Cairn to Cairn

 

Spectacular. Especially the steep descent above the tree line in a torrential thunderstorm, lightning hundreds of yards away. Unbelievably cool.

My friend ODB (and sorry, friend, I won't have time to play) once told me there were three seasons in New England, Winter, Mud, and Bugs, though I'd add it seems to me Road Construction must be a fourth.

Typing this in Lebanon NH after dinner in Hanover - we sort of had a familial obligation to drive through Dartmouth (long, extremely uninteresting story). I did have a Magic Hat Summer Ale for dinner, so Hi! to Old Salty! Middlebury tomorrow morning, Williams tomorrow afternoon.

*

I do hope whoever assassinates Obama understands who becomes president (unless it's a twofer, and who's president then? !hEh!), and just who will Joe Biden name VPOTUS anyway?

Meanwhile, in case Obama succeeds and abolishes both First and Second Amendments, Sasha volunteers for the Death Panel. Awesome.

*

• The Other Dear Leader.
• Yup.
• Brownshirting.
• Risible.
• Oh no! Fascism!
• Hell One. An ongoing count.
• Recommended reading.
• So many pages, so much money. 
• Rachel Loden.
• Louise Bogan.
• Cloudsplitter.
• How to Paint a Dead Man?
• Kill 'Em All.
• Naive Melody.
• GbV once. GbV twice.

*

1400

Albert Goldbarth

Saps, and the anal grease of an otter, and pig's blood,
and the crushed-up bulbous bodies of those insects
that they'd find so thickly gathered on barnyard excrement
it makes a pulsing rind, and oven soot, and the oil
that forms in a flask of urine and rotting horseflesh,
and the white of an egg, and spit-in-charcoal
in a sluggish runnel of gray the mixed
with the harvested scum of a bloated tomato,
and steamed plant marrows beaten to a paste,
and orange clay, and auburn clay, and clay bespangled
with the liquid pearl of fish scales stirred in milt,
and suet, and glue boiled out of a hoof,
and ash, and grape-like clusters of fat grabbed
out of a chicken carcass and dried in the sun
until it became inert and yet still pliable, and lime,
and the pulp of the cherry, and the pulp of the cherry
immersed in egg, and coral in powder,
and silver flake, and fig, and pollen, and dust, and beeswax,
and an iridescence scraped with infinite care
from the wings of hundreds of tiny flying things,
and salted iridescence, and human milk, and ores,
and gall, and stains expressed from teas, and gobs of squeeze-off
from the nettings of cheese, and rouge, and kohl,
and luster, and oyster, and less; and so from these
they made their paints: and then
their Gods and their saints.

*