Saturday, July 14, 2018

Saturday commute cliii: Always chasing









Now and again the fraternal third
in liberté, égalité, and so forth
leaps off some page or some wall,
or now some floor, as the immort-
al distinction in the celebration
of a certain nationhood, which no
one has ever been able to explain.

I accept the premise that this is
a nationhood of coincidence, many
coincidences, whose full range of
possibility cannot properly be as-
sayed without comparison to ours,
which is a nationhood of policies.

Nothing compelled there to be the
nation celebrated today, but this
compilation of endowments captiv-
ates the mind of the West like no
other, and its birthday arises on
the calendar as that of a brother
one is always chasing - even with
all the time in the world.
















Tricouleur
2012

The Barge Children
1959






Friday, July 13, 2018

Suppose it were Friday clvii: And Her Majesty were indisposed





 Just as we'd thought. Royal protocol
 has conceived a hypothetical beyond
 the contemplation of the oddsmakers.
 It says, right here, that when Her
 Majesty's government calls upon her
 to entertain a hostile foreign head 
 of state, it is appropriate for her
 to delegate the task to any Duke of
 Essex there may be about the place,

 This section goes on to provide, it
 is appropriate for Her Majesty, if
 upbraided from any quarter for let-
 ting down the side, to claim their
 visitor's exculpation, of just be-










Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Origins of Wednesday lxxii: Make Yourself Big Again






ages ago, when Republicans were doubt-
ing him as an indiscreet image of their 
dreams of dominance. He hadn’t yet pen-
etrated the sanctum, but he had certain-
ly defiled it to their level. Now that 
they’ve inserted him, the question an-
swers itself: you wind him up, and you 
get an experience which reason and re-
ality have always denied you. Bigness.


He enjoyed a conspicuously wound-up day 
on Tuesday, revealing visions of things 
to come by legally, once his henchman of 
the previous night’s investiture had been 
installed in the court of last resort. He 
bestowed one of his revoltingly self-indul-
his horde’s “Second Amendment” fantasies, 
jumped-up claimants to non-existent rights 
crushed (and did) without a second thought. 
He went on, to strip the agency almost bare 
of funds, charged with informing the public 
of its rights to health care, to refresh his 
drooling claque with putrefaction much too 
rich to be saliva. And then, heigh-ho, it’s 
off to Belgium he would go, to smear resis-
tance to his sneer with the same foul paste.






Over the weekend, a right-twice-a-day sage, 
Maureen Dowd, icebreakingly analogized Donny 
Thump-Thump to an addict, who has addicted 
himself to his flock’s adulation. In the im-
potence sweepstakes, addicts and sex toys 
share a lot in common, always granting sen-
sation to account for most of it. Sensation, 
that is, which Thomas Jefferson famously in-
sisted was the highest intellectual attain-
ment of his slaves, compared with his genetic 
gift of reflection. A sex toy, we would say, 
doesn’t really care what effect it procures; 
it merely exists to be used. So far as we’ve 
been told, this one’s users are Republicans. 


In crushing the right of health care, exalt-
ing arms against a lawful, lenient government,  
and blocking every exit from their policies in 
legislatures and in courts, where does their 
taste rest, for enslavement? What do addic-
tion and the perpetuum mobile lack in common,
which could ever threaten a user's bigness?























Alexander Calder
Poster
LACMA
1965

Nicole Eisenman
Riding Down the River
  on the Jawbone of an Ass
2004

Guercino
  detail
Capitoline Museum
1622