Decay by cynicism: Marseille on plastic

A vulgarian hospital bloc, in-

dispensable dispensary of medic-

ations of impeccable hazard, is

now a bland sea of taupes and

extruded plastic reading chairs,

under the dour Intercontinental

logotype. Streets are being cel-

brated for lack of texture and

bracing aromatics, unaccountably

dismissed as "grit." The soul of

the bouillabaisse, itself, is re-

duced to a "milk shake," sparing

cast iron its raison d'être, and

les fruits de mer their fame, for

drawing thrill-seekers with cred-

it cards. The integuments of the

place and its purpose are no long-

er fluently flexed; even Le Corbu-

sire's wonderfully incongruous

Cité Radieuse is impressed into

service to taxable tourism. And

yet still he saw us coming. An

architecture, a city, a culture

defying mockery, met its muleta.

Eduard Galia

untitled

undated

Le Corbusier

Taureau

lithograph

1949

Did Yagoda never tire?

An upheaval of purges at the moment,
at the highest levels of the slippery
slope of the New American Government,
can claim no comparison with the ar-
duous labors of disposing of Stalin's
enemies in the mid-1930s, championed
up to a point by his court liquidator,
Genrikh Gregoryevich Yagoda. The set-
ting was the subterranean punishment
blocks, a catacombs of remodeled sew-
ers, now resembling empty swimming
pools with uncountable pockmarks in
their walls, and a darkening at their
drains. But it was tiring work - not
to be besmirched as tiresome - given
the urgency of preserving loyalty to
that embodiment of the government, it-
self, the very master of its betrayal.

No. No resemblance can be claimed, be-
tween these indelicate orgies, and the
splendidly ventilated cells of Twitter.
Meanwhile, our own servants do not tire,
but retire under ritual humiliation by
show trial, in the same fastidious venue.

Svetlana Alexievich

Secondhand Time

  The Last of the Soviets

  An Oral History

2013

Bela Shayevich

  translation

Random House, 2016©

Further on l'audace

If, as I am doing, you are regretting

that we don't have John Keegan with us

anymore, to sort out the chore of dis-

posing of the New American Government,

it's out of respect for the delicacy

as well as the urgency of the task. A

military strategist of his logistical

genius seldom arrives on the field -

General Grant, for example - and sadly

less in literature - Grant, for that,

too. Nowadays, most advisory chins are

being tugged toward confronting the ad-

versary obliquely, desisting from the

shedding of blood in favor of the baring

of souls. We are, after all, siblings

of immaculate non-discrepancy with each

other, bound to project a good example.

Let the laurel fall upon the exemplar

of going high, and the vocalist of the

scariest narrative on our health care.

I mention logistics, however, with the

Napoleonic insight that an army marches

on its innards, more than on its abs.

A svelte conscience is fine for drawing

a crowd, but a feast of firepower is

needed for keeping one. The French did

not shrink from Austerlitz, they rose

early and exploited the fog, the fig-

urative if not always the literal con-

text of combat. This meant bringing to

bear a sustainable torrent against im-

provisatory response, and it yielded

the head of the Holy Roman Empire on 

Meissen, paired with wine of Piemonte.

In our happy little springtime

for the solicitations of uncon-

tested candidates, the air is

dizzyingly infused with aller-

gens of piety in political con-

duct, every pretender's person-

al space inviolable. We should

not have to wait for Ypres, but

it seems that protocol demands

this of us. We inoculate our-

selves against stray seeds, to

meet an adversary who brings

gas, and has already won con-

sent to break his wind at will.

We shrink from the whirlwind

within our grasp, as if its

vivacity were not strategic,

imagining power does not wither.

John Keegan

The Mask of Command

Viking, 1987©

Ulysses S. Grant

Memoirs

John F. Marszalek

  David Nolan and

  Louie P. Gallo, editors

Belknap Press, Harvard, 2017©

Saturday commute clxvi: Street sign in O'Hara

It's the month of May in my heart as the song
says and everything's perfect: a little too chilly
for April and the chestnut trees are refusing to bloom
as they should refuse if they don't want to, sky
clear and blue with a lot of side-paddle steamers
pushing through to Stockholm where the canals're true-blue

in my spacious quarters on the rue de l'Université
I give a cocktail in the bathroom, everyone gets wet
it's very beachy; and I clear my head staring at the sign
LOI DU 29 JUILLET 1881 **

                                                             

                         so capitalizing on a few memories 

from childhood by forgetting them, I'm happy as a finger

of Vermouth being poured over a slice of veal, it's

the new reality in the city of Balzac! praying to be let

into the cinema and become an influence, carried through

streets on the shoulders of Messrs Chabrol and Truffaut

towards Nice

             or do you think that the Golden Lion

would taste pleasanter (not with vermouth, lion!) ?

no, but San Francisco, maybe, and abalone

                                           there is

nothing in the world I wouldn't do foryouforyou (zip!)

and I go off to meet Mario and Marc at the Flore

**  Introduced by the anti-monarchist, 

anti-imperialist representative of

Montpellier in the Chamber of Deputies,

Eugène Lisbonne, a diligent opponent of

"the government of moral order," this Law 

established the sweepingly broad freedom 

of the press in France, embodying special

protection against loyalty oaths and oth-

er indignities against chestnut trees.

Frank O'Hara

Beer for Breakfast

  Paris, April, 1960

  Floating Bear, 1961

Donald Allen

  editor

The Collected Poems

  of Frank O'Hara

op. cit.

Suppose it were Friday clxxi: Promising news of farce

The week has brought word of a worthy

parody of the American President, oth-

er than by himself, on which I've been

made eager to lay my hands. I feel the

temptation to scoop this new trouvaille

for myself, strangely enough, before re-

porting further; but my hopes are unut-

terably elevated by its not being avail-

able through Amazon. Imagine, a package

from somewhere other than precedent.

At the same time, we are well enough a-

long now in Lent to deny ourself diurnal

gasps at the latest fashions in politic-

al apologias. I think it was the guy who

lately pretended there was a time when

mauling the voiceless gender was a good

time to be had by all, who left us with

this impression of being freed from such

distractions. It isn't that etiquette

has changed, and it's always been one's

responsibility not to need to be told.

The pose he presents is a tease without

a tactic, the oblivious lamb as leader.

For a society humiliated already by its

credulity, whose joke is this, anyway?

Ryan Koning

  on the runways

Of guts forsworn or found

It's notable, I think, how the American 

President's perversion has triumphed im-

portantly in the culture of competition

for his Office. I don't refer to that

rich lode of illegality and legal bribe-

ry for which we trace our roots to col-

onial times. I refer to the shape-shift-

ing custom of changing the race, itself,

in serial changes of identity along the

way. As we study notional entrants from

the other Party, in the lists for the

pending tournament, we watch ostensible

leaders fretting openly and nervously

over whether to opt for the trident or

the mace, the short sword or the lance

in defining themselves. This visible

fear for one's own hide is genuinely

new, it seems to me, as a testament to

the power of misrepresentation of who-

ever they might actually be, when not

being themselves. Is there no gift for

inspiring others, in this most urgent

obligation of resistance to distortion?

What armor is better than who one is,

against an opponent of no core at all?

This, the mayor of South Bend has pos-

ited with the most unsettling impunity.

You'd think a winner could do as well.

Défense de fumer

     gangland contacts

     blatant infidelity

     drug dependency

     unsavory father

     corrupt elections

     nepotism in offices

     extravagant promises

     an eternal flame

     anyone thinking of

     any resemblance to

     excuse who we gave

     ourselves instead?

     

Sunday nibbled sleeve vii: On the preference for impoverishment

I have a friend who lives in a

garden estate within sailing

sound of the Tomales Bay and in

scent of the Pacific Ocean,

whom I tease because he is very

fair and yet writes poetry. This

is akin, it seems to me, to skate-

boarding uphill, which many would

see as some miraculous trick by a

figure of scintillating endowment, 

but from which I'd flinch, as em-

bracing an avoidable difficulty.

One likes to see invention in the

same light as love, a pursuit one

can decline in favor of the bus.