Cramming It Down the Throats of Hummingbirds

It feels like its going to rain – I stopped and talked with the neighbor, Mark – he was taking out the trash, I was walking the dog. He’s trying to gather data to convince investors to finance a telemedical call center – his Pomeranian, Teddy is twelve. Teddy’s summer hair cut makes him look like a polar bear cub. We got him from a shelter when he was seven. Damn it, the wife always stuffs too much trash in these – he can’t get the trash bag out of the bin without ripping the bag – he has to download the contents piece by piece into several garbage bags. I had to get my privileges reset on my library card – oh yes, she said, they expire every couple of years and then I placed holds on five books from my reading list of over twelve hundred titles.

Eternity waits to conquer / And for that reason there’s no time to lose / Then / And then – Vicente Huidobro – The Selected Poetry of, 1981 p113

72% of Hungarians think that they were better off under Communism. In none of the former Eastern European socialist states do the majority of the people think they are better off today. Only in the Ukraine do the majority approve of the country’s transition to a multiparty system.

There are moments in the life of a country in which the technicians and the professionals are also asked to account for their political choices or non-choices – Carlo Lucarelli – The Damned Season, 2007 p15

It’s getting dark, real dark – gloomy, foreboding and my Internet connection goes down just as I’m trying to get the weather report – Severe Weather Alert – I had gotten that much – I suppose the sirens will sound in case of a tornado – Is there a basement anywhere around - I know this building was constructed on a slap. The previous building had a basement but it burnt down. Oh good, the Internet is back up – a chance of strong thunderstorms. Storms may produce large hail and strong winds – scattered thunderstorms tonight. The front has just reached Kansas City and stretches in a line from Wichita into the Great Lakes.

The full faced flag / stretches for a glory it can’t know / Someday it will hang limp. / Exhausted, we grow limp, / call it flagging – Walter Bargen – Days Like This Are Necessary, 2009 p27

The first clap of thunder – it has been raining steadily for a while now. The smokers have come back inside – headlights reflect from off of the wet pavement – everyone rushes from their cars (which they try to park as close as possible) into the coffee shop carrying collapsible umbrellas which they keep just in case under the driver’s seat. The wind is not so strong as to turn any of the umbrellas inside out.

The goal is privileges without responsibility

In the skyscrapers / The elevators rise like thermometers – Vicente Huidobro – The Selected Poetry of, 1981 p15

And those that are to survive take what little is made available to them and turn it to their advantage – the rich society ladies are shocked, the politicians pass new prohibitions, the good citizens decry the lack of civility and the ingratitude, the police arrest whomever they can catch, the bureaucrats deny more and more applications for benefits – those in need of help must be contrite and penitent. The latest news from the battlefront of this war on unworthiness is trend for employers to reject employment applications from anyone who is not already employed – jit is ustificated for reasons of efficiency - we are seeking the best.

Bad Blood Bad Blood / Born in the Time-Flood – W B Yeats

We are confined by what we do not want to do, by what we do not want to believe, by what we do not what to hear, by what we do not want to see, by what we do not want to discard, by what we do not want to forget.

Why as an intellectual did you believe in a god anyway? And besides who gave you the right to imagine that your early beliefs and later disenchantment were important? – Edward Said

A principle must be absolute or it is not a principle but merely an inclination, a tendency, a rule of thumb.

One must never blame medicine for having failed to cure mortality – Raymond Federman – The Twofold Vibration, 1982 p16

There are the great who forget
        To be human
And there are the humans for forget
         To be great

My mobile phone dropped and broke into pieces and I got out some superglue to put it back together again just like Humpty Dumpty failed to get done for him – that’s why there aren’t any modern fairy tales – we now have technological fixes for everything. There is no need for insurance if you have superglue. You can even perform surgery with it – something Humpty Dumpty would like to have know about but they don’t want you to use the kind you buy at the drug store.

Emotion always trumps reason. People have to be emotionally on board before they can attend to their rational facilities.

I close my eyes and touch the tabletop. I want to determine what I can about it by physical touch alone. If I were really blind I wouldn’t care that  people may be staring. The discomfort of wondering what others might be thinking out weights the value of the information that I might obtain. I do not caress the table top. I am a writer, I might announce and want to determine as much about this table top as I can by tactile experience alone, but that would only call attention to myself – sight and sound are effective at a distance, the tactile is an intimate sense and we don’t want to get caught sniffing or licking unless we are at the dinner table. “Panoptic” means all seeing. What are the words for all smelling, all tasting, and all feeling.. All hearing holds a residue of meaning especially to God, spies and the flies on the wall. To see is to know. To hear is to understand. To smell is to be alert. To touch and to taste is to experience. The senses are not equlivant – the sightless use sight metaphors – I was curious about this and read Helen Keller - she used the same metaphors everyone else did mostly relating to sight and a few related to hearing - nothing about touching  (how odd!).

All cognitive adaptations are not only pancultural but universal as well - Toby and Cosmides

A lost steamer was coasting / The golden islands off the Milky Way // The Andes / Swift as a convoy / Run across Latin America – Vicente Huidobro – The Selected Poetry of, 1981 p41

Alabama was an early adopter
     So was Tennessee
     Fads ferment South of the border
Cute enough to be traded
     Get banded – Silly Bandz
     Twenty-four to the pack
“Cost conscious trinkets
      In tough economic times”
In pursuit of Cabbage Patch Kids,
      Beanie Babies and PokEmon
           Cards
Revitalizing economic growth with a workforce
      Increasing from 20 to 200 to meet the demand
To avoid the bans being imposed
      By the schools a ten year old suggested
      That they be made invisible
So that the teachers can’t see them
      As we trade them
I have the most in my class
But at work it the rarest of them all that counts
      That are becoming the office currency
      The underwear ones which are no longer
             In production
I have seen it proclaimed that Boxers for
      Women will be the next fashion fad
I’ll believe anything after Pet Rocks
       And Futures Markets for Tulips
            And Cinema attendance during the
            First ten days after release
Invest in Silly Bandz today
Tommorow's collectables are 
       Are on the selves today

And the Poets? / They become explorers and looked for crystal in the throats of nightingales – Vicente Huidobro – The Selected Poetry of, 1981 p76