Amerikosh

in anticipation for Howl to come out, another one of ginzburg's poems. enjoy

America

Allen Ginsberg

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

Bobabs, baby

Baobabs. They are very cool trees.
Adansonia, is a genus of eight species of tree, six native to Madagascar, one native to mainland Africa and one to Australia, that are commonly referred to as Baobabs. The mainland African species is also found on Madagascar, but it is not native to that island.
It has also been made famous by a certain Petit Prince (in hindsight, I'm pretty his planet's orbit was the autistic spectrum...).

Chapitre VChaque jour j'apprenais quelque chose sur la planète, sur le départ, sur le voyage. Ça venait tout doucement, au hasard des réflexions. C'est ainsi que, le troisième jour, je connus le drame des baobabs.

Cette fois-ci encore ce fut grâce au mouton, car brusquement le petit prince m'interrogea, comme pris d'un doute grave:

- C'est bien vrai, n'est-ce pas, que les moutons mangent les arbustes ?

- Oui. C'est vrai.

- Ah! Je suis content.

Je ne compris pas pourquoi il était si important que les moutons mangeassent les arbustes. Mais le petit prince ajouta:

- Par conséquent ils mangent aussi les baobabs ?

Je fis remarquer au petit prince que les baobabs ne sont pas des arbustes, mais des arbres grand comme des églises et que, si même il emportait avec lui tout un troupeau d'éléphants, ce troupeau ne viendrait pas à bout d'un seul baobab.

L'idée du troupeau d'éléphants fit rire le petit prince:

- Il faudrait les mettre les uns sur les autres...

Mais il remarqua avec sagesse:

- Les baobabs, avant de grandir, ça commence par être petit.

- C'est exact ! Mais pourquoi veux-tu que tes moutons mangent les petits baobabs ?

Il me répondit: "Ben! Voyons!" comme s'il s'agissait là d'une évidence. Et il me fallut un grand effort d'intelligence pour comprendre à moi seul ce problème.

Et en effet, sur la planète du petit prince, il y avait comme sur toutes les planètes, de bonnes herbes et de mauvaises herbes. Par conséquent de bonnes graines de bonnes herbes et de mauvaises graines de mauvaises herbes. Mais les graines sont invisibles. Elles dorment dans le secret de la terre jusqu'à ce qu'il prenne fantaisie à l'une d'elles de se réveiller. Alors elle s'étire, et pousse d'abord timidement vers le soleil une ravissante petite brindille inoffensive. S'il s'agît d'une brindille de radis ou de rosier, on peut la laisser pousser comme elle veut. Mais s'il s'agit d'une mauvaise plante, il faut arracher la plante aussitôt, dès qu'on a su la reconnaître. Or il y avait des graines terribles sur la planète du petit prince... c'étaient les graines de baobabs. Le sol de la planète en était infesté. Or un baobab, si l'on s'y prend trop tard, on ne peut jamais plus s'en débarrasser. Il encombre toute la planète. Il la perfore de ses racines. Et si la planète est trop petite, et si les baobabs sont trop nombreux, ils la font éclater.

"C'est une question de discipline, me disait plus tard le petit prince. Quand on a terminé sa toilette du matin, il faut faire soigneusement la toilette de la planète. Il faut s'astreindre régulièrement à arracher les baobabs dès qu'on les distingue d'avec les rosiers auxquels ils ressemblent beaucoup quand ils sont très jeunes. C'est un travail très ennuyeux, mais très facile."

Et un jour il me conseilla de m'appliquer à réussir un beau dessin, pour bien faire entrer ça dans la tête des enfants de chez moi. "S'ils voyagent un jour, me disait-il, ça pourra leur servir. Il est quelquefois sans inconvénient de remettre à plus tard son travail. Mais, s'il s'agit des baobabs, c'est toujours une catastrophe. J'ai connu une planète, habitée par un paresseux. Il avait négligé trois arbustes..."

Et, sur les indications du petit prince, j'ai dessiné cette planète-là. Je n'aime guère prendre le ton d'un moraliste. Mais le danger des baobabs est si peu connu, et les risques courus par celui qui s'égarerait dans un astéroïde sont si considérables, que, pour une fois, je fais exception à ma réserve. Je dis: "Enfants! Faites attention aux baobabs !" C'est pour avertir mes amis d'un danger qu'ils frôlaient depuis longtemps, comme moi-même, sans le connaître, que j'ai tant travaillé ce dessin-là. La leçon que je donnais en valait la peine. Vous vous demanderez peut-être: Pourquoi n'y a-t-il pas, dans ce livre, d'autres dessins aussi grandioses que le dessin des baobabs ? La réponse est bien simple: J'ai essayé mais je n'ai pas pu réussir. Quand j'ai dessiné les baobabs j'ai été animé par le sentiment de l'urgence.

Rafiki, in the Lion King, lived in a baobab.

Tabaldi is the name of the Baobab tree in Sudan and its fruit is Gongalis. Baobab's trunk is used as a tank to store water. People in west Sudan use the hollow in the trunk to save water in the rain season. Gongalis is used to make juice or to cure stomach and other diseases.

In South Africa, there is a pub located inside a hollowed out Baobab that has apparently been carbon dated at 6,000 years old.

Singer Regina Spektor has a song called "Baobabs."

And of course, Asians have found in this majestic tree inspiration for - what else - a new Pepsi flavour.

What do you think of ditching summer vacations around the world and instead meet up after Christmas time in say Switzerland or something after this year? Maybe spend one more year in Montreal for new years and from then on have some sick vacations with no tourists.. Not only that but pretty much the only fun time when we can all be at the same place is summer and I know we'd all rather to spend summers at home..

Marianopolis is good, I really like my english class called beat generation and my philosophy class.. my teachers are so strange but smart guys.. my contemporary cinema teacher is such a weird pedophile it's scary (Rene Rozon)

goodbye

The Professionalization of Dentistry in 18th Century London

Way more interesting than that title lets on!

Well, I'll go to college and i'll learn some big words...

Hellou,

you know when you hear a song and you just keep it on repeat because it's your new favorite song for like the next 6 days?

yeah...



Enjoy!
P.S. that album is great, not everyone's cup of tea though..

George Soros just donated 100 Million $'s to Human Rights Watch

That's just swell.

Girl raised from birth by Wolf Blitzer

Girl Raised From Birth By Wolf Blitzer Taken Into Protective Custody

Cold Calls

I'm cold-calling today, to book interviews for research. Yesterday, I gathered a list of what must be 100 people at least, from the charity I used to work at - Bail for Immigration Detainees. I have a

Name, nationality, age, phone number, year arrived in UK, date detained.

Name, nationality, age, phone number, arrived in UK, date detained.

Name, nationality, age, phone number, arrived in UK, date detained.

Name, nationality, age, phone number, arrived in UK, date detained.

Name, nationality, age, phone number, arrived in UK, date detained.

And so on, about 100 of them in a scrawl I hope to be able to decipher later! Many, maybe half, I suspect, will no longer be at the Detention Centre in question - they'll have been removed from the country (deported, in the early morning, before others are awake to make a kerfuffle, perhaps?), Released into the community to await the outcome of their immigration case (though not allowed by law to work and forced to live on coupons), Granted asylum, perhaps? They might still be in there, denied asylum, but waiting for the government of Iran/Lebanon/Eritrea/the Palestinian Authority to issue "Emergency Travel Documents" for their return (which can take years, if they drag their feet or deny that the person is a national. All that time in limbo status!). Maybe they've been moved to a different centre across the UK, as happens incredibly frequently and for no apparent reason? (there is an argument that the Border Agency moves people around so much because it prevents the formation of personal ties with staff, and severs links of support with networks of friends and charity actors. The threat of being moved also falls into the incentive system: because some centres are much nicer and friendlier than others, "troublemakers" can be credibly threatened with being moved to "one of those awful places that feels like a prison".

It's funny, to have snippets right in front of me of major, major dates and details about strangers' lives: Mr. Osunde from Nigeria and his date of detention earlier this year, Mr. Kamel, a Syrian Kurd who arrived in the UK in 2004 and who, I noted, speaks Arabic and "some English" (important for interview purposes - how can one give informed consent of one doesn't know what 'anonymized', 'confidential', and 'completely voluntary' mean? If they can't understand, perhaps, that I am not with the government, that I can't help them with their asylum claim, but that I am just a 'researcher'? That's why, when I make my first calls today to book interviews to be conducted in the visitor hall of Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre, 6 miles north of here, I'll look for someone who speaks good English, who's been in the UK a while, who is likely to make this inaugural interview experience relatively smooth.

Alright Marouf, Mounir, Michael, Mohamed, Saheed, Lennox, Manjit.... I'm a'comin!

Forgetfulness

A poem by Billy Collins

Theme song in movie "This is England"

I saw "This is England" on netflix this weekend and it's a 10/10. You guys need to see it ASAP.

Here's the theme song:

I thought to myself, that German sniper is as scared and lonely as I am. So I thought, I'll play his love song