Alone And Drinking Under The Moon

Amongst the flowers I
am alone with my pot of wine
drinking by myself; then lifting
my cup I asked the moon
to drink with me, its reflection
and mine in the wine cup, just
the three of us; then I sigh
for the moon cannot drink,

and my shadow goes emptily along
with me never saying a word;
with no other friends here, I can
but use these two for company;
in the time of happiness, I
too must be happy with all
around me; I sit and sing
and it is as if the moon

accompanies me; then if I
dance, it is my shadow that
dances along with me; while
still not drunk, I am glad
to make the moon and my shadow
into friends, but then when
I have drunk too much, we
all part; yet these are

friends I can always count on
these who have no emotion
whatsoever; I hope that one day
we three will meet again,
deep in the Milky Way.

- Li Po

Translated by: Rewi Allen

Brother of Afghan Leader Is Said to Be on C.I.A. Payroll

The funny thing is the 'is said to be.' A way of avoiding legal issues. What the article says is that the CIA tried to buy this election and, because of 21st Century technology, it didn't happen. In the way it happened, say, in Latin America in the 50s. Stuffing the ballot box just ain't what it used to be.

A few howlers from the piece.

A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment for this article.

“No intelligence organization worth the name would ever entertain these kind of allegations,” said Paul Gimigliano, the spokesman.

Some American officials said that the allegations of Mr. Karzai’s role in the drug trade were not conclusive.

“There’s no proof of Ahmed Wali Karzai’s involvement in drug trafficking, certainly nothing that would stand up in court,” said one American official familiar with the intelligence."

Two examples of damning with faint praise.

Eight Thousand Words

I have a long article in the Fall issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review.

http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2009/fall/anasi-game-over/

From beginning to end, this piece was tough on me. The phrase 'the torments of the damned' comes to mind. But it's out and I'm pretty happy with it. Of course, I think it should be twenty thousand words.

Many thanks to Bill Wasik for all his help and to Ted Genoways for giving it a home.

Flat Foot Floogie'

'In penning his biggest hit, "Flat Foot Floogie," the sly Gaillard perpetrated a monumentally mischievous prank on the American pop music public. The whole first line read: "Flat Foot Floogie with the Floy Floy." As it happen, a flat-foot floozie (Galliard substitutes "floogie"). in the African American slang of the period, is defined as a streetwalking prostitute and, in the same lexicon, the floy floy is defined as gonorrhea. In other words, America was unwittingly singing along to a song celebrating a streetwalker carrying the clap.'

Not my prose but a great joke, the 'YMCA' of its day. Slim Gaillard was a bad-ass.

Observations from the Late Shift

William T. Vollmann is a genius.

Dear Jon

A long-time friend of mine - almost 30 years! - died unexpectedly last week. He was in a coma at the end and I got to spend time with him in the hospice. I was alone there and I knew it was the last time that I would see him. It was disorienting to see Jon lying there but also powerful. In this society we are all too often kept from the deaths of the people we share our lives with - by distance, by accident, by queasiness. Yet I wouldn't have been able to honor Jon's life in the same way if I hadn't been close to his death. I wouldn't have felt it.

We were angry, energetic, trouble-making teenagers together. When we were about seventeen, we broke into every single private school on the East Side of Providence. Partially this was because we resented rich kids, but mostly because it was convenient. Later we found out that the schools had put out a bounty on us. Jon and I were delighted.

Led Zeppelin

I'm reviewing a bio of the dread Zeppelin and realizing that they were my first foray into sophisticated music. Laugh if you must but they went far beyond the simple textures and orchestrations that I'd been listening to up until then. They, more than Pink Floyd, were the Radiohead of the 70s. Except that they were so much better than Radiohead (Wait, maybe that means Radiohead was the Pink Floyd...).