Origins of Wednesday lxii: Girl, 20

  I crib a title of a wickedly funny
  novel by Kingsley Amis, to embrace a
  screen illusion of unforgotten re-
  membrance to Californians of one's
  age in the 1950s. A sudden inspira-
  tion of one's mother, to take my old-
  er brother to Philadelphia to be in-
  troduced to his grandfather via the
  Super Chief, left my father and my-
  self to borrow vacation houses of 
  friends in Palm Springs and Balboa,
  to improvise a sort of holiday in
  sitù. I can just see my brother, an-
  noyed by a fish fork for the first
  time, as I remember the falling in-
  to, in a wicker basket on the Rivi-
  era, of the most thrilling face a
  boy could ever look upon in those
  days, if not still. Even now, our
  archest critics speak of the geni-
  us of Hitchcock, in so many vernac-
  ulars, for all their tortured acad-
  emicism, it can make one car-sick.

  He raised a generation of America,
  on delight to be the ungrown child.
  Neither our director, nor our men-
  tor, he is our trust officer, ad-
  ministering remittances of an es-
  tate in endless probate. We ought
  to be able, it seems upon this ump-
  teenth announcement of Oscar nom-
  inees, to imagine one of these wor-
  thies, sixty years hence, sharing
  chicken with Grace Kelly or Cary
  Grant, from a hamper which will
  shortly frame their kiss. The one
  this canny Magwitch thieved for us,
  as if expecting some future tide
  of artistically advanced maturity,
  and allowed the heart to inherit.

Alfred Hitchcock
  director
John Michael Hayes
  screenplay
Robert Burks
  cinematography
To Catch a Thief
Paramount, 1955©

Ps-s-s-t, they're back

                 Call it, the back with two beasts,

                 if that helps. Our previous entry's

                 welcome of their flight seems only

                 to have hastened remonstrance, not

                 to enjoy release from their clutch-

                 es. Now the great factory of our

                 frenzies frames its refinancing as

                 implicit, anyway, in this union of

                 states. And what a wonderful floor-

                 show they have held over, from its

                 blame for the abandonment just end-

                 ed, in the promise of demagoguing

                 it all over again, for newer welts

                 to praise the balm of government,

                 that flogger's springboard to fame

                 and electoral advancement, for pry-

                 ing deeper fissures in our patience.

Fabienne Verdier

undated

The American government did close, by the way

One had thought not to mention it

whilst others might still be out 

for their Saturday ride, but good

news is rare enough, much less on

the occasion of that government's

initial anniversary, that a happy

medium had to be struck, between

draining the cellar of blanc de

blancs, or spending the day under

a decorous gag order, no matter

how luscious the linen. A mild an-

nouncement on the Sabbath seemed

unprecipitous enough, and so here

it is: the most injurious, yet ad-

dictive corruption of public life 

is in remission.

It had not ever been so, that

Americans should have instit-

uted such a structure of de-

bauchery, debasement, plunder

and compulsive belligerency in

the offices of Washington, DC

to which they exile the needy,

and the fee-finders of simple

services. By the time, then,

that government in their land

had achieved its present ad-

vances upon the imagination,

the sensation of wear and tear

had begun to inspire defenses.

And these are not salubrious con-

ditions for the flourishing of a

happy government. Within a day of

perceiving how this closure tant-

rum might backfire against the

values of their real estate, den-

izens of the new government were

out and about on the sermon cir-

cuit of broadcast news, to blame

the citizenry for sustaining en-

thusiasms they'd been forcefed by

these very conduits. Oh, my. How

notoriety does outstrip us all, as

fashion glides into another season.

Louis Prades  i, ii, iv

Francisco Basile  iii

When do we eat?

 I bought and reserved a seat in
 our local cinema for this after-
 noon, to see the new movie on
 couture. Will anyone count with
 me the faux pas in this declar-
 ation, ignoring entirely the op-
 portunity costs in avoiding the
 Spielberg flick on The Post, a
 movie on a rural mother's battle
 for justice with the local cops,
 and the re-telling of Aciman's
 novel on young men in Tuscany -
 all being screened in the same
 building? Or shall we just let
 it go with the oxymoron in at-
 tending a film on couture in
 broad daylight? The affront of
 uncouthness is hard to conceal.

It developed, that reconsideration got

the better of this plan. I'd like to 

attribute it to being distracted by a

beautiful day - and the weather would

allow that characterization. But, my

decision to postpone this experience,

at best, and probably until the re-

lease of a dvd, was enabled by learn-

ing that the people with whom one was

to discuss this thing, have not even

seen it. So much for mice such as I,

even if it really should turn out to

be, the last Day-Lewis movie, a rumor

no one can verify for several years.

The seductiveness of fashion - and

I have not always been impervious -

achieves its acutest advantage if

its form is otherwise irresistible.

A Day-Lewis movie comes plausibly

close enough, not to be ruled out,

even at the inflated prices of to-

day's cinema salons, gratuities not

included. The genius of fashion, on

the other hand, lies in its shrewd

substitution of itself for its use.

A table setting by Jean Puiforcat, 

for example, has so little to do

with dining, and so much to do with

remembrances of the Normandie, that

one doesn't know whether to meet in

a deck chair or a life jacket. This,

being what one needs to know of cou-

ture, secures its berth permanently

among the higher opportunity costs,

with rough justice, an embarrassment

of the Pentagon, and fumbled kisses.

It has been lost on no one, need

I say, that the career of Daniel

Day-Lewis has absorbed itself so

thoroughly already with justice,

fumbled kisses, and devastating

American war, that his leap into

the milieu of couture seems not

only fitting as the last of this

nonsense that he'll have to en-

dure, but a fine farewell frock.

Of course, one wants to see him

assault this final peak, and un-

doubtedly only raise it higher.

This is an expectancy to savor.

Suppose it were Friday cxlvii: Respites we have welcomed

   Morning rumors of an interruption
   in nuisances from Washington waft
   the precious aromatic of an inter-
   regnum of peace for all, on a par
   with that of the privileged per-
   forming mice, themselves. A writ-
   er published what I considered
   to be a perceptive appreciation
   of that theatre's unstateliness,
   which I pass along with some con-
   cern that the host publication is
   placing itself uninfluentially at
   the margins of conditioned reflex-
   es these days, save for its fixed
   delight in almost any foreign war.
   Not that they demand a government.

   Yes, for anxiety's grinding sake, 
   one doesn't really need to be able 
   to see reports of being governed,
   if the ongoing prosecution of our
   wars can be assured. Margins hold;
   the government may go wobbly all
   it wants, if ventilation of such
   idleness does not bring peace a-
   broad. What interesting stability
   seems to pervade the horizon, as
   the inertia of our system governs. 

Alexander Calder
untitled tapestry
1975

Annals of gender oppression: A star is born

What a winter for discontent, one might

have thought, to find at such a break-

neck pace how many bumpy facets we have

missed, in the broadly conceded fall of

man. Only the other day, we learned how

patriarchally oppressive it is, to offer

just one color of wine at a time, in the

pursuit of a style of genital rapproche-

ment. The revelation caused a new social

archetype to be born, Rocky Foreplay, a

more marginal monster than one of the

genders could imagine, and yet evidently

ubiquitous in the sight of a famous other.

Some of the genders have yet to report,

yet as night follows day, the temptation

to follow the lead of the dissident must

be counted the more primly advantageous. 

In matters of gender oppression, the cus-

tom is to acknowledge no more than one

bogey-person at a time. Yet who is to ask,

if pride of place may never be exchanged?

Is the White House right: is this to be

the season of a Counter-Reformation? If

it does take two to forge a swastika, a

mirror image of the half is all we need.

Then we may know what we should call it.

iii  Jack Hurrell

What news of the Senate?

Tapping into a Senator's obligation
to render "advise and consent" isn't
so very different from asking one to
take care to see that the laws are
faithfully executed. All it takes, 
is a clarification of where faith-
fulness lies. Over the weekend, a
Senator from Georgia named Perdue,
and one from a deeper part of Dixie,
sentimentally named Cotton, took to
the air to render fealty by impugn-
ing the integrity of another Senator.
This was a nice piece of business.

Cast iron Sunday

We reconstituted the porcinis in 

a cup and half of boiled water,

and strained and rinsed them

carefully to clarify as stock,

to concentrate it later. Yester-

day's errands led to discovering

a recent collection by the po-

et-essayist-immigrant-memoirist

Charles Simic, of exceptionally

memorable images. They call for

the magic of a braising in cast

iron, a patient afternoon for
Sunday's expectations to be out-
sripped by relief from inter-
ference. In his own new collec-
tion, Alan Bennett asks his di-
ary, If one could write a story
about a masterpiece and include
the masterpiece why bother to 
put it in a frame in the first
place? His objection would be
sorry news for many, but it is
the very maxim of neutrality of
cast iron, and allowing wine to
stand. It is its only decanter.

                  Whatever solace you have for me,

                  Glass of old red wine,

                  Whisper it in my ear

                  With each little sip I take,

                  And only in my ear,

                  In this hour made solemn

                  By the news on the radio,

                  The dying fires of sunset,

                  And the trees in my yard

                  Putting on their black coats.

Alan Bennett
Keeping On Keeping On
  The Diaries
  13 September 2007
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2017©

Charles Simic
The Lunatic
  Poems
  The Wine
Ecco/Harper Collins, 2015©

i  Esther Bubley, photographer
   Seismographers in Texas
   1945