Red Mug, Blue Linen

Sunday, December 11, 2011

'Tis the season to be spiffy i: Whit and the birds guy

An affable little beast, my English Cocker is impecuniously incautious in his zealotry for the presentable guest. I haven't any idea how he acquired this snooty conception of entitle-ment, unless by sheer deprivation by oneself. Can't be helped, I suppose, but we will not entertain pessimism toward new tricks; and it is somewhat heartening that his sartorialism is more one of nature than of anything passing for fashion. But this is true only up to a point, as all things are with a gentleman of parts.

Whit is emphatic in his wel-come of the fellow he refers to as, the birds guy. As awk-ward as we all can sometimes be with names, 'Johannes Niermann' is a great deal to draw down, from memory cells not vastly larger than Mr Perry's. But he does know what he values in attire, and the birds guy definitively has it, for Whit. One knows better than to go too far, toward unveiling another gentleman's core principles, and I've forborne from infringing on Whit's sovereignty in the matter. Innately birdy, anyway, Whit could be expected to favour the occasional panache of the woodcock, his ostensibly destined prey. But the water birds of Mr Niermann's habit quite escape our expectation.

Whit's markings are those of the blue roan, and he is himself, famous for his featherings. Yes, and you may feel free to remark on them, you know. But who could think of Whit, drawing any literalist affinity for markings from the rich grab bag of presentments to which, it is only fair to say, the household is exposed in any given month?

Readers will remember their reunions with Mr Niermann here, in their own ways. He has always been an articulate member of the company; and quite possibly Whit's gratitude for his clarity of utterance goes far toward defining the dog's sense of his spiffiness.

Found, out and about even more often than here, Niermann accounts for no small part in Whit's own superb conditioning, which the little beast has not been unknown to flaunt to obtain the upper hand in some of our conversations. There are certain trees on this property, and hedgerows and ponds, indeed, which constitute almost a checklist of gathering places where Whit will not fail to fly, in search of his birds guy. His diligence has cured me entirely of the assumption that these destinations represent a form of habit in his constitutionals, as he leaves no small statement of his frustration wherever Mr Niermann fails to turn up. He is plainly looking for his birds guy, and has made it a prerogative one has to accept.

Why would a man put

"Kenzo" on his waist,

Auguste?

So that he could find

himself in a parking

lot, I should think,

Hercule.

ii-v Johannes Niermann

Saturday, December 10, 2011

A City of Coffee Mug to another northern place

No doubt, the text of this tribute

would sooner leap from one's hands

than linger in their provenance,

and in deference to the crockery,

I shall be brief.

The City of Coffee Mug has been

awarded once before, as a mutation

of a blogging prize dispensed here

some time ago. Poetically, the

Canadian of our first recognition

is no longer publishing; but he cer-

tainly must again, and for all we

know, could well be.

This vessel means to encourage

that blogger who is generously

creative and unarbitrary, aware

of an artistic exertion in self-

presentation, and of humane intent.

These risks bear a price, and are
fundamental to the city of coffee.

These few characteristics but

superficially describe the blog

we know as Linnea. I'll not im-

pose a quiz because all readers

are aware that this is a project

of a med student musician from

a cold climate, famous for

posting spontaneous "graffiti"

from her home city, which turn

out to be elegant aperçus of

more than its surfaces; notes

on human health which go to

the bottom line of the human

condition; reminiscences and

reports from a romantic rela-

tionship of already transpar-

ent trust; reflections on music

of enormously sociable enthus-

iasm; to say nothing of tender

and humane internal monologues

whenever she feels like it,

which uncannily have to do

with everyone else.

She is exempt from snobbery's

intimidations and immune to its

seductions; she is capable of

amusement where it is offered,

and disarmingly charitable in

remarking on her preferences.
She has never cited privilege
as a feature of taste, dropt
a name, or exhibited glamour -
all infallible ways of drawing
our attention, just not hers.
She's what a doctor or recital-
ist has to be: she's fearless.

All very good, you may be
thinking; but with these
omissions, how can one be-
lieve there is any there,
there?

Because she knows a good
story will depict desire
without the anticlimax of
possession; but that its
narrator will experience
credibly, and conjure the
defeat of, the cruelest bar
to pleasure.

There's a little Sidney Carton
in every such acknowledgment.
Maybe there needs to be - the
rule, praising the exception.
I have no illusion of escap-
ing that rule; I am grateful
that she lightens it.

A City of Coffee Mug to Linnea,

of warmth.

Photographs© Linnea

Was she wrong?

International Human
Rights Day

And to people of all nations, I say, supporting human rights is your respon-sibility too. The lives of gay people are shaped not only by laws, but by the treatment they receive every day from their families, from their neighbors. Eleanor Roosevelt, who did so much to advance human rights worldwide, said that these rights begin in the small places close to home – the streets where people live, the schools they attend, the factories, farms, and offices where they work. These places are your domain. The actions you take, the ideals that you advocate, can de-termine whether human rights flourish where you are.

I have read, with interest, some refusals of Mrs Clinton's advice in Geneva this week, anticipating this day's marking of Human Rights. I have read Mr Perry's statements; I have read fear that Mr Perry would state them. She was right to press forward.

Refusal of her advice amounts to a capitulation to a loy-alty oath, engendered by the Star Chamber (which condemned Thomas More) to incriminate one's own conscience. I grew up in a generation which suckled at the teat of self-dread on that very pretext of wisdom which conceded the indictment of deviancy, and sustained the deadly lie of voluntary identity. I watched fear corrupt every mentor I ever knew, and destroy almost every friend I ever had. It does not work. The young don't know the carrion stench of misplaced reticence. I don't want them, ever, to.

The Secretary of State
of the United States
Palais des Nations, Geneva
December 6th, 2011

Friday, December 9, 2011

Suppose it were Friday xlvii: De Prospectiva Pingendi on a weekend

The only solution, in Piero's mind, was to go outside geometry .. Piero was right: one shouldn't use the perspective construction to degrade things seen at a grazing angle .. But the theory is also right: such constructions will be seen correctly if the eye is positioned in just the intended place.

It is only that our tolerance for being in the wrong place is now rather small.

Mark A. Peterson
Galileo's Muse
Renaissance Mathematics
and the Arts
Harvard University Press, 2011©

i Silvano Mangana

iii Ivan Terestchenko photography

Armani Hotel, Milan

Elle Decor Italia©

A word of caution on elation in élites

BCW

The famously self-protective

American President has wan-

dered into Bloody Kansas, at

who knows what incalculable

cost of stillborn staging, to

mime the histrionics of the

aristocrat of Sagamore Hill,

and all the Critical Left is

but agog to speak its thrill.

How awesomely soon they for-

get the rhetorician's first

and only task, which is to

give voice to the lower or-

ders, not to describe them

in the syntax of a social en-

gineer. This was one of the

saddest proofs of alien

disdain of human life, of

cold unfitness to be found in campaign diction since the first Bush's immortal, Message: I care. But you saw the delirium over this illusive populism, throughout the print media: the editorial boards of both The Times and The Post adored the genius of invoking The Middle Class in the third person - Michael Tomasky at The Daily Beast counting 25 such hearteningly aloof descriptions of his listeners. The man who can't bring himself to the first person plural in public discourse is going to be rejected as a tight-assed Thomas Dewey, and richly deservedly so.

Where is Peggy Noonan when she's needed, who could make Caligula sound innocent and quaintly sweet? He sounded like a pedagogic oncologist, touring a ward of the suffering with his retinue of readers, declaring right before their upturned faces what to do about their pain as if they were not there.

Yesterday, this man needs to go to the movies; he needs to go to the drugstore for a cherry soda; he needs to skin his knee and yes, quite frankly and urgently, he needs to lose at something, or take himself off the road.

From the writer of the preface to our book of the year i

imagine a literature

of power without force

He made her loneliness and her

isolation into a longing to meet

someone, for a face at the window,

a figure in the distance.

This longing, he knew, would in

time come to him, too, as the

garden door creaked, or the

branches of the trees beat against

the window as he read by lamplight,

or lay awake in that old house, and

in one of those seconds before worth-

ier thoughts could surface, the first

thought would be to welcome what was

coming now ..

The person looking in through the window was the person who had appeared to her. He was the same. His face was close to the glass and his stare into her face was deep and menacing until she realized something that she would never cease to believe: the added shock of certitude went through her fiercely that it was not for her he had come. He had come for the children.