Erin go bragh!

  

  He came back to the sofa. He lifted
  MacMurrough's wine and silently gave
  it into his hand. They listened to
  the night sounds through the window,
  while the mood recouped, repossessed
  them.

  "MacEmm, can I ask you? I don't know
  does it mean .. does it mean any-
  thing with marrying, MacEmm? Doyler 
  and me..

  I don't know, you see..

  I never thought of it before and   then I wondered, is it this way     
  you'd be with a wife? You see, I
  don't know."

                "MacEmm, you haven't brought this

                from England with you, you know.

                It was here anyway. I wasn't the

                first in the Crock's Garden and I

                doubt I'll be the last. I'm sorry

                for the soldier for I doubt I was

                much comfort to him and I hope he

                found better joy where he went.

                

                But you know I wouldn't live that

                way. It will be different, won't

                it?"

                "I hope it will, my dear."

Jamie O'Neill

At Swim, Two Boys

op. cit.

Scribner, 2001©

i      Charlotte Hedley©

iii   The New York Times©

Shall we have Gail Collins or lose this day after all

    Like you, I'll do anything

    to avoid one of our Satur-

    day commute postings, but

    I was prepared to go ahead

    with a blithely nautical

    entry, albeit under penal-

    ty of enlistment. We late-

    ly saw a reader encouraging

    the page to continue our

    coasting on quotations, but

    also to invent a few lines;

    and if one can't say some-

    thing nice about a sailor,

    it would smack of tarring

    him with the brush we re-

    serve for his uses.

   

    What I think we all like a-

    bout our modern writers is

    that they don't make us re-

    member very far back. This

    defies Fitzgerald's Law of

    Second Chances, but it ex-

    plains our wars to a T, not 

    to mention our zombies of

    Presidential aspirations.

    One could go on in this

    vein, but to deny readers

    a chance to relish Gail

    Collins' tracking of such

    an aspirant with his may-

    onnaise jar, groveling

    for a flag to wrap him-

    self in in Iowa, would

    contradict the spirit of

    the Saturday commute. 

    Is there still a Scott

    Walker, we must ask; and

    if so, why?

    

Gail Collins
Rush to Judgment
The New York Times
22 May 2015©

A little bit of war

        Have we all been keeping up
        with the Mission Accomplish-
        ed, so many years ago, now,
        that we've all but washed
        our hands of our own triumph?

        Ramadi has bit the dust again.
        Is this the President's "whack-
        a-mole" image, come to recur-
        ring life? Is it another gurg-
        ling simmer in the tardily dy-
        ing pot of sectarian strife?

        I don't think so. I think it's
        yet another nail in the coffin
        of the pretense we prolifically
        pursue, that we can have a lit-
        tle bit of war, and deny it, as
        we "move on."

        If nothing else, I hope the in-
        numerable American martyrs we'll
        revisit this weekend at Arlington
        will be spared the contemptibly
        false non sequitur, "insurrection,"
        for counter-attacks against an ab-
        solutely inachievable mission. An
        insurrection presumes an establish-
        ed government; what we observe is
        non-compliance with our fantasies. 
        
        The dead deserve their language.

Margaretta Fitler Murphy Rockefeller

My memory of this lady began
when I was a young boy, an
exceedingly unprecocious ad-
olescent by today's standard.
I remember her with spontan-
eous fondness, because she
was so pretty, frankly, yet
another retrograde symptom
I'm unlikely to shirk. And
I was aware of the "turmoil"
over her marriage to the Gov-
ernor of New York. I recall,
very clearly, that I did not 
share in that judgment. Even
then, I supposed I was sup-
posed, to feel threatened by 
a betrayal of children, even
if I was not yet in any posi-
tion to denounce her on other 
"moral" grounds.

I just knew enough then, to
be certain that custodians of 
children should love each oth-
er, and not demand the same 
from the innocents. In this
way they discover and believe
in beauty, and whether they
discover it or not, in love.

Margaretta Fitler
  at Shipley, ca 1942

Dutifully padding about the temples of gastronomy

      And yet she loved all things 
      French, loved being in France.
      When we went there en famille
      after the war she exclaimed
      continuously on its marvelous
      Frenchness, everything was just
      as French as she remembered it -
      'Look,' she said, as we drove
      away from the boat through Cal-
      ais, 'the very streets - the 
      cars, a Citroën, James! - oh,
      a gendarme, and there, the lit-
      tle outside lavatory, they're
      called pissoires, and you see
      the wine shops - James, see the
      windows! all that wine - and the
      pavement cafés and there's a pâ-
      tisserie' - she said the word
      with such a French flourish -
      'you boys have never tasted a
      real French pâtisserie - do stop,
      James, and we'll have a pâtisser-
      ie, the boys can have their first
      tarte aux pommes!'

      James stopped, and she led us
      to the little shop, its open
      counter just off the pavement
      laden with cakes, fruit tarts,
      &c, the smell of their recent
      baking hanging in the warm air,
      and it's certainly true that
      Nigel and I had never seen such
      a display, not smelt such smells
      - 'peach, pear, apple,' she said,
      'apricot, fraises, framboises -
      and that's the one I'll have' -
      she gestured at it, one of her
      grand gestures - 'the black-
      berry!' and a swarm of flies
      rose up from it, leaving not a
      blackberry but a plain custard
      tart - ...

     

















Simon Gray
The Last Cigarette
Granta, 2008©

This volume in the
"Smoking Diaries"
was nominated by
the Head Master
of Eton for Hey-
wood Hill's List
of 100 Something-
or-Other. Fright-
ening to consider,
one could have
missed it.

Fionn Creber

Dutifully padding about the temples of Impression

     Is travel then the mirage where
     the real self itself becomes mi-
     rage ..? When we are in Rome or
     Athens, do they evade us, lost
     under the scurrying modern life
     imposed on them, an ancient ghost
     behind a modern ghost? Do we meet
     always and everywhere nothing but
     ourselves?

     Or are there, in Florence, for ex-

     ample, moments when the emanation

     of the past stamped on stone and

     bronze surges up above the present,

     with a greater order perhaps than

     it ever had in the past? This is

     surely so when, from Fiesole, we 

     see the dome of the cathedral like

     a shield made of rust-coloured pet-

     als guarding the city ..

     

Stephen Spender

World Within World

1951

Random House, 2001©

Fionn Creber

Dutifully padding about the temples of Persepolis

     2 March 1935

     Dear Dr Herzfeld

         Since both the Governor
     of Fars and Dr Mostafavi have
     stated categorically that you
     have no right to prevent my
     photographing the portions of
     arches and columns which have
     always been above ground, the
     only means of stopping my pho-
     tographing them are either

       (1) to show me the wording
     of your concession proving
     that you have the right, or
       (2) force.

     Please choose your means.

     There are still some things to
     be said about Persepolis.

     Only the stone has survived, but
     for a few of Alexander's ashes
     which they dig up now and then.
     And stone worked with such opu-
     lence and precision has great
     splendour, whatever one may think
     of the forms employed on it. This
     is increased by the contrast be-
     tween the stones used, the hard
     opaque grey and the more lucent
     white. Isolated ornaments have al-
     so been discovered in a jet-black
     marble without vein or blemish.

     Is that all?

     Patience! In the old days you ar-
     rived by horse. You rode up the
     steps on to the platform. You made
     a camp there, while the columns
     and winged beasts kept their sol-
     itude beneath the stars, and not
     a sound or movement disturbed the
     empty moonlit plain. You thought
     of Darius and Xerxes and Alexander.
     You were alone with the ancient
     world. You saw Asia as the Greeks
     saw it, and you felt their magic
     breath stretching out toward China
     itself. Such emotions left no room
     for the aesthetic question, or for
     any question.

     

     Today you step out of a motor, 

     while a couple of lorries thun-

     der by in a cloud of dust. You

     find the approaches defended by

     walls. You enter by leave of a

     porter, and are greeted, on 

     reaching the platform, by a light

     railway, a neo-German hostel, and

     a code of academic malice control-

     led from Chicago. These useful ad-

     ditions clarify the intelligence.

    

     You may persuade yourself, in spite

     of them, into a mood of romance. 

     But the mood they invite is that

     of a critic at an exhibition. This

     is the penalty of greater knowledge.

     It isn't my fault. No one would have

     been more pleased than I to leave

     the brain idle in a dream of history

     and landscape and light and wind and

     other impalpable accidents. But if

     circumstances insist on showing me

     more than I want to see, it is no

     good telling lies about it.

Robert Byron

The Road to Oxiana

1937

Oxford University Press

op. cit.

Fionn Creber

Dutifully padding about the temples of Mt Athos

    Woke up this morning, the weight
    of my twenty years heavy upon me,
    wondering how many people at home
    were wishing me many happy returns
    and whether the waves of their 
    well-wishing would reach me through
    the air. The arbondaris, with whom
    I have made great friends, brought
    me tea and jam and bread. He seems
    to have taken me under his wing, as
    I'm his only guest.

    After dressing, I was just setting
    out in quest of Father Basil, when
    I met him on the threshold, coming
    to visit me. So we sat talking in
    my room, and then we set off to
    look around the chapel, where the
    ikons and frescoes were all new,
    and though not unpleasant, not very
    interesting. The gilding in the up-
    per chapel is all recent, and some
    of the stencilling on the wall aw-
    ful, and luckily not very obvious.
    The two-storey library is enormous,
    with long, pleasant rooms packed
    full of books in expensive cases.
    It is very poor in manuscripts how-
    ever, except for one with the gos-
    pels for each day of the year, which
    has fascinating illustrations, a Na-
    tivity where the interest and adora-
    tion in the eyes of the animals is
    really wonderful, and another of the
    Baptism of Christ, naked in Jordan,
    with the devil, or some evil water
    sprite, in a posture of submarine
    thwartedness.

    Then I bade Basil goodbye, and he

    returned to his cell, I to mine,

    he dragging his heavy boots behind

    him, and giving the impression, in

    his youthfulness, of a schoolboy

    dressed up in a flowing beard and

    hair, tall hat and long robes.

Patrick Leigh-Fermor
February 11, 1935
The Broken Road
  From the Iron Gates
  to Mount Athos
Artemis Cooper and
Colin Thubron, editors
2013
op. cit.

Fionn Creber