thrashing is not crazy when one is on the hook

• Tweeted last evening by Catherine Gass, a William Gass intro to an Elkin.
• I took the hint.
• I've been fighting a bug. Dosed myself last night with Elkin's Bailbondsman. It helped.
• Some of these have been here since Saturday night.
• The strange new pathologies of the world's first rich failed state: Americans appear to be quite happy simply watching one another die, in all the ways above. They just don’t appear to be too disturbed, moved, or even affected by the four pathologies above: their kids killing each other, their social bonds collapsing, being powerless to live with dignity,or having to numb the pain of it all away.
• UPDATE! Sorry, I don't know how bluuger reset itself, but fixed, links now open in own window. I'm an attention slut, but I don't pad stats.
• The war of dissent: the duh of corporatocracy.
• Why Dollar General wins.
• How to recognize a dystopia.
• The post-physical economy and the rise of Trump.
• The road to manifest destiny.
• The uncomfortable truth about Whole Foods and Amazon's food monopoly.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• BPD.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• Murnane workshop. I wonder if I'll ever recover the clarity of concentration I once had to read Murnane to full effect. And by that I mean stop the cluttering - see above - I enjoy too much.
• UPDATE! Advice against enjoying it too much.
• A Tribute to Edmond Caldwell (via Frances! thanks).
• Some of what I can't talk about is much better! Some of what I can't talk about is the same. Only one is worse, and it has nothing to do with anyone I give a fuck about in my life.
• Bug was worse yesterday, fever. Serendipitously accosted by a Hillaryite Colleague in full bloom, blargled at me. I congratulated her on Dems naming Joe Izusu to make response to Trump's SOTU. 
• Didn't know who Izusu was but got the Joe. Fuck you, HC said.
• Fighting a bug, but after dosing myself too with Richard and Linda Thompson I feel better.

THRASHING SEEMS CRAZY

Julianna Spahr

this is true

a man in an alley grabbed my arm

this is true

someone called me and left the phone dangling at the post office

this is true

a man stalked me

  

someone tells a story

  

  

someone tells a story to another person

another person says I don't believe this

someone tells the story again in an attempt to convince

someone tells

  

  

as disbelief is easy

belief is difficult, supported by constraint

  

but a woman knows a man stalked her

knows this is true

  

a woman knows her own address

her own body

her lost domain, her desires, her confusions

  

someone tells a story

  

  

there are things people can do to themselves

they are:

leave molotov cocktail on own yard

set fire to own house

leave a glass of urine on own porch

leave envelope of feces outside own door

send a butcher knife to self at work

send letter to health department that self is spreading VD

stab own back

  

  

someone tells this story

says this is true

self turns on self

the knife enters at a point that the self could not have reached

         but did

someone tells and then repeats and she stalks herself several

         times to convince

someone tries to enter into the information

to pass words back and forth that have meaning

fails, resorts to this is true

  

  

this is true

a woman calls her stalker The Poet

   

this is true

a woman describes a stalker in terms that describe herself

  

this is true

a woman stalked herself to kill herself

  

this is true

a woman is at times a man

  

  

when a fish is hooked

other fish don't see the hook

  

thrashing seems crazy

  

the hook could be the branding of a woman at a young age

         by a man

or an older male neighbor spending too much time with a

         child

or the boring nature of life

  

in the story the hook is the artist's rendering of the stalker as

          described by the woman

it is the woman in a man's face

  

she does not know this man

thrashing seems crazy

  

later she realizes it is herself

her knife

her hook

her own face she was always drawing male

  

this is true

as thrashing is not crazy when one is on the hook