from an unpublished interview:

...Have i ceased to have patience for the unmistakeable
cue, or have i sharpened my observance of ever more
subtle beginning-traces. I don't know.

There's times i know i shouldn't try to write. I know
it's going to be terrible if i don't give up, but i
go ahead anyway because i'm curious as to what will
happen. Well, the poem turns out bad alright, but for
the moment i've satisfied my curiosity.

Everyone who creates finds that parts of their work
and portions of their lives seem finer and more profound
than the rest of it; and they would give anything to
increase their share of that bounty. The trouble is,
you can't. There's nothing you can do. What kind of
artist you are capable of becoming depends on how you
choose to deal with this rude and imperious paradox.

The greater mass of [my writing] i never try to
publish, and i hope some overly kind editor will not
someday put them into a book next to the poems that
are worth something. If that happens i am going to
be an implacable and howling vengeful ghost.

After writing for many years, you've made all the
big easy discoveries and you come to a kind of
watershed. There's the temptation to continue what
you already know how to do well--and this is the road
of self-pastiche. Or you go looking for exotic subject
matter to renew your sense of novelty. Or (and i think
this is best) you will be forced to turn inward and
seek out the sources of your own creativity. I can
only liken this to the difference between a long term
relationship that takes you on an unending journey
of mutual exploration, and the kind of short term
affair that relies on an excitement that soon fizzles
out. I don't know where it leads but i know i can never
be limited to the purely lyric mode again...

I am not one of those who can comfortably accept
that the waste and inequity of the present system is
the best humans can hope for on this planet. But the
emotion of this is rather banal. It manifests in my
work more subtly--as an aesthetic of restlessness,
self-contradiction, and a tendency to evade the
expected.

More and more, obliquely, by implication or allusion,
describing a partial arc in the air; i find that
the presence of my other poems completes the new
one.

What poem did you submit to Pinsky's "favorite
poem" survey? --The "Sonnet to Orpheus" which
begins: 'Silent friend of far-flung distances...'

What American poet did you nominate for the
postage stamp, and what was their response?
--Léonie Adams. They said there was no such poet.

There are more poets now than have ever existed in the
history of language, put together. You might say that
the old paradigm, which was based on a scarcity
economy, can no longer begin to cope with a situation
in which the typical poetry magazine of maybe 100 or
200 subscribers, receives ten times that many submissions
in one week. So perhaps poetry has already turned into
a hobbyist-subculture, or rather a whole set of them
(each claiming to be the ONE TRUE WAY): and we need
to see what can be done within those pared-down domains,
that doesn't depend on getting published as the final
sanction and goal of writing. After all, it hasn't always
been that other way, either; in Shakespeare's day, arguably
the English language's richest and most fertile period,
poems went around from friend to friend and were copied
out in longhand, and that was it. A serious person used
Latin.

   "Knowing I Live in a Dark Age

Knowing I live in a dark age before history,
I watch my wallet and
am less struck by gunfights in the avenues
than by the newsie with his dirty pink chapped face
calling a shabby poet back for his change.

The crows mobbing the blinking, sun-stupid owl;
wolves eating a hamstrung calf hind end first
keeping their meat alive and fresh...these
are marks of foresight, beginnings of wit;
but Jesus wearing thorns and sunstroke
beating his life and death into words
to break the rods and blunt the axes of Rome:
this and like things followed.

Knowing that in this advertising rainbow
I live like a trapeze artist with a headache,
my poems are no aspirins...they show
pale bayonets of grass waving thin on dunes;
the paralytic and his lyric secrets;
my friend Al, union builder and cynic,
hesitating to believe his own delicate poems
lest he believe in something better than himself:
and history, which is yet to begin,
will exceed this, exalt this
as a poem erases and rewrites its poet."

--Milton Acorn
[I don't know that a better political poem has been written
in our era.]

Moblogging scoops the news in Japan.

Yes, there is a Klingon scale--music has even been written
in it. (Not to be confused with Klingon Rock.) (Not to mention the real Klingons*.)

Listening to: Venetian Vespers.

-----------------------------------------
(*the same reviewer looks at Thai elephants & other
primitives here.)
(And here is his response to Pat Boone's In a Metal Mood--one of
the clearer Signs of the Apocalypse.)

I read some Charles Tomlinson, prompted by a book called
The Sinking Island, & here is one good poem he did write:

   "In Defense of Metaphysics

Place is the focus. What is the language
Of stones? I do not mean
As emblems of patience, philosophers' hopes
Or as the astrological tangents
One may assemble, draw out subjectively
From a lapidary inertia. Only we
Are inert. Stones act, like pictures, by remaining
Always the same, unmoving, waiting on presence
Unpredictable in absence, inhuman
In a human dependence, a physical
Point of contact, for a moment not physical
And on a track of force, the milestone
Between two infinities. Stones are like deaths.
They uncover limits."

[Perhaps he'd just been reading Riding.]

   "What Hunger Means"

Words to describe it are nixed;
Empty gestures must suffice.
What will they take away next?

All things wrong will soon be fixed
They say, if we sacrifice.
Words to describe it are nixed.

By noise of dismays we're vexed
When murmurs of prayer suffice.
What will they take away next?

Our strength lies in throngs unmixed.
They won't be asking you twice.
Words to describe it are nixed.

To think I was once perplexed,
And dabbled in foolish vice!
What will they take away next?

After all else is deep-sixed,
Fun fun fun the maze of mice!
What will they take away next?
* to ** it are *.

07 20 03

You know, after the Velvet Revolution, everyone in
Czechoslovakia had taken Russian in school but
noone wanted to use it anymore... Maybe i should be
writing in Europanto!

I wonder how many novels Wittgenstein is a character in?
Must be at least a dozen--including one Sherlock Holmes
story.

But we got the sons.

I spoke last week with a woman named Jodie Evans, long-time
peace activist and organizer of a group called the International
Occupation Watch Center, or IOWC. The purpose of the IOWC is to
stand as watchdogs in Iraq over the corporate contracts being
doled out, and to view in person what is happening to the Iraqi
people. "I think that if you were against the war, then you need
to be there," said Evans, "because there is no one in Iraq who is
for the Iraqi people, and the people know it. They know it."

Evans had just returned from Baghdad. Upon her arrival to the city,
she saw the demonstrable chaos caused by the war, and by the abject
failure to repair the country in the aftermath. "It was 120 degrees,
it was dusty, the air had a haze that makes everything gray," said
Evans. "The buildings you see on the road are bombed out. In some,
you can see the fire coming up. In some, you only see the scaffolding
of contorted metal. We got across our bridge and turned right onto
the street we know so well, the one we've stayed on, and every building
was either boarded up or bombed out, including the United Nations DP.
It was all bombed in, the windows were black from the fire."

"Immediately after we arrived," said Evans, "we hear that it is not
only worse than before the war. It is worse than during the war. People
are upset, people are angry. There were lots of stories about how the
Americans are doing this on purpose. A month after the '91 war, which was
much worse than this one, everything was back and working. Now, the people
live in this chaos they can't even imagine. People can't go outside.
Women haven't left their homes. Lots of people haven't come back from Syria
or Kuwait or wherever they fled to get away from the bombing, because life
in Iraq is unlivable. There is 65% unemployment, and even the doctors and
nurses and teachers who are going to work don't get paid, so there's no
money."

Evans met a number of Americans in Iraq who are part of the 'rebuilding
process.' One such person was in the Compound, a guarded palace that is
now home to Bremer's office and staff along with a number of other groups.
The overall organization is called the Iraqi Assistance Center, or IAC.
The man Evans met was a professor of religion and political theory at a
religious college in America. He explained that his job was to collect
intelligence for Bremer.

"That professor I spoke to, the one doing intelligence for Bremer, I told
him that I had spoken to countless Iraqis and all of them felt this chaos
was happening on purpose," said Evans. "He basically said this was true,
that chaos was good, and out of chaos comes order. So what the Iraqis were
saying - that this madness was all on purpose - this intelligence guy
didn't discredit. He said, 'If you keep them hungry, they'll do anything
for us.'"

"I met the man who was hired to create a new civil government in Baghdad,
to bring Baghdad back to order," said Evans. "His name was Gerald Lawson.
I asked him what his background was that allowed him to get this job. He
said he was in the Atlanta Police for 30 years. I asked how this gave him
the ability to create a stable, civil government. He said he was a manager.
I asked him what he knew about Iraqis. He knew nothing, and didn't care to
know anything. He didn't know their history, their government, didn't speak
a word of Arabic and didn't care to learn. This guy doesn't work for the
American government, doesn't work for the State Department, and doesn't work
for the CPA. He works for a corporation created by ex-Generals. Their job
is to create the new Iraqi government structure."

"We met the man whose job is to make sure the hospitals have what they
need," said Evans. "He is a veterinarian. We met a British guy who showed
up at the Compound gates one day and said he was a volunteer who wanted to
help. The next day he was named the head of rubbish control in Baghdad, which
is a huge problem there because there is garbage all over the street. I asked
him what he had been doing with his time. He said he'd been hanging out at
Odai's palace playing with the lions and the cheetahs. I met the guy in
charge of designing the airport, where major jumbo jets are supposed to
land. He had never designed an airport before."

"Another man I spoke to associated with this process is named Don Munson,"
said Evans. "His job is civilian affairs policy. He said to me, 'We are
replacing one dictatorship with another.' He's there for two years, and he
works in the palace on the first floor."

"Remember," said Evans, "that the first thing America did was to fire 80,000
police officers. These guys weren't associated with the Hussein regime. That's
like connecting a cop in LA to the Bush administration. All the people I've
talked to over there, the ambassadors and others, said they warned Bremer not
to do that. The cops knew who the criminals were, and 80,000 cops are gone.
So now there are these little mafias that run neighborhoods. With no other
work and no way to survive, people are going to become criminals. The borders
are wide open - we didn't even get stopped when we came in - so everything
is just flowing into Iraq."

"A friend of mine's husband is an ambassador," said Evans. "I asked him if
this was normal operating procedure. He said that, basically, no one will work
on this Iraq project who has any respect for their work or career, because it
is so clearly a farce. He said that later we will go in after these guys have
blown it, but right now with Bremer there it is a farce. Even the press is
over there are just shaking their heads and asking, can anyone fail so badly?
Can anybody make so many mistakes? You can't imagine they can be so dumb."

--truthout.org

If there can be said to be any "origin" of so complex a
phenomenon as binary thinking (as a syndrome & not as
a procedure), i think it must be in parental malpractice, by
parents similarly afflicted, who are incapable of unconditional
love & thus force their children to suppress part of themselves
which will be a long time retrieving (if ever); in the meantime,
they will have to be some sort of dualist, although the exact form
of this may turn out quite a heretical one.

If every time the word "evil" was used by someone who should
know better was the playing of a song, & i got royalties for that song,
i wouldn't have to work at this bookstore, that's for dingdong sure.
It's theology, it makes about as much sense in any discussion
about the real world as requiring all of us to invoke Mickey Fucking
Mouse in the news. And do you know why it's so convenient to
have this word at our fingertips? That which is "evil" is a Monster, &
a Monster's feelings don't count. You don't try to persuade Monsters,
you exterminate them. --And what is a crusade against crusades, but
another kind of Monster?

   "Grief Management for Dummies"

Bitterly flung on the raven currents
These mute words to a gin run mad
Neither increase my malign endurance
Palpably, nor bring peace once said.

Poet of riddles, grimoires & shadows,
Look to the cardboard a beggar wields:
Read if you will of nearer battles
Not to be mentioned by tenured skalds.

Poetry's over; & that's no subject.
How many rtimes will you wake & turn
Back to the dark, in this pyramid Egypt
Hieroglyph-choked & vision-shorn?

09 13 02

"Never be a citizen of anything in which you would not want
to hold shares." --Norman Spinrad, Greenhouse Summer (1999)

"The restaurant band was playing Dixieland Bach..." --ibid
[A few words about this book. The author puts more effort into
creating a couple of interesting characters, & sketching a post-
capitalist society of "citizen-shareholders" in "syndicates", than
in delineating a plausible world for the polar-melted climate that
is all too foreseeable. (His chief enjoyment, from living in Paris
i suppose, is giving that place the climate & culture of present-day
New Orleans--that being, apparently, the only thing Paris now
lacks. I would have rather seen his temperate Siberia...) But it is
important for being one of the few scifi novels to address this
subject, & interestingly, not completely a dystopia or disaster
novel (such as J G Ballard's monumental The Drowned World--).
All the same, i think it is typical of its period in being unable to
imagine the tragedy of a world in which billions of people have
become environmental refugees. You have to go back to literary
novelists of the thirties & forties, to find something that comes
close to what is now required. (Here i insert a blurb for the better
songs of Grunge--& Under the Volcano.)]

One of my esteemed colleagues likes to maintain that Grunge
was the Death of Music. Whilst i was never a real partisan, &
i regret that it should have become so oppressively prevalent
a paradigm, i do think as a movement in Rock it has had some
validity. He challenged me to name 10 good songs that Grunge
has produced. So here, after a bit of research, is my list:

1. Nirvana, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (1991)
2. Live, "Lightning Crashes" (1994)
3. Live, "I Alone" (1994)
4. The Toadies, "Possum Kingdom" (1994)
5. Cracker, "Low" (1993)
6. Tool, "Sober" (1993)
7. 3 Doors Down, "Kryptonite" (2000)
8. Alice in Chains, "Rooster" (1992)
9. Stabbing Westward, "Save Yourself" (1998)
10. Bush, "Everything Zen" (1998)

There is a great monotony of tone, & a lack of feminine
presence, that must be accounted Grunge's greatest weakness.
This comes, i think, from their origin, not in Black Sabbath
so much as Robin Trower--if one goes by actual resemblances
& not what the bands say--& would have made the period
intolerable, if i hadn't also had music by Tori Amos, Bjork,
& a number of one- or two-hit girl-led bands (Alanis Morissette,
Veruca Salt, Belly, Garbage), to balance the spectrum.
But all in all, Grunge created a mood that can rarely be found in,
say, Fifties or Sixties music (& only in Seventies
or Eighties among the underground).

'...black masses have continued to be said since the Middle
Ages. ...even in America, where the poet Longfellow was head
of a sect.' ----letters of J K Huysmans

Empathy is evidently a freak talent, the sixth sense that
not only does 80%* of humanity not possess, they do not
even suspect the existence of. So a compassionate
society cannot be founded on the regular exercise of
this talent. However, i don't know why it shouldn't be
possible to train people to regard it as a respectable
fiction, like so many others; & for those who actually have
it, their revealing the secret can do, after all, no harm.
(--Except to themselves: a strange torment it is, for example,
not to be able to hate wholeheartedly, when you need to!)

-------------------------------------------------------------
(*Alright--70% of women & 90% of men.)

What i think about Mathematics & Reality: when i mow the lawn,
i automatically visualize the grass being divided up into regular, linear
segments, & this is the path i follow so as to complete the task in the
minimum number of strokes. (I determine my path through supermarket
aisles in the same fashion.) In fact i am constructing the job as i go,
& i recognize that there are any number of geometric alternatives in the
same area of space. But my tool determines the width of the path, & its
linearity. Some people (& i include friends among them) would take this
lawnmower & push it any old way; eventually they would get most of
it, but it would take a whole lot longer. (They would, however, feel "less
regimented". --Digital to them is in varying degrees, a foreign language.)
--So time constraint also is one of the hidden aspects to this job-constructing.
But if exactness alone were the goal, then i would do better to use a high-
powered weed eater--analogue style--& if i wanted to become really intimate
with the contours of the landscape, i should use scissors. (Call this an image
of an Aesthetic Civilization--such as i like to imagine Heian Japan to have
been.) --Alternately, i might let it go & stick to the paths that my routine
generates through the waist-high brush. Or, plant something else that is
so appropriate to the climate & my needs, that just as it naturally is, is
the way i like it & we co-exist peaceably. (Call this an image of a Sustainable
Society.)
   --We are so reliant on the infrastructure that our
science has allowed us to create, & so oppressed by the lack of genuine
leisure, that not only do we regard our Crunching Numbers as the acme of
all possible epistemologies, we refuse to consider that anything but small
adjustments to the machines, can ever be necessary. At best we solace
ourselves with the Dream of the Perfect Machine. Much like "Heaven",
it is a dream without particulars (can you say "nanorobots"?).
   I think it will only after the failure of the petroleum-
based world economy, & its consequent social disruptions, that people will
be willing to listen to something so radical as a value system based on
quality not quantity. The question really becomes: will it be a new smart
one, grounded in rationality, or one of the old stupid ones, grounded in
irrationality?

Black Fatima.

   "Elegy For Green Yellow Red"

I'm stopped at a light. It's a perfect morning. (Perfect anyway as July
can manage.) Long shadows, the air mild. Hardly any cars out. Yet
we wait here, patiently, for the light to change. --Traffic lights are
one of the two or three unconsidered things that make city living
possible. Yet there are people who want to get rid of them. Even a
pause of thirty seconds is too much affront for their egotism to
stand. When a traffic light stops working, anarchy ensues. It can
be good anarchy, as drivers politely allow one car at a time to have
its turn. Or it can be bad anarchy, with everyone trying to force
their way through, & cars slamming into cars out of sheer stubb-
ornness. But what these selfish people want, is not any kind of
anarchy; rather, they want a definite order to prevail. First, the big
awesome Hummers--everyone stops for them, & they never have to
stop at all. Then those bulbous SUV's--they stop only for Hummers.
Then i guess the rest of us--on mopeds or in dogcarts for all they
care--we stop for everyone, & nobody stops for us.
   When i think of how burningly some people
resent the very existence of traffic lights--that momentary equality--
i know them for a sickness & a scourge. But i don't know what to do
about it...
   Invisibly, insatiably, they are doing away with
the traffic lights.

07 20 03

Online Etch-a-Sketch.

Christiania update.

A neat little list of sculpture gardens.

Applied Canetti. Although he won a Nobel Prize not all
that long ago, Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power is a
great book no one seems to have read. Not only profound,
but a storehouse of highly entertaining anecdotes... (Nowadays
if he is remembered at all, it's as the basis for a character in one of
Iris Murdoch's novels.)

A form which has become prevalent only with the internet,
& which resulted from not understanding that Billy Collins
was making fun of fixed-form poetry: the Paradelle.
No doubt someone this instant is seriously trying to follow
the Rules of Flarf...
[Reminds me of how zzxjoanw became extant*, after it was inserted
into a Maori dictionary by the lexicographer as a joke; similarly, i
believe, Lewis Turco invented the terzanelle to see if anyone would
write one--& they did.]

Another definition of "flarf" : snarky towards the idea of
Robert Lowell...

And let's not forget about scrytch.

--------------------------------
*i have used that word in poems, so it is now a "real word"...
According to this, in David Brin's novel Earth, there's a char-
acter who play that imaginary musical instrument...Ironically? Or not?
Who can say?

My favorite utopian idea: the 20-Hour Week. Just double
everybody's hourly wage, & cut their hours in half. (I
maintain that practically no one works more than four hours
in an eight-hour shift, anyway--.) What would we do with
all that extra leisure? Perhaps, construct a civilization.

I still think FLARF is an Icelandic word, but i can't seem to find
out what it means... Consider This:

Bei›ni um annan gagnahra›a flarf a› sko›a ? hverju
tilviki fyrir sig. ? landsbygg›inni er bo›i› upp? 512
kb/s og 2 Mb/s tengingar en bei›ni um annan gangahra›a
flarf a

? fleim st?›um, sem ekki eru skilgreindir sem IP-sv?›i,
flarf vi›skiptavinur stofnl?nu fr? heima-bygg› ? n?sta
MPLS-punkt

Ef betri?rangur ? a n?st ? bar?ttunni vi v?muefnavand-ann
flarf fletta a breytast

Anais Nin postcards!

from Harlem Gallery (1965) by Melvin B Tolson:

" '...If,
anchored like hooks of a hag-fish to sea weeds
and patient as a weaver in haute-lisse tapestry,
a Rivera or a Picasso,
with a camel-hair alchemy,
paints in fresco-buono
the seven panels of a man's tridimensionality
in variforms and varicolors--
since virtue has no Kelvin scale,
since a mother breeds
no twins alike,
since no man is an escape running wild from
self-sown seeds--
then, no man,
judged by his biosocial identity
in toto
can be,
a Kiefekil or a Tartufe,
an Iscariot or an Iago.'

Is philosophy, then, a tittle's snack?
History a peacock's almanac?
He laughed down at me,
a kidney without anchorage,
and said: 'You must see through the millstone,
since you're not like Julio Sigafoos and me--
an ex-savage.'

His ebony forefinger an assagai blade,
he mused aloud as the box played in Harlem's juke:
'Creator of the Harlem Ghetto, what is a masterpiece?
A virgin or a jade,
the vis viva of an ape of God,
to awaken one,
to pleasure one--
a way-of-life's aubade.'

Black as cypress lawn,
the crag of a woman crabsidled in.
he breath of a fraxinella in hot weather,
her unlooked-for grin
evaporated; then,
like a well's spew
of mud and oil and raw gas,
she blew
her top.
Dipsy Muse slumped like Uhlan
when his feet failed to prop,
his squeal the squeal
of a peccary ax-poled in its pen. ..."

I'm not sure if these are the snarling angels i saw
in Prague, but they'll do.

You can buy my CD now (see "tie ins" at the upper left)!
Makes a great stocking stuffer for Lughnasad!!!

"...if Joseph Goebbels had run his own cable channel, it
would have been indistinguishable from Fox News."
(Caution: reading a printout of this article in a coffeeshop
got one guy a visit from the FBI, according to today's Tom
Tomorrow.)

Reading: Extremities by Kathe Koja (recent short
story collection by one of contemporary horror's finest
writers), Dark Sleeper by Jeffrey Barlough (as if
Charles Dickens had decided to try a Lovecraftian
pastiche), Doctor of Silence by Robert Kelly (stories
by a much overlooked poet), The Devil's Church and Other
Stories by Machado de Assis (top Brazilian writer of the
fin de siecle), & (rereading) Moderan by David R Bunch
(which, though aimed at the Vietnam War, loses nothing of its
outrageous punch even today).

In order to write, i devise a Phantasmagoric
Transmogrification of everything around me;
cars, for example, become "Yaldabeests"--large
spiders that are ridden.

The burglar stole $16 in change--& climbed right
past a $250 book on display.

   "The Brights"

Now the hard road lengthens:
Return, between bad tires & the scarred road, lengthens.

A wonderful dream happens to someone else
Beyond; & the barred road lengthens.

"Truth is both dogmatic and intolerant"
Says a sign, & the marred road lengthens.

07 18 03

   "A Family

Beyond the window
The crescent moon, attacked by T.B.,
Thrusting out its lung almost consumed,
Is hanging white without breathing on a high-tension wire.
The children of mice tear off the ceiling.
The loam falls down much.
Cats do not appear for a long time.

Why, the youngster 'Sung-og' carrying a toy-gun,
Shouts, 'I'll shoot you!'
'I'll shoot you!'

The body-weight riding in a balloon
Soars high up inflated;
The dialogue of my family
Seems to be in a hospital ship."

--Zang-hyon An


Listening to: Clara Rockmore- The Art of the Theremin

When will we understand that our dream of a free
& egalitarian society requires an athleticism of
the spirit we have to train for, when all we know
of discipline is the bogus dichotomy of unlimited
self-indulgence or coercive regimentation? When all
we know of choosing, is between the packagings of
indistinguishables?

    "My Country is Not

Blanca, we are not grapes.
Many grapes do not make my country.

The dark of the eye cannot see my country.
Only the swallow knows what the swallow swallowed.

An onion lolls on the ocean.
The ocean, they will say, resembles an onion.

Far away is my country.
Rider on a horse cannot cross it.

On the rooftop: rooftop, feathers, sky.
Who has not, into our earth, spit?

The sun, the moon, they do not darken my country.
The pregnant ones, even they cannot bear it.

Your happiness, Blanca, is not my sorrow.
My country is not a democracy.

The salamander's sigh, the cricket's careful quiet.
Not in either, I have looked, lies my country.

Who has not, in his heart, beat?
Who has not, in his stomach, snarl?

My country is not a watermelon.
My country is not a cancer.

Much grandfather, therefore, in my country.
Much Blanca, much country.

Not even the swallow
Knows what the swallow swallowed."

--John Bradley

The famous "necromantic" art gallery in New Orleans now has
a webpage.

I'm not sure announcing yourself as a "bright" these days is all
that bright.

They need clicks.

I'm mad. I'm hopping mad. I'm mad because they're using
a Lynyrd Skynyrd song to sell shit beer.

We visited a small factory run by Lighthouse for
the Blind. They make notebooks, glasses cases.
It was loud, just like the factories i'd temped in
long ago. Takes some designing to make a factory
you have to feel out the operation of. Something
to feel good about. Imagining that i were writing
for these people...

   cool in here, a faint
metal smell; & a nonstop
   roar, my hands steady

   07 16 03

Aleatoric places (via sylloge).

Listening to: Silk Road Journeys.

A bumber sticker i saw: Yo soy el army. A duplicate, with
translation: "One-man army".

Who is Mary Cavendish Gore, & why is her 1934 novel Mad
Hatter's Village worth so much?

Looking at this book about Coelacanths. I wonder if i
can google a picture of one?
The Coelacanth has entered my private mythology ever since i first read
about it. It's also a nifty word...

Our store got broken into Thursday night. I'm still
steramed about it. They didn't take much money, &
they must've gotten cut up pretty good on the broken
glass, but they took a couple of our (semi-reliable)
remote phones, & the good CD player. I know if any
of our cash-only "customers" comes in wearing ban-
dages, i'm going to be real stingy.

      Non fanda timemus;
Sed venient maiora metu. --Lucan I.634-5 ('We fear
unspeakables;/ Worse is on the way.')

   "Parentage

'When Augustus Caesar legislated against the unmarried citizens
of Rome, he declared them to be, in some sort, slayers of the
people.'

Ah! no, not these!
These, who were childless, are not those who gave
So many dead unto the journeying wave,
The helpless nurselings of the cradling seas;
Not they who doomed by infallible decrees
Unnumbered man to the innumerable grave.

But those who slay
Are fathers. Theirs are armies. Death is theirs--
The death of innocences and despairs;
The dying of the golden and the grey.
The sentence, when these speak it, has no Nay.
And she who slays is she who bears, who bears."

--Alice Meynell

Most literate cities: Dallas is #36. (But only because i have
a copy of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.)

"Despite all the time and effort I have wasted on the attempt to hide it, trying to tell my self I am wrong and hunting for chances to prove my self wrong. I think the time now is right to reveal it, the time to be honest has come.
In the presence of that mountain sized despair, which has already burdened my weary heart with the frustrations of all the past years to wait for me now and rip me apart to pieces which are hard to bring back together. I am going to declare what has been gnawing on me brutally from the inside so hard I can't even think about blaming myself for keeping this inside for so long. I will confess that I despise you.
Yes, I blame you for creating all these rifts within me, I hate you as much our people have suffered, as much as my ears had to listen to the sounds of bombs and missiles, I hate you as much as the destruction my eyes has seen, as much as I hate the blood that flowed, the wasted years and the loss of my hopes for a future. I hate you as much as all the Iraqis who had to immigrate, as much as the politicians who had to disappear. I blame you for the suffering through the merciless humid and hot nights of Basra without the simplest creature comforts, I blame you for not being able to find the simplest entertainment in my city the second biggest city in Iraq, blame you for the dirt road I have to travel to get to my university which is right in the middle of the city. Blame you for loosing the will to live and for my need for love which was lost in you……..
Because of all that, my dearest Iraq, I despise you. But please, my love and hate, understand my anger. I want you to stop answering my questions about the wasted childhood and youth by saying that these things will be forgotten, because if you do that again you will have to allow me to keep on despising you. " --Ishtar Talking (translated by
Salam Pax)

Attending a poetry reading is like going to a Latin church
service; attending a slam, like going to a service that's
been painfully rendered into the vernacular. The ritual
stands for its own defiant persistence. Which is not the
same as transcendence: we've given up hoping for the
same thrill we might find in dancing, say, or a really
good movie. But it is not nothing that some of us still
feel pious toward a dead culture. And in fact its deadness
becomes ever more relevant, as the tricks of the moment
begin to pall on us. For dead things never get any deader,
& that, in a world of violently gyrating meaninglessness,
can be something to hold on to.

   "Hyo-gwan Bag

Pen name, Un-e or Cloud Slope. Opera singer at the time of
King Czôl-zong and King Go-zong. Gained a good reputation
among the people, but dreamed his life away. The famous
anthology of poems named Gagog-wônlyu or the Original
Streams of Songs, which he edited in the 13th year of King
Go-zong being helped by his student Min-yông An is the
collection of Sizos in chronological order, and classified
them into two kinds, Male Voice and Female Voice accord-
ing to the tunes." --op cit

There was a time when only traditional music was
listened to; then a time when only contemporary.
Now we live in another kind of time, when not only
every past era, but also every other culture, presents
its version of music (& they even mingle). --But our
literature, & even moreso our poetry, remains mired
in the contemporary paradigm(s). This is its doom, &
also its charm: to be unlike our music.

   ”The World

It burns in the void,
Nothing upholds it.
Still it travels.

Travelling the void
Upheld by burning
Nothing is still.

Burning it travels.
The void upholds it.
Still it is nothing.

Nothing it travels
A burning void
Upheld by stillness.”

--Kathleen Raine

We were at a party & someone just sat down at the
piano & started playing the most amazing, intricate
flowing piano piece i had just about ever heard. "Is
that Debussy?" i whispered. "Ravel," i was told. "Jet
D'eau."

Found an old paperback in one of our stores that seemed
to be an amazing story: Sally Trench's Bury Me in My Boots,
about her work in the late 60's with homeless people. When
i googled for her name to find out more, i discovered she was
still helping people thirty years later--in Bosnia. Who says
there are no more heroes?
[Oh yeah--she was blinded by a thrown bottle at 22.]

Listening to: Miles Davis, Kind of Blue.

"Investigation of the Royal Massacre"

The desert's share of elves
Alluringly recedes, a highway night
Disclosed in orbs that flicker, hover, melt
And leaving, jab with knives:
The desert's share of elves.

The thievish dealer says
One day you too shall vanquish with the moth;
Anything to lose this daily death.
You hazard it, because
The thievish dealer says.

The desert's share of elves,
The thievish dealer says,
Is more yours with the fading felth.

06 09 01

I'm not disingenuous about Antiwar.com's politics--nobody hates
the neocons like an old-time conservative--but when i read ol'
Justin Raimondo defending Ann Coulter's defence of Joe McCarthy, my head kind of spins--
& then i giggle.

Economic Lysenkoism (long, technical). (via Counterpunch)

   degrees of sanity

ability to make small talk

capacity to recognize illness

understanding past mistakes

foresight & avoiding situations of lessened choice

teaching others the same (who ask)

teaching without appearing to teach

...Now that Poetry magazine has been funded (at their
current rate of expenditure) through the year 3541 AD, i'm
thinking it may be the only 20th century institution to survive.

If just being a Satanist isn't bad enough for you, try being a
Communist Satanist.

Fridge magnet pornography.
Poems made from the words of another poem.
Using the minor characters in a famous story.
A poem using the rhyme-words of a famous poem.

The Dowson poem near the end of "Laura".
The Auden poem near the end of "Three Weddings and a Funeral".

Another Iraq soldier-blogger.

Poems written a line at a time, every day for a year.
Sculpture made exclusively from metal fragments salvaged
at the scene of a car wreck.

   ’A STONE FENCE

From there
The vast zone stretches.

It began to ruin.
A cross-shaped sword is sticked in.
It was hard and small.

Whitish clothes are folded there.
The third one is vacated not covered.

The stone fence is broken.
It was built again, being built again.

It was built.
The stone fence was built.
And the wind stole in and lodges.
Then the frozen evening squeezed in.’

--Zong-sam Gim

My Best Palindromes

Seva saves.
Sip alone no lapis.
Emanate: get a name.
Stem men-emmets.
Sex: every gyre vexes.
Won king is a sign I know.
Pope Wodwo, how do we pop?
Elapse day, Hyades pale.
No garden if a fine dragon.
Ode protocol: loco torpedo.
Nidor of sagas for Odin.
Diana, simoom is an aid.
I garble Babel, Bragi.
Raps clack calcspar.
Diastole hymn, my helot said.
Fresh Caesar ever as each serf.
Allude my wedded dewy medulla.
O due spasm: I had Ahimsa pseudo.
‘Til ransom may allay, ammo snarl it.
A neb revels in Aegean isle verbena.
No sibyl, no senile lines. Only bison.
No omen urn I say, so rosy as in rune moon.
Night-omega, minimum in image: moth ‘gin.
DNA-lyre, I felt senses nestle fiery land.
Story, cremate ylem anew: enamel, yet a mercy rots.
Revenge buoys telepath; tape lets you beg never.

'In times of peace, there's no need for unofficial recorders.'
--Yuan Haowen (1190-1257)

Poets on the factory model: decide to produce (not poems, but
books of "poetry"), and then try to drum up a market for their
product (this may be the chief sin of the Quietudinous--but not
only theirs...). Who will hold a gun to the head of their pet & ask:
Does this need doing? Who would not be burst like a bubble by
such a question? --Then how much of our art is self-protection
against that actual irrelevance.

I quit eating fast-food not because it gave me indigestion but
because they never would give me exactly what i ordered.

Subtract from philosophy what is merely [Jungian] type-
propaganda, and not much remains except earnest exhortations
and embellishment for the sake of embellishment.

I don't enjoy the struggle of intelligence vs. stupidity. I
can't see it as a game. Therefore i shouldn't choose to play it if
i can avoid so. Never mind "what has to be done". My feelings
of indignation aren't a good guide on this, because though they
keep me aimed with an image of Justice, they would make me try
to reach it by an impossible directness. I must make myself immune
to emotional blackmail even when it comes from me.

None of us is sane, none of us is healthy, none of us is whole--
& the pretence that we are, is not the least of our afflictions.

The Great Big Book of Tomorrow is out!

"Either man is obsolete or war is. " --Buckminster Fuller

   "Nothing Left to Lose"

Don't cry for me Afghanistan.
Our mines bedeck your broken hills;
The new resurgent Taliban
Don't cry. For me, Afghanistan
Remains a dream; no Marshall Plan
Shall ever come to salve those ills.
Don't cry for me. Afghanistan,
Our mines bedeck your broken hills.

07 11 03

If Dubya gets re-elected with a 5% approval rating, we'll
know what happened.

I know it's all over the Internet, but how can i not link to
a space blog?

Peter Gabriel sings a duet with a chimp on his new album.

My Lojban translation of Basho's most famous haiku:

tolcnino lalxu
ke banfi nerplipe ke
liksna jalge .uo

Literally: 'Opposite-new lake kind-of amphibian into-break
kind-of liquid-sound result (completion!).'

Driving into Oak Cliff, where i grew up; & which is
now largely Hispanic. Thinking about Low Riders, & how
their ethic is to drive slow where everybody else drives
as fast as they can get away with. Slowness as a space.
Nobody saw it as such before they took it over for their
own use. Laying claim to the despised signifier. How this
has long been a significant strategy for subcultures. Camp.
But now, just the other day, i saw a mainstream-publisher
book on how to decorate "Fifties style" (for those who can't
afford to buy the real thing). I remember when Fifties kitsch
was cheap because everyone thought it was terrible & stupid;
what they wanted was--oh, Art Deco. I remember when a few of
my friends started collecting it--& also the "easy listening"
music of that time (now immortalized by Re/Search's book on
Exotica)... i myself was (in the early Eighties) ambivalent: i liked
it, but i could bring myself to approve of it intellectually (this
changed). Where was the Irony in all this? Only in the sense of
reverse-valorization; the Whigs of that time never felt condescending
towards their found treasures so it wasn't "camp", nor did they
exactly seek the baddest of the bad, merely the most characteristic.
  Then Retro caught up with them, & it wasn't avant
anymore. (Say, ten years later.) --Later still, we are experiencing the
cultural white-noise of too many style-strategies going off at once,
like firecrackers. Are the Eighties "in"? The Seventies? The McKinley
Era??...When white noise becomes the given (=syncretism). The style
of Empire in a syncretic period appears almost random. To define itself,
Imperial aesthetes adopt what i have called Apodeictic Bogosity--but
compounded with Doublethink. Wrapping oneself in the flag despite the
intellectual bankruptcy of the gesture but so fucking what, we can do
what we want--& then being able to feel like this is a fine & noble gesture.
Look how Classic Rock--which originally was anti-war--is being fused
with "Let's Roll" (Apocalypse Now without the irony). I feel less & less
my commonality with the Boomers, when this is what happens when the
Boomers take control... In such a context, is Classical Music then the con-
trarian mode? (I think of A Clockwork Orange.) What is the new
meaning of contrarian, if one is to escape duality? --What we all have in common,
is less a culture than an infrastructure (Hotmail, Yahoo, Google, cellphones,
cable TV, traffic lights & gasomats). Does the infrastructure have a politics?
  Posthumous Poetics (neo-Alexandrianism): in an effort to trans-
cend the noise of the marketplace, one resorts to "writing English as if it were
a dead language" (as was said, perhaps unfairly, of Pater). This has been tried
before. Callimachus is only read by specialists, but his Roman disciple Catullus
is still esteemed; he benefitted from what might be called "hybrid vigor"--the
merging of the somewhat etiolated Greek traditions, with the turbulent up-&-coming
argot of Empire (often wielded best, by provincials: Catullus was a Celt). --I see
parallels in the phenomenon known as "Bollywood" (also, in a more circumscribed
way, in the mid-Nineties "shibuya-kei" music of Japan). Just as when Country met
Blues & produced Rock, when Indian pop culture demanded home-grown movie
spectacles on the plan of Hollywood musicals, something rich & strange resulted.
(Maybe too: scifi, from technophilia plus Pulps--).
  --Which leads to the poetics of Glimflash (one genre superimposed
on another). Glimflash as signifier...of the logical third?
  The poet at this juncture: a three-legged dog who likes to catch
frisbees.

If Dylan was going to plagiarize someone, he should’ve
borrowed from Kathy Acker.

Was the decline of poetry in the eighteenth century
partly due to the popularity of coffee? and how about
the "Enlightenment" as a coffee phenomenon among
the intelligentsia?

An age poor in individuals is an age rich in devotees--
which does not make it an "age of faith" to live in
(though afterwards it may be called such): such believers
are faithless to themselves and to each other; that's what
every age of faith is really like.

This continual violent shaking of city life passes for
stability because it makes things easy, relieves a lot of
hard choosing through its robot rounds & routines, but
stability is something else.

Until there is social justice it's no use kvetching about our
personal injustices. But we can still strive to be more just
ourselves. How do you increase your desire to be just? Not
intellectually--by empathy.

More than i want social justice, i want a land where i don't have
to hate.

I'm not interested in making art that's "passable" nowadays
and it annoys me when mine is judged as a failed attempt
at that-- --but my whole life is judged so, too! (e.g. by potential
employers)
  This doesn't incline one to objectivity.

My father, now in his seventies, is learning to play the clarinet.
For some reason i am irresistibly reminded of that moment in
Plato where Socrates tells his friends who have come to be with
him on the last day before his execution, that he has had a dream
in which he was told, "Socrates, practice music." And so, that's
what they find him doing when they get there...

"In the video documentary 'Aftermath' i made about the '84
convention protests for cable there's a bit i used over & over like
a leitmotiv of this real blankfaced suited droid riding down the
escalator at the Republic Bank, just as the War Chest Tour gang
swarmed in, & he wasn't reacting at all. Well, the first day i worked
there, i got out by the same escalator & i didn't recognize it till
i arrived at the bottom & looked up. This belongs alongside Goethe's
riding past his old self & the second time he experienced it as the
old man he became...except i have failed to be enlightened...

"...for a while the small illuminated stage of 'culture', where
ideas & words could loom large & seem like causes, passed
for the whole scene. Now that's dissolving--to writers it
appears catastrophic--to demagogues perhaps a Godsend--but
nothing in the way humanity creates or resists innovations is
different or will be different. Except for the fact that trivial
twitches on the sleeping face of the Electorate get amplified
into earthquakes by our power to instantaneously respond to
bad dreams. Maybe the best way to focus local power is to
work on attenuating those larger influences. ...it makes me wonder
whether the visceral-reponse democracy we are heading into
will keep pulling energy out of the commonwealth or reach some
point of general distress that historically has always resulted in
great upheavals in the way people live, if not the way they
think. ...even the Reaganoids in Washington & elsewhere cannot
find a world sufficiently sanitized & isolated to maintain their
lifestyle once the roads become impassible--there aren't enough
helicopters. Poetry has turned itself into helicopters for the
minds of another elite...and meanwhile reinvents itself as Rap in
the ghettos. It's not yet as distinct as Latin and the vernaculars
were to become; that means choices made now can influence their
reciprocal evolution. Shall i say "politics" is another such heli-
copter? --that it means one thing to people who own houses and
something else to renters...?

"Our fathers to their graves have gone;
Their strife is past, their triumph won;
But sterner trials wait the race
Which rises in their honored place;
A moral warfare with the crime
And folly of an evil time." --Whittier

The most famous concrete poem.

   ”PACT

It is written in the skyline of the city (you have seen it, that bold and accurate inscription), where the gray and gold and soot-black roofs project against the rising or the setting sun,
It is written in the ranges of the farthest mountains, and written by the lightning bolt,
Written, too, in the winding rivers of the prairies, and in the strangely familiar effigies of the clouds,

That there will be other days and remoter times, by far, than these, still more prodigious people and still less credible events,
When there will be a haze, as there is today, not quite blue and not quite purple, upon the river, a green mist upon the valley below, as now,

And we will build, upon that day, another hope (because these cities are young and strong),
And we will raise another dream (because these hills and fields are rich and green),

And we will fight for all of this again, and if need be again,
And on that day, and in that place, we will try again, and this time we will win.”

--Kenneth Fearing

Nothing should be simpler to keep up than the meshing of
related purposes, like well-used forest paths that don't have to
be recleared everytime somebody uses them. I only have to
count the crossed out lines in my address notebook to see
the likelihood of that. Well, we are gossamer, and if like the
coral-tube worms we contribute to some Great Barrier Reef,
visible from the moon, that's not a part of the tubeworm's
plans. Maybe 'organizations' are obsolete. And networks
--except as the temporary filament sufficient for a contact,
a letter, an image glimpsed for 1/30th of a second... But i
don't know that (true, the Bank has not bought its new
building like all the others before it--they rent). The old
paradigm, of building to last, still troubles me; it must be
too long since i've travelled, for that's like a great wind
sweeping away a lot of clutter & reducing you to essentials--
it helps teach the art of prioritizing, which is worth any
number of megalithic monuments. Having gotten that, further
travel is redundant--turns into a place itself; albeit one without
any particular topography.

"The waste of fine tea through incompetent manipulation
was considered one of the three most deplorable acts in the
world (the other two being false education of youth and
uninformed admirations of fine paintings)." --F R Carpenter
on tea in the Sung Dynasty, quoted in The Signet Book of
Coffee and Tea

"Grammar of five-fold rose and six-fold lily..." --Kathleen Raine

"How many ages since has Virgil writ!
How few are they who understand him yet!" --Roscommon's
essay on translated verse

"Indeed if the worst conceivable situations which our
humanity may have to confront lie beyond the scope of
poetry, then poetry itself is a mere diversion." --Kathleen
Raine, The Inner Journey of the Poet

"You talk like a Rosicrusian, who will love no thing but a
sylph, who does not believe in the existence of a sylph, and
who yet quarrels with the whole universe for not containing
a sylph." --Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey (1818)

"The wickedness of Cheops reached such a pitch, that being in
want of money, he prostituted his daughter and ordered her to
make a certain sum of money: but I was not told how much. This
she did, and being minded besides secretly to provide for her
own memorial, she demanded of every man that lay with her the
gift of one stone towards it. And of these stones, they say, was
built the midmost of the three pyramids, fronting the great pyra-
mid, whose sides are a hundred and fifty feet long." --Herodotus
Book II.126 (tr Harry Carter 1958)
[This myth illustrates quite clearly, i think, how the common
people feel about the Caesars & Cheopses of this world.]

    "--Also we've caught
A poet, a small shrill man like a twilight-bat,
Accused of being a traitor to his country..." --Jeffers, "War-
Guilt Trials"

"Nowadays they call slavery ethos, which was being hooked on
values you had no hand in creating." --Ishmael Reed

"...Americans are, perhaps, after the Albanians, the least humorous
of people..." --Gore Vidal

Someday it will be wondered why the people of this age were
always using sentences with the names of famous persons in them
(even our poetry). As if we could not bear to speak about ourselves
or anyone we knew, but still wanted to improvise on some vestige
of a relationship.

Almost a good idea: Which Book lets you set the parameters, & it
comes up with a suggested book to read--but only from those
published after 1995!

   "Only Lacan Has The Phallus"

In a streetlight's sphere
close-pent by dark
the rain as it descends
  seems to radiate out
from the eye of the light;
  so all that occurs
in one's mind alone,
accretes to Ego
--that specter made of limitation.

The metaphor of the Spirit. Put your hand out the car
window at 90 mph. Most of the time we don't even know air is
there. The "Spirit" is simply a way of saying this about the
humanness of humans. It's really harmful to posit a separate place
(or mode of existence) where we will (or could be now) always and
necessarily fully human. Because then it becomes politicized--a
collective condition (e.g. why should salvation be the same for any
two persons--the same process or the same language--Christianity
arose when having an identity was rare; that is, when it was poss-
ible to ignore individual differences, or when they were usually sub-
sumed under sectarian names) that obviates the need for individual
effort (the doctrine of Works is almost better, ezcept it too narrowly
defines what work can be)... Gurdjieff'sconcept, however, is restricted
to building an ego. I would like to integrate this into "The Cloud of
Unknowing" (future mindscientists* may measure my folly from this),
for it matters most of all what kind of ego (and egolessness) you make
--or allow for. I think of what a wonderful house my mother's father
built. There was a pit in the garage for working under a car. There was
a receptacle for dog shit so it wouldn't draw flies. There was a foldup
drawing table by the window with the best light. --He just failed to
anticipate the disintegration of society in his plans. It left completely
isolated... --So we construct egos without considering the destruction
of the Spirit...

---------------------------------
*menli jenai degji fatci as i put it on #lojban recently:
the science of "mental- and not finger-reality".

   XIAN’S SALSA RECIPE

“Here is the salsa I keep in my fridge at all times. A day does not go
by that I do not put this stuff on something. Since I began adhering to
this ritual my quality of life has improved dramatically.

1. Roast a few tomatoes, poblanos, and serranos. To do this, stick'em
on skewers and toast'em like marshmallows in your gas flame until they
blister (if you have electric, throw'em in an iron skillet and roll'em
around).
2. Do the same thing with a couple cloves of garlic.
3. Chop up a bunch of onion and marinate it in juice of 1 lime for at
least 15 minutes (this is key).
4. Chop up everything else and chuck as much or as little of it into a
blender as you want, depending on how chunky you like it. Mix it
together with the unblended stuff. It will look foamy and unpleasant,
but that's just air bubbles. They go away in a little while.
5. Mix in the onion and some cilantro and some salt, and maybe some
chipotle powder from Penzey's. Done, and done.”

Whatever happened to Isaac Bonewits?

Have you seen the new Bombay Sapphire commercial? There's one poet
who's not starving--.

Want ultimate Cool Points? Get a Lojban t-shirt!

When in the course of Human Events... Naaah.

   ”DIVIDENDS

This advantage to be seized; and here, an escape prepared against an evil day;
So it is arranged, consummately, to meet the issues. Convenience and order. Necessary murder and divorce. A decent repute.

Such are the plans, in clear detail.
She thought it was too soon but they said no, it was too late. They didn’t trust the other people.
Sell now.
He was a fool to ignore the market. It could be explained, he said. With the woman, and after the theater she made a scene. None of them felt the crash for a long time.

(But what is swifter than time?)

So it is resolved, upon awakening. This way it is devised, preparing for sleep. So it is revealed, uneasily, in strange dreams.
A defense against gray, hungry, envious millions. Aveiled watch to be kept upon this friend.
Dread that handclasp. Seek this one. Smile.
They didn’t trust the others. They were wary. It looked suspicious. They preferred to wait, they said.

Gentlemen, here is a statement for the third month,
And here, Mildred, is the easiest way.
Such is the evidence, convertible to profit. These are the dividends, waiting to be used.
Here are the demands again, considered again, and again the endless issues are all secure.
Such are the facts. Such are the details. Such are the proofs.

Almighty God, these are the plans,
These are the plans until the last moment of the last hour of the last day,
And then the end. By error or accident.
Burke of cancer, Jackson out at the secret meeting of the board. Hendricks through the window of the nineteenth floor.
Maggots and darkness will attend the alibi.

Peace on earth. And the finer things.
So it is all devised.
Thomas, the car.”

--Kenneth Fearing

I wonder how it's going to rebound on this side
of the Big Water when Blair gets the boot for his
WMD lies?

"By volume, the ink in your unkjet cartridges costs seven times more than vintage champagne." --Boingboing

AFGHANISTAN 1998 Missiles Attack on former CIA training camps used by Islamic fundamentalist groups alleged to have attacked embassies.
IRAQ 1998-? Bombing, Missiles Four days of intensive air strikes after weapons inspectors allege Iraqi obstructions.
YUGOSLAVIA 1999 Bombing, Missiles Heavy NATO air strikes after Serbia declines to withdraw from Kosovo. NATO occupation of Kosovo.
YEMEN 2000 Naval USS Cole bombed.
MACEDONIA 2001 Troops NATO forces deployed to move and disarm Albanian rebels.
UNITED STATES 2001 Jets, naval Reaction to hijacker attacks on New York, DC
AFGHANISTAN 2001-? Troops, bombing, missiles Massive U.S. mobilization to overthrow Taliban, hunt Al Qaeda fighters, install Karzai regime. Forces also engaged in neighboring Pakistan.
YEMEN 2002 Missiles Predator drone missile attack on Al Qaeda, including a US citizen.
PHILIPPINES 2002 Troops, naval Training mission for Philippine military fighting Muslim Abu Sayyaf rebels evolves into US combat missions in Sulu Archipelago next to Mindanao.
COLOMBIA 2003-? Troops US special forces sent to rebel zone to back up Colombian military protecting oil pipeline.
IRAQ 2003-? Troops, naval, bombing, missiles Second Gulf War launched for "regime change" in Baghdad. US, joined by UK and Australia, attacks from Kuwait, other Gulf states, and European and US bases."
[Ya have to love it: the robot fink at Amazon suggested, after i
looked up "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace": Bush 2004
Merchandise.]

Alright, i was wrong in my prediction about Q is for Quahog.
But i kept that one to myself.

Three times as many books are being published as
twenty-five years ago.

CAMBODIA l975 Troops, bombing Gas captured ship, 28 die in copter crash.
ANGOLA l976-92 Command operation CIA assists South African-backed rebels.
IRAN l980 Troops, nuclear threat, aborted bombing Raid to rescue Embassy hostages; 8 troops die in copter-plane crash. Soviets warned not to get involved in revolution.
LIBYA l981 Naval jets Two Libyan jets shot down in maneuvers.
EL SALVADOR l981-92 Command operation, troops Advisors, overflights aid anti-rebel war, soldiers briefly involved in hostage clash.
NICARAGUA l981-90 Command operation, naval CIA directs exile (Contra) invasions, plants harbor mines against revolution.
LEBANON l982-84 Naval, bombing, troops Marines expel PLO and back Phalangists, Navy bombs and shells Muslim positions.
GRENADA l983-84 Troops, bombing Invasion four years after revolution.
HONDURAS l983-89 Troops Maneuvers help build bases near borders.
IRAN l984 Jets Two Iranian jets shot down over Persian Gulf.
LIBYA l986 Bombing, naval Air strikes to topple nationalist gov't.
BOLIVIA 1986 Troops Army assists raids on cocaine region.
IRAN l987-88 Naval, bombing US intervenes on side of Iraq in war.
LIBYA 1989 Naval jets Two Libyan jets shot down.
VIRGIN ISLANDS 1989 Troops St. Croix Black unrest after storm.
PHILIPPINES 1989 Jets Air cover provided for government against coup.
PANAMA 1989 (-?) Troops, bombing Nationalist government ousted by 27,000 soldiers, leaders arrested, 2000+ killed.
LIBERIA 1990 Troops Foreigners evacuated during civil war.
SAUDI ARABIA 1990-91 Troops, jets Iraq countered after invading Kuwait. 540,000 troops also stationed in Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Israel.
IRAQ 1990-? Bombing, troops, naval Blockade of Iraqi and Jordanian ports, air strikes; 200,000+ killed in invasion of Iraq and Kuwait; no-fly zone over Kurdish north, Shiite south, large-scale destruction of Iraqi military.
KUWAIT 1991 Naval, bombing, troops Kuwait royal family returned to throne.
LOS ANGELES 1992 Troops Army, Marines deployed against anti-police uprising.
SOMALIA 1992-94 Troops, naval, bombing U.S.-led United Nations occupation during civil war; raids against one Mogadishu faction.
YUGOSLAVIA 1992-94 Naval NATO blockade of Serbia and Montenegro.
BOSNIA 1993-? Jets, bombing No-fly zone patrolled in civil war; downed jets, bombed Serbs.
HAITI 1994-? Troops, naval Blockade against military government; troops restore President Aristide to office three years after coup.
ZAIRE (CONGO) 1996-97 Troops Marines at Rwandan Hutu refugee camps, in area where Congo revolution begins.
LIBERIA 1997 Troops Soldiers under fire during evacuation of foreigners.
ALBANIA 1997 Troops Soldiers under fire during evacuation of foreigners.
SUDAN 1998 Missiles Attack on pharmaceutical plant alleged to be "terrorist" nerve gas plant.

WASHINGTON DC 1932 Troops Army stops WWI vet bonus protest.
WORLD WAR II 1941-45 Naval, troops, bombing, nuclear Hawaii bombed, fought Japan, Italy and Germay for 3 years; first nuclear war.
DETROIT 1943 Troops Army put down Black rebellion.
IRAN 1946 Nuclear threat Soviet troops told to leave north.
YUGOSLAVIA 1946 Nuclear threat, naval Response to shoot-down of US plane.
URUGUAY 1947 Nuclear threat Bombers deployed as show of strength.
GREECE 1947-49 Command operation U.S. directs extreme-right in civil war.
GERMANY 1948 Nuclear Threat Atomic-capable bombers guard Berlin Airlift.
CHINA 1948-49 Troops/Marines evacuate Americans before Communist victory.
PHILIPPINES 1948-54 Command operation CIA directs war against Huk Rebellion.
PUERTO RICO 1950 Command operation Independence rebellion crushed in Ponce.
KOREA 1951-53 (-?) Troops, naval, bombing , nuclear threats U.S./So. Korea fights China/No. Korea to stalemate; A-bomb threat in 1950, and against China in 1953. Still have bases.
IRAN 1953 Command Operation CIA overthrows democracy, installs Shah.
VIETNAM 1954 Nuclear threat French offered bombs to use against seige.
GUATEMALA 1954 Command operation, bombing, nuclear threat CIA directs exile invasion after new gov't nationalized U.S. company lands; bombers based in Nicaragua.
EGYPT 1956 Nuclear threat, troops Soviets told to keep out of Suez crisis; Marines evacuate foreigners.
LEBANON l958 Troops, naval Marine occupation against rebels.
IRAQ 1958 Nuclear threat Iraq warned against invading Kuwait.
CHINA l958 Nuclear threat China told not to move on Taiwan isles.
PANAMA 1958 Troops Flag protests erupt into confrontation.
VIETNAM l960-75 Troops, naval, bombing, nuclear threats Fought South Vietnam revolt & North Vietnam; one million killed in longest U.S. war; atomic bomb threats in l968 and l969.
LAOS 1962 Command operation Military buildup during guerrilla war.
CUBA l961 Command operation CIA-directed exile invasion fails.
GERMANY l961 Nuclear threat Alert during Berlin Wall crisis.
CUBA l962 Nuclear threat, naval Blockade during missile crisis; near-war with Soviet Union.
PANAMA l964 Troops Panamanians shot for urging canal's return.
INDONESIA l965 Command operation Million killed in CIA-assisted army coup.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 1965-66 Troops, bombing Marines land during election campaign.
GUATEMALA l966-67 Command operation Green Berets intervene against rebels.
DETROIT l967 Troops Army battles Blacks, 43 killed.
UNITED STATES l968 Troops After King is shot; over 21,000 soldiers in cities.
CAMBODIA l969-75 Bombing, troops, naval Up to 2 million killed in decade of bombing, starvation, and political chaos.
OMAN l970 Command operation U.S. directs Iranian marine invasion.
LAOS l971-73 Command operation, bombing U.S. directs South Vietnamese invasion; "carpet-bombs" countryside.
SOUTH DAKOTA l973 Command operation Army directs Wounded Knee siege of Lakotas.
MIDEAST 1973 Nuclear threat World-wide alert during Mideast War.
CHILE 1973 Command operation CIA-backed coup ousts elected marxist president.

CUBA 1906-09 Troops Marines land in democratic election.
NICARAGUA 1907 Troops "Dollar Diplomacy" protectorate set up.
HONDURAS 1907 Troops Marines land during war with Nicaragua
PANAMA 1908 Troops Marines intervene in election contest.
NICARAGUA 1910 Troops Marines land in Bluefields and Corinto.
HONDURAS 1911 Troops U.S. interests protected in civil war.
CHINA 1911-41 Naval, troops Continuous occupation with flare-ups.
CUBA 1912 Troops U.S. interests protected in civil war.
PANAMA 1912 Troops Marines land during heated election.
HONDURAS 1912 Troops Marines protect U.S. economic interests.
NICARAGUA 1912-33 Troops, bombing 10-year occupation, fought guerillas
MEXICO 1913 Naval Americans evacuated during revolution.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 1914 Naval Fight with rebels over Santo Domingo.
COLORADO 1914 Troops Breaking of miners' strike by Army.
MEXICO 1914-18 Naval, troops Series of interventions against nationalists.
HAITI 1914-34 Troops, bombing 19-year occupation after revolts.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 1916-24 Troops 8-year Marine occupation.
CUBA 1917-33 Troops Military occupation, economic protectorate.
WORLD WAR I 1917-18 naval, troops Ships sunk, fought Germany for 1 1/2 years.
RUSSIA 1918-22 Naval, troops Five landings to fight Bolsheviks
PANAMA 1918-20 Troops "Police duty" during unrest after elections.
HONDURAS 1919 Troops Marines land during election campaign.
YUGOSLAVIA 1919 Troops/Marines intervene for Italy against Serbs in Dalmatia.
GUATEMALA 1920 Troops 2-week intervention against unionists.
WEST VIRGINIA 1920-21 Troops, bombing Army intervenes against mineworkers.
TURKEY 1922 Troops Fought nationalists in Smyrna.
CHINA 1922-27 Naval, troops Deployment during nationalist revolt.
HONDURAS 1924-25 Troops Landed twice during election strife.
PANAMA 1925 Troops Marines suppress general strike.
CHINA 1927-34 Troops Marines stationed throughout the country.
EL SALVADOR 1932 Naval Warships send during Marti revolt.

Pillage & despoilment are second nature to egotists.
It is only an extension, after all, of what they do
to their own humanness.

Oh good, someone put that list of US interventions from
Gore Vidal's book online (via Metafilter):

"SOUTH DAKOTA 1890 (-?) Troops 300 Lakota Indians massacred at Wounded Knee.
ARGENTINA 1890 Troops Buenos Aires interests protected.
CHILE 1891 Troops Marines clash with nationalist rebels.
HAITI 1891 Troops Black revolt on Navassa defeated.
IDAHO 1892 Troops Army suppresses silver miners' strike.
HAWAII 1893 (-?) Naval, troops Independent kingdom overthrown, annexed.
CHICAGO 1894 Troops Breaking of rail strike, 34 killed.
NICARAGUA 1894 Troops Month-long occupation of Bluefields.
CHINA 1894-95 Naval, troops Marines land in Sino-Japanese War
KOREA 1894-96 Troops Marines kept in Seoul during war.
PANAMA 1895 Troops, naval Marines land in Colombian province.
NICARAGUA 1896 Troops Marines land in port of Corinto.
CHINA 1898-1900 Troops Boxer Rebellion fought by foreign armies.
PHILIPPINES 1898-1910 (-?) Naval, troops Seized from Spain, killed 600,000 Filipinos
CUBA 1898-1902 (-?) Naval, troops Seized from Spain, still hold Navy base.
PUERTO RICO 1898 (-?) Naval, troops Seized from Spain, occupation continues.
GUAM 1898 (-?) Naval, troops Seized from Spain, still use as base.
MINNESOTA 1898 (-?) Troops Army battles Chippewa at Leech Lake.
NICARAGUA 1898 Troops Marines land at port of San Juan del Sur.
SAMOA 1899 (-?) Troops Battle over succession to throne.
NICARAGUA 1899 Troops Marines land at port of Bluefields.
IDAHO 1899-1901 Troops Army occupies Coeur d'Alene mining region.
OKLAHOMA 1901 Troops Army battles Creek Indian revolt.
PANAMA 1901-14 Naval, troops Broke off from Colombia 1903, annexed Canal Zone 1914.
HONDURAS 1903 Troops Marines intervene in revolution.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 1903-04 Troops U.S. interests protected in Revolution.
KOREA 1904-05 Troops Marines land in Russo-Japanese War.

Flags & creeds are parasites on humanity; parasites
that cause derangement. The sooner we shake them off,
the better. I will be proud of that nation which gives
every child medicine & every adult employment; & no
other. I will be ashamed of those nations which perpet-
uate the cult of Guns 'n' Punishment, & i will despise
all those to whom nature is less sacred than personal
gain. Let the Red-assed Baboons smirk for their hour
in the sun. That hour--is ineluctably doomed.

What finally divorces me from all existing psychologies, is
their assumption that the usual is the normal. In
other words, their empiricism. But if one single psychologist
could remember what it was like to be a kid, growing up in
a world that often seems violently contrary to right and reason,
he would no longer doubt, but be certain that normal human
existence is something we have scarcely dreamed of. And
when we do reach toward it, we want to continue clinging to
all that's unhealthy in our old lives. Thus philosophies of
rationalization, ideologies, instead of philosophies of ration-
ality, which would consist of a constant analysis and testing
for what beliefs will work. But with ideology, you end up
making excuses for why it didn't work.
   It is the error in science that's significant.

And scholars still can't decide whether Propertius was screwed
by his copyists or really did make flying leaps of association like
a modernist...

The pain of incompletion is a lodestar--if we allow ourselves to
listen.

Coffee is exactly what i used to think Truth had to be: black,
bitter, and makes your head reel if you down it all at once.
Needless to say, truths are nothing like that, and no coffee
tastes as good as it smells. Cynics fall for the promise of
truths. They are in love with the smell of coffee.
   --My cynical mysticism.

I wish i could read a really good poem about
Tokay. (I think it was Andrei Codrescu who wrote,
"Republican Tokay is a contradiction in terms.")

Listening to Esma, Queen of the Gypsies. Oh, "Nasvali So Uljum"--!
We only think we understand oppression.

A brief history of art-robots. (via Consumptive)

Hello Kali. (via Prentiss)

So the photographer of lots of people pretending to lie dead in public
places in Cosmopolis is a real person? His name is Spencer Tunick. (via
Gawker)

Much as i appreciate the poet of Lord Weary's Castle, i think
it would not be hard to demonstrate that for every year in which
Lowell wrote a good poem--Robert Duncan wrote a better one.

The trouble is, there's a bunch of authority-basis principles;
one might find them distributed according to Jungian axes, perhaps
(but that's a discussion i prefer not to go into just yet), or the pure
hap of parenting: legitimacy via force, via politics (which
may or may not coincide with consensus), via tradition, via the trappings
of authority itself (which, alas, is most true of American business today--bad
decisions don't seem to matter, as long as you "walk the walk"), via love &/or
family, or (finally) via competence--this
last the one that i, being the sort of person i am (INTJ), consider the only sane
alternative. Does that mean i want a meritocracy whose leadership is
determined by exams? (I have to admit i haven't been impressed by the
Mensans i've met--the local artists' co-op had far more interesting, &
accomplished, people in it.) Well, at the very least, --this last election could
have been solved by a spelling test.

   "Fourth of July Poem"

Enough done gone boom already.

7 4 84

One thing i am learning [from my night job], that the night is
just like the day; it is just as bright, and i can imagine having
my other senses acute enough to move about in it freely--
but also, i think that the day, is just as obscure, just as
hidden and unobserved (through our inattention) even
though flooded with light and light's reflections... I don't
know how to begin to describe this or paint it, but i want
to someday. Because it is like a great allegory of awareness
...all around us for everything; and that must be the only reason
to be a realist...and why so many (gropingly) choose to try it.

'533. 'I often think that the night is more alive and more
richly colored than the day.' --letters of Van Gogh

Going to the woods to gain silence is like getting ice from the
North Pole. By the time you arrive it's almost all gone.

A real doctor would tell me, All you need is to run wild in the
woods awhile. "But i have run wild all my life!" Yes--except
you ran in a maze. That doesn't count... Every rat in
the maze thinks it's running wild. But put them in an open field,
and they keep on making maze patterns. Do you want to be a
Big White Coat? Then learn how to make up new mazes. But
don't talk about wilderness or the woods.

Sometimes i fall silent. If i were suddenly asked, What are you
thinking? i would say: "I'm not thinking. I am contemplating
something inside me as if it were outside of me."

Christmas on Earth. After a national political convention,
the prostitutes there take a month off. --This is a fable we
want to believe about all "vice". When we indulge, it's not
to feel joy, but to play Santa Claus.

We are inordinately impressed by those who can train their
face (actors, yogis, impassive peasants, cats). What does this
say about our concept of the mind? Personality is a face-metaphor,
extended to include the whole body & body movement (especially
talk-style). Mind as: the underlying bone structure of a face. (Brain-
washing = reconstructive surgery.) --What kind of mind-concept
would we have if we didn't have mobile faces? Would we
consider monkeys like magical protean Houdinis on that account?
(Jesus who walked through walls.) Would we never try to teach
anybody? (Shape their expressions: straighten up, kid!) ...Would our
hands be useless??

My [T]heosophical [Society] incense is unbearably sweet with a
lingering after-aroma of carrion. Just like theosophy in
fact. Which makes me wish every philosophy, every religion,
every mind-set system would produce its own brand of joss
sticks. We could judge them at once, without having to run
them through our brains; painlessly...
   Scientology, for instance: Comet cleanser.
   Materialism (consumerism): leaded gasoline
(with additives).
   Methodism (unreformed): the back of the
closet where you keep all winter coats (in the South that is).
   Artism: turpentine, of course, --in all its
mystical ramifications.
   Taoism: ripe peaches (not as found in a
supermarket!).
   Buddha's buddhism: peaches on the ground
starting to go bad.
   Zen buddhism: supermarket peaches, with a
whiff of ethylene (or formaldehyde or whatever it is).
--You play this game. But only with the systems which have lured you.
Nietzsche: "My genius is in my nostrils." --Ozone? (as detected by
acidhead-third nostril)

How can i blame anyone for what they believe? Our definitions are
as much forced upon us as the deformations of age, illness, and
employment: they are the surfaces where our bodies touch the
hook we all writhe upon.

Yesterday Pollution Red, today only Orange. After driving home
i feel a slight sore throat, & when i first get into the car there's
a funny sensation around my eyelids like the stinging that means
i've gone too long without bathing (but i haven't). It's only the
sky falling, friends. We were warned.

New movie about Bonhoeffer (which i haven't seen
yet). Timely. Reminder to all of us: when this devout Christian pacifist
learned the true nature of the Nazi government, he joined the
plot against Hitler.

The other morning on the radio they were doing a story on
"songpoems" i.e. those companies that would record your
lyrics using a house band, for a fee, & claim to be able to
make you a star if you give them "seed money". I didn't get
to hear if they ever covered John Trubee (they probably didn't),
but here's one of the great underground art stories of the
80's: "Blind Man's Penis".

If Kisha Kurokawa isn't the Buckminster Fuller of Japan, i
don't know who is. He wants to combine the best of traditional
Japanese aesthetics with modern technology; & if there are any
humans left on this planet in 300 years, that's how they'll be
building...

"Can the water talk?
Is it possible
That the wind can listen?" --Sahara Sunday Spain

   "Planet of the Republicans"

Now that our world has been taken over by red-assed baboons,
Those who are not will still want to act like red-assed baboons.

Ask for a little mercy, ask for some sense
You're sure to be shouted down by a choir of red-assed baboons.

We few cowed humans left when we meet each other
Can't even bring ourselves to say the words "red-assed baboon".

7-2-03

Sometimes i try to imagine that these are exciting times
i'm living in. Instead of--dreary and terrifying.

For each of us there are important words, and these we define
unlike anyone else. I wonder if all huge misunderstandings
begin in not asking: What do you mean by this? --Because
it's such a dumb question, really.

Though i am sick of violence, this alone cannot give me a
belief in nonviolence. Ahimsa--soul force--i have never
seen work. And the only environment where i always
have enough love--the wilderness--that's just where i don't
need to believe in nonviolence... No, i can't do more than
try to be fair with each person, from day to day, moment to
moment. I don't have the integrity for convictions.

   "Where Every Prospect

There will be no evil
No throat bared in
Scarlet agony here
But only the green grass

Waving beside peaceful roads

Along which gay
Runners carry thoughts of the sun
To fill the wilderness
With animals of loftier design

Than bowed to thug

And gun
In whose image created they
This
Where no peace is
Where only the stench of
Smoking flesh
Can adequately say, Now

Man is not evil"

--Kenneth Patchen

Insofar as we aren't free, our lives generate injustice. Friction.
But it's no use to search for the blame. Rather, learn not to react
from your sensitivity--knowing how far we are from being completely
free--learn how not to make it worse. When to get away from words,
and when to take refuge in them. Because even the most balanced
of us is recovering from a grave and subtle sickness. (To say this
without cruelty.) (Or sentimentality either.)

Will and willingness: law and justice.

Ah Christiania... i visited there in 1977. Saw the hash supermarket.
Didn't see any naked hippies in body paint (alas). Now the Blue Meanies are
after them too.

How to tell a poem from a joke: read it backwards. (Works
with books, too!)

As it is that i have only noticed my body heat on rare
occasions--so insulated has been my usual environment--
also only rarely do i feel the power of love; but in this
case it's noise that covers it up, rather than an abundance.
And loneliness is when your noise level suddenly drops
and you find out how little loved you are. Unless you have
learned to love yourself, you'll be forced to scamper under
the nearest dense illusion: this is what we really mean by
"the power of love"...

How i am with influences. --I dance in the skin of the lion, i
dance in the skin of the deer. I even talk with someone an
hour and come away borrowing their cadences in my head.
Is this weakness? I think it is strength--to leave my ego by
sympathetic projection and be secure of returning. --Then
why don't i know it when i'm doing it? (I almost never detect
my influences till much later...) Maybe: i don't have to. Maybe:
identification is the other side of knowledge.
   And "subjectivity" is the myth that
conceals this fact.
   For, as Reason was discredited by
bad thinking, insincere identification led to too much
undependable inner-knowledge...

A streetpreacher: "Y'all are highly organized, but still
stupid!"

"Then there is Dallas. Perhaps in no other city is there so
great a distance between what a city actually is and what
people like to think it is." --Wayne King in NYT Book Rev
8-5-84

In my book i would change all the appearances; & keep the
meanings. The City of Magnificent Splendors ("that city
of all great cities which alone has no reason to be there").
Describe the City by its Lights.

"In my opinion caricature reaches its height only in periods
of decadence or when art cannot rise to the heroic." --George
Grosz

"Poetry which relates to the beings of another world ought
to be at once mysterious and picturesque." --Macaulay

magniveté - between jest & earnest

A triad- knowledge, ignorance, mystery.

I scored 100% Green, 94% Kucinich (no surprise) on this
questionnaire. I would, however, like to see some other
things factored in, like amount of support they're likely
to get from the Democrat Party machine; & how vulnerable
they are to red-herring smear campaigns (don't you think
Kucinich is going to get painted as a card-carrying Commie?
i really think we need somebody STUPIDER & SQUARER, like
Kerry--)...