ABlog

6/1/06

Spoke with J.—her feeling that death is all around. S.S. died.

the place of poetry is the place of death—

a thought in the BBG—something confused, but—don’t we feel guilty towards the dead—for suddenly “othering” them? We drive them out of our party. We don’t treat them the same anymore.

Hence the rituals of inclusions and exclusion—the provision of objects for their delectation—the ceremonies (for instance, in Chinese—Taoist, Buddhist—spiritual traditions, to help them cross over-- )

but might we live with them?

I am so used to existence by now!

6/3/06

In reading the materials that Alan M. gave me to go along with the Hasegawa book on the end of WW II, I was much struck by one historian’s point that the decision to use the atomic bomb was not really a decision. The bomb had been developed with the expectation it would be used. The firebombing of Tokyo and other cities had established (if it needed establishing) that civilian populations were to be ruthlessly targeted….the Bomb’s extended use—again and again, as fast as the component parts could be produced and assembled—was firmly contemplated because there was no assumption that the first or second use would lead to surrender.

It is scary to read this history written in a fairly detached tone and find oneself identifying with the “great power” perspective of those who, from whichever side, operated according to “reasons of state.”

6/4

Eve.

That palindrome of a name, she told me, was selected in a hurry. Her parents had been determined on a boy—she had an older sister. I believe she said it was “Eva” in the official records, but everyone called her Eve.

They don’t choose to haunt us. We decline to let them go.

She was no part of me, officially. She was part of my predilection for arranging family out of un-family.

When she moved [away], it was already a little like her dying. I was angry with her for never acknowledging the difference it would make in our relationship….

Through her, I had the experience of a generation.

Her friend George C., a somebody in the Party, had given his blessing for them to attend [a showing of the film] Ninotchka.

Her apartment was tasteful Modernism—her needlepoint reproductions of abstract paintings she copied out at MOMA.

She had learned to smoke in college, advised to do it to fit in.

Were her parents from Odessa?

Something is missing from this account—the true import. Why I wanted to graft myself to this story that wasn’t supposed to have that much to do with me….I wanted to make myself daughter to an alternate tradition: Jewish, secular, Communist, professional….

Paper today talks about military lingo: “‘hearts and minds’ approach terminology (Vietnam) has fallen out of favor; commanders prefer to talk about ‘kinetic’ and ‘non-kinetic’ forms of defeating the insurgency” (Burns, Week in Review) (“kinetic” = killing, “non-kinetic” = hearts & minds)

6/9

“beastly bombings and beheadings”—NYT editorial

“parlor purity” (David Brooks, yesterday)

Answer to Sigmund:
Women always wanted to be men.
Finally, we can!

6/10

flowers falling past the moon

(I saw this last night—the catalpa still in full, glorious flower, slow motion this year because of the cool rainy weather. The moon was near full, yellow-orange, bright enough to see the drift of flowers, one or two, beginning to detach themselves from the limbs and hurl themselves into the dark yards.)

Shame & dread of the
pen-laden hand
moving over paper.

6/11

Times coverage of Guantánamo suicides: the military focus is on preventing prisoners from doing laundry in their cells.

****

The Guantánamo suicides—suicide as propaganda—suicide as a text—the fury of incomplete control. The “health” of the body itself as a sign of control: you are mandated to be in good health—I, the Omnipotent, decree your obligation to physical well-being. I, the Supreme, take the place of that Christian God who supposedly forbids suicide because human bodies are not the property of humans, but of the deity.

6/13

[Guy] Debord said that given a choice between a garbage disposal unit and love, young people were choosing love. One could say now that given a choice between preventing the annihilation of their species and an iPod, people are choosing the iPod.

6/16

Now somewhere over the middle of the country.

How we are taught to see a continent as something to be disposed of.

The fear that I’m bringing nothing except a great weight of sadness…and the desperate scrambling up the mind’s talus surface—trying to resolve what can’t be resolved, trying somehow to make it come out all right.

6/22

A vision out of Kafka—she and I hanging on the white lab coattails of the 2 young doctors—“Might he have a little more salt in his diet? What do you think of the drainage on the left side?” In the background looms George, the Russian aide. “You people are readers. I am big pest. Here again to take your vital signs.”

The people in the airport
are busy
keeping in touch

wearing grooves in the sky
flying
from here to there

6/26

“Shops of Dirt and Horror—Grossest Groceries”
“Rotten Hubby Sold Our Home and Fled”
[tabloid headlines]

7/2

He tells me we have 10-15 years to fix the planet.

****

We drove back from JFK a long ways coming down Linden Blvd., while I was gone it had got to be summer. It had got to be the paved-over tropics and the landscape of beauty was young sweaty bodies with a basketball, leaping, reaching. While I was gone it had got to be Brooklyn, row houses where you look up and there’s another plane with its landing gear down.

7/7

My attitude toward people’s beliefs is a strange one. (Is it because I’m a poet: I believe in metaphor?) I am an agnostic, but an emotional more than an intellectual one….I am very resistant to any proselytizing and importunate belief, but so long as it is reticent, I’m inclined to admire, perhaps to envy—almost.

I have the old Unitarian’s dilemma: once you begin to regard belief as “belief system,” your reasons for choosing one system over another get foregrounded in a way that undermines commitment….

Syncretism is one thing when it involves two competitive or overlapping faiths. But what about the syncretism of faith and rationality?

7/8

anthimeria =
the rhetorical device of using a word as a non-customary part of speech.

She speaks so decisively, declaring that one plus one is almost certainly two. Why is it so insufferable to be lectured by her on the subject?....the feeling that one must pay attention b/c she does know something: she’s right to entertain possibilities others dismiss. Yet her insights spin crazily, she launches into a buildup of worst-case scenarios. There is a crazy calculus of striving for control and demonstrating that control is impossible. There’s a bizarre kind of almost narcissism involved. She is the only one who knows these esoteric truths.