Saturday commute cxl: With da Vinci

A convulsion rocks the world today,

in an uprising of a popular demand

for learning to retain its place in

our judgments. What does it mean as

thousands upon thousands will so

publicly confess their intellectual

curiosity, as to offer themselves in

the streets to protect their right

to demand discovery of fact, and its

application to the moral duty of any

government they accept upon the earth? 

That there is a foul concert of power 

against it, on a scale unprecedented

since Galileo. And at the center of

this, of course, we have the carnival

barking of our own Donny Thump-Thump,

combining his nasty opportunistic de-

light in vengeance upon any illumina-

tion, with his compulsive devotion to

rape of humanity's natural treasury.

Where are we, then, but with da Vinci,

studying arm strands: art, advancing

medicine; medicine, advancing life;

life, advancing incentives and reward

for science; science, informing art.

Invariably, what they fear about us

is what we know about them. 

Take a look again, at why the strands 

converge with obvious resolution. To 

anchor their capability with fluency.

Take a look again, at why there is a

faith which insists that God became

man. It was surely not to deny fact,

but to exalt it.

There is the revolution, there is its

ingenious constitution. They're ours.

The worst fatigue

I was picking up a little
jambon de bayonne for a
few sandwiches the other 
day - except it came, I
later learned, from New
Jersey - when by chance
I noticed some duck con-
fit, which is all over
the place these days. I
was reminded of a neat
story in The Times on
travel in Gascony, and
I asked the person help-
ing me, if she read any
of our culinary journal-
ism, also all over the
place these days. This
drew from her an angry
boast of having vast
experience as a chef,
of the broadest exper-
tise in Western cuisine,
enabling her finally to
ignore what people were
saying - about herself,
she didn't need to add.

Having no experience with

what we might call, exper-

tise fatigue, I can't be

sure how it varies from a

nicely predominating gloom

of disappointment with life,

of which we read every day.

But it did strike me, and

still does upon some reflec-

tion, as possibly the sad-

dest condition to endure.

A renunciation of curiosity

in any passion - as I take

the mastery of anything to

require - strikes me as a

kind of life imprisonment,

except that as pathetic as

that condition must be,

sound must still percolate

into one's cell.

Obviously, one's interview

with the ham guru did not

end well, and on departing

the little shop I noticed,

I had failed to collect

that package. I wonder if

anyone enjoyed it for me.

As a dilettante in these

great matters, at least I

retain the liberty to be

dazzled enough by news of

Gascony to pass it along.

iii  Florian Neuville

Once in the boat

The question comes up, recurringly,

among white males of my generation,

the one before most of them living:

once in the boat, how does one dis-

embark, gracefully? The rowing mode

teems with many compacted anticipa-

tions of a timely release, which is

to say, the elevation of one's oar,

on completing the honorable stroke.

In those days, at the same time, it

was not expected that the tastes we

assimilated would expire in travest-

ies, much less in our own time. The

275 GTS, for example, proclaimed no

special urgency to reject elegance,

in favor of provocative aggression.

Yet such was the new world model of-

fered to us, as if any of our lives

had presented that specification to

Pininfarina, or to any other of the

founts where our imagination was re-

freshed, perfectly, in those dreams

from the boat. Even then, we didn't

go crying to false Conservatism for

dire vengeance against the current.

Nowadays, that avenger comes to us;

and proposes to lie with the lambs,

but manages only a transitive case.

Suppose it were Friday, someone ur-

ges; put on a pretty record, wiser

voices call. Just as we thought we

were rowing, the blade still sharp

with its own command, Finish this.

Carrozzeria Pininfarina

Ferrari 275 GTS

mid-1960s

Bernard Plossu

Sénégal

1976

Under a government

Under a government dominated by
hostility to science and led by
a scaremonger who toys fondly 
with the lie, that immunization 
causes autism, it is difficult
in this country to get the word
out, that April is Autism Aware-
ness Month. The newspapers are
awash this week with anecdotes
of cruelty to school children,
but tragically neglectful of
grounds for hope. Oxford Univ-
ersity Press has cited several
journal articles available on-
line, and there is hope that
other nations will step into
the moral position which ours
has vacated, even as everyone
of good will here resists the
constant purge of understand-
ing, collapse of self-control,
and self-inflicted incarcera-
sion in humane incompetence,
cultivated by our government.

Meanwhile, Paint it Blue is 
not just for elections anymore. 
It's for every day.

Who awoke today, and will forget this?

Republicans downplayed the im-
plications, saying Ossoff ben-
efitted from a cocktail of mon-
ey, national attention and en-
thusiasm that's nearly impos-
sible to replicate.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution
April 19, 2017

Yes, I think I've seen that

cocktail before, somewhere.

It's a pity, they can't rec-

ognize it, but its ingredi-

ents explain why: they also

have all the money needed,

to express the freedom of

speech their Supreme Court

bestowed upon it; they al-

so have all the enthusiasm

of a sense of cause in re-

sistance. What they got a-

way with, was a national

disbelief whose attention

was deflected by the man-

fest preposterousness of

their hallucinations, and

revulsion with their deal-

er. It had lacked decorum

to see them straight.

Now that they've been be-

trayed, now that they've

betrayed themselves, who

among them will forget?

               So two nights passed: the night's dismay

               Saddened and stunned the coming day.

               Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me

               Distemper's worst calamity.

               The third night, when my own loud scream

               Had waked me from the fiendish dream,

               O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild,

               I wept as I had been a child;

               And having thus my tears subdued

               My anguish to a milder mood,

               Such punishments, I said, were due

               To natures deepliest stained with sin, -

               For aye entempesting anew

               The unfathomable hell within

               The horror of their deeds to view,

               To know and loathe, yet wish to do! 

               Such griefs with such men well agree,

               But wherefore, wherefore fall on me?

               To be beloved is all I need,

               And whom I love, I love indeed.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Selected Poetry

  The Pains of Sleep

  [fragment]

ca 1803, published 1815

H.J. Jackson

  editor

Oxford University Press, 1997©

ii, iii  Jonathan Ossoff

          Walsh School

            of Foreign Service

          London School

            of Economics

         Candidate for US Congress

           6th District, Georgia

Convenience store epiphany

Just as I was about to complain of a 

recurring sensation of living through 

a contemporary cartoon, in a caption-

ing contest for which I never hold a 

clue, a drill fell to hand and I found 

myself building shelves. Still building 

storage, for stuff I don’t want, much 

less need. Now I well understand the war 

on information, waged from Mar-a-Lago;

what good is junk, if you don't have it?

In defense of shock

I think the Easter message

of the vacant tent has the

suspense of expectation go-

ing for it without further

ado from here. Yet we tend

to dwell so much on the as-

pect of an evacuation that

we afford much less contem-

plation than is necessary,

to the discovery of a void.

Nor is this an occasion to 

dispute explanations. With

hope so high of occupancy,

why ignore its study, even

to invoke it as a standard

of amazement, as if aspir-

ations were only a mis-en-

scène? I'd prefer the real

weight to enjoy equal time

with sudden weightlessness.

Why deny a faith its roots

in a pile of human pulp at

the price of misconstruing

a dignity to exalt another?

Not that it matters, but I

do not see Homer, making a

mistake like that.

           

Adam Nicolson

The Mighty Dead

  Why Homer Matters

William Collins, 2014©