(no subject)

I'm starting to forget things, bang into things, drop things. Not a lot, but these were things I never did until a couple years ago, and now do almost daily. I mean, I was absent-minded, but the Google Within never fed me blanks. Not sure how much of this is just me getting older and how much is my having gone to seed--(caused in turn by happy lovenest living? or by eye worries). I also feel very stupid, but I think I remember feeling that way in prior Septembers also, something about the transition from lazy summer hedonism to uneasy autumn intellection.

Are my poems any good? They're all composed straight onto the journal; inspiration turns to consternation fast with me, transforming in turn to that bizarre, vast self-disgust around the twentieth minute, where ideas curl up and words get terse and random. Looking back at one I tend to like it, remembering the idea I had and the reason that idea matters; but am ignorant of how much of these are in the words themselves, distinct from the memories of writing them.

You have some idea, some interesting mental phantom you want to share, but to get it to the next person-planet you need to hurl it through outer space, where, having insufficient physical integrity, it invariably slumps and twists and arrives frozen in some monstrous meaningless form you yourself wouldn't recognize.

(no subject)

Bush's "taking of responsibility" for the criminally inept Katrina response reminded me of a bitter aside by my favorite teacher at High School, Doc (who left the priesthood to marry a nun). He mentioned how widely praised Reagan had been after saying he took responsibility for the deaths of 300 Marines and French soldiers in the Beirut bombings twenty-odd years ago; and how taking responsibility didn't mean just saying you took responsibility, but, for something like that, minimally, resigning. He was mad about the misuse of the word, I think, rather than whatever Reagan may have done or not done to make the deaths happen. I've never fully understood what the word means, responsibility, but whatever it is it's clear Bush is dodging it by "taking" it. Taking it implies you don't already have it, for one thing. Makes him sound like Jesus, taking our sins onto him. Whatta guy. Also how snarkily he did it! "To the extent the federal government was responsible..." Double distancing, there: if it was really my guys' fault which is it really, then I guess it's my fault too because I stand up for my guys and what's their fault I'll make it my fault and take one for the team Amen Go America.