Russell Edson

The Neighborhood Dog

A neighborhood dog is climbing up the side of a house.

I don’t like to see that, I don’t like to see a dog like that, says someone passing in the neighborhood.

The dog seems to be making for that 2nd story window. Maybe he wants to get his paws on the sill; he may want to hang there and rest; his tongue throbbing from his open mouth.

Yet, in the room attached to that window (the one just mentioned) a woman is looking at a cedar box; this is of course where she keeps her hatchet; in that same box, the one in this room, the one she is looking at.

That person passing in the neighborhood says, that dog is making for that 2nd story window…This is a nice neighborhood, that dog is wrong…

If the dog gets his paws on the sill of the window, which is attached to the same room where the woman is opening her hatchet box, she may chop at his paws with that same hatchet. She might want to chop at something; it is, after all, getting close to chopping time…

Something is dreadful, I feel a sense of dread, says that same person passing in the neighborhood, it’s that dog that’s not right, not that way…

In the room attached to the window that the dog has been making for, the woman is beginning to see two white paws on the sill of that same window, which looks out over the neighborhood.

She says, it’s wrong…something…the windowsill…something…the windowsill…

She wants her hatchet. She thinks she’s going to need it now.

The person passing in the neighborhood says, something may happen…that dog…I feel a sense of dread…

The woman goes to her hatchet in its box, she wants it. But it’s gone bad; it’s soft and nasty. It smells like something that’s lost its ghost. She wants to get it out of its box (that same cedar box where she keeps it), but it bends and runs through her fingers…

Now the dog is coming down, crouched low to the wall, backwards; leaving a wet streak with its tongue down the side of the house.

And that same person passing in the neighborhood says, that dog is wrong…I don’t like to see a dog get like that…It’s not over yet…

from The Intuitive Journey (1975)

Loin Mix #I [January 2011]

Here's a mix I put together tonight with the sole purpose of entertaining myself. There are two separate This Heat side projects (Flaming Tunes and Camberwell Now) for pleasuring you. The Flaming Tunes record was finally reissued from its initial cassette only (!) release in 1985 and I picked it up two years ago at Rough Trade East (I think). You can probably find that shit online, but the reissue was a real labor of love from a small record label, and it's well done - definitely worth owning. Get it here. Elsewhere - The Fall has never sounded friendlier (with the exception of Edinburgh Man) and the Fahey tune is with the surviving members of a dixieland orchestra - it slays. The Mayo Thompson and Wire tunes are old favorites that make any mix worth it - ringers.

1. Mississippi John Hurt - Nobody's Dirty Business (from Avalon Blues: The Complete 1928 OKeh Recordings)
2. Flaming Tunes - Breast Stroke (from S/T)
3. The Fall - That Man (from Totale's Turns)
4. Camberwell Now - The Spirit of Dunkirk (from All's Well)
5. Wire - The 15th (from 154)
6. Albert Ayler - Ghosts [First Variation] (from Spiritual Unity)
7. Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet - 13 (from Sport Fishin')
8. Mayo Thompson - Dear Betty Baby (from Corky's Debt To His Father)
9. John Fahey and his Orchestra - Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning (from Old Fashioned Love)
10. Michael Hurley - Be Kind To Me (from Armchair Boogie)

Download: Loin Mix#I [January 2011]

Charles Wright

Stone Canyon Nocturne

Ancient of Days, old friend, no one believes you’ll come back.
No one believes in his own life anymore.

The moon, like a dead heart, cold and unstartable, hangs by a thread
At the earth’s edge,
Unfaithful at last, splotching the ferns and the pink shrubs.

In the other world, children undo the knots in their tally strings.
They sing songs, and their fingers blear.

And here, where the swan hums in his socket, where bloodroot
And belladonna insist on our comforting,
Where the fox in the canyon wall empties our hands, ecstatic for more,

Like a bead of clear oil the Healer revolves through the night wind,
Part eye, part tear, unwilling to recognize us.

If you haven't read it yet, now is as good a time as any to read MLK's Why We Can't Wait.

Pärson Sound 3 LP Box Set

This has been killing me ever since I got it in the mail a few days ago. Well worth the 60 bone price tag, and I'm not one of those VINYL NO MATTER WHAT IT TAKES types. I love records but mostly I want to hear them, not be fiscally threatened by new Robert Wyatt reissues (which are, incidentally, excellently done). If you've heard Trad, Gras, och Stenar then you have a basic idea of what to expect - long-ish, tasteful workouts that make you think: early spring early evening laying out in the grass don't have to work tomorrow no bills no bullshit enjoying being alive. Pretty great. This is just like that but stranger, and a little more threatening. Pretty great. I think the CD set is already out of print, and I'm sure the LP set is on its way also (1000 total pressed).

Here's Julian Cope tingling over it.

A whiff:

George William Russell

DAWN

Still as the holy of holies breathes the vast,
Within its crystal depths the stars grow dim;
Fire on the altar of the hills at last
Burns on the shadowy rim.

Moment that holds all moments; white upon
The verge it trembles; then like mists of flowers
Break from the fairy fountain of the dawn
The hues of many hours.

Thrown downward from that high companionship
Of dreaming inmost heart with inmost heart,
Into the common daily ways I slip
My fire from theirs apart.

Roberto Bolano

GODZILLA IN MEXICO

Listen carefully, my son: bombs were falling
over Mexico City
but no one even noticed.
The air carried poison through
the streets and open windows.
You'd just finished eating and were watching
cartoons on TV.
I was reading in the bedroom next door
when I realized we were going to die.
Despite the dizziness and nausea I dragged myself
to the kitchen and found you on the floor.
We hugged. You asked what was happening
and I didn’t tell you we were on death’s program
but instead that we were going on a journey,
one more, together, and that you shouldn’t be afraid.
When it left, death didn’t even
close our eyes.
What are we? you asked a week or year later,
ants, bees, wrong numbers
in the big rotten soup of chance?
We’re human beings, my son, almost birds,
public heroes and secrets.