silliman on the line

I like this bit of musing on the poetic line. Ron Silliman says, "[I]t is poetry that has recognized & acknowledged that, even prior to the invention of writing, the line is implicit in all language – without it, even an individual spoken word would lack beginning, middle & end. One might well argue that poetry is precisely that medium which foregrounds the presence of the line in language, even if it does so with no great consensus as to what a line might be." He then goes on to discuss Marianne Moore's line, calling her work essentially prose. What, he asks, is she doing when she breaks her writing into lines?

If you want Moore go over to Silliman's Blog. Me, I'm still swirling around the line being "implicit in all language", the idea that "without it even an individual spoken word would lack beginning, middle & end." What the hell is he talking about?

In From the Country of Eight Islands Hioraki Sato gives the English versions of the haiku one line only. The book's other editor-translator, Burton Watson, gives us English versions with the more familiar short-longer-short lines (conventionally 5-7-5 syllable lines). I find I prefer the 3 line haiku. The poem is so brief the visual delay of the line break allows the poem to unfold more deliberately, parts saying things to the other parts. A single line is relatively sudden. The difference is interesting, but not dramatic. Take away the spacesbetweenthewords and what happens? Something dramatic? Not really. You get used to it. As I said in an earlier post, "I want a line to justify itself." This implies that I think there are lines that don't. I'm most dubious of the ultra skinny line where one word gets a line all to itself. A word is already a lone object (much more than a line, anyway) so, it seems to me, making it stand by itself forces on it an extra weight, a weight that it must be a strong word to carry. If the word is most important as a part of the poem's whole, the word being communitarian rather than individualist, standing the word out there by itself calls the larger piece into question. There are poems that want you to spend time on the words as individuals, as in the Aram Saroyan here or some of the Clark Coolidge poems here (scroll to the bottom of the page). In the cases of Coolidge and Saroyan part of what the poet wants to say is that words atomize, become separated like leaves from the context of tree or other leaves. A word broken apart retains space one may explore.

Justification? Sufficient?

I get the feeling some poets, especially those new to poetry, break writing into lines in order to make their work look like a poem. Several years ago I worked on a community college literary magazine. The faculty advisor was put off by one of the poems I thought very nice. When I read the poem aloud he agreed it was better than he'd thought it, having been put off primarily by the poet's use of the very short line. Because the poem was a series of transformations I thought the short line acceptable. The individual lines, yes, often did not quite justify themselves. The piece worked as a whole, I thought, considering its theme and the fact that we were editing a community college magazine part of the mission of which was to build beginning writers.

Thoughts on the line ... I think I'm not saying the same thing Silliman's saying.

Could he and I achieve "consensus as to what a line might be"? Consider this talk on the way to failure.

ftm

Transgender men fascinate me. Sorta mystified, sorta intrigued, there's one who lives nearby, Loren Cameron, whose book of photographs I bought a few years ago, on whom I have a little crush. I see him walking his pansy little dog and I think, Boy, you need a big husky wolfy thing. I still think Loren's cute as the dickens, as a man. But, get this, I still lapse into thinking (or using) female pronouns when thinking about Loren. It's not like I look at Loren and think, Hot Chick. No indeed. I look at Loren and think, Cute guy. So why would I think "she"? Do I call boys "girlfriend" and "oh look at her"? Only when I'm being really campy, which is totally rare cuz I'm not good at it. And it's not like I know Loren personally, never saw him before he had the beard and bald dome. So it's not like I have to train myself against ingrained habit.

Anyway. This post got started after I followed a link to Jasper's exasperation about not being taken for a man, or rather, for being almost taken for a man. Because he doesn't immediately describe himself, and I know there are a lot of girls who have short hair and wear jeans, I wondered what made the women he talks about assume he's male. Facial hair? Seems not, as he yearns after the validating beard. Tall? Says that in there somewhere. Baggy pants? Dunno. Doesn't say how he's dressed. Jasper has a boyfriend, Adam, of whom Jas says, he has "a beautiful swish."

may I be a victim too please

The Dan Brown novel The Da Vinci Code is a real phenomenon. The hold list at the Berkeley Public Library has had about 150 people on it for months. As of today there are 144 holds, (check here if you want to see the current number). Given that a book is checked out for three weeks, and the library owns 33 copies of the Code the book has already gone through the hands of a lot of people.

SFGate has an article about the supposed Jesus controversy the book has stoked. The article has some quotes typical of conservative victimology. You know, the big & powerful are victims of "the last acceptable prejudice." Boo-hoo, boo-hoo, I'm now wringing my handkerchief of its thousand captured tears. If I may quote another Catholic in the same article: "sheer delusion." Because the novel (a work of fiction, remember those?) posits some ideas about the life of Jesus quite counter to the Church-approved story these "pitiful adherents" (says one) feel all put-upon. Look, if you have the Truth on your side, what have you got to worry about? Especially if besides Truth you have 2 billion compatriots, wealth in the billions of dollars (most of it in property -- most of that untaxed), hundreds of thousands (millions?) who work full time spreading your ideology ... Boy, next we're going to weep for Coca Cola, poor put-upon corporation wilting before the thuggery of those damn villains who think carbonated sugar water is overpriced & unhealthy. Unjust! Prejudice! Cornsyrupophobes! Carbonation-haters!

When the churches stop trying to destroy my family, I'll revisit the possibility of sympathy for them. Until then? We'll leave our sympathies in their nice shrink-wrap.

Xianity

from The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell:
"The world is full of ... mutually contending bands: totem-, flag-, and party-worshippers. Even the so-called Christian nations -- which are supposed to be following a 'World' Redeemer -- are better known to history for their colonial barbarity and internecine strife than for any practical display of that unconditioned love ... which was taught by their professed supreme Lord ..."

That's just so darn snarky.

"'Love your enemies, do good to them ... Give to every man that asketh of thee ... [A]s ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise ... Be ye ... merciful ...'"

Or, you know, punish them. There's lots in the Bible about punishing.

change mind

Give me a day off work and I go into a funk. What say. Maybe I need a clock on the head with a rolled up movie screen. Without the audience I s'pose I'd miss half the experience, eh?

Aak! Fluffy cat bringing rain in on his back, jumps into my lap. I have a towel beside the desk for just such an incident but he's in my lap before I think. He is, however, the skittish type and when I go, "Aak!" he gives me a stunned look and exits.

Here I was telling myself I wasn't going to be using the blog for the personal drizzle but Kent's off at work this chilly wet Xmas eve and I ... I ... oh hush ... Now Sundy, the short hair, is myowing at me to play, very insistent. He even comes up to the chair and hooks me with his claws, play now play now play now. Lookin' silly there, kit, with the shoelace wrapped around your middle. Kent tied a black feather to the end of the string, the string being tied to an arm-long bamboo. Sundy thrills to hunting this feather. Such jumps we haven't seen in months. But, y'know, I don't always want to play.

After work last evening (& after yoga class at the Y) I stopped in at Comic Relief to see if Rory was around. Big collection of comics, I said. Any ideas?

You'd get best value if you can donate them and get a tax write-off. Book value? Sure. On paper looks like money. But you won't get book value thru e-bay, certainly a comic store couldn't afford to buy at top price, how would they make anything on the sale? Only a small fraction of the collection will have a ready buyer. If we do donate the whole bit I suppose Rory's right that we ought to go through the boxes and make sure we're not just dumping stuff we'll have regrets about losing. Ugh. But who'd want a fat donation of comics? Literacy Volunteers. Children's Hospital. One would have to make sure the Undergrounds don't get in the kiddie batch. Getting a tax write-off means making enough money to itemize, and determining the hassle in itself is worth it. I hate the idea of organizing my life around the desire to avoid taxes. I figure if I have so much money I'm paying big money in taxes I have so much money worrying is superfluous. I've always been poor. Not on-the-street poor, not deep-in-debt poor. But keep-your-expenses-low poor? Yes yes.

Maybe we can get up to Sebastopol this weekend and do more sorting and tossing (let's not talk about the oh-no-we-can't-throw-away-thats) ... I don't want to do this in the rain. Rain depresses me. Going through old stuff depresses me. Man, gravity is thick where I live.

Hey, the brothers are playing with each other. 'Bout time they amused themselves. Cats.

Do I need a cup of coffee?

asking

I got letters from the Martins, Michael & Jack (no relation, shared last name purely coincidental, really, I asssure you), and I asked each if I could excerpt from their letters. Both said NO. Guess that's what comes of them being writers and such. Yvo and Schuyler aren't writers. (OK, Schuyler is a scientist and writes for papers for publication, but that's diff, yeah?)

Mike had written in response to my concerns about soliciting work in my capacity as guest poetry editor -- particularly the thought that one might ask a writer one admires to cough up some poems only to dislike the poems thus coughed. Does one reject the poems? Mike told me about a couple exchanges he's had with writers, him being ed of Hogtown Creek Review an' all. I thought editors don't talk enough about hurting people's feelings so I wanted to post Mike's comments. No, no, says he. What if one of the persons googles "Michael Martin" and "Hogtown Creek Review" and ends up at LuvSet and reads this stuff and feels even worse? I'd already prepped the excerpt, changing all Mike's archy-like "i"s to "I"s. Thing even got posted briefly. Not that I intended it to be posted. I hit the "preview your post" button, not the "publish" button. Somehow publication happened. Such has been corrected. 'Tis well gone now. Gonest goner done gone. Full on. So, you with the feelings, fear not.

Jack's letter included a thorough account of his being clocked on the head by a rolled up movie screen. He teaches high school English, had been using the screen to show some transparencies. When he got hit the class busted up, cracked up, went wild ... all of this sounds more dangerous than the accident ... they laughed a lot. Which was, you know, kinda peculiar, it being possible that Jack had been like hurt and everything. I thought it all read well, the very thoroughness of the account. But I can't post it cuz Jack says he's going to "use" it. Reminds me what Tess Gallagher said about husband Raymond Carver: tell him a story, even if you're a writer yourself, and next you know he's snuck yours into one his own darn stories.

*****

Have a happy this and a merry that and a jolly other thing.

Ishihara Yoshiro

A bio from the back of From the Country of Eight Islands: an anthology of Japanese poetry edited & translated by Hiroaki Sato and Burton Watson:

Ishihara Yoshiro (1915-1977) A student of German and a Christian convert, he began to write poetry seriously after his experience as a prisoner of war: captured by the Soviet Army in Manchuria, he spent eight years in Siberia, released only by the general amnesty given at Stalin's death. He began to write at that time, he said, because he wanted to examine what it means to be a human being.

... to examine what it means to be a human being.

From Yoshiro's "Song of the Ringing in the Ear":

When ringing begins in my ears
he is perhaps the man that begins
but when he begins abruptly
there's another man
that begins
and all the other men that revive at a stroke.

Phoebe 2002

In my last post I wrote about a poem by David Trinidad, a poem excerpted from a longer work, Phoebe 2002.

The description of the book by its distributor is worth a read all by itself. "[A] collaborative epic poem/essay [Trinidad collaborated with Lynn Crosbie and Jeffrey Conway, two writers with whom I'm unfamiliar] that zings in and out of the scenes [in the movie All About Eve] and makes a thousand connections within the world of popular culture. Drawing from high and low sources, the poets relate All About Eve to such epics as Paradise Lost, The Faerie Queene, The Iliad and The Odyssey, as well as to other movies (Valley of the Dolls, Rosemary's Baby, Silence of the Lambs) and television shows (Gilligan's Island, The Twilight Zone, Scooby-Doo).~The figure of Bette Davis assumes heroic proportions as she descends into a Dante-esque Inferno (a drunken party) and goes on to do battle with husbands, directors, studio heads and archrival Joan Crawford."

Other excerpts from Phoebe 2002 are on the web. I just found them so I'm going to post links without having actually read them:
excerpt at The Literary Review
excerpt at the Electronic Poetry Review
excerpt at Painted Bride Quarterly

Plus there's a rave review at Rain Taxi. And an interview with Trinidad about the book.

power makeover

I haven't paid much attention to the unholing of Saddam Hussein. If it means the US is pulling out of a stable democratic country now, well, GREAT! If it means we'll have a trial in which reams of information about how he destroyed his country will be revealed to people seeking the truth about the fate of their loved ones, well, I'm all for that. If it means we'll get an Iraqi-side view of the US's relations with the country, well, wouldn't it be interesting? But I ain't sure it means any of that.

Besides, what's there to say that isn't filling up pages already?

I've yet to watch Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, the Bravo channel show about gay fashion & lifestyle consultants doing a makeover on a clueless straight bumpkin. It sounds, at best, cute. But I got a good chuckle out of this photo: Hussein's power makeover

The photo illustrates the Data Lounge gossip columnist's take on press coverage of the great capture. As Mr. Barillas says, "We were treated ... to this memorable New York Post headline describing Saddam's hidden desert orifice as his, "Tiny, Dirty, Airless Hole," and as if we weren't close enough already, we hear Fox News chiming in with: "Coming up: Inside Saddam's Hole." ... We're just glad they cut away from the bedraggled former chieftan's medical examination when they did."

David Trinidad

One thing I've wanted to do since I started this blog was to link to poems out there on the web that I liked, a sort of guide (for anyone who cares) to my tastes. Good poems, as Garrison Keillor has it. Or What I Like, as Edward Field describes it in his A Geography of American Poetry.

So. Here's one: "Searching for Anne's Grave" by David Trinidad

I've enjoyed Trinidad's work since I first came across it in the anthology Under 35: The New Generation of American Poets (35, an age I'm well past but one which was some years in the future when the anthology came out). I've read his collections, Answer Song, Hand Over Heart:  Poems 1981-1988, and Plasticville.

"Searching for Anne's Grave" is talky, prosey. It's as though we're looking in Trinidad's diary. The language is not ramped up. "I stayed in the // air-conditioned bookstore and chatted with its legendary proprietor ..." Does that sound like language distilled? Pushed to an extreme? Nope. At his most descriptive Trinidad virtually subsides into nouns; describing dinner: "olive tapanade, radishes dipped in salt, melon and // prosciutto, grilled salmon and polenta, fresh blueberries with the / most delicious yogurt/whipped cream topping" ... the modifiers are banal, "most delicious", "fresh". I like that Trinidad goes with this chatty talk, "the most delicious ... topping", "as fate would have it", a ramping down. Not poetic. It's the idea of the New York School. That there is poetry in the offhand, the daily. In gossip. Twisty, fantastic language is not wanted here thanks.

I like the poem collage, and here Trinidad cuts into his life incidents from the life of Anne Sexton (whose grave he & his friends visit during the course of the poem) as well as symbolic readings of the eagle as found in an internet search, among other things.

Formally the writing is broken into four-line stanzas, the lines breaking at about the same length. It doesn't look like Trinidad was counting syllables in order to choose line breaks. Counting stresses? Mm. I don't care about stresses. The lines often break abruptly ("symbol- / izing", "of", "to", "the"), arbitrarily? Merely because a line appeared to be the same length as the preceding? I want a line to justify itself. Is this a piece of language that is interesting as a unit? These lines are so long it's not difficult to find interesting stuff in each. But as units? I find in rereading particular lines I like the lunge from line to line that those abrupt breaks force. Is this really different from the breaks at the left margin one would see in a paragraph of prose?

The poem's first words remain opaque, "While Eve grills Phoebe, while Jeffery took (and passed, I must / say, with flying colors) Lynn’s quiz ..." I presume they make more sense in the context of Phoebe 2002.

I like the stuff in this poem. The eagle stuff, the flowers they buy, Beck, dinner. The language may not be distilled, but the material is. It's almost sludgy there's so much -- names, places, times, memories. I like that the talk is unpretentious, a little fey ("Damon and I were stunned...it / seemed like such a sign." [DT's ellipsis]), candid, seemingly confessional ("confessional" ... what's the word mean in poetry, really?). It's much more entertaining than a diary entry. More like a carefully composed letter to a pal, perhaps. I like Anne Sexton. She's definitely influenced my poetry. And it's funny. ee cummings in "section E ('Capital "E"' ...", the conversation with the Magic 8 Ball, counting cigarettes. Trinidad is fascinated by symbols ... cigarettes as sex? eagle as intermediary between this world and the next? This is not writing you have to figure out. But it is writing that rewards attention; there is, like I said, a lot of stuff in it. Reread and you'll notice how much you didn't quite notice the first time through.

tigerbalm

from Madge Mucker's Media Maven column:

"Roy Horn, one half of the performing duo of Siegfried & Roy, is recovering in a Los Angeles hospital for wounds inflicted in a mauling by one of his trained tigers. His partner Siegfried Fischbacher says that Horn is doing so well that he might be able to go home to Las Vegas for Christmas. In fact, Horn is breathing on his own and is communicating by written notes. His first words? He wrote a note to partner Siegfried saying: 'It is good to hold your hands.'"

topes

The Mac is in the shop. Rats.

So I'm writing this at work, off the clock thank you. Darnit. I was all up to speed on the blog and feelin' groovy and now the spanner in the works.

Not that there's all that much new or anything. Had to return a digital camera we'd borrowed from a friend. I liked having it. So I bought one. Have taken a picture of Sundy (cat), a picture of Flash (dog), and an "arty" (K said) picture of my hand casting a shadow on the rug. Maybe I'll start reading the instruction manual.

I think I'll go to the gym & lift some weights. hup. ho.

favorite political blogs

Here are a few blogs I visit every day, or The Something Interesting Criterion:

Daily Kos
Kos is a Democratic Party activist. When I first started reading it the blog was more about ideas and fighting back against those crazy rightwingers. Now it's heavy on the party strategizing and presidential polls. Still, there's a lot of intelligence in it and Kos & his correspondences always say something, they don't just throw up a link and say, "Here's something interesting." The kind of thing that often isn't.

The Mighty Atrios
Atrios blogs lots. He's snarky without being bitter and the man adds value to his links. Yeah, once in a while he pulls the "something interesting" link bit, but not so often as to be annoying.

Steve Gilliard
Thinks he knows what he's talking about. Does. Mostly.

Talking Points Memo
A real working journalist.

Silliman's Blog
Tend to disagree with him half the time, but in an at-least-he's-speaking-intelligently-about-something-interesting sort of way. About poetry? Yeah, about poetry.

Scoop on LSD

From Wes "Scoop" Nisker's "The Big Bang, the Buddha, and the Baby Boom: the spiritual experiments of my generation": LSD was a "real maker of mystics ... Although serious Western Buddhist and Hindu meditators don't talk about it much today, for many the psychedelic drug experience accounted for at least a few degrees of their turning eastward. Mushroom and peyote derivatives or LSD could give people at least the temporary ability to see through the fictions of the ego and separation that seemed to engulf humanity. At their most benevolent, these psychedelics could offer a direct experience of coexistence with all things and help to open one's heart to the mystery of life itself."

Such, as the govt knows, is "extremely dangerous" ... see my posting yesterday for more on that.

the harm in LSD

This week two men were sentenced to long prison terms (one received two life terms so he has no possibility of seeing the outside again) for having manufactured large amounts of LSD.

Why?

The government, home of the Drug War and fomenter of hysteria, ought to know. So let's go their webpage on the effects & dangers of LSD. After talking about uncomfortable physical sensations like "sleeplessless" and "loss of appetite" and "dry mouth" our govt tells us the drug "produces delusions and visual hallucinations." Well. So what? There are lots of over-the-counter medications that cause sleeplessness, dry mouth, loss of appetite ... that are even dangerous if taken to excess ... aspirin can be deadly to children under twelve. And we all know alcohol can bring on hallucinations and delusions.

But, judging by the severity of the punishment LSD must be much more poisonous than aspirin or alcohol, right? The govt lays on the big guns. It seems, "Some fatal accidents have occurred during states of LSD intoxication."

So nobody has died from taking LSD? No cases of LSD poisoning? That's surprising, isn't it? You can drink so much water your bodily tissues begin to dilute and you die. And water is about as safe an ingestible as you can get. But the govt mentions no case of someone dying from the ingestion of LSD? Why not? Would they hide such a thing? Wouldn't they want to make the best possible case for the drug's dangers? Curiously, toward the bottom of the page govt talks about tolerance for LSD. If you take a lot of it over time, you'll develop a tolerance. If you want to get as great an effect the 10th time as you did the first you'll probably have to take a larger dose. Says govt, "This is an extremely dangerous practice, given the unpredictability of the drug." Define "extremely dangerous" please. They do define "unpredictable" in their first paragraph, the effects of LSD "depend on the amount taken; the user's personality, mood, and expectations; and the surroundings in which the drug is used." Is there anything of which this is not true? Again, this sort of thing is so weak as to beg the question. Jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. Extremely dangerous? Fewer than one in ten survive the plunge. Check. Extremely dangerous. How about flying? Can you name anybody who died while flying? All those people on 9/11? If a terrorist spiked the water supply of a major city with LSD how many poisonings leading to death would result? Any? John Denver piloted a little plane into the ground. And John Kennedy (son of the president) piloted his into the sea. Has anyone dropped acid and died from the drug? The govt says cocaine has caused strokes and heart attacks and seizures. So govt is capable of offering up "extremely dangerous" effects of drugs when they know of some.

There is a paragraph on the LSD page that suggests, "LSD users may manifest relatively long-lasting psychoses, such as schizophrenia or severe depression." Although govt admits, "It is difficult to determine the extent and mechanism of the LSD involvement in these illnesses." It could be that it is difficult because it's not possible. I'm sure there are many people who have taken LSD who have later been diagnosed depressed or schizophrenic. But it could merely be coincidence. It doesn't seem to be listed among the possible causes of schizophrenia. Who knows? A lot of people have taken LSD over the last half century. A lot of people have done a lot of things. Voted Republican, let dogs lick their faces. One theory has it that our pet cats give us schizophrenia.

Researchers who worked with LSD in the 50s called it a "psychotomimetic", that is, a chemical that will create psychoses. There was some hope in the CIA that it would prove a good drug for interrogations. As I understand it, that did not pan out. However, one might remember the govt's description of LSD's "unpredictability", that is the "user's personality, mood, and expectations; and the surroundings in which the drug is used." How might you feel were you being interrogated by unfriendly persons in an institution where you have no power and little hope of escape? How might you feel were you in a warm beach house with friends on a sunny day? I expect your emotional state would differ in each circumstance. Govt doesn't want to hint at it, but there is such a thing as a good trip. People can enjoy and learn from an LSD experience.

Erowid collects info that is rather more sympathetic to LSD than govt.

Let me return to one little govt point. "Some fatal accidents have occurred during states of LSD intoxication." Someone on a drug, any drug that effects perceptions, and such can be legal or illegal, may misjudge their abilities, their skills, the risks, and do something that causes injury. When I hear that someone has died from an illegal drug, I ask, "Did they die from the drug or from doing something stupid while intoxicated?" Intoxication is not bad. Some fatal accidents have occurred during states of tiredness, anger, distraction, even joy. But you have to be ... what? careful? responsible? Can you make that legal?

Two life terms. For what?

guest editor

Michael Martin has asked me to be poetry editor for the next issue of Hogtown Creek Review.

In an interview with the poet Lola Haskins in the 2003 issue Mike asks "about poets" ... Haskins replies, "The truth is I don't subscribe to any poet. ... I subscribe to poems. This poem, that poem."

playlist

I burned a CD tonight. The 8th of my "CMJ set" series. CMJ is a music magazine that comes with a sampler CD. As with any collection of music there's some you like, some you'd prefer never to hear again. I guess we've been subscribing to CMJ for almost ten years. I've tried before to separate out the songs I like. I did a mix tape a couple times. But it was a real hassle and then you're pretty much stuck listening to the songs in one order. So this CD burning stuff is cool. I listen to the CDs at my desk at work as I do my repetitive daily tasks and pick out the songs I want to hear again. Most of the songs on tonight's playlist are from 1995 CMJs. A few are from other sampler CDs I've picked up at local record shops. I move the songs around until I get the order I think works best. Each mix has its own character and I name them. (When you play the thing you can always choose "random" on the CD player. Or just play the one song you're in the mood for.)

SLEEPLESS PLANETS (CMJ set 8)

Insomniac -- Kensuke Shiina
Paiute Stitch Game Song -- Judy Trejo
Phiescope -- myu-Ziq
In The Name Of The Father -- Black Grape
Moonbeam Monkey -- Tanya Donelly
Somebody Else's Body -- Urge Overkill
Come On My Darlin' -- Pima Express
Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick -- Ian Dury & The Blockheads
Jack Names The Planets -- Ash
Mighty K.C. -- For Squirrels
Ground On Down -- Ben Harper
Give Me One Reason -- Tracy Chapman
Thrash -- Underworld
O Pastor -- Madredeus
Crossroads -- Robert Tree Cody & Xavier Quijas Yxayotl
Malign -- Hungry Ghost
Boogie Down Seductions -- Silverkick
The Hearts Filthy Lesson -- David Bowie

Bush in England

I want to share another dispatch from an email group to which I belong. Schuyler Waynforth writes from England:

Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair came to town yesterday. They were accompanied by their wives and their many, many, many security people. We were kept on the green in front of our house with a metal barricade and a wall of police officers (from all over the region) between us and the armored cars they arrived in. I managed to catch glimpses of all the major figures. I first spotted Cherie Blaire with her wide grinning face peering out the window waving at what few protesters had figured out this was the way into the village, a few neighbors, ourselves, and the backs of what seemed at least 100 police. I must admit I had this wonderful fantasy of the police, in unison, mooning the president as he passed, their yellow and white reflective vests snapping in the movement of them lowering their pants and presenting for America's commander in chief. But, they remained vigilant and alert and didn't once acknowledge anything but those of us who stood in front of them. David swears he saw Laura Bush on the first pass, but I only managed an etching glimpse of George W. Bush, with his Charlie Brownish head, waving and smiling, sound-proofed away from the shouts of "Bush Go Home" and the general booing that surrounded me. I saw Blair as he greeted Bush. I had to stand on a pillar that once supported a fence that surrounded "our" front yard (the yard is really council property, but it is in front of our house, so I feel a bit possessive) leaning against David to really see if it was him.

No people but those chosen to meet with them were allowed within 100 yards of him. Two buses of select constituents were brought in to the Dun Cow Inn (I heard one reporter calling it the Cow Dun Inn or Cow Dung Inn, either way she was mistaken) to enjoy lunch with the families. The Dun Cow Inn got a new kitchen out of the deal. Some neighbors wondered at the health risks they had been taking eating there before this Friday. It's a good pub; probably one of the better pubs in the region, which is probably why Blair used it. Or else it's because it sits at a junction that allows for a number of exit routes and that gives a lot of control over how far people can be kept away. Not that they weren't prepared to lay siege from where they stood. 4 snipers were visible from where I stood and I suspect there were a few on the church tower and in other areas less visible to me.

On their way out I did spot Laura. She was sitting in a rear facing seat in one of the Suburbans brought over from the U.S. She was smiling and waving and looked overly made up and so very rigid.

After lunch they had gone to a local high school (or comprehensive college as they are known here) to see a few kids play football. The Guardian reported that those students who had left for lunch and had been told that they would be permitted to return if they could prove their identity were kept from returning if they were wearing anti-Bush or anti-Blair paraphernalia. I figured it was about the best example of free-speech practice that most students could possibly hope to get.

I found I didn't agree with many of the protesters slogans. They kept telling Bush to go home and to take his poodle with him. But I don't think Blair is Bush's poodle. I think Blair has wanted to go after Saddam Hussein for a while and this has been a good marriage for him. In 1999 Blair gave a speech in Chicago where he said we have Milosevic, now we need to get Hussein. I think the poodle position is a good one for Blair to hide behind. It is much better to let people believe you were following in good faith than encourage them to believe that you had your own blood-lust going. And getting out of Iraq is exactly what Bush wants to do. He wants to set up the commercial oil contracts for American corporations and then by June of 2004 he wants to be out of there at the behest of the new Iraqi government. It is getting too messy and too risky to stay until a stable government can be established. What I really wanted to shout was "Open your mind to new ideas!!!" "Come and live with us for a while and look at the world from a different perspective!!!" "Quit hiding behind security and cameras and sound bytes and money and people who think just like you think and look for a new view." But it's hard to make that sound snappy. And it doesn't fit well on a placard.

It was really exciting. I am so glad that it was here, even with the 1,000,000 pound price tag it carried. I don't know if our council taxes will have to cover the cost. Linnaea and Simon had fun drawing pictures of evil Bush and nice Bush (Linnaea's was the nice Bush, Simon has bought into our whole Bush is evil propaganda, however) and coloring in Go Away Bush signs. It was amazing to see all of the police. The village was so very different in the light of an American invasion.

more from LeGuin

More quotes from Ursula K. LeGuin's "Dancing at the Edge of the World: thoughts on words, women, places":

In a generally enthusiastic review of a book on depression in women LeGuin takes the author to task for insufficient insight into the plight of old women, "[I]f ECT [electroshock] is so safe ... why not use it on depressives of forty ... or fifteen? But [the author] doesn't suggest that, leaving me with an unhappy impression she thinks ECT is fine for old depressives. Why? Because the old depressives are right, at last? Because what they knew all along, waking alone in the black pit of 2:00 a.m., is true -- they don't matter any more?"

From a review of five poets: "While painting seems more the business of stockbrokers than of artists, while orchestras endlessly replay old symphonies and let living composers go unheard, poetry flourishes. Living way below the bottom line, unexploitable, it remains as threatened and ubiquitous as the trees and the wild grass. Our very lack of a 'great' poet may be a sign of the luxuriant vitality of the art."

From a review of a book about the primate language experiments: "That language -- genuine language including syntactics, jokes, lies, and disinterested or aesthetic observation -- may prove to be a skill accessible in some degree to several species: this is an idea so distasteful to certain behaviorists and linguists that they attack not only the results of experiments but the investigation of the subject. Academic territorialism plays a part in this tabooing, but its basis seems to be a need to believe in human uniqueness, human supremacy."

Edifying Spectacle

Just been reading Richard Evan Lee's Edifying Spectacle. Quite an active rich blog. He breaks out his interests into six different and sometimes overlapping weblogs: Pansexual Sodomite, Amorous Propensities, Books Do Furnish a Room (Lee is a used book dealer), Gullibility isn't in the dictionary, Diversions, and Computer Toaster. I haven't sampled all that but it looks like a good place to poke around.