| Larkin |
[Mar. 29th, 2006|08:28 am] |
Aubade
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
--The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused--nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear--no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 9th, 2006|05:08 am] |
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and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. |
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| everything cuts against the tide |
[Mar. 6th, 2006|01:06 am] |
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Post-work six pack. CPK Sicilian pizza, frozen. Watching the Wilco DVD, Vernon writing poetry about guys in girl pants. Healthy smoke. I should cancel Monday teaching everyday. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 24th, 2006|03:03 am] |
What reflection concerning the irregular sequence of dates 1884, 1885, 1886, 1888, 1892, 1893, 1904 did Bloom make before their arrival at their destination?
He reflected that the progressive extension of the field of individual development and experience was regressively accompanied by a restriction of the converse domain of interindividual relations.
As in what ways?
From inexistence to existence he came to many and was as one received: existence with existence he was with any as any with any: from existence to nonexistence gone he would be by all as none perceived. |
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| fraudelent foes with the strength of hercules |
[Feb. 20th, 2006|10:19 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Del - I Wish My Brother George Was Here | ] |
Friday I boogied out to the Anza-Borrego desert with some borrowed gear -- backpack and tent, sleeping bag and camp stove, lantern, crackers, jam and bread, jar of peanuts, two-and-a-half liters of water and six wands of string cheese -- to spend some time by my lonesome. The problem was, I should have left by noon but didn't until around 3:45. At the spot outside Borrego Springs where the pavement ends, throwing my backpack on, the sun was far beyond down; only the slightest bit of afterglow in the sky.
I hiked out about an hour and a half in the dark, talking to a Ranger lady who happened to drive by ("Do you have a light?" Me, hiding my tiny little Maglight in my pocket: "Yes."), I thought if I hugged along the ridge of one of the mountains, it might act as a kind of windblock. If you've ever tried sleeping in a tent out in the middle of nowhere, the wind rustling the nylon can sound like an amazing array of different things: dogs breathing, footsteps, sinister whispers... A tent is the ultimate auditory homophone; same sounds, different meanings. Well, it didn't really block the wind, but you can memorize the range of sounds the tent makes and somewhat filter it out, which was working fine for a while.... Until a caravan of trucks and jeeps and Land Cruisers started parading through the desert right by my tent like a crew of Colombian drug runners in Clear and Present Danger. "They're stealing from ME! Are you listening to ME?!" Anyway, here's the home from home:
So after the guys in the white Suburbans with shouldermounted rocket launchers woke me up, it was kind of hard to fall back asleep. I bet it was just them shutting their doors in the distance, but I swear to whatever god you hold dear, it sounded like a gunshot. I almost put on my running shoes and left all my stuff behind. But then the wind stopped, and it got so quiet you could hear the quiet, which is kind of like when someone sneaks up from behind and covers your eyes with their hands and instead of seeing black you see a swirl of red and yellow iridescences. And then, echoing through the valley, was one coyote, the Liberace of coyotes -- that thing had pitch control Mariah Carey'd be jealous of, and tone that makes the Irish Tenors look like a bunch of bar-tune butchering drunks (which, of course, isn't too far from the truth). This is a picture of one side of the valley from the next morning:
Okay. Not much sleep so far. Then it starts raining in the middle of the night, and as all you tentlovers know, rain is loud in a tent. So I was awake awake by probably 7 am, with who knows how much sleep; I didn't bring a watch, actually don't even own one, but my cellphone wouldn't give me the time out there. Heated up some coffee, had some boysenberry jam and rye, a few peanuts, and half a Powerbar that had been left in the backpack I borrowed. Then I packed everything up into the backpack and started off. At first along the road, but then I passed some of the traffickers -- a husband and wife cooking breakfast behind their Mercedes sport utility -- and tried to make a joke ("Smells good!") to get no response, so I said Fuck people and left the trail, and wandered off by my lonesome for the next eight hours or so. I had thought going out there would help me think some things through, make sense of things, but instead I didn't think about a damn thing the whole time and it was wonderful. A full twenty-four hours of only thinking about eating, staying hydrated, and not being forced to swallow condoms-full of pure horse turned out to be so restive that even though I've still got some "heavy traffic ahead" (in the words of the Earl Scruggs song) I'm a bit more calm and clear-headed to tackle it.
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 16th, 2006|03:01 am] |
Fucking Johan. At first he gives me Smog, and I think I've found my depressing soundtrack for a little while. You'd think he could happy with that, but no. Then he makes a Bonnie "Prince" Billy CD, and now I'm listening to I See a Darkness literally ten times a day... I finally took it out of my car player today, but it's still on my computer and my ipod. I'd be pissed if it wasn't just the best damn song I've heard in the last five years.
I'm going out to the desert Friday. Either the desert or Paris, I'm still deciding. But the desert sounds really nice right now. Camping. Mmm. It's gonna be cold, I bet, but as long as it doesn't rain I'll be happy. Ish. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 26th, 2006|12:54 am] |
Be Not So Fearful
Be not so nervous
Be not so frail
Someone watches you
You won't fail
Be not so nervous
Be not so frail
Be not so nervous
Be not so frail
Be not so sorry
For what you have done
You must forget them now
It's done
And when you wake up
You will find that you can run
Be not so sorry
For what you have done
Be not so fearful
Be not so pale
Someone watches you
You won't leave the rails
Be not so fearful
Be not so pale
Be not so fearful
Be not so pale
You must forget them now
It's done
And when you wake up
You will find that you can run
Be not so sorry
For what you have done
Be not so sorry
For what you have done |
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| rosco's hurts in my stomach |
[Jan. 15th, 2006|11:42 pm] |
I found this in my old files, from an essay written in high school on "The Crucible":
“God damns all liars.” The witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts were the largest manipulation of the public in the history of America. A group of Puritan girls literally led their entire town, including leaders, on a witch-hunt only based on spite and revenge.
A whole town? Oh God! Who'd have thought it possible! The largest in history! Jeesh. It's funny, I don't remember it, but I must have been dumb or just very naive. Ah well, I'm still both. Hurroo! |
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| more historical |
[Jan. 15th, 2006|01:42 am] |
My roommate and best friend in San Diego for surgery and nothing better to do with myself, I came home from work tonight, made a pizza, poured a glass of cheap cabernet, and pulled out my old, busted laptop. The thing has been fucked up beyond use for a few years now, but for Christmas I bought myself an external harddrive; with it, I could finally copy over all the important files from the laptop that I didn't want to lose.
There were some stories on the laptop, and some pictures--attempts from photography class and shots from my Ireland trip with my Ireland friends whom I miss even though I rarely talk to them--but I mostly wanted to get my music off there, the things I had recorded in the three-year-or-so span when the laptop was running well enough to record on. One glass of wine became many while I listened to the old stuff--definitely immature, shitty music, no doubt about it, but for someone who only sporadically keeps a journal (the paper kind), the riffs and rough drafts and songs took me back to the time and mood and circumstances of when I recorded them so well that I was remembering things I hadn't remembered since I-don't-even-remember.
So I had this idea: since I don't know what people write in these live journals, I'm going to use mine to go song-by-song from the first thing I recorded and try to reconstruct the life I hear at the edges of the songs--who I was with, and where; what was going on at the time; why I went one way or the other with the style or the lyrics; what I don't like about them, what I do; why they move me (though I know they won't move others, they're incomplete and shoddy. It'd be like asking someone to love your baby blanket like you do.).
But I have to find a good way to host the songs first, so I won't be starting tonight. But in the meantime, here's one of my favorite polaroids from, jesus, about five years ago.
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difficultgrace's journal