It Was My Duty to Stay Awake and Sing If I Could Keep My Mind on Singing, Not Extinction, as Blurred Green Summer, Lifted to Its Apex, Succumbed to Gravity and Fell to Autumn, Ilium, and Ashes

Had lunch yesterday with a friend, another former teacher (let me never give any impression I don't know how fortunate I am to work and have gone to school at Hilltop), a poli/sci specializing in American political culture (his mentor was Chris Lasch). He says in his 40 years of teaching and 68 years of life he has never seen more people ready to take offense and pick a fight. He says it's taken 18 years since the coordinated anti-Clinton barrage started in 1992 in exploitation of the new potentialities of new media realities and, regardless of blame - we're all to blame - it's like weight: I didn't gain that 50 pounds overnight, I'm not going to lose it overnight, and statistics suggest I'll be fatter in ten years than thinner.

I hearby ban me using the word *motherfucker* on this shitty blog, this shitty blog's comments, or by me in the comments of your shitty blog, hence through the end of September. A hypothetical pint I'll owe you if you catch me, a hypothetical pint you me if I stay clean. Dinner and pints, R, one way or the other, October 1. It's the very least I can do to fake civility.

• Uh-oh.
• Post-Obama era.
• The greatest country in the world!
• As I type, this is the top story on YFWP website, with this sublede: Controversies over calls to burn the Koran and over a proposed mosque in New York are sparking questions about how Sept. 11 became so politicized. Republican Thanksgiving sparking questions?
• As many have noted, bombing wedding parties with predator drones is a much better recruitment tool for al-Q than a christer burning Korans.
• A view from England.
• American psychopaths.
• Torturer's reward.
• Standard obamapostasy. More. More.
• UPDATE! Look what just landed on my desk.

• Rodeo clowns.
• Talk about me like a dog.
• Kill the poor.
• Colorado coal mine scrip.
• Siberia is melting.
• MOCO Civil War?
• Wildfire at Point of Rocks!
• Mother Futcher h/t. Found there after I'd already written this post. Serendipity abounds in clusterfucks.
• Helmetball predictions.
• Novels about being fat. Berger's Reinhart was pretty fat by the last of the four if I remember correctly. And of course, there's Mantel's Allison in Beyond Black, though of course both author and character are English.
• On the tribes of poetry I linked to yesterday.
• New Wells Tower story.
• UPDATE!

• Um, GUIDED BY VOICES, Thursday October 21, 930.
• Guilty pleasure.
• UPDATE! BLCKDGRD Theme Song 3.
• Guilty pleasure.
• UPDATE! Wanna stream the new Royksopp?
• Guilty pleasure.
• Guilty pleasure.
• Terrific 90's playlist.

BLUR

Andrew Hudgins

Storms of perfume lift from honeysuckle,
lilac, clover—and drift across the threshold,
outside reclaiming inside as its home.
Warm days whirl in a bright unnumberable blur,
a cup—a grail brimmed with delirium
and humbling boredom both. I was a boy,
I thought I'd always be a boy, pell—mell,
mean, and gaily murderous one moment
as I decapitated daises with a stick,
then overcome with summer's opium,
numb—slumberous. I thought I'd always be a boy,
each day its own millennium, each
one thousand years of daylight ending in
the night watch, summer's pervigilium,
which I could never keep because by sunset
I was an old man. I was Methuselah,
the oldest man in the holy book. I drowsed.
I nodded, slept—and without my watching, the world,
whose permanence I doubted, returned again,
bluebell and blue jay, speedwell and cardinal
still there when the light swept back,
and so was I, which I had also doubted.
I understood with horror then with joy,
dubious and luminous joy: it simply spins.
It doesn't need my feet to make it turn.
It doesn't even need my eyes to watch it,
and I, though a latecomer to its surface, I'd
be leaving early. It was my duty to stay awake
and sing if I could keep my mind on singing,
not extinction, as blurred green summer, lifted
to its apex, succumbed to gravity and fell
to autumn, Ilium, and ashes. In joy
we are our own uncomprehending mourners,
and more than joy I longed for understanding
and more than understanding I longed for joy.