Fidel is Fading

Fidel

Fidel, commenting on Obama (Reflexiones), says: “I am going over sayings and matters I’ve collected for over half a century. I had the rare privilege of observing these occurrences for all that time. I receive information and I think calmly about these occurrences. I do not hope to enjoy such a privilege in four years, when the first presidential term of Obama ends.”

Fidel is fading. I know there’s some out there that will seize on the opportunity to offer a postprogressive critique of his crimes, his iron glove, his olive garb—and they’re not wrong—…but I’m sad. There’s something in his inflexibility, in—let’s face it—his absurd arrow-line inflexibility, that’s valuable. Well it’s flexing, and we’re losing something. The arrow bends, and we spend our time designing bows that look like a Dr. Suess machine.

Fidel comes from the woods. Fidel believes in the woods. Possibly, even: Fidel believes he is still in the woods. The next one wears no uniform, he wears a suit. Surely, this is superficial, and may have nothing to do with how he looks to a Cuban—but what are we talking about but precisely superficiality, the cycles of a sign? One sign is replaced by another, the bombastic signature of Fidel falls off the foreheads it has signed and it’s replaced by spidery signatures, made by crawling pens.

Let’s not be so stupid as to say this is the death/defeat of communism. Communism—at least as an actually existing system out there—is constantly and continually changing, and will probably not go away any sooner than capitalism (now there’s a dialectic to leave behind…). But as Fidel fades, so also fades a certain relationship to communism and the whole kingdom-come project. The kingdom is not come anymore, is not coming, but is now, now, now: patchworked together out of provisionality, a cessura indefinitely and arythmically falling through to the next note.

With this new president our horizons are opening up: a welcome change from the last eight years of battening down the hatches. Hope springs eternal, as they say. So it does, but neither horizons nor hope are blanks without content. Ours has yet to be filled in; everything could change in a minute; but the outlines are there: this is to be a strange kind of neoprogressivism, where helping hands prop up the old systems and care for the sick and poor, where mixed races pull both halves together, where justice is apportioned justly to the just and unjust, where freedoms are scrawled over legal pads. So with all that, why should I be upset about Fidel? Isn’t he laying in his bed, a different product of the same kind of thinking, cheering our hopes and critiquing our means? Yes, but Fidel (at least as symbol) is nothing if he isn’t serious. To the extent that Obama is completely every-fiber-of-my-body-serious he is ridiculous. Because we’re not.

Fidel fades. We can’t reach him anymore. We don’t have that sort of access to our futurity. Everything is so sophisticated now, so exact; the farmer’s almanac that listed two weeks of warmth in the spring, an early frost, gives way to the weather report of 85% chance of rain the day after tomorrow. But let’s not make this a eulogy for the astrologers. History buries forever. But we can mourn, we can move on, we can learn, we can rethink, we can rebuild, we can repeat.

¡Viva Fidel! ¡Viva La Revolución!

Wedding Service for Country Joe and Robin

I found this in BAMN: Outlaw Manifestos & Ephemera, which is pretty much the best book ever. Seems the table has been set for a second course of weddings recently; some are hungry and some have just eaten. So I thought I’d post it.

Dear friends, the pastor would say,

you are gathered together to witness,

he would continue, a ceremony of holy matrimony.

What a beautiful dress

Doesn’t he look nice

Is she crying

It’s just because she’s happy

And what has this got do with Vietnam

and what city is it this time?

Khe San, Memphis, Hue, Panama

No, it is San Francisco

The Mission

A slum

And what are Protestants doing in this neighborhood?

No matter

The Lord spoke unto Abraham and said

ye shall have faith in my wisdom and ye shall

do my bidding, ye shall convert the Indians and Niggers and spics

He always uses ye not you; he’s not talking to us

Ye shall return to the spirit of the Sierra Maestra

and ye shall be ascetics and make the world cry

with electric music and sad and funny theatre

for ye are the blessed children and carry the seed

of the new, always new, hope and faith that this

world shall be and it shall be and it shall be

Boroch ataw adenoih elehanu meloch olum

Yatta, yatta, yatta rabbi cut out all that shit and tell us why we’re here

You’re here because you’re invited except for the crashers

and you have to sit through this part because if you

want to eat the food and drink the booze you have

to sit through this part. That’s the way it’s always been.

There is a specter haunting the world

And it’s not Phil

and hammers and sickles castrated our parents, the good ones anyway

Eisenhower and Krushscev buried together

in Disneyland or Outer Space

and we have come back to the heritage of Moses

stuttering, stammering poor kike, diddled by

Egyptian chicks, and fed with the affluence

of slavery and one day like the good hippie

he was he said Feh, which was the old way to say Fuck it

and he said to his people let’s split and sure enough

on the way to the rural commune some Ingmar Bergman character

jumps out of a burning shrub of marijuana and says

I’m God buddy and you listen to me

And the sons of Moses listened and the preyed and

by the large they were peaceful but their music

got behind and they got righteous and full of pity for the Dead and they kill

Arabs and burn villages just like Americans,

just like Germans, just like Christians and Muslims

But enough of foreign religion

Mah Fellah Americans, says the Great Potato, we are

gathered here today for the purpose of national unity

The bride and groom grow edgy,

the audience murmurs,

What the fuck is he doing here

He’s everywhere

and we shall overcome for there’s an old American saying

oh no

When the going gets tough, the tough get going,

Get him out of here, this is a church

And just as our ancestors persevered in the past against

our deadly enemies, the Injuns, the Mescans and the Nigrahs

so too will we persevere against the comomists, the hippies

the kikes and all the other great unbelievers who menace our

precious civilization

And in our ears the Great Society responds with applause

led by George Meany

but George is alone

the applause is canned

the TV camera supers behind the face of the Great Potato

and it reveals

an electric razor and an oil well

and a painter taking a photograph and pasting it on his canvas

And there is a thin blue line of cops between the barbarians & Harlem

There is a specter haunting us today

And we don’t know what it is

My children join hands

At last say the parents

By virtue of the power invested in me

Who the hell would invest in him

and by the laws of Moses and of Jesus and of The Buddha

of the holy ghost and the millions of other ghosts who don’t give a damn

In Hanoi it is one day later, in Cuba it is 6 o’clock

and the workers come back from the cane field

We don’t know it but they are looking at our ceremony

They are saying

Stay as you are Country Joe

Stay as you are Robin

Do not fall prey to the temptations of the Great Potato

Stay with Moses, stay with Fidel, stay with Che

And the ghost of Che lurks in the church and his

death wail booms from the mighty Fenders

Don’t forget me

And the ghost of Malcolm stands guard against the blue eyed devils

and the burning monk takes the uncollected garbage with him

in a purification of the holy

And it is we who are holy

By the laws of all who were holy and who have invested this power in us to join and to cry and to make each hatred a deepening of love

Under the Laws of Moses, Jesus, Mohamed and Ho Chi Minh

Under the Laws of Ginsberg, O’Casey and Mayakovsky

How about the laws of California

How about the lynch law

How about the Geneva convention

How about Pacem en Terris

How about kissing my ass, says the Great Potato

Again he sneaks in

and his friends hover over him, shaking giant Bar B cued ribs,

clutching their genitals in their pistol pockets

Begone says Moses

Beat it says Jesus

Que se vayan, says Fidel

And the ghost of the Che and Malcolm and the burning monk

surround them, and give them a powerful revolutionary hex

and for a brief instant there was light and the specter

hovered in the sky and became a rainbow

and the guns were turned into plowshares in Israel

and into electric guitars in the Great Society

And they joined together in bodies and with the sound

in their heads, like millions of fish in the great ocean

and the audience pushed onto the stage and the stage became

the tabernacle and the power was invested in all of them

and it was all of them who shouted

Country Joe, Robin, and all the friends in Vietnam and Cuba and

Texas and the Mafia

Lay down, and they all lay down, and the couple stood alone, still

alone, but the friends were near, each time nearer

They carried their burden, alone, together, and they took each others’

hands, just as they would do in the unholy temples

And the Most Reverend Bishop Mackerel said “May the Lord bless you

by giving you children” and the audience didn’t laugh

For the time had come when the laughter became serious, the moment,

the instant at which the laws of God, of the Great Potato and the

State of California were to come together for the most sacred of rituals

which would be reported in tomorrow’s paper and would include

details about where the bride bought her dress

That Moment has come

That Moment has gone

Relax, said the minister,

because we are where it is at.

And Country Joe and Robin’s hands began to sweat as any hands

held together would sweat and the Minister now told Country Joe that if he wanted

he could kiss the bride

and the audience peeked to see if they blushed

and some thought they did and some said they didn’t

And the Great Potato was frying in lard

And Malcolm said these were good blue eyed devils

and he would protect them when the time came

and ghost of the Great Che shouted that They Would Triumph

And the ceremony came to an end as the Minister pronounced the lovely couple

He said I hereby pronounce you and he pronounced them Country Joe

and Robin

and ye shall remain Country Joe and Robin

and today we feel your love and you must feel ours

For you are now locked together in holiness, give or take the matrimony

for as long as you want to be

and May you groove with the great guru

and may your children be Great Fish, and birds, and beautiful

Country Folk

And now the Great Ring bearer comes forth

bearing the Ring of the Niebelomin, and

the Carousel ring—and the ring of truth

and the ring of love

And the best man and the bride’s father

fumble and hands touch and another part of

the ancient ritual is completed

All that remains is the blood of Christ,

dry for a thousand nine hundred odd years.

And bottled by Mogen David. Drink he said

and together they drank. And none else shall

drink from that glass.

(They stomp on the glass).

Robin do you yattayatta take Joe, more or

less the way he is, for more or less forever.

And do you Country Joe yatta blah yatta

take Robin the way she is.

Yeah, said the groom.

Go in peace.

Gatherings

from the web.

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This video inspired me to write my last post. There goes the planet…

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Playboy, February 1966.Dylan on how he chose his career:

Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I’m in a card game. Then I’m in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a “before” in a Charles Atlas “before and after” ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy — he ain’t so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I’m in Omaha. It’s so cold there, by this time I’m robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain’t much to look at, but who’s built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything’s going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?

Bob Dylan kicks ass.

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Dissonance

“…a kind of dissonance prevails. There is the person you knew before, and there is the person you know now. And they are not the same person. So that, when you think about them, it is only as a way of understanding what you have lost, what you will never have again. You become wed to the dross of memory, a person who lies alone in bed and thinks about what has already happened.”

–Steve Almond

What’s a writer supposed to do when someone else has already hit the nail on the head?

Robots

Look what I found:

Because of the robot, she no longer feels guilty when she fends off her son’s requests for a quick game. “My son says, ‘Will somebody play with me?’ ” she said. “But I’ve got to cook the dinner or pay the bills. Now, we have the machine.”

Robots That Are All Serve and No Volley