On the River Styx, I am so Sick for Your Love

The morning after and it’s tough – even the dogs are frazzled – Josh rolls over in the top bunk and asks – anyone stirring out there – No, I reply – and he rolls back over and goes back to sleep. I had been up for an hour and a half. Ellen is up and out on a run. Said something about taking the first left and winding up in a dead end – I told her how to get around all the dead ends and make the connections to circumnavigate the lake and mostly avoid the busy roads. I did at least three shot-skiis and I know Jerry did at least six – but I was first up on the keg-stand, it wasn’ the greatest time and I felt like I might puke and besides everyone else is young and they are still asleep and I’m walked the dogs and had two cups of coffee and still have a cotton mouth. Someone else just got up. She’s says she’ll join me as soon as she brushes her teeth. My sister was up. I said good morning. She said, I’m not up – just getting some water. So, I say, you have a cottonmouth too? We tried to get Tom to do a keg-stand. He baulked. Wanted to watch someone else. See what it was all about. Then the keg ran out. But he did at least one shot-ski. I was leading the cheer for an all girl shot-ski team and was told only if you do and wound up in the middle of the all girl team. Tom said that he’d seen the longhaired dude over here a lot in the last couple of years (meaning me) and wondered who I was. His wife wondered what I was reading. We talked about you a lot, he said. The day before yesterday was his last day at work. He's now officially retired. Welcome, I said. Thank, he replied.

Snakes and spiders
      Are just alike
Every goddamn one
      Of them is carnivorous
And some are even
       Poisonous
Let me get my fangs
       Into your neck
And make you sick
       For my obsessions

That’s really the life, not having to break your balls for someone else – Richard Sennett – The Hidden Injuries of Class, 1972 p38

Ticks – picking ticks off of myself and off of the dog – the dog’s collar got rid of most of his – they abandoned him for me – The stuff they put into those collars is related to nerve gas – the antidote is atropine. I’ll stick with DEET, thank you very much. Would such a collar work with vampires, I wonder? Have I been bothered by any vampires? No! So why am  I worrying about them? But neither have I been personally threatened by suicide bombers or carjackers. But who would want to steal that old piece of junk that you are driving and I stay away from tall building and military installatons - who's going to carbomb a campground?. Yeah, I know and I don't really worry, not a lot. And  I leave the old truck unlocked with the keys in the ignition and no one will take it. If I didn’t spend my time worrying about remote possibilities I might have to hold myself accountable for something that I could actually do something about. I’ll just sit here and pick ticks off of the dog, thank you very much and dream about an all girl shot-ski team.

Threat reports that focus on ideology instead of criminal activity are threatening to civil liberties and a wholly ineffective use of federal security resources – Michael German

It rained last night, I got up and shone the light out the back window of the tent – was the creek rising, was I about to be swept away – it sure sound like it – I could hearing the rushing of waters but couldn’t see any flood tide. Would they have built a campground next to a stream susceptible to flooding? Would they leave a dead tree standing that fall and crush you? You can never be sure – you can’t be sure of anything, can you? I turned off the light and went back to sleep.

I shall saw / wood saw I / see the beach of windy feet / so feel / wool / had grown on / last sweater until / he had heard // summer – Joseph Ceravolo – The Green Lakes is Awake, 1994 p78

You cannot become innocent of the painting you know – John Berger – Selected Essays, 2001 p226 You cannot not unknown the way to San Jose once you get there

That which is usurped, tends also to destroy he who usurped

Dissipation is actually much worse than cataclysm – Tracy Letts – August: Osage Country, 2007

63% of Americans believe that there are no limits to economic growth (J Madrick – The End of Affluence, 1995)

A bard can get through / to someone like Kissinger once, / but not twice – Edward Sanders – The Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsberg, 2000 p112

On Average an American born in the 1990s will in his/her lifetime produce:
      1,000,000 kilograms of atmospheric waste
    10,000,000 kilograms of liquid wastes
      1,000,000 kilograms of solid wastes

He/she will  also consume in the process:
        700,000 kilograms of minerals
     1,000,000 kilograms of energy (BTU equlivants of oil)
          25,000 kilograms of plant food
          28,000 kilograms of animal products (7,000 animals)

Everything that passes through the body of the poet must be subjected to the greatest possible amount of his heart – Vicente Huidobro – The Selected Poetry of, 1981 p5

When absolute power is an offer, talent fights to get in – James p287 - The power offered does not have to be absolute in order for the talent to queue up

At bottom, population growth and resource consumption are the problem – Brian Czech -  But neo-classical Economics has redefined them to be our solutions

Force first
Land second
Thus is constituted
      The State

[Political violence] strips bare the social body – Leslie Manigat

The saint is to religion what
      The hero is to the nation
But sometimes we get them confused
As they get confused themselves
      Not sure of their causes
      Hence – St George the Dragon slayer
And a glass encased mummy of Lenin
      Lain in state

These people, the people of power, turn their lives into theater… subordinated their behavior to rituals and ceremonies – Alenander Sokurov

Global “identity machine”: a planet-wide apparatus of institutions and assumptions that has over the last decade or so, effectively informed the earth’s inhabitants… that, since all debates about the nature of political or economic possibilities are now over, the only way one can now make a political claim is by asserting some group identity, while all the assumptions about what identity is… established in advance – Graeber p101 -- This same “Idenity Machine” is called by Paul Gilroy the “over-developed world”

There had been a big flood on the Green River (was that the flood that inundated Nashville?) – not today, sometime is the recent past – the encrusted silt clay is still wet – covering the path, caking on the vegetation – the ferry churns back and forth – mostly one car at a time – I did not cross over – I will do that tomorrow. Dog and I hiked to Echo Spring which a silt encrusted mud hole. Today I hiked the Styx Springs trail and returned via the bluff train back to the natural opening of the cave.

Outside of a track an field event, it does not make sense to throw iron balls into empty space – not even in wartime – Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht – In Praise of Athletic Beauty, 2006 p77