May Day
It is May Day in San Francisco, and the “general strike” is underway. Sort of.
I got off the Bus at Powell and Market and nearly fell into a ring of janitors protesting the Westfield Centre, yelling in Spanish about the 99%. They’re asking for a twenty-cent raise. Their signs say things like, “Westfield Unfair”, “Janitors Unite!” and “Westfield Gets Rich on the Backs of Its Janitors”.
Inside, an Occupy leader stood on the very top floor of the rotunda, staring down into the open air and rousing shoppers to join him in chants: “When I say Union, you say Yes”!, “When I say ‘People’, you say ‘Power’!”, and “This is what a union looks like!” Everyone clustered around the railing and looked up at him as they shouted. There were only maybe forty of us spread over four levels, but there was a nice echo in the place. Other than the handful of protesters and the security guards and the few shopgirls standing at their kiosks, the place was deserted. Below us, the white marble floor of the food-court gleamed, blank and clean. On a normal Tuesday lunch-hour, you look down on a swarm of hair and feet and coats and shopping bags. Not today. Everywhere else, the mall was silent.
I went back outside and watched the janitors again. A clump of police formed a tight-knit, pudgy, navy circle - perhaps they were brainstorming. At the sight of them, I got a little nervous. I started to walk toward Union Square. Was I nervous because I expected to run across some roadblocks, or a news-van, or more righteous screaming people?
No. I was nervous because I knew I wasn’t going to find any of those things. This world is not what it once was. It was a beautiful clear day and Market Street was palpably quiet.
I set foot in Union square blinded by sunshine and silence. I wanted to see for myself that absolutely nothing was happening. In the Barney’s New York window, a bunch of tiny American flags spun on a bunch of tiny record players. Perhaps I should have been disappointed? After all, it’s May 1, 2012, and this is San Francisco. If ever there was a time and place for things to change, this is it. But maybe they did.
How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind’s labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not laguage but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.
—“The Forgotten Dialect Of The Heart”, Jack GIlbert
POETS.org: 3rd Poem
Holy shit. I’m on this list!!
Where’s Rob? Not on this list:
Aase Berg
Abigail Child
Aby Cooperman
Ada Limon
Adeena Karasick
Adriana Grant
Adrienne Rich
Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Akilah Oliver
Aleida Rodriguez
alexandria volk
Alexis Orgera
Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Alice B. Fogel
Alice Fulton
Alice Jones
Alice Notley
…
When I’m on the Look Out’s balcony.
Just watched “Shane” for the first time as an adult. I loved it so much I can’t actually talk about it, so here’s a little bit of the score, and a picture.
Just watched “Flesh and the Devil”, a silent drama starring Greta Garbo that’s actually totally about guys being gay for each other.
Garbo is one of those entities that might be overrated, but isn’t. And as phony as it sounds to talk about “star quality” in this day and age, that’s what it is. She isn’t really better looking than any other starlet, nor is she a brilliant chameleon of a thespian or anything. She’s just so much more alive than anybody else on screen with her at any given moment.
I’ve recently been reading a book about how to ace a theatrical audition. The premise is that since you really don’t have time to develop a “character”, you have to exploit your own life and emotions: you should be more fully yourself than you’ve ever been in your ordinary life. That’s Garbo all over.
![so30s:
Queen Elizabeth, Buckingham Palace Gardenby Cecil Beaton, 1939Beaton struck up an instant rapport with the Queen. His diary reveals that she was an active participant in the staging of her romantic portraits, suggesting suitable dresses and accessories. Here, Beaton combined a painterly eye with the elegant style of his Vogue fashion studies. Like those, each royal portrait would be carefully retouched under Beaton’s instruction, to define facial features and trim silhouettes.
from Queen Elizabeth II by Cecil Beaton exhibition at Victoria and Albert Museum [ 8 February - 22 April 2012]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0tnufX8Nt1qas9gro1_1280.jpg)
Queen Elizabeth, Buckingham Palace Garden
by Cecil Beaton, 1939
Beaton struck up an instant rapport with the Queen. His diary reveals that she was an active participant in the staging of her romantic portraits, suggesting suitable dresses and accessories. Here, Beaton combined a painterly eye with the elegant style of his Vogue fashion studies. Like those, each royal portrait would be carefully retouched under Beaton’s instruction, to define facial features and trim silhouettes.from Queen Elizabeth II by Cecil Beaton exhibition at Victoria and Albert Museum [ 8 February - 22 April 2012]
(via ninme)
