Saturday, August 15, 2020

Saturday commute clxxxi: This very day, no less






In James Brooks’ hit film comedy, “As 
good as it gets” (1997), Helen Hunt, 
playing a single mother of an asthmat-
ic boy being neglected by the American 
medical establishment, receives an en-
dowment covering all of the medical ex-
penses necessary to transform her son 
into a soccer star within a week. But, 
suspecting that this gift comes with 
carnal expectations attached, she turns 
to Shirley Knight, her mother, to fret 
that maybe she should reject it. “No,” 
she flatly declares. “This isn’t a pair 
of stockings, this isn’t a string of 
pearls. This you do not give back.”

I find myself unable to imagine that 
Joseph Biden could have foreseen that a 
prospective running mate, often seen but 
"somehow" blocked in her quest for the 
Presidential nomination that he won by 
attrition, would be revealed as a soccer 
star within hours of being presented with 
his favor. How oblivious the presumptions 
so often are, at the foundation of our ex-
pertise, we need hardly note in this moment 
of Donald Trump. Yet suddenly the campaign 
that might already be seen as straight, but 
which no one pretended might see very far, 
finds itself carried aloft on a wave of ju-
bilation not seen since the conquest of 
Vicksburg.

Look here. People are affected. That very 
night one could feel the country, stand up. 
Stephen Colbert found Jon Batiste, composing 
a song, "for Kamala." Those who were able to 
squeeze into the donation sites of the Democ-
ratic National Committee, managed to deposit
$48 million there in those hours. Personal
ties, political commitments, alumni networks, 
lately moribund in the moment of Donald Trump, 
sprang to giddiest life — and all without the 
least forewarning. There was pandemonium at
the corner of Castro and Market, without a
word from Dionysus. This selection is not 
a pair of stockings; it’s not even a pair of 
Bernie’s fishnets. Alas, it isn’t pearls of 
Elizabeth Warren. It's the ore of our ground,
not of our statues. This is our birth.

No tentative “connection with the future,” the 
cliché of the day — or light at the end of a
tunnel, Kamala Harris declares the truth of
this very day, that only an unyielding maze 
of sordid, illegitimate structures could con-
ceal. Nor could it be lost in the confetti,
this revelation was ultimately forced upon
powerfully reluctant beneficiaries. But it's
done, and what one feels is the pace at which
such power can shift.















ii  Joshua Lott
    Getty Images©







Friday, August 14, 2020

Suppose it were Friday clxxvi: So run





             I live with the sound my body is.

             . .

             I can't forget the pure sound I heard once
             when a violin string snapped nearby
             in three o'clock's perfect silence.
             But I tell myself I'm safe. I remind myself
             of the boy who discovered order in the piano
             and ran upstairs to tell his little sister
             that they didn't have to be afraid anymore.










Jack Gilbert
The Dance Most of All
  Poems
Infectious
  [fragment]
Alfred A. Knopf, 2009©

Conor Fay




Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Origins of Wednesday cxi: A country maybe to be living in





  No, I didn't believe it either, when
  I heard that New Yorkers were buying
  cars to get around, much less that a
  chance had been laid upon the table,

  It's enough to promise to stop World
  maybe just refocus it on fascists of
  our own. But I stray, which the Bid-
  en campaign, so far, does not. Nice.