"But if it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive."
Henry V
National Affairs Desk
Asheville 5:05pm 1/21/06
It is drizzling in Asheville and just off Barnard Ave a trumpet plays softly as a young, if we may call 25 young, man gets into his father’s white grand caravan to navigate a potholed driveway run through with rivulets easily fixed by proper ditch management. Or so the eye of a seasoned roadman might say. This day, mostly over and half complete, will see the SuperBowl duo revealed and prayers said and shelves restocked and bullshit walked around on Sunday talk shows, a parade of lies to ward off a week of questions from reporters not fit to sniff Edward R Murrow’s necrotic taint.
This day is also the day a certain young man has fit his shoulder in the notched wheel not to be removed until death or mental collapse. That is to say, “You’ll have to pull me off it you bastards 'cause I’ll die here.” An observer might call that a shitty line but he would be cautioned that the wheelman is new at his task and should be cut some slack in his first few days. If the observer persists he will be hobbled by precise sledge work.
This young man is saying goodbye to a few things: an intimate relationship with the small hours, the luxury of sleeping in alone (late sleep with a partner is a necessity,) the quick short lived joy of self indulgence, and the lie of maana and tomorrow I will do it. He has made these goodbyes before but never held to door for them. Now they shamble down the street looking for an open window or half shut door to slip into and steal a little more time from any sucker with his hands in his pockets.
Look ye, with men like Berman, Oldman, and Ibsen already flash cooling their hammer forged children in the trough of library shelves, the steam from that quenched paperwork powering our entire generation, this is our number called up, this is now our turn to cry “Forever!” and let loose nature’s gentle men and women who will rise from their excused and pardoned sloth with vicious abandon and lash the keys with their whip crack fingers tearing new words and work from reality’s back to drip crimson on to parchment hewn of the lambs skin and old growth woods and bound in lovers passion pulled hair to lay before the next batch of as a taunt and a challenge, “Do better if you can and dare!” Just as Our forebearers, the immortal caste of creators, did for us. That call that draws us to stare at dark fingersteps in fresh snowy pages, the linger stench of ozone sucked deep in the lungs like the smolder smudge plant we covet and burn as fuel to reach farther than before, clawing into our mind and the stars at once with both hands, a multi armed elephant poised on one foot dare not bite his thumb at our cephalopod flurry, our minds run on thought feet barefoot, shedding the ill made shoes we were shod with in youth and letting our souls slap the pavement as we run blood and blisters come up and leave a path which we look back on and then, seeing the first creator all around, in our work and we as it’s work it tells us before we ask, where you see only one set of footprints that is where we ran together in one form and that is where wind nor rain will never wash our tread from being. Let them burn Alexandria and sack Constantinople, let Washington be over grown with vines and Athens crumble, even unspoken and unread the footprint will forever be impressed and print on the sands of time.
Best here again to hold your tongue for let the creator doubt himself but do not let him hear an echo. For it does not fall to you or I to imitate but innovate. There may be nothing new under the sun but by moonlight worlds are birthed from pregnant ink smeared paws, nations clatter to life under the stroke and smacks of the chosen, the ranks of which no outside force picks but they themselves choose the life rather than deny it and they choose every step which brings them not closer to death, for every step no matter the direction walks closer to that unknown door, but the choice life of great hills and valleys, the landscape all men covet no matter the volume of their protests and only the few, we happy few, we band of brothers and sisters who choose the choice life know the tread and step and breadth of this land and our password is also our produce, we die and live in the tale of our doing.
So my friends let us do and do well and tell well. Let us lean on the lathe of life and turn out work to barter for food, fame to be shunned, the real prize is this life and only we can bestow it on our selves. All other glory is false and cheap compared to the glory and the power of the work, the only job which is the pay, the only lover that is the love, and the only end which we write ourselves.
(It seems impossible to indent. and this is all an attempt to get line breaks.)
Henry V
National Affairs Desk
Asheville 5:05pm 1/21/06
It is drizzling in Asheville and just off Barnard Ave a trumpet plays softly as a young, if we may call 25 young, man gets into his father’s white grand caravan to navigate a potholed driveway run through with rivulets easily fixed by proper ditch management. Or so the eye of a seasoned roadman might say. This day, mostly over and half complete, will see the SuperBowl duo revealed and prayers said and shelves restocked and bullshit walked around on Sunday talk shows, a parade of lies to ward off a week of questions from reporters not fit to sniff Edward R Murrow’s necrotic taint.
This day is also the day a certain young man has fit his shoulder in the notched wheel not to be removed until death or mental collapse. That is to say, “You’ll have to pull me off it you bastards 'cause I’ll die here.” An observer might call that a shitty line but he would be cautioned that the wheelman is new at his task and should be cut some slack in his first few days. If the observer persists he will be hobbled by precise sledge work.
This young man is saying goodbye to a few things: an intimate relationship with the small hours, the luxury of sleeping in alone (late sleep with a partner is a necessity,) the quick short lived joy of self indulgence, and the lie of maana and tomorrow I will do it. He has made these goodbyes before but never held to door for them. Now they shamble down the street looking for an open window or half shut door to slip into and steal a little more time from any sucker with his hands in his pockets.
Look ye, with men like Berman, Oldman, and Ibsen already flash cooling their hammer forged children in the trough of library shelves, the steam from that quenched paperwork powering our entire generation, this is our number called up, this is now our turn to cry “Forever!” and let loose nature’s gentle men and women who will rise from their excused and pardoned sloth with vicious abandon and lash the keys with their whip crack fingers tearing new words and work from reality’s back to drip crimson on to parchment hewn of the lambs skin and old growth woods and bound in lovers passion pulled hair to lay before the next batch of as a taunt and a challenge, “Do better if you can and dare!” Just as Our forebearers, the immortal caste of creators, did for us. That call that draws us to stare at dark fingersteps in fresh snowy pages, the linger stench of ozone sucked deep in the lungs like the smolder smudge plant we covet and burn as fuel to reach farther than before, clawing into our mind and the stars at once with both hands, a multi armed elephant poised on one foot dare not bite his thumb at our cephalopod flurry, our minds run on thought feet barefoot, shedding the ill made shoes we were shod with in youth and letting our souls slap the pavement as we run blood and blisters come up and leave a path which we look back on and then, seeing the first creator all around, in our work and we as it’s work it tells us before we ask, where you see only one set of footprints that is where we ran together in one form and that is where wind nor rain will never wash our tread from being. Let them burn Alexandria and sack Constantinople, let Washington be over grown with vines and Athens crumble, even unspoken and unread the footprint will forever be impressed and print on the sands of time.
Best here again to hold your tongue for let the creator doubt himself but do not let him hear an echo. For it does not fall to you or I to imitate but innovate. There may be nothing new under the sun but by moonlight worlds are birthed from pregnant ink smeared paws, nations clatter to life under the stroke and smacks of the chosen, the ranks of which no outside force picks but they themselves choose the life rather than deny it and they choose every step which brings them not closer to death, for every step no matter the direction walks closer to that unknown door, but the choice life of great hills and valleys, the landscape all men covet no matter the volume of their protests and only the few, we happy few, we band of brothers and sisters who choose the choice life know the tread and step and breadth of this land and our password is also our produce, we die and live in the tale of our doing.
So my friends let us do and do well and tell well. Let us lean on the lathe of life and turn out work to barter for food, fame to be shunned, the real prize is this life and only we can bestow it on our selves. All other glory is false and cheap compared to the glory and the power of the work, the only job which is the pay, the only lover that is the love, and the only end which we write ourselves.
(It seems impossible to indent. and this is all an attempt to get line breaks.)
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light.
And, somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout,
but there is no joy in Mudville --
mighty Carolina has struck out.
34-14 seahawks. fuck. at least the steelers will teach them whats what.