Human textuality, 2016

 I'm most at home with writers

 who are entirely inclined to

 be known as having fashioned

 the text I read of theirs. I

 don't know how prevalent they

 are, but I know them when I

 run into them. Alexander Pope

 strikes one as the epitome,

 doesn't he, of this commit-

 ment? A modest legacy of the

 Renaissance. To be known by

 one's texts is a risk, on the

 other hand, which few men do

 entertain, and until the im-

 mediate present, has been an

 endangerment to women. This

 gives rise to a prejudice, 

 almost, against going so far.

 Fashion is generous that way,

 but at an interesting price.

 It is not in season, just now.

  

 This is a season of being

 known atextually - and yet,

 however, as literarily as

 any couplet in Pope. We know

 them in our living past, in

 upheavals recurringly knock-

 ing at the door of one's own

 birthright. Again, this is a

 season of confession, beyond

 recent precedent but surely,

 standing on its shoulders. In

 this face, captured at a rally

 in Ashburn, Virginia this week,

 one doesn't see an aspiration

 to be known as the inventor of

 the text, but as its epigone.

 Tiresome as it may be, for the

 third time in seven days to say,

 this is the image of this year's

 upheaval, and it is impossible

 to dismiss it as illegitimate.

 I read it, you read it, and be-

 yond question, it is plain. This

 man needs to be answered, with-

 out the degenerate reflexes of

 a mind undisposed to read him.

 How much more, shall I respect

 an Augustan stylist of lines? 

Maxim Steklyanov

Saturday commute cxxxi: Three alleys, off Montgomery

  Telegraph Hill is a glorious warren

  of alleys; I lived on two, at its

  pinnacle, Alta and Calhoun. But be-

  fore then, I found the Barbary Coast

  that lies below the peak, as it has

  begun its rise just north of the Pyr-

  amid, the block above Ernie's, which

  we all know from Vertigo. I didn't

  pursue an offer at Osgood, its center,

  one block north of Jackson Square, the

  block where Bill Stout placed his in-

  comparable architecture book store, on

  axis from Ferlinghetti's City Lights.

  Did I love it; it was an enclosed en-

  clave of little verdure and no Bay.

  It challenged me at the wrong time.

  It was conceived before the Fire, not

  far from the City's original battery:

  hence, "coast." It deserves the blue. 

  I would like to have settled with it,

  but this is not about regret. It's a

  way of lofting a kiss into the wind,

  a famished thing to do, to haul it 

  back upon the mind as cooling fog.

Farrow & Ball

Pitch Blue No. 220

Kerouac

Reflections of the house

 The fog I call the world is not a cloud of atoms

 only, but a cloud of feelings, and ideas ..

 All I do is what my flesh can do, yet everything

 my flesh can do feels strange. I am the swelling

 of a salt sea onto an armature of chalk, the calm

 of a tidal pool where brain cells live, the wind,

 the lightning storm where thought flares into thought.

Brooks Haxton
Uproar
  Antiphonies to Psalms
  I Am
  [fragment]
  Psalm 40
Alfred A. Knopf, 2004©
op. cit.

Billy Vandendooren

Vogue
1932

A literature of power without force ii

      In the place where the 
      touchstone of aptitude 
      is not scholastic, not
      sartorial, not praised
      for much these days ex-
      cept enduring our wit,
      where is politics now?

      Where?



















Jerome Liebling
Weirton, West Virginia
1982

They're sorting it out

If a man were forum shopping

today, to sort out the dis-

contents of 2016 in the West,

which portal would he select,

each one of them more immor-

tal than the next: Morgan,

at 23 Wall, enshrined in art

by Paul Strand in 1915; the 

clubs at Harvard, visited in

extremis at The Times earlier

in the week; or a mariner's

shelter from Attica, erected

at Agrigento, not far from the

streets where Herbert List saw

this debate, in real time.

  

Tell us who the litigants
are, to direct them to their proper court. If they are, as is common on life's docket, clamoring for resemblance, where could that case be heard, with the perspective to harbor their duality, balancing their dignity? A space to shelter doubt, tending to the broader justice. A sailor's.





























Mary Lefkowitz
Andrew W. Mellon
  Professor, Classics
Wellesley College
Greek Gods, Human Lives
Yale University Press, 2003©

v  Herbert List
    Ostsee, 1933

Origins of Wednesday xxxiv: Sommeliers for greatness

I don't know. Which are the

parts that you like the best?

I just live out in the coun-

try; we aren't exposed to the

broader taste of our times.

You'd think we were, living

in a district led down this

path by the sadistic Cantor,

only to be delivered to the

lunatic, Brat. But, no. We

don't get the nuances here.

Mostly sulfites, actually.

How about the part of rigging

the stab-in-the-back defense,

for losing? How about insist-

ing to his own protectors, he

has a right to defend himself

against a crying baby, parents

surviving a son's heroic death?

Man's threatened, he's entitled

to destroy himself on his own.

How about his boast of strap-

ping on his gun? Concealed

carry, eat your heart out.

But as Dr Strangelove point-

ed out, the whole idea of a

Doomsday Machine is to let

folks in on the intimidation.

Besides, there's the pleasure

to consider, apart from honor.

Anyone up for waterboarding,

or the whole 9 yards of deep

interrogation of the soul?

If pressed, I'd have to go

with his principled stand on

his right to defend himself,

against any American who com-

plains. This, I really think,

is enough to disincline me to

nourish myself with his wine,

revelatory as it must be.

Surveying the entire palette

of what he offers to the pal-

ate, what could pair with it?

One could always ask his som-

meliers, Ryan and McConnell,

who proclaim how well he goes

with everything they want, the

Whole Platform of Pure Reason.

In case one should want so much.

Stanley Kubrick
Terry Southern
Peter George, screenplay
Dr Strangelove, 
  or How I Learned ...
1964

Glazed slate

    An interesting thought experiment
    is proposed at Slate just now, on
    whether a progressive would back
    a candidate as aberrant as little
    Donny Thump-Thump. Its premise is
    amusing, and possibly harmless to
    investigate: offering alternatives
    like Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz as
    placeholders for how a loony Right
    sees Hillary Clinton, its primary
    effect is to portray dissent with
    her candidacy as improbably crazed. 

    The question, however, is not so
    unsound, even in everyday bounds
    of politics: how unthinkable could
    it be, to prefer a wholesome mind,
    before serial, unhinged arousal?

    One cannot expect the Republicans
    to accept our invitation to enjoy
    this stimulating game, exhaustion
    having overcome their sociability.
    Yet to feel their pain is to know
    it, all the same, almost as guilt. 
    

Ermenegildo Zegna
  model unknown

Janis Ancens
Rhys Pickering
El País©
  edited
June, 2016

Remember the Republicans?

Of course we do - and, as well

we should! Admittedly, like Re-

né Lacoste's merry crocodile,

they've changed hands and fac-

tories of origin so plentifully

now, it's a wonder when they

manage to devour a human right,

anymore. But we are, we promise,

we are going to discuss voting

rights, wherein they continue 

to strike such an ingeniously

exclusive profile. But, events

plague their mind, they sulk so

pitiably, it hardly seems sport-

ing to account for them today.

They've hoisted themselves a

candidate whose parody of the

crocodile has all but chomped

their beaten breast of its point.

He's taken their rapture in arch

patriotism and turned it into a

roster of blackballs. He's taken

their embodiment of bluster and

touted every dictator he can re-

member, from the self-effacing

privity of his tax returns.

To their mind, in short, he's

compromising the brand. But, no.

He enacts the crocodile's adap-

tive indifference to mentality.

Statistics of size foil hopes 

for his fidelity at every turn.

Pressures mount, to designate

an agile courier of reprimand.

Any moment, now, he's bound to

blurt out what everyone knows.

And then where shall they be?

Drew Hanley

Assouline Publishing

Maurice Prendergast

South Boston Pier

1896