11/24/2012
11/23/2012
Feb 29, 1958 By Allen Ginsberg
Last nite I dreamed of T.S. Eliot
welcoming me to the land of dream
Sofas couches fog in England
Tea in his digs Chelsea rainbows
curtains on his windows, fog seeping in
the chimney but a nice warm house
and an incredibly sweet hooknosed
Eliot he loved me, put me up,
gave me a couch to sleep on,
conversed kindly, took me serious
asked my opinion on Mayakovsky
I read him Corso Creeley Kerouac
advised Burroughs Olson Huncke
the bearded lady in the Zoo, the
intelligent puma in Mexico City
6 chorus boys from Zanzibar
who chanted in wornout polygot
Swahili, and the rippling rythyms
of Ma Rainey and Vachel Lindsay.
On the Isle of the Queen
we had a long evening's conversation
Then he tucked me in my long
red underwear under a silken
blanket by the fire on the sofa
gave me English Hottie
and went off sadly to his bed,
Saying ah Ginsberg I am glad
to have met a fine young man like you.
At last, I woke ashamed of myself.
Is he that good and kind? Am I that great?
What's my motive dreaming his
manna? What English Department
would that impress? What failure
to be perfect prophet's made up here?
I dream of my kindness to T.S. Eliot
wanting to be a historical poet
and share in his finance of Imagery-
overambitious dream of eccentric boy.
God forbid my evil dreams come true.
Last nite I dreamed of Allen Ginsberg.
T.S. Eliot would've been ashamed of me.
11/22/2012
Turkey claims Iraqi government becoming unstable
Turkey claims Iraqi government becoming unstable - UPI.com: "Turkish daily newspaper Today's Zaman reports that 12 Iraqi troops were killed this week in clashes with Kurdish paramilitary forces known as the Peshmerga.Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying Ankara was concerned that tensions between Baghdad and the semiautonomous Kurdish government could escalate into sectarian warfare."
11/21/2012
USrael 'spied' on Nicolas Sarkozy presidency
US 'spied' on Nicolas Sarkozy presidency - Telegraph: "An alleged attack by the virus took place in May, after the United Nations had issued an urgent warning to guard against the Flame virus.
The sophisticated spyware , which is one of the most powerful bugs in history and around 100 times the size of most malicious software – was purpose built to hack into computers in Iran for details of the country’s nuclear programme .
The Trojan bug worms its way into computer systems and turns infected machines into listening devices."
The sophisticated spyware , which is one of the most powerful bugs in history and around 100 times the size of most malicious software – was purpose built to hack into computers in Iran for details of the country’s nuclear programme .
The Trojan bug worms its way into computer systems and turns infected machines into listening devices."
Erdogan accuses Maliki of leading Iraq into civil war
Middle East Online::Erdogan accuses Maliki of leading Iraq into civil war in latest outburst:.: "is comments came after Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki issued a warning to Kurdish forces in the autonomous Kurdistan region in the north not to advance towards government troop positions following deadly clashes in the area last week.Relations between Baghdad and Kurdistan have been fraught since the establishment of a new military command covering disputed territory, and over various other long-running disputes including how to share the region's oil wealth.
Iraq and Turkey have been at odds over several issues, including the Syrian conflict, the Turkish military presence in Iraq to pursue Kurdish rebels, and the oil dispute."
11/20/2012
5.3 Million Children in Iraq Lack Basic Rights
Thanks, Dubya. Thanks, Tony Blair:
More than five million children in Iraq are deprived of "basic rights," the United Nations said in a statement on Tuesday, calling for urgent action."One in every third child in Iraq, 5.3 million children, is still currently deprived of many of their fundamental rights," it quoted Marzio Babille, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Iraq representative, as saying."UNICEF calls on all stakeholders -- in government, civil society, the private sector and the international community -- to urgently invest in these children to respect their dignity and give them an equal chance to become healthy, productive young citizens of the new Iraq," Babille said.
Violations of children's rights in Iraq include inadequate access to and promotion of health services, lack of access to quality education, violence in schools and families, and psychological trauma from years of bloody unrest, the statement said.
Iraqis faced decades of war and sanctions under dictator Saddam Hussein, and bloody sectarian violence in the years following his overthrow in a 2003 US-led invasion.
And basic services, especially for vulnerable populations including widows, children and people displaced by violence, remain starkly lacking.
William Burroughs On 'The Valley'
The Valley runs from Brownsville to Mission, a strip of ground sixty miles long and twenty miles wide. The area is irrigated from the Rio Grande River. Before irrigation, nothing grew here but rnesquite and cactus. Now it is one of the richest farm areas in the U.S.
A three-lane highway runs from Brownsville to Mission, and the towns of the Valley string out along this highway. There are no cities in the Valley, and no country. Tle area is a vast suburb of flimsy houses. The Valley is flat as a table. Nothing grows there but crops, citrus and palms brought from California. A hot dry wind starts every afternoon and blows until sundown. The Valley is citrus country. Pink and red grapefruit grow there that will not grow anywhere else. Citrus country is real-estate-promoted country, country of "Bide-A-Wee" tourist courts and old people waiting around to die. The whole Valley has the impermanent look of a camp, or carnival. Soon the suckers will all be dead and the pitchmen will go somewhere else.
During the Twenties, real estate operators brought trainloads of prospects down to the Valley and let them pick grapefruit right off the trees and eat it. One of these pioneer promoters is said to have constructed a large artificial lake and sold plots all around it. "The lake will sub-irrigate your groves." As soon as the last sale closed, he turned off the water and disappeared with his lake, leaving the prospects sitting there in a desert.
As put down by the realtor, citrus is a flawless set-up for old people who want to retire and take life easy. The grove owner does nothing. A citrus association cares for the grove and markets the fruit, and hands the owner a check. Actually, citrus is a risky deal for the small investor. Over a period of time the average return is high, especially on the pink and ruby red fruit. But a small operator cannot ride out the years when the prices are low, or the yield of fruit small.
A premonition of doom hangs over the Valley. You have to make it now before something happens, before the black fly ruins the citrus, before support prices are taken off the cotton, before the flood, the hurricane, the freeze, the long dry spell when there is no water to irrigate, before the Border Patrol shuts off your wetbacks. The threat of disaster is always there, persistent and disquieting as the afternoon wind. The Valley was desert, and it will be desert again. Meanwhile you try to make yours while there is still time.
Old men sitting in real estate offices say, "Well, this is nothing new. I've seen all this before. I remember back in '28. .."
But a new factor, something that nobody has seen before, is changing the familiar aspect of disaster like the slow beginnings of a disease, so that no one can say just when it began.
Death is absence of life. Wherever life withdraws, death and rot move in. Whatever it is-orgones, life force -that we all have to score for all the time, there is not much of it in the Valley. Your food rots before you can get it home. Milk sours before you can finish the meal. Tle Valley is a place where the new anti-life force is breaking through.
Death hangs over the Valley like an invisible smog. The place exerts a curious magnetism on the moribund. The dying cell gravitates to the Valley:
Gary West came from Minneapolis. He had saved up twenty thousand dollars from operating a dairy farm during the War. With this money he bought a house and grove in the Valley. The place was on the far side of Mission, where irrigation stops and the desert begins. Five acres of Ruby Reds and a house in I920 Spanish style. There he sat with his mother, his wife, and two children. In his eyes you could see the baffled, frightened, resentful looks of a man who feels the stirring in his cells of a fatal disease process. He was not sick at that time, but his cells were looking for death and West knew it. He wanted to sell out and leave the Valley.
"I feel closed in here. You have to go so far to get out of the Valley," he would say.
He began running from one project to another. A plantation in Mississippi, a winter vegetable set-up in Mexico. He went back to Minnesota and bought into a cow feed company. He did this with the down payment on the sale of his Valley property. But he couldn't keep away from the Valley. He would run like a hooked fish until the drag of his dying cells tired him out, and the Valley reeled him in. He tried out various,illnesses. A throat infection settled in his heart. He lay in the McAllen Hospital and tried to see himself as a man of business impatient to get up and back to work. His projects became more and more preposterous.
"That man is crazy," said Roy, the real estate man. "He don't know what he wants."
Only the Valley was real to West now. There was no other place for him to go. 'The other places were fantasy. Listening to him talk, you got the uncanny feeling that places like Milwaukee didn't exist.
11/19/2012
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)