High tide of hope

At last, the virulent storm that

seemed to emanate from the White

House has been shown to swirl in

our continental sea as a lurking

permanent dread of status asphy-

xiation. Were you alive when the

last Texan to be President, pro-

claimed the end of history, when

those office towers were downed?

If he was right, then is the week

just passed a rebirth of history?

Suppose it were Friday clxxvii: And one awoke in an Edward Hopper

   It's not only the weather
   that strikes the tone for
   one's day. But it can al-
   most always be seductive.

 

Henri Cartier-Bresson
Telegraph Hill
undated

Origins of Wednesday xcix: President in the heartlands

    What, again?

         Insolence needs drowning
         worse than wildfire.

Heraclitus
On Nature
  Fragments
Brooks Haxton
  translation
6th Century BC
Penguin, 2001©

A country of unbelonging

I live in what I suppose is the first
country to identify itself without a
name, but only with a system. The U-
nited States of America does not dis-
please one for eschewing any mark of
ethnicity, however, but it does des-
cribe a container of no substitute
definition - which may also be all to
the good, given the options available
throughout her history. Now she finds
herself in a conspicuously brittle 
custody battle, in which a vain impa-
tience to define the place is merely,
if sadly, a festival of aggressions.

We are reminded of Truman Capote, on 
a species to which not everyone is
domestically drawn:

She was still hugging the cat. 
‘Poor slob,’ she said, tickling his 
head, ‘poor slob without a name. It’s 
a little inconvenient, his not having 
a name. But I haven’t any right to give 
him one: he’ll have to wait until he 
belongs to somebody.’

I offer this posting to my friend, a
painter who writes and lives with a cat.
Who defines, who possesses, whose reli-
gion determines their relationship? If
they knew, would it ever be the same?

Truman Capote
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Random House, 1958©

Hanging antecedents

This is a photograph by Jon Gasca

which he calls, Paul P at home.

I do not know if this is a refer-

ence to a portrait of Paul P, in

his house or not; or to a portion

of the house of Paul P, which we

are to infer to satisfy him.

I do feel that the photograph is

a comment on style, or an evoca-

tion of style, or both. In either

case it is provocative, in a prom-

inence it gives to the hanging of

a picture, an accumulation as much

as an acquisition, as Alan Bennett

would say, because we don't know

if its punctuation of the space

is antecedent, contemporaneous, or

subsequent to its creation by Paul.

We have no sense of its contribu-

tion except as ornament in place.

For a couple of decades I've been

living without the hanging of an-

tecedents or of new accumulations

in the space where I live. In fash-

ioning a new environment, I have

therefore been giving thought to

laying receptive preparations for

certain pictorial elements. Yet I

do congenially resist, slightly,

the inevitable burden of a past

which some impart, or of recent

but expired acquisitive choice,

in others. 

I do not know, what confers 

such tenacious immunity from or-

lamentation upon my space as I

have come to see it. I truly do

like pictures, even some of mine.

I do think a picture has a right,

so to speak, to be seen, alone.

I think no picture has a right

to be seen every day, without

extracting distinct concessions

from the space, and its tenant.

I do not agree that images rep-

resent the baggage of stored

pleasure, because they do have

an autonomy, against how I see

them. I do know, I do not care

to regard a picture as a debt I

must pay, by exhibiting it. This

means, it must compete with its

absence, in improving my opinion

of my space. This is why I like

Jon Gasca's photograph. I sense,

Paul P has preserved the values

to him, of space and ornament,

exploiting a recessive image

with almost objective success.

Saturday commute clxxv: Gold rush trousers

  Far be it from us, to infer a mer-

  cantile commitment from a slouch in

  proletarian denim, but the seeking

  of one's fortune isn't always mere

  materialism on the march. There is

  shelter to be had, here and there,

  from the heat of Summer Saturdays,

  and a quaint refreshment to be pon-

  dered, whether or not fully taken.

Suppose it were Friday clxxvi: Pretenders, everywhere

What do you say, we give contenders

for the nomination a pass for their

antic changes of the subject of the

election, in the precedents for ex-

ploitive distraction set by the guy

who's got the job, despite himself?

He, and what he has done to the def-

inition of leadership are the issue.

This is not rocket science. Leader-

ship is not revealed by attrition.

It resists attrition, and it wins.

Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House
The New York Times©
June 26, 2019

The menswear candidate

A friend of mine remarked the other

day, not a little incontestably, it 

was a dark day for menswear when the 

Presidency lost this man. Those who

lived through that scintillating ep-

och have forgotten the lateral lisp,

an aplomb in the figure at all times,

even the stern rebuke of Big Steel's

impertinent price increase, through

a veil of awesomely apposite deport-

ment, calling into question how much

his clothes really do make the man,

now that we see what little Brioni

have done to humanize the incumbent.

But I stray. Laying not very far o-

ver the horizon of the next Presid-

ency, we spy a candidate who offers,

not to say threatens, to refute the

proposition that one can be made to

seem to wear what others may place

upon one's back. Tar and feathers,

for instance; or merely, a drumbeat-

en wash of hoary phobic effigies.

Have we so soon forgotten Mr Biden's

praise of an African American run-

ning, for being surprisingly clean? 

The mayor of South Bend, a place

not so far west in The Philadelphia

Story as Duluth, offers cheerily to

be elected to this office by charm-

ing the pants off the capitalist in-

telligentsia, and lightening them

of merry wads of patronage. Every-

one is tacitly avoiding the thought 

of how he shall be dressed by the

other side, if he should gain the

nomination to run for that office.

An air of make-believe, not hugely

different from the spell which ab-

sorbed the literati in Camelot, is

suspended by satisfaction with how

he dresses himself. In Center Right

and in Center Left, the sound of

ice cubes clinking in a giddy flux

is wonderfully reminiscent of the

blitheness of the last candidacy,

oblivious to the coral in the way.

Ah, but how splendid now to don

the noble togs of chivalry, what-

ever the rules of the game.