The East Village



Douglas Rothschild


from SO MANY DAYS OUT: OCT-11

Studies show that 68% of Americans are willing to give up on their personal America, in order to feel safe from those whom they believe are attempting to limit their personal America --Dan Rather

911 represents the unspeakable tragedy, why have they been talking about absolutely nothing else for days?

"Two vast and trunkless towers of smoke in the deepest desert stand. & the inscription at the base reads, 'Look upon my works ye mighty & despair'" --P.B. Shelly

the journey begins either here or there. either racing towards or away from some- thing like this or that. Some other as if yet undescribable momentum. The little fish, their flat lifeless wings, push- ed outward & upward, as if in silent prayer. But this too is observable & does little more than completely mask the other operations, rich & smug, pet peeves of a disso- nant generation, dislocated through time: rings true. & on the lonely cop on the corner, bartering one thing for another, like yellow paint splattered at the top of the stairs, the stairs leading down, from the middle of the journey of our lives. . . . What is it Wittgenstein says? At the end of the Tractatus? Hovering just above the edge of the page--the wide, flat edge? The one on which you write? Of that which you cannot see, it is not there?


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