ECHO OFF: Can’t myself / let off this / fiction, “you don’t exist, // baby you’re / dead” Walk / off, on – the light bulb // overhead, beside / or, the bed, you / think you laid / on? When, what – Robert Creeley – The Collected Poems, 1945-1975, 1982 p422
Across the campground is a circle of fifth-wheelers with a fire-ring in the middle. I don’t see any vehicles. Indians must have stolen them all. There are a lot more RVs than there are people, but like other homeowners you rarely see them except when they need to shop. The RV is the equlivant of a lakeside cottage – for both you deduct the interest on your mortgage. It’s the idea that people think that are getting away with something, that motivates them – but is conformity to a government program a meaningful way to rebel? It's like walking across the street when the little hand is amber. Come this weekend, they will all be back. The Indians are doing just fine with their smoke shops and their casinos. One man’s addiction is another’s butter.
Attitude comes as close to authenticity as the ethos of reflexivity allow – Thomas De Zengotita – Mediated: How the media shapes the world and the way you live in it, 2006 p100
The night’s dew drips form the trees
The finches chirp up in the branches
The morning begins with a cup of coffee
That “any number of meanings” quality keeps you in motion, but depth asks you to stop. Depth is to your life what dead air is to a talk show – Thomas De Zengotita – Mediated: How the media shapes the world and the way you live in it, 2006 p184
She is learning how to perform service all on her own, says Richard who says that he should know because he grew up in New Orleans where excellent service was the norm. Trice, he says, is learning that service in itself is not demeaning. It’s just a way to make a living. The secret I say is not to observe yourself. He agrees.
He followed the course of thoughts because he was tied on behind – Paul Bowles – Too Far From Home: Selected Writing of, 1993 p46
The FBI was originally organized as a kind of Dept of Homeland Security – it’s original assignment was to investigate organizations for “alien subversion” and track down draft dodgers during World War I and it performed this function largely through the assistance of an all-voluntary group of 250,000. These volunteers were given official police badges that read in part, “Auxiliary to the U.S. Department of Justice”. They were encouraged in their efforts by the agent in charge, J Edgar Hoover, to hunt down and report “seditious and disloyal conversation” and participated in what were called the “Slacker Raids” which rounded up anyone suspected of draft evasion, pro-German sentiments, pro-socialist views, or rationing infractions. 50,000 men were taken into custody and jailed. Fewer than 50 of those jailed were ever actually arrested and 5,000 of them were eventually inducted into the Army. Mass trails were held of union organizers with bleachers installed to seat the defendants many of whom received sentences of up to 20 years. Under the 1917 Espionage Act it became a crime to aid, abet, or counsel anyone to avoid service in the military. It was illegal in many states during the war to be un-employed
Nothing happened today. And if anything did, I’d rather not talk about it, because I didn’t understand it – Robert Bolańo – The Savage Detective, 1998 p118
There is a big funeral at St Mary’s. The first policemen to die in the line of duty in over a decade is being honored at ten o’clock. The attendees are expected to exceed the capacity of the Cathedral.
I’ve not taken my medication since Monday. Am I staring to feel it? I’m not sure yet
There is a despair one comet to / awkwardly in never having known / apple-breasted women – Robert Creeley – The Collected Poems, 1945-1975, 1982 p79
Having guests is tiring. Not the guests. It’s the change in routine I suppose. I have to nap in the afternoon, change my pace, do things differently - not things that you didn’t want to do, just different things. I left my Muni pass so that my sister could ride the cable car as I sat out for the coffee shop. Like any Saturday afternoon it was packed. I considered several alternatives but they all involved Muni and I considered Frank’s Bohemian for a brewski, but I really did not want a cold one but a hot one and wound up at Martha and Brothers with a cappuccino. It was that or skip writing anything today and that I would not do. Sea Lions, Ft Point, Golden Gate Bridge, Sausalito and the Headlands and back. My nap. Then up and at it again. So on up to this moment again. Having visitors is tiring
Ruthlessly gentile, gently ruthless we move / As if through water with delaying limb – Thom Gunn [Collected Poems] 1994 p202
She was as thin as a rail, but now has a boyfriend and is putting on weight. She was once very self-conscious and shy. Now she is self-assuring and demanding. Wham Bam, thank you weed cutter man Walter has brought in an article about a Mexican gardener who was beaten up by an alien that then had sex with his weed cutter. The alien dinged the weed cutter up in his three-minute assault. The alien departed without even sharing a cigarette with the weed cuter. Frank Zappa where are you when we need you. Walter said that that was his show and tell- for today anyhow.
The sexual insatiable woman is to be found primarily, if not exclusively, in the ideology of feminism, the hopes of boys and the fears of men – D Symons – The Evolution of Human Sexuality, 1979
One remains immune to any disease that has yet to be invented, well everyone but one – the one for whom the first diagnosis is given.
I am the man on the rack. / I am the man who put the man on the rack. / I am the man who watches the man who put the man on the rack – Thom Gunn [Collected Poems] 1994 p274
In 1894 40% of all arrests in New York state were for vagrancy which was defined very broadly to cover any character objectionable to middle-class society – “ idle an dissolute person who went about and begged, runaways, pilferers, drunkards, night-walkers, lewd people, wanton and lascivious persons, railers and brawlers, persons without a calling or profession, visitors of tippling houses and houses of ill-fame and wandered.” We have had progress we no longer harass people for vagrancy – we harass them for being suspected of drug trafficking or suspicion of assisting know terrorist groups or suspicion of being an illegal immigrant – but the result is pretty much the same.
At least you would learn not to be afraid of God. You would see that even when God is most terrible, he is never cruel, the way men are – Paul Bowles – Too Far From Home: Selected Writing of, 1993 p41
4% of the US energy consumption is devoted to the production of 30 million tons of plaices of which only 2 million tones get recycled. 33 Million barrels of petroleum and natural gas are consumed in the process
Kings and those who are powerful desire what weights them to the ground – Michael Ondaatje – Anil’s Ghost, 2000 p191
In 1888 there were 8,000 resistered boats on the River Thames. A year later there were 12,000 in spite of a decline of commercial river traffic.
The history of acts is the form they make / toward one another as like waves they break. // The mind is coincident to any of several impinging / impregnated incidents like tomatoes ripening – Robert Creeley – The Collected Poems, 1945-1975, 1982 p99
Modern man is an incurious man on the whole. He sees something and only wants to know how much the thing is worth. How much effort is he expected to devote to it? He wants to know how he stands in relation to in and thereby in relation to other men – he is by nature a democratic man.
The flattered self is a mediated self, and the alchemy of mediation, the osmotic process though which reality and representation fuse, gets carried into our psyche by the irresistible flattery that goes with being increasingly addressed – Thomas De Zengotita – Mediated, 2005 p7
Proponents of capitalism as an end in itself believe that capitalist institutions already provide the most perfect form of individual and collective development. They believe that capitalism is a revolutionary and progressive force in world history… Capitalism is antiimperalistic and liberates people form irrational and hostile human relations – Martin Carnoy – Education as Cultural Imperialism, 1974 p5 – Karl Marx was such a believer.
Materials buried per acre in US cemeteries (excluding human
bodies):
Embalming fluid 1,000 gals
Steel 97.5 tons
Concrete 2,028 tons
Lumber 56,260 board feet
From the private ease of Mother’s womb / I fall into the lighted room. // Why don’t they simply put me back / where it is warm and wet and black – Thom Gunn [Collected Poems] 1994p247
The average American uses 23.6 rolls of toilet paper per year
It is notable that Kipling does not seem to realize, anymore than the average solider or colonial administrator, that empire is primarily a money-making concern. Imperialism as he sees it is a sort of forcible evangelizing – George Orwell – Dickens, Dali and Others, 1946 p144
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