Saturday commute clxx: Remembered sentences

      I can give no adequate account of
      the subtle poetry of such reminis-
      censes; it depends upon associations
      of which we have often lost the thread.

      Such is the colour of the interior glow
      of clubs in Pall Mall, which I positive-
      ly like best when the fog loiters upon
      their monumental staircases.

Henry James
Essays in London
  The Anticipation
  of Christmas
John Julius Norwich
An English Christmas
John Murray, 2017©

Trying out for gargoyle the next time

    With our primitive and sub-rudimentary

    data connections in the regressive Vir-

    ginian countryside, if we have begun to

    see the smart and witty restoration pro-

    posals of the moment's architects for

    the rooftops and parapets of Notre Dame,

    then we know we can trust our reader to

    be able to lead this discussion, should

    we somehow tumble from that peak of nau-

    sea to which they all have floated us,

    and be lucky, as if as a gargoyle, all

    we should dispense from here were tears.

    The other day, a considerate genius of

    our acquaintance wrote in from that city

    of angels on the further coast, to relay

    an essay he'd discovered on the character

    Notre Dame has acquired through her many

    centuries of witness to the follies of 

    the building trades, not least upon her 

    own elevations. I pass it along, hopeful

    that the vigor of its perceptions, if not 

    their virtue, might serve as a kind of e-

    metic buttress of humility in the face

    of the heroically self-referential rap-

    tures of our contractor-exhibitionists. 

Paul Berman
The Tears of Quasimodo
  Victor Hugo and the 
  Ideals of Progress
Tablet
April 24, 2019©

This was supposed to be Beto

I'm reminded of the late playwright,

Simon Gray's funny confession of a

breakfast table habit of scanning 

the obituaries - did they die at an

age less than his, did they go on 

to actuarial heights he was doomed

not to reach? 

and we're always told that those

who persisted to a great age did so

with grace and style and full of en-

ergy, still climbing mountains at

eighty-three, conducting symphonies

at ninety-one -- I think, what right

did they have? who decides these 

things? 

Patently, this is the shirt our in-

tended Texan was destined to fill,

and (barring good health among his

rivals) may still do. But now it's

been absconded with, by another ver-

sion of the bright young thing, of

a more multi-faceted stamp. Flat-

footed, the 2-term mayor of South

Bend is not, in zigging and zagging

his compromises with the hardest-

hearted in the Resistance, and the

technicians of political necessity.

The phrase, "real man," has not been

deployed yet, quite probably for fear

of wasting it until the exquisite is-

sue of the ballot box is upon us. It

will be. Still, the mayor is filling

in the shirt awfully fast, and one

can almost see what right he has,

and who decides these things.

Simon Gray

Coda

Faber and Faber

2008©