Saturday commute cxlii: all set

       Likes new stories?

        Check.

       Likes old stories?

        Check.

       Likes stories?

        Not especially.

       My own default conveyance,

       since mastering the alpha-

       bet, has been baggy khaki.

       But that doesn't mean, for

       almost as long, I haven't

       noticed how those who go

       about with the tan leather

       patch on their hip, enjoy

       a most elusive privilege,

       the gift to be impartial.

       You see them, miles away.

Suppose it were Friday cxxiv: Seasonable theatre

Of all the democratic dramas we've seen emergent in our tweety little amphitheatres, yesterday's in Washington so cleared the ambient fog as to set the stage anew for the weekend's ritual of Presidential meltdown and surrogate slime, to positively gush with frantic spray. Hence, our people's patient vigil at the cistern's rising tide, bravely led to call us to the facts that cannot hide.

The artificial question of what can be believed has been dissolved. In the witness's unforgettable phrase, the nature of the person has determined this; what theatre is for, has made itself known again. 

Doug Mills, photographer

James Comey in the Senate

July 8, 2017

The New York Times©

Thursday treasures i: To have and have not

In a classic American story of his - 

which he rated, abysmal - Hemingway

engaged one character to inquire of 

another, how he went bankrupt. 

“In two ways,” was the reply. “Very 

slowly, then all of a sudden.” Such 

is that experience of furious era-

sure, the new American government 

brings to bear upon so many trea-

sures of our hold upon this world, 

even against understanding it, that 

we forget the premonitory, slow rot 

of Reaganism’s lewd contempt for 

“tree-huggers,” to say nothing of 

the revolting petrogluttony of the 

Bush dynasty. 

But now that the world has been ed-

ified in its survival and humane 

instincts, by science beyond qual-

ified resistance, and convened be-

yond dissolution, by diplomacy, the 

Church, shareholder uprisings, and 

the plain, jaw-dropping migration 

of Champagne to the south of England, 

we’ve slipped from the globe’s idle 

abuse, into its abrupt flogging into 

fury’s crematorium by the new Ameri-

can government. Thursday is as fine 

a day as any to extol what we trea-

sure, and it is not untoward to begin 

at the top. These glacial waterfalls

are a scant 600 miles from the North

Pole, where the temperature is in the

high 60s, Fahrenheit.

Now is World Oceans Day, 2017. Here's 

to water in its place, and a place for 

all amongst it. 

i, iii, iv  Paul Nicklen 

ii  Pedro Pedreira

Thomas Tallis 

If ye love me

1560

San Francisco 

  Chanticleer

1994©

Ah, yes. Repudiation Wednesday.

You see, for some years, a quiet

little cornerstone of the United

States' adventures, both on and

off the books of budget snoopers,

has been a conveniently unpubli-

cized base in Qatar. Fretful for

being insufficiently loved, the

head of the new American govern-

ment took to prestidigitating

late Tuesday to heap isolating 

scorn on that host sheikdom,

as a magic trick of his recent

diplomatic mystery tour of the

piratical peninsula - straight

out of his July '67 issue of

Action for Men. The pulp comic

comes to life, by endowing its

reader with heroism. Having es-

stablished himself as the pulp

comic of his claque, he sus-

tains its awe by such bravery.

One truly doesn't like to look

at these incontinent betrayals

of state secrets, by the morbid

mind of The One most entrusted

to wield its unspoken implements,

such as confiding to the world,

when last in Israel, that he'd

taken care not to name Israel

as the source, in his boast to

Russian pals on their Oval Of-

nice visit, of very hot stuff.

The nannies, it seems, were all

out of town; and who must have

been his playmates at the time,

we are unlikely ever to know.

Maybe a little moth, of wings

too tenacious to depart its

frame upon his imploring tug;

or maybe just a speck of dust

on his mirror, as he beamed to

admire his morning shave. But

everyone's so busy now, deny-

ing that he knew what he was

doing, we know it is Wednesday,

in governing the United States.

i    John Vassall

     1924 - 1996

iv  Fredrik Ruegger

Tuesday story straightening

Have you dared to glimpse the papers today? Neither have I. But as ad hoc patterns in the contradictory explet-ives of the new government habitually shake themselves out by the later hours of Monday, Tuesday's emerged as the weekly interlude first to toy with convergence, almost a peculiar kind of coherency, in talking points to take to the bank of policy, until Repudiation Wednesday yields to the epistemological no-man’s-land of Mar a Lago’s unsecured coat check window by week’s end. How much of this new government’s mind does rest in idle hands, becomes clearer every week. Shall we never have the Travel Ban we beggared on our knees, before we are embargoed as a tease?

Le Corbusier

Les mains

1951

Why are these men smiling?

   

   

   Call it the Global 

   Spring. All that's 

   left are peoples

   who aren't fright-

   ened of the world.

Donald Tusk

  President of the EU

Le Kiang

  Premier of the PRC

Brussels

June 2, 2017

Having to stop a government

Not since that invasion,
announced histrionically
as not an invasion, of
Cambodia in 1970, have
Americans felt so close
to their natural obliga-
tion to set aside the
government purporting
to act for them. Their
sense of this would re-
quire another 4 years,
ultimately, to be vin-
dicated in connection
with a violation of an 
office of politicians.

How ironically close
to mockery, the facts
must sound, today. And
they are.

          Coldly the sun shone down on the moonlit scene.

          Our committee stirred uneasily in its sleep.

          Better not know too much too soon all about it.

          The knees of grammar and syntax touched each other,

          Furtive in pleasure under the oaken table.

          The river lay not moving under the light

          Of the shadowy earthly winter lunar scene.

          The ends of justice are determined in

          The conditions of our sleep. The spellbound scene

          Arranged itself in a traditional way.

          Transfixed and perfectly still. Unspoken agreements

          Spoke volumes on the bookshelves of the room.

We know the scent of stir-

ring from a slumber fed

by loyalty and trust; the

thirst for honest stories

heaves a warm, extracted 

must of provenance, reborn.

         _____

This posting was prepared be-

fore the government announced

its withdrawal of the United

States from co-operation with

what has come to be called,

the Paris Accord on Climate;

and the point of view given

above is based on vastly more

than policy distinctions. But

the day will come, and may it

be soon, when the government's

act toward that Accord pales,

utterly, beneath the tone and

texture of its pathetically de-

ranged arguments and excuses,

flooded with complexes of per-

secution, victimhood, tribal

piety and remorseless vengeance.

Our generation was not living,

when Hitler announced his with-

drawal from the Treaty of Ver-

sailles, but that pathology we

have all been raised to recog-

nize, is grotesquely projected

as patriotism by this government.

It is not well, it does not mean

well, and it can not bode well.

David Ferry

Of No Country I Know

    Dwelling Places

      The Committee

1993

University of Chicago Press, 1999©

Narcissistic foreplay

Don't we all just love it:

the American President's re-

nowned sense of the exquis-

ite (last exhibited by his

daughter on a billboard in 

Manila), is being brought

to bear upon his oft-bruited

promise of a grand decision,

with characteristic decisive-

ness, regarding his African-

American predecessor's sig-

nal foreign policy triumph.

Like all such benchmarks of

sobriety and progress, he

thrills in protracting an

animus without, in the event,

achieving quite the shred-

ding that he promises his

interesting adherents. Will

he work some accomplishment

now, on their behalf, they've

lacked since his investiture?

He's given himself a toy he

must break, called suspense.

But will he lose his racial

bogeyman, by unwonted deed?

And without that trusted pet,

would he not stand alone?

Nick Mutolo