Saturday commute ix

To another country.

I would like to bring into the fold of this posting certain tireless readers of the page, who may have become less enchanted with it, as I have done, in some of its establishing postings. One could only reiterate that this is a city of coffee, meaning, all stirpes of the enthralling family (whence it has never been one's purpose to extricate oneself), autonomous elements within its flux as we are, are contemplated with more than hypothetical welcome. Friday's discovery of readership by the blogger at Another Country makes this perspective all the more timely to recall; for, it is a signal project of that blog, to elevate awareness of capital punishment. 

Patient readers of this page will readily apprehend that the subject fails to give rise to pretty pictures, the tedious vehicle for what we wish to say. But now I may tell you that the youth, Laurent, switched law schools in order to study under the most activist faculty against that convention, then assembled in the United States. That their classes were conducted on the radiantly aromatic sub-maritime ranch of Leland Stanford had surprisingly less to do with it than the willingness of the émigré to see their warfare accomplished.

That it is not, is plainly not the only raison d'être of that estimable blog, but it is reason enough to acknowledge the blogger's courtesy with the prodigal's humility. We have to gather our sensibilities, as the city of coffee must, to observe in our debts to each other how vacant this convention is of justice, ignoring our common law's own stricter prohibition against a penalty based on any doubt whatsoever. We accepted the obligation not to turn away, when we confided the need to be heard, and asserted the privilege of publication.

In this week one needs to confess to the ultimate presence of oneself in the handiwork of others, fractional as it may be, involuntary as it may be, and recognise that what one extracts from them is a strengthened resolution to accept the human life. Now we hear testimony that a god had done so. 


Who can believe, the Example was set only for himself?

Alexander Agricola

(1446 - 1506)

Nobis Sancti Spiritus

San Francisco Chanticleer

Chanticleer Records, 1992©

4th portrait, another country