Saturday, April 14, 2018

Demagogue of the Day, deposed




No, we couldn't believe it, either.
Joe DiMaggio batted safely in 56
straight games, one season, and
hearts sank, worldwide, when that
string was broken. Now, despite a
wonderfully full-throated roar of
self-praise (from the usual source)
for the most flamboyantly innocuous
act of righteous power since Gener-
al McClellan led the armies of the
American Union, a new claimant of
Demagogue of the Day recognition
has hit the ball out of the park.






A little context, for our innocent friends:
The United States is really a rather loose
association of 50 polities of scant mutual
interest, outside of resisting meddling by
the nation; and the education of children
is reserved to their sovereign negligence.

One such polity is called, Kentucky, a bas-
tion of poverty in every parameter except
the proof of its beverage and the hooves of
its thoroughbreds. The Governor, a Republic-
an of impeccable imbecility, has been at war
with educators and their ilk, and has drawn
repeated lines in the sand against learning
in public schools. Faced now with uprisings
among the teachers, he denounced their pro-
tests yesterday for causing the guaranteed 
molestation of children, indeed their fatal
poisoning, because the schools are closed.

Now, there's a real, adult male rôle model.







Aggressive war in violation of the UN Charter




    Menelaus, eat your heart out.

    From America, here we go again:
    neutering the Constitution and
    defying treaty accords we have
    authored, ourselves. This, to
    seduce our People into a self-
    incoherency of policy, to rat-
    ify the grotesque projections
    of a narcissist who's lost con-
    trol of a bad day's news cycle.

    From France and the United King-
    dom, verification that they are
    not documentarily restrained as
    America is, yet as incurably in-
    clined to claim the Levant as a
    sphere of disciplinary influence.
    



















Thursday, April 12, 2018

Folies bourgeois





First one thought, hey, 
remove yesterday's entry,
given that the American
government had only been
practicing, or playing, 
or testing a pose it may
strike to its advantage,
where it's noticed any-
more. Then, no, it would
of Origins of Wednesday,
because they're numbered.

Not that anyone was seen
to have restrained the
American government from
the War Crime to which it
appeared to commit itself.




How suddenly, though, it
percolated about the web
yesterday, that the Amer-
ican government should be
expected to be a little
bit confusing, from time
to time, without the ben-
efit of pantomime excul-
pations of a loyal valet.
Not all clumsiness is con-
tradictory, yet much less
of either can be asked to
qualify as contrapposto.
Where government's intent
is to confuse, can it be


















Dancers of the Mariinsky
and Estonian National ballet






Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Origins of Wednesday lxvii: Bringing in the sheaves





   He that goeth forth and weepeth,
   bearing precious seed,
   shall doubtless come again 
   with rejoicing
   bringing his sheaves with him.






Then were we like unto them that dream.























Psalm 126
  fragments & variations

i    President of the United States
iii  Book of Common Prayer, 1928




Tuesday, April 10, 2018

De stijl of the times ii





Oh, my. The new government's deliver-
ance of the legal profession from the
clutches of self-respect, celebrated
a mere three weeks ago, has entered in
the last two news cycles a fratricidal
interval of resistance, in raids that
are welcomed as an attack on our coun-
try, in the very same clocksweep as
horrid new images of chemical annihil-
ation in an overseas civil war again
inspire that same conscientious lament
which led to a demure riposte against
a naked airfield. True to form, it did
hurt us more than the absent respondent,
by carrying ostentatious discipline be-
yond ambivalence, into pale illusion.
So much depends on the pictures he sees,
and best not seen in those he shows.


We greet each other, then, suspended in
a veil of yet another frantic threat of
reprisal - in the overseas fratricide, 
as well as the indelicate domestic im-
broglio in the profession of justice -
with the figure of discipline superbly
foretold for us by Theo van Doesburg in
1919, the hero stalwartly lobbing mis-
siles in retreat, the artist's ingeni-
ous exploitation of the fleeing stride
A vision to savor almost for prescience.














Theo van Doesburg
The Archer
MFA Budapest
1919






Monday, April 9, 2018

What's become of mortification?


A kind of glee that's felt
upon a discovery of proofs
of a prejudicial suspicion, 
mortification has not only
seen better days, it's had
better exemplars than our
knights of belligerent re-
ligion, locked in embrace
with the new American gov-
ernment. We all prefer to
look the other way, even
mortifying as the spectac-
le must be, aesthetically;
for mortification, without
its ration of delight, is
championing only its lust.





















Jose Wickert