Saturday, June 21, 2014

Saturday commute cix: Catching up with policy



It was a slow day
And the sun was beating
On the soldiers by the side of the road
There was a bright light
A shattering of shop windows
The bomb in the baby carriage
Was wired to the radio

These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby, don't cry
Don't cry




It was a dry wind
And it swept across the desert
And it curled into the circle of birth
And the dead sand
Falling on the children
The mothers and the fathers
And the automatic earth
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby, don't cry
Don't cry







     It's a turn-around jump shot
     It's everybody jump start
     It's every generation throws a hero up the pop charts
     Medicine is magical and magical is art
     The Boy in the Bubble
     And the baby with the baboon heart







And I believe
These are the days of lasers in the jungle
Lasers in the jungle somewhere
Staccato signals of constant information
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires and baby
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky




     These are the days of miracle and wonder
     And don't cry baby, don't cry
     Don't cry






















Paul Simon
Graceland
1986©







Friday, June 20, 2014

How is our darling Dick like yesterday's fashion prince?






 D'you have a mode of
 covering up that's ty-
 ing you in knots? To
 precipitate a frock
 you can't escape, re-
 sembles making a war
 you can't pretend is
 someone else's. People
 wouldn't know you with-
 out it. We saw our Dick
 in Murdoch media again,
 impersonating a garrote.





















iii  dove, crow, wall


Thursday, June 19, 2014

Cornstarch, milk, and London's Springtime moment







 to London's lightly covered in-
 troduction of menswear sugges-
 tions, and took the precaution
 of illustrating his excitement
 with enough liberality to read
 through it. It would call for a
 harder heart than ours to doubt
 his report, of many reduced to
 tears. Deconstructions do this. 



Houdon ate the heart out of his own blancmange, so uncontrolled was the voracious jubilation for its crumbs. But there he was, the gender blessed at last to breathe within the milkened cornstarch of idolatry in motion. Who would not have wept to share the day? 






 At home, then, later - possibly much 
 later - the usual sordid questions 
 tend to lay the celebrant low. Where 
 can one wear the thing; how can one 
 know if it isn't a knock-off, or even 
 if fits? What if it shows up on Amazon?
 But, oh, is it not just chickening out
 in art's defense, even to ask the price?















Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Origins of Wednesday iv






        Eventually, however, a day 
        arrives when conditions be-
        come more fortunate and the 
        tremendous tension decreases; 
        perhaps there are no longer 
        any enemies among one's neigh-
        bors, and the means of life, 
        even for the enjoyment of life, 
        are superabundant. At one stroke
        the bond and constraint of the 
        old discipline are torn: it no
        longer seems necessary, a condi-
        tion of existence - if it per-
        sisted it would only be a form
        of luxury, an archaizing taste.






        I always figured, the con-
        ditions of greater fortune
        this philosopher was talk-
        ing about, were social and
        cultural, not material. He
        expects social change, not
        social mobility. Still, e-
        ven the fortunate can hope
        to be released. 
       
      












Friedrich Nietzsche
Beyond Good & Evil
  Prelude to a Philosophy
  of the Future
  What is noble cclxii
Walter Kaufman
  editor & translator
Basic Writings
op. cit.

1879 Hall




Monday, June 16, 2014

The Diemming of Nouri al Maliki





We come again to that phase
we always appreciate in the
pursuit of our serial wars,
when the retirement of their
pretexts focuses on the Diem-
ming of our puppets. In Iraq
we observe the disintegration
foretold quite neutrally, to
all who were undeceived, as
long ago as 2006, although if
anyone had felt like it, he
could have read the wartime
letters of Lawrence in Car-
chemish, where he dined with
the country's compiler, Ger-
trude Bell. But I was remind-
ed of the more recent volume
in an exchange of notes with
an expatriate of here, and the
reason we never hear of it now, 
is that it was hostile to our
preposterous pretexts, and the
work of a friend of the Kurds:
Peter Galbraith has been shun-
ned but his analysis has matur-
ed in the rise of ISIS. The End
of Iraq is worth a read today;
The New York Times drew his map
for us again last weekend, and
very prettily, too.

If no one can ever be in synch
with today's American policies,
who learned of the world before
the dawn of Fox News, we'll still
always have Casablanca, in which 
the default text of authority's 
hypocrisy immortalised Claude 
Rains, shocked, shocked to dis-
cover gambling at Rick's.

But I stray. The beat beat beat
of the tom-toms of propaganda,
which wafted so musically to our
upright ears as John F. Kennedy
prepared us for abandonment of
the sectarian, the corrupt, the
exclusionary, the arrogant head
of our visibly failed state in 
Saigon, echo loudly now, to Nouri
al Maliki, you you you must go.
Ngo Dinh Diem was surely those
things, which we now so sagely
discern to be incompatible with
a viable state, but which are
exactly what we specified and
engineered in boosting Maliki, 
made him available, and made him
expediently dependent and culpable.
All he lacks is a Crawford twang,
to articulate his lineage. 

What was to be expected of a war
to celebrate the death of history?

Now, a rug can be pulled out from
under embarrassing satraps, more
than one way, as Mr Noriega can
attest. No one can suppose we in-
tend the Diemming of Iraq's head
of state to imitate previous art.
But our honor now perfumes the air,
to edify the senses of the latest
generation to mature in this land.

I do not like to reflect on such
things in this setting. I like the
way my lawns are being groomed this
season, by some earnest and learned
youngsters, in whom caring to do a
good job translates into a brighter
glow than ever in the quiet acres I
enjoy with my dog. I'd be uneasy a-
bout paying them money for their la-
bor, without repaying their care. 










Peter W. Galbraith
The End of Iraq
  How American Incom-
  petence Created a War
  without End
Simon & Schuster, 2006©

Ellen J. Hammer
A Death in November
  America in Vietnam, 1963
Oxford University Press, 1987©





Jacques Fath had a splash called Green Water





   something I agreed 
   on with my father.









Sunday, June 15, 2014

So was the Governor of Texas doing his Mayor of Toronto thing?




 You know Rick Perry,
 you love Rick Perry:
 a walking consola-
 tion for the death
 of Liebling (and we
 coming on). So was
 out in San Francisco
 on being on his game
 only as an addict, 
 like Toronto's pop-
 ular Mayor, or was
 he simply confiding
 that he can't under-
 stand his personality
 without reference to
 fear of where it draws
 him? He needn't worry.
 That requires consent.