May, 2025

May 24, 2025: Heard from Slick Williams of the archtop guitar. He says that he is kicking himself. He has passed on keeping a written record of our present moment. Would he maintain a diary a la Pepys? Yes, and some moments last longer than others, say what, be you Bob Woodward interviewing Trump or Suetonius writing up Caligula’s torture trials. Moreover, Slick had watched Dr Zhivago with the sound off. Found it pleasing. ‘How well the images tell the story.’ Is it not sweet?

But there it is: the tyranny of images in our time. Of a certain kind, at any rate. That it is an old bugbear of mine, how there are images that, how shall we say, enrich time and space (as in the old paintings), while other images are but black holes that suck up light, if not all life. Told Slick I can talk about Proust until the cows come home, never mind that there are a great deal of words sans gilded adverts in that boast. But when I watch Korean TV dramadies, I am all at sea. The Japanese seem to get Dostoyevsky better than we “westerners” do.

And speaking of ”westerners”, blindfold me before some old cowboy flick, and from the sound of the fisticuffs I will tell you, one, we are talking the 50s for sure, and two, Fred MacMurray just landed a hail Mary haymaker, with or without encouragement from Barbara Stanwyck. In a separate but somewhat related matter, did Richard Chamberlain make for a good Lord Byron in that 70s movie about Lady Caroline Lamb, he being, how shall we say, sufficiently unapologetic?

You may not remember her: Lady Caroline Lamb. Or you may, indeed, recall that, novelist, married to an upper-crust politician, she came down with a bad case of fatal attraction, i.e. Byron. Dangerous to know. Speaking of which, are there in Trump aspects of Augustus Caesar as well as Hitler? Among the clear-eyed, who manages whom in Washington for fun and profit and the best seat at the banquet table? Once upon a time, poets did write for the ladies, perhaps because the guys were too busy swindling and killing each other to be much receptive to pretty rhymes. (Now the ladies write for the ladies whilst the guys howl at the moon, as it were.) 12,000 years ago, and life might have been glorious on the steppes, all those horses and all that wandering, no import duties to pay, and whatnot, and then a certain haplogroup went and got European….

I read the words following that had old politicians in mind, and thought of Joe Biden. From The Past Recaptured by Marcel Proust: And this dream-like existence became as torpid as death in certain old men on the days that followed any day on which they had chanced to make love. During those days it was useless to make any demands on the President of the Republic he had forgotten everything. Then, if he was left in peace for a day or two, the memory of public affairs slowly returned to him, as haphazard as the memory of a dream. Well, Proust had been remarking on a gathering of people whom he had not seen in years, and my, how things change. That sort of thing. Does the passage of time create indifference, yes or no? And the answer is it does and does not. Certain injustices rankle one as much at age 85 as at age 17. I am nearing the end of Proust’s seven volume opus bundled under the title À la recherche du temps perdu, and I have come, over time, to trust Proust for one simple reason: he knew how to impart, without much rhetorical fuss, the feel of any given day, be it sunny, rainy, wintry, and one might be blissed out or undergoing the tortures of the damned, but each day was a “presence”, not merely a date on the calendar. But back to Biden. Poor man. The toe-tagged republic is being wrapped around his aged neck while Trump, with heavy fanny, does his twinkle-toe beguine on the golf course….

Postscript I: Carpenter: … …. On this “day in history”, 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge opened for business. Well, it would provide the poet Hart Crane with something to write about. If I had the wherewithal to regard his famous poem a hundred years from now, would I look at it like I look at Roman trompe l’oeil? It is not a question you need to answer, so relax. Carpenter, however, has his own questions to ask, ad not a few astringent declaratives….

Postscript II: Lunar went to a lecture / performance on folk music and the preservation of memory. It was both very good and very bad, he said. (Which does seem par for the course for folk music.) Then he segued: … …. ‘So how many deaths does it take to constitute a genocide? Twelve white South African farmers? 60,000 Palestinians? I'm already making overtures towards the next book, soul objects, Estonia, souls of the dead in trees, Estonia which is officially a pagan country. Maybe I will try to get there next year. That plus the Japanese. Otherwise I find myself at a loss for words, the sheer vileness of what is happening in Gaza.’

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, stand aside if you see an Executive Order bearing down on you: … …. ‘[Trump] has railed against South Africa’s seizures of land from white farmers. But during his first term, he pushed to take land for his border wall using eminent domain. How is [this] possible? The cosmos went out of its way to create the most offensive being it could imagine, yet somehow the creature proceeded to make himself even more offensive.’ … …. No contravention of sense there. …. ….‘My funks? I believe I could have avoided them altogether had I become a lifelong professional student, scooping up degrees in ancient, medieval and a few other histories, plus archeology, anthropology, philosophy, literature and, if time remained, spectacularly flunking out of assorted foreign language programs. I was never more content than when breezing through the PhD program at the [university]. I read all the required books for each semester's upcoming courses before they began, i.e., between semesters, which left me oodles of time to write weekly columns (paid; that was nice) on Friday afternoons for a now-defunct political website and otherwise paint [impressionistic] works while imbibing vats of cheap red wine. It was heaven. And funks are prohibited in heaven.’ … …. ‘The Trump Effect isn't always what the Trumpers claim it to be. Its flip side has been real conservatives' horror; that the ultimate outgrowth of what they once supported was, inevitably, DJT. Somehow, they either didn't see, or refused to admit, that their party was beginning to overflow with nothing but crackpots. As I recall my first shock was reading Bill Kristol encouraging his followers to vote Democratic. Frum was also vocal and loudly so in opposing Trump right off. Sad, though, that there have been so few Frums and Kristols.’ … …. ‘[What is it we’re in? I’ll give you three guesses, and the price might be right]: time warp back into the 30s’. … ….

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … … ‘No, I don’t do politics before 10 in the morning. Percival is forbidden to give me looks of a canvassing kind, Percival being a dialectically minded goat, and a true empiricist. He’ll put anything in his mouth. I had occasion, this week, to hear the dying words of an old islander I’ve known for years. He hissed the name that shan’t be mentioned. He said that the ruin is well under way. I squeezed his hand. The trouble with life is that there are enthusiasts. The trouble with life is that there are those who are disinclined to be enthusiastic. And so, the Very Rich can hie it as both predator and victim. How very convenient for those VRs. I’ve little to say just now about Solzhenitsyn’s August, 1914, The Red Wheel. Maybe because I’m embarrassed, having failed to grasp the true subject matter of the book at first go. You’re to blame, of course. Can’t be bothered to read the damn thing yourself.’

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. “While we’re in a considering mood, consider that Marcus Aurelius, who some may remember as a Roman emperor, wrote himself a book of scruples to observe even as it was very likely, in my mind at least, that he regarded the Roman scene as hopelessly corrupt and beyond help. Consider that the first emperor, or Augustus Caesar, tried to legislate sex, even as, in his life, from the sounds of it, he liked to bugger boys and have at the wives of his inner circle. What am I saying? Really? You have to know? Verily, life is a henyard. Consider what Gibbon wrote on the Magi. That they owned a great deal of property. No, strike that. Take this on, this quote born of a number of quotes on the experience of reading Gibbon: … …. Nine out of every ten rulers was hopelessly corrupt, incompetent, or malicious. Religious sects spilled each other’s blood over tiny differences of doctrine. Wives poisoned their husbands, fathers executed their sons. Whole cities were destroyed, whole populations slaughtered. Good men were disgraced, bad men elevated to the height of power and respect. Whatever lingering sense of cosmic justice I had before I read [Gibbon]—the sense that, in the end, most wrongs are righted, most crimes punished—was destroyed. History has no moral compass. … …. ‘Marcus Aurelius was somewhere in these parts (Slovakia, 2000 years ago). I imagine him on his horse shading his eyes, having a look at some hawk wheeling in the sky, having on his mind the worthiness and unworthiness of men as he listened to a creek course around some rocks and smelled the pines. Don’t mind me. I get like this now and then. But surely to God, if peoplecan put up with You-Know-Who’s presidential ravings, people can bear the terrifying lucidity of my verse.’

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. ‘I like men, I’m just a recluse with routines that must needs be followed. Assiduously. Hence the cupcakes in my oven. The French horn as would sound the hunt, but that I don’t care for the spectacle of foxes torn to bits. You know as well as I do that there’s a movie shoot in progress in our building. Why, are we so heritage? Now you know who has clout in this world. They offered me decent money to vacate my premises for a while, but I said, no way. Violation of space. Do I sound so very precious? Why don’t you and I get together though we live in the same edifice? Because it would nip in the bud the beginning of a beautiful friendship. I’ve never read anything by a Roman author. There’s another reason for keeping certain things separate. We’d be stuck with watching Singing in the Rain or something. Playing Scrabble. Arguing Doris Lessing.’ … …. True dat. And there are a half dozen people, at least, with whom I correspond and on whose faces my eyes have never set. In this way, I work at home (or in my local) and forgo the power lunch.

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘I, for one, don’t doubt the depictions of what’s happening to us. Just wondering if the consequences as predicted are accurate. For instance, during the collapse of the Weimar Republic, did people feel the blood drain from their heads? Did Nazi women mist their undies with lavender? Sorry, but that’s all I have. I’m just now in the process of scouting used bookstores for a DVD copy of a 1997 TV series about the Odyssey, the one with Assante in it and Rosellini. Don’t know why, but I just need to have it. (Hell, I’ve read the poem five times.) I just like the portrayal of Aeolus by that grinning Pollard guy, Michael J. And I liked the “it’s going to be one damned thing after another” feel of the thing. Otherwise… ‘ … …. Yes, well, Mr Mix, I know that production and can live with it. Apparently, there is a new one due to be released. Just now, it is cold and drizzly out. Here in my local, Muhammed’s wife carps, the waiter the object of her grousing. ‘You work here, I don’t.’ Meaning: he should keep his eye on the ball. Where is this on the political spectrum? The “Chronicle of the One Monarchy”, old version, but with fresh legs? It is not that she is unkind but that her English comes off rather brusquely, like a barrage of howitzer discharges. The Comptroller of the Universe is at the cabin painting, the whole of civilization in her every stroke.

May 18, 2025: I was in need of Comic Relief. Bringing Up Baby (1938 Howard Hawks film featuring Grant and Hepburn) recommended itself. (I have since been gratified to learn that production was often derailed, Grant and Hepburn succumbed to fits of the giggles.) As I watched the antics unfold, I wondered if a serious moment might obtrude here or there, even allusively. 1938 was one of those years. Headed for nowhere good.

So, and speaking only of the Germans, there was the Anschluss. It was the annexation of Austria (two years after the Austrian Karl Kraus died who fought the Hitlerians tooth and nail by way of satire). And then, increasing in intensity, the brutalities as had already been engineered against Jews, in addition to the expropriation of Jewish property. Was it some great shock to the system of the body-politic? Had it been, as it were, on the radar for a while and so, predictable, no biggie? Here it was spring (as I watched), the little fascisms to the south settling in like the first flowerbox blooms, fresh tree foliage such as I could see outside my window, the pale lime green of it all, the movie paused so that my partner in crime could fetch herself a glass of water. Brave, new world, no doubt about it, of “we can do this, people, all youse who are still wanting to be so baaaaad. Here’s your chance.”. Fascism alluded to or not, the comedy delved deeper into divinely sanctioned chaos, Zeus in madcap mode. I laughed. Or larfed. Or had a bad case of the titters. The Comptroller of the Universe chuckled now and then, she wary of all things screwball. But now one could, say, switch on laidback CNN news anchors and, mercy, yet another go-round of yet more sorry business and frenetic farce. One might cast a cold eye, look, move on. Guarda e passa, if you recall your Dante. But, in one’s thought-making, another nine circles of hell forming up…

Perhaps it has become a sport, comparing Trump to the Caesars, and to the non-Julio-Claudian emperors. Julius? Augustus? Caligula? Nero? Domitian? Commodus? Who’s got game? But why not the more rapacious Roman governors for a match? Their chief aim in life? Squeeze the provinces dry through oppressive pay-to-play taxes and other financial hanky-panky. Defalcation (come across in William Makepeace Thackeray’s The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon), and I had to look the word up. No, it had nothing to do with trimming back the talons of a big bird. Its meaning however? The theft or misuse of money on the part of officials who are bound to protect that money, to ensure its proper use. Lex Calpurnia, anyone? Or would Dick, Jane and Spot the mangy mutt recall Cicero’s inveighing against Verres who “governed” Sicily like it was his private treasure chest? Guess not, then. Git along, little DOGE-guy, git… So what about health insurance? Or: Fly, fly away, Mr Four Hundred Million Dollar Jet Man. That strange yowling you think you hear sometimes in the near distance? (See the above-mentioned movie for your prompt.) Not a loon, but a moody leopard on a somewhat surreal midsummer’s night of an evening arrived earlier than any RINO Puck or Hermia might have anticipated, though Shakespeare always did have his suspicions about tariffs, leopards, and men overfond of military parades….

Once more (returning yet again to Proust and his cinderblock prose) it was as though he were an old friend, one that one would like to rag on, albeit with affection, because no writer, even a writer of genius, is perfect. A fantasy ensued. Put a number of people – who have been instructed to keep still and keep mum – in a room. Have authorial types, Proust included, observe them without the dears knowing. For what reason? To ascertain what gives in the minds of those people and render scenarios as might have something to do with their actual lives, however privileged or hard done by. And how many of the deep-dive scriveners, under the pressure of coming up with anything, anything at all, night resort to outright “fictions”, to their “imaginations” so as to whip up story boards? How does one depict spiritual depravity, nowadays? By way of fashion shoes, cell phones, charity balls? Stacks of bitcoins? European travel shows? I have not the foggiest as to how he would have pulled it off, but I can see Proust getting down to cases, getting to the “inner sanctums” in question through hard-headed intuitions or extrasensory applications of empathy, and, throw in some spreadsheets, and “life”, not fictional characters, not Hallmark cutouts, might well be the result. Life nearly as rough and ready as it is in Thackeray’s Barry Lyndon memoir, though Proust is moving sartorial furniture around between Paris and Balbec and whistlestops in between.

Rough and ready, eh? Thackeray does not lay it on like a Cormac McCarthy or a James Ellroy, but you get the idea. In the course of which, it is put to us more or less in the early going of the memoir, the one doing the recollecting so often affronted: who pays the price for a gentleman’s (martial) glory? Why, some grunt, that’s who, he without a pot to piss in, as it used to get said. Pays with his carcass. You bet. I knew a few. One wonders if Vonnegut or Heller read their Thackeray before writing up their satires on wartime army operations? Back to those people in our fantasy of a fiction-making room (and it is, and we get it, a great deal of nonsense on our part here), just that there is fiction, and then there is fiction, and then there is whole hog misrepresentation, Trump’s big claim to fame being that he “gets life” more than any other effing sod. Which is why he deserves such big kahuna emoluments…

Lastly, the HBO series Rome (and it is not a strict accounting of the history by any stretch, as it relies on a lot of semi-plausible “fictions”), puts in the mouth of Mark Antony who is somehow easier to take, for all his thug-ness, than the coldly logical Augustus: ”What happens to those who prattle of tyranny?” Besides proscription, how about ICE agents?

Postscript I: Carpenter … …. Is it really National No Dirty Dishes Day?

Postscript II: Lunar: … …. ‘Holy mackerel [old buddy], has Trump done something smart? Was it an accident? The business with Syria is momentous. God knows what Israel thinks. Trump is already something of a hero in Lebanon for helping bring down Hezbollah. {Or did I say that in a past life?] I no more trust Trump than you do, but the lifting of sanctions is a major game changer especially in smashing down Iran's influence in that area. It is not to be underestimated and of course Netanyahu is already going ape-shit. Will this mean further attacks on Syria? Don't forget the sheer horror that took place in that country under Assad. … …. Look, I am off to see some puppets shortly, another fascination of mine. I think I mentioned that extraordinary book I read by Kenneth Gross. Now there is a medium for you to explore, writing a play for puppet theatre. I am gutted by the news of earlier SAS behaviour in Afghanistan, the killing sprees, including shooting young boys in handcuffs. There was a time when one could point a finger at the Americans and their lack of military discipline, which came to a head at My Lai, but now it seems we are just as bad. I hardly know what to think and whether, ultimately, it will be Gaza that pays the price.’ … …. It has already paid that price many times over, has it not? What with Renewed Offensive No. 6 or whatever, it is just being reminded so….

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you see the backend of leverage as is applied to foreign entities in a game of “Pick-Up Tariffs”, all of which entities are supposed to say: ‘You got me, pardner’: … …. ‘Congratulating Trump for doing something right is like praising Hitler for having liked children and dogs. Otherwise, the Syrian move was the only real move for the US to make, so what's to congratulate in the first place?’ … …. Oh, there is something, I am sure. His gold-plated office, for starters. His grasp of Sumerian history: let them eat legumes, we’ve got Big Macs. No, that fails to cram a nutshell with crucial gist. How about what it is Walmart should eat, check the recent headlines?

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘We’ve had the season’s first thundershower. Percival bleated, but it was for show. Otherwise, from Solzhenitsyn more army incompetence. Another digressionary chapter or the core of the book, the book being August, 1914, The Red Wheel? I’m not going to cheat by thumbing ahead, though I suppose I could take a gander at the back blurb, could read of debacles such as put one on a glide path to October, 1917, a particular kind of October, 1917. You mention “rough and ready”. I’ll raise you “marching on empty stomachs” in a Prussian wasteland to no real purpose. I can’t speak to you with any confidence as to Solzhenitsyn’s writerly qualities, being at the mercy of a translation, but writers who’d give you the world, sometimes frighten the world off in the process. Or they give you the scaffolding and not the essence. That’s the zen in my goat’s ratty ear doing the critique, talking to power. Had enough? Come, Percival. I’m for a tin of sardines. You up for the mustard?’ … …. Looks like I have been outflanked. By two grotty islanders, no less. Seems to be no rejoinder on my part forthcoming. Whispered aside: should hang up my shield, join a senior’s yoga class….

Postscript V: Rutilius being Rutilius:… … ‘Well, Cary's screwball comedies are the best. I love Arsenic and Old Lace. [However that may be], third day of my six-monthly spa cure. Seven procedures including being tied up in plastic bag filled with oxygen, mineral and bubble baths, strange packs of minerals applied to my back, electrical massage which is like being kneaded by a large cat and so on. Visited the spa museum which told me that the Hungarian national poet, Petofi, visited the place as did various Hapsburgs including Napoleon's wife, Marie-Louise, for a "pre-nuptial" cure and the ubiquitous Sisi. There was a portrait of the young Franz-Joseph where he looks almost presentable although likely to induce an irresistible desire to look at one's watch after ten minute conversation. The place is only half full due to ice hockey. Poems continue, though who knows or cares if they're any good…’ … …. I wonder if the man wears flippety-flops when under the influence.

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. ‘I’m back. Cupcakes in the oven. French horn on the table. That one marched on an empty stomach. I put him through his paces, ran the derby, and we won, showed and placed. Oopla! The sky has lightened somewhat. It got quite dark. Deep throat rumbles, but no clarity. A girl can hope. Last night, as I coaxed sleep to approach, I listened to De Falla, the whole nine yards, “Nights in the Gardens of Spain” et al. It was all very Spanish, hardly Slovenian. I liked it, but what can I say? Not going to talk Franco on you. About whom I know SFA. You know what I hate? People who do fake camaraderie in eateries (not referencing my Polish cousin’s place in the country as per the week previous, but here in the city, as if saying to a bored restauranteur: “You’re my turf, my especial niche”. Hate it. The political implications, if any? Perhaps if your name is “The Late Late Show”, you might wind up your guests with whiffs of designer-brand authenticity. Now JS Bach was predeceased by eleven out of his twenty spawn. Talk about real. I’m beginning to understand that 86 47 is not a time signature for the stranger parts of De Falla’s “El Amor Brujo”, but is a clumsy attempt at providing a clue for a game of Charades. Ah, there goes the oven timer. I’m over and out. Ciao.’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘I’m back, too. And I just walked through a t-storm on Crescent Street. It put me in mind how, years ago, I drank with a journalist in Ziggy’s little establishment, jock hangout. The guy disliked poets. All of them out to lunch, and here it was cocktail hour. Didn’t know their arses from an ambulance driver on the Italian front. And such. I was cheeky and full of cheek in my “yes buts”. He glowered. “Even us journos,” he said, ”don’t always know what’s at stake, and too often when we do, we don’t, as it were, mention it [unless we’re in “I’ve got news for you” form]. “Really,” I said, “you have it in for poets? Why pick on them? They’re the last things on a person’s mind (mind as is a compendium of Top Ten lists).” “Precisely,” he said, “couldn’t put it better. Hey. Got to tinkle. Order another round – on me. Feel a drunk coming on. Let’s put upon Wallace Stevens the arch-poet. What have I got against him? Nothing. Feeling playful. Dark days are in the offing though. How do I know this? Don’t know how I know this. Can feel it in the morning when I put my socks on. Perhaps it’s best never to take them off. There’s an ode in this somewhere.”

May 10, 2025: I am not up just now for grand literary pronouncements, but I can handle some idle reflections, if I may. Accordingly, I suppose the language in Wiliam Makepeace Thackeray’s The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon is a masculine language. “Going to road” and all that, even if you are not likely to come across the grunts and squeals of ultimate fighters whaling on each other in the ring, at least not so far. And it is probably safe to say that a young man gearing up for being about in the world is not likely to mark any time discussing Hamlet. Especially if he is Irish, and, in the course of a duel, has killed an Englishman. Certain parties will not look kindly on this. … …. but no lad of sixteen is very sad who has liberty for the first time, and twenty guineas in his pocket, and I rode away, thinking, I confess, not so much of the kind mother left alone, and of the home behind me, as of tomorrow, and all the wonders it would bring. … ….

Whereas with Proust (in his treatment of the young Marcel), though the language proceeds from one epiphany to the next at seemingly the speed of light, despite all the digressions, the stop and start pace, it is still a passive language, even as it treats with, say, the competing self-interests that are the young Marcel’s and Albertine’s, he with his endeavour to hold Albertine hostage to his confusions, and she to her clandestine affairs with girls. On the other hand, however one might characterize the Proust-Moncrieff cinderblocks of prose, the prose is straightforward enough even when dealing with nebulous “interiorities”, nearly as straightforward as the language with which Thackeray portrays his duellists, one of whom is somewhat apprehensive, even vaticinal. … …. At [the count of] ‘three’, both our pistols went off. I heard something whiz by me, and my antagonist giving such a most horrible moan, staggered backwards and fell.

And for no apparent reason (other than to appease my pedantic nature), I asked myself: which Cato was it who committed suicide – there in Utica, and it – the suicide – was fallout from the hostilities between Caesarist and Pompeian factions, both touting they had the best interests of the Roman republic at heart, though J Caesar was viewed by the nobility as a budding tyrant. Well then, it was Cato the Younger who did it to himself, perhaps out of shame at being continually outplayed: J Caesar had a way of prevailing. There it is: I was, in fact (as I do every odd year or so) watching the HBO series “Rome”, its most memorable scene perhaps: the dying Caesar decorously drawing his toga over his bloodied body, the knives still out. It is for me an idle meditation on the immense change J Caesar brought to Rome, a meditation in light of the fact of Trump. Not that I would compare the one man to the other. The one was no stranger to the battlefield, and had, besides, an excellent grasp of the Latin language. The other has been described as a clown with a shambolic grip on some sort of pidgin English that seems, nonetheless, to light the restive fires of his base. The one wrote a history, even if that history was self-serving. The other has a media company as would tell a history of America, and yet, it would have no history in it, not even a smidgen, everything all Doris Day hunky-dory, nary a trace of the sulfurous reek of so much that stinks to high heaven in the American annals, just ask a West Point librarian. (In Trump, all the evils find their celebratory black masses, their empowerments.) If J Caesar, J for Julius, had his Rubicon, Trump has his, what, his redeye flight to El Salvador, the transport plane stuffed with unduly processed illegals? Years ago, I figured (with a little help from Tacitus) that America was going Caesarist, not necessarily fascist. That the state Augustus Caesar inherited from J Caesar was a mixed bag: republican façade, autocratic top-down decision-making. Just as now the American state is a hybrid concoction: putative democracy with increasingly fascist elements subordinating institutions to their “we’ve got the knives out for habeas corpus” pep rallies. One bewailed the death of the Roman republic as per Horace the poet, for instance, but welcomed the stability after decades of civil conflict. There at least was that. One bewails the death of the American republic and the catastrophes it invites, and will continue to invite, hypnotic gestures waggling at every farce yet to come. That being said, I yield the floor to Daffy Duck: ‘Of course, you know, this means war!’

Postscript I: Carpenter ,,, ,,,, And is it really Lost Sock Memorial Day?

Postscript II: Lunar says it right out:… …. ‘Yes, I could have broken the Vatican bank had I laid a bet. I reckon this is as much a political decision as it was with Pope John Paul II, but whether the former [can] bring down the American empire as did the latter the Russian one remains to be seen. What is important is that Leo XIV has already attacked Trump and Vance and also, he will be a foil to the right-wing Catholics in America. Interesting times ahead.’ … …. Alright, so the man leaves off on a rather lame note, and we are left hanging, but really there is more, much more: … …. ‘Singing aside, the new production of Die Walkure had the stupidities one has come to expect. When will they finally realise that having Wotan in a business suit and Fricka arriving on stage in a Mercedes-Benz are clichés? Still, it was well sung and the final act - a real test - was deeply moving and the conducting was great. I’d said: “If I see a swastika I'm out of there.” … …. On the tube going there I saw a young woman, possibly Indian, possibly mixed race, who is my candidate for the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. … …. I mean … …. supernatural beauty, and it was all I could do not to avert my eyes. I nudged B— and yes, she had to agree. That is very funny about Too Tall Poet and the trannies. Publishing: JB phoned me this morning with respect to the treatment he has had at the hands of [a certain press] and what appears to be its new regime. You would think that if you were already published by a press, you would not have to go through the indignity of going through a submissions window, but this is what has happened by and large. It is all so disgusting. Yes, Mastroianni must have had fun making that movie.’ … …. Divorce, Italian Style, not Scream 2. … …. ‘So, then, the next target is the National Endowment for the Arts, which is about as Cromwellian as things can get. The impact on the performing arts, music in particular, the likes of Michael Hersch, will be nothing less than devastating. I had no idea that it was Lyndon, as in LBJ, who brought the NEA into existence and he wasn't all that interested in culture. Those old Shades are all beginning to be substantial figures. Theatre is going to be another casualty.’ … …. Perhaps, not Lyndon so much as Lady Bird… ????

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you actually know what communism is, and without removing your hands from the wheel, can count on one hand the bona fide commies you have broken bread with: … …. ‘I've lost interest in everything, including politics, which I didn't know was possible.’ … …. A grandly, swaggering pronouncement, say what? Meds to sort out? Anyway, corruption is one thing, but the prices one has to pay nowadays just to get a piece of the action, I mean, good golly Miss Molly, Daddy Warbucks does not even come close to the scale, and to all those Little Orphan Annies at their power lunches…

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘So I’m reading what appears to be a digressionary chapter in Solzhenitsyn’s August, 1914, The Red Wheel. He’s on about generals and their general incompetence. Egos. Hairy peacocks. The mucking things up so badly that what can go wrong will go wrong – absolutely. The failure to learn from previous debacles. A quote which helps carry the point: Not just a few individuals but a whole crowd of them saw the army as a comfortable, highly polished, and luxuriously carpeted stairway on which awards, great or small, were distributed at every step... .... Remind you, Sibum, of something? Certain presumptions of worth as apply to … Not trying to set you off. Solzhenitsyn seems to know how an army group HQ works, right down to the tricolour flags (pinned to the maps) such as represent various corps wandering about in a wasteland with little effect on the enemy (in this instance Germans), and as I’m reading I’m thinking what it is a novelist requires so as to be a successful novelist in the literary, not bestseller sense. He or she needs a complete mastery of all human endeavour, from cattle rustling to knitting shawls. Then I said to myself: “That leaves me out as a writer of high level fictions. What would I do with the ladies’ washroom at the Metropolitan?” Research, research! The two most important schools for a writer are “life” and “books”, especially histories. And on this island, as you know, I have my very own Recycling Depot where books come to die and I retrieve some. Percival says “hi”. He loves histories. He chews them up, you know. A most cultivated goat.’

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. ‘In these parts (picture a triangle on its side, top vertex being Prague, the other two Krakow and Budapest and you’ll have the Teddy Bear’s Picnic in which I’m a resident). The meteorological report? Sun and cloud, average temp (18), and a reason to attend a military parade in the capital of a predator nation starts with “R” and ends with grief. Otherwise, because I’m a dull boy, these days, I’m pulling a sneaky one: classic Sibum, from that poem Max Thrax, and let you eat turnips for a change:

I suppose, one morning at the start of spring,
I’ll awake, and yet again, it’ll seem
A mystery unexplained: old trees, new leafed,
Sailing now in a breeze.
Science tells the story well
As one thing leads to the next in maples….
Present moment shy of six,
And in a claw-foot tub I lie half-sunk.
Outside, a white-out sky (March in May),
The muted caws of muted crows,
The fleetingly falling snow, and
What an old body that I have.

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla:… …. ‘No cupcakes, this week. I’m in the country. Staying with a cousin. Jakub owns a restaurant in the middle of a field. Can see Germans and Russians and thunderheads coming from miles away. Golabki and barszcz (borscht to you) in my nostrils already, and in for the long haul… I don’t notice that there’s been any change in our lives as immense as you’d have it, and besides, who’s going to mess with a lady who plays the French horn? (It can shrivel the testicles of an ultimate warrior at 100 paces.) Look, I don’t make light of history, but people adapt. This is news both good and bad, depending on how much truth is buried in the adaptation process. When I left the city a few hours ago, the temperature had dropped, and it was pissing. But I liked being with a busload of strangers, going somewhere in the rain-gloom, eating up the miles, cornfields forever. Jakub picked me up at the Couche-Tard, and the first thing he said to me in no uncertain English somewhat accented was “fuck Trump”. He then launched into a spiel about Korean TV, and what did I think of the new pope? “Nothing yet,” I said, then ventured an opinion on TV melodramas, how they’re bedeviled by pop song tragic emotions. Jakub scowled. He hates being reminded of the fact that, culturally, he's a parvenu. A blackbird. A lone cyclist. Signs of spring. Will be back to my cupcakes next week. Oh, and a ceasefire looking for a dance partner… a sign of … “it’s none of our business, but then we panic.” I’m sure there’s a school of diplomacy that teaches future ambassadors in the methodology, but then, perhaps, its library, too, has been culled, divested of everything but “I sing the body electric”, and we sure as hell aren’t talking Leonard Cohen.’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘Tell your Lunar guy that…never mind… there’s no telling that guy anything, from the sounds of it. But, hokey doodle, Jethro? The soldier’s wife was a man? Movie rights? Anyway, I’m in Seattle. Half-assed pilgrimage. The Pike’s Market. Athenian Café. Where, years ago I argued poetry with a lady poet, and she beat me on points and with her gusto for life, as it used to get said, if one was making a movie about Zorba the Greek or Michelangelo. If one was writing up small “d” democracy. Place where everyone went, and I mean everyone. And it’s still happening. Fish vendors. Fruit stalls. Goods new and used. Hideaway nooks and crannies. Wide open vistas, or the harbour views. Where else would you have me? Thimphu City? My knees can’t take Lonely Planet anymore. Actually, I’m here to lecture. What was I supposed to lecture on? W S Graham, Scots poet. Now, if you go and look up a list of whoever has been a Scottish poet, you’ll get a list as long as … well, I don’t know about that, but it’s long. A whole lot long.’

May 3, 2025: When I first heard Dr Zhivago (David Lean’s 1965 film-saga) ridiculed for being politically fatuous, I was unnerved. I was dismayed. What else was I “not getting”? I suppose the whole “poet thing” that runs through the film front to back gets even more precious as time makes it way to some denouement or other, but surely, there are poets out there whose limpid eyes do moisten at the drop of a hat at every news cycle, and rhymes spring up like mushrooms after a summer storm, like demented cicadas in season….

In any case, a number of scenes from the film stay with me. (The reasons are various, but they usually boil down to this: cinematic pith. As when a picture or screen shot lays off the proverbial ten thousand words as those words, however well-chosen, are now unemployable, because redundant.)

Anyway, the boxcar scene, one no doubt reeking with soiled straw and Lysol... A political prisoner bound for a labour camp characterizes the passengers, the “comrades” surrounding him in the car as “lackeys”. As “lickspittle”. As, oh my God, “bureaucrats”. He is, as deemed by them, insufficiently of the right stuff. The insults, in themselves, were nothing new to me my first time through the film, but the levels of scorn as mouthed by Klaus Kinski (he played the part of the prisoner – that anarchist, sociopath, intellectual… serendipitous casting…) certainly impressed me on that first go round in my post-adolescence. Oh, I wonder why, just now, “lackey” and “lickspittle” have remerged in my consciousness as if cameos for a new reality show called, a la the TV host M Smerconish, Trump 2.0? I was, innocently enough, catching CNN for late morning headlines when the feed was switched to a live cabinet meeting in the You-Know-Where Office, and various Secretaries of This and That, and other functionaries, were extolling the Wizard, the Great Proficient, in a cringeworthy manner. (Consider that the word “cringe” is fast losing its mojo through no fault of its own, overwork the culprit. Nonetheless, “cringe” was firing on all cylinders, and I damn near lost my breakfast.)

I was sent a piece that David Brooks the conservative pundit had written for The Atlantic. I was duty-bound to read it and so, I did just that – I perused. I will say that, ever since the Bush-Cheney years, I have come to blows with Mr Brooks. His stance on the Iraq War did little to win me over, not even with his “aw shucks acts of humility,” his standard comportment on the Friday evening news hour, PBS. But in the broad strokes I found myself agreeing with what he had to say this time around. His point that the current occupiers of all three branches of the government have nothing to do with any “conservative movement”, but are in it for the cheese, rang a few bells. That as for power sought for and power gained and power to be kept at any cost – this is what it means to do the hokey pokey and shake it all about. (Or chalk me up as yet another instance of political fatuity, along with Mr Brooks and some octogenarian hippies…) Later that afternoon, and it was Election Day in Canada, and I had voted first thing as if it had been the second most important deed I have done in my adult life, or third or fourth, and I remarked to myself thusly: ‘While Cabaret (1972), following upon the live cabinet meeting referred to above, is not the greatest movie ever made with extreme politics as its backdrop, it’s not the worst. But because I have election jitters, I could wish for a less ominous echo from the past such as would insinuate itself into this present moment of threat so as to cause a guy to doubt the integrity of his brain functions’.

Now, as for jenny-jessamines, are they birds? Are they flowers? Young women who try the patience of young men? You have got me. I came across it in Thackeray’s The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon (1844). Its occurrence was preceded by the cameo appearances of Boswell and Johnson and a setting about to hit upon suitable rhymes for Aristotle. (I myself have rhymed the philosopher with the most obvious contender – bottle, so I am not sorry to say. I did it with vehemence.) The memoirist had a brief and perhaps liquor-laced spat with Johnson as to the value of knowing Greek and Latin and else, and not knowing one’s horses. I did learn that a “pillion” has something to do, as secondary seating, with horses and motorbikes; that “arrums”, in Barry Lyndon’s world, probably had nothing to do with humanoids in ours, but could refer to flowering plants that, in themselves, may invoke some aspects of human sexuality. You win some, you lose some. Otherwise, you muddle onward.

But no matter. My jitters were not allayed, the day getting on for twilight. And in my latest gander at Proust’s The Past Recaptured, I could only take from the pages in question that there is no consolation, no comfort to be had in any pose struck against those who would render life even more of a boondoggle than it already is, especially after observing the antics of those who would acquire some comfort and consolation, and the endeavour, objectively speaking, is not going well, not even in yoga class. One fails to realize that one is, willy-nilly, a relic in a new world that sprang up around one before one had a chance to blink or wipe away the effects of the siesta. Dragon’s teeth, indeed. Or as when the leaves first appear seemingly overnight, catching one off-guard yet again, and the world is simultaneously recognizable and awfully strange.

Postscript I: Carpenter And is it really International Truffles Day?

Postscript II: Lunar: … …. Noteworthy admission. For the man said: ‘Okay, agreed: this is big. I am speaking of the blocking of public funds to PBS and NPR. This may be the worst yet in terms of what it implies. Fascism? Did you say something? And here [Britland], the local as opposed to the general election, the sudden rise of the Reform Party, the disgusting Nigel Farage, Trump acolyte. What in the hell is happening? Who are these people voting [in the likes of those pikers]? If they are feeling desperate, how does their desperation compare to that of what is happening in the bigger world, Gaza, the Israeli meddling with the Druze in Syria (which is potentially extremely serious) etc. … …. [No], I can't get over this sudden rise of the Reform Party. It is populist not fascist but not without fascistic elements to it, immigration etc, but as opposed to the bloated view (certain) Americans have of themselves what we have here is the opposite, a Little Englander view of things, a yearning for what never was, a narrowness of vision. … …. I think what we are seeing now is a consequence of so much else in the history's past. America did not lose its virginity; it never had it to begin with. Now, for my next trick (book) I am being drawn back to the soul objects idea. We went [to] a wonderful exhibition yesterday on, wait for it, traditional Japanese joinery. There was an accompanying film which began with a tool kit and in which the tools were said to be invested with soul, the soul of the previous owner, and which informs the Japanese carpenter more than learning the trade itself. My, that's my cuppa tea. Did you know that Japan is the only country in the world where the plane is not pushed away from but towards one's own body? You didn't know that, did you? Me neither. What is it about the Japanese that they have this innate sense of aesthetic? The very tools themselves were beautiful.’ … …. Now, is that not sweet on Lunar’s part? But in America, there is a lot of “aesthetic”, say, in the batter’s box, how one strikes a pose and brandishes the bat….

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you hear a red, red robin singing its death song, rogue deep impact on the way as features the mug of any number of Trumpian Rasputins, you pick one, say, Loomer, say Miller, say Rubio, old buddy, or Musk the Impaler. No, scratch that, Musk or He Who Dismembers with Chainsaw. Sure, let us play a round of “name that tune”: So lately, been wondering/Who will be there to take my place?/When I'm gone, you'll need love/To light the shadows on your face. Anyway, Mr Drake: … ….’If other centrists and center-rightists were as open-minded and vulnerable to reality as M is, we never would have suffered this [and here I’m quoting Pasquino the Talking Statue in Rome, the origin of pasquinades], this fascist dick Donald Trump.’ … …. There it is then: tirade-in-a-blanket, thought-crime as active service, voice as detonator.

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘There was a knock on my door late in the evening. Percival bleated out a warning from his pen. Opening the door, I beheld a nutter. He had all the hair of a Noah, ark-builder. He wished to know: how had I voted? With my nose in the air, said I. Now piss off. And yes, if you were wondering at all about where I am with respect to this pressing matter, Solzhenitsyn hasn’t the caliber of Proust, true enough, but when it comes to a round in the pub, I’d rather drink with him than with a very high level gossip columnist. Remember “Rome” the series? JCaesar sends Mark Antony to the senate as tribune, the fact of which will insult not a few senators? I’ve taken to watching it again, and I was thinking Vance at the Vatican, or Musk, if you will, set loose amongst free range Congressionals. What was that longish poem you wrote about Tiberius that no one will ever read, Germanicus’ funeral procession making its way from Brundisium to Rome and the forbidding sight of the emperor there weighing the political implications, not to mention the people in the streets indulging in the sport of insulting him with audible graffiti? And the days were always seen by the light of sunsets, peaceful on the surface, seething with poisons underneath. See what you’ve gone and done? Got me being political in mind, and I don’t much care for it.’ … …. A thousand pardons, my friend. I would not inflict the dog’s breath of “political” on my worst enemies. Rather, there is a fatal flaw in my make-up: when I look up at a night sky of stars whose light is ancient, I know I am peering into the past.

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. ‘I’ve nothing to say. What did you expect? The Gettysburg Address? The Roman poet Martial is a man after my heart, not in any predatory way, but as a soul-cousin, if you will, as when he wrote, and here it is via translation, Peter Whigam’s: They smell of Corycian saffron, of a/girl’s tooth biting a fresh apple,/of first bunches of white grapes and sheep-cropped/grass and myrtle leaves and chafed amber./They’re in the herb harvest. They’re in the flame/golden with myrrh. Earth smells of them/In summer after rain and jewellery/reeking of expensive heads./Your kisses, my cold jewel, smell thus. How would/they smell if love had warmed their giving? … …. If you say so, man. But was not Martial cattier than this offering seems to be?

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. ‘You betchum, Red Ryder, I'll speak of myself in the third person. Hence: she decided not to stay up for the election results. The French horn, however, held its breath, anxiously eyeing a nocturno, and the prospect of a minority government. She knows that cupcakes are problematical for one’s health, but she will bake them anyway, eat a few, and distribute the rest among those NDPers who sacrificed their bodies in the interests of national unity.’ … …. Well, we here take the woman at her word, she always a force to be reckoned with.

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. “I read that same Brooks piece in The Atlantic that you had occasion to mention. In consequence of which I asked myself an obvious question: where am I politically? Haven’t addressed this concern to myself in years. Been resting on my laurels, maybe. And before I could answer, a little voice sounded off: ‘Beware political self-consciousness. It gives one the illusion of an accurate compass heading. One is, for instance, SSE of a liberal consensus as to what identity politics is good for, seeing as we’ve put the workers out with the dog, and are about to do so with civil rights. Or, if you must, define “people”. As per Gladiator the flick, one doesn’t have to be “of the people” to be “for the people”. I can fool around like this for a long time, and without trips to the toilet, but there’s a principle or two or three, the messing with raises alarms. Due process. Equality under the law. Separation of church and state. The designated hitter rule.’