Theories of Talking Up

I have applied for so many writing positions I fear my objectives lagged in an instance or two, and my world weariness is age and spirit both. If you want to ask why I did not get up again after Cecil gave me the usual cyber lecture about my deliberately inappropriate vaginal lewd observation to get his attention, I had taken it to heart, being violated by a lesbian with whom I had allowed familiarity, whether I liked her or not, then Frank came along, but would not drive to the restaurant when Josie made an effort to make amends. I liked neither her nor Virginia, and would have preferred dissecting modern Catholicism with Cecil. By 05, I was no longer after sexual encounters for themselves. I just wanted a man to talk to, and still do, but I'm broken, like a marginalized figure in Dickens, the woman out of Bleak House maybe, a volatile eccentric. I know Josie knows she did something that crossed the line, and felt remorse, but she left a vacuum filled by minority dysfunction I can no longer carry, including a Verizon technician who kissed me, fixing my line. I no longer have much to spare for these minority filler games, too tired to go to the store, but what of it. I've considered A Libertarian-- note the caps-- and no, not Jeffrey Tucker either, as even if he was free, we both have a month, don't like to yield, and I am not keen on domestic violence killings. Scandalous, but idiotic, too many traces, even if contracted out, that sort of thing. At 55 narratives are usually decoded in accurate assessment. The locals are too young, too technical, and the few reactionaries my age have back injuries. The only thing keeping me alive is hate, that I want to dance their graves, but, if I went after Linda, truly played that card, I'd face Israeli wrath, and using my condition as an excuse to destroy perversion will not alter the landscape when it comes to dykes and mind games. The easiest enemy, Trudy, is a sorry excuse for a black female. I just want her and Presby out of my life, watching her age from a girl who laughed into an obstinate figurine of fecal brawn. I do, literally, hate what she is and can probably have her transferred, if not removed, but Joanne has little hope for Joanne, herself, even if she prints her notice and calls Uber. I cannot count on a lucky break, someone who sees me and can offer a haven, but it is a fine Sunday.

Jack Cassidy's Covert Collaboration

"Get on and get up over your hill,"-- a poignant track to Stargate Universe, never viewed

The poet Laurel Speer and I had a brief correspondence of the old fashioned sort, type written, envelope and stamps, the last missive received, one of her essays, in which she conveyed the writer's worst enemy: the loss of words. I certainly never anticipated the spectre of weariness would begin to threaten the only thing I have keeping me on the ground and alive, my work, as a very minuscule author, if you like, as well as a journalist poet with a string of bylines a mile long.

Who am I to push back against Peter Thiel's power, or be distressed about where my next pitch is coming from, or going to? Assuming that Mateen had an objective to achieve something against homosexual liberation, tactically, yes, it was a strategic mistake, precisely because it was a spectacle, one which will ultimately give sexual permissiveness more power, not less, consuming the  media for an extra period of time, however long it may be. Reactionaries need necessarily be shrewder in the methods they deploy, the exception being with Muslims, regardless of who they are, where they come from. They need to be extracted, deported, from Europe, the US, Canada, and any other civilized society. They need to be fought, and defeated, and only then can the rest of us contemplate mercy. The struggle with evil can be an intellectual contest, reflecting both sides of the coin, but it can also be simplified, and I refuse, regardless, to have any sympathy for individuals who insist on applying a Mosaic mindset to the modern world, even as we continually unravel our boundaries, which if you'd bother to apply yourselves, you'd realize we all need.

I am conflicted, when it comes to the Cassidy family, whether I'm more enthralled by the debonair father or the inauthentic son, with his squeaky clean shag and ineffectual strum on his amps.

Vecchio's Bended Knee

What child is this, who, laid to rest,
On Mary's lap lay sleeping?
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet,
While shepherds watch are keeping?-- the classic carol

Jack Dorsey is the boy man who lucked out and got the coolest bubble gum machine we fantasized about as children, but the standard terms of service bulletin does not abrogate moral responsibility, nor does it resolve the issue of what to do with fanaticism in the context of social networks. I know something about hate, real vitriolic hate of the type which led Poets & Writers to suspend me before bitterness and betrayed trust extended to hating my former homosexual associates, one of whom was a real friend, if not the best one for me, before my tolerance ruptured into corrosion, before I really got hurt, physically and mentally, and experienced black racism which liberals hastily deny exists, but I know enough to know we are not going to kill ourselves back to the age of Exodus, and I have restrained myself from my worst caustic excesses, for selfish reasons as well. I care about my legacy. Members of al-Shabab need to realize they are already corrupted, if they are using twitter to heighten the profile of this fantasy Caliphate they believe they can impose on Northern Africa.

I weep for our dead, but also for the fact that I am the oracle of a history very few are willing to respect. I lived the Kent State massacre, lived it, and like the rest of the country, was horrified that a state national guard could kill university students simply for protesting our military aggression bent on dousing Asian nationalism. I've read that Google hates being the arbiter of first amendment rights; I get it. Dorsey imitates the model, a convenient preclusion of conscience. Tears can now resume streaking my face.

Wolf bane Intrigue

Al Qaeda planned attacks years in advance, inserted sleeper cells, did reconnaissance. They took the long view, believing that their struggle would take decades, perhaps generations. -- Richard A Clarke, page 227

I cannot recall all of Clarke's testimony before Congress after 9/11, but I remember his demeanor, how it had a manichean aspect. He was very briefly a real American policy maverick, and his policy wonkish book was the first of its kind for me. I purchased the hardback seeking reassurance after the terrorist attack, and finished Against All Enemies in the hospital before my graft surgery, a period during which I often wept conspicuously, and the ward nurse guilt tripped mio padre and immediate family members into paying me a visit. I wanted to go home, then, as now, I want to go home. Mother's side of the familial would tell you that my longing to restore my sense of place and identity is my fault, and it is; they wanted me to move back in with mother before she dropped dead, so that I could relive all my sexual assaults, and I broke off my wedding engagement just weeks before the non-event, and apparently all I live for now is the fucking blog post, alternately violating my own internal decency and then reigning myself in.

Clarke is a competent assessor, but he wrote nothing I did not already know through my assiduous reading of  the papers, or viewing PBS, reading The Boston Review. Last week I wondered where the title had gotten to, but did not panic over its absence. I may have given it away years ago, perhaps to the little whodonnit bookstore on my Chestnut Street corner. Though faded into the pundit netherworld, Richard Clarke did not have to violate national security to bite back the Bush Administration where it counted and get his point across. Looking at Edward Snowden's actions in this light lends itself to being fearful of young white men's paranoia, despite my own bigoted sizzling, displacement, rage at defeat.

Yet the maw this strange young man opened, if not racist, then at least a wound with a stink about the fact that we have a choc-mix centrist left administration in place, is a complex issue, as well as a perplexing event. Americans have to be be able to trust themselves in order to remain a superpower, and the government has to be hard on such people if it is to be able to function, and yet it bewilders sense, what young men like Bradley Manning (though a rage riddled homosexual) and Snowden have thrown away and forsaken, breaching patriotism in real world terms. Does Edward truly believe he will be able to thrive in Ecuador? 

My alienation from the disability *conspirators* I was once in league with is not so draconian, not quite. I was always a writer first, but the game of spy-craft and the nature of intelligence and national interest is a labyrinth that mirrors psychopathy, the zeal of ideology driven a league too far. Literature and Hollywood have thrived on it since both have been in existence.

In the burrowing for my epigram, however, Clarke's evaluation recalls that I have to be true to my own sense of justice, however beaten I may be, whatever length of time it takes. If I cannot finish my protest missive today, I have to remember that I did get a draft off last year, without realizing that Babette Josephs political career had nearly concluded. Staying abreast of office holders is useful.