Put on a pretty record

  Household
  slogan of
  one's ear-
  ly years.

  I learned
  to miscon-
  strue Moz-
  art. That
  almost is
  irrepara-
  ble.

   Three years ago I was
   suddenly totally blind
   in one eye. My surgeon
   was from Syria and I
   would always ask after
   his family. He healed
   me and I don't see him
   anymore.

Yves Klein
Monochrome vert
1957

Plagiarists

         Separatists expressing
         Ukrainian Heritage one
         fine morning in Febru-
         ary. Look away, again.

 

       

Brendan Hoffman photo

Getty Images

The New York Times

February 15, 2015

We don't know what happens

   Possibly I am not alone in an

   inheritance from my father of

   a preference for a little less

   "truth and reconciliation" in

   "frank and open discussion" of

   shared catastrophe, than many

   propose today, possibly because

   of subjunctive and conditional

   constructions of speech we are

   given, to hedge our testimony.

   I respect the rigors of reti-

   cence, even more than the ec-

   stasies of complaint and con-

   fession. I trust their prize.

   Today would be the 101st birth-

   day of the only man my culture

   could countenance, after for-

   mative years, my having loved.

   Our private catastrophes, which

   were notable enough at the time,

   led us both to experience being

   witnesses to transition we were

   adapted to appraising only with

   amazement, and shared sorrow.

   People say, on the strength of

   a couple of speeches, that this

   culture is changing. As much as

   we have been educated to observe

   what did go wrong, in strangers

   of long ago, we tend to sense a

   disconnect from theories when we

   engage in each other's lives. An

   honest man reads Horace just this

   way.

   Moderation, reticence. I celeb-

   rate a father. This is his leg-

   acy, if one could claim it. Do

   go gentle, rage not against the

   dark. Arms are near. Open them.

Project for the weekend

One is so soon bored
with a new shirt, it
seems wise to expect
to be, so we can get
at the root cause of
recurring disquiets.

 Inequality has still
 not been solved, and
 there's nothing like
 a weekend of liberty
 for making progress.

Gold magenta orange teal pink

        Inside 
        strait.




















Raghu Rai
  Monsoon, Mumbai

Promises we mightn't pursue i

   Well! What a sane suggestion.

   Yes, it was a slow wash cycle.
   The conspiracy against the gov-
   ernment of Greece, albeit count-
   ing its chickens already, aban-
   doned freshening the suspense,
   any longer. The New York Times,
   meanwhile, leapt valiantly into
   the breach, with a stunning sum-
   mary of stains, for declining 
   Governor Christie's offer to 
   serve the sentence he deserves, 
   from the White House.

   These circumstances left the on-
   line sidebar for that editorial
   free to strike a whimsical bal-
   ance, in the management of its
   advertisements. Who would not,
   now that you mention it, stand
   in to spread the truth about a
   candidate of such clothes? In
   a week when not a few people
   are remarking on convergences 
   in many dizzying fulfillments,
   this unusual presentation, not
   to mention the libertine slo-
   gan it rides in on, might have
   caught even the hip, napping.

   We adopt the assumption, not un-
   advisedly, that no one who can
   afford to present himself in a
   broadside at the Times, would 
   waste his money on a race own-
   ed by the Clinton Global Laun-
   dromat. Do we know this Weldon,
   and how much foreign pandering
   experience he has? Will his can-
   didacy penetrate the first tier
   for debate's sake? What element,
   if any, of a bribe seems to be
   missing, in this whole message?
   And yet, should we prosecute on
   technicalities, a platform for
   reconciling both sides on a pla-
   teau of comfort, which might in-
   volve no taxes?

   

Protectorate

             

                                                               

  Luis Barragán did

  not do my shorts.

  Some days, a col-

  ony's just a col-

  ony, some days it

  is a hot holiday.

Puerto Rico

1941

Mark Rothko

1954

Steward?

I thought, I'd break training
in our dervish news cycle, to 
respond to something pleasant.

Against expectation, and with
that spontaneity we grow accus-
tomed to, little by little, in
our changing climate's beguiling
face, this swath of Virginia was
enjoying last weekend a rapid 
collapse in the mercury (now re-
stored to us, as an element sea-
soning our fisheries, by a won-
drously epicurean Supreme Court), 
just as our pulpits were prepar-
ing a prayer for snow. Who would
not, then, place a call to his
butcher, to commission a stand-
ing rib roast? A staple of win-
ter, suddenly calling us.

I was caught twice off guard. 

A premier cru pinot noir at
18 is not a wine for pairing,
I discovered at Sunday dinner,
routine as that alliance is
in its youth, with roasts of
beef, woodcock, and crisp boar.
It is a vision from Rimbaud.

To this one-off lad we owe a 
debt for discovering the daz-
zling qualities of the oblique
against the starkness of noon.
The coinciding of that febrile
delinquent's imagination, with
discovery very few have ever
dreamed, represents not a
capture so much as an immut-
able emanation of an annointed
sensory logic, as we savour in
Minor White. The taste for it
is not rare, only its embodi-
ment is. We others move, in
such fields, from shock to ar-
resting shock, and learn to
yield autonomy to each glory.

I have seen it: to its inher-
ent ruby core has been laid a
mantle of irridescent vermeil.
I knew I should have listened
to Homer.

For some years I have stood
fast against toasting a sin-
gular occasion, with a wine
of extraordinary character.
The occasion is adequate to
itself, while such a wine
offers to illuminate innocent
spontaneity with chapter and
verse of unforgettability.
Men of commerce dispute this
advice, exposing themselves 
and the wine to disappoint-
ing experiences. (I always
wondered what was the matter
with James Bond, to call for
a Bollinger Grande Année so
predictably, and at such con-
flict with his palate's great
adventure).

But this scruple has only led
to the dispiriting consequence
of distancing one from the bet-
ter growths, for in Virginia,
we abhor spontaneity almost as
avidly as we mistake the great
occasion. Is a Gevrey-Chambertin
from Les Cazatiers, under the
midwifery of Père Serafin and 
Fils, to go unremarked by acqui-
escence to these habits? I fear,
in a way, that the reception
of its '97 vintage, today, is
vulnerable to some hack enthu-
siast's boast, on price alone.
But this is not a grand cru,
so the risk of that slander
by association may be slight.

Could there be a price too
great for unseasonable relapse
in Summer temperatures in Vir-
ginia? That anomaly verges so
treacherously upon the defini-
tion of the great occasion, as
to keep one apart from wine,
for the duration.

Nor will this do. We all need
to yield to happiness, some-
time, but then there's always
Rimbaud, to haunt us with the
great wonder of a beauty, ut-
terly recast in our absence.

As the great growths of Bordeaux
only swagger down the fairway of
their second decade in bottle,
with a back nine no palate will
ever hold against their lineage,
those of Burgundy have begun the
untimable unveiling of enchant-
ment the southern département can
never reach. In them the biology
and the chemistry are the same,
but it is as if the elements are
not. And they are raised to re-
semble nothing haunted by the ac-
tuaries of the cellar life. In
them are the halo, the shadow, 
the shimmers of yet accosting
radiance. Does Rimbaud get it
wrong:

   Golden dawn and tremulous evening find our brig
   off shore, facing this villa and its dependencies,
   which form a promontory as vast as Epirus and the
   Peloponnese, or the great island of Japan, or A-
   rabia! Temples lit up by returning processions, 
   immense vistas of the fortifications of modern
   coastlines; dunes illustrated with warm flowers
   and bacchanals; grand canals of Carthage and Em-
   bankments of a louche Venice; languid eruptions
   of Etnas and fissures of flowers and water in
   glaciers .. are open to the minds of travelers
   and noblemen which, during daytime hours, allow
   all the tarantellas of the coast, and even the
   ritornellos of celebrated vales of art, to deco-
   rate wondrously the façades of the Promontory-
   Palace.


No, on the whole, we'd have to
admit, the little monster has
produced a promisingly service-
able tasting note for our Am-
trak stewards, on an overnight
to Miami, swaying off its own
peninsular promontory. But is
it nice?

   Yes. The fruit is not so much stripped, as bur-
   nished; the already modest (13.0) alcohol is so
   well aligned with phenols, acidity, and solids,
   the ordeal of fermentation so long forgiven, its
   energies now are entirely those of projecting a
   signature spice of the skins, and the long, very
   long contemplation of the little shit's absolute-
   ly apposite golden dawn and tremulous evening.  


We don't need such a creation,
but I set down my glass in dis- 
covery of a place in it. 

We don't need such a nature,
but I set down my glass in
grateful fellowship.















   






Jean-François-Arthur Rimbaud
Les illuminations
  Promontoire
John Ashbery
  translation
op. cit.

Minor White
1958

The New Yorker
2015

Decanter, Riedel, Austria
2000's
Glass, Volnay #3, Baccarat, France
1960's

Dishrack
Chuck Williams, Sutter Street
1970's

Further news of the vile body

No one prefers, to advance upon
the Sabbath a comment that seems
partisan. The peaceful day calls
out for a promenade on the strand
and a nap. Here again, however, we
encounter the shortfall of blog-
ging: that nothing is seen beneath
the present date. And this date is
close to closing off appeals of an-
other's life. After a week of up-
holding health care and fairness
elsewhere, our Court is expected
to affirm our exotically unusual,
and unarguably cruel disposal of
human life. Sorry to mention it.

We tend to abhor every vengeful
standard of justice, and count
the morally horrid practice of
the Clintons' introduction into
our Federal courts, of "victims'
statements," as unutterably re-
volting, but abhorrently charac-
teristic of their chronically ex-
ploitive quest for favour at the
bottom of the barrel. The en-
tire principle, of ceding the 
administration of justice to the 
State, was predicated on renoun-
cing that of the clan, which they
champion. It's what their sooth-
sayers say to do, because it
meets their ends. 

But what can we expect them to
know, who learned only what pro-
motes the arc of their deliver-
ance from their origin? In this
way, the Clintons became aristo-
crats of all our hurt feelings;
so is it why, a great ghastli-
ness but rises with their tide?

 

"Proud," she tweeted, Friday.
What will she say, of the im-
pending, certain favouring of
killing as a punishment, from
that same Court that saw our
pleadings, rightly? Who has
heard her plead, for justice
where its votes are few? We
poll the world to cite a case.

Who next will be our Caryl
Chessman: who will hold his
breath, to share another mo-
ment of this world with glib
concession, and serenity with
election on the altar of laun-
dering our life in someone's
blood?

Our culture is not her fault.
The family gift is avoidance.
Her demurral to lead strikes
one as suggesting, she relies
upon being seen as an innocent.
(He makes a career out of it).
And who is not! But should a
sparrow fly to ask, Shall the
the children be awakened, or
should a bean sprout seem to
bow with any pleading, we'd 
hope they never saw such lead-
ership, to leave them so con-
fused.

 

I may say, I know the industry
which gives us our candidates;
and I'll be thought impolite
by those who laud its nobility,
its unending excuses and thrills.
I saw it, I was with it, but it
does impose upon one's patience
with prevarication, eventually.
Yet it's there, inside the "war
room," where Clintons hire out 
for a day's position.

I wonder, who needs to put anoth-
erto death, to win his job? Mrs 
Clinton only cried in her New Hamp-
shire primary; Bill flew home to 
slaughter someone for votes in 
his. But this is vastly greater 
than any Clinton's caution. This 
is what our republic does, and so 
do we who run it with their kind.

We can make them let us stop. Or
shall we always be making ends 
meet?

Luchino Visconti
La terra trema
1948