Fiddling While Rome Yearns

This here back&forth we’ve been
having this summer, Graham:
that’s IT, damnit. Somewhat
sustainable converse-action:
on going prerequisite to
ah, humanities and
fine art

Admit it: you love it—I bet you
five dollars: declaring, exposing,
claiming, decrying, emphasizing,
posing, surmising, guessing—all
for the sake of argument, of
what’s a college for?

To cry Theater! Theater
in a crowded fire!

Dear Graham,

This kind of cerebral and affective back&forth,
rope pull, 3-legged race & trivial pursuit: fooling
around with ideas, wonder, possibility = a certain
amount of un-postponed joy, surely, among the
academically inclined when they aren’t caught
up in work-program, service-project obligation
and can indulge the guess & mess that mothers
invention (how else?).

But of course there’s no guarantee except for
muddle —we can count on muddle—and if tidy
emerges, well. didn’t we assist in the emergency?
Joyful! Joyful! Beep if you love School Mode!

Anyway, I meant to be saying:

This kind of academic tom-foolery you & I
have been indulging this summer of leisure
time & slow recreation does not advance the
understanding of German immigration in the
19^th century nor the implications of Islamic
ghetto populations in 18^th. c Europe; shines no
light on magical realism or cognitive models
in linguistic study, stochastic process: it’s
cultivation of noise; nor the understanding
of string theories I’ll be darned if I can wrap
my mind around that…

Nor does it advance our concern with bugs and
screens and such like samples of ongoing house-
keeping (eco-logic): the scheduling of transition
sessions and service dates and stuff like that: eco-
concerns always with us, Mazlovian bottom-line
neediness, necessary & unceasing joy postponers
—let me just take care of business first: &
THEN joy to the whirl, you’ll see. .

Nor does it address the fall of banks & long lines
of people determined to get theirs, fires, floods,
draught and tornado damage, the rising cost of
gas & everything else—our kalinowskian in-
denial illusory pandering in the face of environ-
mental systemic paradigm shifts, sustainability
adjustments and environmental recalibrations
help help this guy is falling, plow under your
tomato crop: there’s no more market for them
when salmonella rears its ugly head.

Be Not HERE Now
but be anywhere everywhere
ELSE: the media saturating us
with our global village idiocy
and so this fooling-with-thought-
&-image and hmm….seems to
me & what-if and say have
you ever…& you know: it
just struck me stunned stupid…
feels like fiddling while Rome Burns
and all hands should be on desk
putting bread on the table & you
can fix them holes in the roof when
it stops raining and the sun comes
out when it won’t be necessary and
then of course they’ll be other things
to do to tend to to get R done…