8.29.2008

-Matt Pond PA, "Bring on the Ending"


half of all our lives are spent
encouraged by embarrassment
we hold our heads and stay asleep
and cannot hear
in case nobody called
follow the prim ones and sit on your hands

watch your step don’t hardly move

speak in hushed tones
till they bring on the ending
they bring on the ending

as we file to get outside
with all the same coats on
here it is december’s end

all our evaluations are in
the lowland’s goal is less than low
it’s good
so easy to have met them

august lit the weight this fall
the hold of trucks could carry us all
the hot exhaust
the thoughtless sleep
we’d run
and fall into the river
we’d meet up at night
pretty late by the falls
talk too fast without regret
with headlights and stars
it was brighter than the daylight
bodies all backlit
unconscious though we’re moving
stereo screaming

we’ll settle for stares
now un-glide with our hands
the basement is where we will live
and stick to the crowds
without ever speaking
we want it that easy
and don’t get caught dancing
even if you’re drinking

don’t get caught dancing

8.28.2008





Best Show on Earth


I'm still trying to get over
Revelations, the midseason finale in (the final) Season 4 of Battlestar Galactica. Perhaps because Admiral Adama and President Roslin were the adopted father and mother of the Fleet, the touching turn of their relationship in the final episodes of this almost-last season really stuck with me as the grand allegory for the series. They didn't fall in love so much as come up for breath and realize they had been loving each other all along, fathering and mothering, fighting for control, ceding and bargaining. As the humans and the fracking toasters had been, as the fleet itself had been, and yet in the end, the only way to get to Earth was to go hand in hand.

And Earth!
In an homage to Planet of the Apes, we alight at home in Brooklyn, gazing through the Temple of Aurora at the ruined Manhattan Bridge (rebar sticking out, here. no rebar in the brooklyn bridge.) The entire front line of the show, including the outed Cyclops Cylon, Saul Tigh, and his new (pregnant?) lover, Caprica Six, my beloved 'Starbuck,' Kara Thrace, Sam, Leoben (HOT), Momma Roslin and Daddy Adama with his banged-up hands cupping a handful of lifeless Earth, Apollo, now all grown up and rather presidential himself, DeAnna, Tory, Tyrol, they're all faced with this unsavory anticlimactic, radioactive end. Somehow, the Thirteenth Tribe of humanity has arrived at the same fate as the Twelve Colonies: they're slagged, and both humans and toasters are going to have to fight to survive. Well, way to take us back to the end, writers.

I can't WAIT until "early 2009" when the rumored ten final episodes comprising season 4.5 finally air. In the meantime, some interesting questions have been raised by fellow blogger Alan Seppinwall:
  • The identity of the final Cylon
  • The origin and nature of the entire Final Five
  • The origin of the rest of the skinjobs
  • The fate of the 13th colony, and what role (if any) they played in the destruction of Earth
  • The identity of the person/persons/entities that have been orchestrating all this, and what it means that "All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again"
  • The opera house vision and the fate of Hera
  • What exactly happened to Kara when she went into the maelstrom, and what she's really the harbinger of (sic)
  • Roslin's health
  • The true nature of Head Six, Head Baltar, Head Leoben, and all the other "angels"
  • Tigh and Caprica Six's baby
  • The whereabouts of Boomer and whether any of the 1, 4, or 5 models are still out there
For me, the identity, or at least the direction, of the Prime Mover is the central mystery that remains. If all this was fated, I want to know why!Or, as my girl Heather Havrilesky over at Salon.com said: "How did this happen? Where is the final member of the final five, and was he or she somehow involved in the destruction of Earth? Could there still be a happy ending for the colonists, somewhere down the line? Isn't it pretty to think so?"


Here is what the series' writer, Jane Espenson, my idol from the happy days of Buffy The Vampire Slayer had to say about the fate of her creations, on TV Squad: "I think the real reactions are yet to come, just like in life. The beauty of this episode is in its urgency, in the tumbling breathless slide that lands us on that grim gray ...beach... And -- oh -- that haunting devastated city there, with the massive ruined temple and our people trying to find their footing. That image just kills me. Every time I watch this episode, I well up with hope, and it lasts right up through that handful of soil, and then the radiation counter breaks my heart all over again. I do not easily tear up, but the race to the planet -- don't the ships look like they're running?"



But in the meantime I am leaving myself to enjoy a few sublime images, so I will share and share alike. If you haven't watched this show, please don't deny yourself the pleasure/pain any longer. You've got until January - I'm looking at you.

Grey's Anatomy has a moment of well-writtenness/fangeekery

Cement Boy: I'm a loser. I’m the guy who died stuck in a block of cement. I’m like Han Solo.

Dr. Bailey: (gives him a quizzical look)

Cement Boy: Y’know, Star Wars? He was encased in carbonite?

Dr. Bailey: Han Solo is not a loser. Han Solo got encased in carbonite and that was a big mess, but that’s not what he’s remembered for. He’s remembered as the guy who made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs. And who braved the subzero temperatures of the ice planet Hoth in order to save someone he cared about from the big ugly wampa. He’s remembered as the guy who swooped down at the last minute, blasted Darth Vader out of the sky, so that Luke could use the force and destroy the damn Death Star. Princess Leia saved him from the carbonite. They fell in love, and they saved the universe, and had twin Jedi babies that went on to save the universe again.

Cement Boy: (smiles)

8.27.2008


Turtle

by Kay Ryan

Who would be a turtle who could help it?
A barely mobile hard roll, a four-oared helmet,
She can ill afford the chances she must take
In rowing toward the grasses that she eats.
Her track is graceless, like dragging
A packing-case places, and almost any slope
Defeats her modest hopes. Even being practical,
She’s often stuck up to the axle on her way
To something edible. With everything optimal,
She skirts the ditch which would convert
Her shell into a serving dish. She lives
Below luck-level, never imagining some lottery
Will change her load of pottery to wings.
Her only levity is patience,
The sport of truly chastened things.



8.22.2008

lucy and desi


cuban and american, married and divorced, innovating and hamming it up, drinking and whoring while passionately devoted, dazzlingly talented and creative yet shrewd as hell. what a pair.

8.01.2008

The Operation of Grace, or, Radio Silence in the Long Night of the Soul

I perceive, by your letter, you are in doubt about the grace which passes interiorly from heart to heart. We notice an illustration of this in the woman who touched our Lord, when he said: “I perceive that virtue is gone out of me.” In a similar manner, without words, one heart may communicate grace to another heart, as God imparts grace to the soul. But if the soul is not in a state to receive it, the grace of the interior is not communicated, as is expressed in another passage; “If they are not children of peace, your peace will return to you again.” This illustrates, according to my view, pure interior communications of the grace of God, from heart to heart, which the soul relishes in silence, and which silence is often more efficacious than a multitude of words.

God would teach you... there is a silence of the soul through which he operates, filling it with the unction of grace, to be diffused on other hearts who are in a state of receptivity, often more efficacious than words to replenish the soul.

We find this still, harmonious action in nature. The sun, the moon, and stars, shine in silence. The voice of God is heard in the silence of the soul. The operation of grace is in silence, as it comes from God, and may it not reach and pass from soul to soul without the noise of words? O, that all Christians knew what it means to keep silence before the Lord.

Selected from Madame Guyon’s Spiritual Letters, pp. 59, 60

Nirvana "In Bloom" from Nevermind

Sell the kids for food. Weather changes moods.
Spring is here again. Reproductive glands.

He's the one who likes all the pretty songs.
And he likes to sing along. And he likes to shoot his gun.
But he knows not what it mean. Knows not what it mean. And I say yeah.
yeah...

We can have some more. Nature is a whore.
Bruises on the fruit. Tender age in bloom.