The sting of bein' verified

I have a debt to Dooley Wil-
son, Sam at Rick's American
Bar, who hoisted a glass of
Cordon Rouge with Miss Elsa
and Rick, to pluck the sting
of Paris' bein' occupied, by
darkening phalanxes of grey.

A light that has gone out in
our "news" has seemed to have
gone out here. It would only
have been arrogant to try to
be exempt from a sudden glob-
al darkening. That this might
have emerged from our chaste
swath of North America, which
is to say, from the most ar-
able land and welcoming ports
the globe has ever offered to
a continental fragment its o-
ceans to preserve - yes, it
has been a disturbing inter-
val in which to question what, 
indeed, we have done here. 

This phalanx isn't novel. On-
ly its voice can claim that;
while behind him, are all the 
scam's usual suspects. He as-
sumes office by the most ac-
rid division since Lincoln,
without so much as the fig-
leaf of a plurality, but by
quirk of a slavery-favoring
Constitution -- not a lynch-
pin our first Republican ac-
cepted.

Wednesday's séance with Amer-
ica's press, conducted in New 
York by the nation's eclipsing 
ass of undiapered panic and 
rage, in the tawdry vault of 
his own pyramid, was all any 
observer needs to see of that 
mesmerising distraction he 
exerts upon a Fourth Estate
whose office he dreads, which 
his incurable gloom compels 
him to tease. Anyone else who
comments in public is clubbed
by a klaxon dismissal of rel-
evance, for the testimony of 
a loser. Now we are reminded:
we're here for all that.

For rmbl, I remember how we
opened with a tentative but
happy welcome, to pursue an
elusive particle one could
not have defined better than
by the exclusion proposed in
the greeting, upper right.
How wonderful now to be hung
for a sheep, for time light-
ly served as a lamb.

I don't see anything in this
petulantly obtrusive fiend
of brutish chaos, to obstruct
our founding faith in some-
thing certain, that we sense 
is there, constantly urgent 
and worthy. On the contrary.
He martyrs himself every day.

One could want no purer pro- 
pulsion, no lovelier deliv- 
ery to that sustaining par-
ticle at last. He teaches us 
to breach the bastions of our
oceans, the veils of our bor-
ders, the shadows of exhaust-
ed fictions that he bellows 
to inflate. All that's left  
is all that could be matter,
if ever it could perish. 

Michael Curtiz
  director
Julius J. Epstein
Philip G. Epstein
Howard Koch 
  screenplay
Casablanca
Warner Brothers, 1942©

Galego
untitled, Portugal

Michael Bidner
Border collies, Baltic Sea