I Fidget With the Digit Dots

I Never Told Anybody

In 1976 Kenneth Koch taught poetry writing at the American Nursing Home located at Avenue B and Fifth Street in New York City: "The students were all incapacitated in some way, by illness or old age. Most were in their seventies, eighties, and nineties.  They had worked as dry cleaners, messengers, short-order cooks, and domestic servants. A few had worked in offices and one had been an actress."
Here are a few of their poems:


The quietest time I ever remember in my life
  was when they took off my leg.

Another quiet time is when you're with someone
  you like
And you're making love.

And when I hit the number and won eight hundred
  dollars
That was quiet, very quiet.

                                                      -Sam Rainey


Stenography is like a revelation.
Personal appearance is like a runner-up.
Because unless a stenographer looks as well
As the dictation she's taking
Her stenography is soon forgotten.

                                                      -Elsie Dikeman

I was always quiet

And my mother always had to send my sisters into the

  room

To see what made me so quiet.

                                                        -Fred Richardson

I like green; I used to see so many greens
  on the farm.
I used to wear green, and sometimes my mother
  couldn't find me
Because I was green in the green.

                                                      -Mary Tkalec


I never told anybody that I drove away in a buggy
I never told anybody that I fell all the way downstairs-
  I'm still crippled today
I never told anybody that I made a lot of pickles
I never told anybody that I sent a letter to the President
I never told anybody that I was in an airplane just flying
  around the field
  
                                                      -Mary L. Jackson

When I was a little boy 

  and got beaten

It was quiet afterwards.

                                                       -George Johnson

Caitlin Rose Song

Edmond Jabes Poem

Mirror and Scarf

"We will gather images and images of images up till the
last, which is blank. This one we will agree on." - Reb Carasso

   Mardohai Simhon claimed the silk scarf he wore around his neck was a mirror. 
    "Look," he said, "my head is separated from my body by a scarf. Who dares give me the life if I say I walk with a knotted mirror under my chin? 
    "The scarf reflects a face, and you think it is of flesh. 
    "Night is the mirror. Day the scarf. Moon and sun reflected features. But my true face, brothers, where did I lose it?" 
    At his death, a large scar was discovered on his neck. 
    The meaning of this anecdote was discussed by the rabbis. 
    Reb Alphandery, in his authority as the oldest, spoke first. 
    "A double mirror," he said, "separates us from the Lord so that God sees Himself when trying to see us, and we, when trying to see Him, see only our own face." 
    "Is appearance no more than the reflections thrown back and forth by a set of mirrors?" asked Reb Ephraim. "You are no doubt alluding to the soul, Reb Alphandery, in which we see ourselves mirrored. But the body is the place of the soul, just as the mountain is the bed of the brook. The body has broken the mirror." 
    "The brook," continued Reb Alphandery, "sleeps on the summit. The brook's dream is of water, as is the brook. It flows for us. Our dreams extend us. 
   "Do you not remember this phrase of Reb Alsem's: 'We live out the dream of creation, which is God's dream. In the evening our own dreams snuggle down into it like sparrows in their nests.' 
    "And did not Reb Hames write: 'Birds of night, my dreams explore the immense dream of the sleeping universe.'" 
    "Are dreams the limpid discourse between the facets of a crystal block?" continued Reb Ephraim. "The world is of glass. You know it by its brilliance, night or day." 
    "The earth turns in a mirror. The earth turns in a scarf," replied Reb Alphandery. 
    "The scarf of a dandy with a nasty scar," said Reb Ephraim. 

                     ("Words are inside breath, as the earth is inside time." 
                                                                           - Reb Mares) 

 And Yukel said: 

    "The bundle of the Wandering Jew contains the earth and more than one star." 

    "Whatever contains is itself contained," said Reb Mawas. 

    The story I told you, as well as the commentaries it inspired, will be recorded in the book of the eye. The ladder urges us beyond ourselves. Hence its importance. But in a void, where do we place it?  


                                                ("God is sculpted." 
                                                            - Reb Moyal)

LGCF.3

Thomas de Zengotita Essay

"...What all media, all representations—from street signs to photographs to emoticons—have in common is this: they pay attention to you, they address you. Sometimes generically, as with street signs, sometimes precisely, as with person-specific ring tones. And all that attention is flattering—indeed, it is a form of flattery so pervasive, and so essential to the nature of representation, that it has escaped notice as such, though it ultimately accounts for the oft-remarked narcissism of our time.3 The very process by which reality and representation become fused in the age of the simulacrum is delivered to our psyches by the flattery of representation. We have been consigned by it to a new plane of being, a new kind of life-world, an environment of representations of fabulous quality and inescapable ubiquity, a place where everything is addressed to us, everything is for us, and nothing is beyond us anymore.

During the mass-media age (roughly co-extensive with the modernist period), the hidden blandishments of representational flattery were already at work. Broadcast representations were implanting in anonymous spectators a desire for public significance commensurate with their unconscious sense of centrality—for it was, after all, to them that all performances were addressed. But celebrities were monopolizing public attention, gorging on it. The most basic of specifically human needs—the need for acknowledgment, for significance, for a place in the world—was left unsatisfied. Spectators were craving, however inchoately, their fair share of that attention. All that was lacking were the means. Until recently...

http://www.iasc-culture.org/publications_article_2011_Spring_zengotita.php"

Psychedelic Summits

Rabbi Nachman Story: The Cripple

  There was a Sage who, when he was about to die, called all his sons to him and gave them his last words. "Your task shall be the watering of trees," he said to them. "You may occupy yourselves with other things also, but you must never forget to water the trees." The Sage died, and left many sons. One among them was a cripple who could stand on his feet, but could not walk; and as he was unable to work for a living, his brothers gave him a share of their earnings. Their gifts were greater than his needs, so that little by little he saved a goodly sum of money. Then he thought, "I can now earn my own living by setting myself up as a merchant." As he could not walk, he bought a carriage, hired a servant and a coachman, and put all of his gold into a casket to take with him on the road to Leipzig. His brothers thought well of the cripple's plan to become a merchant, and gave him more money that he might thrive in his undertaking.
He rode forth on the highway. When the wagon came to a village the servant said, "Let us pass the night here" But the cripple wanted to go further, and commanded the servants against their wishes. They drove on, and lost their way in a forest.

Why We Don't Fight

"The development of modern thinking from Protestantism to Kant's philosophy can be characterized as the substitution of internalized authority for an external one. With the political victories of the rising middle class, external authority lost prestige and man's own conscience assumed the place which external authority once had held. This change appeared to many as the victory of freedom. To submit to orders from the outside (at least in spiritual matters) appeared to be unworthy of a free man; but the conquest of his natural inclination, and the establishment of the domination of one part of the individual, his nature, by another, his reason, will or conscience, seemed to be the very essence of freedom. Analysis shows that conscience rules with a harshness as great as external authorities, and furthermore that frequently the contents of the orders issued by man's conscience are ultimately not governed by demands which have assumed the dignity of ethical norms. The rulership of conscience can be even harsher than that of external authorities, since the individual feels its orders to be his own; how can he rebel against himself?
In recent decades "conscience" has lost much of its significance. It seems as though neither external or internal authorities play any prominent role in the individual's life. Everybody is completely "free," if only he does not interfere with other people's legitimate claims. But what we find is rather that instead of disappearing, authority has made itself invisible. Instead of overt "authority" anonymous authority reigns. It is disguised as common sense, science, psychic health, normality, public opinion. It does not demand anything except the self-evident. It seems to use no pressure but only mild persuasion. Whether a mother says to her daughter, "I know you will not like to go out with that boy," or an advertisement suggests, "Smoke this brand of cigarettes--you will like their coolness," it is the same atmosphere of subtle suggestion which actually pervades our whole social life. Anonymous authority is more effective than overt authority, since one never suspects that there is any order which one is expected to follow. In external authority it is clear that there is an order and who gives it; one can fight against the authority, and in this fight personal and moral courage can develop. But whereas in internalized authority, the command, though an internal one, remains visible, in anonymous authority both command and commander have become invisible. It is like being fired at by an invisible enemy. There is nobody and nothing to fight back against."  -Erich Fromm

Barry Hannah Story

I was sitting radar. Actually doing nothing.

We had been up to seventy-five thousand to give the afternoon some jazz. I guess we were still in Mexico, coming into Mirimar eventually in the F-14. It doesn’t much matter after you’ve seen the curvature of the earth. For a while, nothing much matters at all. We’d had three sunsets already. I guess it’s what you’d call really living the day.

But then, “John,” said I, “this plane’s on fire.”

“I know it,” he said.

John was sort of short and angry about it.

“You thought of last-minute things any?” said I.

“Yeah. I ran out of a couple of things already. But they were cold, like. They didn’t catch the moment. Bad writing,” said John.

“You had the advantage. You’ve been knowing,” said I.

“Yeah. I was going to get a leap on you. I was going to smoke you. Everything you said, it wasn’t going to be good enough,” said he.

“But it’s not like that,” said I. “Is it?”

He said, "Nah. I got nothing, really."

Old Media

April 2, 1861 NYT Editorial:


It would be difficult, without the deliberate declaration which [Confederate] Vice-President STEPHENS has given to the world, to believe that a national revolution could ever be conducted on the theory which he assigns as underlying secession. Some noble human motive-- some yearning toward light and liberty -- has hitherto consecrated every revolution: some indeed have been steeped in splendors; while this age has been cheered and blessed with the spectacle of a spontaneous upheaval of popular life, on another Continent, which is a pure gain to progress, and claims the tears and laurels of mankind. It has been reserved for the Slave Power of America to bring into the theory of society a doctrine utterly wicked, retrograde, diabolical. As stated with applause, the other day, by Mr. STEPHENS, in the town of Atlanta, it is perhaps the most purely atrocious thing in history. It may well give us pause that in this Nineteenth of the Christian centuries, and in America of all countries in the world, a theory of the social contract such as this could be seriously promulged:

"The foundations of our new Government are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that Slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. This, our new Government, is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth."

And again:

"The delusion of the equality of races cannot be traced in any of the component parts of the Southern Constitution. In that instrument we solemnly discard the pestilent heresy of fancy politicians that all men of all races are equal, and make African inequality and the equality of white men the chief corner-stone of the Southern Republic. With a Government so founded, the world has yet to see in us the model nation of history."

Putting aside all considerations of justice or morality -- which it is hardly permitted seriously to take into account in such an argument -- it must be confessed there attaches a certain theoretical interest to this new doctrine of the social compact. For the first time in the history of human societies, a nation's existence is made to turn on the pivot of an ethnological hypothesis.

Looking Glass County Fair .2