(With blogger acting strangely this may not get through)

Connecticut is beautiful small-town quiet and 72 degree days, sunny for Laura's graduation outside and busy with prep for All Tomorrow's Parties. Everything is the same. Someone is mowing the lawn on one side of the neighbor-fences and the other side is having a cookout. If there are fireflies tonight some sort of delayed shock will set in and the going-north Bends will cripple me for a few hours. Peter calls; we must cook and drink iced tea. Pinch me, eh?

Interview questions posed by epanastatis:

1. Why do you detest the word "meme"?

I don't detest the word. I do detest its memetic adoption and use in LJ quizzes, un-sticky catchphrases, and short-lived lists a la Wired.

2. If I'm not mistaken, you live in Florida. Having been raised in Florida, my attitude towards the place is that it is "hell, flattened out." Would you agree with this? If so, why? If not, why not?

3. You describe yourself as an "anarcho capitalist." [from title of my own LJ - Ed.] As you probably suspect, as a Marxist I belive the existence of a repressive state authority to be essential to the maintenance of the economic hegemony of a capitalist class. Therefore, your self-description appears oxymoronic to me. Please attempt to justify it, in the most rational terms that are true to your professed ideology.

While I answer that: Liberty vs. Democracy (NY Times)

4. How much of Finnegan's Wake have you managed to read? State this in terms of the percentage of unique pages you have completed.

"So?
Who do you no tonigh, lazy and gentleman?
The echo is where in the back of the wodes; callhim forth!"

Fifty per-cent of page one and another half of page 126.. I don't care about your humptytumptytoes, Jim.
(I read books from the beginning-of-the-middle to the end-of-the-middle and then from the first page.)

5. The same final question I asked springheel_jack: if we were to have occasion to meet each other in person, how long do you think we could stand each other? (I think this is going to become my standard question for those LJ-interviewees whom I know enough about to find at least mildly intriguing enough to be curious about eventual, hypothetical, in-person meetings.)

Bets on how many of these I will complete by day's end should be taken before noon and emailed to me. In case of near-midnight finish, House takes it.

-----------------------------
I used to write lots of letters to editors and senators; every now and then it got a response. Are you out there, Jim? This is important. At least these guys tried.

(Your staff aides are very nice, by the way.)

possibilities

I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain
that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love's concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimms' fairy tales to the newspapers' front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven't mentioned here
to many things I've also left unsaid.
I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.

-- Wislawa Szymborska

I prefer letters.
I would settle for functional telephones!

.

it took me too long to realize
that i don't take good pictures
'cause i have the kind of beauty that
moves    (ani)

Fell asleep at dusk and dreamt of sunrises. Sun did rise that morning, but he was forced to wait; in the gathering light, you made it rain.

XXXV
The songful plait of birds, newly awake,
Rings through the glimmering vale at morning-tide;
And rills that clear in liquid crystal glide,
With murmuring chimes responsive music make.
And she whose semblance doth of snow partake
And gold, grey Tithon's ever-faithful bride,
Cites me with these, o'er heaven disparting wide
The fleecy locks made deathless for her sake.
Thus roused, I Morning greet and Sun in skies,
And Sun more fair wherewith my youth was quelled
With daze that hath form then till now endured.
Often together have I marked them rise,
And at encounter of their beams beheld
The stars by him and him by her obscured.

(Petrarch via Richard Garnett)

I was a quiet, lunchbox lonely little boy
reading sci-fi, broken treehouse on the shore
at nineteen the talking in my head got harder to understand,
no work, no school, drifting, a failing satellite
don’t feel sorry for me I’ve been happy too
manic, kindly, blinding, high-res euphoria
(amitriptyline)

no one knows what happens next
because time travel is lonely
listen,
wear your headphones,
and I’ll whisper you the code
of a helper application
that you can download
-
it’s called "Remember"
because no one knows what happens next
(time travel is lonely)

-- John Vanderslice

What a great show! I'm sorry we missed him when he toured with the Mountain Goats. John lit up when we asked him about the past tour; he's producing MG's next album and will be touring with him/them again [hopefullymaybe!] sometime soon. B gave him five bucks for all the CD's he's burned of the free tracks up on the site, which launched them into a brief discussion of open source and free media (this is after all the guy who wrote bill gates must die). Don't forget: you're on the list tonight in Orlando if you want to go, but will it be under BH or Rick Moranis? Chris McGuire wins hands down most fun performance by a drummer in recent gig history. Paul Hoaglin still runs unopposed for the bassist most resembling Jack Black in appearance and stage presence. John did his hair-over-eyes cords-and-bowling-shoes sing-it-like-you-wrote-it with typical aplomb.

Oh, and there was this headliner band called Jets to Brazil...[insert I Went To A JtB Gig Solely For the Opening Band t-shirt here]. All I wanted to hear was Crown of the Valley, but after five or six uninspiring pop songs we called it quits.

This is not Love, perhaps,
Love that lays down its life,
that many waters cannot quench,
nor the floods drown,
But something written in lighter ink,
said in a lower tone, something, perhaps, especially our own.

A need, at times, to be together and talk,
And then the finding we can walk
More firmly through dark narrow places,
And meet more easily nightmare faces;
A need to reach out, sometimes, hand to hand,
And then find Earth less like an alien land;
A need for alliance to defeat
The whisperers at the corner of the street.

A need for inns on roads, islands in seas,
Halts for discoveries to be shared,
Maps checked, notes compared;
A need, at times, of each for each,
Direct as the need of throat and tongue for speech.

-- A.S.J. Tessimond

bonjour!

Hi all

This is the English version of this letter as the Spanish one was sent earlier to inform other dear ones of my safe arrival. Letter will be very short as this silly keyboard is in French!! ( I am typing VERY slowly).

I arrived safely. Period.

Mom, I am here.

Megan, I miss you already. Love to "tes petites".

Rachel: I found your note. Thank you very much. (did you return the movie?)

Please write back lovely letters as by the time I have to sit next to this horrible keyboard I would appreciate having a lovely reason to do it.

-Laura

James Joyce's dirty letters to Nora

Well then. Good morning.
It is a good morning:
- I found the poem I was looking for last week
- I have gasoline in the car (thanks) and food in the cupboards
- Nauset beach awaits; Sunday I and four recent high-school graduates will fling clothing and caution to the wind, throwing bathing suits and selves into one very cold ocean
- Tonight I will see John Vanderslice and Jets to Brazil at the only venue in Tampa with a leopard-print pool table (which I will not use)
- Letters and packages are on their way to me and on their way from me simultaneously
- Postcard-x!

Orpheus and Prometheus and Adonis, oh my.

The worse to her the better lov'd of me.
         -What begg'st thou, then? fond woman, let me go.

//

In my head, I found you
There and running around
And following me
But, you don't know, haunting there
But I find
That I have now
More than I ever wanted to

So maybe Thomas Jefferson
Wasn't born in your backyard
Like you have said,
Maybe I'm just the horizon you run to
When she has left you
There you are here in my head
And running around and calling me
Come back,
I'll show you the roses and brush off the snow
And open their petals again and again
And you know that apple green ice cream can melt in your hands
I can't, so
I, I held your hand at the fair
And even forgot what time it was

And me here, alone on the floor
You're counting my feathers as the bells toll
You see
The bow and the belt and the girl from the south
All favorites of mine, you know them all well
And spring brings fresh little puddles
That makes it all clear, and makes it all

And do you know?
Hey, do you know
What this is doing to me?
Oh, here, here, here, here in my head

More Tori fucking Amos. I shouldn't live alone.

break of day

'Tis true, 'tis day; what though it be?
O wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise? because 'tis light?
Did we lie down, because 'twas night?
Love which in spite of darkness brought us hither,
Should in despite of light keep us together.

Light hath no tongue, but is all eye;
If it could speak as well as spy,
This were the worst, that it could say,
That being well, I fain would stay,
And that I lov'd my heart and honor so,
That I would not from him, that had them, go.

Must business thee from hence remove?
Oh, that's the worst disease of love,
The poor, the foul, the false, love can
Admit, but not the busied man.
He which hath business, and makes love, doth do
Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo.

-- J. Donne

She told me she worked in the morning and started to laugh
I told her I didn't and crawled off to sleep in the bath

Rhyming prove and love is no task for a Sunday afternoon.

Tori Amos with Ben Folds
University of Central Florida Arena, Orlando, FL
Wed, Sep 03, 2003. 7:00pm

Your Tickets
Section R, Row G (Main Floor, Right-hand Side)

Lottapianos.