Friday, May 6, 2016

Suppose it were Friday cxii: Off for a weekend with one good book





from Porto Rafti published his
announcement, way back, of go-
ing off on holiday, by saying,
I will miss you, but not that
much. The thought, of course,
couldn't enter one's mind; it
just seems an enviably cheeky
concession to the undeniable.

For the brevity of a weekend,
variously committed as it is
to the impromptu, one doesn't
risk becoming embedded with 
an enthralling new project.




               But on the other hand, a mod-
               el of collected essays, upon
               a coherent and multi-faceted
               theme, makes a companion for
               travel by self-acclamation.
               
               If one hadn't a copy, travel
               would be saddled by not go-
               ing alone. Gaul had only 3
               parts, and we saw how many
               had to attend its conquest.

               Watteau had as many as the
               letters in the alphabet -
               plus a few more, where the
               letter embodied more riches.

               Poor Gaul. All that noise,
               for only more of the same.















Jed Perl


Gary Winogrand
New York, 1950
Exhibition Pier 24
San Francisco




Thursday, May 5, 2016

Yet another mislaid "only"


Democratic National Committee Chairwoman 
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said if 
it was her decision, she would scrap open 
primaries and only allow voters registered 
as Democrats to participate in primaries.

"I believe that the party's nominee should 
be chosen - this is Debbie Wasserman 
Schultz's opinion — that the party's nomin-
ee should be chosen by members of the par-
ty," the Florida Democrat said during an 
interview with "MSNBC Live" on Monday.

As reported in The Washington Examiner






Isn't it just gruesome, sometimes,
to expose people in trade of serv-
ing curiosity, for the disadvan-
tages they exhibit? Here, like so
many, a dutiful verbiage provider
lobs an "only" into a sentence, so
indifferent to its placement that
you'd think the word could modify
syntax by instinct. Maybe it does.

In the exclusive club the Floridi-
an services for friends and pat-
rons in the Party's hierarchy, "on-
ly" would rate naturally as a modi-
fier of such prolific utterance, as
to distribute itself promiscuously
throughout her proclamations. Such
trade, in our discretion, we usual-
ly offer ascent by a service stair.





Unitary, exclusionary, protective
to a fault, "only" calls upon the
rarest employment in democracies,
and at the most superfluous place.
Not at the starting line, not in
the stretch, not until the roses.
Isn't it intriguing, for example,
that we have the presence of mind
to condemn demands for barriers a-
gainst all of any belief, yet in-
terpose a blackball to our own?

Everything wrong with the patron
is magnified by the servant. All
of "only" is genuinely a tragic
utterance, on a servant's lips.
It is not in the nature of servi-
tude to succumb to servility. It
takes a whole lot of molestation
in the exercise of exclusivity.

I'd like to be amiable about this,
but that Party poses as a bulwark
against debauch this year. I don't
know that posing is remotely good
enough; but the question doesn't
arise. They haven't mastered it.

Serenely they do not notice, any-
more, an elementary rule, even of
grammar. In Indiana, Senator San-
ders claimed a margin of 40 points
among voters under 30, and of more
than 30 of those under the age of 
45. The "only" this Party wants to
represent inscribes the very signa-
ture of molestation, long indulged,
of indentured loyalists it exploits.




Isn't it gruesome, sometimes, to
expose people in trade, for the 
disadvantages they exhibit?
























i   Xavier Serrano
ii  Tim Boot






Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Origins of Wednesday xxvii: rubble without a cause





   Republican voters have planted a mine
   in the public square and they are an-
   xious to enjoy its effects. Is flight
   not flight?



















Kevin Chan




Tuesday, May 3, 2016

We've one less banana today






  Oh, come now. Misfortune
  doesn't befall a sports-
  man like our Ted. It en-
  riches his victim narra-
  tive. Hoosiers go to the
  polls today, open from 6
  to 6. And with their bal-
  lots there's one less ba-
  nana today. So, do. Sing.































Johann Sebastian Bach
Arioso on the Departure
  of his Beloved Brother
BWV 992
Wilhelm Kempff, piano
  
Oskar Dalsjo

Update 05/04, Borowitz







Monday, May 2, 2016

We've always had bananas






 There's nothing like politics in
 America to carry one back to old
 Virginny in rhetorical flourish.
 Before the banana republic, lest
 we forget, we always had bananas.
 People out of season, everywhere
 you turn. People sure of reasons
 to give resentments a glad turn.

 We find it isn't possible to ex-
 pose skepticism toward a certain
 candidate without drawing anony-
 mous and frantic diatribes, of a
 kind it is appropriate to ignore.






















 Given the continuing appearances
 of likelihood, that this candid-
 acy will persist, the avenue for
 anonymous comment below has been
 disabled. We welcome politics as
 we know it. We deserve that much.

 Meanwhile, we continue to hope a
 candidate is left standing whose






































Where went my night at Maud's?





  One of two movies on Pascal one
  must warmly recommend, yet even
  as I scroll down my list, I can
  not find it. It came with a box
  one simply cannot lose, unless,



























Eric Rohmer
1969

1972

ii  Laurent 
     by telephone 








Sunday, May 1, 2016

Color transfer







     A bird cried out among the first things of the morning.
     I dreamed about murders all night long.

     The stone changed color among the shadows as the sun came up.
     It was the bird's cry that startled up the stone.
























David Ferry
Of No Country I Know
  New and Selected Poems
  and Translations
    A Morning Song
University of Chicago Press, 1999©
op. cit.






Daniel Berrigan, S.J.






    When the American adventure in
    Viet Nam ran into Father Berri-
    gan, the Wall we all admire so
    much in Washington could have
    fit inside the Oval Office. If
    you seek his monument, abandon
    first its glossy legacy, from
    denunciations of neutrality to
    propagations of shining lies,
    our youth are trained to trust.

























Discovering caprice

                    
                    I didn't agree to this rela-
                    tionship, to be bathed un-
                    der duress and have my toe-
                    nails trifled with. Our deal 
                    was, lots of birds to chase, 
                    fresh water, and a mattress 
                    to call my own, as in, yours. 




    And she was, I think, the more 
    convinced of her destiny by the
    very strangeness of the form it
    assumed. She knew that love is
    capricious, an irresponsible,
    sovereign power, liking nothing
    better than to play tricks on
    the reason and assert its domin-
    ion over judgment and understand-
    ing. She had imagined quite other-
    wise the man of her choice; she
    had thought of him as created more
    from her own likeness, more light-
    hearted and high-spirited ..


















Thomas Mann
Lotte in Weimar
  The Beloved Returns
1939
H.T. Lowe-Porter
  translation
University of California Press, 1990©