Pie Today?

A little rain early. I stayed in bed. I start to make coffee but I’m out of grounds – no enough for a single cup. This demands a trip into town. Immediately – like right now!  I find a shortcut that shotens the distance by half. I went to the store – bread, baloney for the dog, a red bell pepper, beans, ham shanks and an avocado. I was on the way home. Damn it! I forgot the coffee. It is hell getting old. I turn around and go back. This time I remember the coffee (well I could have gone in and have came back out and stood in the parking lot scratching my head – now what was it I came all the way back to get? Wasn’t there something I wanted to pick up?).

What looks like the first time is actually déjà vu, a gala premiere after a long rehearsal period, some scene that memory has gotten expert at lighting – Durs Grunbein – Bars of Atlantis, 2010  p99

The heat is back – turn of the AC, play in the water, drink lots of beer

It seems almost on principle that he never cuts more than a day’s supply. Nor is he different in this form most woodsmen here – Theodore Enslin – Then and Now – 1999 p30

One in ten people born in Mexico live in the United States

Racial animosity in the US makes redistribution to the poor, who are disproportionally black, unappealing to many voters. American political institutions limited the growth of a socialist party, and more generally the political power of the poor – The Brookings Institute, 2001

It is 10:45. My only source of time is the vehicle clock. I only drive when I travel to my next camp site. Pick up provisions and get some ice which only lasts for up to two days (a lot less in the heat of the summer). The sun is already beating down. On the way out I stop at the river access – dark waters tannin stained. Water striders boat across its surface. The sun feels good. A truck arrives with a boat in tow. I need to move; get out of his way so that he can launch his boat. I eat lunch at Fred’s Fish House. The sign said best fish and hushpuppies in Arkansas. I guess you could mess them up if you didn’t change the oil often enough or tried to fry without letting the oil get hot enough. This is were every one in town – all the pick-up trucks congregated at noon. Must be good. “The special today is…” and she repeats her memorized speech so fast I am unable to follow most of what she says but I do make out that it includes four pieces of fish or of chicken (the customer's choice which). “What kind of fish”, I ask? “Catfish,” is if there was no other. It was more that I wanted but I order it anyway – four fillets of catfish deep fried in a cornmeal batter with slaw, a pickle, fries and two hush puppies, “Was everything good? Would you like some pie today?” And she’s now at a table across the room, “Everything all right. Pie today? You guys be good.” “Always good.” “Doubt that.” “Thank you and good day.” “Pie today?” And it was damn, good catfish, but hushpuppies are just hushpuppies. Eat your grits and bare it.

The eye is simply the better historian: it selects and compares and keeps space and time at a distance. The ear, by contrast, is completely engrossed by the present – Durs Grunbein – Bars of Atlantis, 2010  p117

Conformity is the counterpart of liberty and not injustice. There is no such thing as the liberty to conform; only the liberty to not conform

The Government argues that there are times when the interest of national security require the Government to mislead the Court. The Court strongly disagrees. The Government’s duty of honesty to the Court can never be excused, no matter what the circumstances. The Court is charged with the humbling task of defending the Constitution and ensuring that the Government does not falsely accuse people, needlessly invade their privacy or wrongfully deprive them of their liberty. The Court simply cannot perform this important task if the Government lies to it. Deception perverts justice. Truth always promotes it – Islamic Shura Council of S Cal vs FBI (9^th Cir Mar 30, 2011)

SWEETPEA

An inflated Popeye

            Would not Bluto

                        Make

As Olive Oyl shoots

                        Up

And Whimpie pays   

            Someone back

And just whose baby

            Are you anyway

            Sweetpea?

We deserve / more kindness / Than we give ourselves / To each other / we are gentle – Theodore Enslin – Then and Now – 1999 p38

Liberals feel that individuals need to be made free from the evils of society while conservatives believe that society must be made free from the evils of individuals – one belief could not exist without the other.

There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money and I can’t remember what the second is – Mark Hanna

If life were a bee

Then life it would be

There is no crisis zone on the globe or in the mind were you don’t run into poets, no dirty work for which they consider themselves too fine or too romantic – Durs Grunbein – Bars of Atlantis, 2010 p110

An Ahistoric Fork in the Road

On the waterfront they drink beer for breakfast – the dock workers are coming off the night shift – Bud man, if it’s not a Bud its just not beer. Breakfast at Red’s Java Hut. I’m having eggs and chili ranchero. No beer for me, ma’m. Coffee if you please. This place is crowed. This my friend is the working man’s home – baseball caps with bills front and center, sweat shirts with hoods and orange safety vests. Phil Matier from the Chronicle wanders in and sticks out his hand, “hey”, he says, “I haven’t seen you in while.” “Well,” I reply, “where else would I go to for my breakfast beer.” “Yeah,” he replies, “our city dollars at work.”. A port worker recognizes Phil and harangues him about his department’s lousy management. He is trying to peak Phil’s interest in department gossip – who got promoted and who is sleeping with who. “I’ll have to look into that,” Phil tells him and takes some notes and gets the guy’s cell phone number. “So this is how you get your scoops,” I asked? “Just sit and wait for it to come to you?” “Yeah,” Phil replies, “Yeah, like a crab in a crab pot. Actually, he says, I’m waiting for someone.” Phil is old school, pen and pad. Face to face interviews. Phil’s hot date is a two star police officer.

I’m only guessing based on my perceptions of the neither regions on my fifth-grade map. Aren’t we all victims of the limited perspectives of the lowest rung employee of Rand McNally? That shade of pink China was forced to wear reminded me of an upset stomach and it popular cure – Christopher Kennedy – Ennui Prophet, 2011  p54

Small arms fire

Weapons qualification

Military preparedness

Operation Devocalization

But sometimes

            Small arms fire

Is just target practice

Having no connection

            To target acquisition

Economics seemed to have fallen pray to the very social mechanism it attempted to describe and authorize; and the various theories merely confirmed or denied the privileges or fantasies of social classes – James Buchan – Frozen Desire: the meaning of money, 1997  p10

Trees – mostly oak – now

            In full leaf

Exhausted and eroded

            Farmland – National

Parks Demonstration Project

Of the Roosevelt years

            Eighty years on

The concept was to provide

            Urban access to

            National preserves

The sun tops the nearest

            Oak – The sky is cloudless

            Leaves waver in a light breeze

Scattered oaks in a mown lawn

            Encroached upon by native

                        Thickets

Patrol the roads, mow the grass

Birds flutter about – branch

                        To branch

                        Blue jays

Mostly in the open areas

            At this hour, there are

            Smaller birds in the tickets

I have been unable to shake the conviction that when you through open your arms to clasp life, you are caught up in the wind and blown backwards into the future – Durs Grunbein – Bars of Atlantis, 2010 p3

31% of applicants for health insurance are either turned down or quoted  a higher rate due to pre-existing conditions. 45% of applicants for health insurance cannot find a plan that they can afford.

The patient does not pay the physician for health per se; the patient pays an entry fee for admission to [a] relationship – William Ray Arney – Medicine and the Management of Living, 1984 p93

A two-income family of today is 15% poorer than a one-income family of 40 years ago. Using 2000 as the benchmark, in constant dollars the average wage earner earned $20 per hour in 1970 and earns $8.50 per hour today.

Adjectives of quality applied to money – good, bad, sound, cheap, dear, funny – are, nowadays, mere descriptions of quantity: they tell us only how much money there is about – James Buchan – Frozen Desire: the meaning of money, 1997  p18

To hell with getting “big government of the backs of private industry” let’s get big business off the backs of the taxpayers instead.

For money is incarnate desire. Money takes wishes, however vague or trivial or atrocious and broadcasts them to the world – James Buchan – Frozen Desire: the meaning of money, 1997  p19

57% of physicians under of the age of 40 say they are pessimistic about the future of the US healthcare system

I woke up behind the wheel and told my wife I’d been talking to Good King Wenceslas. A giant red ant wearing a crown figures in this story, as does the taillights of an eighteen-wheeler – Christopher Kennedy – Ennui Prophet, 2011  p61

Space seems to be either tamer or more inoffensive than time. We’re forever meeting people who have watches, very seldom people who have compases – Georges Perec – Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, 1997 p183 – But this was before the age of the ubiquitous GPS locator – turn left in one-third of a mile. Recalculating directions.

Lobsters are the only thing people kill with their own hands – Donald Barthelme – The King, 1990  p72

“This is a routine test of the giant voice system… giant voice system” boomed into  the woods – eiiiiiiiii! GVS poles with two to four 400 to 1,600 watts speakers each of which may be strategically selected for specific messages.

The thing about books is, there are quite a number you don’t have to read – Donald Barthelme – The King, 1990 p35

One in seven US residents received food stamps last year

Contemporary society is so media-saturated that it is literally impossible to see the exterior world except through the filter of the media – Nicolas Abnercombie – Audiences, 1998 p113

This is hell

If there is anything

            Else

It has to be heaven

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed – Steve Biko

The ideal classification table has blank squares (the periodic table is an excellent example), for what has yet to be discovered – even if nothing ever fits into  the square. Blank space raise important questions.

A visionary, even of one hundred percent blind, is capable of penetrating to the very core of things precisely because he disregards all imperfect appearances with their accidental properties as merely blurry likeness. For him, the error-prone eye has been replaced by the soul as the instrument of contemplation – Durs Grunbein – Bars of Atlantis, 2010  p49

Is there anything more intimate than smell? The scent of you bores me. There was a peculiar smell to each love. It was their scent and not any that they put on, although there was that to and it can be captured.

At some point in time the world I know either vanished or withdrew, and another world came to take its place – Haruki Marakami – 1Q84

The wealth of all households headed by those younger than 35 is 68% lower today than it was in 1984

We have fed the heart on fantasies, the heart has grown brutal from the fare – W B Yates

In totalitarian systems the violence is waged against the body; in totalizing systems the violence is against the spirit.

Money sets standards and settles issues – Durs Grunbein – Bars of Atlantis, 2010  p92

Billions of dollars wasted. The damn tree huggers and the forest service, both worst than useless. Billions of dollars worth of burnt dead Ponderosa left standing. Tree huggers wouldn’t allow it to be logged. Lumber companies don’t want it after two years. Just wasted, billions of dollars worth. He and his dog Elijah, a Jack Sprat. Came from Arizona. Now lived in Caboo. He had just recently moved here. Lived in the mountains at six thousand feet but his kids it was too remote for someone of his age. He asked if I’d been fishing here. No, never been here before.. The sun is shining. I don’t know what time it is, the battery in my cell phone is dead. Why do I need to know the time? The coffee in the bottom of the pot froze solid overnight. I got a roaring fire going. A scalding hot cup of coffee. My breath condenses. I flap my arms together. Damn it was cold last night. Across the lake a bald eagle is perched in a dead tree. It swoops down and talons a fish and flies off to  alight on a branch a couple of feet above the water. Eerie Eerie. Knock knock, tap tap tap, three woodpeckers to my right. A bluebird lands directly in front of me. Hammering continues on my right and then stops and resumes somewhere behind me. I see the first flower of the season – it is pale with a tinged of violet. The sun begins to feel nice on the back of my neck.

The universe as known-unknown / has no discernible shape and not much / in it, we give it the limits and shape we need it to have – William Bronk – Life Supports: new and collected poems, 1997  p36

Yesterday’s article about printing messages in food coloring on Pringels got Walter to thinking. What if they got rid of school and replaced it with Pringles, he said. Then he says, that he had another great idea that involved potato chips. It involves Kudzu, he said. Can you make potato chips from Kudzu, I asked? No,he says, but you they could just Kudzu power. It makes things crispy. They could dip the potato slices in Kudzu powder before they fried them. Hey, Walter exclaims, I may have stumbled onto the Colonel’s secret ingredient.

My sister lives in Jackson, TN, I tell him, were the make Pringles. She could help us with this project, Walter say. She could contact them for us, he adds. Do Pringles come in packages, he asks? No, they come in cans – well actually canisters because they are made from cardboard. To be cans they would have to be made of metal. Can’t canisters be made of metal, he asks? Well yes, I suppose they could. The might be how the word ‘can’ was derived, a abbreviation of canister. But the new Pringles, the ones with the messages, would probably come in trays like ‘Lunchables’ Being as Pringles with separate messages would have to come from separate production lines it probably won’t be practical to stack them. And if they put them in bags like normal chips there would be a lot of breakage and you couldn’t read them. Except to a jig saw puzzle fanatic, Walter added. Perhaps there might be a niche market there, I say. Walter says, that it would allow you to sell less for more. I see that you are becoming market savvy, I tell him. And I add, they would monopolize more shelf space, which is another marketing ploy.

Writing does not care where its jumps take it, as long as it happily clutches the few crumbs its unknown consciousness leaves it – Durs Grunbein – Bars of Atlantis, 2010  p60

12.2% of the earth’s land area and 5.9% of its territorial waters are wildlife protected areas. There are 120,000 protected areas covering 8 million square miles.

We now find ourselves at a historic fork in the road we traveled to understand the laws of nature – Steven Weinberg

Summer Is Ten Feet Tall

The Sunday morning paper is special – trying to find the right section; sorting through all these advertisements, turning pages looking at the pictures (colored today printed on plastized paper).  Looking to see if there is something that is worth reading. People will ask you – did you see in the paper yesterday where....? And you will say, I saw that, and a conversation will go on (especially when its sports and he’s another guy).  Can’t be bothered with the real-estate, it’s a community affair. Then you’ll say, did you see where....? You discard the trash in a pile to the left. What is readable is not much – the pile that is left is very small. Entertainment, sports, national news – some people read the editorials and the obits I don’t know what they are bitching about now whose laurels they’re proclaiming – it’s not my community).  Sip coffee. The coffee here is very acidic but it is hot and sort of black and it is comfy here in this sunny nook. Well that about does it for this Sunday morning.

That process of wish and imagination, launched or completed a million times every second, is the engine of our civilization. While barter seeks to match two wishes and annul them, money survives each sale or payment and must be deployed by its new holder or it ceases to be money – James Buchan – Frozen Desire: the meaning of money, 1997  p19

A wedding party – the bride and groom, and all their functionaries. They all come to the Castle for the picture taking. Congratulations, I say to the groom. Thanks, he replies. It’s really not a castle but the hulk a burnt out mansion of native stone. It is being promoted as a European style castle. It’s one of Missouri’s romantic connections to the Rhine River. Every palce pretents that it is some place else. This and Herman on the Big River. And Little Dixie but it has nothing to do with Germany. The Germans mostly lived in St Louis and voted for Lincoln.  But the sitting is rather spectacular sitting atop a two hundred foot cliff above a bubbling spring pool. This place is probably grandeur now as a ruin that it was in its original state. If not for the fire I would not be here. I would never have been invited as a guest.

If he could work a good mule down into the ground and get a good lather on him then we would say he’s a good worker. But I don’t thing we are going to see that...

I take the more strenuous path, the Blue Path down to the springs. The sign warns, “Do not take this path unless you are in good physical shape – 315 steps to descent the 200 feet of cliff face.” I took the long way back and then I took a nap.

Summer had been ten feet tall. It seemed endless, convincing us of our immortality. We came to terms with the inevitable when the sky grayed, turned pearly, opaque – Christopher Kennedy – Ennui Prophet, 2011  p24

It’s the Rage

Warfare

Welfare

Needle

In a hay stack

Play fair

Country fair

Fair exchange

All’s fair

Love and war

Bus fare

Rideshare

Road rage

War on our highways

By the bi-way

All the road rage

There are ecstasies and then there are ecstasies. This isn’t one of them. This is the brown heroin of love, the pure injection of irrational thought – Christopher Kennedy – Ennui Prophet, 2011  p 36

B2s take off at dawn

            From Whiteman

They’ll bomb Chandra

                        Tonight

Musselmen will die

            While wives

Play bridge tonight

Brave warriors endure

            Ennui to bring

Democracy to

             Others

These long hours of tedium

Flying to Chandra

            And back

For every Musselman

            Who shall die

A trick is taken back

            At Whiteman

Until their men return

            They’ll play cards

These brave warriors

            Taking off at dawn

While their wives go

            On having fun

The burden of world history has passed to a few pale, fat men gliding like phantoms at noon toward their Lincoln Town cars… Civilizations with their ancient architecture and civil sentiment had become worthless – James Buchan – Frozen Desire: the meaning of money, 1997 p4

Ticks drop from trees

Hardy as acorns

When it rains they pour

The value of money has been settled by general consent to express our wants and our property, as letters were invented to express our ideas – Edward Gibbons

There was a rustling up on the hillside to my left, the lake was to my right. A squirrel perhaps? No it is still oncoming towards me. Perhaps a beaver or muskrat trying to get back to the safety of the water (I was half right as it turned out)? I stop and try to spot it as it comes rushing onward. Wait, it could be a rabid skunk. Dry leaves are flying. Tall grasses are swaying. Then I see it. A big black snake trashing – hurdling towards me with all its awkward muscular might.. It disappears behind a tree beside me. It must have gone into its burrow. It gets quiet again. There is no motion in the brush. I go on. Then it comes on again. Two feet behind me it darts out of the grass onto the path that I had just trod. It’s a five foot cottonmouth intent of getting to the lake. Now its in the water where its sinuous motions become more graceful – a side to side slither rather than a tumultuous thrashing. It has a beauty as it heads towards deeper water and disappears.

What audiences are doing… is drawing  from the endless media stream that passes them by a set  of diverse elements out of which they can construct imaginative worlds that suit them…  The use of particular media resources for the imagination is not a  random process – Nicolas Abnercombie – Audiences, 1998  p107

Chopping Wood - Carrying Water

John is the man. He has MS, he says.  Chopping wood, he says, keeps him out of the wheelchair. He is out here in his old red pick-up truck harvesting the tree that the rangers cut down. Ranger Todd says this guy is driving awful fast. Someone at the station had notified him that wood would be available here and he is rushing out here so as not to miss this opportunity. Ranger Todd had to borrow an assistant from another station to get the job done. They sliced up the fallen pine and chopped a dead one down. Well hones and oiled chain saws makes it look cutting butter (except for driving wedgs to keep the wood from pinching the sar bar).  Then thyer go out to take care of the ones on the trail. Some small stuff between the Nevins place and Dry Fork and some minor stuff on the Boy Scout trail. That is all, I told him. Umph, Ranger Todd said I’d been told by several people that the trail had been obstructed. Some equestrians carry their own saws for just such an occasion. There was a guy on muleback server campsites back who did. I guess someone did it for you. Thanks, Ranger Todd said. John was busy winching seven foots sections of pine into the back of his truck truck. John and I are the same age.

If  you have psychopathic tendencies and  are born in a rich family, you’re likely to go to business school - George Mandiot – The Guardian

Peanut butter

            Whole wheat crackers

                        Cheddar cheese – sharp

And red wine in a box

            Life goes on

On a cold night

            When young girls squeal

This is the kind of peanut butter

            That sticks to the roof

                        Of your mouth

            Roofiness

This night has that quality

                        Too and so

Do the young girls

Books speak less and less about the facts of the world or the intimate experiences of others and more and more about how to make the self transparent. We read in order to find out how to express ourselves, how to assert ourselves, how to communicate and  connect – William Ray Arney – Medicine and the Management of Living, 1984 p1

Occupy! Is occurant art. Politics and culture do mix or at least they should.

Aesthetic politics is an exploratory politics of invention, unbound, unsubordinated to external finalities – Brian Massumi – Simblance and Event, 2011 p53

Consumerism teaches us that only specific ‘drops’ of experience are worthy of out attention and it is marketing to which we must look to find out what we need to pay attention to.

Power produces, it produces reality – Michel Foucault – Discipline and Punish, 1977

24-7-365 – all the fucking time. All the Freaking Time, man – a life-time, man. Think about that. Up until the end, Amen. Oh God!

But the fact remains. My favorite dog has bitten the entire neighborhood. ‘Here boy’, I say, but he ignores me, intent on running down another frightened child or a bicycle. He’s mangy, too. His collar’s too tight, and there’s no quenching his thirst. Raw meat’s the answer, but I am too lazy to go to the store. This is the story of a boy and his dog. Though as far as I can tell, the dog ran off a long time ago – Christopher Kennedy – Ennui Prophet, 2011 p12

If there were fewer choices to be made, then there would be more choices that would be worth making: we don’t need ten different brands and sizes of white sandwich loafs, we need five different kinds of bread – fresh from the oven and with crisp cruts wrapped in brown paper to be carried home in the bicycle pannier. Say hello to the baker, the butcher and the candlestick maker. Ask the small boy standing on the corern whh he is not in school. Oh, its Saturday. Well OK then, enjoy your day.

Men without lively imaginations are needed to execute policies without imagination devised by an elite without imagination – C Wright Mills

Narco-trafficers corrupt government  and they are

            But the baby brothers of the corporate greedy

Ensuring their own big bonuses

            For incremental incompetence

Which the narco-trafficers rarely are

In the extreme, life is what is capable of error – Michel Foucault

The most radical solutions come from the most banal questions

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them – Albert Einstein

William’s crazy – Mexican Mormans kidnapping young virgins to rear children so they can maintain their 99 year lease; and how his Indian friend refused to die until his skin turned red again (and it did all except for his lower legs); and how he died in a Mexican jail after hitting a Federale. I said, excuse me, but I have to take a shit and am on my way to the outshouse. I think social service agencies take that the cases that  they can’t cope with and drive out in the country and dump the off in the woods. It’s the updated version of Greyhound therapy, but not their budgets don’t permit them to buy tickets toa town in another state. Later William got electro-shock therapy. Litghting strikes his Winnebago. A big ball of fire like a bomb. It crackles. This is not the thunder. Then a second later the boom after the crackling and sizzeling. If it did’t kill him I’m quite sure he’s deaf. Anyway I won’t have to hear any more of his crazy stories.

Duty, religion, public service, liberty, equality, justice or aristocracy – all the cultural flesh that clothes the bones of money for those that possess it – all become suspect: only money, it seemed, was to be trusted – James Buchan – Frozen Desire: the meaning of money, 1997  p14

THERE IS SOMEONE ELSE IN THE ROOM, I’M SURE OF IT. “WHOS THERE” I CALLED OUT AS I AWOKE WITH A START!

I wanted that window seat in the bright light not this one over here in the gloom of a dim corner. Before I could reach it another couple eased into the booth that I had wanted. I eased back not wanting it to be apparent that a race had occurred and than I was the loser. One of them was an old guy with the salt and pepper beard and he was talking about brush hogging. The other guy now in my sunny booth reached over and closed the curtains. He’s saying how friendly everyone is in this part of the country. “Lived here all your life, have you”, he asked the waitress? “Yes, all twenty years of it.” She is distracted. I’ve already asked her twice for a spoon and she has twice come back and asked be if she had taken my order yet. He’s saying how everyone knows everyone: “Your mama had been up to my house riding her horse when she was no older than you.” “Yeah, she still likes to ride.” “We called your daddy Bird Dog. Called him that oh, a hundred years. Don’t know how it got started.”

I hear a chainsaw in the distance, a truck shifted gears. I was almost back. Then a quiet sound caught my attention as if a blind carpenter were caught hammering roses – Christopher Kennedy – Ennui Prophet, 2011  p17

Poet: someone who sometimes gets the girl, but not very often

The talented composer borrows, but the genius steals – Igor Stravinsky

It commences with buds

Not fire engine red, more

            Like a blush

This is  just the beginning

Then comes the dog woods

Then the great awakening

            With its verdure ubiquietness

Then those nasty insects

And that sticky sweltering heat

            Longing for winter again

Already

We traveled the oceans / To see the world / But what did we see / We saw the sea – Charles Bernstein – The Sophist, 1987  p40

When it comes to culture -  “supply siders” do make some sense.

What all these collapsed powers have in common is that the complex social systems that underpinned them suddenly ceased to function. One minute rulers had legitimacy in the eyes of their people; the next they didn’t – Niall Ferguson

Ticks with their white adominal spots

My revulsion is engaged

            I want to rend them to shreds

            Pluck them off and tear them

                        Apart

Pull off their legs (pull the buggers

                        Into  pieces but that difficult)

            They make surprisingly loud crunch

Like the cracking the shell of a lobster

            To which they are related

The little ones are OK

            At least they have yet to feast

                        On another beast

They probably have yet to acquire

            Any pathogens

Say Rocky Mountain Spotted

            Fever or Lyme Disease

And since I’ve seen no deer I may

            Be safe – but I’m sure

That they are not out there somewhere

Lots of squirrels and the beavers

            Have been gnawing on trees

Birds chatter a lot

An understanding of reality is a liability in a situation in which reality is inadmissible – Donald Antrim – The Afterlife, 2006  p70

Big explosion – rocks the trailer – no idea where or what. Sun is coming out – skies are blue.  I go out to investigate. It sounded right close. No sirens forthcoming to indicate any imment catastrophe. As loud and reverbarting as it sounded someone surely got injured or some property damaged (say a fire is raging somewhere).  As close as it was I should be able to hear any emmergency vehicle responding. None do. It turns out to have been a sonic boom. The military have been granted permission to transect the National Forests at supersonic speed. I vaguely recall having read something about this recently. All part of Homeland Security no doubt, or at least to our sense of enhanced insecurity. I certainly feel more insecure now. I once heard the Space Shuttle boom coming into to land at Edwards. It was common in the late Fifties when we worried about the commies, but the claims for broken windows trumped our fear of thr reds. The best security is property afterall.

We demand that you stop demanding a list of demands – Robert Jensen – 11/3/11

There’s a distant

            Rumble

It could be the hoof

            Beat of Mongol

            hords

Highly unlikely

Rip Van Winkle

            Bowling

Even more improbable

Ka-plink, a split

            More English

            If you please

Ka-boom, that’s

            Better, knock

            Em all over

Military manuevers

I can sleep now

            With greater

            Peace of mind

God bless one and all

And to each a patriotic

            Sentiment

I’ve had my problems / with poetry before, but / I’ve never had to turn / my back on it – Charles Bernstein – The Sophist, 1987  p27

8:40: I’ve been up since sun up – that is when it is proper to get up. Fingers are numb. It’s amazing that the temperature was ninety-five three-day past. A hot cup of coffee – any coffee, it doesn’t necessarily have to be Starbucks, any old tin from the supermarket shelf well do. The birds chirp. I wish I could give them names –Latinized double names would be great, but that would take away their singularity. I could then look them up in an Audubon guide and even write out the songs that they sing. But such strings of constants and foreign sounding names would require an objectivity I don’t want to view the world form. To say the least they all sound sweet – their songs not their scientific names.

In prose you start with the world and find the words to match; in poetry you start with the words an find the world in them – Charles Bernstein – The Sophist, 1987  p49

9:11: I give it a try. Try to be objective. Four birds sing – kwitt kwitt qwit. The sun risers; the earth rotates counterclockwise (indicating that I’m located in the northern hemisphere) to be more accurate. I reheat my coffee – calories of heat from the oxidation of a low molecular weight hydrocarbon gas transferred to liquid in this blue enamel container – concentrated water soluble oils, fair trade grown Arabica beans  (100% the label proclaimed along with a list of chemicals), low roasted and finely ground. God, I much prefer it when the birds just chirp. Perhaps I could get a star chart and identify the constellations too – but they have no real meaning except to astrologers (useless knowledge –unless your into that kind of stuff, although it makes good come-on conversations – what’s your sign? What’s your favorite number?).

What lay behind it, more than anything, even more than madness, was solitude, which is perhaps the subtlest or at least the most lucid of the forms that madness can take – Roberto Bolano – Monsieur Pain, 2010 p12

Economics is a study form within. The views of a schizophrenic and an economist have this in common

If we name the faults of those who have hurt us, we will be shielded from pain; if we can collect evidence to justify our anger, we will not have overcome shame; if we pity our betrayers, we will not have been betrayed, mishandled, misunderstood, or left abandoned. But what happens when the ordeal of abandonment is… life itself? – Donald Antrim – The Afterlife, 2006  p175

I am postmodern. I am your future; young girls squeal. Young men play loud music. This is what I am. This is what it is. And I ask, so what? And I ask for nothing in return except for peanut butter and crackers.

I wake. I am sweating. I try not to fall asleep again. For a moment I am certain that there’s someone else in the room – Roberto Bolano – Monsieur Pain, 2010 p36