Daily Miltonian

Yeah yeah, Raven schmaven, we’ve been to the Poe House (haw!) in Philly, we’ve been to dude’s grave in Bmore, and yes, we have looked into the pit and you better believe we screamed like little girls. Here at the Daily Miltonian, we know horror, and we know our Poe, that’s why we’re skipping the bird to deliver only the straight goods to you, our favorite reader, the only pumpkin we have room for in our dark, terrified hearts. Boo, motherfucker: it’s Halloween.

Ulalume

By Edgar Allan Poe

The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere -
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year:
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir -
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Here once, through and alley Titanic,
Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul -
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
These were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriac rivers that roll -
As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole -
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the boreal pole.

Our talk had been serious and sober,
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere -
Our memories were treacherous and sere, -
For we knew not the month was October,
And we marked not the night of the year
(Ah, night of all nights in the year!) -
We noted not the dim lake of Auber
(Though once we had journeyed down here) -
Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

And now, as the night was senescent
And star-dials pointed to morn -
As the star-dials hinted of morn -
At the end of our path a liquescent
And nebulous lustre was born,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
Arose with a duplicate horn -
Astarte’s bediamonded crescent
Distinct with its duplicate horn.

And I said: “She is warmer than Dian;
She rolls through an ether of sighs -
She revels in a region of sighs:
She has seen that the tears are not dry on
These cheeks, where the worm never dies,
And has come past the stars of the Lion
To point us the path to the skies -
To the Lethean peace of the skies -
Come up, in despite of the Lion,
To shine on us with her bright eyes -
Come up through the lair of the Lion,
With love in her luminous eyes.”

But Psyche, uplifting her finger,
Said: “Sadly this star I mistrust -
Her pallor I strangely mistrust:
Ah, hasten! -ah, let us not linger!
Ah, fly! -let us fly! -for we must.”
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
Wings until they trailed in the dust -
In agony sobbed, letting sink her
Plumes till they trailed in the dust -
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.

I replied: “This is nothing but dreaming:
Let us on by this tremulous light!
Let us bathe in this crystalline light!
Its Sybilic splendour is beaming
With Hope and in Beauty tonight! -
See! -it flickers up the sky through the night!
Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,
And be sure it will lead us aright -
We safely may trust to a gleaming,
That cannot but guide us aright,
Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night.”

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
And tempted her out of her gloom -
And conquered her scruples and gloom;
And we passed to the end of the vista,
But were stopped by the door of a tomb -
By the door of a legended tomb;
And I said: “What is written, sweet sister,
On the door of this legended tomb?”
She replied: “Ulalume -Ulalume -
‘Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!”

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
As the leaves that were crisped and sere -
As the leaves that were withering and sere;
And I cried: “It was surely October
On this very night of last year
That I journeyed -I journeyed down here! -
That I brought a dread burden down here -
On this night of all nights in the year,
Ah, what demon hath tempted me here?
Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber -
This misty mid region of Weir -
Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.”

Everybody leaves their heart in New Jersey. Go on, admit it: Yo La Tengo is the band that made your first girlfriend fall in love with you. You put it on the mix tape, back when there were mix tapes, because you knew the thrill of November feelings.  

Or maybe you were the girl that got the mix tape? During sophomore year, from that earnest kid? And you fell in love? It’s OK to say so, even if now you’re a junior account manager, a wizened Sex and the City alum, with a solid sense of yourself and your life and where you’re going with it.

Well, anyway, that old November feeling is coming on again, and it’s still October, and you’re old enough by now to pony the 23 bones it’s gonna to cost you tonight to remember.  

Aren’t you? Well, aren’t you, kid?

Yes you heard right: Mayor Tom Potter has indeed declared today to be official Wonder Woman Day here in Portland.  Fort Saint Davids was in Philly when Mayor John Street declared Rocky Week.  This one just feels a little different, y’know?  Full details can be found here.

We seem to have inadvertently inaugurated a form, here, which is to say the article about other people writing about Portland. (And we’re now one more chamber down the nautilus, but OK. Enough already.)

But we–like the English majors we actually aren’t–are going to go ahead and say our successors are doing a creative misprision of our real intentions, but big time (i.e., “a misunderstanding that feels like understanding, like when your hands are so cold they seem to burn when you clap them.”)

Because when the writers of America said, “I love you,” what we were really saying was, “I love you, too.”

Willamette Week, this week, is instead being a coy mistress about it, wondering if the Right Coast is wooing us right. When New York compliments Portland on its sensuous lips, the WW replies, “Don’t you understand anything? Our beauty is rather in the graceful curve of our neck, our downcast eyes, and of course our intelligent slouch.” And we (the whole Fort Saint Davids crew) are now feeling bad about what we started. Because come on, now, there.

So we’re writing right now from our suddenly autumnal rooftop East Coast offices in NY. We’re writing back to the tree-nestled Pacific Northwest offices to say forget about it. We’re gonna let the flyover be our condom and we’re totally gonna do it, and we’re not going to be too drunk to perform this time. So don’t go southing this relationship before it even starts.

Here’s fractal meta-valentine to show you we mean it:

That’s how serious.

Although: fair warning: we look terrible in the morning, and we’re way too chatty for 7 a.m., and we’re glad you wear contacts so you can’t see our hair all fucked up. Because it will be.

All we know is this is Bruce Springsteen, playing with some mystery dude, in the streets of Copenhagen, in 1988. The truth is, that’s all we need know. In an Internet full of answers, sometimes we don’t even want to know the questions.

Tell me now baby is he good to you? Now there’s a question. Maybe the Internet doesn’t have the answer. But we do.

Daily Miltonian: Even Knoxville loves us.

Quick. Don’t think about Sofia Coppola. Actually, come to think of it: never think about Sofia Coppola.

Ever.

But OK.  If the Midwest has their stranglehold on the emo (and what a strange hug it is), it’s easy to forget that until recently, Portland had very much cornered the market on twee.

 So I guess it should come as no surprise that right after Portland came in at #1 on ice cream consumption, despite the apparent lack of a real summer, we are now told we are #3 in per capita candy consumption, quoth the demigods of charts and charticles: Nielsen Media Research.

This behind only Seattle and the entire states of Idaho and Utah, who need the distraction.

But to remember–as you knew intuitively when you were 19, when it was all around you–that cream will curdle you and sweetness cloys, you need to soak it up in its absolute excess. Which is why you need Sellwood’s Keana’s Candyland in your life.

Good morning everyone, this is your host, FSD. Oh it’s Autumn here, alright. Back in the Globally Warmed East, it’s just now the initial days of Fall 1. But here in the lush Pacific Northwest, we’re most definitely enjoying the first damp kiss of Fall 2. Vaux’s Swifts! There’s Pumpkin Milkshakes at Burgerville. There’s nostalgia-inducing cedar-smoke coming out of chimneys. There’s leaves everywhere, and color…glorious color! We don’t have the technology to capture it perfectly, nor can we write the poetry necessary to convey it. Please accept what meager digital photographs we have as evidence of the beautiful world in which we’re now living.

One Year Later: Some more tidbits from our inaugural week, October 2006. We had posted the phone number to the Poconos Fall Foliage Hotline, which was operated by former FSD neighbor Dina. Our secretary, Renee the Secretary, recently spoke with Dina and confirmed that our former neighbor is in fact no longer the operator. However, we are fairly certain that the hotline still exists, and encourage you to call it to find out. After all, you will never know when the peak foliage in the Pocono mountains will be until you ask an expert. 570-421-5565: dial with confidence.

One Year Later: October 19th, 2006 marked the street date for one of our mightiest posts, the ever-perplexing Hi-Rise poems. What more can be said about this now-legendary suite of contemporary verse that spawned a movement (the Brogram), a short story (Erik Bader’s Cherry Hill), and predicted a life that really, when you think hard about it, we’re all leading right now. Now that’s art.

One Year Later: October 20th, 2006 marked the electronic debut of our patron saint and resident seafood critic Father Gibbs. Read about what seafood one should eat here.

One Year Later: Quick interview here.

Renee the Secretary: Erik, what was up with those weird early posts like the one where went on a date and had octopus?

Erik: Pure and simple I was trying not to go insane. I was in no shape to be dating anyone at the time. I figured if I wrote that I was on a date I could remind myself that I was, in fact, on a date. Ever get that bad? Where you have to keep reminding yourself that you are, in fact, doing whatever it is you are doing, there in Reality, and not, say, in Acheron or some other, more sinister realm of existence?

Renee: Like the afternoon, the same week as the date post, where Alex convinced you to take a drive out of the city, and you guys were walking down Main Street in Moorestown, and you were so fucked up out and out of it that Alex had to remind you it was fall and there was indeed crisp fall foliage and brittle-gold leaves laying in bright piles down cobblestone alleys past wise old buildings and there you were, alive in the quickness of Autumn, not killed by tanks and dead in a boat down a black hole vortex at the furthest most desolate edge of Known Reality.

Erik: I mean I couldn’t have said it better myself, Renee. As for the octopus, Father Gibbs suggested it. We all need to Eat More Seafood.

Renee: True that, EB!

One Year Later: October 20th also marked the debut of Alex Zahradnik’s groundbreaking 80’s Desert Music post, coining a phrase that has been in the Official Lexicon ever since. The FSD PNW/NW offices would like to add this video to the list. Fucking desert A, man. From their 1982 album, “Mirage”, hah hah!

One Week Later: FSD, Daily Miltonian, and Daily Miltonian East would all like to retract our former statements re: the latest Radiohead and will now state that the album is completely forgettable, owing to the clear and hard evidence that while thinking back on said album which we last heard merely one week prior to this statement, we cannot for the life of us remember a single song, tune, melody, or even lyric. So yeah, whoops. Oh well, better luck next time boys!

One Day Later: Hang out with your Daily Miltonian! Make us pies, hot toddies, cider, cider donuts, or coffee. Do it because you care. FSD: We’re lovin’ it!

It’s always fun, on your birthday, when someone anonymous knocks on your metaphorical door and wants to hear what you have to say. You’re wiser now, they say, and we are now willing to listen–we’re here now at your door to accidentally ask you about lolcats.

Of course it isn’t necessarily always lolcats they want to hear about (although, let’s remember here, it’s possible we invented them).

 Down there, below this here, are a small sampling of the ways, in the past couple days, that people–we don’t know who, exactly–came googlingly to our doorstep. Well, we say to you all: welcome. It’s our birthday. Stay a while.

Because everybody else, they don’t like you like we like you. (They couldn’t possibly. They’re them.)

 How People Found Us:

The feed my face:

• mayfield icecream
• pbr nutritional facts
• calories in PBR
• root beer
• winnie the poo drink beer

The we know you so well we complete your:

• is there a poem i can give my
• one baby to another says

The OCD file:

• hulk vs silver surfer
• rhino and silver surfer
• who is faster, ironman or silver surfer?
• HULK VERSUS SILVER SURFER

The bestiary:

• julio the wowl
• lolcats
• lizard king
• Erik Bader Panda

Other:

• smuggle alcohol pyramid rock festival
• New York gray rape (not here, people)
• altered blood
• cudding relationships
• world of warcraft gay sex
• rumors about loren hunt

And of course, our favorite:

• daily miltonian

We look at this higgledy piggledy and we think: are we doing something wrong?

No. Judging by this list, we’re quite obviously doing something very right.