Sven Birkerts’ beautiful post-election essay Scratch takes that odd mull of emotions so many of us have been feeling:

The anxious fear that I can’t get said what I need to, that I’m no longer clear about where we’re going, and that even if I did know, my words would do no good at all. Not just my words, but words in general. I can’t help it: when I get into these moods, no matter how I tilt my head, the whole proposition looks dicey. Everything pushes at me: the scatter and distraction of dailyness, the glut of our things, the fact that so few people seem to heed the things I care for. Not just books, but the whole inward-tending way of things. On these darker days I’m absolutely convinced that the idiotic shimmer has taken over, crowding everything else aside to the bright slick thump of some studio-generated piece of feel-good music.

and makes some sense of it by connecting it (via music) to the not so distant past:

All those dreamers waking up, everything inexplicably turning, changing, but not before leaving its traces—in the fine-grained details of atmosphere, in the songs, and for me, so I now discover, in the crackle I absorbed without noticing it, those endless few years when I lay on my bed, eyes closed, playing, over and over, my amplified scenarios of the life to come.

Read the entire essay here.

20 questions. Then post and tell me whether you won or lost. I won but we differed on some of my answers.

Ellen Meister is one of my favorite writers. Here are a couple of her recent stories: Womb-O-Matic & Alone With Cooper.

oh man! I just love him anyway but when he gave Larry King shit for saying “bailiwick” I thought I was going to lose it. Jon Stewart for president!

hellooooo

I’m writing this from a hotel in Paramus, New Jersey. You’re jealous,r i g h t??? Okay, so I’ll be back home and more inclined to post stuff tomorrow night or Friday morning. Anyway, sorry to be lame but I’ve been typing non-stop (seriously) all day. And thanks. And sorry.

Okay.

Good night!

Woke up to snow on the ground (Allen’s grandmother–she is 96–told me a few months ago that it would not snow until the brooks are full. The brooks are now full and it has snowed).

When it first snows I always go back and read The Dead, if for no other reason (and there are many reasons to read it!) but that I can get to my favorite paragraph in all of literature:

Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. it was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

Chickens Come Home to Roost (be aware if you click on this link as there are graphic images of detainee torture) is a thoughtful essay in t r u t h o u t by Marjorie Cohn about how Bush’s Middle Eastern policies are creating not solving problems:

Bush was elected because many see him as a strong man who will protect us against the terrorists. Ironically, it is Bush’s imperialist policies that invite increased terror upon us. In the words of Malcolm X, “The chickens have come home to roost.”

Leigh Hughes and her trusty staff have done it again–come out with another kick ass issue of edifice WRECKED. Within you will find a wonderful combination of prose, poetry and image.

Curriculum Vitae

by Lisel Mueller

So I got some Yerba Mate tea because it is supposed to be a more heathful energy-inducing drink than coffee. Anyway, I just drank a cup of it and while I certainly feel energized, I’m not sure if it’s from the tea, the fact that I actually slept last night or because the stuff tasted so foul that I couldn’t help but wake up (it has also produced a disquieting tingling sensation in my mouth). I’m going to give it a couple more tries to see if I like it better. Maybe I’ll add some honey to it or something.

a talented writer and lovely human being, Maryanne Stahl. If you have not read her books, I can’t recommend them strongly enough (although, truth be told I’ve not yet read her second one, but I plan on it based on the strength and beauty of her first one).

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=read08-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0451206339&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lc1=0000ff&bg1=ffffff&bc1=&lt1=_blank&f=ifrhttp://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=read08-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0451208668&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lc1=0000ff&bg1=ffffff&bc1=&lt1=_blank&f=ifr

Read it and weep. Three fabulous stories by three wildly talented women:

Memory, Foam by Jordan Rosenfeld

Goodbye, Street by Marcia Lynx-Qualey

Barbie Toes by Theresa Boyar