July 2024

July 29, 2024: I should have been familiar with the word ‘lucubration’. Its meaning points to overly elaborate or pedantic scribbles. This is how some people might classify these posts I write. But I was unable to find a definition for ‘prosectomy’ either on-line or in ‘print’ dictionaries such as I still keep around, but that the word occurred in relation with a bit of turkey carving and so, I am guessing… The words in question showed up in the close-out pages of Proust’s Cities of the Plain. Where I also came across passages that seem to behave like bats released from hell, endless succession of commas, swarms of them, and to no point. A bit of mismanagement on the part of Proust-Montcrieff or some generations of editors? In which passages the more absurdly comic the Baron de Charlus becomes in his infatuation with Morel the more that something tragic is looming into sight, that will eventually claim its due. The young Marcel? He does not know whether he is coming or going with respect to his feelings for Albertine, though he is spending a lot of time on trains (transiting between dinner parties and his hotel room); spending so much time on the trains that he must needs get to the etymological bottom of all the names of all the stations the train happens by. A sort of plotline: Young man and young woman pet each other in dark train compartments, then he ponders the mysteries in the name Incarville, and she, well, she has other fancies.

I was not sure how I was going to open this post. I had in mind ill-disguised rants to do with the notions that, one, poetry is an old man's or old woman’s game in contradistinction to the fact that it is regarded as strictly a young person’s bailiwick; that, two, what is perceived as long-winded is not necessarily a bore, though it certainly can be that; that not everything is a sprint to some finish line. But I surrender, no rants forthcoming. Instead, Lunar reports that a shark has been spotted in the Thames (Hammersmith). Could be he is the one who did the spotting, and if so, how trustworthy then is the report? A fin is espied, one gliding along. Alright then. And Lunar is not one to go on about climate upheaval, but there it is. And he will take a stepladder to a blackberry bush for those berries on top that are the choicest because cleanest. Would he wear a pith helmet too and further embarrass his wife? Proust remarks so much on Balzac that I went and bought a novel by Balzac (bought used), Pere Goriot, though, as I walked out of the bookstore, I berated myself for my cheapness as I could have bought Lost Illusions for another fiver, a novel which had the ‘feel’ of being more quintessentially Balzac-ian. I also acquired John Julius Norwich’s The Normans in Sicily which has the feel of immensity, a biography of Dio Chrysostom, a history of Barcelona by the art critic Robert Hughes whom Lunar once took to task for some transgression or other, I do not recall which. I acquired these books from various discount bins. Booksellers, it seems, want out from under all that tonnage of ‘history’ bivouacked on their shelves. And this is as good a time as any to lay on a quote from Proust’s Cities of the Plains which jumped out at me like a shark breaking the surface of the water: In many moments of our life, we would barter the whole of our future for a power that in itself is insignificant.

Postscript I: Carpenter

Postscript II: Says Lunar: ‘Some academic in America, with tenure, has proven that on the basis of Beethoven's 5th that he committed rape.’ What are we to conclude? That anything can prove anything? That the ‘bonkers quotient’ in an air collectively breathed does not just extend to the far-right echelons of the Mind; it has tentacles; they can slither in any direction? That Lunar had a bad dream and cannot distinguish between waking and sleep time, no pun intended on ‘woke’? That where there is will there is calamity? That a civil war is brewing between men and women under 30? (Probably not, but then again, I would not put it past anybody under 30.) Bach sired 20 children. Surely, this constitutes abuse of some kind with respect to the man’s wife.

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, having been on the road of late, but sometimes in a wheelchair, described a racket whereby, in the Dallas airport (remarked upon as a hellhole), ‘pushers’ or those who wheel people in wheelchairs around, are tipped for this service of ‘pushing’, only that it took five pushers for Mr Drake to arrive at the departures gate, at a cost-ratio of 5 dollars per pusher which extortion rounded out at 25 dollars overall. It brings to mind remarks like: “I should’ve been a plumber”. Apart from his misadventures, the man has had nothing to say about wars civil or otherwise. He allows that Trump is in a spot of trouble. Morning may be breaking across America, but it is unclear what winds it is ushering in, and if one could make a cartoon rendering of hope, it might look a little slaphappy. Beats depressive yawns though making way for a coup.

Postscript IV: Whereas Talking Avocado has no regrets about not having chosen plumbing as a profession. Instead, he authors. Spends a lot of time at the local recycling depot. And he reports that the summer invasion of off-islanders (Albertans mostly) is in full swing, and they are bringing all their disposables to the site, and that he had, in the course of things, a curious thought. The curious thought, so far as I can follow it, is something like this: his eye is caught by an attractive woman, she chatting it up with somebody or other she knows. But instead of any appreciation for the fact of the woman’s charms, the thought that clambers onto the stage of the Performing Arts section of his mind is this: never mind those charms, is the woman disease-resistant? That is to say, can she withstand the next plague to come? Is she somehow a cipher for the whole of humankind? If it is not a woman he is looking at, what is she then? Right. She is a genetic code. A lottery of sorts. Nature at its most unforgiving. This alarms him. Next thought. And he went on about some article in a national magazine to do with ‘Wokeism’ and arts funding and the ‘editorial psyche [s] of various national magazines and publishing houses. As if everything is reducible to X’s and Y’s and the wherefores of evolution? So the man’s mind had slipped and he was briefly part and parcel of a post-apocalyptic sci-fi flick on-island. It happens. It happens on islands of sandstone and mudstone and sandy beaches, a trading post or two thrown in, and a smattering of recluses.

Postscript V: Standard Quote Department (standard because it’s damn near universal across all written history): from The Roman World of Dio Chrysostom by CP Jones, Harvard University Press, 1978:

Although Dio ostensibly discusses the incompetence of Tarsus’ upper class only to justify his own intervention, he regards it as a contributory cause of the city’s troubles. The chief fault of the politicians is their empty ambition; most think only of their crowns, purple, and seats in the front row, and few are ‘truly concerned’ for the city. So it was - some two thousand years ago. And the next quote, were I to employ it, would deal with ‘public amusements’. You can see where things would be going….

July 26, 2024: The world has changed since my last post, not that the post had anything to do with the change. No doubt, some will argue that, no, nothing has changed, that it is the same old same old if with a vengeance; and some leftie sites are, as we speak, adducing that Kamala Harris is the same old same old when it comes to Gaza (amongst other issues), but I cannot explain away the relief I felt when Biden decided to step aside.

Otherwise, I have found myself looking up the meaning of the word ‘anfractuosity’. I came across it in Proust’s Cities of the Plain. The dictionary has it to mean ‘a winding channel or course; intricate path or process (as of the mind)’. Sure. My mind has been known to be anfractuous. Proust, however, applied the word to get at the physical nature of ‘the cliffs of Parville’ along which the smoke of a locomotive was trailing. Proust then went on to discuss the nature of a bore.

It is like looking out the window first thing in the morning so as to see what kind of day it will be, this reading (or rereading) Proust with aged brain cells. It is that ‘every day’. Every day the comedy act that is the Baron de Charlus and Morel who are both trying to hide or disguise their sex plumage or are trying to make an exhibition of it. The comedy act that is the attempt of Mme Verdurin’s Wednesday evening regulars (her get-togethers over supper featuring artistes and intellectuals and other sorts of luminaries including members of the nobility looking for a few cheap thrills) to wrap their heads around the fact of the Baron’s sexual proclivities as well as those of Morel. And there is the fact of the young Marcel weeping at the rare sight of an aeroplane. I cannot remember weeping at my first sight of a computer. Or cell phone. Whatever. No, it was a long ago viewing of one of the elder Breughel’s paintings what done it to me, and I am not an effete snob. The other morning, I was toying with the idea that great art is a chameleon; it can be what it needs to be at any given time and that this does not detract from its worthiness. Well then, hyperesthesia (another word I had to look up): extreme sensitivity in one’s sense of touch. That ten years of Trump constantly in the news has had the opposite of a coarsening effect? As Lunar reminds me: ‘People fall apart in his presence.’

Postscript I: Carpenter

Postscript II: Slick Williams, favouring his classical guitar over his archtop of late, had this to say to me the other day: ‘Like you, I’m appalled by political events. I do think, though, that I’m kind of privileged to witness this, because it is definitely the weirdest time I could have ever imagined — the almost literal deification of a political leader, not something I’ve seen in my lifetime or ever thought I would. In future years, either everything will be like this and it will be unremarkable, or people will look back on it with a mix of amazement, amusement, and horror.’ One responds, “You bet’chum, Red Ryder.” He would be talking Trump, of course. And perhaps we are not out of those woods yet and the teddy bear’s picnic therein.

Postscript III: Lunar quoting W S Graham from one of Graham’s poetry readings: “Am I deteriorating, my dears?” Old age? Waning literary powers?

Postscript IV: Meanwhile, Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana has been on the road. He sent me (electronically) a photo of the Athenium Café, Pike’s Market, Seattle, where I used to hang about when a lad (I can almost taste the pickle slice that came with the hamburger), and I was a little choked up to see that, from the outside at least, so little has changed over the course of an indecent amount of years. Some things ought not ever change, with the exception, of course, of the ‘nutso crap’ (Drakes’ words) that is the politics of the day, and the news cycle that feeds on it like so much fungi.

Postscript V: Talking Avocado wrote to tell me that he was infinitely weary of the Victorian tone in many of Horace’s translators, but that he was also prepared to fend off any excursions to the opposite end of the spectrum, whereas my Latin is insufficient to render distinctions, just that I think Horace was rough and ready when he needed to be, particularly in the satires. Talking Avocado then apologized for being literary. He ascribed it to the distorting effect of hope on his psyche, this after the recent events in the political world. Otherwise, Talking Avocado generally sees my cynicism and raises it by a double, sometimes triple measure to see if I will fold or foolishly stay in the game. He then, as if the foregoing were not enough, mentioned that he had had occasion to watch a nature show. “Try and get your head around 150 million years of dinosaurs feasting and defecating without a single reprieve from the monotony. Now, consider this: 150 million years of humankind going on about Norman Mailer? I’ll take the extinction event.” If the man has a meds course to observe, he may have wandered ‘off’ the trail.

Postscript VI: And one goes ‘Really?’ after reading the following, and for the reading you will require a copy of Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy: ‘The virtuous succession will always exist in every well-ordered republic’.

July 17, 2024: One can, I suppose, hope. May imbecility and incompetence get in the way of these peoples’ purposes. There have been events, events such as will likely tip the scales in favour of slimeballs who like to trophy hunt, who like to strut trophy wives before slimeball cameras; who enjoy playing a hand in rendering news channels unwatchable; who could a give toss about anything or anyone not directly beneficial to their bottom lines, conspiracy theories the soft, mucky centre of the national psyche to the south of here. The bog from which, a thousand years from now, people will say, of the old bones they have been digging up, that they bear all the telltale marks of having been ravaged by cheesy predators. Of having been shamefully wrong-footed. Moreover, I see (at first blush) in the vice-presidential nominee for the Republican Party a Sejanus, a Roman politico who happily rode the coattails of one Tiberius and ran his show for him (getting a lot of people killed in the process) until the power went to his head and he began to run things for himself, and then Tiberius had to have him eliminated, one little piece of history that is not likely to repeat itself, as Trump, if he remains alive, will be too enfeebled to do or to care that much, though our Sejanus will have his rivals, threats to his well-being, institutions too broken to deal with the ensuing chaos. But already I am getting somewhat far-fetched in the head with this analogizing, this attempt to find a mirror to hold up to ‘events’, and reflect, what, my own sorry self?

I did choose to wait a while before venturing to say anything with respect to ‘events’, and besides, I am not, willy-nilly, political. That much the mirror can tell me. Still, for once I can say that the signifier ‘Orwellian’ may be properly applied to the current situation, as when MAGA mouthpieces turn everything upside down, and hairy moths flood the zone from the bottom of the jar as opposed to from the top: something to the effect that Democratic rhetoric sparked the violence that triggered one of the events alluded to above. Good God, where is post-structuralism when you need one? Oh and, any chance the ‘event’ was staged, massaged, managed? Was this what is meant by ‘jumping the shark’? And sometimes my favourite bits in the histories of Tacitus involve his reports of unnatural doings: two-headed animals, snakes showing up in a baby’s crib, lightning striking certain landmarks, orange men haunting golf courses, and yesterday, it seems that a meteor passed right over the Statue of Liberty, and when I read this news, a brain cell flashed, one that had‘augury’ stamped on it. Turning point, but in which direction?

Otherwise, the young Marcel (in Cities of the Plain, volume four of the seven volume À la recherche du temps perdu by Proust has either been getting to dinner parties by way of train; has been weathering those dinner parties by way ‘grinding it out’; or has been getting around by way of motor-car, and it is a big deal, getting around by motor-car early in the last century and so, how speed, then, alters one’s relations with time and space, a discussion of which I cannot recall ever happening so far as I am concerned, perhaps because we all of us grew up with the car as an established fact, ditto for how we viewed time and space before social media collapsed all that even further, and plane travel was just a way of getting to a different sort of corner store. Over the years, I have had occasion to look at a few critical passages (such as are written by none other than critics) in which was stated that Proust had ‘spiritual aims’ in his prose, and perhaps he did, who am I to begrudge the man that? Perhaps what was (or is) spiritual in Proust was his attention to detail. Ah, those interminable dinner parties. And while the young Marcel is on occasion hinting that he would like to cop a cheap feel at Albertine’s expense, one kind of wishes he would do just that so as to vary things up a bit.

And there is ‘sleep’ time. There is ‘dream’ time. There is ‘wake’ time. And in which time are coups engendered and in which do coups come to fruition? In which time does a newly rich woman (who used to be a hotel servant in one of Proust's passages) deposits little steaming nuggets, little treasures in wardrobe drawers for the maid to have to clean up? Which is my metaphor, via Proust, and to him I am indebted, for the current political situation as besets the world.

Postscript I: Carpenter

Postscript II: Lunar presents me with the ‘European perspective’. Putin, not Trump, is the clear and present danger to the world. And Lunar has a point, and he will carry it all the way from the well to his dinner table and the almond chicken that sits upon it. Still, there is this: You can't walk into a secondhand bookshop here [in Londontown] without seeing ‘Hillbilly Elegy’. Well, I have not read the Vance book myself. I have seen that there are mixed reviews (none of which I have acquainted myself with nor have any wish to). I think the sort of ‘libs’ that Vance would ‘own’ do have some blood on their hands, inasmuch as blinkers of all sorts, not just the ideological kind, have blinkered eyes to commonsense and even reality itself, and thrown a particular kind of octane on already raging fires and so, have done a great deal of political damage, contributing to all the wrong-footedness in the face of what I am afraid we are going to have to call evil. And one can see that they will never hold themselves to account for this, those particular sort of libs more taken with cosmetics than with substance. Iconography for Dummies would be the title of the next Lunarian screed, if there is to be a screed with this in mind: the fist, the flag, the blood, the lip-synching of the word ‘fight’. And so, in a word, galvanizing.

Postscript III: As for Drake, one Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, stranded in a Chicago airport whilst enroute to Seattle, and the event broke, something in Drake also broke, and he found himself weeping. He made mention of this to me, and for the first time in years, I felt a connection to an American that required no words, no explanations, and while an Estonian in Estonia may have more reason to fear Putin as opposed to Trump-Vance, and while I certainly understand that and would never gainsay it, it is not something I understand in my gut, whereas… but never mind ‘whereas’… There are some things that do not require a talking-about, let it stand. I hope Drake got to Seattle. I hope he is having a beer for me at the Athenium, a café in which market (Pike’s Market) I used to hang around, and where I acquired my particular notions of small ‘d’ democracy, and it was a place I loved, and it was a place whose soul may have been ruined by gentrification, and then again, perhaps not. A miracle may have obtained.

Postscript IV: From Talking Avocado, nothing. I would have thought he would have a remark or two for me in light of recent doings. For instance: SCOTUS cloaking Trump in the shield device of immunity. But nothing. Perhaps he has melded into the woodwork, the driftwood on his island beaches. Perhaps he is doing yoga in sight of little ocean waves. Perhaps he is at work on a novel, a useless but necessary gesture. Perhaps, he is completely gassed, that is, blind drunk, next stop reflections on mortality.

Postscript V: Large peoples come out, and almost all have come out, from the country of Scythia [southern Russia], cold and poor places. Because there are very many men there and the country is of the quality that cannot nourish them, they are forced to come out of there, having many things to expel them and nothing that retains them. … …. From Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli being a 15th century political philosopher, and Livy being the ancient Roman historian…. The quote itself has absolutely nothing to do with anything, unless, very very obliquely, we are on about Ukraine, or hey, Florida where there is a brain drain in progress. But the quote did strike something like a funny bone in me, not a ha-ha funny bone, but a ‘funny bone’, as in familiar but strange.

July 11, 2024: I am not going to make heavy weather out of the words ‘war’ and ‘slavery’, but while reading a couple of recent posts by Heather Cox Richardson (on her Letters from an American site), it hit me that it is quite possible that, over my lifetime, I have taken my understanding of those two words too much for granted. It is one thing to know that on July 9, 1868, as per HCR, ‘Americans changed the U.S. Constitution for the fourteenth time, adapting our foundational document to construct a new nation without systematic Black enslavement.’ But that, as things turned out, politically, and in virtually every other sense, though slavery was now against the law, black people were still up against it, at the mercy of men who had ‘organized the Confederacy’ in the first place…. My point being, I can follow along as certain words are being bandied about in an intellectual discussion of this, that, and the other thing, but as to what it feels like, what it means to be ‘enslaved’ I have not the foggiest. War? True enough, ‘war’ has had an outsized influence on my life. Both my parents were more than directly shaped by WWII and its aftermath. Then, as it happened for me, there was Vietnam. Then, speaking somewhat loosely, and skipping over a lot of conflict, the Bush-Cheney years. Now Ukraine and the obscenity in Gaza which, though distant, are immediate enough… But like I said at the top, I am not going to make heavy weather out of the words ‘war’ and ‘slavery’, just that, so it seems to me, one has to stop every now and then, disengage from the back and forth between the various punditocracies, and ask, “What are we really saying and why?” &c.

Machiavelli in his Discourses on Livy is obsessed with how republics come to be ‘ordered’, how they are governed, and whether men of war or men of peace are best for the job, and what effects can ‘two weak princes in a row’ have on a republic, and what, in any given situation, is a virtue and what a detriment. And so forth and so on. Sometimes, as I am reading Machiavelli’s words (in translation) I have a dim memory of the childhood sandbox. Yes, what is to be done with So-and-So the bully on the block? Kick him in the nuts, run and hide? … …. orders and laws made in a republic at its birth, when men are good, are no longer to the purpose later, when they have become wicked… …. Gosh, of whom could Machiavelli possibly be writing? And can a ‘corrupt’ state remain a ‘free’ state? … …. But when the citizens have become bad, such an order becomes the worst, for only the powerful propose laws, not for the common freedom but for their own power … …. Minutes from a session of Spanky and our gang?

In any case, My Very Best Friend asked me why I was reading Proust, saturating myself in Proust-Montcrieffian prose, and she implied that it had to be for reasons of snobbery, and me the son of an army sergeant, which makes me veritably of working-class origins. (Still, strictly speaking, my father who had managed officer’s clubs in his 20-year military stint, lived above his paygrade.) I responded somewhat along these lines: “All the better to twit the arty-farty types who have wanted me to stay in my lane. You want snobs. There are your snobs.” My Very Best Friend was pleased with my answer, and she, not having much use for academics herself, and arty-farty types, and for her own reasons, raised her wine glass as a toast to… whatsowhomsoever. We were celebrating birthdays, and there was the somewhat alarming sight of McGravitas’s bare feet on the coffee table, he going on about Breughel the Elder and Rimbaud. … …. We have seen more than enough of those intellectuals worshiping art with a big A, who, when they can no longer intoxicate themselves upon Zola, inject themselves with Verlaine… …. A quote from Proust’s Cities of the Plain. In which I was rather surprised he would make a joke out of the King of Diamonds, or that, because the king is one-eyed, the king is excused his military service. The kind of joke as might amuse an eight-year-old… He saw how little was to be expected of human affection, and resigned himself to it. Well, a dinner party under the auspices of the Verdurins is winding down, and Charlus the baron is speaking bad French….

And perhaps John Huston made a forgettable movie, and perhaps that movie was The Bible, to do with the first 12 stories in Genesis, but I will never be able to rid my mind of John Huston as the voice of God and of Noah or other Notables, and I did watch it for a while, and rather enjoyed the Eve-being-tempted-in-the-garden-scene and sentience breaking across the land like a menacing thunderstorm, and it now dawns on Adam-as-Frankie Avalon that he is in for a lot of crap. With humankind it is always one step forward, two back, and I could care less what the believers in progress have to say for painless dentistry.

Postscript I: Carpenter

Postscript II: We had had a little back and forth as to the madness of the times and how much crazier can they get, each of us with the sneaking suspicion that we have not seen anything yet, and Lunar says: ‘Craziness, you say. Yesterday's news almost made me retch. Man with crossbow ties up his ex-girlfriend, her mother and sister and kills all three. All three died slowly. Bad things happen always, but I wonder if this kind of thing has not become in the sick mind a kind of media grab, a form of pornography. Whomsoever commits such a crime must have some inkling of the ensuing headlines.’ Not that the immediately above springs on the mind like any sort of revelation, but porn in a thousand forms, does rule our civilization. Lunar went on to comment on the miracle goal that put England in the finals against Spain (Euro Cup), and the recent election, the results of which, in both England and France, provide a bit of a reprieve from the machinations of the far-right, not that anyone should be taking their eye off the ball; not that anyone should be thinking that ‘hey, we’re shot of the rough seas, the one-eyed-leading-the-blind through plague, famine, war, and the insanities of Mussolini-like cretins.’ Alright then, and a pause for breath... Moving on...

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana which is, in effect, a state of mind, be it crazy going for crazier, be it collective psychosis, a wave of lemming-come-to-papa moments: ‘Yes. Yesterday was sort of otherworldly, in my mind, that is. I felt discombobulated, as though what I was doing and needed to do — were somehow foreign to me. Bizarre, no? I think that's passed, most of it, anyway. Perhaps it was a signal that I'm entering Biden territory…. …. just another day of Adventures in New Maladies… How 'bout you and the poetry and all things worrisome about POTUS?’ … …. Yes, seeing as what has been in the news that cannot quite catch its breath is Biden and cognitive decline, not much going on about the other fellow, his sh-t-for-brains…

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado. I never know what the man is going to throw at me, though generally, it is I who initiates our conversations, somewhat strange conversations, as we have never set our gazes on each other. I can tell you that, to some extent, he can be pegged as follows: published author, recluse, Socratic humanist sort, as when, ‘sure, we’re human, but let’s not get carried away with ourselves’. The man is that skeptical, and, as for myself, I will always spell skeptical with a 'k'. Then he says: ‘Am currently rereading Travels With My Aunt and enjoying it immensely. As for Trump, forgive me for being jaded and or myopic, but I don't think that [n]either he, nor Pierre Polyvinyl [Justin T] up here, will make a bit of difference in anything. They're mere balloons with faces painted on them waving in the wind at the end of strings while the glacier-like legislatures do the real work, which is as slow as a school of minnows turning a garbage barge against a current.’ Nice stretch of verbiage. Upon which I could never improve. Although I beg to differ with the view of Trump. OFTEN MEN DECEIVE THEMSELVES BELIEVING THAT THROUGH HUMILITY THEY WILL CONQUER PRIDE… Which it is in caps because a chapter heading in Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy, and because I was looking for a segue somewhat aslant of a most un-excellent prince, and just because.

July 2, 2024: So, what does it sound like, the sound of the final nail being pounded into a coffin? One overhears the chatter of dinner guests, a fair number of them in attendance at la Raspelière, vegetable etymologies the subject under discussion. It would seem that this or that village has the name it has because of the kind of trees found within its boundaries, as in Oakville or Elmvale, Ontario, however far from Proustian France those locales are. In any case, a couple of wretches at table, in their attempts to come off amusing and float their boats and pad their creds, are floating their little seminar in word-origins and then ducking for cover, the withering looks of their hostess – one Madame Verdurin – directed at them with every intention of having them sunk. Her working principle: too much knowledge is mighty boring. To allay your suspicions or to add to them, I borrow the above scenario from Proust, his Cities of the Plain, volume four of À la recherche du temps perdu, although Proust, so far in the volumes I have read, has not seemed unduly worried about the health of the Third Republic, France’s government of the day. Also, I have just heard from Lunar who said, ‘it was ever thus: kings and football players living above the law.’ What am I on about? It is reasonable to assume that he means to give me the gears for being excessively exercised by the news: immunity for a sack of the proverbial. I whizzed off a response, or that, never mind learned disquisitions, the man ought to write dialogue for sit-coms. For the instinct of imitation and absence of courage govern society and the mob alike. Yes, well, the italics are attributable to Proust. Then some ensuing patter: … …. People ought not to dine out if they can’t speak properly… ….

Machiavelli, in his discourse on Livy, concerns himself with the problem of order in relation to the maintenance of a republic, and the role religion plays in it all, and that there is a right and a wrong way to do all this with respect to religion and law and arms and all the rest of it, and what the people will respect and what they will not; and I suppose this presupposes that the people pay attention. But whatever Machiavelli had to say, and whether any of it has any bearing on a present day crisis, it is all going bad, or has already gone that way, note the stench on almost every front. I have a dim memory of me as a seventh or eighth grader addressing a student body in the course of a general assembly. I was slated to deliver some remarks on the nature of democracy and why it was a good thing, and I fell into some kind of semi-extemporaneous harangue on what happens when a democracy is lost, as if I knew precisely what happens when a democracy is lost; as if I knew the meaning of the word ‘democracy’ (because I can pretty well state that I had not the foggiest, nothing that would pass muster in your basic civics class), and where the harangue came from beats me now, out of what niche in my brain. Also confusing were the puzzled looks on the faces of the teachers and the students in the auditorium, and the year was… no, I did not care to remember what year it was, though it probably predated, by a good stretch, Sinatra’s it was a very good year. Even so, no one gave me a hard time for my little speech. I was a good athlete, which is what mattered.

And furthermore … …. Not only were the auguries the foundation, in good part, of the ancient religion of the Gentiles, as was discoursed above, but also they were the cause of the well-being of the Roman republic. Hence the Romans took more care of them than of any other order in it, and used them in consular assemblies, in beginning enterprises, in leading out armies, in making battles… …. Certain orders of augurs they called chicken-men… …. or them what took the auspices, as some Dickensian character might phrase it. And so, it would seem Biden has to rid himself of his chicken-men and get a new crew in, if he intends to ever win a debate… …. (The italics just above? Me quoting Machiavelli in his Discourses on Livy, and I am reminded that I have been superstitious all my life, and perhaps I now know why. Logic is a great thing, but it does not always rub out or otherwise cancel a nagging intuition. Lunar, by the way, has just chimed in to say I, too Americentric, ought not ignore Britain, that she has her troubles, what with her sleaze politics, what with Putin’s fighter planes buzzing it every day, so much so, these occurrences no longer make the news. Alright then: England, my England getting ‘trampier’, which it is a made-up word.)

Postscript I: Carpenter

Postscript II: I already forget the question (something to do with the recent debate?) to which this response by Cornelius W Drake of Champaigne-Urbana would appear to be the answering field holler: ‘Fact-loading was said to be Reagan's problem in an '84 debate. That may be, in Biden's case too. It's a fair observation; unfair is omitting what's entirely non-speculative: Your typical president possesses America's largest ego and generally he's resolute. In the vernacular, "He knows his own mind." (Reagan and Biden, two examples.) Often he's so damn resolute the characteristic transmogrifies to pigheadedness, and that gets him into trouble. With staff Biden has always been known for a hot temper and loud sessions of reproach. That alone leads me to suspect, which has no more verifiable basis than any other suspicion or speculation, that Biden would have put his foot down if he thought he was being harmfully overcoached. But here, I think, is the counterargument guaranteed to destroy the first one (excessive fact-loading as partial blame): Presidents wield ultimate power when in the White House, meaning their every decision is singularly and wholly owned. Deflecting blame on anyone else or any thing doesn't cut it, same with Navy captains, still known as the only true dictators left on earth. I did get a kick out of [Miss}Jewett's "slim suited piss ants who think they know politics." Times I have written that? Decried in discussions? Countless. On the other hand — you knew this was coming, right? — I've scribbled or screamed that very thing but best of memory informs it's always(?) been directed at down-ballot pissants. They are legion. Excepting Trump's, presidential campaign staffers are politicos who with MLK have gone up to the mountaintop, and by and large stayed there. These are the genuinely knowledgeable but of course as fallible as anyone else. Included in the knowledgeable category and positively aglimmer with high honors noted by several of Trump's exclamation marks were those pioneers of egregious fallibility Mike Dukakis' Susan Estrich, Al Gore's Donna Brazile and John Kerry's Mary Beth Cahill. Sense a pattern? I won't say it. I will say that in presidential politics there is absolutely no room for sentimentality, tenderness, nurturing instincts or inflamed impulses short of anything but homicidal intent. If you were looking for my opinion of presidential culpability and slim-suited pissants — what a charming, keepable and theft-worthy phrase — there you have it, though I'm certain you would have preferred a synopsis of my synopsis, not a novella.’ Drake, just so you know, I was able to stay on the bronc long enough to get the gist. Oh and, I came across an on-liner (not one-liner, but on-liner) on your favourite political site, the one you love to slag for its incessant virtue-signalling, that the American people always come through a crisis, will never vote that 'sack of the proverbial' into presidential office, no matter how hard Marjorie Taylor Greene does the shimmy. Sleep well.

Postscript III: Talking Avocado: ‘Have you got it out of your system yet, Sibum? Have you considered laxatives? Perhaps a vacation stay in Punta del Este, best in Uruguay’s summer months (the reverse of ours), and best to avoid the party beaches unless you’re into that sort of thing. You’re not, are you?’