June, 2025

June 29, 2025: Gravity applies to everything, even to the making of poems. Or so the theory goes, one mass affecting another. It occurred to me the other morning as I was in the bath, light bending even so at the first hint of my sorry mass, that I might have something to say for gravity and poem-making. In theory, at least. That no matter how short or long the poem, from a mere 4-liner to a 200 pager; no matter the total volume the sense of the words would occupy, there is always the temptation to overload the wagon, to say everything, as one might not get another chance. Every poem, short or tall, skinny or wide, light or heavy, good or bad, has its limits. So that, the trick appears to be as follows: observe what those limits are, and then within them, write as completely as one can without distorting the boundaries, and the words, the sense inside, lose their shape. Normal times, and I would not even have bothered with the thought, but these are not normal times, and one has to keep one’s eyes on at least one still point in space, if one wants to tamp down the vertigo.

As for reading Proust, yes, my progress has been at a snail’s pace, but he (or rather his proxy the young Marcel become the old Marcel) does seem to be winding up now for his long goodbye, he about to remove himself from his ‘people’, the socialites, the artistic heavies and so forth and so on, the loves and near loves, perhaps so he can go and write about them in some hermetically-sealed room, one in which he will bend time to his purposes. À la recherche du temps perdu… Seven volumes. Gravity-defying? Perhaps. But i think the man had a great deal of respect for the force of gravity on an empty page and went about his task accordingly…. I think there is something in me that does not want the exercise of reading the work to arrive at a termination. Would there be anything else to live for? Then again, there is always this other voice: “For God’s sake, shut it down. There are other authors, other words.”

Postscript I: Carpenter; … ….and we think there is a holiday on about waffles, as we speak… ….

Postscript II: Lunar on dealing with pain in the Brexit era: … …. ‘Half of what I order is unavailable at the local chemists so one has to look further afield. This has to do with availability and distribution all of which has not yet recovered from Brexit idiocies. The manufacture of medicine was scattered throughout Europe and then suddenly we were deprived of a slice of the cake. That is not quite as bad as visitors entering America hav[ing] their computer[s] scanned for anti-American materials in one[‘s] emails etc. McCarthy anyone? One thing to be said for morphine as in Morpheus - it induces sleep… ….’ … …. A scout’s honour observation: … …. ’The most dangerous wasp's nest is the one that has been disturbed but not significantly damaged. If the reports are true and Trump failed to obliterate the nuclear facilities they may explain yesterday's bad language, [the f-bomb]. [More expletives] ahead.’ … …. And, idle remark for idling minds: … …. ‘Long Day’s Journey into Night – appropriate viewing given Hepburn's [in her capacity as Mary Tyrone] addiction to morphine, it has been some years since I last saw it. What [a]powerhouse of acting, Jason R[obards], Ralph Richardson...’

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you espy a travelling show, its marquee name BETRAYAL, CORRUPTION, SLAPSTICK. May be a carry-over from March of 1933, Germany, may be entirely sui generis:… …. ‘Just a heads up, tomorrow night, Frankenstein and the Space Monster, 1965. [Otherwise, there has been a proliferation of cuss words come out of my mouth, and directed at gale force winds. Also],Shakespeare's Pericles isn't the rather well-known one. This dude is "The Prince of Tyre," per the play's subtitle. I relied on my buddy Harold Bloom, who contended that only the play's first two acts were written by one George Wilkens (often noted as the author), which, he added, are "dreadful." Are they ever. But turn the page to Act III and you're carried away in Shakespearean bliss, also Acts IV and V. The difference is….’ … …. Uh oh. Unexplained silence. I think Mr Drake has just been primaried.

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘There’s been a death on the island. Some old German no one liked. Hearing of it, and knowing about his disposition, I immediately wanted to know what’d been up with him. what his story was, you know. Had he been an ass? Been difficult? Did he hail from Frankfurt am Main? Sometimes difficult people have lived more or seen more or both. Percival bids you a good day. Old goat, he’s seen a lot, seen all the way to the edges of the known universe, and there’s water vapour out in those astral boonies, lots and lots and lots of the vapours. Otherwise, I make no mention of August, 1914, The Red Wheel by Solzhenitsyn because there is nothing to mention. Though one fancied that things were on the brink. Man, aren’t they always?’

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. ‘No grapefruit to be had anywhere. Heat wave. Can’t say whether the one is cause and the other effect. I am suspicious. Here’s a little something from Martial, written to the god Janus, on Domitian’s return to January:… …. Although, Janus, you give birth to the swiftly-rolling years, and recall with your presence centuries long past; and although you are the first to be celebrated with pious incense, saluted with vows, and adorned with the auspicious purple and with every honour; yet you prefer the glory, which has just befallen our city, of beholding its god return in your own month. … … Here’s the catch: I misread month for mouth. So I had something Trumpian in mind. God knows what god is in his mouth. [But] if you want bluster, Slovak politics is the place to look. The Prime Minister, Fico, keeps making supportive noises for Putin and I think they are more like suppository noises. … …. Britain is in no better shape with Farage, the testicularly-challenged con man… The fourth estate is to blame as its power and influence has been enhanced by the electronic media and an absence of penalties for telling downright lies to the half-witted i.e. most people who use it. … …. That's enough trivia. What about me! … …. So I have a ten session course of treatment under the hands of a young physiotherapist. She's just the sort of person an ageing poet unwisely includes in his last will and testament. As she gazes at me as I try her latest exercise, I imagine Lunar changing places with me. … …. "I am married," she confided last week apropos of nothing.’

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla; … …. ‘Cupcakes in the oven, French horn within reach, and I’m in my little heaven, and most likely, I deserve it. I myself have never read all of Proust, though I’ve read some. For sure I have. And saw the movie. About which I remember little. Period piece. Very periodic. Still, contrary to my better judgement, I’m something of an expert now on I-country on I-country action, that hostilities will break out again because a certain I-country can’t get no satisfaction, what it’s been doing in the region but appetizers. Cheap shot? Very much so, I’m sure. But then this is a world that has been made cheap, even as it gets so very expensive. And who’s to say my French horn didn’t come to me by way of a rebellion-heavy angel who’d had enough of paradise at 19.99 per cent on his credit card? I’ve been watching Korean dramedies. In one of those shows, no distinction is made between the classical canon (music) and pop (also considered music of the lounge variety), and what means this? Brains elsewhere are also melting down?’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘I was going to go on about your Rilke piece in the ‘Sanctum” section of your site, but it’s slipped my mind – what I’d intended to say. What can I say? Just now I hear some sparrows after a rain shower. It touches me to my bones. A piano plunks away on a streaming venue. There are 15 cream-o’s in a bowl next to my wrist. You guessed it: I’m holding the fort in a café, its door open to admit a freshening breeze, begonias in the corner of my eye. A low-life couple are at the cash. I say ‘low life’ because these two are absolutely gauche, and she’s so thin she makes anorexia pulchritudinous. But they seem to appreciate each other. Otherwise, I regard this moment not as a step toward the next but as something discrete, thing in itself, as if this is all there is, there’s nothing else but the barbarity, sentimentality, utter lack of self-awareness, let alone awareness of anything, just what was last seen on TV. Or else this couple understands all too well that they’re not going to be allowed within 10,000 miles of Bezos’ wedding (poor Venice) except as a freak show. In any case, these ‘deplorables’ aren’t the problem. They don’t vote. They’ve no idea how someone gets to be president. In their view, God elects the president. The young man’s basketball trunks are three sizes too big for him. A sudden wind gust, and he’s gone. Perhaps a special kind of gravity keeps his girl moored to the ground. ’That’s it from me in my dispatch mode.’

June 21, 2025: Recently, a friend I have not heard from in a while told me he has taken up writing again. “A requiem,’ he said. ‘For the world,’ he said, perfectly aware how pretentious it sounded. I did not press him on it, not wanting to jinx the endeavour. We then managed to thoroughly depress each other with tales of various heartlands, and with the observation, attributable to Trotsky and to a few thousand other sources, that old age comes as a surprise when it comes, a bad surprise, and what’s one to do?

I intended to open my remarks this time around with a sideways encomium for William Makepeace Thackeray, how his apparent anti-war postulations are all the more compelling as he employed his novel’s amoral hero (Barry Lyndon – liked his women, his wine, his cards) to be the conveyor of his sentiments with respect to war. Thackeray, whatever he meant to say, did not sentimentalize peace; war is never entirely absent from any human scene; that it will come to a theatre near you, give it time. Well, now that we have got our I-country on I-country action that any number of neo-cons (and other theorists, other lobbyists) have been craving for a long while, and a drunken gambler has deployed his dukes against what we used to call a “shit-disturber’, and this latter entity has yet to fold as was, perhaps, expected, what with the bombing campaign thus far, and a drunken gambler, credit over-extended, needs a bail-out, and the bank is a little leery….Will the metaphor in all its aspects in all this hoopla hold up in the light of day, air raid sirens blazing away or no? Remains to be seen. How big is your straw, how capacious your jug of hallucinogens? I have no money quote from Proust to insert here as has been customary, as I have once again put that author on hold for the time being, even as a hundred page sprint is all I require to close the books, as it were, on all seven volumes of Proust’s grand and Google-able opus…. … …. Instead, from Thackeray’s The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon: … …. I do not intend to make a history of battles in the Prussian any more than in the English service. I did my duty in them as well as another, and by the time that my moustache had grown to a decent length, which it did when I was twenty years of age, there was not a braver, cleverer, handsomer, and I must own, wickeder soldier in the Prussian army. … …. (As I was typing out these words, I kept seeing our protagonist on the back of a Harley, Easy Rider and all that, no peacenik-flowernik he, just a rube who did not care for army discipline, as when corporals formed a line behind the grunts, and sergeants formed a line behind the corporals, everyone with weapons trained on the backs of the men before them, so as to prod the advance toward the enemy, shirkers shot. And so it has gone for the Russians of late, apparently.

Postscript I: Carpenter: … …. It truly is Turkey Lovers Day, there being lots of them out there to celebrate….

Postscript II: Lunar: … …. ‘So Trump is dwelling on the matter of Iran, is he? More than a bit of me wonders if all this is not a repeat of the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. Remember that one? Barely a peep in the news about the IDF killing 50 people at a food facility in Gaza.’ … …. And then, following upon some speculation to do with Netanyahu: … …. ‘Well maybe he will [brings us all down], but he'll be sure to save his own skin and ultimately Trump will save it for him. Already Trump has gone quiet on the matter of Palestinian lives, the lives of those trying to get food for their families. [And} maybe America is the only friend Iran has. How's that for irony? The Gold was terrific and the hero is an old-fashioned man of principle. And the South London gal who is the detective daughter of an old-fashioned crook will steal your heart away. Gosh, 1985 feels like a time of innocence.’ … …. Followed by: … …. ‘I've been listening to a Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya, a contemporary (and lover) of Shostakovich who did the dirty on hm although she composed a gem, a sonata for piano and violin which I can swear has lifted a passage from him.’ … …. Followed by a link to the music that I presume I am to hear out. I have been listening to a lot of Nino Ricardo, master of the flamenco guitar, composer, too, and, if nothing else, as Lunar has it, there is a lot of music to stumble across….

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, and if you have to honk it is already too late … ….’My candidate (so far) for Self-Lampooning Absurdity of the Week is Israel's fiery denunciation of Iran for having so inhumanely bombed one [of] its hospitals. (See: Gaza healthcare infrastructure.) As for you having run out of words for what boots it these days, here’s [something Nietzschean]: … …. That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts. There is always a kind of contempt in the act of speaking… …. And that’s it from me, fella.’ … …. Hey, man, heavy.

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘I also put a book aside: Solzhenitsyn’s August, 1914, The Red Wheel. Summer? Encroaching indifference? I’ve no reason to spite the book. I’d been warming to it. Isn’t everything online supposed to smack of enthusiasm? Could be I’m letting the team down. Could be the goat ate my homework. So then, hello from Percival. You’re going to get heat-bombed. We still need sweaters here on the island. What’s the upshot? Requiem, eh? Could be I need my war paint on.’

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. ‘Going to get all stuffy on you, for lack of me not having anything worthwhile to say. From Statius, who some may recognize as a silver-tongued devil from the so-called Roman Silver Age: … …. Allow time and moderate delay; haste manages all things badly unless we’re talking Trump and his vaybted two week-long decision-making process . … …. Well, what did Statius know? But there, will that do you? I’m wearing my sun hat in the garden. I rather think I’m trying to look a part.'

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla:… …. ‘The thing is, I could’ve sworn I had an epiphany, you know, one of those things. I was sitting idle on the living room couch (which I hardly ever do). I was staring out the window, in my field of vision a church spire and the high crowns of a line of maples (like green thunderheads) and there were some sparrows. The words ‘hollow men’ came to mind from out of nowhere, I kid you not. Had I read Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” in my girlhood? Can’t recall. As when even sin lacks pizazz… I mumbled the words to myself. Of a sudden, I saw the president and his minions. Some women are hollow, too, in the worst way, and I thought I’d seen just how hollow hollow can be, but it passed, this brain fever of sorts, and I’m back at it – cupcakes in the oven, French horn on the kitchen table, and I’m just a little embarrassed.’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘Sitting in a café. Orchestrated pop streaming from somewhere. AC humming, as if with a full belly. On a ledge various fruits and jars of jelly. I wonder if the watermelon is ornamental. Traffic passes in the street. (All this by way of the fact that I, too, have nothing to say, and I wouldn’t risk saying sweet fuck all.) Any number of podcasts have let me in on what’s afoot in the world, some sense in the patter, and the sound of grinding axes. So I sit here, and, as ever, I may know more than I think I know, and I may know a whole lot less. Is there a principle, maybe two, to apply to this state of affairs? If so, you won’t find it in Deuteronomy. I hope this finds you well. Someone here has been dialing Tehran long-distance repeatedly. Finally gets a response. A worried response. A friend of mine not so long ago bought a house in Tel Aviv. Regrets it now. Suddenly, France looks good. Tacitus was a Silver Age Roman author as well, in addition to Statius, and a bunch of others, and I’m having Juvenal and Martial crash the party. Don’t know why. Must I have a reason?’

June 13, 2025: Someone wrote me these words: ‘This wretched time’. I should thank him for clearing things up. I have not had a clue, this time around, as to what to say, write, post, dictate, declare, asseverate; what to bear witness to; what to aver, avow, signify, point out; what to whisper, trumpet, plead, go all coyly logical on, dish out, as Bob’s still yer damn uncle and so’s yo mama. There in the City of Angels, for starters. And, overnight, I-country on I-country action… Plus all that culture war stuff emanating from the Kennedy Center, the articulations a sow in heat. The Chairman would get all Mao, all cheesily Socratic on us and toss bon mots around like they were rose petals, take that, you blue state sybarites. Gaza radioactive… And then, what is this? No-glory Ichabod Crane (saddle sore) on a winded horse. (I had only closed my eyes for a moment to rest them, and Washington Irving’s anti-hero showed up, as if pulled out of childhood’s hat) I do, no doubt, misremember the tale, due to some supernatural cause or other. The passage of time? Nonetheless, on offer: the (metaphorical) state of the union. … …. “But how do you come to be at a party of this size?” Gilberte asked me. “To find you at a great slaughter of the innocents like this doesn’t at all fit in with my picture of you. In fact, I should have expected to see you anywhere rather than at one of my aunt’s kettle-drums, because of course she is my aunt, for having become Mme de Saint-Loup”… ….and so forth and so on &c. … …. “but I don’t think one is doing her an injustice, do you, if one says that she scarcely belongs to the aristocracy of the mind.” … …. And to whom else might these words pertain? (But, from The Past Recaptured, Marcel Proust.) Well, it is my intention to keep this post short, lest in the reading of it a reader, in addition to saddle sore, contract saddle burn.

Postscript I: Carpenter … …. And it is, in fact, National Golf Cart Day. Source of another saddle malady: saddle bum.

Postscript II: From Lunar, discombobulations and typos such as: … …. ‘Sister morphine. All's hell but at least hell, as Dante well know [knew], has its degrees. … …. I feel that if I werre to look at mysekf I'll see fractured bone coming through torn flesh and then I look and see nothing.’ … …. The man has got a case of hip disorder, back disorder, and, who knows, brain disorder, but he has always made sense to me… give or take.

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you see a military parade bearing down on your fair city:… …. ‘Spent the morning appalled by You-Know-Who & Vast Co which is to say, [what was to come, was] vividly obvious on election night. I figure we hit the foothills in November. [???] The sinister now in action was[is?] merely a matter of waiting, no preceding doubts involved [.] Good grief. "Democrats have braced for months for the possibility that President Trump would seek to deploy U.S. troops on American soil. PRIVATELY [Drake caps], they have acknowledged that such a move, absent the state’s agreement, would have profound implications." What the fuck good are privately uttered worries about a dictator's hammer coming down? Stalinist America, home of reigning [raging] fictions: "Trump thanked the National Guard for a 'job well done' on social media" — NBC News, four hours ago. But, the network continued, there's been not one appearance of National Guard troops in LA.’ … …. And so forth and so on &c. … …. ‘All his bullshit and eagerness for blood are straight out of The Authoritarian's Handbook, first edition. [And here’s a quote for you, forgive us for piling on]: "In general, I think technological solutions to human problems are severely underrated. Progressive writers love to declare that 'tech won’t save us', and decry the vile tech-bros who think a magic venture-funded gadget can overcome the eternal foibles of human nature. Instead, what most writers think we need are social solutions — we need to restructure our institutions, our politics, our mores, and our culture in order to balance out, or perhaps to better accommodate, our timeless flaws. … … This approach has occasional successes, but in general I think it fails. In the Covid pandemic, for example, social solutions — social distancing, lockdowns, universal masking — weren’t valueless, but they ended up being a lot less important than vaccines, Paxlovid, dexamethasone, and other technological solutions. Society failed us, and tech saved us." … …. Sibum: … …. ‘Damn. You mean I’ve only to push a button and T and the plutocrats will be gone? Why didn't I think of that?’… …. Drake: … …. ‘Yep, you nailed it.’

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘I don’t know that I’ve had that much to say lately. Partly cloudy here on the island, but with a chance of rotten eggs, depending on your politics. I read somewhere, have now forgotten where, that in Columbia they’ve dug up some 10,000 year old bones the DNA of which has no relation to any other DNA in the New World, which would include us, I suppose. Food for one’s pipe to smoke. Just reread The Blue Flower for the third time. Holds up well. Last night watched the film version of The Caretaker, 1966. Donald Pleasance, Robert Shaw, Alan Bates. Oddly, dourly, delightful. Percival (he just now masticating an old sock) says hello. If you’re sensing I’m in a somewhat expansive mood, your “sensing” would be on point: someone was foolish enough to accept a short story of mine…’ … …. Congratulations then. Are you buying?

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. ‘You’ve misunderstood “cognate function”. Has nothing to do with your cognitive abilities. Rookie mistake, you sod. Has to do with missing links of a linguistic nature, the mother of the mother of all origins of a word. Never mind. I am in a surly mood.’

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … ….’Cruise missiles zipping about or not, I’ve got cupcakes in the oven, my French horn teasing out a measure or two of a Beethoven bagatelle, “Für Elise”, no less. My upswing is on the upswing. (Could be I’m manic. Always a possibility.) So, as it’s not yet ten of the clock in the morning to you, I’ll not do politics. Be that as it may, I see you’ve nothing new to say on William Makepeace Thackeray’s Barry Lyndon and military mutiny and living high off the hog, laughing all the way to the bank with winning cards, and all your enemies are paper tigers. Coffee brew shop around the corner was firebombed the other day. A mild case from the looks of it. Insurance? Mafia? Graduation prank? Were some beans unusually potent? Think I’ll give up art for The Feast of Mother Mary of God. May you, oh, I don’t know, fly up something or other’s nose…’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘Well, I did watch that CNN broadcast of Good Night and Good Luck, stage play version all George Clooney-ish (could smell the Brylcreem all this way), and I’ve seen worse. I’d go so far as to say it got across the menace in the current moment, never mind Edward R Murrow and Nazis and one’s godawful sex life. Or great sex life, for that matter, as the water cooler klatch-chat might testify to. But great theatre? I don’t know. There’s been a spate of Christopher Isherwood on the TV screen of late, by design or by chance, I can’t say. Do you pay these sorts of things any mind, or am I rattling my chains on my ownsome?’ … …. Well sir, are you?

June 2, 2025: Do remarkable people have remarkable deaths? Does the one necessarily follow the other, in keeping with whatever “remarkable” is or is not. (For “remarkable”, I have, at this very moment, some nifty guitaring in mind, composition by Antonio Lauro: “Seis por derecho”. But then someone writes to tell me that the guitaring has nothing on the drumming of Buddy Rich. What, I ask, do drums have to do with the guitaring’s catchy beat?) At any rate, it seems to me Schubert was pretty miserable in his last hours (depression, late-stage syphilis and mercury, and no wonder Schubert was down in the mouth). Lord Byron was perhaps thinking he had done good for the cause of the Greeks, even if he had not been the most “disappointed author” in the sweepstakes of literary failure, a Romantical, cult-y thing as weighed on the minds of Keats and Shelley, among others. Moving on…

I have been plowing through Proust in bits and pieces, fits and starts, for a long while now, and often in tandem with other books. (At the moment, I am also making my way through Thackeray’s The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, the events of which unfold against the backdrop of The Seven Years War, the “first world war” so-called.) Now and then Proust expatiates on “war”, as he does in The Past Recaptured, citing Robert de Sainte-Loup of the fabled Guermantes bloodline. (Proust has it that he was killed in combat.) Sainte-Loup’s contribution to military science? That war is not a scientific enterprise, not even “strategic”; it is more like a love (or a hate) affair in which anything can happen, all the untoward stuff, no matter the software or the plan. So whither AI and the next round of invincibility?

After a two week hiatus from Proust’s cinderblock prose, I opened The Past Recaptured and the first paragraph I encountered was an homage of sorts to an old courtesan. She is just taking her leave of a party at the home of Prince Guermantes. (She has been incidental to the narrative, but never mind.) She happens to recognize Marcel – Proust’s proxy in the course of the seven-volume opus. It has been many years since they last saw one another. She squeezes his hand and says something to the effect that “they must get together some time”, and then she is gone, “galloping to her death”. Nonetheless, here is a woman who seems to be completely herself, for who knows what reasons. She has no desire to work up a fuss over every little thing or otherwise, inconvenience people. In a time like ours, one whose tenor is fascist in all but name, jackboot limping along, prosthetic device hitching a ride, she might not run a flag up a pole, but she might well say: ‘Et la mère aussi.’ Perhaps it was Proust’s way of saying he had limited patience for “drama queens”, although he seemed to have a lot of forbearance for the antics of M de Charlus. Drama Queen-in-Chief and his drama queen cabinet – picture them working out their kinks in Jupien’s brothel cum physical fitness centre. But anyway… …. ‘There is one aspect of war,’ I continued, ‘which I think Robert was beginning to comprehend: war is human, it is something that is lived like a love or a hatred and could be told like the story of a novel, and consequently, if anyone goes about repeating that strategy is a science, it won’t help in the least to understand war…’… …. ‘You got that right, brother,’ so I think I can hear a grunt or low-echelon officer up against it saying. And the nub of what was just quoted above would hardly be news, I should imagine, in any war college, but now that Trump has his dibs on everything, even West Point….

William Makepeace Thackeray, from what I have read so far, was not one to glorify the military, let alone war, the army an interlocking series of protection rackets (as my father, a lifer in the army) understood it, and whose respect for officers was only for show. He had managed too many officer’s clubs, seen too many officers at their finest in times of crisis, face down on their tables…. Otherwise, Thackeray’s Barry Lyndon represents what has been one of the most enduring aspects of human history up until now, that of a young man trying to make his way in the world, come what may. Morality has nothing to do with his progress, as he very often cannot afford it. But surprisingly, sentimental outlooks on life do, as may be vouchsafed by police procedural portraits of gangsters who have a thing about kittens or brotherly loyalty…. Thackeray, in his book, is often on about “bank of faro” or “faro bank”, seeing as his protagonist is a gambler, among other things, who made a living betting on cards. And in the writing, the “faro bank” has some resonance as a metaphor for life and its chances, and, or, for corruption at high levels, Oval Office levels, perhaps, for all that it often seems like 52 Card Pick-up is what obtains there during sessions with foreign leaders and members of the press. At the moment, I am admiring, in my local, some begonias in a flowerbox. They are of a shade of orange that does not cause one to think of candy or aerodynamic coifs. How does something this delicate make do in a world indifferent to quiet, un-showy splendour? Perhaps they are parliamentary. Man proposes; flowers shrug.

Postscript I: Carpenter:… …. Ah, it is National Heimlich Maneuver Day down there, have a go at that bucket of chicken, cram it down….

Postscript II: Lunar: … …. ‘What in the hell has got into the heads of people over there? (Poland.) Starmer has come out and said it, that we must prepare for war with Russia. I can't see it myself, given how Ukraine alone has drained Putin's resources. 22 new settlements on the West Bank. Please Lord, don't make me antisemitic. Have you read I.F. Stone's The Trial of Socrates? What I've read thus far is rather fine. Stone might be Carpenter's predecessor, both of them guided by an innate sense of justice. Socrates is probably not quite what Plato made of him. What I like about Stone is that he describes, as I have done, Plato as a dramatist. Well, there is nothing new in that observation but it is nice to have it reinforced, that sense of being there. 22. 22. 22. [Twice eleven and everything nice.]… …. Yesterday, we walked a little and near Tintern Abbey came upon an abandoned, roofless, church, covered with vine and other plant growth, the difference between it and Tintern being that in the first instance one "comes upon" as opposed to "arrives at", two distinctly different forms of experience. Was Tintern a tourist site when Wordsworth went there or did he come upon it. Did he buy a Tintern T-shirt? I continue with Stone's Socrates and I wonder if the author's animus against Socrates is not a bit slanted otherwise why would people journey from [all] over Greece to see such a pain in the arse [?] One thing I never realised is that when we speak of the hoi polloi we are speaking ancient Greek although back then it simply meant "the many" without the negative connotations. So put that in your pipe and smoke it.’ … …. No need. I have known about this hoi polloi business since grade school. Used to give speeches to my immediate peers about democratic values in General Assembly. I was an insufferable twit. Then I went and read I.F. Stone. Difficult to say if it cured me of the state of being an insufferable twit.

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you see seed oils come to pillage the town: … …. ‘Like you, it's been years since I've read Stone, with the exception of five minutes ago. There's an online archive of his newsletters; I was curious if he published one on the date of my birth (10 July '54) chiefly to see what he thought of the world I'd been born into. No July 10th edition but one on the 5th [………] … He wrote about a recent talk Churchill had given, reporters in attendance, among whom was "the cream of the press corps," defined further as the "leading trained seals." That kind of writing you just can't beat, Menckenesque in style. And that's about all I had retained from his work, other, of course, than his indefatigable muckraking. … …. just thinking [about] Dems' message floundering when it's a fucking mile high and rearing on its corrupt, dictatorial hind legs. "Oh but we might insult too many of last year's Trump voters." Yes, unforgivable would be that, but not neglecting a few mentions here and there about America swirling in Trump's tyrannical toilet.’

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘Count me out this time around. But I’ll never eat pork again. Nor shall Percival the goat. (He has nothing to do, by the way, with mountain goats. They are unique to western America. Just so you know.) And I think I’ll no longer do politics before five. The five of the clock that’s one hour past four in the afternoon teatime. And then, only for a time long enough that gets me quickly through the headlines. I mean, they tell me that we’re all going to die, what else do I need to concern myself with? I’ve already got literary failure locked down.’

Postscript V: Rutilius:… …. ‘We understand your reluctance to post this time around, given your poor performance in your last post. What was that, that “tyranny of the image” bit you were on about? Were we supposed to have in mind soup tins? A la that frog prince Warhol? Kiss him and he blooms? As for pigs, New World pigs, Desoto brought thirteen of the creatures with him to Florida as a hedge against hunger while he looked for his gold. Pig numbers exploded. Soon enough, the indigenous people (albeit they were in a parlous condition on account of poxes delivered upon them by the whites), were stealing pigs from the settlers. I don’t know that they regarded the pig as a curse, but if you say so… The Seven Years’ War in these parts? You know there was a battle called The Battle of Prague (one of several battles called The Battle of Prague throughout history, now that I think on it), just that this one was so bloody you can speak of it in the same breath as Antietam. I was going to concern myself with Madoc, a Welshman who may’ve preceded Columbus to the Americas by a fair margin, but you derailed my intent. Let’s see, I’ll focus my attentions on Maria Theresa as one of the last Holy Roman Empire rulers. No doubt, as rewarding an experience as imagining the Marcomanni running about in these parts, hairy gents, a leader of which, at one point in their history – Maroboduus – had been educated in Rome. Could well have recited Horace as he engaged the “empire” in hostilities.’

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. ‘The history of the pig in the New World, so far as I understand it, is at follows: Columbus introduced the animal to the Bahamas. Pig numbers exploded. Indigenous people would come to see the animal as a curse, unlike as it was with the horse which they saw as a blgly boon. (Pigs ate their crops.) No matter how you play with the scales, pigs and the poxes outdid, by far, any good the Europeans off-loaded onto the continents. That’s all I know about the pig. Otherwise, cupcakes in the oven, French horn on the couch where I left it, the notes of a simple tune dying in the air as we speak, a tune so simple I’m embarrassed to tell you its name. I’ve nothing to say for my reading of Proust. If you want to make a fool of yourself, that’s on you. Politics? As one of your friends attested in the post previous, I too don’t do politics before ten in the morning, but afterwards, cheap shots come fast and furious. We are, after all, going to die. I should say, I guess, that I’m so grateful to be apprised of this fact by such a thoughtful American senator, although I wonder if she is, indeed, distinguishable from any of her Congressional counterparts in the House of Representatives, snowflake territory? I sense I’m wearing out my welcome. Over and out. Until next time.’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘I didn’t know that the first pig in the New World was new to the place. I know that horses brought over by the Spanish, once they went native, evolved into mustangs, got as far as Canada. Had a friend who, in Utah, used to walk out into the desert at night, sit on some mesquite log and smoke, and the little horses would gather around him and nuzzle him. Looking for treats? It broke his heart when the herd was rounded up and shipped to a glue factory, as if nothing wild could be left alone to lurk about in the shadows. He never could watch The Misfits which, as you may remember, if you ever saw the thing, had to do with some ragtag cowboys trying to make a few ragtag bucks rounding up a ragtag herd of wild horses. What the hell do you want with The Seven Years War? It was a busy little thing, crowded field. Spilled over into the Americas, but you know that. I think on it every time I go downriver to Quebec.’