Author: dig

  • AG2026_1233556a slips in and sing

    AG2026_1233556a
    AG2026_1233556a

    In the very early morning 
    Long before Dawn time 
    I lay down in the paddock 
    And listened to the cold song of the grass. 
    Between my fingers the green blades, 
    And the green blades pressed against my body. 
    “Who is she leaning so heavily upon me?” 
    Sang the grass. 
    “Why does she weep on my bosom,
    Mingling her tears with the tears of my mystic lover?
    Foolish little earth child! 
    It is not yet time. 
    One day I shall open my bosom 
    And you shall slip in—but not weeping. 
    Then in the early morning 
    Long before Dawn time 
    Your lover will lie in the paddock. 
    Between his fingers the green blades 
    And the green blades pressed against his body . . . 
    My song shall not sound cold to him 
    In my deep wave he will find the wave of your hair 
    In my strong sweet perfume, the perfume of your kisses. 
    Long and long he will lie there  . . . 
    Laughing—not weeping.”

    The Earth-Child in the Grass, Katherine Mansfield

    To be able to walk along and see
    the fierce green sun
    the meadow grass the tall gently bobbing weeds
    then to take a walk inside yourself
    and see trees tall as Tom Thumb
    It’s always raining here It never rains
    I’m strolling among the shadows of everyone
    I’ve ever loved
    But this morning I was flying with the birds
    Not knowing like the map there was a destination
    But it was fun
    Like making love on Tuesday instead of
    our customary Sunday afternoon
    I’ve learned to suffocate death
    and continue doing so all day

    Song, Paul Carroll

  • These moments

    AG2025_DSF6194b
    AG2025_DSF6194b

    For Lefebvre, ‘moments’ are intense experiences in which everyday life is suspended and possibilities for authenticity, creativity or transcendence are opened up. These moments – whether aesthetic, amorous or revolutionary – reveal the potential richness of existence, both individual and collective. This approach seeks to break with the reproduction of relations of domination.

  • Painting and poetry and music will show us where

    El Michels Affair – Shimmy Shimmy Ya. Enter The 37th Chamber, 2009.


    —after Frank O’Hara

    You have been smiling across the table at your date
    with a sesame seed stuck in your teeth.

    You will gain sophistication, become accepted by Reader’s
    Digest, and retire in Puyallup.

    In your next life you will be a teacher
    and no one will ever call you by your first name.

    After your next vacation you will come home
    and discover that your neighbors have redecorated
    in the style of Iowa trailer court.

    If you feel like you’re getting old,
    secretly plant zucchini in your neighbor’s flowerbeds.

    Avoid people who iron their sheets
    or roll their socks & underwear.

    Painting and poetry and music will show us where we should
    be going, not the senate or tv news.

    The next thermos bottle you see will actually
    be a listening device made in Korea.

    All the people in this restaurant
    are glad that they are not you.

    New Lines for Fortune Cookies, James Masao Mitsui

  • among the ordinary beautiful

    AG2023-GUA-Document-vinyl-053023b-page004
    AG2023-GUA-Document-vinyl-053023b-page004

    https://www.tumblr.com/birdbird/824043260811132928/time-august-4-2026-at-0235pm-link

    Gabriel Orozco, Untitled (Computer generated circles and squares). 1995.



    One narcissus among the ordinary beautiful
    flowers, one unlike all the others! She pulled,
    stooped to pull harder—
    when, sprung out of the earth
    on his glittering terrible
    carriage, he claimed his due.
    It is finished. No one heard her.
    No one! She had strayed from the herd.

    (Remember: go straight to school.
    This is important, stop fooling around!
    Don't answer to strangers. Stick
    with your playmates. Keep your eyes down.)
    This is how easily the pit
    opens. This is how one foot sinks into the ground.

    Persephone, Falling, Rita Dove
  • And the lovely repetition

    AG2022-FG_1011433a
    AG2022-FG_1011433a,
    Taken on November 26, 2022

    Small Oscillations Among Ordinary Forms.


    It is a kind of love, is it not?
    How the cup holds the tea,
    How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
    How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
    Or toes. How soles of feet know
    Where they’re supposed to be.
    I’ve been thinking about the patience
    Of ordinary things, how clothes
    Wait respectfully in closets
    And soap dries quietly in the dish,
    And towels drink the wet
    From the skin of the back.
    And the lovely repetition of stairs.
    And what is more generous than a window?

    The Patience of Ordinary Things, Pat Schneider

  • To practice is to repeat

    Daffodils_triptychii-Document-020123-page001-003
    Daffodils_triptychii-Document-020123-page001-003

    Poetry and the Turning World: Money, Sarah Howe and Sandeep Parmar.

    I have yet to read An Uncomplicated Man, Emily Wilson. I’m sure it’s a good read.


    “Let us,” he said
    “make man,”

    as if ?he had to ask
    someone’s permission

    even if always
    only

    his own.


    To practice is to repeat
    what has not yet
    occurred.


    We get signals
    from the future.

    We’re invited to grow
    by entwining,

    twinning.

    Being duplicitous?


    A rose by any other
    rose

    is its own
    paradise

    of luminous
    folds.

    The Fold, Rae Armantrout

  • AG2026_1233475a

    AG2026_1233475a

    “The initial theory at Hugging Face was that some group of humans had harnessed an A.I. to conduct the attack on its behalf.” (New Yorker)

    Anatomy of a Frontier Lab Agent Intrusion: A Technical Timeline of the July 2026 Incident (Hugging Face)

  • a signal permitting us to go

    AG2026_1233472a
    AG2026_1233472a

                        for Frank O’Hara

    Frank, we have become an urban species
         at this moment many millions of humans are
              standing on some corner waiting like me

    for a signal permitting us to go,
         a signal depicting a small pale pedestrian
              to be followed by a sea-green light

    we do not use this opportunity
         to tune in to eternity
              we bounce upon our toes impatiently

    It is a Thursday morning, Frank, and I feel
         rather acutely alive but I need a thing of beauty
              or a theory of beauty to reconcile me

    to the lumps of garbage I cannot love enclosed
         in these tough shiny black plastic bags
              heaped along the curb of 97th Street, my street—

    like a hideous reminder of the fate we all expect
         letting the bulky slimy truth of waste
              attack our aesthetic sense and joie de vivre

    reliably every Thursday. Let me scan the handsome amber
         columned and corniced dwellings
              reflected in rear windows of parked cars, let me wish

    luck to their hives of intimacies, people
         in kitchens finishing a morning coffee
              saying see you later to the ones they live with

    Let me raise my eyes to the blue veil adrift
         between and above the artifice of buildings
              and at last I am slipping through a flaw in time

    where the string of white headlights approaching, the string
         of red taillights departing, seem as if
              they carry some kind of message

    perhaps the message is that one block west
         Riverside Park extends its length
              at the edge of Manhattan like the downy arm

    of a tender, amusing, beautiful lover,
         and after that is the deathless river
              but waiting for the light feels like forever

    Waiting for the Light, Alicia Ostriker