(fleeting)

*

if you’ll be my bodyguard
I can be your long lost pal
I guess you didn’t know it
but I’m a fiddle player too
don’t call it a comeback
I’ve been here for years

As a reader, I haven’t really been in a fiction place the last few years, but this weekend I was at a small indie bookstore, and I impulsively bought Anniversaries by Uwe Johnson. It is an astonishment. (Also, it’s already cramped my “finished” program. So it goes.)

This is your friendly reminder that “skoch” (as in, “No, not too much — I’ll just have a skoch,” and which rhymes with coach) is not from the Yiddish. It’s from the Japanese.

Hey, don’t look at me. We’re talking about the same species who came up with the word “plinth.”

I used to go to a lot of poetry readings, but eventually I stopped because holy shit they can be awful. Like, Vogon awful.

But last night I went to this reading at the Black Dog Café.

So good! Great material, real voices. (Good book, too.)

Here’s a short essay thing I wrote recently.

Is Not Chicago

I think it’s about free will, or maybe polarities? And there’s something in there about pencils and Tolstoy. Frankly, I’m not sure what the fuck I’m talking about. But I don’t need to make sense all the time, do I?

I just realized I’m old enough to remember a time when, without a trace of irony and with a sincere belief that it would impart some meaningful insight, people asked each other, “What’s your sign?”

Despite a short trip to Florida and other distractions, I somehow managed to finish three short books this week. 📚

It’s a peculiar and dubious distinction of this current moment in human history that we have taken a noun like “content” and made it seem empty.

Well, there goes my carbon footprint… Off to the Gulf coast for a few days.

“All this is perfectly distinct to an observant eye, and yet could easily pass unnoticed by most.”

—Henry Thoreau, 12 July 1817 – 6 May 1862

I didn’t read much poetry this week, and the “finished” book is sort of a cheat: a new edition of a book I’ve already read, which gathers some new material I hadn’t seen before; I only read those sections, and browsed the rest. It definitely merits a cover-to-cover re-read. 📚

Last month, I decided to spend April chewing through the cracked leather restraints holding me back from finishing some longer, book-length works of poetry. It went pretty well, but now my teeth hurt.

Here’s what I finished reading this month. 📚

Augury

This week, a hawk flew right at my window as I stood looking out. Later, a bald eagle hovered right outside the same window. Yesterday, another hawk swooped down right past my car.

I’ve always considered myself more of a scavenger, but maybe I need to go hunting.

Now that I’ve settled some some travel plans that were up in the air, I got a wristband pass to Wordplay in a few weeks.

So if any other Twin Cities MBers are planning to go, let me know. A Lofty Micro Meetup under the proverbial Biltmore Clock?

Frankly, I’m gobsmacked that there’s so much buzz about Endgame…

But I’m really pleased that Samuel Beckett is finally getting the mass-culture attention he deserves. Fingers crossed that Krapp’s Last Tape will be coming to the big screen soon!

PSA Blot’s front page has recently been updated, with links to an impressively eclectic sampling of bloggers who use the service — and I see quite a few Micro.bloggers among them (including yr ob’t svt)…

I don’t need more pencils. On the other hand, maybe I need more pencils. Okay fine, I’ll buy some more pencils.

I hope to ease back into blogging again soon.

Most of April, I’ve been silent (busy breeding lilacs, &c).

I visit the timeline when I can, but I haven’t had the bandwidth to engage in any of the fascinating conversations.

(Thanks, @smokey, for your weekly updates!)

I have at times heard people, perhaps in an attempt to be clever, point out that the TV show MASH ran for 11 years when the Korean War only lasted three.

Sure, okay.

But all 256 episodes, back to back, only run about 110 hours. The war lasted 27,072 hours.

What I finished this week. 📚

Hooray! We discovered water in our storage unit. Everything we had planned for tomorrow has been cancelled so we can spend the day assessing the extent of the damage, and moving into a new, dry unit.

Sad news for the arts scene in Minneapolis: Zenon Dance Company to cease operations, citing ‘lack of funding’

What I finished this week. 📚