The Nominalist In Me Invents a Life Devoid of Precedents

Had lunch in celebration of Elric's father's birthday yesterday in the historic Belt Building in downtown Gaithersburg MD, the town I grew up in. The building's been renovated and turned into a brewpub. The hostess and waiter were pissed seven of us showed up for lunch; they wanted to prepare for Tattoo Night. An awkward conversation around the table followed as we waited for our food. I never want to hear the phrase "tramp stamp" used again in Bromark's mother's presence, nor have to explain what one is again to anybody.

The photo above is a Christian Science Reading Room, catacorner from the Belt Building across both E. Diamond and N. Summit Avenues, though when I think of that building, the one business I remember is when it housed an art supply store, years ago, where I started buying pens and tablets.

I recognize the nostalgic incense this bleg has burned the past (x) month(es). Partly it's the June/July congestion of birthdays and anniversaries, this year especially with the Gah in Uniontown, the lunch in Center City Gaitherburg, but shedding paradigms requires revisiting established but abandoned landmarks, not to confront and disavow them but to recast.

That store across the street once was Center Market, where I once shoplifted two quarts of Wild Irish Rose and, two painful days later, never shoplifted or drank Wild Irish Rose again, a lesson I'm trying, with some tiny but glad successes, to repeat in countless places large and small.

• Struggling in an age of anxiety.
• Justice as fairness.
• The standard of unfairness for the elite.
• The poor must die.
• More Jensen. I never got around to Omnivore's Dilemma until now, but yes, the cogs.
• Low hanging fruit.
• Rightist collective narcissism.
  
• Obamagasm? No.
• Class warfare?
• What the hell got into Dana Milbank?
• Hey! zencomix is back from holiday!
• Metro!
• I didn't go (and feel no guilt) which guaranteed it would be eventful. Refereeing is the biggest problem in MLS.
• Everything bad is good again. Mark, it's not Sting, it's Gordon Fucking Sumner.
• I knew Scalapino's name but not her poetry, but the outpouring of grief of her recent death and the celebration of her work compels me to give her a read. Good thing I have access to a university library's stacks.
• Lennon on sale.
• UPDATE! Kristen Hersh, acupuncture, bi-polar disorder.
• Have I ever mentioned I like GbV?
• UPDATE! Darkblack's Sunday Overnight
• Bromark found live Ivy covering Go-Betweens. .

CHANSON PHILOSOPHIQUE

Timothy Steele

The nominalist in me invents

A life devoid of precedents.

The realist takes a different view:

He claims that all I feel and do

Billions of others felt and did

In history’s Pre-me period.

Arguing thus, both voices speak

A partial truth. I am unique,

Yet the unceasing self-distress

Of desire buffets me no less

Than it has other sons of man

Who’ve come and gone since time began.

The meaning, then, of this dispute?

My life’s a nominal/real pursuit,

Which leaves identity clear and blurred,

In which what happens has occurred

Often and never—which is to say,

Never to me, or quite this way.