifundia under much the same circumstances as the Spanish Anarchists, and it was also the crime of the Waldenses and of the Anabaptists. What the authorities could not forgive in these sects was the emphasis they laid on the social teaching of the Gospels. And it will be remembered with what almost insane fury Luther urged the destruction by fire and sword of those peasants who were compromising him by taking his teaching on Christian freedom in a literal sense.</span></p><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">The reason for this violence is obvious. The Bible, and especially the New Testament, contains enough dynamite to blow up all the existing social systems in Europe, only by force of habit and through the power of beautiful and rhythmical words we have ceased to notice it. An intelligent Chinaman has been more observant. Sun Yat Sen, when he visited Europe, was amazed that a religion which persistently extolled the poor and threatened and condemned the rich should be practised and maintained chiefly by the richest, most selfish and most respectable classes. The political skill and duplicity required for such a feat seemed to him to go far beyond anything that simple Orientals could run to. The danger has therefore always existed that any weakening in the influence of the Church, any desertion of the interests of the poor by the priesthood, would lead to a greater emphasis being placed upon the social principles of equality, voluntary poverty and brotherly love that, along with many other things, lie at the root of Christianity.</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth (Canto Classics) (pp. 307-309). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-27076751155383786322022-10-14T08:06:00.001-04:002022-10-14T08:06:05.828-04:00Works Cited, A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving<p> <span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 19px; text-align: justify;">Owen used to say that the most disturbing thing about the antiwar movement—against the Vietnam War—was that he suspected self-interest motivated many of the protesters; he thought that if the issue of many of the protesters being drafted was removed from the issue of the war, there would be very little protest at all.</span></p><p class="storyText" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 19px; text-align: justify;">Look at the United States today. Are they drafting young Americans to fight in Nicaragua? No; not yet. Are masses of young Americans outraged at the Reagan administration’s shoddy and deceitful behavior? Ho hum; not hardly.<br /></p><p class="storyText" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 19px; text-align: justify;">I know what Owen Meany would say about that; I know what he did say—and it still applies.<br /></p><p class="storyText" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 19px; text-align: justify;">“THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN GET AMERICANS TO NOTICE ANYTHING IS TO TAX THEM OR DRAFT THEM OR KILL THEM,” Owen said. He said that once—when Hester proposed abolishing the draft. “IF YOU ABOLISH THE DRAFT,” said Owen Meany, “MOST AMERICANS WILL SIMPLY STOP CARING ABOUT WHAT WE’RE DOING IN OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD.”<br /></p><div>- Irving</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-82542372474075732802022-10-08T14:25:00.003-04:002022-10-08T14:25:35.527-04:00Works Cited<p>Remember that? Remember then?</p><p>I remember what Owen said about "Project 100,000," too--remember that? That was a draft program outlined by the secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, in 1966. Of the first 240,000 taken into the military between 1966 and 1968, 40 percent read below sixth-grade level, 41 percent were black, 75 percent came from low-income families, 80 percent had dropped out of high school. "The poor of America have not had the opportunity to earn their fair share of this nation's abundance," Secretary McNamara said, "but they can be given an opportunity to serve in their country's defense."</p><p>That made Owen Meany hopping mad.</p><p>"DOES HE THINK HE'S DOING 'THE POOR OF AMERICA' SOME FAVOR?" Owen cried. "WHAT HE'S SAYING IS, YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE WHITE--OR A GOOD READER--TO DIE!"</p><div>-Irving</div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, "system-ui", ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-56668145191438133662021-10-06T14:53:00.005-04:002022-09-26T09:23:54.511-04:00Joyce Carol Oates is Silly<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Joyce Carol Oates: </span></p><div data-block="true" data-editor="94equ" data-offset-key="qeo-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="qeo-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="qeo-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="94equ" data-offset-key="cj2pa-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="cj2pa-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="cj2pa-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">"they" will not become a part of general usage, not for political reasons but because there would be no pronoun to distinguish between a singular subject ("they") & a plural subject ("they"). language seeks to communicate w/ clarity, not to obfuscate; that is its purpose.</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="94equ" data-offset-key="b0j8o-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="b0j8o-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="b0j8o-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="94equ" data-offset-key="5upc4-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5upc4-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="py34i1dx" color="var(--blue-link)" style="font-family: inherit;">https://twitter.com/joycecaroloates/status/1445581438175223816</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="94equ" data-offset-key="a3uqg-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="a3uqg-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="a3uqg-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="94equ" data-offset-key="18vet-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="18vet-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="18vet-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">It’s remarkable how blissfully unaware people can be of their own ignorance. So let’s count the ways this is wrong:</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="94equ" data-offset-key="8oui2-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8oui2-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="8oui2-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="94equ" data-offset-key="6lfip-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="6lfip-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="6lfip-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">1. Fun fact, the pronoun “you” is singular and plural, and has been for centuries, and English seems to still function. </span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="6lfip-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="6lfip-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="94equ" data-offset-key="52s7-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="52s7-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="52s7-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">2. Singular “they” has existed longer than any one of us, included Ms. Oates. Again, English still seems to function.</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="94equ" data-offset-key="5l7bi-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5l7bi-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="5l7bi-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5l7bi-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="5l7bi-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">3. If we really do need a plural “they,” then it’s perfectly permissible to just coin one. “They all” comes to mind.</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="94equ" data-offset-key="1pnhc-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="1pnhc-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="1pnhc-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="1pnhc-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="1pnhc-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">4. With thirty seconds of Googling, you can verify for yourself that there are plenty of languages that mark plurality only optionally, or not at all. These languages all appear to function. Not surprising that Ms. Oates didn’t know this, but it is surprising she didn’t bother looking it up before making a pronouncement.</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="94equ" data-offset-key="9etr7-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="9etr7-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="9etr7-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="9etr7-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="9etr7-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">5. There are countless ways that English is ambiguous, and it still functions. We do not distinguish between inclusive and exclusive first person plural pronouns, unlike, say, Hawaiian. We do not mark whether we witnessed something directly or only heard of it from others as part of our verb tenses, unlike, say, Turkish. We do not distinguish, typically, between groups of two and larger groups like, say, Slovenian. And so on. </span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="94equ" data-offset-key="60qfr-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="60qfr-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="60qfr-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="60qfr-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="60qfr-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">6. Finally, the purpose of language is not to communicate with clarity. It can be used in that way, but it can be used in just the opposite. Many a politician, or lawyer, for example, uses language to obfuscate. You can object to them doing so, but you can't deny that they're using language.</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="94equ" data-offset-key="5jbaf-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-7753488970396340222021-09-28T16:38:00.002-04:002021-10-01T10:34:39.858-04:00Poem After Reading the Long Loneliness<div><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>The Long Loneliness</b> is the autobiography of Dorothy Day, published in 1952 by Harper & Brothers. In the book, Day chronicles her involvement in socialist groups along with her eventual conversion to Catholicism in 1927, and the beginning of her newspaper the Catholic Worker in 1933.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">-<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Loneliness" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Poem after reading <i>The Long Loneliness</i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I read your book, Dorothy, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Looking for answers you didn’t have</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Nor claimed to have</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">But when you contemplated the mystery</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Of the seeds and your daughter’s crown</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">You saw Rome and lovely pomp</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Decode what was good</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And what endured</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Through the nights of the race</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">As we muddled the classifications that bound us,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Denied the chromosomal match,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Saw no miracle in the fact</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">That a lemur manufactures ascorbate</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Whereas you, and you, and you, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And Andaman savages </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And the Davos jet set</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">All have carried a bit of wrecked code</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">That once meant a necessary amine</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And now means only that we need each other</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Much more than we need anything.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">We, Toba’s orphans,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Who once huddled in the dark, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Our dank fear redolent</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Amid the tang of gopherwood.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I think we agree,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Dorothy.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">II.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I read your book, Dorothy,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Because you’re a better person</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Than I’ll ever be</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Or ever want to be, I suppose, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Because I’ve not these thirty-nine years</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Ever learned to domesticate</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">The disgust</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">That rides through me</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">When the beggars near.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Because I watched a war unfold</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">In dull contemplation</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And kept a languid opinion</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">That it might be a bad idea</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Buried in notes on my desk.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Maybe I supposed,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Socratically, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Dorothy, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">You could teach me something I know,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Weave courage from this</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Mess of tissue and lymph</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And trim and tack</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Until some wind </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Impregnated the sails.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">III.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">In your book, Dorothy, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">You found God</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">In joy</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And the pico-unknowns</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">That underlay your cosmos and apple trees, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And I, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Naïve, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Could tell you that a web search</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Is all that separates us now</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">From the secrets of the yearning seed</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And the neurotransmitters</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">That fire our contentment.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">But let’s be frank, Dorothy,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">(I will not lie to you</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Because I can’t keep track of my lies):</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I will confess the arcana of dark matter</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And tick down Hilbert’s list of the unsolved.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I will tell you a tale of fractal realities,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Of a frond of futures that they tell me</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Come endlessly from the quantum breakers.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I will even grant that whether the Turing box halts</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">The Nazarene solved halfway to Cana.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And we cannot.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">IV.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Still, Dorothy Day, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">As history closes its damascene folds</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Over your testament,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">As the unknown changes its shape with its magnitude intact</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">(I want to be fair, Sister,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I want the accounting honest)</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">You refuse to believe</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">That none of this leads to the stoup.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">That the crucifix is only</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">The first attempt </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">At something we still strive</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">To perfect, ever faithful,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">In strategic hamlets</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And hospitals perched</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">In the far away myth of Al-Anbar.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">(Of course I came for your accusation, too.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I came into the purgatory of these yellowing pages</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">For embers that might brand</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">With something life has so far spared.)</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Please, Dorothy.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">On the beach of Staten Island, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Let’s gather driftwood for the evening fire.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I will tell you how we’ve economized</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">The Gnadenhuttens of yesteryear</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">By ensouling drones and whetting the</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Anthropocene scythe</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And you will respond with Dostoyevsky</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And the rosary.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I’ll venture that the pump was primed</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">With the delta’s firstborn blood</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And you will tell me of beatitudes</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And John of the Cruz.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I will proffer martyrs of Hiroshima</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">You, a sobornost,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And we will both agree only</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">That the water and blood</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Have sprung rich from Golgotha</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">These two millennia.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">V.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Dorothy, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Will it seem ironical</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Or perhaps pat</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">That I found a sacrament</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">In an old mp3</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Of you recounting the annals of anarchism,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Of communism prior to the Stalinite kiss,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And as your voice fought through fifty years</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Of static—</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">(So much entropy, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">We lift our heads above only once)—</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I did think:</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Here’s a wonder</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">(If wonders can teem, as they do in an HTML world,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And still signify).</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">My phone a brief tabernacle</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">For your will.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And I stopped and I considered this.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">That’ll preach.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">VI.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Maybe, Dorothy, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">When we are both shades,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">When you’ve tired of Tolstoy’s eccentricities, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And Madam Krupskaya is busy educating the lumpen-Cherubim,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">When we both drift between the darkling angles</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">In the lattice of the axioms</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">That man throws up against the sky</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">To pin moons on filaments galactic, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">You’ll wait with me</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Through ten to the power of thirty-four</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Intent to see if the proton cracks</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And what radicle creeps forth.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">You’ll hold me </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">As the wavefunction falls around us</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And our possibilities entwine—</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Those worlds where you cowered </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And those where my heart bled enough bravery</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">To stand at your shoulder when the bludgeons fell.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">(How thick does my disgrace flood these forking corridors?)</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Only don’t save me from the talion, Dorothy.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Let’s tell ghost stories of orgasms, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And holocausts,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Of serotonin and seraphim.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Let’s sort all this ash,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And make sense of it as we can, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">With a qibla for you, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">With a qibla for me.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">VII.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Does it matter, Dorothy?</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">For there’s only the one lesson,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Surely.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">We can do better, and we do not.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And yet, when we’ve been cracked open, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Like ruddy lobster shells,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And our hearts wriggle on the scale, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And Ammit drools, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">We will be oh so zealous in our defense:</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">We did our best!, we shall say. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>They</i> held the bullhorns, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>They</i> wrote history,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And we believed them.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And they said: </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Help them not!</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">For they are perverts and they are already damned!</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">They are greedy. They are lazy.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">They are against the revolution.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">They are for the revolution.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">They spy, they spawn, they steal, they stink.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">They are disloyal and they are armed</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">(And they are having this very conversation).</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">We were so very scared, you see.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Miserere nobis.</i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Nescivimus nos.</i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">We didn’t know better.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Does it matter, Dorothy?</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Just who gives the verdict?</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Which gouty judge clambers up the dais,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And clears his throat,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Saying,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Goddamn you fucking apes.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">How many mujaddids and mahatmas, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">How many avatars and Avalokitesvaras</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And siddhas and scientists and saints</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Do I have to wind up and set forth</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">To get you to stop torturing each other?</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I have given you brains that can count infinities, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Minds that can unfix time.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I have watched you poke stars, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Levitate steel, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Map bereshith</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">In the shifting sands of the shifting void, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And you claim ignorance</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And plead for forgiveness.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">You love me? What need I of love?</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I am clad with scales thick beyond all measuring,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">My carapace infinite, my blood neutronium.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">My tears so heavy</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">They debase elliptical purities.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I pick quasars from my hair.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">How shall you injure me?</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And then, what can I forgive?</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And what can I send?</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">To clear the clear,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">To make the obvious more so?</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Another novel? Another opera?</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">One more documentary?</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">A new, subtle exegesis of Samaritans</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And figs?</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Or shall I waterboard you in the gutter?</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Incarnate you as tapeworms?</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Flense the delusion,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">De-rationalize,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Commune with you once again</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">The shriveled horror:</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">To be poor</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">To be powerless</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">To be persecuted</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">To be condemned to picking</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">The cluster bombs from the cyclopean teeth </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Lining the Plain of Jars.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">You have made me state it so often</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">That it turns to moist cliché in my mouth.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">But once more, for the stenographer:</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Love each other.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Be kind to each other.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Before the wind dies.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Most nights, I cannot sleep for the ticking of the argon clock.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">It has been one point eight million years</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Since you told your first story, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And curled your toes in the Olduvai muck.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Time enough to know better.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">VIII.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Don’t misunderstand me, Dorothy.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I damn and am damned.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I will wait in harrowing hell</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Until the Hawking radiation</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Releases every last soul.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">After we forget why we suffer.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">After we forget how.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Only then will I tunnel free,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">More eschar than man,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And watch the nebulae </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">As they resolutely refuse to coalesce.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">IX.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">In the closing static, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">The universe, physicists augur:</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">A garden of singularities, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Black holes murmuring secrets.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">We know now—did you?—of the mausolea</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">That anchor galaxies, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">But even they conclude their testimonies</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And leave the manifold virgin as once.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And Dorothy, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I have to say, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I still think those seeds managed it alone.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">On the shores of Tottenville,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Mastodons still wallow.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Lenape yet abound.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">We come again to gather driftwood, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">For the Sabbath Atash.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I don’t know if there’s time or humanity enough,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">For these seeds to dehisce</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And speak a coy green wonder in twilight.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">But better we than I,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">To pray in this starless hall.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Hold my hand, Dorothy, </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">For I am amazed.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Pad-footed comes the night.</span></div></div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-90387585922549161272020-11-03T23:15:00.009-05:002021-10-01T10:39:29.249-04:00Adulthood Fairy<div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The man turned at the gang of teenagers, and drew back his lips to reveal sharp eel teeth.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“Yo man, you sell drugs or what?” they said.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“I’m actually the adulthood fairy,” he said. “I go around granting adulthood to the children of the world.” Leathery wings extended and trembled in the wind ripping through the alley.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“Sick, dude.”</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“I also sell drugs.”</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“Sick, dude.”</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“So, are you all ready to become adults?”</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“I mean, we were just after some molly, but, yeah, what the fuck.”</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“I have to warn you, there are pros and cons to being an adult.”</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“Like what?”</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“Like, you’ve got to work a job, and some of you get hemorrhoids. And you, you lose two fingers at a Guatemalan zoo.”</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“Damn.”</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“And that’s not even the worst part of the trip.”</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“Damn. I don’t want to be an adult then.”</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“But, also… no homework.”</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“Sick, dude.”</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“And you get to have sex.”</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“Awesome!”</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“Most of you at least. Not you. Or you. And you will have sex, but it’s with an elderly and semi-lucid Casey Affleck.”</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“Not sure how to feel about that.”</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“No one is. Much of adulthood is learning how to feel about that.”</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“Anything else?”</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“Yeah, you know when you were a little kid, and you were super excited for Christmas, and you couldn’t wait for it to come? Well, when you’re an adult, all that anxiety and expectation gets moved to Election Day. And, while on Christmas, there’re always presents waiting under the tree, and family and eggnog and cookies and all that shit, and lo, what wondrous joy—on Election Day, half the time, the results will be so completely horrible that they will fill your soul with terror for the fate of the human race, and challenge your faith in the universe and your fellow man, and you will find yourself poisoning your brain with whatever chemical you can find in liquid form to somehow scrub the afterimage of that Lovecraftian horror called the American democratic process from the halls of your memory. And the other half of the time the results will be slightly less bad.”</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“Whoa." They exchange looks. "How much sex though?"</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-43757290706425441052020-10-24T13:02:00.005-04:002020-10-24T13:02:48.260-04:00Works CitedYes, there are a hundred, and a thousand voices crying. But what does one do, when one cries this thing, and one cries another? Who knows how we shall fashion a land of peace where black outnumbers white so greatly? Some say that the earth has bounty enough for all, and that more for one does not mean less for another, that the advance of one does not mean the decline of another. They say that poor paid labour means a poor nation, and that better-paid labour means greater markets and greater scope for industry and manufacture. And others say that this is a danger, for better-paid labour will not only buy more but will also read more, think more, ask more, and will not be content to be forever voiceless and inferior.<div><br /></div><div>Who knows how we shall fashion such a land? For we fear not only the loss of our possessions, but the loss of our superiority and the loss of our whiteness. Some say it is true that crime is bad, but would this not be worse? Is it not better to hold what we have, and to pay the price of it with fear? And others say, can such fear be endured? For is it not this fear that drives men to ponder these things at all?</div><div><br /></div><div>Paton, <u>Cry, the Beloved Country</u></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-64551655121626636102020-10-23T21:12:00.004-04:002020-10-23T21:12:29.260-04:00Works CitedHe was grave and silent, and then he said somberly, I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find we are turned to hating.<div><br /></div><div>Paton, <i>Cry, the Beloved Country</i></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-32218899335304162182020-10-20T17:26:00.005-04:002020-10-23T21:11:39.376-04:00Works CitedI always used to think I'd like to stay seventeen or eighteen if I could. But not anymore. I'm not a teenager anymore. I've got a sense of responsibility now. I'm not the same guy I was when we used to hang out together. I'm twenty now. And I have to pay the price to go on living.<div><br /></div><div>Murakami, <i>Norwegian Wood</i></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-3762938499844740172020-06-01T22:41:00.002-04:002020-06-01T22:41:52.294-04:00Works CitedFifteen years after Independence, in 1975, a group of Senators called the Church Committee took it upon themselves to look into the secret operations that had been brought to bear on the Congo. The world rocked with surprise. The Church Committee found notes from secret meetings of the National Security Council and President Eisenhower. In their locked room, these men had put their heads together and proclaimed Patrice Lumumba a danger to the safety of the world. The same Patrice Lumumba, mind you, who washed his face each morning from a dented tin bowl, relieved himself in a carefully chosen bush, and went out to seek the faces of his nation. Imagine if he could have heard those words-dangerous to the safety of the world!-from a roomful of white men who held in their manicured hands the disposition of armies and atomic bombs, the power to extinguish every life on earth. Would Lumumba have screamed like a cheetah? Or merely taken off his glasses, wiped them with his handkerchief, shaken his head, and smiled?<br />
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On a day late in August, 1960, a Mr. Allen Dulles, who was in charge of the CIA, sent a telegram to his Congolese station chief suggesting that he replace the Congolese government at his earliest convenience. The station chief, Mr. Lawrence Devlin, was instructed to take as bold an action as he could keep secret: a coup would be all right. There would be money forthcoming to pay soldiers for that purpose. But assassination might be less costly. A gang of men quick with guns and unfettered by conscience were at his disposal. Also, to cover all bases, a scientist named Dr. Gottlieb was hired to make a poison that would produce such a dreadful disease (the good doctor later testified in the hearings), if it didn't kill Lumumba outright it would leave him so disfigured that he couldn't possibly be a leader of men.<br />
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On the same August day, this is all I knew: the pain in my household seemed plenty large enough to fill the whole world. Ruth May was slipping away into her fever. And it was Rachel's seventeenth birthday. I was wrapping up green glass earrings in tissue paper, hoping to make some small peace with my eldest child, while I tried to sponge the fire out of my youngest . And President Eisenhower was right then sending his orders to take over the Congo. Imagine that. His household was the world, and he'd finished making up his mind about things. He'd given Lumumba a chance, he felt. The Congo had been independent for fifty-one days.<br />
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Kingsolver, The Poisonwood BibleUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-76610499034502863452019-03-03T14:05:00.002-05:002019-03-03T14:05:54.896-05:00Works Cited<div style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 0.25em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">
In a rencontre of this kind, having left my antagonist for dead, I was wise enough to make my retreat into France; and a few days after my arrival at Paris, entering into conversation with some officers on the subject of politics, a dispute arose, in which I lost my temper, and spoke so irreverently of the Grand Monarque, that next morning I was sent to the Bastille, by virtue of a lettre de cachet. There I remained for some months, deprived of all intercourse with rational creatures; a circumstance for which I was not sorry, as I had the more time to project schemes of revenge against the tyrant who confined me, and the wretch who had betrayed my private conversation. But tired, at length, with these fruitless suggestions, I was fain to unbend the severity of my thoughts by a correspondence with some industrious spiders, who had hung my dungeon with their ingenious labours.</div>
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“I considered their work with such attention that I soon became an adept in the mystery of weaving, and furnished myself with as many useful observations and reflections on that art, as will compose a very curious treatise, which I intend to bequeath to the Royal Society, for the benefit of our woollen manufacture; and this with a view to perpetuate my own name, rather than befriend my country; for, thank Heaven! I am weaned from all attachments of that kind, and look upon myself as one very little obliged to any society whatsoever. Although I presided with absolute power over this long-legged community, and distributed punishments and rewards to each, according to his deserts, I grew impatient of my situation; and my natural disposition one day prevailing, like a fire which had long been smothered, I wreaked the fury of my indignation upon my innocent subjects, and in a twinkling destroyed the whole race. </div>
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Smollett, <i>The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle</i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-24980229373585924182018-11-26T20:37:00.001-05:002018-11-26T20:37:24.626-05:00Works Cited<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Ah hate cunts like that. Cunts like Begbie. Cunts that are intae basebaw-batting every fucker that's different; pakis, poofs, n what huv ye. Fuckin failures in a country ay failures. It's nae good blamin it oan the English fir colonising us. Ah don't hate the English. They're just wankers. We are colonised by wankers. We can't even pick a decent, vibrant, healthy culture to be colonised by. No. We're ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? The lowest of the fuckin low, tha's what, the scum of the earth. The most wretched, servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat intae creation. Ah don't hate the English. They just git oan wi the shite thuv goat. Ah hate the Scots.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Irvine Welsh, <i>Trainspotting</i></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-34399971044322129262018-10-11T21:27:00.001-04:002018-10-11T21:28:15.843-04:00Works CitedA contingent of howling simopaths swing from chandeliers, balconies and trees, shitting and pissing on passers-by. (A simopath--the technical name of this disorder escapes me--is a citizen convinced he is an ape or other simian. It is a disorder peculiar to the army, and discharge cures it.)<br />
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William S. Burroughs, <i>Naked Lunch</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33986085.post-89119549711488505052018-09-10T10:06:00.001-04:002018-10-11T21:26:00.205-04:00Works Cited<div class="gmail-p3" style="color: #232323; font-family: arial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, had always been the systematic organization of hatreds, and Massachusetts politics had been as harsh as the climate. The chief charm of New England was harshness of contrasts and extremes of sensibility --a cold that froze the blood, and a heat that boiled it --so that the pleasure of hating --one's self if no better victim offered --was not its rarest amusement; but the charm was a true and natural child of the soil, not a cultivated weed of the ancients.</div>
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<i>The Education of Henry Adams</i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0