The Unswung Bat

Tuesday, November 04, 2008
 
WE WON!

In my words: Damn right.

In the words of a friend: SUCK ON IT JOHN MCCAIN, YOU LITTLE BASTARD!

AHHHHHHHH that feels so good. So good. Like, eight years good.

- posted by Andre @ 8:04 PM Permanent link
Monday, November 03, 2008
 
Action Items: Great Raymonds in History

For future action, here below is a Google-compiled list, reproduced exactly as it was compiled to me by Google, of "Great Raymonds in History." The nature of each Raymond is shown as Google computed it, and thus it is how each person would represent themselves if only they could speak to us.

A Google-compiled list of 20 Great Raymonds in History and their Nature


1. THE GREAT RAYMOND (MAGICIAN, SUBJECT OF FASCINATING FACTS) | www.magictricks.com/raymond/

2. RAYMOND A SPRUANCE (NAVAL HISTORIAN, AUTHOR OF BOOK: "THE QUIET WARRIOR") | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_A._Spruance

3. ALONZO PEARIS RAYMOND (D. 1904 "as a consequence of great exposure, hard work and hardships.") | freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~raymondfamily/alonzo.html

4. RAYMOND BADACH (DELI OWNER) | www.raymondsnj.com/history.html

5. ERIC S. RAYMOND (HACKER HISTORIAN) | oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/raymond.html

6. DANIEL RAYMOND (ECONOMIST FROM HISTORY) HISTORY ARTICLE: | muse.jhu.edu/journals/history_of_political_economy/v032/32.3frey.html

7. RAYMOND APPLE (JEWISH HISTORIAN) | www.unswpress.com.au/isbn/9780868409276.htm

8. RAYMOND HOOD (ARCHITECT, ROCKEFELLER CENTRE) | www.archiplanet.org/buildings/Rockefeller_Center.html

9. RAYMOND IBRAHIM (AUTHOR, TODAY IN HISTORY) | jihadwatch.org/archives/023059.php

10. RAYMOND (OF DAIMBERT, GODFREY AND RAYMOND, THE WRITERS OF A LETTER TO THE POPE) | history.hanover.edu/texts/1stcru3.html

11. RAYMOND A FOSS (FAMOUS POET) | famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/raymond_a__foss/poems/22180

12. ROY RAYMOND (CALIFORNIA CABERNET MAKER WITH SONS) | www.epinions.com/review/fddk-Wines-By_Name-All-Raymond.../fddk-review-BE7-51F72EC-38B8685F-prod1

13. RAYMOND A BEHR, DR. (PEDIATRIC/ADOLESCENT PSYCHIATRIST) | www.healthgrades.com/directory_search/physician/profiles/dr-md-reports/Dr-Raymond-Behr-MD-EBC93EEA.cfm

14. RAYMOND R SKYE (WAMPUM HISTORIAN) | www.realpeopleshistory.com/raymond-r-skye

15. RAYMOND JOHN CHAMBERS (HISTORICALLY SIGNIFICANT ACCOUNTANT) | Findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3933/is_/ai_n8862550

16. KANDLER, MRS. RAYMOND (EDITH) | boards.ancestry.com.au/surnames.kandler/35/mb.ashx

17. RAYMOND GUBBAY (PROVIDER OF CLASSICAL MUSIC TICKETS) | www.raymondgubbay.co.uk/composers.asp

18. BARBARA RAYMOND (LONGTIME WESTPORTER) | www.westportnow.com/index.php?/v2/comments/longtime_westporter_barbara_raymond_dies_at_83/

19. URI RAYMOND (PATRIARCH, RAYMOND'S HARDWARE, PORT SANILHAC MI) | www.raymondhardware.com/AboutUs.chtml

20. SAINT RAYMOND OF PENAFORT (SAINT) | www.saintraymond.net/history.shtml

- posted by Andre @ 2:09 PM Permanent link
Friday, October 10, 2008
 
Obviously

Unfiled yuppies coexist interminably in the literature.

- posted by Andre @ 6:22 PM Permanent link
 
Dip, dip and sing

We have reached the middle of the palindrome
ladies and gentlemen, thank you. you may now
split and go either way you think. it is the
same unless you start to push too hard on it
                  

- posted by Andre @ 5:49 PM Permanent link
 
Strong 18 Strong

Falling in a whole sky, your small elongates, and perspective webs sticking out from yours, radiating higher is dropping.
like a long head stranded across belly, knees, feet and hungry and innerarms.
you,

Oversung, you did, to reach here, or--
                  Now it's a cloud white undertow every smallest vaporshape scaling visciously up the outs lowing from your skin. How freezing in your aw.
--overcold? Outerthought? Bubbled, as in the
seed hatching in the fruit?
And in the blank behind the season [                  ] wasnthere.

Wondering your gravity...
or the equivalence of the distinct principles
that must be the same, but only in a small enough space
and your form always escaping forever into form






-

And far away may find a land where both our hearts may rest.

- posted by Andre @ 4:52 PM Permanent link
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
 
From this valley they say you are going

My grandmother died on Saturday. I heard this Monday when I went home to meet mom on her return from a trip to Anchorage to be with the family. It was good--and unusual--that almost the whole immediate family lived there, especially considering how much they all moved around and have no roots in the area other than those they quickly fabricated. When they have no history, my maternal family will quickly stubborn one into existence.

This powerful bullheadedness is, as you might detect, a bit of a family emblem. Mom said that grandma died as she wanted to. She wanted only her immediate family there, none of her grandchildren, both to prevent us from having the memory of her dying and to draw in the most familiar people in her life while she waited. Mom also said she eventually wasn't even afraid. Though she still had bad stretches where she couldn't breathe and panicked, she was telling everyone that it was natural, what was happening to her.

So grandma had the death she wanted. She was the only person who still called me "Ani" (pronounce it "Onny"), a nickname my mom called me by when I was very young. Grandma always called me that--more the older I got, I swear. I don't remember the exact last time I said goodbye to her, and I'm glad for that. If I did, it would stand falsely as a summary of our connection. I'm left with a long and gappy memory of her. She was as stern and unbending a figure as I have ever known--more so, much more, than any other family member I can think of. But she wouldn't say anything against a view of yours she did not share. I know she was very kind and intelligent, perceptive and different, and worried. I miss my grandmother, and the question of when I, personally, lost her troubles me.

Her ability to find her good death leaves as strong an impression on me as the fatalistic sprit underlying all her wise deciding. She chose what was dearest and steadiest in her life to die beside, which is the first thought to almost bring tears to my eyes since the news began to hit. But she didn't choose to save her life when she could have. I'm unsatisfied we'll ever explain that habit well--is it unrequited curiosity that pulls you to die, fear and rationalization, disenchantment, disappointment, loneliness, weakness, shame, a complicated enjoyment of the object of your guilt, a simple act of mental avoidance? I don't know whether she reached any conclusion or was covered by an iron shield during the worst of it. I know my grandfather, who was exhausted, awoke magically ten minutes before she died, and she became calm when he came in to be with her.

If we have such control over the things we know about, if we can sweep away, more or less, the obstacles we'd hate to encounter even in the face of death, then why does it seem so right for everyone to do everything too late?


Love,

André

- posted by Andre @ 7:38 PM Permanent link
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
 
I'm not dead yet

This year will be hard. I'm not going to have any of my own time, and I'll have to be very clever to have enough time for the stuff I've committed to do. I think next year I'll go hollow out a boulder and live in hermitage, enjoying only the simple burdens and absences of a contemplative life, like crickets chirping, hunger, the inability to have odd bumps diagnosed or cuts properly treated, and the sense that those facelike imaginary patterns in foliage are actual people.

- posted by Andre @ 6:01 PM Permanent link
Sunday, November 18, 2007
 
1...1...1...1...

Aha! Wait, was that anything? You'll only hear about the tall man once, and it has to last you till the end. He always thought people looked better when you looked back at them: the subjects of the older photos, the people as they once were—grampa at 16. Great-great Aunt Denisa when she was alive, around World War I. That man with the mustache is probably her father, whose relation to you you could figure out through a tortuous trudge of thinking on your fingertips. See how he looks. He must've been thinking this. He looks proud, he thinks of his daughter like this, of us like this. It's the way you know how things went for him that helps you see him. The successful ones must have the roots and buds of their success showing. The ones who would fail already haunted by that pathetic awareness.

- posted by Andre @ 12:31 AM Permanent link
Friday, October 12, 2007
 
An adjective est mort

And you can have my overblown tragic pronouncements when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.

I like to use up all my adjectives for a day at once, so I can coast by on clever nouns, gentle pronouns, verbs, and truculent adverbs. Statements simply made ease the strain of communication. Poetry is a consolation of restriction...or in restriction...or just a restriction. I argued the point to a stump today. Is "today" adverbial?

The point is...the stump is...

That is to say...

What I'm getting at is...

...

Well, at least I'm not dead yet.

- posted by Andre @ 10:19 PM Permanent link


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