Just Wandering (and wondering)

October 30, 2008 | 3 Comments

Yesterday’s Thought.

It will all be okay.

If not, pay the mortgage one more time.

–

Today’s Thought.

Pen: Meet paper.

And leave the rest of us alone.

–

Tomorrow’s Thought.

Don’t forget to take out the trash.

–

I just want to go back when everything was so simple. You know, back when I could fax my love to you.

–

From Don Quixote:

“I exaggerated her beauty and marveled at her virtue and understanding. She returned the favor, praising in me those things that she, as a woman in love, found worthy of praise.”

Sounds like the Obama campaign to me.

–

Last week, I got a call from nowhere. The fine man on the other end of the phone said: “She liked your work. She died. And she left you a small sum of money with one stipulation: Do something that would make her smile.”

No problem.

–

He once said to me that he wanted to write to shut up the babble in his head.

— Jonathan Franzen, on his friend, David Foster Wallace

Indeed.

–

Cut trees. Haul trees. Sell trees.

That makes sense to me.

–

Is it me, or are we deep in elaborate schemes to make us all feel like we matter when the people pulling the strings think otherwise?

Just wondering.

–

Sometimes there were even arrangements which permitted private entrepreneurs to utilize the manpower of the asylums for their own profit.
— Michel Foucault

Sounds like America to me.

–

I read the profile of Gary Snyder in The New Yorker (10.20/2008). Oh Gary, why do they still think your love affair with nature is so …well… unnatural? But you handled it well. You freak.

–

And then I went to my library and pulled my collected poems of your friend, Lew Welch. This was the poem I had marked:

The Basic Con

Those who can’t find anything to live for,
Always invent something to die for.

Then they want the rest of us to
die for it, too.

These, and an elite army of thousands,
who do nobody any good at all, but do
great harm to some,
have always collected vast sums from all.

Finally, all this machinery
tries to kill us,

because we won’t die for it, too.

Sounds like America to me.

–

Oh, of course, we’re going too fast to think.

I didn’t mean to be disrespectful.

Really.

–

Final thought:

We are free men. Now we must take our heritage seriously. We must stop defending civil liberties long enough to use them. We must attempt to give content to our formal democracy by acting within it. We must stop whining about our own alienation long enough to use it form radical critiques, audacious programs, commanding views of the future. If WE do not do these things, who will?
— C. Wright Mills

–

We’ll know we’re getting someplace when the bastards opposed to freedom come to us to apply for a permit to rally against our happiness. Because our response will be: Your breath is your permit, now carry on.

Until then, I’ve got horses to feed and woods to wander.

–

Dismissed.

Posted by M. Colby | Filed Under blog 

A Random Break in the Silence

October 29, 2008 | 2 Comments

Oh, hi. I didn’t know you were still here. I’ve been upstairs rearranging the things I like to rearrange from time to time in preparation for change. I’ve done it so often now that it basically amounts to moving the boxes from one side of the room to the other. But with each move, I exhale in that all-too-satisfying way that says: Got it done.

And so it goes.

–

In my spare time I’ve been playing a little game of political make-believe. I pretend, for example, that everything I read, watch or listen to about the upcoming election is being done with a supreme sense of irony. Everything, it seems, is a mere tryout for a Saturday Night Live skit or a John Stewart monologue. Nothing is real. Tragedies are funny. And if you don’t at least act like you get the joke, the joke is on you. Get it?

If that doesn’t work, my little game of political make-believe takes me to the realm of pretending everything I read about politics and the election is being written by either Samuel Beckett or Albert Camus. It’s not news, it’s high-minded literature.

Consider, for example, Camus’ extensive writing on Sarah Palin’s wardrobe. It’s brilliantly existential. Did she buy the clothes yesterday or today? He can’t remember. But it matters, and it matters deeply. He just can’t remember why or how.

And I love how Beckett keeps penning pieces about how much longer we have to wait until the election arrives. It’s soon. It’s far away. It’s coming. It’s going. And we’re all just waiting. And waiting. November 5th will be a very empty day, indeed, for those believing in either Messiah. But, hey, there’s always 2012 for those who want to keep waiting. Send your checks now!

–

Lately, it felt like every time I sat down to address you, dear readers, I would stumble onto something on the Internet that made it all feel pointless. Consider, for example, these words from Andrew Sullivan:

As I said on Chris Matthews this morning, this race has tightened a bit already and will probably tighten again. But it is also possible that the race could widen, and defy the final polls - in Obama’s direction.

Got it? In case you didn’t get it, let me summarize: Up is down; yes is no; a win is a loss; and blog pundits have too much time on their hands.

–

As for Vermont politics, it’s now official that Democratic candidate for governor, Gaye Symington, has been running the worst political campaign ever. In a year that should amount to an easy win by a Democrat to unseat the Bush-loving current Republican, Jim Douglas, Symington has put forward a campaign that is so awkward, bumbling and ineffective that she’s about to be passed in the polls by Vermont’s favorite all-time-political-loser, Anthony Pollina. Ouch.

The breathless hand-wringers over at Green Mountain Daily have been busy picking over the dead carcasses of both the Symington and Pollina campaigns and remain seemingly oblivious to the dark comedic quality that both are about to get their political asses handed to them by the right-wing Douglas. Wow, such passion for the right to finish second!

From my perspective, the worst part of Symington’s inept campaign is that it is breathing life into Pollina’s same old, same old, same old campaigns. Pollina, for example, is practically dancing in the streets over the fact that the latest statewide poll has him at 23%, just behind Symington’s 24% (Nevermind, of course, that Douglas has 48%.). I guess when you’ve been a loser for that long, a close third is something to celebrate. Whatever.

There’s no question both Symington and Pollina will lose. But the mainstream pundits are already putting their bizarre spin on what the losses will mean for both of them. Eric Davis, the political scientist from Middlebury College who rarely veers from the blatantly obvious, told Radio Vermont listeners yesterday that a Symington loss could most assuredly spell the end of her political career as a “viable statewide candidate.”

For argument’s sake, I’ll accept his great punditry wisdom on that account. But why, then, hasn’t the same ever held true for Pollina? This will be Pollina’s fourth major drubbing at the polls in a statewide race – never having received over 25% of the vote – and yet pundits like Davis never even come close to putting him in the same political coffin they so eagerly have placed previous statewide losers like Racine, Rainville, Clavelle, and, yes, even Tarrant (all of whom, by the way, secured more votes than Pollina ever has).

Sorry, but I just don’t get it.

If Symington is declared politically dead by her upcoming loss, Pollina must do the right thing and join her at the funeral. Unfortunately, that’s about the best we can hope for when it comes to the liberal/left fusion this year.

–

In real life, I’ve been preparing for a winter of horse logging. I’ve been lining up jobs, getting my trusty horse, Big Jim, in shape, and looking for a potential teammate for the big fella. So far, so good – on all fronts. The jobs are lined up, Big Jim is looking fine, and I’ve finally convinced Boots to let me bring his new Percheron, Bart, to my place to work with us. In other words: All systems go.

If you’ve got land in central Vermont in need of some cutting or thinning, contact me soon via email at: mcolby@broadsides.org.

–

Speaking of horses (and all animals, for that matter), now’s the time to be thinking about them. In my recent travels to find a new horse, I’ve bumped into a number of scenarios that clearly indicate that in these tough economic times the animals are hurting, too. With hay prices reaching $4.00 a bale, there are numerous “free horses” out there. And it’s no great leap of logic to realize that when people can’t feed themselves adequately, they’re not going to be feeding their animals adequately.

If you can take an animal in, do it. If you can help someone – or some group – feed an animal or two or three this winter, do it. They had nothing to do with the economic calamities facing us. They only get to suffer the consequences.

–

Dismissed.

Posted by M. Colby | Filed Under blog 

Obama Throws ACORN Under the Bus

October 16, 2008 | 11 Comments

Barack Obama missed a golden opportunity last night to stand up and defend ACORN, a fabulous organization that is being unfairly vilified by the rightwing. When asked about his association with the group, Obama all but held his nose, verbally danced around the issue and — worse — left an impression that ACORN is somehow a disreputable organization. It is not. As the video below beautifully demonstrates, ACORN is an essential advocate for those who have been completely ignored during this election spectacle: The poor.

Obama’s refusal to say a kind or defensive word about the work of ACORN should be yet another warning about what an Obama presidency will look and act like. Hint: Think Clinton circa 1992. Like Clinton, Obama’s run to the right during this election season will not stop on January 20, 2009. What we see is what we’re going to get. And what we saw last night from Obama was nothing but pandering, middle of the road pap that only felt digestible by the fact that he was debating a desperate and unhinged man.

Besides ACORN, Obama also gave a big dope-slap to the anti-war movement last night. Did you notice, for example, that he never mentioned the Iraq War? I thought for sure he would mention it when he was being “pressed” by Bob Shieffer to name a program that he would cut if elected. But no such luck.

Oh yeah, it’s 1992 all over again. And as Obama — like Clinton — keeps dumping on the left, the left remains too drunk on the Kool-aid to notice.

Here’s the ACORN video:

Posted by M. Colby | Filed Under blog 

And This Goes For Me, Too

October 14, 2008 | 4 Comments

Posted by M. Colby | Filed Under blog 

Catch-Up Blogging

October 9, 2008 | 3 Comments

I feel terrible. No, I’m not sick. I just feel like I let you down. You come here to avoid doing whatever it is that you should be doing and yet – for days – you’ve gotten the same old words and the same old screen while I have rather intentionally been avoiding you. You kept check, check, checking while I kept avoid, avoid, avoiding. I think our relationship is in trouble. There seems to be a communications problem.

But I thought of you often as I carried out my life’s random duties. I spoke out loud to you while I was in the woods, for example, on numerous occasions. I laughed as I gave my monologue about the Palin/Biden debate to the trees instead of you. I cursed at the radio and the newspapers as I heard/read the ninniness spill forward. And I confused my dog as I ranted to him – and him alone — about the complete and absolute nothingness of the Obama/McCain debate.

Once again, it felt like the merry-go-round was going too fast to get back on. It’s happened before – often, in fact. And then I remembered what to do: Walk away, you fool. Find something better to do. When the meaning you’re reaching for feels like – to steal a dopey McCain phrase — the jell-o you’re trying to nail to the wall, it’s not the meaning you need. Walk away, and let the slop fall to the floor.

And so I did. I hope you won’t hold it against me.

–

Having said that, let me contradict myself (again) and clean up my desk full of notes about the events gone by.

First, let’s dispense with the Palin/Biden debate. Personally, I felt dirty after watching it. I felt an urgent need to take a shower and purge myself of the experience when it was finally over.

I felt like I had gone to a hockey game and a fight didn’t take place. Or that I had attended a NASCAR race and no one wrecked. I wasn’t, for sure, expecting anything other than the entertainment provided by the slip-ups and embarrassments of the two well-polished participants. And when it didn’t happen, I felt cheated. And dirty.

The morphing of politics and entertainment seems to be complete in America. Because I’m not sure anymore if the entertainment industry (a la Saturday Night Live, John Stewart, etc.) is imitating politics or if our politicians are imitating the entertainment industry. Why can’t we just vote for Stewart and Tina Fey and call it a day?

The expectations of “viewers” and “voters” seem to be the same: Go to sleep, be passive at best, tune in to watch and then tune out. Don’t risk anything. Don’t demand anything. And don’t expect anything other than to be entertained – first by the politicians and then by the mockers of the politicians.

According to the New York Times, the viewers/voters of America lost over $2 trillion in retirement savings last week. And yet we basically yawned as a nation and sat with our popcorn and watched our leading candidates serve up nothing but jive and jargon when it came to addressing it. Oh well, it’s nothing the remote control can’t fix, right? Click, and off we go to get some chuckles as Fey and Stewart make us laugh at the fact that our futures are in the hands of complete fools.

Poor Ralph Nader. He’s so goddamned old fashioned that he doesn’t know about the modern morphing of viewership and citizenship. This silly man actually thinks that the American people will soon be taking their outrage to the streets. Oh Ralph, that’s so 1960s. We’ve got parody now! And if that doesn’t do the trick, we click over to “Dancing with the Stars.” Ah, goodbye outrage…

–

As for the Obama/McCain debate, I was mostly just grossed out by McCain’s creepiness. When he wasn’t wandering around the stage looking like he was trying to stop from crapping in his pants, McCain was calling anyone and everyone his “friends.” And Obama was being Obama by being a wimpy liberal and refusing to either call McCain on his nonsense or – better yet – offer up some substance of his own.

Wouldn’t it have been great, for example, if Obama would have just told him directly to stop calling him his “friend” because true friends don’t trash you behind your back? McCain has been like the Eddie Haskell candidate: Being a little prick until the parents/media/opponent are in the same room with him (yes, that was a reference to “Leave it to Beaver”).

It’s also very cowardly. All week we heard jab after jab from the McCain campaign about Obama and his “friendship” with the “domestic terrorist” Bill Ayers. But then McCain goes face to face with Obama and the little sissy doesn’t utter a peep about it. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, that’s Sarah Palin’s job. Sure, John, hide behind the skirt – first Cindy’s and now Sarah’s. I’m beginning to see a pattern.

Again, it would have been nice to see Obama awake from his debate slumber in attempt to actually connect with the confusion and pain that has settled on our nation like a wet blanket. He might have, for example, addressed this “domestic terrorist” term that was being thrown around all week by equating it with the Wall Street thugs who have just hijacked our economy. If wiping out $2 trillion in retirement accounts isn’t domestic terrorism, I don’t know what is.

Oops, I almost forgot: Obama and his handlers and contributors are neck-deep in the mess. Silly me.

Ah, only in America can you go to jail for stealing food for your family but get a bonus for stealing trillions from the masses.

I’m going back to the woods.

Posted by M. Colby | Filed Under blog 

Literature & Fiction Blogging

October 3, 2008 | 12 Comments

Oh boy, this getting rich quick stuff is not as easy as I thought it was going to be. Day one in my quest to reach the new FDIC limit of $250,000 in insured deposits turned out to be a complete and total bust. I spent the day dropping my tiller off to be fixed (estimated cost: $125) and then heading over to help my friend, Boots, set up his new greenhouse. The economic component of the day involved bringing some of my freshly milled wood to him for the project. But then, at the very moment I was going to ask for the $248,000 needed to get me to the limit, I offered a bartering arrangement whereby I’d simply get some of his seed garlic and maple syrup in exchange for the wood and my labor. I know, I know: That’s not what Donald Trump would do. But it was only day one, damn it.

–

There’s a man on Route 25 who builds bird houses. Hundreds and hundreds of bird houses of all colors and sizes. They fill his tiny yard, stacked and restacked within feet of the 50 mph traffic that zips by. As fast as you see the houses, they disappear – a colorful blur of the wooden boxes to each motorist.

Yesterday, though, I saw the bird house maker. He was on his knees, delicately painting his newest house as I whirred by. Nothing else seemed to matter to him. Not the rain. Not the sound – or proximity — of my truck. Not the soft rain. Not the chill in the air. And certainly not the fact that he barely had a place to put his newest house.

And I thought to myself: I’d like to be a bird house maker, too.

–

I wish I had been with Hayden Carruth when I saw the bird house maker. He would have written a beautiful poem or, better yet, he would have told me in his scrambled egg and whiskey voice why the bird nest maker matters most at that very moment.

But Hayden Carruth died last week. He was 87, and, for decades lamented to anyone who would listen that he was near death. But he kept living and kept writing. And, I’m proud to say, I’ve got all his books – poems, essays and reviews.

I began perusing my Carruth collection earlier this week when I heard about his death on the radio. The first book I grabbed off the shelf was Beside the Shadblow Tree, a memoir of his friend, James Laughlin. It’s an elegant tribute, part autobiography and part biography. I flipped through it, remembering by all the underlines that I once reviewed it for a magazine. My first random stop amidst the underlines was this one:

“Is it such an anomaly that I choose not to mourn the deaths of my good friends in public?”

Carruth was writing about his decision not to attend the memorial service for Laughlin – a decision that led to great consternation amongst their mutual friends. Carruth brushed the blustering aside, concluding that Laughlin “would have understood.” Indeed.

Last week, however, it was Carruth’s turn to pass. And I’ll bet he would have been the first to opt out of the tributes that have come pouring out since the news of his death became public. No thanks, I can hear him say in his husky voice, just read the poems and carry on.

Here’s an entry to my original blog, “The Daily Curio,” that I wrote in April 2003:

Check out Hayden Carruth’s latest book of poetry, Doctor Jazz (Copper Canyon Press, 2001). The cantankerous Carruth keeps rolling along despite bouts with illness for the past couple of decades. Carruth, a former Vermont resident who now lives in upstate New York, tickles the funny bone, slaps established thinking upside the head, and ruminates beautifully on some of the curveballs life’s thrown his way. Here’s a taste of Carruth, from his series of poems under the title “Faxes to William.” This one is officially called “Three:”

The man who has a lifelong intimate relationship
with death, who thinks of death continually,
whose sexual and esthetic behavior is determined
by death, whose ordinary perceptions and routines
of work are shadowed by death, nevertheless
hides his obsession or disguises it in hundreds
of devious and nearly unconscious demeanors,
and then he wonders, he always wonders,
if everyone else is doing the same thing.

–

And here’s “Nineteen:”

William, do you know why
I like writing these faxes
to you? Because you
don’t have a fax machine.

–

And here’s a Carruth poem that I reprinted in an issue of Wild Matters when that monthly rag of agitation was still in circulation:

On Being Asked To Write A Poem Against The War In Vietnam

Well I have and in fact
more than one and I’ll
tell you this too

I wrote one against
Algeria that nightmare
and another against

Korea and another
against the one
I was in

and I don’t remember
how many against
the three

when I was a boy
Abyssinia Spain and
Harlan County

and not one
breath was restored
to one

shattered throat
mans womans or childs
not one not

one
but death went on and on
never looking aside

except now and then
with a furtive half-smile
to make sure I was noticing.

Face it, this sure beats the hell out of wasting more time on analyzing that poor excuse for a national discourse that took place last night. But don’t worry, I’ll get to that, too. Once I’m in the mood to place small splinters into my fingernails.

Thanks for playing, my friends. Now go do something real. You know, build a bird nest or something.

Posted by M. Colby | Filed Under blog 

This Changes Everything

October 1, 2008 | 7 Comments

I just got the news that the U.S. Senate is going to be extending a hand to the “middleclass” by increasing the insurable amount of money we can all have in FDIC banks from $100,000 to $250,000. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been waiting for that kind of assurance before I bothered to go out and make that kind of money.

But now, baby, the sky’s the limit. I’m getting right on it. In fact, I’m getting ahead of the curve. I’ve already called my bank and told them to get ready because I’m planning on using the new limit. Yeah, I did.

“Listen,” I said to the fine young lady on the banker’s phone, “you better be keeping an eye on my balance because I’m on fire now. The barriers are down. My anxiety has been relieved. And there’s nothing stopping me.”

I could tell she was impressed – even inspired. Because she was silent, clearly thinking something along the lines of:  “This guy’s on the ball.” Yes, mam, I am. I’m an economic engine now.

But I didn’t want to rub it in. I could tell she was probably thinking negative thoughts about her husband. I’ll bet he wasn’t taking the initiative like I was. You’ve got to be sensitive to those things nowadays.

“Hello?” I called out after a few seconds. “Hello?”

“Yes, I’m here,” she responded. “Whom would like to speak to?”

Damn, I really did hurt her feelings. She was being cold now. She started with such a fine “good morning” greeting, and now my initiative had clearly demeaned her. It must have felt like she was being passed on the economic escalator – and I was the one going up. Poor woman.

“Or I could check your balance if that’s what you’re looking for,” she continued.

“Of course,” I responded, realizing she needed to regain some sense of dignity – you know, prove that she was still standing between me and my money.

I gave her my account number, verified my security code, and listened to her rythmic pecking on the keyboard in front of her.

“As of today,” she said, “your available balance is $1,753.43.”

“With the emphasis on “as of today,” I interjected. “Because I’m heading for the limit.”

“Is there anything else I can do for you?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, as I reached for a calculator and did some quick math. “Can you verify that — if the FDIC insurance limit is raised to $250,000 — I could safely make a deposit of $248,246.57 into this account?”

“I believe that would be the case,” she responded.

“Well, that’s all I needed to know,” I said, effectively ending the conversation and this poor woman’s growing sense of jealousy.

Like I said, I’m on fire.

Posted by M. Colby | Filed Under blog