There Is No Audience Because There Is No Audience

• Is that the new Egoslavian flag raised whenever I've nothing to say but feel the need to say something? It could be the new Egoslavian flag for when I've something to say but don't yet know how to say it, and if I made it so it would be flying today - see bullet immediately below.
• Kim Davis has defeated us all: Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis is clearly a terrible person who should not be occupying so much of our collective attention. In an ideal world, she would have resigned in protest. And there’s little doubt that this whole controversy has been drummed up by movement conservatives who are eager to fund a media spectacle. It’s all made-up bullshit. The thing is, that spectacle has been amazingly effective in showing liberals in the worst possible light. There may literally be no stereotype of liberals that is not confirmed in the response to Kim Davis.
• I am, of course, guilty, if not of the particular accusations listed in the above case, then of others. I've worked on it, made some, um, progress, I think, though long-timers and loved ones may disagree. I admit much of the work has been done working backwards from increasing contempt for my old team than decreasing contempt for the other team.
• Obscurity.
• Why wrestling matters: It’s undeniable that nerdiness has transformed from a stigma into a badge of pride in today’s pop culture, where everything is a potential source of nerdiness. You don’t have to look hard to find NFL nerds, beer nerds, hip-hop nerds, or car nerds. Most of the perceived sources of nerd antipathy have become outlets for people to express their idiosyncratic commitment. And the Internet has made it easier than ever for nerds of all stripes to commune with like-minded people — and to realize that there are others in the world who share their fascinations and obsessions. Some bastions of nerdy subculture might still be filled with awkward teenagers, but now they’re sharing space with the rest of the breathing world. Avengers: Age of Ultron grossed $458 million domestically this year. Some 8.1 million people watched the Game of Thrones season finale. This is not the geekdom of yesteryear, and the stigma attached to wrestling fandom has diminished as it has with other traditionally nerdy subcultures. h/t Hamster.
• Did Thomas Pynchon publish a novel under the pseudonym Adrian Jones Pearson? I'm guessing no, but I ordered a copy yesterday anyway.
• Haunting the pursuit: For years I would start writing stories much like any other, stories whose disembodied narrators had unproblematic access to The Truth Of What Happened, stories that sought to ignore the nagging feeling in me that I was doing something terribly wrong, being untrue to myself and the world, and to no justifiable purpose. When I never finished them, when they screamed at my neglect for months and months until I destroyed them unwritten, I castigated myself for my laziness, not yet knowing that it was possible to let myself feel these other buried impulses, and to come to the work through them, rather than using glib writing to paper over them. Laziness is real, and at this point I have to admit to myself that it will always be with me, but simply knowing that something else was going on, and that I had permission to care about it, is the one thing that has made my writing, such as it is, possible — my work on this blog as much as the fiction that (with one uncharacteristic exception) has not yet been exposed to The Public, both of which are aspects of this same impulse.
• No title yet.
• Had pints with a friend last night, she asked me to bring my tablet, she thinks.... it doesn't matter HERE what she thinks, but she wanted to see... it doesn't matter HERE what she wanted to see, though she likes the pages from behind, she thinks I should.... it doesn't matter HERE what she thinks I should....
• Garden of smurfly delights. Which of course put this in my head:

PERHAPS NOT FOR YOU

Alice Notley

There is

no

audience

because

there is

no audience.

So if you speak only to

imagined beings

what does "only" mean?

--------------------------

This building formerly a restaurant . . .

this small room has been scraped of its paint 

and denuded of most former furniture: but 

also it has grown in size—can a building be 

enticed to grow? Because it is now as big as an 

airplane hangar.

--------------------------

Your

          beautiful face 

unbloodied beneath

          flies

Mother of flies your

          beauty 

to turn to. If only 

the audience

could see how

you are peaceful and the

          flies 

languid, glossy

But the audience will still bring

          its own feelings 

to these 

words

not seeing you

               not seeing 

what I 

am present for.

--------------------------

Who has left me 

here, I have.

Who are your 

familiars

                   Come 

            into the 

enlarging 

page if you dare

--------------------------

     Because he invented 

your shape I do mean 

structure

because he invented you badly 

           everything is still hidden.

--------------------------

I was to impale myself on a

quadrangular

steel rod, with a blunt end

                     with a blunt end 

which would make puncture

      more difficult 

and I tried—it's too hard. I can't 

Okay said the voice. I can't 

Okay

then I was weeping

                              But it's blood! I'm 

crying blood! I 

screamed

That's part of it

said the voice.

---------------------------

I think this is hard.

(That's part of it)

How they prefer him must go.

I think this is difficult singing

Length and repetition 

         create power

If this voice can return like 

         a body

It resembles something that's already been, 

Changing.

------------------------------

Chestnuts broken

autumnal fungi

so you will remember, that

          it's fall 

outside

         falling. you'll go down

this is no story for the puling

          social classes 

No not at all 

it's for us my familiars say 

who let me weep blood on their ground.