Saturday, June 10, 2017

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.




















Friday, June 9, 2017

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, June 8, 2017

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-
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©










Wednesday, June 7, 2017

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-
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
in governing the United States.




















i    John Vassall
     1924 - 1996

iv  Fredrik Ruegger










Tuesday, June 6, 2017

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