Every now and again ii

Karen & Justin

   You don't mind
   letting winter
   know its place.

The more we see of this

new American government,

the less endearing seems

its vast naïveté, believ-

ing it lucked out with a

jackpot of pure January,

unaware of things a vine

could tell them, of what

folly it is to reverse a

prior grafting in an or-

ganism it defined. They

are children with eras-

ers, against indelible

vitality, attempting to

color by elimination

the very fact of time.

Edward Weston

Juniper

  Lake Tenaya

  Yosemite Valley

1937

Richard Rodriguez

Brown

  The Last Discovery

  of America

Viking, 2002©

Make us a watchman iv: the test of torsion

Among the roughly several

dozen aspects of the dance

which intrigue us, torsion's

revelation of proportionality

in dynamics counts, one should

guess, high.

Backlighted by rectilinear

blocks of light and shadow

the model portrays a re-in-

terpretation of the tableau

as an orderly procession in

his own physical structure.

De Stijl gives us the rota-

tion of a square generating

an isosceles triangle with

each renewal of its scale.

Which is the more improbab-

le in nature, we sometimes

aren't inspired to ask, un-

til human conduct is put to

the same test; and then tor-

sion gives us the spectacle

of balance as a scrupulous

discipline. Time and again,

we respect it spontaneously.

Time and again, we almost

can't explain it, until we

see its absence, and a col-

lapse permits our gaze to

experience disappointment,

in grotesque incoherency.

Some are now suggesting, a

strategy of the new Ameri-

can government is to compel

us not to watch. If so, it

has chosen the wrong stage.

Theo van Doesburg 
1883 - 1931

In White America

The press are agog with adap-
tations to Bannon's position
at the center of the National
Security establishment. Still
they query, is this a polit-
ical intrusion, is this some
gesture of ostensibly confus-
ing shock and awe, or does a
darker specter lurk within
the mystery? 

When a historian-playwright

quit his professorship at

Princeton in the late 60s,

he didn't leave because he

was not permitted to bring

a collaborator to his under-

graduate seminar. He left

because they wouldn't let

him bring his therapist.

Now in this most defining-

ly toxic of Presidencies -

one can scarcely call it,

an administration - the

greater risk lies in de-

priving the patient of a

shepherding nod from the

caregiver of his mind. 

Bannon has guided ruin 

and revulsion, on very

little action. Who's to

say his has not been a

staying hand, in usher-

ing in the fun guy he's

aided to delight us?

Martin Duberman
In White America
1963

Origins of Wednesday xliii: Café of the analogues

  The flowing colonnade,
  the consonant current,
  inspire this sportsman
  with his contribution.

  His texts may be digi-
  tised; his play is all
  analogy.

Puiforcat
Initiales
  Paralleles

You couldn't help but notice, could you

When he quickly fired
the lawyer, he didn't
say she'd defied him.

He said, poor infant,
she had betrayed him.

Grace Kelly

To Catch a Thief

1955

Alfred Hitchcock

  Director

Robert Burks

  Cinematographer

  Academy Award

More, harder, I need to proclaim something

   Sam Waterston, an actor who

   channeled Abraham Lincoln

   for Ken Burns, and lots of

   other fine things -- my fav-

   orite is his Sidney in The 

   Killing Fields -- has issued

   a suggestion of how to laud

   the most generous, the most

   incalculably smart promoter

   ever to raise $24 miiion in

   a single weekend for the Am-

   erican Civil Liberties Union.

   I mean, yeah, eventually it

   will add up to real money.

   Double or nothing, anyone?

   

And how we want to be in that number

               I am responsible for ensuring that 

               the positions we take in court re-

               main consistent with this institu-

               tion’s solemn obligation to always 

               seek justice and stand for what is 

               right. At present, I am not convin-

               ced that the defense of the execu-

               tive order is consistent with these 

               responsibilities nor am I convinced 

               that the executive order is lawful.

   

  




















      It's harder than they
      thought, to extinguish
      sanity in this country.
      Harder, still, to close
      its heart.

Pete Marovich
  Sally Q. Yates
  Acting Attorney General
    of the United States
Getty Images©

Nicholas O'Donohue

We go home now viii

What we are confronted by, is new
only in technology, not technique.
I'm terribly sorry if antiquity e-
quips one to recall what propagan-
da has so long concealed, that the
President's political Party is not
only adept at intimidation and mis-
information. It feeds on them. So
now the President exploits an im-
plement for keeping his followers,
ignorant and aroused. This is only
faster than the trickling down of
editorials from The Wall Street
Journal, and the club car brood-
ing still in vogue. I refuse the
pretense that Republicans are not
thrilled to have a nitwit at their
disposal, once again. They deified
the first one, and exploited the
pants off the latest one. We may
be repulsed by the face they've
chosen, but you can do only so
much for Dorian Gray.

Scribes who instruct us now, to
be dazzled by the rapidity with
which the vortex extracts our pa-
tience, have been schooled to ex-
tend great patience to vapidity.
Yes, the incumbent is movingly in-
fantile; yes, his bawling resounds
with the speed of summer lightning;
but to forget the entitled Andover
cheerleader and the Hollywood po-
seur would still leave us with the
bare knuckled tyrant from Whittier,
the godfather of their Jim Crow
economy, long before globalism.

Shadows are fallin', and I've been
here all day .. There's not even
room enough, to be anywhere ..

If Republicanism always finds its
idiot, now it's overshot the mark.
They're out of protection to sell.
This creature's landfill is theirs.
His dust is theirs. His ashes, too. 

Bob Dylan
Time out of mind
  Not dark yet
1997

ii  Laurent
     Market Street
       Pride March
     1990

And now for something completely fair

    Bring it to New York, old man.

Thomas Peter
Roger Federer
  in Melbourne
Reuters©

Horror's perfect circle

  We all know people
  who thought, 
  He could not mean it.

  We all know people
  who thought,
  A little discipline
  can't hurt.

  We all know people
  who thought.

    One can't believe
    the continent was
    placed here for a
    brokerage of fear.

              A youth in Jakarta, orphaned by
              a Taliban terrorist bomb stands
              at the shuttered doors of those
              same United Nations, whom Nikki
              Haley now promises to teach the
              manners of bending to our will.

              An ancient writ, habeas corpus,
              deliver the body, inconvenience
              as it is, jams a snarling snare
              prefigured in the flab a spoilt
              child wears to show as muscled,
              his coterie flaunts to signify,
              their social climb is achieved.

              They make this place an asylum,
              they will not share. Still, new
              blood is offered, to redeem the
              ports we close to keep us free.
              Such is the energy of the hour,
              that fear is rinsed with tears,
              and resolution gathers, bodily.

              At last the great monstrosities
              that devoted our people to ter-
              ror as a way to shield ourself,
              release their foulest pendulum,
              Dorian Gray once hid, for this.

           
    I think Brexit's going to be a 

    wonderful thing for your country. 

    I think when it irons out, you're 

    gonna have your own identity and 

    you're going to have the people 

    that you want in your country ..

              

iv  Kemal Jufri
       Sardar Hussain, Jakarta
    January 28, 2017
    The New York Times©

v   Second Amendment Survivors
     Sandy Hook Elementary School
     December, 2012
     Reuters©

President of the United States
Remarks to the Prime Minister
  of Great Britain
The White House
Washington, DC
January 27, 2017