Saturday, February 14, 2015

Saturday commute ciii: passenging to Naples





The couple have motored down
from London and are just ar-
riving in Naples, where they
plan to dispose of a villa
left them by an uncle plain-
ly inspired by Norman Douglas.
They have shared the rôles of
driver and of passenger with
well distributed testiness,
their Bentley drop-head coupé
a self-effacing, quiet witness
to every subtle wince, more re-
flected than absorbed by sump-
tuously conditioned hides. A
crack in any surface bespeaks
a vital change of rhythm.




This is the shape of something.
Because the couple are named
Joyce, and because she recalls
a sickly poet from her youth,
who died for her, these signals
of the great story, The Dead,
are both apposite and incongru-
ous in this vigorous original.

One can't suggest a name, for
their fictitious story or the
art that it rides in on. Here
are 85 minutes, uncovering the
erotic genius for eternal life.

What could look the same again?




























Roberto Rossellini
  director, writer, producer
Journey to Italy
Viaggio in Italia
1954























Someone is here


not to pose as some
genius, or overbear-
ing authority; lift-
ing with us, to be
capable, curious ..

We'd do a Valentine.

And build it, if we
had to. But the mir-
acle gets there to
draw us, and we are
educated, and this
is what we call, a-
midst all its incar-
nations, an act of 
love.

This is all ours.

























Konstantin Vesnin




Friday, February 13, 2015

Friday's gutter








  Hey, Auguste.
  Why are Fen-
  di doing now
  what Jaeger
  did in the 
  '70s?

  To get to
  the end of
  the 'zine,
  Hercule?






















  Not entirely, Auguste.
  But because it's safe.








































I'm ready for my close-up, Mr Ford






 If one were born a pig
 (not that it's a char-
 acter one could not as-
 pire to play), the mat-
 ter might seem to boil
 down to, Shall I go as
 a prosciutto, or capo-
 collo, on a casual day
 at work. But to be sure
 one qualifies, it's al-
 ways prudent first to
 ask, How ever shall I
 dress the part?







































Thursday, February 12, 2015

Green is surprising








  










                         We are talking
                         about the most
                         vulnerable hue
                         on shore. It's
                         our most prev-
                         alent; does it
                         so conceal our
                         wearing of it,
                         or do we?





A cuprous tan,
a furtive scan,
gathered, where
its coolness ran

















green is how
his nature
draws a man.






















Françoise Huguier
Martinique
1986





Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Nasty distraction? Kansas resumes discrimination


The Topeka Capital-Journal re-
ports that one of the Right's
most notably vitriolic rhetor-
icians, in his Senate days, is
in a bind as Governor of Kansas
over horrific failures in his
management of the State budget.
He is, in a word, unpopular.

Right-ho. Time to kick a few 
fairies. He has just rescinded
an 8-year standing Executive Or-
der against employment discrim-
ination in Kansas, on the basis
of sexual orientation, on the
puerile fratboy excuse of avoid-
ing creating a "special class."
Again, we watch a neutral term
of law, perverted by a lawless
parody.






Discrimination is what creates
the special class. Not even a
Governor can govern around that,
and there is a mountain of Con-
stitutional law to tell him so.
But that's always been the spe-
cial charm of the miscognomen,
"orientation," hasn't it: all
you need, to kick a fairy, is 
your "orienation." Yet, now, 
the Governor does us all a ser-
vice by illuminating the iro-
ny, that marriage is far from
the end of it.




















We've observed before, how mem-
bers of that Party, only, wake
up every day and wonder, whom
can I hurt today? Usually, it's
a foreign nation, a female in
the workforce, a collegian on
a Pell grant, a non-white try-
ing to vote. But the fairies
remain so delectable, so tempt-
ing, so alluringly available
for schadenfreude, this Party
has single-handedly preserved
them as a Class, against the
irreversible fact of their as-
similation in society without
lying.

Now, tomorrow, if no one from
his sect objects, I'd like to
resume our play, thanks very
much. And may Kansas survive
her Governor's licentiousness.





















Distribution of justice in Alabama






The New York Times, in the midst
of an absolutely torrid exposé
of suspect foreign dislocation
of the New York residential mar-
ket, happened to publish the map
of Alabama twice today, once to
show the concentration of lynch-
ings in that jurisdiction from
1877 to 1950, to pluck a couple
of dates arbitrarily from the
air, above; and again, to show
the concentration of resistance
to marriage equality there, now
much in defiance of the highest
Court in the nation, below. As
one mightn't suspect, the white
spaces represent lawful conduct.

These maps show Alabama not to
be a concentration camp, but al-
so not a place of coincidence.
Where African-Americans are nu-
merous, the struggle succeeds.
























The way you wear your hat






   the way you
   sip your tea   






















   to feel one's
   place, to know
   one's landing,
   to observe how
   to make it sof-
   ter, and to be-
   lieve we shall

   we ride cables
   that have sung
   we're coming -

   over and over.





   































iii  Laurent Albucher

George Gershwin
Shall We Dance
  They Can't Take
  that Away from Me
op. post. 
1937©









Monday, February 9, 2015

Alabama's bein' naughty again





         Always a
         tease we
         can use.

         And just
         in time,
         for Sel-
         ma.













































Living in the time of song


I was lunching alone yesterday
when I read that Bob Dylan had
been out, explaining himself a-
gain, at an industry ceremony
in Los Angeles. Reuters and The
New York Times reported that he
spoke for 35 minutes, to some
3,000 of the hippest and hottest
of the moment; and this would be 
an excruciatingly long time for 
such people, to suppress their 
natural animation. At least,
many must have ventured to mut-
ter, he isn't singing.



























Even so, for music industrial-
ists Mr Dylan seemed to put his
finger on an even more unset-
tling proposition, than a solo
for cement mixer. He was heard
to be discussing music as verse.
Well, he and Cole Porter might
be able to get away with this
kind of lèse-majesté, but the
anatomy of human beings, his
listeners' lives contend, calls
for a hippity, hoppity beat, a-
long with copyright, of course.
















But I stray (and it wasn't
even that kind of lunch);
for, plainly, these indus-
trialists bear a shrewd re-
gard for the hypothetical
capacity of words, as agents
of one kind of humane effect
or another. What they do not
much care about, I tend to
think, is the sustained long
haul of the same effect. In
this respect Bob Dylan has
not been the ideal companion
to the business they've cho-
sen. His marginal voice has,
though, gained position for
his long haul, without giv-
ing threat to theirs. And of
course, he has made many of
them ridiculously wealthy.





I read his remarks, and came
home to revisit some lines he
put one in mind of, portraying
a distinction of importance. A
distinction, everyone knows he
has cared for. A distinction he
was willing to lay open to them. 





          .. as in cutting up a man that's dead,
          The body will not last out, to have read
          On every part, and therefore men direct
          Their speech to parts, that are of most effect;
          So the world's carcass would not last, if I
          Were punctuall in this Anatomy ..

          Vouchsafe to call to minde that God did make
          At last, and lasting'st peece, a song. He spake
          To Moses to deliver unto all,
          That song, because hee knew they would let fall
          The Law, the Prophets, and the History,
          But keepe the song still in their memory;

          Verse hath a middle nature; heaven keeps Soules,
          The Grave keepes bodies, Verse the Fame enroules.
























John Donne
An Anatomy 
  of the World
  The First Anniver-
  sary, 435-440 et seq.
1611
Charles M. Coffin
  editor
The Complete Poetry
  and Selected Prose
  of John Donne
First Modern Library Edition
Random House, 1952©