To some extent we all enjoy a surprise

I'm aware of only hazarding
a guess in this suggestion,
but as this writer consults
his nature, he keeps recur-
ringly assuring himself, he
cannot be both ordinary and
strange at the same moment.
We can not all be Mr Trump;
and would sign any petition
to the Lord, to keep us so.

But what of the obverse case, may I ask? What of the case, of being surprised in our enjoyment? This can only happen, it appears, to those who do not traipse in the klieg-light of the ziggurat-zoned zillionaire Zorro of the Right (toward whom Bob Dole is able to feel cozy). A wave of bashfulness comes, may one guess again, to those impaled on the gaze of any intrusion, whilst writing their heartfelt letter to The Times. On the wings of literacy, it will fly over the head of anyone who suc-cumbs to Donald Trump; but it may lift those, not wounded at Anzio, who'd like to reject our Duce. 

Write it. And with the object not of disarming him, but of showing his wake as the funerary pro-cession that it is, a vortex so vacuous, its virtue is its vividness of vengeful villainy. Let anger with attractiveness be confined to him, named for him, an entourage out of Visconti's The Damned.

                  I cite recitals of play at this

                  page for its fulcrum of our na-

                  ture. I cite playing fair only

                  because the game is our mechan-

                  ism for loving each other. We

                  do not intend to yield to a per-

                  sonification of unfairness, in

                  either party; but in one, there

                  is a primordial emergency, not

                  to be neglected. Make the sound

                  of play, so pure, that shame en-

                  gulfs the snarl with sweat, and

                  sweeps the gutters clear of its

                  echoes. 

                  

Luchino Visconti

La caduta degli dei

  The Damned

1969

Happy birthday,
Mr Washington.