Distribution Automatique

Saturday, November 29

from *a day in the life of p.* by kari edwards
(subpress collective 2002)

[the following quotations will not do justice to
this unusually original and moving work, they are just
a taste of the strange beauty of its language]

[note: asterisks indicate bold type]

"*may the birds proclaim unclean sympathetic
vibration for the sirens of the night
may the bugs and worms find a station that brings
direct service to the distant ones
may I not stop before death or a photo copy of death.
may the books on the shleves preserve a hearty dust
collection.
may phantasmic abundance accrue with a psychosis
twinge.
may the objects too numerous to mention cease to
cause consternation-cease to talk back
in their continual banter-cease to swallow the
heads of their previous owners.
may the street waiters in soiled clothes and may the
floating paper winds find a score suitable to
relinquish self serving components.*" (p.7)

neither the nearly fathered father nor the nearly mothered
mother know what that meant nor cared, and when to respond,
that no one person could ever change the traffic patterns alone, and
it's best to stick to job assignments and registered duties for the best
of the community, than to contramand the command. whatever
mentioned the new comer to the block who, by the way was
recently crucified and the nearly parents said-

yea...wellmmm that's different.

still, whatever believed in the possibilities of single pebble
ripple effects, and knew if only the icarus dream hadn't been abated,
surely, icarus would have gone down in history as more than a
mythical failure. this usually caused someone to *spend hours
listening to the silver backing found on old coins*, saying- we are
kin left with nothing but the sounds of bad musicals found in *turbine
engines* and artificial vintage products for the masses." (49)


"*on these days*, sometimes would create a language of the day-
relabeling minute particles- summoning the flesh to remember
when it was called into being, not the usual dictionalized image, but
the moment when an object takes on a life of its own, when
windows became magnificent turner paintings, awash in sudden swells
of fire, smoke and the billowing clouds of a burning london. when
the shrubs on the outside trimmed to anal perfection longed for
freedom in a dialectic known only in forest dreams, when the
crevices of the room eclipsed the moon and the sun- when space
would expand the depth of the floor into a deep abyss- as viruses
all sustained the same energy- freeing themselves from the form
known as birth scream recognition- where the self was set free by
multiplication tables, where diagrams of thought flowed in all
directions, leaving no direction at all." (p.50)

Friday, November 28

Antipathies

Travel light. Cut your
losses. Take a deep
breath. Search within.
Take a break. It ain't
necessarily so. Log in at
the labyrinth. Cover your
bets. Take a warm coat.
Button your fly. Smooth your
dress. Zip up
your jacket. Say grace.
Eat your greens. Watch
your weight. Make sure
to check in. Balance your
checkbook. File your
papers. Complete the
form. Mail in the
application. Get your
diploma. Be on time.
Vote your conscience. Say
your prayers. Be cool.
Be nice. Assert yourself.
Say your prayers. Don't
get mad. Don't get me
wrong. Watch your
tongue. Brush your
teeth. Smell my
breath. Be a team
player. Be a good
boy. Be a good girl.
Change your clothes.
Don't clash your
colors. Set your
clock. Tell the truth.
Pay your bills. Tuck me
in. Be polite. Don't
rain on my parade. Clip
your nails. Tuck in
your shirt. Comb
your hair. Count your
change. Don't
rub it in. Be cool.
Be fair. Be nice. Be
honest. Be good.
Don't be late. Don't
argue. Don't get mad.
Don't interrupt. Don't
be a bore. Do not
disturb. Knock first.
Don't stare. Don't raise
your voice. Lock the
door. Put your stuff
away. Don't litter.
Salute the flag. Support
the troops. Pay your
taxes. Count your
blessings. After you.
Good luck. Good night.
good morning. Don't use
cliches.


***************************
Small World Dep't

"I've just got to stop blogging for five minutes and
read," I told myself, so I headed downstairs, put on
some water for decaf and opened up my favorite book
to read just now, "A day in the life of p." by Kari
Edwards.I read it for half an hour or so, and loved
every moment. But temptation got the best of me:
" I know, I'll just go check my site meter and
see who's been by. Five minutes, that's it."

So thanks to Boynton, Blue Kangeroo
and, guess who, transdada
for all your kind words about the recent posts on
::fait accompli:: and for directing people there...
(That's right, transdada is Kari Edwards).
As Ann Waldman once put it in a fine poem:
"No way out, no way, no way."

Anyway, hi all, and, now, back to reading
"A day in the life of p." And if it's ok
with Kari, maybe I'll put up a few quotes
from, well, the best sci-fi I've seen since
Phillip K. Dick a little later...



Dress Rehearsal


1.

They asked
inevitable
to place
without

choose
caption
rate
dread

only
prolongs
preferred
juncture

tumbling
further
parent
closure

2.

tomorrow
interrogation
prefer
sytematic

knowledge
listless
wholes
apart

remembrance
ocurrance
loyalty
fixture

together
medication
merely
trumped

Thursday, November 27

Abraham Cowley

*Of My Self*

This only grant me that my means might lye
Too low for Envy, for Contempt too high.
Some honor I would have
Not from great deeds, but good alone
The unknown are better than the ill known.
Rumour can ope' the Grave
Acquaintance I would have, but when 't depends
Not on the number, but the choice of Friends.

Books should, not business, entertain the Light ,
And sleep, as undisturb'd as Death, the Night.
My House a Cottage, more
Than Palace, and should fitting be
For all my Use, no Luxury.
My garden painted o'er
With Nature's hand, not Arts; and pleasures yield,
*Horace* might envy in his Sabine field.

Thus would I double my Lifes fading space,
For he that runs it well, twice runs his race.
Add in this true delight,
These unbought sports, this happy State,
I would not fear or wish my fate
But boldly say each night,
Tomorrow let my Sun his beams display,
Or in clouds hide them; I have liv'd today.


1668
Or, as Robert Lowell put it "Their monument sticks like
a fishbone/ in the city's throat"


"...The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by like grease."

from *For the Union Dead*
Robert Lowell
Juan Ramon Jimenez

SEAS

I feel this barque of mine
has struck against something there in the depths,
something vast.

And yet nothing
happens! Nothing...Quietude...Waves...
-Nothing happens; or has all come to pass
and we are now, tranquil, within the new?

(translated by Eleanor M. Turnbull)

MARES


siento que el barco mio
ha tropezado, alla en el fondo,
con algo grande.

Y nada
sucede! Nada...Quietud...Olas....
-Nada sucede; o es que la sucedido todo,
y estamos ya, tranquilos, en lo nuevo?-
Juan Ramon Jimenez *There was no one*
from *Ten Centuries of Spanish Poetry* (Grove Press)

-There was no one. Water.- No one?
And is the water no one?-There
is no one. The flower. Is there no one?
But , the flower. Is it no one?
-There is no one. It was the wind.- No one?
But, the wind, is it no one?- There
is no one. Illusion.- Is there no one?
And is illusion no one?


(tr. Eleanor L. Turnbull)

No era nadie

-No era nadie. El agua.- Nadie?
Que no es nadie el agua?- No
hay nadie. Es la flor. No hay nadie?
Pero, no es nadie la flor?
-No hay nadie. Era el viento.- Nadie?
No es el viento nadie?- No
hay nadie. Illusion.- No hay dadie?
Y no es nadie la illusion?

from *The Norton Anthology of Poetry*

Kenneth Koch *Permanently*

"One day the Nouns were clustered in the street.
An adjective walked by, with her dark beauty.
The Nouns were struck, moved, changed.
The next day a Verb drove up, and created the Sentence.

Each sentence says one thing- for example, "Although it was a dark rainy day
when the Adjective walked by, I shall remember the pure and sweet
expression on her face until the day I perish from the green, effective
earth."
Or, "Will you please close the window, Andrew?"
Or, for example, "Thank you, the pink pot of flowers on the window sill has
changed color recently to a light yellow, due to the heat from the boiler
factory which exists nearby."

In the springtime the Sentences and Noun lay silently on the grass.
A lonely Conjunction here and there would call, "And! But!"
But the adjective did not emerge.

As the adjective is lost in the sentence,
So I am lost in your eyes, ears, nose and throat-
You have enchanted me with a single kiss
Which can never be undone
Until the destruction of language."

Wednesday, November 26

from *Lamplights Used to Feed the Deer* by Lynne Dreyer
Some of Us Press

"...You are forgoing many
obstacles and how a letter now
and then would not suffice and
if this would what kind of human
being I would be.

You left your footprints. You
left yhour face. You came back
from the sandfilled land. I knew
you would and suddenly you
were not wearing those ridicu-
lous things but looked as I had
seen you the first time. Body
outstretched, hand holding the
head. small poses. I am going
home.

Where is that?
Best of this world.
Light on the printed word.

You face the people on the
streets. They look at you side-
ways they look at you straight.
They look at you they try to
look through you they can not
see. You try to be one of the
fish we saw at the acquariam.
The ones you could see through
You fall to cover yourself again..."
from Ann Lauterbach *If In Time*
selected poems, 1975-2000
Penguin

from *Quotations from Reality*

"Perhaps none of us ever believed
contemplating the acute world would rescue us
from it. Between frequency and absence
a world is missing in action, although
one is still friends with the bride. Lying
in bed, he proposes a new form of separation
and she accepts, feeling already radiant.
The song of praise from Catalonia
is energetic and glad as your niece
who is fourteen and no longer a virgin.

Barcelona is beautiful. I iknow
of a beautiful girl named Gloria Barcelona.
Once I thought there were instances of magic
until a philosopher friend, now dead, said
it was pure coincedence. He pretended to be
dying of cancer, then killed himself.
An acquaintance worte me the news on brown paper.
He left me his books, which I never got, but just
the other day you said: :*'The world is not the case.'"
Eileen Tabios *Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole*
Marsh Hawk Press

from *Come Knocking*

"You quirked an eyebrow when I said I loved the flag. What else
can be summoned when you have never seen me drop a smile?
Then you admired the cherries hanging from the ears of a lady
behind me, But as I turned my back I felt you raise your hand
before it sadly lapsed....

What is the surface of reality? Do not our fathers matter? Life so
transcends one's intention. With what are we grappling when we
are not sleeping? Why need we grapple when we are dreaming?
How difficult it must be for you. And still, I must come knocking."
from *radish* poems by Li Bloom
(iuniverse, inc)

Abandoned Rain

You've heard that it's all

The same rain

Fallen on branches

Off needy trees

Bur diffidence is our nature

Human and conditional

And we are just

Beginning to cry

As I try to unscramble

Myself

& you
from *foriegnn bodie* by Nada Gordon
(Detour Press)

NOTHING

Nothing is as it was said-
not the man who I was so
beautiful and I said so what

Not the wing just out of the
chrysalis (gold dot), not the plastic
*chonmage* wig, not even the web

Only love has the fury to make peace
in all the layers of the onion
spouting in a black plastic box

Cats yowling together make the sun rise
and dogs bark, irritation
is a form of pleasure

Like string from a yogi's nose, devotion
doesn't pour from your ears- or throat-
diamond shapes from a revolving lamp

I'm not really here
except for the glowing red light
under my arm...
from *Semiramis If I Remember: (self-portrait as a mask)
by Keith Waldrop (Avec Press)

"...and, behold, it was a dream."

A "seasonal affective disorder" has been detected in the
crust of a star. Do not confuse "auspicious" with "holy."
We live in a crossing-place called "city." The past is a
buried "night of time."

Torn petticoats, instant decisions, anonymous angels-
here we give in to the notion of "poetry as picture" and
strive for the garment of "style."

Concealment across all "surfaces." *Time of night.* Thin
film of color, insecurely attached. As though "all this"
were in the dark.

Toward the end of my life, I find myself in a region
without character.

Unattractive fragments of once impressive structures I
see here, and then- again- here.

Familiar desires. Mellowed antipathies. Best to avoid
consecrated areas.

Temple.

Sky.

The liver.

But suspecting speech in noises, I listen for ambient
signals, the ground from which words figure.

Not the city now there. (Where I have never been.) Not,
I suppose I should say, a city ever *there.*

Anywhere. Any there.

Nor was that city ever *now.*

And who am I, to speak of time as "mine"?
Paul Celan from *Speech-Grille*
translated by Joachim Neugroschel

Stigma

"We slept no more for we lay in the clockwork of sorrow
and bent the hands like rods,
and they bolted back and scourged time till blood was drawn,
and you spoke a gathering twilight,
and twelve times I said thou to the night of your words,
and it opened and stayed apart,
and I put one eye in its lap and plaited one in your hair
and I twisted the fuse between them, the open vein-
and a young flash of lightning came floating."
from *Trilce* by Cesar Vallejo
translated by David Smith

XVI

"I have faith in being strong.
Let me, crippled air, let me go
lacing myself with zeroes to the left.
And you, dream, give me your implacable diamond,
your timeless time.

I have faith in being strong.
Concave woman goes by over there,
a colorless quantity whose
grace closes where I open.

Praise the air, friar past! Thieves, idiots!
Glimpse the green presidential banner,
striking the six other flags
and everything that's hanging in back.

I have faith that I am,
and that I've been less.

Hey, big man!"

Tuesday, November 25

(solipsis)//:phaneroemikon (Lanny Quarles)
makes some
generous comments and
extends some of my
thoughts from a
diary entry of 3/22/91
in an interesting and
useful way, it seems
to me.


Thanks, Lanny Quarles!
Salaam Pax posted this message from Raed yesterday on
Where is Raed {click here}

What do we have to be thankful for?
As an electorate, we still have the power
to stop all this.

I hope!

:: Tuesday, November 25, 2003 ::

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr .. I am angry now ..
I AM angry .. and "THEY" come and ask you
"why don't you like us?" ... I will tell you why ..
>>>> I was just stopped by an
american check point .. they let me
stand under the rain .. in the mud ..
for more than 15 minutes .. a soldier
pushed me in a very strong way that
I nearly fell down, and the other was
investigating me: Why do you have
a camera in your car? haaa? !!!!!!
What the hell !!! I mean !! duh ??
I have a camera? why not? then came
the other americano with a smile
asking me: do you film porn? and
I heard that but I said: what sir?
and he replied: PORN pee ooo are enn ,,
ha ha ha .. (is that funny?) ..
Soldiers stopping people in the EID
(these are the Muslims' festival days)
asking them whether they film porn
and pushing them in mud ..
I DON'T LIKE "THEM" ..
Soldiers are not the best
representatives of any culture ..
Grrrh ///////////// (new paragraph)
SALAAAAM?! where the peep are you?
I'll change the title to WHERE IS SALAM..
call me for god's sake .. stronso
:: raed 6:59 PM [+] ::
...

Monday, November 24

Thanks (solipsis)//:phaneroemikon (Lanny Quarles)

for this very interesting link on time travel:

Max Planck Gesellschaft
One more quote from the new edition of Walter Benjamin's selected writings:

"...It is highly significant
that Baudelaire
encountered competitive
relations in the production
of poetry. Of course,
personal rivalries between poets
are as old as the hills. But here
the rivalry is
transposed into competition
on the open market.
In this context, it was a real
discovery for Baudelaire
that he was not competing
against *individuals.*
The disorganization of poetic schools,
of "styles"
is the complement of the open market,
which reveals
itself to the poet as his audience.
In Baudelaire, the
public as such comes into view
for the first time...
because the "school" was for
him a mere epiphenomenon,
he experienced the public as a more
authentic reality."

Walter Benjamin
Selected Writings
Harvard UP
*********************************************

Clearly as public clamor for
individual poets declined (Baudelaire,
like most poets remained relatively
unknown during his lifetime),
it became necessary for those
who wanted to bring poetry to public
attention, discovered and theorized
interconnections
beween poets that might highlight the
existence of poetic "schools." Apparently,
with blogging and web publishing,
this has become less necessary. As
Benjamin believed was the wish of
Baudelaire, writers are now enabled
to bring their works directly to the public
without necessarily enjoying the
patronage of critics and the leaders
of poetic schools. Of course,
everyone concerned with bringing
greater interest to contemporary
poetry would have the most success
working productively with each
other. But, as Benjamin makes
clear in this discussion of Baudelaire,
if the poet is empowered to bring
their work directly to the public, the
necessity for the critical grouping
of poets as an "incorporated" body
may become less necessary.
In any case, it appears
that pluralism seems
to have expanded apace with the
burgeoning of desktop publishing, and
is expanding exponentially
with web publishing and blogging.
11/26/90

For nearly every moment that
I thought I was going into surgery,
I was aware of how much I have
been allowing negative feelings to
color my view of life. Specifically,
in holding resentments- feeling
critical of people. There has been
a parallel shrinking away from
each uncomfortable aspect of
a challenging situation. With each
satisfaction I've earned, I've
been able to use it to exagerrate
my self-sufficiency, to the point
of making people seem too
unimportant. This is a reaction
to making their
"threatening" or negative characteristics
(which remind me of my parents
from the standpoint of being a child).

So each "unpleasantness" is
exagerrated- this is widened to
avoiding any sense of risk at
all- wanting an enclosed life.
What I'm doing is classing
whole groups of experiences
together as unpleasant- and
therefore-unnecessary. Then,
instead of patiently unravelling
the knot, I storm against
myself for my own weaknesses.

A few principles would be helpful-
that would place my relations with
people in a less threatening-
and more productive light.
Remembering to begin with that
everything is accomplished in small
steps.

3/22/91

There is something in everyday
thought which is akin to horror- this
must be at the heart of the obsession
for news reports of terrible happenings.
Any thought, even the slightest
level of anxiety can multiply
itself as a result of some inner loss of
balance which prevents the mind from
letting go of the fear. A feedback
loop gets
established which guides the mind-
and, if sustained, the soul,
into a swirling undertow of fears.

After the scientific term for
the boundary of a black hole- the
event horizon- I think of this
as the event current:
A way of describing the tidal flow
of current events.

3/23

"Let us define the limits. there
are no boundaries in things. Laws try
to impose some, and the mind cannot
bear it."

Pensees-Pascal- p,218

"Languages are ciphers in which
letters are not changed into letters,
but words into words, so that an
unknown language can be deciphered."

Pascal- p. 221

"'My mind is filled with anxiety.'I am
filled with anxiety' is better.'"

Pacal, p. 226

6/12/91

Symbiosis and anger

Anger as the outcome of frustration
with the *constriction* side of symbiosis.

6/21/91

A voice: "He had mastered that
great art of keeping everything up in the air
just enought to have a decent idea
of what his next move should be."

The art of keeping things at bay
is necessary in order to have
the mental space to picture the
whole situation, the immediate
expression of which is this feeling
occuring right now. In order for
*this* feeling to be released and to
allow the emergence of the next
"reality," the feeling must be
recognized.

6/27

The greatest feats of all rely on
a few convictions.

6/29

In the 90's exploitation is the
sincerest form of flattery.

7/3/91

When you say to
yourself- "oh- it's that feeling
again"- you're feeling command
over yourself. Even this much
remove from a feeling can entirely
change its meaning.

Sunday, November 23

5/11/2000


Awhile ago I thought of
a maxim which I was very
proud of which goes "If
you don't listen to
everything you don't hear anything."
Now I realize the corollary
is- "If you don't think of
everything, you can't think
of anything."


**********************

Tactus de Sonus (fr) {click here}
{Des séances d'enregistrement de Cyber
jam avec un son experimental, tribal,
global, electronique et mystique.}



This is an interesting French
electronic music site.

You must be kidding. A blogger's parliament? {click here}

via The Cassandra Pages, of course!{click here}