Apr 13, 2004 16:11
In a vain attempt to update this thing on occasion, I'm updating. Nothing much to speak
of, except that SPAIN is Thursday. If anyone wants me to bring them back something and
I don't know it already-- well, let me know. Soon. I'll buy you a sword.
While I was procrastinating (avoiding finishing writing that goddamn children's book), I
stumbled across this. It should be a challenge, waste a few valuable minutes of my life, and
make everyone understand just how desperately boring rainy Tuesday afternoons when no
one's home can be:
Choose a band or artist and answer only in song TITLES by that band: Radiohead (of
course....)
Are you female or male? "Vegetable"
Describe yourself: "Optimistic"
How do some people feel about you? "Creep" (I had to put that in there)
How do you feel about yourself? "Karma Police"
Describe your ex girlfriend/boyfriend: "A Wolf at the Door"
Describe your current girlfriend/boyfriend: "You"
Describe where you want to be: "Sail to the Moon"
Describe what you want to be: "Bulletproof... I wish I was"
Describe how you live: "Nice Dreams"
Describe how you love: "We Suck Young Blood"--- I joke. Don't I?
Share a few words of wisdom: "2+2=5"
Now that I've sucked you into my Tuesday afternoon, I'll leave you with a poem by Lorca translated by Robert Bly. It's good. I know it's long, but it's easily one of the most timeless and beautiful poems I've read. Enjoy.
"New York (office and attack)"
To: Fernando Vela
Beneath all the statistics
there is a drop of duck's blood.
Beneath all the columns
there is a drop of sailor's blood.
Beneath all the totals, a river of warm blood;
a river the goes singing
past the bedrooms of the suburbs,
and the river is silver, cement, or wind
in the lying daybreak of New York.
The mountains exist, I know that.
And the lenses ground for wisdom,
I know that. But I have not come to see the sky.
I have come to see the stormy blood,
the blood that sweeps the machines to waterfalls,
and the spirit of the cobra's tongue.
Every day they kill in New York
ducks, four million,
pigs, five million,
pigeons, two thousand, for the enjoyment of dying men,
cows, one million,
lambs, one million,
roosters, two million
who turn to small splinters.
You may as well sob filing a razor blade
or assassinate dogs in the hallucinated foxhunts,
as try to stop in the dawnlight
the endless trains carrying milk,
the endless trains carrying blood,
and the trains carrying roses in chains
for those in the field of perfume.
The ducks and the pigeons
and the hogs and the lambs
lay their drops of blood down
underneath all the statistics;
and the terrible bawling of the packed-in cattle
fills the valley with suffering
where the Hudson is getting drunk on its oil.
I attack all those persons
who know nothing of the other half,
the half who cannot be saved,
who raise their cement mountains
in which the hearts of the small
animals no one thinks of are beating,
and from which we will all fall
during the final holiday of the drills.
I spit in your face.
The other half hears me,
as they go on eating, urinating, flying in their purity
like the children of the janitors
who carry delicate sticks
to the holes where the antennaes
of insects are rusting.
This is not hell, it is a street.
This is not death, it is a fruitstand.
There is a whole world of crushed riveres and unachievable
distances
in the paw of a cat crushed by a car,
and I hear the song of the worm
in the heart of so many girls.
Rust, rotting, trembling earth.
And you are earth, swimming through the figures of the office.
What shall I do, set my landscapes in order?
Set in place the lovers who will afterwards be photographs,
who will be bits of wood and mouthfuls of blood?
No, I won't; I attack,
I attack the conspiring
of these empty offices
that will not broadcast the sufferings,
that rub out the plans of the forest,
and I offer myself to be eaten by the packed-up cattle
when their mooing fills the valley
where the Hudson is getting drunk on its oil.