Saturday commute lxxvii: thinking with Terestchenko

Yesterday, the 8th, the visual

diary of Ivan Terestchenko pub-

lished a stimulating triad of

photographs on the theme of the

travels of soldiers and sailors.

There is an adjective which most

will find superfluous, but I in-

erject it in a preposterous pre-

caution, that a reader of this

page would not have noticed his.

iii  Anonymous at diary entry

iv   Youth at Seignosse, Terestchenko

bring the flowers

But you can't deny, I warned you, Martin

 not everyone would
 read the patchouli
 the same way.

Sentient

  More and more, I find myself con-

  sulting my friends for their gen-

  ius in reading the world, not for

  writing it. This is not sensuali-

  ty; everyone understands, this is
  sensibility. It is, famously, the
  more threatening thing. 

   

A moment

          It isn't shore leave, but the

          US Navy's renown for the com-

          fort of a ship's company is a

          lesson to us all, need I say.

          And really nowhere does the

          fleet's genius for the genial

          delectations of a voyage draw

          greater delight than in cros-

          sing the international date-

          line. On such occasions, the

          most junior officer on board,

          who has not yet leapt the cal-

          endar this way, is commanded

          to serve the officers and men

          a commemorative sweet, which

          we take to be a salutary prac-

          tice under any circumstances.

          Beneath this portrait from a

          pleasant naval service, slept

          my English Cocker, Whit, for

          his whole life; and possibly,

          in time, a new incumbent will

          succeed him in commanding his

          own biscuit from that perch.

          I, for my part, draw endless

          satisfaction from the faces

          of the crew, enjoying such a

          respite with tradition's qui-

          et ceremony. I remark, that I

          respect this, because I see,

          their servant did.

          To your day, Sailor.

United States Navy

USS Goldsborough, 1967

What can I give him?

For most of the people I would

understand, and who might do

the same for me, this question

adopts a phrasing which trans-

poses it to another realm; and

we all live with many such pre-

emptions. In this case a poem,

later a Christmas carol, beat

us to the punch line, and yet

has framed the natural expres-

sion of my consternation, every

first week in February, as my

brother's birth date looms. In

fact I do not enormously mind;

I'm not sure when I noticed the

correlation of my question, and

the mystification I shared with

Rossetti's impecunious figure;

but the boy had been a chorister

and I accepted it as permitted.

A blog is stamped with personality but is not personal, a reader lately remonstrated to me. What could anyone give, I won-dered, if that were the case? Only our love can make us feel unread. Oh, we'd quarrel. There is turmoil in fruition; authorship's a rubbing clear. 

I would give my brother the fortitude to accept his absence. I would give him the peace he has made with his death. I would give him the imprint of our escapades and larks, our studies and our talks, our sharings of a common bath. I would give him what is shining even clearer in the shade, and I would give him evidence, it mattered how we played.

  Cottage cheese
  Garden peas
  Ovid's Metamorphoses

iii  Valéry Lorenzo