Reading adirondackly

Extract the day,

they say: my pines are happy

to give shelter, planks, and

scent. I think I said this as

a child, comfy in their tent.

What matter: now, I'm not a

child, I play with them in 

trust; countless climbing

fallings never blaming them

for lust.

I 'wake to scents of bacon

o'er their embers as I steep,

I dine on sizzling fishes hid

within their lapping keep; as

reading adirondackly, I 'low

my heart to leap.

Pricing sweaters, one by one

  Their wearer hits

  the shower, aware

  of a gesture of ol-

  factory compassion,

  shrugging get off,

  alert, to his toss

  of textures privil-

  eged to breathe as

  he has done. Where

  is a price for any

  sweater set, which

  strikes that tumb-

  led incarnation of

  its native, tauten-

  ed frame, as we ig-

  nore the epithets

  invented to defame? 

Listening at the Monteleone ii

           I believe I think,

           I want to ask. Yet

           what I want, is to

           know.

  She materialised soundlessly. Her eyes 

  fixed on me with a gentle questioning 

  look which I came to remember as having 

  belonged to my grandmother during her 

  sieges of illness, when I used to go to 

  her room and sit by her bed and want, so 

  much, to say something or to put my hand 

  over hers .. Now it was she who stood next 

  to my bed for a while. And as I drifted 

  toward sleep, I wondered if she'd witness-

  ed the encounter .. Nothing about her gave 

  me any sign. The weightless hands clasping 

  each other so loosely, the cool and believ-

  ing gray eyes in the faint pearly face .. 

  I felt that she neither blamed nor approved 

  .. No. Wait. She seemed to lift one hand 

  very, very slightly before my eyes closed 

  with sleep ..

Tennessee Williams

Vieux Carré

  Part One, Scene Two

1978

New Directions, 1979©

Listening at the Monteleone

In the last year of her young

life a strikingly beautiful

woman finds herself in the old

Hotel Monteleone, perusing a

guide to the port city downriver

from her native Minneapolis,

on a journey unaccompanied ex-

cept by her hostess, a friend

of the family. She is ill, but

her inscription in the endpa-

pers is firm, and continental.

Her name is Dorothea; her father

was a young teacher at Heidel-

berg, her mother, surviving far
beyond her, was of the third gen-
eration of the territory's first 

fortunes. Family legend had it

that he died of consumption in

Paris, on the young couple's

honeymoon. Now, I reason this

out, more probably: there may

well have been no marriage, as

her conception took place, de-

spite all precaution. Her father
may well not have died. Yet she

became beautiful, even accept-

ing her position in society; 

then, redeeming the cherished, 
missing father, entered into

a second marriage, to a boys' 

school teacher. If I do hold
her in my mind, it's not for
having met her. It's for be-
ing left my eyes.

'Old New Orleans' has been

compiled chiefly from an-

cient notarial acts, in ev-

ery case the history of each

old home has been searched

through these conveyance rec-

ords to establish original 

ownership and the year of ac-

tual building. Therefore, if

blame for blasted tradition

is to be attached to anyone

it should be placed on the

shoulders of the notaries of

a century or more ago who set

down in their sear and yellowed

files the actual transactions ..

  To steal a glance and, anxious, see

  Him slipping into transparency -

  The feathered helmet already in place,

  Its shadow fallen across his face

  (His hooded sex its counterpart) -

  Unsteadies the routines of the heart.

  If I reach out and touch his wing,

  What harm, what help might he then bring?

  But suddenly he disappears,

  As so much else has down the years ...

  Until I feel him deep inside

  The emptiness, preoccupied.

  His nerve electrifies the air.

  His message is his being there.

Stanley Clisby Arthur

Old New Orleans:

  A History of the Vieux Carré,

  Its Ancient and Historical Buildings

Harmanson, 1936©

J.D. McClatchy

Mercury Rising

  Mercury Dressing

Knopf, 2011©

Raising a puppy, but writing for others

I believe I probably snaffled

this unseasonal portrait from

the estimable Derek, whose tum-

blr has long been registered

in the adjacent panel, Context.

Of all the works in progress

at this page - that is to say,

of all the deferred projects

that hold the most promise -

the renovation of that frame

of reference is on one's mind.

It bears listings I simply ad-

mire, without habitual consul-

tation, and it lacks listings

which would further justify

its name. 

Derek's tumblr is less contex-

tual here than I wish it were,

but there is consolation for

most readers of rmbl, that it

has its own existence. Derek

has found a rare style of tum-

blring, circumventing a form's

inherent rejection of texts,

for which he obviously cares

a great deal.

In a more modest test of bal-
ancing, I think it is under-

stood, by readers here, that

I have undertaken the respon-

sibility for raising a puppy.

I do what I can to distrib-

ute his exercises and dev-
elopment with other people,

but at the end of the day,

this duty is mine. Among my
motives for turning to this
page, I have never deceived
myself that duty is one of
them, as much as responsib-
ility may figure underneath,
from time to time; and among
my motives for raising a dog
well, I do not suppose that
companionability can carry
the sense that it does in
social comment. I do won-
der, though, how seamless-
ly a religious kind of car-
ing informs the one task,
very universally, and the
other almost not at all,
even less with affection.

Thorny is but a name I gave
my puppy. At the same time,
I'm urged to publish above
the fold, an exchange from
another entry, and because
the matter remains so wide-
ly discussed, I've agreed.
Companionship and responsi-
bility, facets of one ped-
igree, display their common
lack of austerity, all over
again; and many will say,
one should be ashamed.  

No, a shower will not get you off of the grid, although now that I think of it, giving up the right to privacy is a small price to pay to ensure more accurate google searches. I like my search engine to know that when I type "redmugbluelinen" I am looking for poetry and pictures rather than Bed, Bath, and Beyond. And if Uncle Sam is reading your blog, (which he almost certainly is), then he knows that not only does a gentleman not dine in restaurants - but he also refrains from eavesdropping an entire nation.

_ _ 

You come here in obvious good faith but possibly lightly equipped with information in the subject at issue, and the mode in which you frame it leads to infamies of conduct of the very greatest moral consequence, for which there always exist various appetites of great energy. I'm terribly sorry to draw a distinction in the midst of such sympathy, but I did not cite the right against self-incrimination as an equal little snow cone to the Everest of privacy. I cited it because thousands of persons throughout British history, the precursor nation of this one, suffered under State compulsion and were hacked, quartered, immolated and sent to their mothers in dustbins for failing to incriminate themselves and, very often, others. When Google or Bank of America or your employer does it, it's naughty. When the only power on earth of the sovereign competence to compel your death does it, it is against an inheritance of liberty which no one has the moral right to squander.

The “I have nothing to hide” school of moral self-management, by the way, is, against a power which is inherently fallible at best, not merely negligent for oneself, but antisocial in the most reckless degree. We do not measure our virtue with pride, without corrupting conduct enacted in our name. Such is the legacy of the tragic panic which has governed American society, through waves of serial Awakenings, since Massachusetts was invented. Such is the seductive pressure on us all, today, that we roast and hack our martyrs all over again, and extinguish the rights of Americans unborn. That we may be ignorant of how we do it has been the simplest of all deceptions, when that we do it remains, in the numbers of the latest Pew poll, revoltingly popular.

But this is not eavesdropping. It is populist usurpation, the elevation of the crowd to a very high place. Even in that crowd, we have friends, and can possibly find ourselves, unwittingly.

  

Almost skating shirtlessly, almost swimming tidelessly

    Sometimes one

    can hardly

    tell the tale 

    of the shadow 

    from the act.

    

Did you ever wonder, what good a shower could do?

Over the weekend, while waiting for the shower, I read (as we all did) all the usual suspects on the American president's latest arguments in favour of neglecting the due process of law under his protectorate - I mean, neighbourhood gossips do it, and it's all the same thing. By and large, our wits were in accord, Douthat blaming us all for using communications in the first place. 

I forget whether I made it to the shower, but I can recall wondering what the point would be. Oh, I must have done. I have a dog to walk.

Leonard W. Levy

Origins of the Fifth

  Amendment: The

  Right against Self-

  Incrimination

Oxford University Press, 1968©

By what can one be taught

 What causes me most
 shame is always the
 same thing, casual-
 ness of expectation.

 I am taught by love
 but it is mine, for
 the treasures of my
 learning.

                  .. Her eyes

        in their wilderness gather fishes,

        dreaming salmon leap over cheekbones

        into the hot spring of her blood

        and her lips, wet with the flavor

        and the subtle scales, glitter

        against the horizon ..

Frank O'Hara

Poems Retrieved

  A Greek Girl at Riis Beach

Donald Allen, editor

City Lights, 2013©

Photo, Laurent

Leica M-3, 90mm Elmarit f/2.8

1/100 sec at f/4.0

Morning open shade

Kodak Ektar Pan

A Virginian in New York

Secretariat

Belmont Park

June 9th -

every June 9th,

while there is time

Canon, loose

      The Lord gives everything and charges

      by taking it back. What a bargain.

      Like being young for a while. We are

      allowed to visit hearts of [others],

      and go into their bodies so we feel

      no longer alone. We are permitted

      romantic love with its bounty and half-life

      of two years. It is right to mourn

      for the small hotels of Paris that used to be

      when we used to be. My mansard looking

      down on Notre Dame every morning is gone,

      and me listening to the bell at night.

      Venice is no more. The best Greek islands

      have drowned in acceleration ..

Jack Gilbert

Refusing Heaven

  The Lost Hotels

  of Paris

  [fragment]

ibid.