Abroad at home

I never forget that it was a fit of laughter
that changed the wind for us. Since then, I've
always kept something absurd to say to myself
when things go wrong: when, for example, the
customs officers hunched over your expired pass-
port decide your fate in an incomprehensible
language, and after a few ill-received inter-
ruptions, you scarcely dare lift your eyes from
the ground.

Then some silly pun, or the memory of a situation which still seems comic, is enough to give you heart - even to make you laugh out loud, alone in your corner - and it's the turn of the men in uniform not to understand; 


they look at you in puzzlement, 
raise an eyebrow, check their 
fly-buttons and assume an ex-
pression, and then the obstac-
les they'd put in your way are
removed, who knows why.

Nicolas Bouvier

The Way of the World

1963

Robyn Marsack

  translation

Marlboro Press, 1992

New York Review Books, 2009©

Nicole Gomes

Ioannis Stefanidis

Kwamman Chu

Settling

            


         More and more
         we become our
         own soup kit-
         chen, anyway.


















Puiforcat
Initiales

The sting of bein' verified

I have a debt to Dooley Wil-
son, Sam at Rick's American
Bar, who hoisted a glass of
Cordon Rouge with Miss Elsa
and Rick, to pluck the sting
of Paris' bein' occupied, by
darkening phalanxes of grey.

A light that has gone out in
our "news" has seemed to have
gone out here. It would only
have been arrogant to try to
be exempt from a sudden glob-
al darkening. That this might
have emerged from our chaste
swath of North America, which
is to say, from the most ar-
able land and welcoming ports
the globe has ever offered to
a continental fragment its o-
ceans to preserve - yes, it
has been a disturbing inter-
val in which to question what, 
indeed, we have done here. 

This phalanx isn't novel. On-
ly its voice can claim that;
while behind him, are all the 
scam's usual suspects. He as-
sumes office by the most ac-
rid division since Lincoln,
without so much as the fig-
leaf of a plurality, but by
quirk of a slavery-favoring
Constitution -- not a lynch-
pin our first Republican ac-
cepted.

Wednesday's séance with Amer-
ica's press, conducted in New 
York by the nation's eclipsing 
ass of undiapered panic and 
rage, in the tawdry vault of 
his own pyramid, was all any 
observer needs to see of that 
mesmerising distraction he 
exerts upon a Fourth Estate
whose office he dreads, which 
his incurable gloom compels 
him to tease. Anyone else who
comments in public is clubbed
by a klaxon dismissal of rel-
evance, for the testimony of 
a loser. Now we are reminded:
we're here for all that.

For rmbl, I remember how we
opened with a tentative but
happy welcome, to pursue an
elusive particle one could
not have defined better than
by the exclusion proposed in
the greeting, upper right.
How wonderful now to be hung
for a sheep, for time light-
ly served as a lamb.

I don't see anything in this
petulantly obtrusive fiend
of brutish chaos, to obstruct
our founding faith in some-
thing certain, that we sense 
is there, constantly urgent 
and worthy. On the contrary.
He martyrs himself every day.

One could want no purer pro- 
pulsion, no lovelier deliv- 
ery to that sustaining par-
ticle at last. He teaches us 
to breach the bastions of our
oceans, the veils of our bor-
ders, the shadows of exhaust-
ed fictions that he bellows 
to inflate. All that's left  
is all that could be matter,
if ever it could perish. 

Michael Curtiz
  director
Julius J. Epstein
Philip G. Epstein
Howard Koch 
  screenplay
Casablanca
Warner Brothers, 1942©

Galego
untitled, Portugal

Michael Bidner
Border collies, Baltic Sea

Present imperfect

   In the season of the scowl

   upon which we'll be launch-

   ed Friday at noon, an occa-

   sion arises for reflection

   on its origin as a kind of

   affectation of social posi-

   tion. 

My kingdom for a flatterer

           Or, really,
           anyone at all
           who'll play
           with me.

  Pay enough,
  you can al-
  ways dredge
  up yourself.

Damon Winter

Kellyanne Conway

  working

The New York Times, 2017©

The whole damn ranch

                                  Elsewhere Anchises,

          Fatherly and intent, was off in a deep green valley

          Surveying and reviewing souls consigned there,

          Those due to pass to the light of the upper world.

          It so happened he was just then taking note

          Of his whole posterity, the destinies and doings,

          Traits and qualities of descendants dear to him,

          But seeing Aeneas come wading through the grass

          Towards him, he reached his two hands out

          In eager joy, his eyes filled up with tears

          And he gave a cry: 

                             At last! Are you here at last?

          I always trusted that your sense of right

          Would prevail and keep you going to the end ..

Virgil

Aeneid

  Book VI 

  916 et seq.

op. posth.  

ca 29-19 BC

Seamus Heaney

  translation

op. posth.

Faber & Faber, 2016©

Ivan Terestchenko

  photography

2010

So as not to scare the horses

In these days,
I'm not out to
diminish my an-
ger. But, I am
out to sustain
my sympathies.

In farming, we
style congress
as a covering.

I come before you today as a colleague who has worked with you for years, and with some of you for 20 years. You know who I am. You know what I believe in. You know that I am a man of my word and can be trusted to do what I say I will do. You know that I revere our Consti-tution and am committed to the rule of law. And you know that I believe in fairness, impartiality, and equal jus-tice under the law.

         Oh, Oscar? Where did
         we put your nice por-
         trait of Mister Gray?
         There's his authentic
         rent boy at the door,
         counting on our being
         Edwardianly discreet.



















The Nominee for
  Attorney General
Statement to the Senate
January 9, 2017

i    Christo
      Project for a 
        Wrapped Island
      South Pacific Ocean

iii  Michael Salerno, photo

One's pattern

In the last week or two I've
been repairing lacunae in my
table settings, the kind of
thing a bachelor is natural-
ly the last to notice, until
he can't have friends in to
dinner anymore. It turns out
that one's pattern is still
in production, if not in vo-
gue, and this has kept me on
the line with a French firm's
representative in New York.

What's made this risky busi-

ness these days is our next

régime's penchant of hacking

communications to expose the

people of sanity in our na-

tion. It was bad enough, to

be dealing with France for

fish knives, and spoons for

vichyssoise. But what surely

cost me my rating at their

club must have been my reli-

ance upon the good advice of

a female, much less of Arab

descent, and less still of

Muslim heritage. 

She was unfailingly helpful 

in reminding me of requis-

ites of service of my tastes 

to my friends, and posed in

this way some threat to the 

foundations of our security.

But they've said the same

thing of wives and sisters

of everyone who's listened,

and now demand a Department

of Justice committed to in-

fantile insult as policy.

Every gesture we care about,

is an exertion of affection. 

For aiding mine, I thank her.