Whit, willingly at play

Early this morning, under a clear

Autumn sun, I took a happy walk in 

an expansive meadow on a neighbor's

farm, where my English Cocker, Whit

had run as a puppy with his uncle, 

Geordie; and as I went on with them 

in spirit, I let go the ashes of his

remains to mark again those sweet 

and antic paths the two had charted

in their play.

In a year of unusual domestic sur-

prises this English dog and I did

participate more closely in each

other's lives, than ever before. In

many weeks of recuperation from one

surgery, and then another; in end-

ing some customs and beginning new

and wiser ones; and in endless for-

tunate hours together to observe

the subtle changes of them all, he

gave every companionship a radiant

and innocent and beautiful being

can contribute to the acceptance

of complication and novelty.

I accept that these cannot prac-

tically be a writer's purposes.

What interests me is the bench-

mark they set for pride in what

one does. I do not think a dog's

unfaltering pride is simply in-

herent or bred. I think, like

ours, it is in part responsive.

I think he knew he was a kindly

dog; and I admire that he was

willingly this way.

Camille Pissaro
Near Sydenham Hill,
  Looking towards Lower Norwood
1871
Kimbell Museum of Art

I dressed as the man who dressed for the man who dressed James Bond

      Do not be self-conscious.

      It is better to be affected.

Villiers David

1908 - 1985

Advice to my Godchildren

Juan Saumarez Smith, editor

  [Heywood Hill]

Maggs Brothers

Estate of Villiers David, 2012©

Who was that lawless roads pedestrian?

I was amazed at daybreak, yesterday, to find proclamations of a new alignment being offered on the strength of an admittedly amusing night. I was advised that it had been, if not especially good, then at least historically enormous; but then as I set about scrutinising its definition, I found recurrences of effect being misconstrued as cause, and coincidence as stable remedy. These sentimentalised deceptions were as innocent as the sensations that designed them, I allowed, and might well subside as such things do, innocuously enough. But then, at evening, there was more.

Ross Douthat's invention of an emergent coalition from an undifferentiated flight of commonsensible refugees of every condi-tion and occupation, from attack by Republican contempt, was dwarfed by Andrew Sullivan's com-pulsion to announce the greatest conjugal upheaval of all time.


Were the news not, in these parameters, benign enough to warrant such huzzahs, we'd have to reacquaint our mentors with society's assimilative powers all over again, that genius for absorption which allows abrupt deflection its novel but not much altering flight.

Yet here we were: pursuing innumerable, unremarked wars without the approbation or oversight of our institutions, but by one authority, stripped constitutionally of the power to do so. This was to have been the not George Bush presidency: the not war criminal presidency, the not civil liberties violating presidency, the not arbitrary presidency. 

The late campaign illustrates that triumph of history over political change which renders its morning-after raptures bitter precedents. Mr Obama sought office to fix an institution, and got away with neglecting to, by saying the economy ate his homework.

It was good to get past the Republicans, but I very much doubt that our culture can count forever on such a purified embodiment of the barbarian. Who can be sure that reason will not be resumed as their guide, as fast as it was abandoned, precipitating a pluralist outpouring from this coincidental coalition, as sweets from a piñata? The election held promise of a wiser pursuit of criminal justice in California, while nevertheless exposing the profound hazard of populist intervention in due process which rallied harsh misrule in the first place. But it is no exaggeration to say, the trends of the evening were framed as a flight from cruelty. It is not popular, against so many.

Home again, home again, jiggety-jog

   And please, Daddy.

   No more airplane food.

The New York Times

November 7, 2012©

I note, some readers revived a posting from March

   Refreshing of them.

    

Reach

      I think of you in black and white

      When we were made of dreams ..

      Just when I thought you were gone,

      you came back

      Just when I was ready to receive you ..

      On the rising curve

      where the waves of Nature will test every nerve;

      I took you close and got what I deserve

      When we were born in time.

Bob Dylan

The Bootleg Series

  Volume 8

  Born in Time

  alternative version

Special Rider Music, 1990©

Banked

        

        And then turning where the last pale

        Lighthouse, like a Samson blinded, stands

        And turns its huge charred orbit on the sands

        I think of you - indeed mostly of you,

        In whom a writer would only name and lose

        The dented boy's lip and the close

        Archer's shoulders; but here to rediscover

        By tides and faults of weather, by the rain

        Which washes everything, the critic and the lover.

Lawrence Durrell

Selected Poems
  Alexandria
  [fourth verse]
1946
Peter Porter, editor
Faber and Faber, Ltd, 2006©

  

Freedom riders

 

   We have so little to say

   about the world where we

   awaken, it is a constant

   trial so much as to ex-

   press a yes or a no. But

   the exercise of even the

   emptiest act is all that

   can preserve the right

   for others.

The New York Times

Upholding Democracy,

  Ballot by Ballot

November 3, 2012©