Suppose it were Friday clxxiii: And recycling went on

     Sometimes I think one can

     complain too much of the

     calm of an orderly way of

     life. 

           

           What became of that

     in the intricate calcula-

     tions of campaigners for

     our electoral affections?

What's with all this talk of impeachment?

  Really, I just don't think I'm up

  for it at all. Such a whole lot of

  drama for the gratification of ap-

  petites to disapprove. What is the

  source of this failure to be satis-

  fied, and what is it about impeach-

  ment which promises a fulfillment?

  I've heard of the fog of war, but

  this strikes me as the war of fog:

  people groping heedlessly for mech-

  anisms they cannot control, because

  of frustration with a language they

  haven't mastered. What would Tacitus

  say of such a resort to wilderness?

Robbie Davidson
  x Maxwell Poth

Further remark on Dean on screen

James Dean participated in three movies

in his career and died in that same year,

1955, at the age of 24. He was directed

by Nicholas Ray, Elia Kazan, and George 

Stevens. Probably nobody in the history

of American film has been showered with

more diverse support in so short a time;

and certainly nobody else so instantly

or enduringly outstripped so much fame,

becoming more universally recognized

than all three films put together. What

shirt today is not born, knowing, it

will never dress James Dean?

Now we have another historical study

of American cinema, to approach this

Alexandrian career with as much well-

sourced research as the years and the

author's visible diligence can allow,

and I'm happy to recommend it for com-

ing to grips with Dean's enigmatic as-

pects with obvious care, legitimate ar-

gument, and enlightening appreciation.

One never minds being informed about a

body of work from the craftsman's point

of view, the merit of which is better

to recognize its singularity. The crit-

ic is David Thomson, familiar for his

interviews with Criterion in their re-

masterings of films for dvd. The style

is conversational, the temper is calm,

the manner is dignified, the thinking

is continuously impressive, and the

curtain of fame is congenially lifted.

We read of many artists engaged in the

suggestion of desire, and of how their

personalities may have been tested in

a variety of ways. What one learns of

Dean is that if all the fame which had

fed his fame were suddenly to be extin-

gushed, the screen would reignite it.

One never minds discovering what one's

always seen.

David Thomson

Sleeping with Strangers

  How the Movies

  Shaped Desire

Knopf, 2019©

Decoration Day

     

  
  One wouldn't wish to make light
  of a seasonal holiday set aside
  for the last Monday in May, to
  express a debt to the fallen in
  the nation's military services.
  It is of course, beyond payment.

  The occasion began life under a
  title better fitted to the cost,
  Decoration Day. Stripped of all
  the cant of the occasion of any
  combat death, is the nation's
  deprivation of a young life bet-
  ter fitted for the illumination
  of our lives, than the enactment
  of politics' most sordid habit.

Of heroes on their weekend

  Having a Coke with you

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, 
  Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia
  in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better
  happier St Sebastian


partly because of my love for you, partly because of your
  love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around
  the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on
  before people and statuary

it is hard to believe when I'm with you that there can be
  anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when
  right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o'clock light we are drifting
  back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through
  its spectacles . .

        

Frank O'Hara

Having a Coke

  with You

  [fragment]

1960

Donald Allen

  editor

The Collected Poems

  of Frank O'Hara

op. cit.

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©