Son of A...

Hope everybody had a lovely Sunday.

Archaeological Record

The Order In Which Things Are Broken:

Ancients threw the masks down the cenote—
the faces smashed first in little ways before
the long drop, an eye or an ear broken, a mouth snapped
in half. Then, lifted from the well, two thousand years
later, still grinning and golden. The loose spooling of two
people fast unravels—how we let go of time spent,
how heat fades, how a body forgets fully what it knew.
I have learned your face as you will never.
The third day we met you gave me all your secrets
until I held an ocean in a cradle. Now all I ask for is more.

Desirée Alvarez.

You keep samin' when you oughta be a'changin'

Now what's right is right but you ain't been right yet.

Lectures on Logic

Ars Poetica:

To answer Kant’s last question she should take the curtains from her eyes
and lay them on the bed.

She should stand on her head and dream,
empty herself of  I, I, I, I.

She should walk inside the living and the dead,
become some other passerby.

Catherine Barnett.

It's goin' to be a long time gone

I was all of two months old when this aired.  Happy birthday, Mom.  Miss you.  A long time gone, indeed.  

津波

The Great Tsunami:

She recognizes its crest in the way he looks at her.
The wave is as vast as the roiling mass in the Japanese
Print they had paused in front of at the museum,
Capped with ringlets of foam, all surging sinew.
That little village along the shore would be
Totally lost. There is no escaping this.
The wave is flooding his heart,
And he is sending the flood
Her way. It rushes
Over her.

Can you look at one face
For the whole of a life?

Does the moon peer down
At the tides and hunger for home?

Michele Wolf.

Die gesamte Generalität ist nichts weiter als ein Haufen niederträchtiger, treuloser Feiglinge!

Lmao been waiting for this….absolute cinema….no notes! https://t.co/KhrE5Uxa68

— Wu Tang is for the Children (@WUTangKids) November 5, 2026

The most gratifying version I've ever watched.

In conclusion: Der Krieg ist verloren.

Ooh, a storm is threatening my very life today

Lisa Fischer.  My.  God.

Public Thing

Respublica:

The strident high
civic trumpeting
of misrule. It is
what we stand for.

Wild insolence,
aggregates without
distinction. Courage
of common men:

spent in the ruck
their remnant witness
after centuries
is granted them

like a pardon.
And other fealties
other fortitudes
broken as named—

Respublica
brokenly recalled,
its archaic laws
and hymnody;

and destroyed hope
that so many times
is brought with triumph
back from the dead.

Geoffrey Hill.

#throwbackthursday

Popped up in FB memories today.  Last picture by the field office in Littleton, NH, where I lived in a motel for months while campaigning for Obama.  Ericka joined me for the final few days.  It was magical.  (2008)

Why do we never get an answer when we're knocking at the door?

Quoth Nancy about Crazy On You: "We were listening to a lot of Moody Blues back then. There was a [Moodies] song called Question that had this fast, fiery guitar rhythm. That was our idea for the groove."

It's Complicated

I Hate:

I hate how this unsummoned sigh-sound, sob-sound,
not sound really, feeling, sigh-feeling, sob-feeling,
keeps rising in me, rasping in me, not in its old disguise
as nostalgia, sweet crazed call of the blackbird;

not as remembrance, grief for so many gone,
nor either that other tangle of recall, regret
for unredeemed wrongs, errors, omissions,
petrified roots too deep to ever excise;

a mingling rather, a melding, inextricable mesh
of delight in astonishing being, of being in being,
with a fear of and fear for I can barely think what,
not non-existence, of self, loved ones, love;

not even war, fuck war, sighing for war,
sobbing for war, for no war, peace, surcease;
more than all that, some ground-sound, ground-note,
sown in us now, that swells in us, all of us,

echo of love we had, have, for world, for our world,
on which we seem finally mere swarm, mere deluge,
mere matter self-altered to tumult, to noise,
cacophonous blitz of destruction, despoilment,

din from which every emotion henceforth emerges,
and into which falters, slides, sinks, and subsides:
sigh-sound of lament, of remorse; sob-sound of rue,
of, still, always, ever sadder and sadder sad joy.

C. K. Williams.

It’s as Though the Lord Wanted Me to Be Happy

😶😶😶 https://t.co/8EtFPN1wCA

— Golden State Valkyries (@valkyries) November 4, 2026

Parade celebrating the Purple Wave on the same day we all are celebrating the Blue Tsunami?  I guess G-d really is good.

No further analysis from me.  Also no demands of the Democratic majority as to whom they should select for their House and Senate leadership.  And no predictions or wishcasting about '28.  Just basking in the glow, tempered a bit by my residual anger over how we could have just done the right goddamned thing in '24 (and/or '16).

Anyway, post title is an Ericka-ism.  Wish she were here to see the worm turn.

Selah.

No way to breathe easy, no time to be young

Is that...Luke Skywalker playing guitar?