Saturday, April 22, 2017

Saturday commute cxl: With da Vinci






A convulsion rocks the world today,
in an uprising of a popular demand
our judgments. What does it mean as
thousands upon thousands will so
publicly confess their intellectual
curiosity, as to offer themselves in
the streets to protect their right
to demand discovery of fact, and its
application to the moral duty of any
government they accept upon the earth? 

That there is a foul concert of power 
against it, on a scale unprecedented
since Galileo. And at the center of
this, of course, we have the carnival
combining his nasty opportunistic de-
light in vengeance upon any illumina-
tion, with his compulsive devotion to

Where are we, then, but with da Vinci,
studying arm strands: art, advancing
medicine; medicine, advancing life;
life, advancing incentives and reward
for science; science, informing art.

Invariably, what they fear about us
is what we know about them. 

Take a look again, at why the strands 
converge with obvious resolution. To 
anchor their capability with fluency.

Take a look again, at why there is a
faith which insists that God became
man. It was surely not to deny fact,
but to exalt it.

There is the revolution, there is its
ingenious constitution. They're ours.
































Friday, April 21, 2017

The worst fatigue


I was picking up a little
jambon de bayonne for a
few sandwiches the other 
day - except it came, I
later learned, from New
Jersey - when by chance
I noticed some duck con-
fit, which is all over
the place these days. I
was reminded of a neat
story in The Times on
travel in Gascony, and
I asked the person help-
ing me, if she read any
of our culinary journal-
ism, also all over the
place these days. This
drew from her an angry
boast of having vast
experience as a chef,
of the broadest exper-
tise in Western cuisine,
enabling her finally to
ignore what people were
saying - about herself,
she didn't need to add.




Having no experience with
what we might call, exper-
tise fatigue, I can't be
sure how it varies from a
nicely predominating gloom
of disappointment with life,
of which we read every day.
But it did strike me, and
still does upon some reflec-
tion, as possibly the sad-
dest condition to endure.
A renunciation of curiosity
in any passion - as I take
the mastery of anything to
require - strikes me as a
kind of life imprisonment,
except that as pathetic as
that condition must be,
sound must still percolate
into one's cell.




Obviously, one's interview
with the ham guru did not
end well, and on departing
the little shop I noticed,
I had failed to collect
that package. I wonder if
anyone enjoyed it for me.
As a dilettante in these
great matters, at least I
retain the liberty to be
dazzled enough by news of


















iii  Florian Neuville







Once in the boat





The question comes up, recurringly,
among white males of my generation,
the one before most of them living:
once in the boat, how does one dis-
embark, gracefully? The rowing mode
teems with many compacted anticipa-
tions of a timely release, which is
to say, the elevation of one's oar,
on completing the honorable stroke.




In those days, at the same time, it
was not expected that the tastes we
assimilated would expire in travest-
ies, much less in our own time. The
275 GTS, for example, proclaimed no
special urgency to reject elegance,
in favor of provocative aggression.

Yet such was the new world model of-
fered to us, as if any of our lives
had presented that specification to
Pininfarina, or to any other of the
founts where our imagination was re-
freshed, perfectly, in those dreams
from the boat. Even then, we didn't
go crying to false Conservatism for
dire vengeance against the current.

Nowadays, that avenger comes to us;
and proposes to lie with the lambs,
but manages only a transitive case.
Suppose it were Friday, someone ur-
ges; put on a pretty record, wiser
voices call. Just as we thought we
were rowing, the blade still sharp
with its own command, Finish this.


























Carrozzeria Pininfarina
Ferrari 275 GTS
mid-1960s

Bernard Plossu
Sénégal
1976











Thursday, April 20, 2017

Under a government






Under a government dominated by
hostility to science and led by
a scaremonger who toys fondly 
with the lie, that immunization 
causes autism, it is difficult
in this country to get the word
out, that April is Autism Aware-
ness Month. The newspapers are
awash this week with anecdotes
of cruelty to school children,
but tragically neglectful of
grounds for hope. Oxford Univ-
ersity Press has cited several
journal articles available on-
line, and there is hope that
other nations will step into
the moral position which ours
has vacated, even as everyone
of good will here resists the
constant purge of understand-
ing, collapse of self-control,
and self-inflicted incarcera-
sion in humane incompetence,
cultivated by our government.

Meanwhile, Paint it Blue is 
not just for elections anymore. 
It's for every day.

























Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Who awoke today, and will forget this?






Republicans downplayed the im-
plications, saying Ossoff ben-
efitted from a cocktail of mon-
ey, national attention and en-
thusiasm that's nearly impos-
sible to replicate.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution
April 19, 2017





Yes, I think I've seen that
cocktail before, somewhere.
It's a pity, they can't rec-
ognize it, but its ingredi-
ents explain why: they also
have all the money needed,
to express the freedom of
speech their Supreme Court
bestowed upon it; they al-
so have all the enthusiasm
of a sense of cause in re-
sistance. What they got a-
way with, was a national
disbelief whose attention
was deflected by the man-
fest preposterousness of
their hallucinations, and
revulsion with their deal-
er. It had lacked decorum
to see them straight.

Now that they've been be-
trayed, now that they've
betrayed themselves, who
among them will forget?




               So two nights passed: the night's dismay
               Saddened and stunned the coming day.
               Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me
               Distemper's worst calamity.
               The third night, when my own loud scream
               Had waked me from the fiendish dream,
               O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild,
               I wept as I had been a child;
               And having thus my tears subdued
               My anguish to a milder mood,
               Such punishments, I said, were due
               To natures deepliest stained with sin, -
               For aye entempesting anew
               The unfathomable hell within
               The horror of their deeds to view,
               To know and loathe, yet wish to do! 
               Such griefs with such men well agree,
               But wherefore, wherefore fall on me?
               To be beloved is all I need,
               And whom I love, I love indeed.



















Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Selected Poetry
  [fragment]
ca 1803, published 1815
H.J. Jackson
  editor
Oxford University Press, 1997©


ii, iii  Jonathan Ossoff
          Walsh School
            of Foreign Service
          London School
            of Economics
         Candidate for US Congress
           6th District, Georgia









Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Convenience store epiphany





Just as I was about to complain of a 
recurring sensation of living through 
a contemporary cartoon, in a caption-
ing contest for which I never hold a 
clue, a drill fell to hand and I found 
myself building shelves. Still building 
storage, for stuff I don’t want, much 
less need. Now I well understand the war 
on information, waged from Mar-a-Lago;















































Sunday, April 16, 2017

In defense of shock





I think the Easter message
of the vacant tent has the
suspense of expectation go-
ing for it without further
ado from here. Yet we tend
to dwell so much on the as-
pect of an evacuation that
we afford much less contem-
plation than is necessary,
to the discovery of a void.

Nor is this an occasion to 
dispute explanations. With
hope so high of occupancy,
why ignore its study, even
to invoke it as a standard
of amazement, as if aspir-
ations were only a mis-en-
scène? I'd prefer the real
weight to enjoy equal time
with sudden weightlessness.

Why deny a faith its roots
in a pile of human pulp at
the price of misconstruing
a dignity to exalt another?

Not that it matters, but I
do not see Homer, making a
mistake like that.





           














Adam Nicolson
The Mighty Dead
  Why Homer Matters
William Collins, 2014©