Friday, December 20, 2019

Suppose it were Friday clxxi: Paris reading





I was re-reading The Tenth Muse the
other night, Judith Jones' wonderful
reflections on an active relationship
with food and wine. I wasn't yet sen-
sitized to the moral hazard of people
of means, intruding upon that natural
pursuit, and indeed it wasn't until
I overheard a Presidential candidate
warn of their presence that I was ab-
le to imagine the great risks which
lie in one's path, unless they are ex-
cluded. Suppose they should take an
interest in Paris; there might be a
Tuileries. There might be no end to
manifestations of means, and their
unbearable reminding of inequality.




It was enough to make one remorseful
for one's own appetite, for a com-
petently prepared sorrel soup. What
had been so wrong with that bitter
green, to make me want it luscious?














Thursday, December 19, 2019

How hangs the fruit of Madison?





Many pundits sound worried - worry
being their stock in trade, it has
a happy edge to it - that if the
US Senate is so far gone into the
hollowed out pulp of probity that
it simply cannot conduct a trial -
then the most pervasively corrupt
Administration ever to be deliver-
ed to its dock might simply light
on no more than an expanded feast.

They could be right, you say. Rare
is the advancement of putrefaction
so lacking in suspense, as to hold
no further nibble for the lowest
taste of the foulest appetite. But
who wishes to prove that verdict?





No, the keener problem, as it
appears to our view, is that
the context of judgment might
now have shifted from its or-
iginal morbidity of predation,
to a kind of hilarity of pre-
monitory release, as if some
hideously fulminated orange
were about to plop free from
its self-executing branch, on-
ly to roll into the nursery 
as mythologically mistreated.

It seems as if we no longer
quibble over how repulsive a
fruit can become, that's over-
stayed its season. Rather, at
issue is to avoid the re-runs.

















Wednesday, December 18, 2019

Origins of Wednesday cvi: Time to get dressed






The President of the United States, in the best maudlin air of his narcissist king-predecessor, Richard Second, issued a hand-emblazoned diatribe to the Congress on the crime of oversight which is to befall him today.

He never did expect
there would come a
time to get dressed.



















Don Worth
Mt Baker, Washington
  gelatin silver print
1962


William Shakespeare
Richard II
  III, 2
1595




Tuesday, December 17, 2019

A room at the Post Office, anyone?





Everyone's agog over Larry Tribe's
inspiration, to tease the US Senate
with articles of Presidential im-
peachment, without delivering them.
that you can't do anything about an-
other branch of government in an e-
lection year. No Justice Garland? 
No rush to waste the People's time
with a President who's on the way
out. Unless, that is, he isn't. All
the time in the world, for the Sen-
ate to decide to run an honest bar. 



Needless to say, there is a middle
ground, which is to send over a few
articles every month, until the e-
lection, to see how they play by way
of attrition and the confusion of his
alibis. There is the merit, too, of
tying up the Chief Justice, who must
preside, so that his ill-gotten ma-
jority of ideologues will be strained
to ruin the nation in the next year,
as M'lord of casuistry incarnate su-
pervises his elected understudies.

Heaven knows, there is an abundance
of impeachable incidents to haul the
fellow up on, and we're not going
away. A room at the Trump, anyone?






















Sunday, December 15, 2019

Sunday nibbled sleeve xii: Connecticut young




 Newtown High beat Darien yesterday,
 in the final seconds of a game that
 was tied, 7-7. Seven years ago, the
 same players survived a conflict we
 couldn't save them from, without an
 abuse of some Constitutional right.
 Whose rites were written in heaven?