Yours, dear reader?
HT: Never Yet Melted
WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Gerard Van der Leun
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
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
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.
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
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
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3 Out Of 4 People Struggle With Math: Interrogating Silences In New Media
WTF? Well, it makes as much sense as anything else I write, so……
First Initial: 1. Eating 2. Diddling 3. Probing 4. Resisting 5. Unpacking
Last Initial: 1. a sack of 2. Yo Momma’s 3. Biden’s 4. the proctologist’s 5. a shipment of
Birth Month: 1. glands. 3. nasty parts. 3. nostils 4. finger 5. large intestines.
Nostrils
the proctologists Finger
First initial: 1. Adventures in 2. Critical analysis of 3. Speaking truth to
Last initial: 1. Bladder 2. Spat 3. Hemorrhoid
Birth month: 1. Accidents 2. Fashion 3. Disasters
Can’t stop! Send Thorazine!
Me: “Situating Spaces as a Site of Resistance” (My first name is Amos — I’m one of those weirdos who goes by his middle name.)
My father: “Debating Politics and Power as Violence”
My mother (using her maiden name): “Reimagining Narratives as Violence”
My sister (using her married name): “Reimagining the Self Through a Critical Lens”
Chinese menus are fun!
*shudders to think that these word-salads are even plausible as titles for a master’s or doctoral thesis.*
Hale Adams
Pikesville, People’s still-mostly-Democratic Republic of Maryland
Redefining Bodies As Coded Queerness
Genius at work, obv.
Signaling Aesthetics as Cultural Mediators.
Redefining Silences in New Media.
“When you say nothing about something it doesn’t mean nothing has been said.”
JWM
“Performing Silences in New Media” 🤔
Come to think of it, some New Media SHOULD go silent. 😏
Not Too Bad: Critiquing Historical Categories Through a Critical Lens.
Tell Mr. DeMille I’m ready for my doctorate.
That’s genius and I’m still laughing. Thanks again GVL.
“Performing Gender As Violence.”
I will be presenting Destabilizing the Self as a Form of Erasure (aka The Hot New Diet Tip You Need For The Perfect Beach Body!)
“Feel free to call my cell”: Debating Bodies as a form of Erasure.
Eh. It kinda works.
Antoine Lafayette
No wait, thats my porn star name