I don't mind die neue sachlichkeit

for a critic

  I don't mind the new
  objectivity. But, my
  god. Look at that.


  




     Is this, Maître, Wright's unin-
     terrupted, beautiful symphony
     for canvases and viewing them,
     or his ultimate, exuberant via-
     duct of optimism, between the
     chauffered matron, heading north,
     and the new bourgeois, townward
     bound: Henry Adams' Virgin and
     his dynamo? As it mediates, it
     seems unmistakeably a bridge, a
     synapse, an armature of a spark.

     Guggen-here, Guggen-there. Trea-
     sure bracing gushes of its fount,
     and repeat after it, New York.

Nobis sancti spiritus

 The Washington Post has opined that

 Pope Francis has appeased the Castro

 régime in not exploiting his tour of

 Cuba to demand political concessions

 of human rights - at least, that is,

 to the editors' satisfaction. There

 was no suppressing, however, a clear

 general thrust of his call for a rev-

 olution of tenderness, as he departed.

 Concluding one of the most remarkab-

 ly obtuse ratings of the struggle of

 the spirit ever to be reduced to writ-

 ing, the newspaper snidely remarked,

 But then, it takes more fortitude to

 challenge a dictatorship than a dem-

 ocracy.

 We are compelled to wonder how much

 else of people of faith this newspap-

 er would like to demand, on its watch

 of human fortitude. Just whose forti-

 tude would the newspaper place on the

 line, for this thrilling confrontation?

 That of the diplomatically immune agent

 of faith, or that of its vigil keepers?

 Who needs Marco Rubio, with comprehen-

 sion like this, of the real imperil-

 ments of confrontational fortitude?

 The real human suffering, the real

 human cost, the real test of faith,

 the real revolution demanded, as if

 commanding a great vintage, here and

 now, from a vulnerable vine in mid-

 season? Who is it, who suffers for

 the gratification of stupidity in

 the stewardship of worldly demands?

 How many divisions has he: Stalin.

 He has a mission to comfort the souls

 of the faithful, to encourage through

 them the outcomes so impetuously and

 ignorantly demanded by this newspaper,

 not to subject them to martyrdom as a

 proof of their fortitude. His disdain,

 his objections to injustice are only

 too unwithheld to be missed by people

 subdued by any restraint, save those

 corrupted, by the easy pleasures of

 missions accomplished.

Matas Ignatavicius

Herbert List
  Mexico, 1958

Last cluster
  Virginia, 2005

Alexander Agricola
1445 - 1506
Motet, Nobis Sancti Spiritus
San Francisco Chanticleer
Chanticleer Records, 1993©

Presents ii

A short note as Monday fills our
coffee cup and Autumn settles in.
The New York Times issued yet an-
other report yesterday, on an as-
pect of our war in Afghanistan
of which we must now all profess
amazement: our proxy's pederas-
tic spoils of military conduct.
Who can bear the wait for Con-
gressional proceedings, on such
useful unintended consequences?

In keeping with brevity, amaze-
ment in this context arises as
another vainglorious display of
poor breeding, yet more of the
exultant refusal of self-aware-
ness, which lies so conspicuous-
ly to conceal the facts of force.

Now we read of boys screaming in
the most privileged tents, of be-
ing chained full time to the fur-
niture of their exploitation, who
represent a mortal threat to the
witnessing, protesting knights
who wear our uniform.

                   The wind pours dust on us;

                   there is grit on my teeth,

                   I wake up with aching gums

                   and blood in my mouth. The

                   night is still, the moon 

                   is dark. I lie for a while

                   looking up into blackness,

                   then slide back into the

                   dream. 

Of course we could have read the
Iliad, to sort these strands of
force's fabulous tapestry. We
could have read any of our sev-
eral million soldiers' diaries.
We're not alone in preserving
ignorance, as scrupulously as any
fanatic or barbarian we've met.
War is how we reconcile. Nausea
is its advocate.

J.M. Coetzee 
Waiting for the
  Barbarians
Secker & Warburg, 1980
Penguin Books, 1982©


i  Andrei Tarkovsky
   Ivan's Childhood
   1962

Saturday commute cxiii: Resisting plaidfully

   We concur:
   kick back.

   If we don't 

   tell Satur-

   day what to 

   do, it will

   soon enough

   tell us. 

What it looked like

   Sliver of the
   moon through
   the woods down
   here,

   I'm not sure
   if we were
   meant to see.

   Every star
   out, too.

   It's what it
   looked like,

   and looks
   like as we
   look again.
   

Origins of Wednesday xvii: Love? Love what?

  
   When you are philoso-
   phising, you have to
   descend into primeval
   chaos, and feel at
   home there. 


   





   We still think of the 
   oppression of the ques-
   tion. But then one is 
   always restored, by the 
   explosion of the answer.

   

   Are we the
   Tea Party?
   
   We see the
   flattery -
   yet hear a
   correction.

   I think it
   speaks for
   fair play. 



































Ludwig Wittgenstein
Culture and Value
1948
Basil Blackwell
  translation
G.H. von Wright
  editor
op. cit.

Yes, I see

  We don't have any
  opening just now.


      I'm not here for
      what you have; I
      am here for what
      I've fairly won. 


             In 2008, we had a "change election"
             which took remarkable hold, against
             the very most vulgar resistance. It
             goes on, in both Parties; but it is
             the one whose property it is, we do
             rush to invigorate with its origins.

             It's trusteeship. Now a Clinton has
             promised the Brookings Institution,
             she will contrive to bind all Pres-
             idents who may follow her pending
             reign, to warfare against Iran for
             hypotheticals which may worry her.

             Ignoring the vessel of the promise,
             it's the thought that counts. She
             has assimilated nothing of the ge-
             nius of a cause, of which she now
             claims to be a prudent parent.

             This is not the Constitution, much
             less the civilisation, one should
             wish upon a kennel for one's dogs.
             Even the Pavlovian reflex requires
             actual provocation, to go to war;
             but is that species our baseline?

             The principles of an honest intel-
             lect cannot be blackmailed again,
             by warnings of doom from that sec-
             tor's messenger, even if familiar,
             admonishing us to get to bed, and
             not expect a candidacy of reason.

             To no one's great awe, The Post
             has trotted forward Ignatius and
             Marcus, to intone that her belli-
             cosity's exactly the right basis
             for further discussion. An imper-
             ious consensus, if not a new one.
             How tiresomely they mime what we
             rejected decisively, in 2008.

             Oh, yes. They will warn of a cor-
             rupting of the Courts, a lowering
             of obligations among the well-to-
             do, a curdling in béarnaise. Let
             there be the trials we've endured,
             and learned to master, before any
             taunting to renounce our progress.

             Who caused it? Who'd preserve it?
             

So now you're at Yale: the provenance question

I suppose, it is a feature of age,
not merely to sympathise more than
is welcome, with the trials of the
present, but to perceive them, al-
most as a corollary of lengthy re-
flection, as potentially rather a
godsend to the young - who can be
counted on (much to the amusement
of the gods who envy them) to ex-
perience their challenges as com-
paratively self-defining. I offer
to admit, from one's own super-an-
uation, they simply are not. That
said, I never thought this at the
time.

I associate the university, that
Yale is in my mind, with the life
and mind of a predecessor of ours,
Socrates. This is because my ex-
perience of Yale comes from the
dialogues of law students with an
indefatigably questioning inter-
locutor; and while I learned, e-
ven in college elsewhere, to val-
ue that intensity of interest in
the question put before my mind,
to engage, I appreciated there an
inherently infinite contestibil-
ity in such questions. It isn't
that a right answer cannot exist.
It's that the answer can't com-
pare with the vitality of the
question. It is on the basis of
this simple fact, that I condone
the education of lawyers at the
very most demanding institutions:
if one gets out of Yale without
humility, that principle suffers.
Hence, Clarence Thomas, and the
Clintons.

But I stray. At Yale these days,
there is a buzz to defrock an
undergraduate college of its
namesake, John C. Calhoun - the
noted South Carolinian theorist
of white supremacy, nullification
of national law, and awkward hair.
Students movingly remark upon the
ordeal of studying beneath commem-
orations of a racist alumnus. Who
would not?

The undergraduate motive of reform
is one we all exercised and never
forget; but it's no betrayal or re-
nunciation of that urgent feeling,
to say that it can hope for too
much, and in the wrong place. The
question is never, in an institu-
tion going on 300+ years, whose
university the place is (anyway).
The question is whether one is
capable of accepting responsibil-
ity, today, for the choice one has
made to engage in it - knowing, a
paradox lurks in some nomenclature.
Where on earth, may we demand an
apology from the past?

On the other hand, how best can we
remit the inference of insult or
worse, in the encumbrance of in-
heritances we'd never shape as they
are today?

Yale appears to be on the verge of
offering tentative answers to the
question, and one can't help but be
certain of the place's awareness,
that any answer must lack the per-
manence of the question. Hence, 
Yale. And may it never be easy.