The revolution is not so much on pause, as riven by incertitude.
The click track - you may have observed - has fallen foul of synchronization: Stalling; Steiner, and Bradley. As unreliable as Ukrainian trains. Between Kiev and October.
Burrowing under creaking autonomous sod. Moles. Metro gnomes. Travelling in fits and starts; co-opted SMPTE time.
1/4; 1/8; 1/16.
Incremental decrepitude.
A tree leaning into the broken tooth of a circular saw, filmed for posterity in crackling stop motion.
June 1883. The Chautauquan.
"Sound is the sensation excited in the ear when the air or other medium is set in motion."
Naked science.
An old African proverb tackles the nature of suddenly uprooted trees with telling prescience:
"Do not look where you fell, but where you slipped."
By extension, keep one foot in front of the other. And don't forget to tie your shoelaces. When not dancing barefoot; or broadcasting 'Radio Ethiopia' before a lolling wave.
Lumberjacking; sawdust traumas; pissing in the river in a force nine gale.
Of course. Mixing metaphors is similarly as perilous, mixing metaphors while mixing one's drinks - injecting intravenously - an ill-advised taboo.
It was not Bill Burroughs who remarked "If we can hit that bullseye then the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards..." but Zapp Brannigan.
Zip gun boogie. Billy West. East. North and South.
"Checkmate". I digress.
The revolution is not so much on pause, as low on ammunition.
One month blurs into another as camel charges in Cairo's Tahir Square give way to rocket salvos over Bin Jawwad; the waters recede in Fukushima to expose fuel rods in meltdown.
Cesium-137. Iodine-121.
Tsunamis. Turbulence in Syria.
A changing of the guard on the road to Damascus.
Four horsemen on overtime. Double time. A plague of Sundays.
Somewhere between one month and the next, the bleachers fell into disrepair. The fiddles went quiet.
The ferryman sailed by, empty-handed. Lantern-jawed. Granite sprung.
The emails gathering one on top of the other like so many dessicated leaves.
Well. I have lost the will to rake the ashes. I began one post and could not see an end to it. The music is of saws and knives. Scraping knotted bone.
Paul of Tarsus can keep his fine opinions to himself.
23 comments:
"Incremental decrepitude" -- I am TOTALLY stealing that as the name of my next project.
It is frustrating. Can't listen to jack shit. No stomach for it.
A fog of incremental decrepitude sews it up.
It's like my ears have left on permanent vacation to a rest home, while my brain slowly turns to stone. Was all I could do just to explain my MIA.
Frankly, it's very cool that even two words of my babble seem to have struck a c(h)ord. I fully expected to wake up to an empty house.
I don't mind leaving my blog empty for a week or so at a time. I can't be "on" all of the time.
Real Life is greater than The Internet.
And I really am going to steal Incremental Decreptitude. My goal is to do another paper 'zine within the next year(s) or so.
A paper publication has renewed appeal. The pristine white and the marching columns of characters; the smell of ink.
I will definitely uncap a bottle to toast the launch of Incremental Decrepitude. You will have to mail me out a copy.
Don't plan on getting one anytime soon, obviously - I move slow, plus it might just be something that I make by hand on a copier, a few at a time.
I googled "Incremental Decrepitude", just to make sure it was public domain, and oddly enough it was used on some fitness message board about a year ago. Apparently we are not unique.
Wait, I think you just came up with an even better title...
Tim. I woudn't dream of turning my back on a crocodile. With or without an extra pair of snake eyes. Unless I was drunk.
My entire jaw and neck has broken out in some kind of ugly rash. Four weeks ago I would have sworn it was a cold sore. Herpes Simplex. Well. Never had anything like it before, the Zovirax is as much use as a tube of Deep Heat.
Welts like something out of the Elizabethan age.
I may go to sleep tonight and wake up as a lizard. A skink.
I hope that wasn't what you were implying ?
It's those depleted uranium shotgun shells. Get some painkillers quick before it goes away is my advice.
Curiously, the pain is tolerable. It's the itching which is driving me crazy.
I ought not to be shaving, I imagine. I avoided doing so at all for a week or so, but the itching just got even worse. And the razorblade just aggravates it and maybe sets the whole cycle running again. Hard to tell for sure if it is healing underneath the facial hair.
I cannot be fucked going to see the doctor only to get short shrift.
Actually. I am inclined to blame the whole thing on a leather armchair we inherited which may or may not be infected with some kind of foul virus. I am prickly enough right now to point the finger at anything and anyone. I may not be succumbing to a secound round of radiation sickness - like those poor Japanese bastards - but that is of little comfort.
Fucking positive outlook does not come naturally.
Yeah, well, I know what you mean. I'm a pacific coastal type resident and they're pouring radioactive waste into the sea, the air, you know. The fish are safe though, don't worry.A Japanese expert just said so on the news. Nothing yet however from GE on how to fix their little problem. See, it's not their problem. Japan bought the power plant from them and the warranty expired. I got some hippie cream thats green and full of all kinds of stuff like goldenseal and other soothing emolients that helped my kid when his ass was all red and itchy. I put it on burns too. Go herbal, it'll probably help.
I found the stuff. Here's what's in it....olive oil..calendula...lavender...camomile...yarrow flowers....marshmallow(no shit)....comfrey root..rosemary...plantain....beezwax...lavender oil....it works. I swear it does. They got something like it at your health food store. I get this at a hardware store in Sebastopol CA. Get a ride over and I'll meet you at SFO with a quart.
So, yeah Ian. I ducked the issue. But it bothered me that I did so I came back to howl along. No one I know can explain the apathy, the endemic withered faith in humanity as a going concern. The Ostrich Syndrome has to be before the China Syndrome can materialize. A couple of weeks ago I was at the ANSWER Coalitions anti war(s) demonstration in SF. There were maybe 3000 people there all told, more like two thousand probably, in the rain and cold. I was handing out bumper stickers that say "Tax The Rich, Take Back The Wealth" and I tried to give one to a guy selling The Workers Vanguard. He wouldn't take one because ,as he said, basically, thats a hopeless position. I asked him when the fuck the workers revolution was going to start. We looked at one another for a minute and both started laughing. A poignant moment, significant in that we both recognized again for thirty seventh million time we are still pissing into a force 9 gale wind and it's the best we can do and why the fuck isn't the whole city out here with us, can't they see Godzilla is ready to stomp they're fucking houses flat and eat them? All I can say is I guess not. We let up after Viet Nam 'got over' and The College Republicans continued to breed and feed at the base of the thrones that seated Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and Nancy Reagan. While we were out looking for better weed and learning how to smoke coke, they were rewriting the US Tax code and utterly conquering any place they felt might possibly have oil under it. Then, too, most people just want to be let alone,to live along and get by, and they don't really want to fight, even fight back. The word "revolution" conjures bleeding genies, dirty commies with hungry babies and fire spitting dragons for them, and who wants to fuck with shit like that if they can avoid it? "I guess but I just don't know."
The rich decided a long time the whole world is is their ball. Nobody can play unless one subscribes to their rules; any opposition to the status quo is routinely crushed.
Well, fuck it. I don't want to play. I might as well sit on the bleachers. Picking my nose. Just busy sucking on my ding-dong.
TV shows like the X Factor and Dancing on Thin Ice do their part to promote the illusion that this is team sport. Football practice. There is no 'i' in team. There is no ib damned.
I'm with Lou on this. The old Lou. The apathatic motherfucking snide little nasty Lou before he gave up cigarettes. Quit on qitting.
Behind the coach.
This is the era of the call centre. The universal script.
"Hello ? Hello, sir ? What is your problem and how might I pretend to serve you ? Give me one moment while I put you on hold."
Celine Dion. I don't Mariah Carey.
Nobody knows anything. The rich get richer; the dumb get dumber. Pre Neanderthal. Amoebic. Slower than a week in gaol.
The office temp is Adolf Eichmann. In civillian clothes. An Obama t-shirt; a thrifty dollar a year subscription to UNICEF.
A seat at the junket next to Madonna Louise Ciccone.
Even George Bush gives to charity, tax deductible, cocking a snook at the IRS.
I am a lazy bastard lounging in striped pyjamas. A monkey haircut. The integrity of a chimpanzee on Prozac. A hobbit Elvis holidaying in the ghetto on trans-fatty acid.
A ball of confusion in a straitjacket.
I don't frequent health food stores. I probably ought to. Rosa does on occasion; I try to let the benefits percoloate on down.
My reputation might be in the toilet, but there is still time to get occasionally flushed and hot under the collar.
It's my life - and it's my wife - and I guess but I just don't know.
We'll be out in the street again Sunday. In SF. We'll see how it goes
I already have a van full of people that are going down.
Never Give Up
Looks like the Metro Gnomes is already taken as a band name. Caterwaul of Sound too? Curses!
Between Kiev and October.
And I guess but I just don't know...
No script here. Though my brain does feel like it could use one.
Now then now then ib, just dropping by to say hello. I'm fed up of the dirge that is Easter Monday, the telly reruns humming in the background, the burnt baked tattie, the neighbour's cider overloading and constant club beats. C'est la vie.
I hope you get over that bloggers block and return in multi-prose, like it should be, as it should be.
Old Lou: "Give me an issue and I'll give you a tissue so you can wipe my ass with it."
No issue. No need for a tissue.
Just constipation.
Nazz, my brother.
'Stabby Road' ?
Been there before. Downloading... Revisted. Admire the title immensely.
Apologies for the protracted delay.
Best wishes.
Jonder.
Those Metro Gnomes, it seems, were always lurking. I have tunnel vision. And a fear of opticians generally.
Rats.
Löst Jimmy, Big B,
little hell has a way of creeping between the lines. Out there in space, I lost the 'Mir'. Still have the big clear blue, but I require the MP3. The bigger web is in my iTunes.
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