The Landlord

The management company decreed that there should be an inspection of all the units in the building, just the safety appliances you understand, just a moment of your time, you need not even be home and truly we’d rather you were not. And so it was that I was home to receive that knock at the door for that brief inspection, truly brief, no longer than a rectal exam but alas even less pleasant…

I exaggerate.*

Yet it did leave me feeling rather venomous toward the company and that brought to mind a long gone poetry ‘zine that I had subscribed to back in the day when I had hallucinatory aspirations to be a poet. I saved it for this poem by the late John Dickson. I saved it for just an occasion like this. I should have saved it with the aspiration to write as well as this:

poetryandlandlord
From “Poetry &”, December 1976, scanned by Roman.

Poetry & was edited by JoAnn Castagna. It was printed on newsprint and folded to letter size, an inexpensive way of printing a larger press run. I can imagine distribution being something more than a chore. In any case, I don’t recall the ‘zine lasting much beyond Volume 1.

Voilà. With this post, I’ve had a revenge of sorts, the best kind: mostly imaginary.

* Also, it was as much me as them. Regardless, Dickson’s poem addresses, in a general way, the relations involved.

“Insignificant”

“Emptiness is normal.”

This from motion designer Clément Morin, a thirty minute video examining the scale of the universe and humanity’s place in it. As you might expect from the title, we’re judged generally insignificant and don’t you forget it, but the theme creates the occasion for some really well-done animation. That the narrator sounds somewhat like someone on helium doesn’t hurt, either. This is definitely full screen and headphones territory.

The video’s argument is rather thin in places and while the factoids are fascinating, there are some that I have quibbles about. This is unfortunate as there didn’t seem to me to be any reason for only being approximately correct.