Saturday, January 30, 2016

A campaign slogan so great


   You don't even
   have to say it.






   You just have to
   be playing fair.























Madison PHS
Brooklyn, New York
1958

The Washington Post
29 January 2016




Saturday afternoon update:
Everyone's telephone registered
endorsements offered today by
The New York Times to follow-
ers of the Presidential race in
the United States. This posting
is not an endorsement; this
page might not offer one. And
the Times might well change
its mind.

Tuesday morning update,
9th February ~
The slogan lit the day.





Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Theban trails






Possibly I should open a parallel blog this 12-month, of footnotes and diagrams for readers who know the United States only as the foreign country that it is. At the moment, for instance, we note that the leading Right Wing columnist for the paper of record has warned Right Wing voters that it would be insane of them to nominate either of their two favorite candidates for President, while the leading Left Wing columnist for the capital paper has warned Left Wing voters that it would be insane not to nominate the least trusted operative in either Party, the wife of the only President impeached in the 20th Century. 

In the midst of all this, an urbanite gadfly and publisher in his own right has intimated that he will nominate himself, if this insanity is perfected. Here was impressive agreement, then: insanity must not be so unconstructive as we'd thought. 

Yet maybe I'm right. Wouldn't it be happier to write for Thebes? We do the next best thing, to read about the house of Atreus, where the political Chorus was just as gloomy as America's is, but you could stay home at will. In previous postings, I've likened our volatility to that of Bacchae in revolt; but now we see, we'd been watching the Oresteia all along, a chronicle of endless palace coups. There is, however, a self-defrocking effect of our mentors' good advice. It had been obvious in Murdoch's farce, but now it's come to the most exalted pages. They bring readers' disgust to greater heights with these diagnoses, than tragedy is designed to bear. We therefore approach the exile of the Chorus, which has exhibited itself to the Left and to the Right, as vested middle managers of privileged play. Suddenly and simultaneously, their earth has shifted by our exposure of the protagonists. It was nothing personal. They might still sell us other bubbles. 

Just not today.




















Andrei Tarkovsky
Offret
  The sacrifice
1986

Stay Sane, America,
  Please!
The New York Times
26 January 2016

Democrats Would be Insane
  to Nominate Bernie Sanders
The Washington Post
26 January 2016





Sunday, January 24, 2016

Embarcadero





  Like you I had found this
  to be a suspiciously posh
  little saddle, but on the
  other hand, I must admit,
  it only enhanced my sense
  of its being auspicious.




 














...                        each lord            
Touched at his sleeve for the ace he'd hidden there.
























David Ferry
Of No Country I Know
  New and Selected Poems
  and Translations
  The Embarkation
  for Cythera
  [fragment]
University of Chicago, 1999©

Antoine Watteau
L'embarquement pour Cythère
1717
Palais du Louvre