July 2026

July 16-18, 2026: A friend wrote me to say: “What’s real anymore? The world gets creepier.” He was not concerned with literary polish. Just the facts, ma’am. I told him I had recently been the recipient of a come-on, one AI generated. It was droll praise for my late, lamented novel whose characters dread the America shaping up under the tutelages of Clinton, Bush-Cheney, the Trump to come (and Biden), Obama the stuff of some weird interlude, as if all calamity-politics and no play make Jack and Jill pretty dull stuff. It seems I would have to pay a finder’s fee for the thumbs up my book apparently rated, and a reader’s club would knock themselves out with it, if such a club exists all unbridled enthusiasm for sprawling narrative. Speaking of which gusto, I will here quote the estimable Carpenter to this end, and this end has its own relations with disgust and dread and whatnot, bar none:

I spent the morning watching the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Kafkaesque horror and theatre of the unspeakably absurd. The result: I’m spent. There, before the panel, a caporegime for the world’s most notorious mobster auditioned as permanent head of all federal law enforcement — a surreal abomination akin to seriously entertaining the posthumous bestowment of a Medal of Freedom on Heinrich Himmler. Watching today’s video feed was entrancing only in the out-of-body sense of also watching my American soul float away somewhere in exile; perchance to dream but outwait this once-unimaginable nightmare of organized crime’s exhaustive national infestation.

Feeling the need to get clear of the regime’s unrelenting stench, I have also been flailing about. Ought I pull the plug at last? No more news? No more sights and sounds of a fascist skid? But would, say, the wilds of Borneo cut it, I a city-slicker? Perhaps on this account I was predisposed to appreciate Laurens van der Post’s “The Lost World of the Kalahari” (1956), the opening salvos of which, the other day, knocked me for a loop.

So, as I read the introductory words, it was as if the words would settle an argument, one I might have long been having unconsciously. Is there a life in which questions with respect to its meaning do not embarrass the inquirer, especially a westerner in no danger of going hungry? We are happy to be entertained all the while carrying on mindless. We are not all that dismayed to be engaged with nothing but self-gratification. It is almost a state of grace – the free-fall limbos of our lives in which we have no real connection to the earth. Well, I am no tree-hugger, am not likely, in my dotage, to become so. Sometimes I do not feel comfortable in my environment until I see cigarette butts at the curbside. Even so, trees have always “haunted” me (how is that for mawkish?), and I have always had in my gut the sense that I am not lord and master over and all sundry and was never meant to be. (But every time I watch a trashy flick, it is as if I might just as well have played what truly matters false.) That things do disappear and will not return – flora, fauna, human beings. That often enough what is unworthy (whose only aim is to consume and wreck things without any blow-back inconveniencing them) replaces what had been vital and indeed, irreplaceable… The Bushmen then. Their relations with the animals, their deep knowledge of everything in their world – what sickens, what heals, their out-of-body dances and their music and their painting… Otherwise, in contradistinction to “The Triumph of Good Government”, we have ourselves some “Triumph of Mowing the Lawn”, and if you do not ken the epithet, whatever you have been doing, you have not been paying much, if any, attention. And what do we civilized sorts have to show for our superior prowess? “Miss Congeniality”? With which, in addition to Truth Socials, we stuff our time capsules…

So Van der Post goes on to say that the blacks and whites of South Africa (the Hottentot, the Afrikaner) busied themselves, expunging the Bushmen from the land. It was slaughter pure and simple, and it was the first I had heard of it. (Though, God knows I have heard plenty, having less and less reason to high-five the human race for its finer sentiments. I am happy to defend the canon and other high points of literature against detractors, but, to be sure, there are ifs and ands and howsomevers….) The Bushmen, possessing no sense of property, therefore were not human. Clearly, they could be killed without the slightest show of remorse or regret for the consequences. What remained of such paleolithic riffraff were driven into the Kalahari, desert region, and that was to be an end on it.

Van der Post, for all his sympathy for the “Pan-like” people, seems to have been an unwitting contributor to their demise. He was, perhaps unsurprisingly, an object of controversy. Accused of shameless self-aggrandizement, of having had sex with a 14-year-old, of impregnating the girl, and being cozy with Carl Jung and his set, I had a brief wonder as to Van der Post’s mental soundness. And yet, why would he misrepresent the Bushmen he so evidently admired? He claims for them skills and talents no westerner could touch or even now muster in kind, no matter which devil he bargains with. In any case, I have only just begun the book. And, most likely, what is in it so far as speaks to “a wiping out” (as if by way of an errant asteroid) is connected somehow to much in these parts that is disappearing before my, what else, very eyes. Not the least of which is democracy in the upper half of a New World badly frayed around the edges. And no matter how tenuous it has been at times, no matter how much it has gotten to be a dog’s breakfast, the democratic temperament is a miserable ghost of itself.

The movie “The Odyssey’ has received a lot of media attention of late. I will beg off going into the reasons why, the culture wars in need of no fuel from me. I might mention that the poem of the same name is enjoying a revival. Which is well and good. A trailer I have seen for the movie has in it a shot of Polyphemus (the one-eyed Cyclops), and my first thought was, as the image filled my screen: “Right, here’s Trump snacking on everything”. Will anyone say otherwise?

The epical poem in question may perhaps have in it the very last vestiges of a Stone Age cosmology. Everything had a voice – every stone, tree, animal, and there was nothing New-Agey about it as would reduce every stone, tree and animal to a stuffed toy panda. Then again, from a certain point of view, with respect to the poem, the loose ends of which were settled, as it were, by Homer “the editor” and further codified in the reign of Peisistratus (6th century B.C.) we might be talking the beginning of the end. As per the 16th century artisan Cellini who “wrote his autobiography himself”: Thus it will not serve us in this world to be merely men of honesty and talent. And these are the words of a blowhard, a braggart who was only out for old Number One though he did manage to serve art in some capacity.

Postscript I: On this day in 1941 “New York Yankee slugger Joe DiMaggio extends his hitting streak to 56 games, a Major League record that still stands. The next day he goes 0 for 4.” Carpenter? He claims not to have even an iota of athleticism anywhere in or near his person, but he can pull off – what? 20 strokes per second on the drums? And on the seventh day, he rests. What? Not even the smattering of a chuckle? Best we get on with it and so:

Postscript II: Lunar: … …. ‘I'll have a verdict for you tomorrow as “The Odyssey” is showing locally. Will it be more spectacle than substance is what I think everybody who knows the, uh, original, will be asking themselves. My guess is that it will not bear too much scrutiny but that it will feed the eyes.’ … …. Alright then. Cornucopia and popcorn, and for the really hard up, Raisinets. And now: … …. ‘The Maine killing has sent me into a rage. America can go, if it hasn't already done so, to hell. The brain can barely hold it, the idea of immigration officers armed to kill. I really do feel it is time for insurrection. The whole country ought to be in the streets NOW. Keats talks about living within contrarieties: I rage while listening to one of the most beautiful and mysterious of compositions, Ernest Bloch's "Suite for Viola & Piano" (1919) which I can't recommend highly enough. [ ] I have just learned that close to 3000 people died during the heatwave, the same figure as in France. There is nothing like proofs to inoculate one against any affection for what one has [written]. Well, the footie. There were loud screams and cars honking on King Street last night. Argentina, though, are we any match for them?’

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you come across checkpoints, items warranting scrutiny: alcohol concentrations, contraband, illegals, election fraud, testosterone levels. But give it up for Drake the Impaler: … …. ‘I can think of nothing irrational about how you feel; it seems reasonable. I've never known advice to help anyone in your state, so of course I'll offer some. Have you thought about neither watching nor reading any news for a few days? Its bombardment can be intolerable. I "get it." I suppose I cope by comparison, today and yesterday. A Palestinian or Ukrainian or South Sudanese would see me as living in a paradise. A couple months ago I read Antony Beevor's massive history of the Battle of Stalingrad. I'm now reading Vasily Grossman's even larger Life and Fate. He lived through the city's nonfictional hell. One critic called it the greatest Russian literature of the 20th century, and I agree. It's a work of stunning originality, even though structured much like Tolstoy's War and Peace. Anyway, I eat a couple times a day, my roof isn't caving in from mortar fire or artillery shelling, and no one is shooting at me or hauling my daughter off to a Siberian labor camp.’ … …. I guess the man is feeling indefatigable.

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘Percival says hi, maa-maa, and I’ve got my head down, what with all the Odyssey chatter. For years I’ve walked this island’s beaches, putting myself in mind of Ithaca, Scheria, Ogygia, Thrinacia, Aeaea, Telepylos, Ismarus, Aeolia, not to mention the islands of the Cyclops, the Lotus Eaters, the land of the Dead, of the Sirens, and Scylla and Charybdis round off a rough sum. And I wouldn’t even be trying very hard to acquire the requisite states of mind as would see me knock-kneed in those pictures, and among other things, I’d happily be the sex slave of Calypso. There are worse fates. Enough. I sense a pratfall in the works. Been feeling a tad shaky ever since I failed to get through the Solzhenitsyn.’

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. ‘Don’t know what to tell you about the Cave of the Nymphs. Allegory, say what? That Odysseus must sleep a while there in a dream state. That his soul requires tweaking before he can return to Penelope and “his world” in good faith, and do what he needs to do? The heat is with us again in Presov. I don’t give Trump as much thought as you seem to, if thought is what it is, and not a rash. Although this business with the Hegsethian and the male sex hormone is a thigh-slapper.’

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … ….’It certainly was reflexive on my part. The news of L Graham’s death and then the immediate onrush of the name Putin into the breach. And none of my Polish cousins beat me to it. Although I did need one to tell me that Graham (Lindsey) had just visited Ukraine and was making anti-Russian noises. Otherwise, cup cakes in the oven, French horn on the kitchen table along with some sheet music to the effect of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”. In light of your Kalahari Bushmen and their dancing about so as to pass between worlds, was Mick Jagger shamanistic? I hear the much-aged version of himself looked much displeased with the Argentine-England outcome. I’ve no intention of seeing the Odyssey flick. I’ve plenty of vista in my little cave.’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘Well, I watched something, and it was in no way related to the Odyssey. “Stigmata” (1999, though I’ve gotten to it years after the fact). What was classified as supernatural horror, as if there’s any other kind, struck me, in a weak moment, as allegorical. And there’s one born every minute. The movie was damn near cheesy, though not quite. It was, however, Hollywood just the same. I heard out the director’s commentary. He’d been serious, he said, wanting to put across not so much horror as a religious experience, inasmuch as physically undergoing the stigmata may constitute a religious experience. What can I say? It satisfied, briefly, my hunger for something untainted by T’s corruption and the world he’s making, one bereft of any air fit to breathe. All us canaries are breathing the thinnest of fumes, oxygen stripped down to the regime’s exhalations. Maybe I should put myself behind the wheel of a stock car and breathe a better grade of gas. (Stock cars were the invention of bootleggers who’d outrun government agents. And then it got to be a thrill. Aren’t the streets getting their fare share of “thrill”, what with the noble, questing ICE men?) Haven’t read a thing in days. Leaning toward a history of the Peloponnese.’

July 5-7, 2026: Someone said: two scorpions in a jar, or Trump and Netanyahu. Seems apt. Meanwhile, I continue with Cellini’s (16th century) autobiography. He wrote the thing himself, or so I say jokingly with friends. How else am I supposed to commune with my pals, some of whom have grief very much on their hands: the loss of spouses, the loss of amigos to the horrors of age? Cellini said: “…. Fortune always comes upon us in new ways, quite unforeseen by the imagination.” How else am I to think of biological fate and the upcoming mid-terms?

Cellini had a deal of trouble with the king of France who had the artisan in his service. This put me in mind of Trump’s staff, most of whom, as gossip and leaks have it, suffer from episodic whiplash. A number of commentators have commented on the Lincoln reflecting pool in the same breath as their mentions of Narcissus and his puddle as gave the gazer his sweet self-regard. Two-thirds of the way through Cellini’s memoir and he is still a braggart and something of a wanker, whereupon,
ten years of You-Know-Who, and braggadocio is the new state religion.

Well, some say religion is our physiology, or that it is the other way around. Politics (in a pre-history so far back we may have heard the echoes of dinosaurs) may have had its origin in who gets to control altered states of consciousness. How many ways can I allude to the mid-terms? So when did Hitler become all-powerful? Apparently, the Enabling Act, March 1933, granted him emergency powers that allowed him to bypass parliament. Within a year, what with other maneuvers, winks and nods and dodges, and he was absolute dictator. Trump now has the power to fire everybody from everything, and from government too, your dog included. Dark gallows humour and glitz as per 1930’s Berlin cabarets? I do not see much of that on the celebrity circuit, do you?

Postscript I: What happened on this day in 1947? It began with some New Mexico rancher who, having earlier in June, come across debris on the ground, reporting his find days later, set off a chain reaction. July 7th, and the military declared that bits of a “flying saucer” had been recovered, indeed. Which led to an almost immediate retraction on the part of the same military, different echelon perhaps. Which led to, well, a field day for conspiracy theories into our perpetuity. But we here have in mind a contested red card which speaks to Trump pulling strings with respect to the World Cup football matches, politics (are we aghast?) alive and well in sports. Which in turn leads to Carpenter painting a painting entitled “Trumpism”, all-black canvas as has nothing to do with the All-Blacks rugby team of New Zealand. (In rugby there are no “own goals”, an example of sport, not art, defying life….)

Postscript II: Speaking of sport and footie, Lunar: … …. ‘I've gotta say that was one epic game. Couldn't sleep for the heat and so started watching it at two in the morning. Now should Starmer do as Trump did and phone FIFA to reverse the red card that was given to one of the English players? That was utterly bizarre, FIFA giving in to Trump. I mean politics is one thing, football another. But then it was FIFA who gave Trump a peace prize. Yesterday we went over to see the girls who were hosting a cousin whose father has just died, a fellow called J who was in the Canadian Army in Kandahar, and I was unexpectedly and mightily impressed with him. He spoke about how the experience humbled him and exposed the arrogance of the "west" in assuming superiority. The only true soldier is a soldier who is for peace. Compare him to the scumbag Hegseth and his gloating. Where is west on the map if you are in the east? Which way does one turn one's head.’ … …. I expect that is one of those existential questions per se… …. Lunar, in any case: … …. ‘Watching the Trump 250 speech and well, yes, bullshittery. And no, it was not America that brought down the Berlin War.’ … …. And that is an end on it. But in the event, I do not get the memo, this: … …. ‘Putin has dropped heavy hints, by the way, of a military incursion into Poland presumably to test NATO's willingness to resist. That would be a nightmare scenario that will put Ukraine in the shade. As we all know there is no such thing as a reliable relationship with Trump as Starmer has learned to his and the country's cost… and… …. I can scarcely believe my eyes: Starmer let Trump bully him into forcing the NHS to increase buying from American pharmaceutical companies by 25% which will in effect cripple the whole system. Where does the treachery end? It was agreed quietly, very quietly, in December. I had "felt" for Starmer but no more. Weakness can be more dangerous than strength. It is already being predicted this could result in a rise of 230,000 needless deaths. That news clip I saw last year with Trump dropping his papers and Starmer on his hands and knees picking them up, that said everything we need to know.’ … …. A bawdy scene out of “Fanny Hill”, mayhap? In the IT AIN’T OVER TIL THE FAT LADY SINGS DEPARTMENT, lastly this time around from Lunar: … …. ‘Not that one wishes this to be at the expense of the American team who had no say in the matter of Trump reversing the orbit of the earth around the sun, but there is something awfully sweet about Belgium's victory.’ … …. We are talking Belgium 4, the USA 1, and runaway black holes, and Trump’s hands on handball which should have rated a penalty kick at the very least.

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you see a bunch of humanoids having a smoke at the drug store corner, before they go and play a round of pickle ball, and you are going to be a tourist on Enceladus, tours of organic molecules in the wild on the agenda: … …. ‘You mentioned Lincoln. I've always thought that, oddly enough, it was likely fortunate for his legacy that he was assassinated when he was. Had he served out his second term, I think he would have clashed with the Radical Republicans — and they had the superior concept (in my view) of how Reconstruction should play out. Its death I've always considered the real low point in US history. Not the Civil War, for it was an act of redemption. The end of Reconstruction was a crass sellout that poisoned all socio-politics for ever after. Including today. You could even say it launched Trumpism. [Well, I do.]’ … …. I would be the last person to argue with Drake on that score.

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. It must’ve been one of those instances when a movie viewed late at night becomes one’s sleep, some sleepy-head voice in my snooze saying that, often enough, people born happy stay happy no matter what, and that some people can never catch a break, hence “unhappy”; but that, with most of us, it’s one day happy happy, and then three days of misery… Back from the city. Steered clear of World Cup crowds. Saw an old cabbie going by, his cab empty, the look on his face that of “vanity, all is vanity, could use a cigarette”, and I thought of you for some reason. Again, I think I might trash my novel, but then something either relentless in me or fatal, questions that urge. Percival, of course, could care less. Goats are sanguine with respect to most things, unless their digestive tracts veer off track. Apologies for the malapropist pun which indicates a declining intellect. Oh and, I was down on East Hastings and was reminded that the Only Seafoods (restaurant) has long since been out of business, the building no more. I mention it because I remember that dream you said you had, Trudeau (Pierre Elliot) addressing you from the place, the winos, the rubbies politely hearing the PM out, and you were getting the third degree as to what was expected of you in the civics sense.’

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. ‘Temperatures are down to 23 Celsius here in Presov. Faces of Trump minions that I’ve seen at random on this or that screen, they all have the unmistakable look (even the women have it) – the look that is smugness barely contained, hands caught in the cookie jar, but no foul declared, no harm, and in fact, they get to take the penalty kick, stutter-stepping, messing with the minds of the opposing goalies. Corruption is about winning, about drubbing one’s opponents with their own miscalculations, revenge tasting sweeter by the hour, and I wouldn’t want to be a mail-in ballot to save my life. Oh yes, we get the news here. Tibullus the poet: “Let other men gather bright gold to themselves and own many acres of well-ploughed soil, let endless worry trouble them, with enemies nearby.” I could wish much worse on various entities. Ditto, Persius the poet: "Retire within thyself, and thou will discover how small a stock is there." Trump might not have fazed Persius in the slightest, then again even the worst of the Caesars could speak in complete sentences….’

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. ‘Returned from the Townships. Ordinary summer endeavours with Polish cousins. Perogies unlimited. Otherwise, had the thought that I’ve seen this movie before: Democrats, counting eggs, count their hatchlings, and what do you know, said hatchlings are sickly, deformed, and pliable, answerable to the highest bidders. And what about the NDP, speaking of True North mediocrity? Otherwise, cupcakes in the oven. Have had a reunion with French horn, he half-hearted, not much interested in “This Sportin’ Life” which is a song about having had it with life. No longer impressed, if ever one was. Will I go see the new Odyssey flick and put up with the obnoxious ads on the humongous screen as batter the sensibilities and then you’re as soft as butter, prepared for the onslaught of the flick? Don’t know. Convince me.’ … …. If it even remotely has some connection with the sensibility of the poem…

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘Pessimisms in me running rampant. Like elephants having a hissy fit. See Elephant Walk (old flick with Elizabeth Taylor). It is to say I can see things turning out hunky-dory for the man, and he get his vengeance and his legacy and his billions, and the country yawns, when it’s not frenzied with impotence. Not saying this will happen but, you know how it is. You try to be thoughtful, and words like “enshittify” flood the zone, public discourse cordoned off so as to save itself from itself. I watched one of the Odyssey offerings the other day, the mini-series with Assante in it. The moment when he returns to Ithaca after all those years, and he’s tasting his cheese, and for a moment, heart, mind and soul are all of a piece and home, could be that was a profoundly moral moment. Then there were the false suitors to deal with. You betchum, Red Ryder: Trump as a false suitor. This was the light by which I viewed the goings-on. Taking back the world stolen from one. Poetry as the only true source of morality, pace Plato and the Ten Commandments, and Kant and all the rest of the gang. Even as poetry is a pack of lies, as Plato had it. Trump, of course, can turn the game around and a moral vision serve him. But then, you may recall, I said “false suitor” as serves no one and no thing but himself. Ah well, you had to have been there.’