Filling sandbags today? Yep! Don’t they have a machine that does that yet? Filling sandbags is this community's equivalent to a charity bazaar. It is their regular community building ropes course. The river is due to crest at somewhere between 30 and 39 feet. The big flood of 1991 was thirty-three (I was later corrected - forty-three) feet. The prognosis on the crest and its timing changes daily but everyone agrees that the breaks in the levee up-river does not diminish the height of the crest but only affects its timing. All that water eventually has to go somewhere – meaning downstream – it will eventually all pass right by here. The question is when?
Like most black-glove cops, [he] believed implicitly that if you ever backed down even for a moment in dealing with assholes and scrotes the entire structure of American law enforcement would crash to the ground in a mushroom cloud of dust – Joseph Wambaugh – The Choirboys, 1975 p30
Dave was telling me that Esmeralda’s real name is not Susan. Nor is Susan’s name Esmeralda (I had been calling her Susan except in my mind where I thought of here as an Esmeralda). It is Trisha and she resents serving assholes but is learning not to not show it so much he explains. She is learning how to perform service all on her own, he says. Dave says that he should know because he grew up in New Orleans where excellent service was the norm. Trisha, 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. And I think that Dave has his own ideas about what kind of service he would have liked Trisha to have performed. The only thing that she had ever done for me was draw me a beer and she had always smiled when she sat it down if front of me.
America’s most resent great achievement was the conversion of a comatose economy into the world’s greatest war machine and that had happened the better part of a century ago.
Sandbagging is pretty much complete – now for the wait – wait for the river to rise – sometime in the next week, someone says. The high water will last into August.
“The future / is all around us.” // It’s a place // any place / where we don’t exist - Rae Armantrout – Versed, 2000 p68
The Calico Cat and the Gingham Dog
Simple language does not lie
Truth requires complexity
Falsehood demands details
Agent based interpretation of complex events… appears to represent a default strategy of the human mind – Scott Atran – In Gods We Trust, 2002 p49
Dial a 1-800 number at random – you have a 33% chance of hearing an advertisement for phone sex
We sleep together in the dark / but confuse light with love – Rae Armantrout – Versed, 2000 p103
Unlike the other apes (man, chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas) orangutans prefer the use of their left hands
It is very curious to be curious. History is curious it is very curious to be history – Gertrude Stein – Stances in Meditation, 1957 p213
Having finished their cigarettes the musicians dribble back in – it is spoken word time at The Poetry Center – with music. This was the type of thing the Beat did so well in dark cellars wearing berets and dark sunglasses (I read just today that the US Army was abandoning the black beret and going back to the field cap. A ten year experiments as one soldier said of wearing a wet sock on your head – It had been a democratic process. The brass surveyed the men to find out what they liked and didn’t like – I’m sure that there were other things that they didn’t like). Someone when down stairs – the Poetry Center is on the fifth floor – to put up a sign. Someone wandering about might hear the horns from an open window – the sign was to invite them up just in case they might be curious. I don’t know that anyone was. I once heard an African rite taking place in a warehouse in Lisbon along the Targus and wondered what would happened if I just wandered in, but there was no sign saying that that would be OK so I didn’t. I would have liked to have seen this sign in many places but didn’t. Lots of opportunities missed. But then I don’t recall every having seen such a sign and wandering in either. And I was already here. So the sign didn’t do me any good either.
I’ll take the M train downtown. Walk to the Rex on Sutter. Hear Marcus Shelby. I already have tickets – season ticket holder. It will be my third concert today. They were only into their first piece here and I was already plotting my route to my next gig: the M line to Powell St Station, walk up Powell to Sutter and turn right. Walk for half block. Stop for a happy hour beer along Powell if and only if there is time or go up Sutter and investigate the White Horse. I noticed it before but had not stopped. Then I said to myself, “hold it buddy, hold it right there”. “This is now and that is then and you can only be at one place at a time and that is not there.” So I get into the groove and my mind didn’t wonder off again any more. I was getting lost but at least I knew where I was which was here. And when they blow the last note I will smile and said I was there.
It’s already 6 O’clock when I got downtown. By the time that I get to the Rex no time will be remaining to enjoy a happy hour anywhere. I get Oregon Porter at the Rex bar.
Knight Bachelor – a man knighted by the British Monarch but not a member of one of the organized orders of chivalry. There is no female counterpart. Most entertainers who have been knighted are allowed the honorific “Sir” due to their Knights Bachelor rather than their membership (which is generally as a junior member – ‘Commander’ or ‘Officer’) in an Order-of-Chivalry
We can only seek to do justice to a name, not to find its truth. Since a name has no signification, only a designatory function – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p160
Burning kerosene – jet fuel
Two pilots in mock combat
Race pirouette their crafts
Through my overhead space
They won’t go away
They won’t leave me alone
I want to smack them
With a fly swatter
Sometimes they whine
Roaring as they make
To run away
A red shift makes them invisible
Except to the ears
It’s when they are far away
Or come in low that
They really roar
It is quiet at this moment
They have returned to base
To take on more fuel
The course of events must assume a certain definable shape, and until it is in a phase where some aspect is an accomplished fact, news does not separate itself from the ocean of possible truth – Walter Lippmann
“Marx was right,” I turned to Brian and said. “Money cranks the handle of the reality machine.” “Nice metaphor,” he replied
Thought is non-productive labor, and hence does not show up as such on the balance sheet except as waste – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p175
Two-thirds of all college grads in 2008 had accumulated a debt in obtaining their education. The average debt of a graduating student is $23,000. And then are all those who never graduate and there debts.
[The] surge lifted all yachts if not all boats – Lizzy Ratner – The Nation 2/14/11 p12
An abstract God
Is Just
Another dollar
An insignificant
Certificate
All consciousness is consciousness of language in its heterogeneous multiplicity. Understanding and misunderstanding, as it were, are entwined as the conditions of linguistic interaction – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p156
Tell me one more lie
To counter all that
You have already told
Tell me one more lie
To console me
Once again
Tell me one more lie
That you do love me
And always will
Tell me one more lie
That you won’t lie anymore
That that was your last deceit
Tell me one more lie
So that I won’t be
Unhappy anymore
We can only agree to disagree if we can establish agreement concerning what it is that we are agreeing about and we can only establish communication if we can ascertain that we are in communication without first communicating that fact – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p182
No comments:
Post a Comment