Post Wherein I Propose the Annexation of Canada by the United States by Means of Daoism [by Anthony Madrid]

All right, let’s all try and remain calm. I’m not going to go up the front steps and walk through the front door, here. I’ma go around back and come in through the kitchen window. So I need you all to be patient.

FIRST CONCEPT. What I call “social” reading. What do I mean by that. I mean reading contemporary poetry in a spirit of (a) wanting to know what’s going on in Poetryland, and (b) shopping for friendships. This is rather different from reading like a normal person, who simply wants a good time. People who read socially (in the sense I’m advancing here) don’t mind as much if they’re not having a good time. They are playing a different game, with different stakes. They want to know “the lay of the land”—and that means they have to map the swamps and the abandoned parking lots just as much as the places where they might want to be. For a certain kind of reader, that knowledge by itself is enough to make the suffering worthwhile, and if you add to that the potential for discovery with all its attendant thrills—the possibility of finding uncharted isles where dinosaurs still live or whatever—you get some idea of the stakes involved for the “social” reader. The deal is you get a map going, and then you can give directions.

I also mentioned “friendship shopping.” Here’s where Facebook comes in. Today, the supreme ease with which you can have a written conversation (boing!, right there, instantly) with somebody whose poetry does it for you—and how quickly thát can turn into friendship, sex, children, a new civilization—well! this is another good reason to put up with the inevitable boredom involved in the mapping project….

SECOND CONCEPT. Virtually every one of you reading these words answers the description I am giving here. You piss and moan about it, but you want to know what’s going on and you want to “get into it” with people. It’s just like with music when you were in high school. You were studious—you just didn’t call it that. You wanted to know all there was to know about glam rock or rap or whatever the fuck was your deal. We were all like this. Metal. Psychedelic shit. Beck. The difference is: With poetry, you can “friend” Beck, and Beck has nothing better to do than chat with you, ’cuz he’s lonely and starved for praise….

THIRD CONCEPT (hold tight for this one). Americans ignore Canada a lot. Apropos of poetry, there is a certain amount of reasoning involved, and that reasoning is elegant and convincing: “Why would I fuss with Canada, when I haven’t even read _______ [some American poet]? I’ll come ’round to Canada later.” Also, many American poets have a certain amount of resentment towards Canadians, on account of the way the ones who come down here almost always parade their scorn of US backwardness and obnoxiousness (which would be fine, except they act like they don’t expect you to agree).

But here is precisely where I take my first step through the back window and into the kitchen sink. Listen: There is no actual reason to think of Canada as a separate country. Thinking of Canada as a separate country is like thinking of the states of New York and Pennsylvania as separate. You can, if you insist, but the warrant for doing it is slender. Who in the world is gonna stop her ears and say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don’t wanna know what’s going on in Philadelphia; I’ll get to Philly after I’m done with the rest of the US….” (I deploy {PA + NY} as my example here because those two states’ combined populations = the total population of Canada. Plus most of Canada’s people live right there in that zone anyhow.)

—But here’s the clincher.—Go back to Concepts 1 and 2. Admit it: you are a social reader. You can’t get enough of charting the cliques: the Cool Kids, the Freak Shows, the People Who Can’t Write for Shit but Are Total Babes—OK, then! there’s this whole other neighborhood you haven’t been to yet…. It’s right there across the street, and you’re putting off checking it out ’cuz you’re silly!

I’m not saying Canada is this golden Shangri-la where exciting things are happening, 24/7. No, the whole beauty of what I’m driving at is precisely that Canada represents more of the same of what we already got, down here—more Cool Kids, more Freaks, more friends, more everything! You can’t get enough, right? You wanna know all there is to know, right? Well….

FOURTH AND FINAL CONCEPT. Daoism. I have in mind, in particular, the emphasis in the Daodejing on “actionless activity”—and stealth. You probably see where I’m going with this.

The Canadians don’t need to know about any of this plan. We will simply annex them, mentally. We’ll quietly start reading them, and caring about them, and reviewing them. We should submit to their online journals. We need to know what those journals are.

Again: There is no need to announce. Indeed, we want it to go down such that “when our work is done, our task accomplished, throughout the country, people will say it happened of its own accord” (Daodejing 17).

My brothers and sisters, join me in this. Go, reread the Daodejing and let us march upon the Canadians with our minds. They cannot resist us if we have the Dao on our side.

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Comments

[Andy]

*Puts on tin foil hat*

[Marc]

Diágonal smudge on top of that "a."
Rubbing the screen won't make it go 'way!
Scratch with a nail. Bite glass. It won't budge.
Nothing can kill that diágonal smudge.