Saturday commute lxxiv: Crime of the upturned face ii

Without thinking to book-end

the year by resuming a train

of thought laid by in January,

I have been wondering how much

there literally is of parting,

of leave-taking in the taking,

in our address of the upturned

face. We suppose, there cannot

be liberty until so little re-

mains of this ambiguity, which

we know cannot dissolve. Still

more to the point, I wonder if

2012 will not be remembered in

this country as a year of pro-

found interpretive deliverance,

caused by the emergence of a

class so steeped in compulsory

anguish, no suspension could 

relieve it; so long compelled 

to die, its refusal finally 

lanced a humane trepidation.

Was it true: that phobia were a

fear, not a scruple? If we did 

not end that sense of parting,
in our rapport with the upturned
face, had we seen an end of fear 
of it?

Suppose it were Friday lxviii: Clean shirt workout, not so bad?

                          There's nothing worse than telling the young they'll evolve, a friend from our Context wrote in the other day.                                     I complimented him on his unassailable suggestion against insulting them with any hope. 

Clean shirt long evening

 Beth Nelson

  I marveled with Gérard,

  that people must sound

  so different, who know

  the same thing.

  

       

Plato

The Symposium

4th Century BC

Christopher Gill, translation

Penguin Classics

Penguin Books, 1999©

Clean shirt golliness in haste

 The neurological deadline in media

 is unutterably severe. When a fact-

 check or a copyright citation can

 mean the difference between a hy-

 pothetical lawsuit and missing the

 entire Baltic plain on its way to

 work, not a few of us have made a

 concession or two, to bring timely

 solace to downtown Vilnius. But of 

 course, that is not what I mean.

 Nor is St Petersburg to blame.

No. It turns out, that in churning out the news and such comment as it may require (and coming from our Gothic culture in particular) one has no more than 5.5 seconds, tops, in image hang time, to register a clavicle before the reader's gaze. And it had better be a good one, or demand only spirals for ever costlier cuts. But can we, dear reader, shape our news as Mr Murdoch does, to suit the compulsive habits of a certain clientele, at the expense of all sanity?

We all have our Shetland memories of a kinder, gentler media world. If any of one's readers happened to be looking at the time, I think we would all be ever so glad if they would step forward now, to identify what precipitated this abrupt and, may I say, almost arbitrary demand for clavicle imagery, which has now become a baseline of expectation in our neue sachlichkeit of cognitive consensus. Was it to balance a flock of Falwellian blondes in Addison's and Steele's old perch, for which the once-proud pectoral parapet has been press-ganged into reportage? I shudder to speculate; but as I temporise on the side of truth, dawn encroaches upon Oslo ..

Comfort ye

             all people

Clean shirt reckless moment

Split the lark, our genius maiden

wrote, and you'll find the Music.

For unfashionably numerous years,

I have participated in the reflex

the West cherishes toward Christ-

mas; and I still find its tug un-

answerably endearing. I can see,

a crucifix bobbing on a brother's

choral surplice; I can smell the

grandeur of my first given book,

Le chanson de Roland. Is this not

the most sensuous feast day there

is, if memory's palate wafts the

freshest collars of our vestry?

The day marks the launching of a

struggle far from encompassed by

the single Life it celebrates. I

now perceive this occasion as one

distinctly of revolution; and ap- 

prehend how scary it would have

been, for absolute autocrats to

have trembled and stars to alter

course. The scale of the rumours,

alone, would have been enough to 

mortify Clytemnestra, mid-plunge,

and send wise men scuttling for

bribes, convening shepherds of im-

peccable witness to attest to it. 

Rip the chorister's cuirass on

Christmas, and there is Miss

Dickinson's menstrual metaphor,

the poet's reserve of love, it-

self, the ultimate replenishing

inkwell of transfigured breath.

    Loose the flood - you shall find it patent -

    Gush after Gush, reserved for you -

    Scarlet Experiment! Skeptic Thomas!

    Now, do you doubt that your Bird was true?

The radical event, so hand-

somely assimilated as sur-

passingly protective, will

always signify that quality.

But there is a post hoc, er-

go propter hoc halo of in-

terpretation in such parti-

san teleology, which ultim-

ately falls away. Instead,

a prohibitive watershed of

infinite mystery and possi-

bility in this anniversary,

I admit to my friends, al-

most to fear.

Helen Vendler

Dickinson: Selected Poems

  and Commentaries

Belknap Press,

Harvard University Press, 2010©

William Shakespeare

Sonnet 29

op. cit.

Clean shirt idiot savant