“The dead air shapes the dead earth in the dead darkness”:
Faulkner and Rexroth, Asbury and Jersey City, Jeremy Varon’s Our Grief is Not a Cry for War: : The Movement to Stop the War on Terror and other thoughts as September turned to October
A phenomenal weekend of movement, mostly in the mind, a trip to the beach, and back, journeys with the hydrofeminists, out to the waterfront on Governor's Island, to Judson, to Princeton, a discussion of the anti war movement before the Iraq War, into the recent colonial past with JM Coetze, the subconscious with Jonathan Lear, to anarchist Chicago and New York, with Rexroth, and Gornick, to a lost world with Faulkner, a land that feels all too familiar, reading a beaten up copy of As I Lay Dying I found in the street in 1999, into the Odyssey. The title refers to the ghost of Agamemnon speaking to Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey: "As I lay dying, the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes for me as I descended into Hades". The inspiration for the novel, the scene of Agamemnon's death, murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus, upon his return from the decade-long war, his departure, is ever a reminder, of betrayal, the futility of vengeance.
The ideas keep moving, meandering their way through me, dreams I want to record, daydreams, dreaming about writing about them, of posting a note, pulling me into the day, thinking about the details of the night, the past where we came, details lost in the day, road trips of the mind, backwards, forwards and backwards.
All weekend, I tried to make sense of As I Lay Dying, Faulkner’s homage to family obligation, closed minds, hearts, still striving, family members bickering, carrying a casket of a dead mother, who everyone resents, who kind of resents them, on the way to her family resting place, told through multiple narrators, her friends, family, her sons, with multiple fathers, from an affair. Telling me about his family, ours back in Georgia, Dad always said, they were, “Calvinist sons of bitches.” He had no admiration for the mean, for the closed in, the parochial he saw in his childhood in Thomasville Ga.
Of course, this was Faulkner’s source material in Mississippi:
“And so it was because I could not help it. It was then, and then I saw Darl and he knew,” says Dewey Dell, referring to her somewhat clairvoyant brother, a WWI veteran everyone in town refers to as ‘queer.’ He seemed to know she was pregnant. ”He said he knew without the words like he told me that ma is going to die...." she explains, early on in her chapter, struggling with an unwanted pregnancy. Dell channels a Hamlet like mediation on the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune:
“I feel my body, my bones and flesh beginning to part and open upon the alone, and the process of coming unalone is terrible.”
“The dead air shapes the dead earth in the dead darkness, further away than seeing shapes the dead earth. It lies dead and warm upon me, touching me naked through my clothes….I don’t know whether I am worrying or not. Whether I can or not. I dont know whether I can cry or not. I dont know whether I have tried to or not.”
Voice after voice, chapter after chapter, the narrators trace the journey.
“Now and then a fellow gets to thinking about it, about all the sorry and afflictions of the world,” says Tull, a sympathetic neighbor.
Ever the outsider, Darl understands:
“In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I don't know what I am. I don't know if I am or not. Jewel knows he is, because he does not know that he does not know whether he is or not.…And since sleep is is-not and rain and wind are was, it is not. Yet the wagon is, because when the wagon is was, Addie Bundren will not be. And Jewel is, so Addie Bundren must be. And then I must be, or I could not empty myself for sleep in a strange room. And so if I am not emptied yet, I am is.
How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.”
We met to talk about it on Henry Street, deep in Carroll Gardens, on Sunday, trying to make sense of this opaque story of a road trip of obligation. We’re still bound to our family whether we like it or not. His story illustrates Bourdieu's concept of “habitus” as a “system of deeply ingrained, unconscious dispositions—habits, tastes, and ways of perceiving” like few others. Niklas, my Berlin buddy from Tbilisi, said it over and over.
On we talk, unpeeling the layers of this opaque book.
We’ve been at it for ten years, reading novel after novel.
Sunday, was everything, I thought driving home from Princeton after lunch with mom, slowing, ready for two book groups, one on Faulkner, the second on Rexroths’ autobiographical novel, reflecting on his theology of the sublime, between poetry and god, anarchism and “ethical activism,” "apocalyptic optimism” and support.
Ken Knabb, our host, read some of Rexroth’s prose, reminding us:
“A Sword In A Cloud Of Light”
By Kenneth Rexroth
Your hand in mine, we walk out
To watch the Christmas Eve crowds
On Fillmore Street, the Negro
District. The night is thick with
Frost. The people hurry, wreathed
In their smoky breaths….
Believe in all those fugitive
Compounds of nature, all doomed
To waste away and go out.
Always be true to these things.
They are all there is. Never
Give up this savage religion
For the blood-drenched civilized
Abstractions of the rascals
Who live by killing you and me.”
These days, those “blood-drenched .. Abstractions of the rascals” they seem to be everywhere.
I read Dad’s beaten up, water drenched copy, deciphering his notes from Chicago, thinking of him as I rode through the city, of his faith, his reading, his existential quest to understand that sweet spot between poetry and sublime, into the living theater of the city.
October 6th
Finishing meetings, I rode up to join Jeremy Varon for the launch of his book, Our Grief is Not a Cry for War: The Movement to Stop the War on Terror (U. of Chicago Press) at Rizzoli Books at 1133 Broadway, just off 27th street.
Walking into the event, I ran into Andrew Boyd, who walked in with me, asking questions. There was Leslie Cagan, who organized the demos, our heartbreak lingering.
The reading has already started, Jeremy unpacking the pieces, unravelling the layers of our distant past, a peace movement that tried to stop a war. "Any time there is a great injustice, we need to document who spoke out, about this preventable on a large scale....” says Varon, tracing the toll of casualties from the US War on Terror, some 38 million displacements, 4.5 to 4.7 million deaths, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, a massive human cost, impacting millions more. “Millions of people around the world, with a Cassandra- like accuracy, laid out what would happen. Again and again, the anti war movement was right,” says Varon. “I wanted to save the movement from forgetting, from oblivion. Some turned their lives upside down to participate.” Listening my mind trailed back to jails in Lower Manhattan, bust after bust during those years, lost time, classes, police, traffic, cascades of bodies, police in riot gear for years. “I wanted to put them on record with the abolitionists.... 2001 was the high water mark of the global justice movement... to address global inequality, dire poverty... the prosperity of the few depends on the misery of the others... 9/30, the convergence around the IMF meetings in Washington was planned with the IMF / World Bank and fire breathing Anarchists. Some 10,000 had committed to engage in forms of non-violence civil disobedience. After 9/11, these demonstrations were canceled. The movement never got its feet back, 911 decimated it,” says Jeremy, recalling the 30 million who took to the streets around the world to oppose the invasion of Iraq. “The anti war movement changed in composition and size. Bush said you are either with us or against us. 9/11 opened the gates of hell. This war is never going to end.” Family members who lost someone worried their loss was going to be repeated, or exploited exponentially. Our grief is not a cry for war, they repeated. “After 9/11 the US had the sympathy of the world. This soon dissipated. The sense of the old ugly American neoliberal agenda reappeared soon enough, the image the world saw with Viet Nam. The invasion of Afghanistan was one thing. But Iraq did not bomb us. While no one wanted Saddam Hussein, few wanted us to invade Iraq. Feb 15, 2003, the World Says No to War was the biggest single day of protest in world history,” says Jeremy, who I saw in the streets frequently during those days, still do. It was one of the craziest days of my life. My Dad was in town, staying at the Chelsea Hotel. We all participated in demonstrations. Dad worked with others to break the police barricades, police clashing with protesters all day long. And then back home. Dad met our teenager, just born, for the first time. That day of protest Some 15-30 million people protested around the world, millions in world cities. “That wasn’t enough to stop it,” says Jeremy. The media followed, parroting the jingoism. “The coverage of war as it happened had nothing to do with how it happened. Today feels a little like 2004, says Jeremy, into this post truth delusional world. We knew there were no weapons of mass destruction, but still the US went forward and re elected Bush, even with the image of Abu Garub prison, torture and prisoner abuse. He even won the popular vote this time. You can’t let that sense of defeat throw you off. You just can’t. The movement moved beyond the drab rituals of dissent into profound rituals, Camp Casey anti war protest in Crawford Texas. The movement delegitimized the Iraq War. There’s no glory in being proven right. The anti war movement played a role in turning the opinion against the war. But so did the failure around the response to Hurricane Katrina. ‘Heck of a job Brownie,’ said Bush to his friend, responsible for the Katrina air. If he was this delusional around Katrina, what could he be thinking around Iraq, many thought. Who knows if reality will prevail, wonders Varon, turning to the present moment. A woman in the audience laughs out loud. There’s so much damage that has been done. A failed coup against our democracy and constitution. And the people rewarded this with a second term. As a historian, who we are is so wrapped up in what we do to understand our past to have been," Jeremy concluded. What a night, what a peace reunion. Tears in my eyes, thinking about Dad now gone, that child now grown in LA, the cycles of history, Andrew’s French Bread for Peace block from those peace marches, I ride back home, recalling our losses and striving.
A line from the novel I was reading lingered all week.
“Once in every generation, without fail, there is an episode of hysteria about the barbarians,” writes Coetzee in Waiting on the Barbarians, his 1980 novel of memory and empire, colonization and decolonization.
Waiting for the Barbarians was beach reading in between Faulkner, who set his own imprint on the conversation with the understanding, “"The past is never dead. It's not even past" from his 1951 novel Requiem for a Nun, reading and thinking, trying to make sense of the forgetting and remembering that is ever present (1951, p.73). Be it a communist leader ready to photoshoot out the image of a rival or an American president erasing remnants of our history, pardoning criminals involved in a coup attempt, Kundera (1980, p. 22) explains:
“People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It’s not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.”
It was a strange few days prior, summer warmth, into crisp fall, snapshots of days in time.
October 8/9th
Full night out with Jay and Brennan, gossiping in the Lower East Side, I keep thinking about Eileen's gaze at her English teacher... About the streets of New York, our lives, our impulses, " The “echos of our old compulsions” are hard to shake, says Faulkner. They certainly are for me. Eileen Myles wrote the novel "Inferno (A Poet's Novel)", published in 2010, a fictionalized account of a young female writer in New York City during the punk and indie scene of the 1970s and 1980s, exploring her sexuality and creativity... She read to us last week, confessing she didn’t always remember what she wrote. Still she recalled, Alice,the other Alice, learning Carson McCullers lived next door decades before. I’m still thinking of her influences and mine, the images in time, that we see on the streets, our friends, around the city, the people, the friends we find, the people we will never know, the crew in my morning yoga class, day after day, class after class along the way.... the signs on the wall in the bathroom at the bar.
I drafted notes each morning, posting a few on insta, a few more here and there before they disappear, as summer turns to fall.
September 24th
On the way to the Charles Ludlam show, Fed made sure to wait for the light, always the good Berlinner, even in jay walking nyc. The theater of the ridiculous lives on in our minds, long after Charles has departed the stage. I think of Keith, who used to perform in this magic theater of our minds. The rain pours, the cats greet one another, conversations continue well into the night. We sit at Barely Disfigured, talking into the night.
September 25th
Rally at Foley Square
ICE OUT of NEW YORK rally & march to say it loud & say it clear: IMMIGRANTS ARE WELCOME HERE!
Says the PSC:
BREAKING: PSC members are here with 100s of New Yorkers to shut down the streets surrounding 26 Federal Plaza. We will not stay silent as ICE commits violent & unlawful actions against our immigrant communities. We will not stay silent as ICE operates in the heart of our city, kidnapping New Yorkers and separating them from their loved ones and community.
September 26th
Friday afternoon, Brad and I met at Principles of GI Coffee House on 9th street in the industrial Gowanus, talking about the water along the polluted canal, the ways we are told to forget the toxins beneath the surface. 'its beaten, with chronic problems like me,' says brad, referring to the toxic waterway, where he gets close to the surface, riding his canoe, looking below, at the movement underneath, the millions of polluted gallons, flowing in, the sewage overflow, the toxins, still secret places, at the 9th street bridge... oil slicks shine, reflections with the clouds, flowers along the water...we walked along the water, looking at the scrap metal, reused, towers rising, a new neighborhood along my neighborhood....
Brad recalled The Sleepers, of Walt Whitman:
“I wander all night in my vision,
Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and stopping,
Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers,
Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory,
Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping....”
September 26th
The obits tell us more.
Assata Shakur RIP
rip prof, rip jonathan lear
Open minded…
Reading Freud together in Chicago, all those years ago. I loved his writing on psychoanalysis, reading each of his news books after Open Minded came out. We read Radical Hope for book group years ago. And I was just reading his book on Freud this fall, helping me understand. Thank you Jonathan.
RIP.
September 27th
Lunch and movies with Mom, Humphrey Bogart, as Frank, in the 1948 film Key Largo, says "I had hopes once, but I gave them up. Hopes for what? A world in which there's no place for Johnny Rocco". Ray suggested we watch it the week before. We met in the park after my morning of reading as i lay dying, thinking about desolation, dragging a dead relative to her final resting spot. It's a good life, said mom, looking at the leaves in her garden. Our peaceful place in the world. Sohpia joined us. Back home, Peters band played at Young Ethels on 5th ave in Brooklyn. It rained from NYC to Los Angeles.
September 29th
At Judson, micah talked about the rapture that wasn't to be, explaining ex·e·ge·sis, critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially of scripture. Baby C talled about Benjamin’s angels of history looking backward, robby showed us his work on alienation and our favorite defences, his friend talked about psych hospitals and the dsm saying autism used to be thought to caused by bad mothers, ray and i talked about rainbows, colin and i talked about dead parents, and we met robby and kimberies cat…
September 30th
Ken Schles says pass intro 1180. save ny environmental law.
Pete from NYCC wrote....
The landlords are on the attack against New York City's "Green New Deal" law, Local Law 97, which creates good jobs, cuts pollution and lowers our utility bills. They just unveiled a big super pac with $1.3 million to attack Mamdani for supporting the law, which the landlords hate because it makes them clean up their dirty, polluting buildings. On Monday at 9am we will rally against THEM and to make sure Local Law 97 stays strong. We will call on Council Speaker Adrienne Adams to stand with the people, NOT the landlord lobby. Join us on City Hall's steps. We will protest the real estate lobby's attacks on the City's landmark law, which they want rolled back. Instead of that, we will say: let's go forward by passing Intro 1180. Intro 1180 closes a regulatory loophole in Local Law 97 that the real estate lobby got their corrupt MAGA Mayor, Eric Adams, to set by improperly using regulatory power he has under Local Law 97. Intro 1180 is prime-sponsored by City Councilmember Carmen De La Rosa and it has over 20 co-sponsors, but Speaker Adams has not scheduled it for a hearing or a vote. She should support Intro 1180! And the landlords should stop trying to buy elections so they can make more money at our expense.
- Jose, Pete and Santosh at NYCC
Jeff Sharlet wrote:
“The big news—bigger than Comey, bigger than the shutdown—with Trump’s Thursday Terror Memo, a blueprint for accelerating this slow civil war. It radically expands the definition of terrorism so broadly that just by declaring one’s self opposed to fascism, one might be guilty of it, and it names expanded powers for DOJ, IRS, and local law enforcement to “investigate.” I gave it a close read. Link in bio. #fascism #antifascism #journalism …”
October 1
Charles and I talked about Keith and Eric talked about Jamie. I talked with Truman at the greatest bar in New York. And bands played at Club Cummings.
I’m trying to make sense of that conversation, part of the next book.
October 2
Yom Kippur begins October 1, 2025 at sundown; ends at nightfall on October 2, 2025,
No school, we rode out to Foley Square to hear the journalists speak out about being beaten and targeted at Immigration Court, at Federal Plaza. 'being an immigrant is not a crime,' said Jumaane Williams, public advocate, to roars from the crowd. 'we all saw the video of ice knocking that woman down last week. Now they are beating up the people filming and documenting,' said Jay Walker.
Greeted Jackie.
Everyone greeted one another, a little solidarity, the joy of seeing my friends is everything, greeting each other at a demo.
Finishing the demo, a few of us made our way up to Ave C, where Eileen Myles and a group of NYC based poets read from their work and from Palestinian poet Batool Abu Akleen, Myles started the night, talking about Batool Abu Akleen, a poet who lives in Gaza. The title of her collection is 48Kg, because it consists of 48 poems, each representing a kilogram of the poet’s own weight. I keep wondering if she’s still alive, confessed Myles before reading from her new poetry collection, about the horrors.
“I want a grave so my corpse won't be decomposing in the street,” reads Myles.
The world has been trying to erase this narrative, as fast as it's written.
They've been trying to erase history forever.
down to c squat...to 2a, great convo... recalling struggles, stories, when to leave, when to speak up, Free
Alexa Wilkenson.
October 3
No school, dropped by the rise and resist silent vigil outside of federal plaza where ICE are separating families, deporting, and criminalizing immigrants.
Jackie Rudin wrote about the demo:
“A New York-based photojournalist was raided, arrested, and hit with felony hate crime charges for documenting a Gaza protest at The NY Times. This is a blatant infringement of the First Amendment. Tuesday night several photographers I know well were attacked and thrown down (one taken to the hospital) for doing their job and documenting what was going on at the Immigration building at 26 Federal Plaza. Rise and Resist came out to support journalists and thank them for their bravery and urgently needed reporting…..
This has been an intense week at the Immigration building at 26 Federal Plaza. ICE thugs were caught on camera (and video) beating and attacking immigrants as they kidnapped them on the 12th floor of the building. The videos went viral and made it onto social media (and legacy media) shining a light on the level of cruelty being dealt there.
Needless to say there was a little tension in the air as Rise and Resist stood outside with our weekly silent vigil. They hate the attention and even started attacking photojournalists on the 12th floor who were there (doing their job) documenting what was happening. We brought our signs from the demo the day before, showing our support and gratitude to the journalists who risk everything, everyday. More than ever we must bear witness to what is happening. And we must shine that light brightly. Rise and Resist is here every Thursday from 12 noon to 1PM. That's 26 Federal Plaza at the Worth Street entrance between Broadway and Lafayette. JOIN US.”
Later in the afternoon, my friends met me at Tompkins. Dana and I talked about Abby, his departure, and meeting our fates. I walked over to C Squat, where Bill showed me about his installation on rad bookstores in nyc from blackout to mayday to bluestockings. Said hi to jerry. Mom and I talked about her grandad, long gone, but a memory. I'm thinking of the struggles, the ways we age, look for meaning, as our lives change. The rise and resist crew meet daily for actions. Dana plans another demo, another parade. I think of Jerry's stories, old movies and memories with mom, as the season’s change.
Mom and I watch To Have and Have Not on TV:
“It would be better alone, anything is better alone but I don't think I can handle it alone,” says Bogey. I guess none of us can.
October 3
Daytripping we found ourselves back and forth to New Jersey, looking at the seagulls, reading As I Lay Dying, wondering about our dreams, looking at a crumbling old theater on the beach, the magic hour light hitting us, thinking about the Stone Pony, where the Boss found his sound, looking at the honky tonk boardwalk, as a sort of mythic place, with its own cosmology....
"Asbury was sort of the end of the earth... But it had a boardwalk, it had a beach, it had arcades, and it had music. It was a city that was falling apart and beautiful at the same time. That contradiction gave it its poetry". - Bruce Springsteen
October 4th
Woke up early with the birds, reading my novels on the porch, drinking coffee, out to the beach, greeting out with the tides, through an october saturday, found ourselves at the jon bon jovi rest stop on the way from the beach at asbury park, nj, on the way to holy brooklyn, and out on the ferry to governor's island, exploring the waterfront, ferries running to and from manhattan and staten island.
'we are bodies of water. we maintain solidarity and kinship with all bodies of water, worldwide,' declared the broadside at nora's show exploring our relationship with bodies of water, our bodies,other bodies, pollutants, pesticides,
Onward to the Oculus, I meet my friends on the way to the path train back to Jersey City, oh my, once more, through the fall night, more and more friends joining us... singing along with The Mountain Goats song "No Children" from the album Tallahassee and its bitter lines, "I am drowning / There is no sign of land / You are coming down with me / Hand in unlovable hand / I hope you die / I hope we both die".
Stories about lou reed in 1987, sweet jane, old concerts, virginia saw the boss on the born to run tour 1976... cheri saw leonard cohen, i saw cheap trick at six flags 1976... alive for second...bodies of water, between asbury park, and govs island and jersey city... singing along through time, recalling ...
“The best ever death metal band out of Denton
Was a couple of guys who'd been friends since grade school
One was named Cyrus, the other was Jeff
And they practiced twice a week in Jeff's bedroom
The best ever death metal band out of Denton
Never settled on a name
But the top three contenders after weeks of debate
Were Satan's Fingers and The Killers and The Hospital Bombers
Jeff and Cyrus believed in their hearts
They were headed for stage lights and lear jets and fortune and fame
So in script that made prominent use of a pentagram
They stenciled their drum heads and guitars with their names
The best ever death metal band out of Denton
Was a couple of guys who'd been friends since grade school
One was named Cyrus, the other was Jeff
And they practiced twice a week in Jeff's bedroom
The best ever death metal band out of Denton…”
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