Suppose it were Friday cliv: A fixer's payroll

Casual Friday brings out the paddle

player-hero in all of us, to the ex-

tent that all we have to wear on our

sleeve to distinguish ourselves are

the testimonials of prior conquests.

Yolanda, Liz, the redoubtable Erica.

And, one keeps looking for the name,

Hope Hicks, whitest of lissome liars

in that realm, but how soon we for-

get the roster of our vanquished as

they settle off the table with Cohen.

Sascha Schneider
1913

What do "they" care?

Untrammeled play in the fields
of the lord does not very ac-
curately describe the range of
possible gestures, even in the
most liberated state, available
to the practitioner of speech.
In surfing, we have long known
that the gods conduct a monitor-
ing of behavior, which we have
lately learned our corporations
and other manipulators maintain,
to anticipate and shape the arc
of our play. Every time we ven-
ture into a discernibly oblique
convergence with currents in the
New American Government, the lis-
tening posts of Russia leap into
the acutest concentration, al-
though whether for that nation's
policies or for this one's, one
couldn't possibly claim to know.

This is the consumption pattern
of the first 36 hours of the pre-
vious posting, on the NAG's em-
brace of a torture administratrix
to supervise a widely known unit
of our secret intelligence service.
Yet, all with no mention of Russia.
Given the NAG's affection for the
government of Russia, one could 
hardly attribute this interest to
any apprehension of mistreatment
of its citizens. Of whom, then;
for whom are "Russians" reading?

Upon coincidences of much less
persistence, the paranoia sustain-
ing the NAG continues to be fed.
Why not the curiosity of occasion-
al critics, condemned to be read?

iii  Willy Ronis

      1938

  

The Gina Haspel obscenity

Stalwart fellow, always willing 
to support his underlings, and 
lead them in the service of the 
Nation as defined by his superi-
ors. Extraordinarily experienced 
and demonstrably devoted servant 
of the American people. Show the
threat, and turn your gaze away.

This impeccably impregnable

claptrap for any abuse of the

Constitution of the United 

States is on offer once again,

this week, in the frantic ef-

forts of the New American Gov-

ernment to expose the humanity

of its dissidents. One has to

count oneself among them, simp-

ly to breathe a better air. As

our entertainment, the NAG now

offers, at phenomenal hazard of

discovery, a lady to navigate

the gates of its Trojan horses.

If told to, this servant of a

finer civilization will claw at

captive throats, submerge them

indefinitely in water, and make

sure no bruises are discovered.

Of course, Gina Haspel captures

the imagination of the infant

upstairs, as much as Clarence

Thomas struck George Bush the

Elder as the finest legal mind

of his time. They are loyal.

Such prohibitive affronts to the

dignity of self-government, itself,

illuminate the constant agenda of

ostensible Conservatism today: to

break the will of the People to up-

hold restraints upon self-dealing.

The NAG, in its zeal to debauch 

every value won in the nation’s
evolving aspirations, has select-

ed a frantic grifter to ruin the 

Environment, an ignoramus to shep-

herd Education, a constellation of
bigots to tear down the Lincoln 

Memorial, and Orwellian stooges to 

mop up the entrails of their fes-

tive savagery. Now, openly to pro-

tect viciousness, itself, from any 

risk of resistance, it has anointed 

a female to stand as torture’s own 

shield, against every humane notice.

Seldom has moral capitulation gath-

ered such surpassing negotiability.

Raffaelo Sanzio, eat your heart out.

Portrait of corruption

   The Times published this portrait the

   other day, and I thought it brought

   out so well the obsessive compulsions

   of the American President that I al-

   most overlooked the spell they've suc-

   cessfully revealed through the noble

   implement for dealing with them. I re-

   fer to that wand of superior magic,

   of instantaneous manipulation, in the

   President's anxious grasp. He, Jobs,

   and Zuckerberg have embedded their

   place in history with the abandonment

   of reflection, itself. They have very

   nearly effaced a respect for the mind,

   much less the more self-confident il-

   lusions of literacy. There will be no

   corrective mallet, only detoxification.

   We are witnessing a greatness, surely.

 

Jasjyot Singh Hans

The New York Times©

May Day

         I give my hand to justice, 

         Diaphanous fountain, sublimest spring,

         My sky is deep and changeless

         All I love is incessantly reborn

         All I love is always at its beginning.

Odysseus Elytis

1911 - 1996

Burnished Day,

  Conch of the Voice

  [final verse]

Edmund Keeley and

  Philip Sherrard

  editing and translation

Voices of Modern Greece

Princeton University Press, 1981©

Origins of Wednesday lxviii: Only, our misplaced modifier

I spent a little bit of this
morning's coffee, trying to
rinse the grit from my eyes
of the latest Presidential
display of puerility, by im-
agining Dwight David Eisen-
hower, tidying the lapels
of Charles de Gaulle. Only
by admitting to myself, how
forgotten they are, was it
possible to regard that im-
age with any comprehension.

 The American President is a
 case study in the misplace-
 ment of an exclusive singular.
 Only because this is so cus-
 tomary, do we indulge his
 indiscipline as only routine.
 It'd be worse than bizarre,
 to see it as comprehensible.

Finding out things

[Freeman, holding forth as usual like
a professor]: "Scientists are still
trying to find out how pigeons can 
find their way home. We don't know
whether they can find their way by 
the stars." [George]: But I know that
camels find their way by the stars."
[Freeman]: "How do you know that?"
[George]: "Because when three wise men
were going to Bethlehem, the camels 
saw a star in the sky, and so they
knew where to go."

Esther is looking through an anthology

of children's poems: "That's funny, I 

wrote a poem called 'Daisy Song,' and 

now I see another author has written one 

too." [Freeman]: "Who is the other auth-

or?" [Esther}: "John Keats."

Freeman Dyson

La Jolla

April 19, 1959

Maker of Patterns

  An Autobiography

  through Letters

Liveright/Norton, 2018©

Suppose it were Friday cliii: And clear

The choice of an imagined future is always a matter of taste . .  I see human freedom as the goal and the creativity of small human societies as the means to achieve it. 

Freedom is the divine spark that causes human children to rebel against grand unified theories imposed by their parents.

At the age of 94, the theoretical physicist and mathematician, Freeman Dyson, has undertaken to present an unreasonably elegant review of a major new work of speculation in the social sciences. The extract, above, stands on its own, obviously, and suggests to me the spirit of the third figure in Dominique Isserman's image of the esplanade, more than Twombly's.

The choice of a vision of the present is always a matter of taste. With non-stop belligerent entertainment as the unified theory of the day, one turns with gratitude to the prospect of a weekend with the correspondences of a shimmering mentality. 

           A frequent contributor to The New York Review,

           Dyson laid out the stakes for the foregoing im-

           plication - that the mind most necessary to cri-

           tique is one's own - in a deeply well-informed

           review of the biography of Robert Oppenheimer,

           by Wittgenstein's leading biographer. (Kai Bird,

           author of the review cited here of Dyson's let-

           ters, wrote another one). Against the prodigious

           negative pressure of the day, to critique the un-

           ruly mentality of misrule in the nation, then and

           now, Dyson presented a devastating depiction of

           the cost the embattled path imposed on a stronger

           mind than most - and the rôle of companionship -

           [His wife} came to me with a cry for help. She

           implored me to collaborate with Robert in a piece

           of technical scientific work. She said Robert was

           desperate because he was no longer doing science,

           and he needed a collaborator to get him started ..

           His days as a scientist were over. It was too 

           late to cure his anguish with equations.

          

iv  Joe Collier

v   Oliver Houlby