Origins of Wednesday xxi: One good towel

I can't believe we couldn't restruc-ture our entire political polar system between that faction of humanity which desires only one good cry, and the one which would settle for one good towel. Not that the basis for their achieving a consensus is obscure. Where the substance of each position is so amenable to the justifications of the other, nobody particularly cares very much for holding hearings on that moisture, much less on that absorbency, for that very reason. Plainly, to govern anybody on the basis of so much common understanding only threatens to engulf Conservatism in Trumpism, which is as infamous for the sumptuous towel as for voluminous tears. Such a shame.

Swimming my haircut

    

    A shower just

    won't cut it.

    Sport and po-

    etry and sun.

    

Terestchenko

And then there were two

The clarifying triumphs of Donald Trump
and Mrs Clinton place the nation on the
verge of speculating between figures un-
popular enough in their own Party to be
rejected, standing alone. Their need of
each other is bringing forth their uni-
on against the principles and bonds of
a national inheritance.

Whether a doomed interloper should now
enter the mix, either from Orthodox Re-
publicanism in its new distillation, or
from some disdaining great fortune in
the wings, will not change that defini-
tion of the election of the successor
to Barack Obama. Now unfolds a squalid,
mire-drunken spat between two specta-
cles of corruption: venality beyond
belief, against impotent iconoclasm, 
driving refugees into each other's lap
for the shelter of their ruthlessness.

Where is Gore Vidal? At long last,
have these victors no sentiment for
reading aloud from his Burr or 1876,
instead of hectoring us to do their
rival in, superfluously?

They leave two candidates, classically
worthy of conducting that competition
in their place. The Governor of Ohio
and the Senator from Vermont are so or-
dinary, so notably undemented and com-
pleat, as to inspire that greater cam-
paign which remains open to our effort.

I refer to the reform by repopulation
of both houses of Congress, and as many
State lower houses as can be reclaimed
from ideological delirium. 2016 is now
launched on a course to advance nothing.
But to strike to salvage its wreckage, 
recalling Churchill, would mark a limit
to this indelicate collusion.

Marco Calderini
Palazzo reale, Torino
ca 1910

The bell at the interval

I awoke this morning to discover
myself residing in a Super Tues-
day State. The surprise began to
make itself understood as a wear-
ing in of treads, punctuated by
a gathering chatter, greeting me
even with awareness of my choice.

 What would it have meant to the
 neo-classical theory underlying
 our Constitution, if everyone 
 were not to show up? A system,
 relying upon the vitality of fac-
 tion and the candor of personal
 perception, thence to be assessed
 and extruded into shifting place-
 ment within, and acting as a check
 upon our structures of governing,
 depends also on everyone's show-
 ing up to play. Not as sages, but
 as themselves; or the concept col-
 lapses, and the game is not fair.

 No one is unneedy, of exercising
 himself, contributing himself. I
 see rmbl standing for Mr Sanders.

Hannes Kilian
1965

Mark Rothko
undated

An irrelevance of heroes

   Not so much a pride of 

   lions, Kasich, Cruz, or

   Rubio, fending off our

   nemesis, only then too

   pliantly to bend to the

   Congress of Republicans.

   What's become of thinking?

Marcel Breuer
Chair "Wassily"
Dessau
1926

It's not your fault

    It's not your fault.

    Everyone understands
    this now.

    






















Matt Damon &
  Ben Affleck
  Screenplay 
Gus van Sant
  director
Good Will Hunting
1997

Josh Singer &
  Tom McCarthy
  Screenplay
Tom McCarthy
  director
Spotlight
2015

Pierre B.

    This is for Spotlight, and

    the beautifully true heart

    of our knowing portraitist 

    Élisabeth Baysset.

    In this movie, we remember

    every gesture of her draw-

    ing forth the profile of a

    lovingly nurtured life, so

    that what might have been,

    can be.

Élisabeth Baysset

Pierre B.

2012©

Sunday history by the downspout

We were immediately conducted
into the little Chapel on the
right hand. Sir Roger, plant-
ing himself at our Historian's
Elbow, was very attentive to
everything he said, particular-
ly to the Account he gave us 
of the Lord who had cut off 
the King of Morocco's head ..

      Our conductor then pointed

      to that Monument where there

      is the Figure of one of our
      English Kings without an Head;

      and upon giving us to know,

      that the Head, which was of

      beaten Silver, had been stolen

      away several Years since: Some

      Whig, I'll warrant you, says 

      Sir Roger; you ought to lock up 

      your Kings better; they will

      carry off the Body too, if you

      do not take care.

Joseph Addison
Richard Steele
The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers
  from The Spectator, London
  1711 - 1712
    XXII: Sir Roger in Westminster Abbey
The Heritage Press, 1945©
op. cit.