Just touch your face
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WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Gerard Van der Leun
Through the wild cathedral evening the rain unraveled tales
For the disrobed faceless forms of no position
Tolling for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts
All down in taken-for-granted situations
Tolling for the deaf an’ blind, tolling for the mute
Tolling for the mistreated, mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute
For the misdemeanor outlaw, chased an’ cheated by pursuit
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
— Bob Dylan
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms
and counter-storms of general destruction; killing
of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or
less intentional, of children and women;
Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice,
the innocent air
Perverted into assassin and poisoner.
The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible
baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.
The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement,
mass-torture, frustration of all hopes
That starred man’s forehead. Tyranny for freedom, horror for
happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.
Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
Comments on this entry are closed.
The song, “can’t touch this!” is rolling around in my empty skull. I appreciate her sense of irony very much.
For my part, I trend towards even darker humor. Like the NBA player touching mics and then coming down with the Coronavirus. You cannot write irony this rich.
Paging Mr Rudy Gobert. Your Darwin Award is ready for pick up. Mr Gobert…
(I hope Karma has a sense of humor)
This lady makes a lot more sense than 95% of the blathering buffoons on the lobotomy box…
Were it not for my bride’s weakened state, sardonic misanthropic shit that I am, I would be enjoying all this a lot more than I am. As it is, I am thankful indeed that you kind folks were so generous as to provide me quite a few weeks of schools on making do in a contaminated world. The WuFlu will burn itself out in good time, but it won’t be our last plague, so to the already planned spring rebuild of my deck I am adding a fully plumbed decon station.
Got any plans for such, ghostrider?
The list is long, Cap’n, as it is every year. And every year all of it does NOT get done. That’s what next year is for. I too have a deck that needs some attention, on 2 different levels. In about a month my new wood lathe from Grizzly will be delivered and all bets are off on whether anything else gets done as lathes have a tendency to addict all they come in contact with. We’ll see. I’ve had a smaller lathe since 2010 with it I have created 600+ pens unlike any ever seen anywhere and sold all of them. I have also created 300+ wooden bowls and have sold about 250 of them – the others have been in a variety of art galleries. I have also created several hundred other items on that small lathe and have sold most of them too. I likes doing some lathe work.
Thinking about taking the bed off my 1991 Chevy S10 and replacing it with a home made aluminum camper. I’ve designed it in 3d in autocad and have most of the aluminum tubing on hand and I have access to a welder.
But back to the decks. We have about 1000 sq ft of deck on the first floor and about 400′ on the 2nd floor and I need to strip all of it with the pressure washer down to bare wood, then paint all the railings and stain all the decking. There is also a 32′ bridge linking the house with my office in that mess too. I need spring to start last week.
Obama virus cure here:
https://youtu.be/C1GpWOdj2e0?list=RDC1GpWOdj2e0
No evil goons. One million girls cannot be anything but fun, fun, fun.
Southern wit & wisdom;thank you ma’am,that was delightful.
Casey’s right,someone notify MC Hammer.This lady’s rant would make a great remix of “Can’t Touch This”.
It’s official,Arizonans are in panic hoard mode. Stopped at Wally World today for a couple gallons of spring water I use for coffee. Surprisingly,they still had it,but the toilet paper aisle was wiped out. (Sorry) Seriously,not one pkg left. Hand sanitizers disappeared 2 weeks ago,along with Clorox-type wipes.
The ramen noodle section,normally crammed full,had 2 pkgs of chili flavor left. Disappointing. I had hoped to add to my stock of “oriental” flavor,which has recently been changed to “soy” flavor,presumably to stop offending oriental snow blossoms.
Apparently the Coronavirus apocalypse will have Corona beer;that case was well-stocked.
Is that Mummy Pig or is it Daddy Pig?
Elvin Bishop! Yes sir!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MCLPtTKKgQ
“Man, you should have seen,
That little juke joint jump”
https://youtu.be/WtwhkS6-QHY
As always, the Muslims have the most senselessable response to plague. Blame infidels in musical form. Try not to look away.
I totally love this woman’s response! She speaks for many of us as we witness the unfolding insanity.