July, 2025

July 26-27, 2025: The roots of the word morass are various. Dutch, Germanic, old French, proto-Indo-European. For what it’s worth. But when I came across it the other day while scouring a news site for something revelatory, the current political situation described as a “morass”, I thought the sense spot on, even as I might have made some cheek: all political situations are morasses, bogs full of slithery things. Whereupon my thoughts were superseded. By none other than the Comptroller of the Universe. She does not often resort to vulgar tirades, but she would prefer to “morass” the blunt impact of “shit-show”. She is a mid-west girl after all, not one to lollygag about with questions of word-choice. You either know what you mean to say, or you have no clue, so, at your convenience, make it happen or get off the convenience.

The other day I caught by chance the last scenes of Easy Rider. I have not clapped my eyes on this bit of cinema since it came out in the 69th year of the 20th century era, most of which was a fever dream. I watched Fonda and Hopper being blown off their choppers one after the other by a shotgun toting redneck. This was followed by an observation as made its way along a number of dusty halls in my brain. “Maybe this is all I’d ever needed to know, seeing as we seem to have come full circle in a matter of five plus decades.”

All that was missing was a techno-sado beat for the celebratory dancing, as when one party dances on the grave of that party’s reviled enemy. Wait, you can hear it now… orchestral swells of narcissistic pleasure moans, jerky gesticulations of Jesus-Loves-Me, my bad so much badder than yours as entitles me to…. to 99 bottles of beer on the wall? Fascism by way of disco and strobe and rave and the delirium tremens of SCOTUS? Is there anything to this? Perhaps I have been deluded all these years to think that anyone, let alone myself, could plumb the depths of the American soul or its swampy shallows, via a long shot like Proust (especially when the man was on about the Dreyfuss Affair), or, what the hell, Roith, DeLillo, or Gass, or Sherwood Anderson in a pinch, or Al Capp or Walt Kelly and the denizens of Okefenokee Swamp…. What was the quote? We have met the asshole and he are us?

All this said, I do not get up to much with the soul-searches, anyway. Mornings, and I read my news sites. I read a few passages from whatever books I have on the go. I write. I drop by my local coffee shop, and for no reason in particular, marvel at the marigolds on display. (This is not code for some societal subgroup). I am astounded by the richness of experience to be had in my poor man’s super mart, the inflationary price of blueberries notwithstanding. Which cashier will return my smile? Which one will remind me that she does not do the job as an avocation? I might visit Greece (better late than never) as I have never been to Mt Parnassus (situated in the Pindus Range). I may never go to Greece as I have been all over Italy, awed by the antiquities there, so much so, I pay attention to whatever ruins come to light in Peru, say, or Guatemala. I remind myself that the sparrow I have my eye on evolved from a theropod; that it adapted itself to human environments (to wit, the first grain-fed city populations), clever bird. And that William Blake was right about some things (he one more human trying, without much success, to adapt to humankind).

Well, Blake or no Blake, in my teen years, the two authors who got to me most were Thomas Mann and his Buddenbrooks, and James Baldwin and his The Fire Next Time along with some verses of Garcia Lorca. To what end? So that I might be a clever, plucky bird? The driest of the dry film comedies ever has to be Kind Hearts and Coronets (this title inspired by a line from a Tennyson poem circa the 1840s, poem about a cold, upper-crust bitch). The movie features Alec Guinness inasmuch as he has eight roles to play, the barest hint of a mannerism speaking volumes to the characters being, as it were, played, even in drag. What put me off Blake? Ginsberg and Orlovsky doing him up at some reading of the man’s verses and songs. They turned the poet into glass beads and incense, into Victorian lace and Ottomans of a logging camp’s afternoon, a pale northern sun in a pale northern sky, Canada, indeed… I would read of the Nazis, of Stalin and Mussolini; I would read journalism to do with Pinochet and Mao and the Assads, and the Orbans to come, as well as the Trumps and Netanyahus, my brain cells hot to trot, but now, they – those cells – amount to no more than a dim gleam, the worst having been rendered as another day at the office, and there might be a market crash, but then some feel-good obscenity might sweep the Oscars, if Paramount has anything to say about it, as it guts all content of free-ranging “bias”, the old liberal notion of fair play thrown back in its face, but with a twist of both-siderism, along with some “eat shit” salad dressing. CNN has noted a deepening crisis in Gaza. Remarkable powers of observation. Good eye, say what.

Postscript I: Are you serious? National Aunt and Uncle’s Day? Even so, Carpenter.

Postscript II: Lunar: Lunar has been ailing. Has not had much to say of late, but I will double-check. Perhaps there is a curse or three as devolves upon the after-effects of Brexit and the disembowelling of the National Health Service. Well then, encomium, curses set aside: … …. ‘The pain was so intense I went into A & E and despite the collapsing system, which is a pretty abstract notion in any case, I met with nothing but kindness - a Scottish lass who pushed me ahead of the queue, a wonderful Nigerian lady doctor who despite not being about to do much for me managed somehow for me to get an MRI in the next three weeks or so. That, too, was really something and then there was a cheeky and flirtatious Portuguese girl. I don't know what her ranking was, not quite a nurse, and who had a field day with me. I hoovered it all up, of course, B rolling her eyes. The visit to A & E would have been a waste were it not for the Nigerian, a Muslim, moving mountains for me. This morning the pain is still there but I got at least one wheel on the steam engine rolling. … …. This afternoon I've got the women's footie to look forward to, England versus Spain. And then ... and then …’ … …. Nice to hear Lunar gush for a change…

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, and there may be people about who do not feel they rate a pardon or a commutation or a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card, in which case, beware of confused folk at intersections and their spirit-broken lawyers: … …. ‘T is being dragged through his own filth every day, and when that starts chipping into maga's loyalty, he's losing. Most of maga is like Nixon's diehards even after the smoking gun appeared, but most of maga isn't most of the electorate. Now, off to eat something, since you asked, and thanks for the reminder. I tend to go astray with forgetfulness in all the filth.’

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘I saw a movie with a goat in it, last night. His was a cameo part. He’d eat the skirt of a female interloper. She had designs on the immediate property, would parlay it into a B&B. Percival says hello. Goats are mentioned 136 times in the bible, and a further 51 if you count “kids” as young goats. Goats have a bad rap in the New Testament, though in other spiritual spheres, they’re known for resourcefulness and resilience and such. What am I hearing, as in sensing? Seems to me what’s been a bad moon rising for some time has settled in for an extended stay, and no amount of Epstein files will jigger the lock on the fevered minds of the “base”. Elsewise, I don’t do politics before a civilized hour of a civilized day (or night), and the times are hilariously barbarous. It’s been a long while since anything interesting has turned up at the Recycling Depot by way of books. Solzhenitsyn? There is this, me reading of more cowardice and ineptitude on the part of the officer class. Otherwise, here’s a quote I rather like, to be put in play for when one is up against it. From August 1914, The Red Wheel: … …. “An officer must be brave. In the face of the enemy. In the face of his own superiors. And in the face of vodka. If he isn’t he’s no officer.” Variations of this dialogue have been heard at any corporate watercooler on the continent for the last century. What else was I going to say? It’s slipped my mind. Must’ve been a lie.’

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. ‘What I have to say is what Tacitus had to say once upon a time: “Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure.” And you think they don’t golf in Scotland? I hear the man is hated there, if not here, there and everywhere, and perhaps because I don’t have a smidgen of anything American in me, but because I like Copland’s “Appalachian Spring”, I’m tempted to say that the Americans are deserving of their lot, even if the rest of the globe’s folk aren’t. Sorry to be, at times, less than sympathetic. We have on our hands here what you might typify as a shit-show.’ Cloudy. Heavy rain in the forecast. I have developed doubts as to my life’s work. Pains me to say it. Zv#$ptfffh!!!…’

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. “I refer you to my French horn if you’re going to come at me with Copland. Otherwise, cupcakes are in the oven. G Maxwell? There are some creepy women out there. Instant skin-crawl. Your man Drake, in the course of the last go-round, was on about morality and how it shifts from culture to culture, one man’s morality another man’s license. So what’s a prude? What’s a monster? Where’s the unshakeable principle that might have universal accord? 10,000 years of the house sparrow eating starch-heavy grain, and one might think we’d know by now. I’m all for lust and the Dionysian correction to uptight Apollo, but at the cost of one’s centre of gravity? Man, we’ve gone way overboard with our intoxications, and has it produced great poetry, any real wisdom? Some songs, maybe, but not as many as you’d think. Poetry’s been out to sea for a long time now. A special breed of sadist writes it, but only a few motley masochists care to publish the gleanings. So it seems. So I’ve been told. Anyway, you know I don’t get out all that much. Tennyson is a little wrought for me, unrhymed Frost more to my liking. Good God, I’m losing it….’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘Have you gotten any further in The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon? You must be close to the point where the worst aspects of his character are going to start making people under his thumb miserable, in keeping with the Current Morass and its Jester-in-Chief, in keeping with the Present Day Geist as when my bad is badder than your bad, my bad being more excellent. Once I loved a woman who kept a goat. It’d gnaw at her recorder. Sheer spite. It had no inkling of Randy Savage. I haven’t read anything in weeks beyond a pizza menu, haven’t had a damn thought worth the mention, I’m just a dull boy getting on for the septuagenarian phase of my life. Lost interest in self-improvement, but I know there’s a soul, one that grins at the futility of the mediocre overcoming their mediocrity, me being one of them. Well, I know that there’s not not a soul as grins, as plays its cards close to the chest. The problem is, as ever, how to approach it without scaring it off? How treat with the thing? Hint: avoid discussions of the item. A woman on TV the other night (actually she was in a movie about a ghost-presence) said that the body has energy. Where does the energy go when the body dies? Can you hold your nose while balancing on your left foot? You’re lucky to have a Comptroller in your life. I loved a woman once who kept a parakeet. The bird had the run of the house. It shat all over the Collected Works of Carl Jung. Then it was we fell out of love.’

July 20, 2025: Felix culpa, eh? Or, as they say in the parlance: a positive may arise from a negative. But what is the likelihood of that in any immediate sense? The Trumpian enterprise has got the world snagged in its fetid pincers. It casually stings all sorts of worlds with its tail in between pressers, superheroes not helpful, too introspective. Autocrats? If you have seen one, you have seen them all, so the tautology sporting a bowtie goes. The odds are not terribly propitious for a Golden Age, no matter what the techies say. Had Byzantium, you know, improved on Rome? But why not Alexandria for a universal capital, what with Hypatia and the astrolabe, what with the great library, what with Theocritus’ little satire on theatre goers queuing in line as pre-dated Woody Allen’s attempt by two thousand years? (The movie queue scene with Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall is referenced here.) As for Zorro-like Trump crusading against a cabal of billionaire sex offenders, I have got a Weimar Republic to sell you at a bargain price….

But back to Rome and Byzantium, Procopius’ Secret History on my mind… Which it is an account (6th century) of Justinian’s court, one chockful of pique and slander, and would be still if the mother of a Certain Entity, present day, accosted by a demon, had fobbed off the result on an unsuspecting urban populace all Bronx cheers, all the while saying that ‘the devil made me do it’, all the while saying ‘anybody can become president’. To add to my own on-going generalized disquiet, I was reading along in Proust (The Past Recaptured or Time Regained, last of the seven volumes as comprise À la recherche du temps perdu), and at a party the young Marcel gotten old asks an old flame (not Ghislaine Maxwell) to introduce him to young girls so that, what, he might feel young again, might relive some ancient sensations. Something akin to a virulent sadness just then swept me up. Why? Better to take up philosophy than to boogie when past it? Rage, rage against the dying of the light sort of thing with every last ounce of libidinous breath? And then embers of the semi-dormant Jeffrey Epstein scandals reignited and began flaming all over the news. Proust’s women? The duchesses this and duchesses that? They seem more consumed with social standing than with sex and cherished memories of the same, and the autumn smell of fallen leaves. As for Proust himself, it seems I will have to keep reading to the opus’ bitter end if I want to know the determining ipso facto why of all desire in its relations with small “k” karma and POETIC JUSTICE, every sweet letter of which is in tabloid caps.

One other thing out of the blue… So, Judy Holliday’s father was a socialist, her mother a classical pianist. For all the dumb blonde roles Ms Holliday played back in the 50s, she was likely a genius, above-average bright at least, as Jack Lemmon attested, and that it “took a lot of smarts to play dumb blondes”. That she survived an encounter (she played to the cheap seats) with one of those McCarthy Senate hearings designed to rid Hollywood of anything to the left of Genghis Khan. I bring this up because I will not bring up what boots it now as is a few orders of magnitude worse, given the purges and the treasure chest thrown at the presidential Praetorian Guard, “retribution” the encampment’s password. The word “vulnerable” is bandied about without too much blushing on the part of movie critics when describing the appeal of the actress-comedienne’s (Judy Holliday), her ability to inhabit various registers of emotion inside of a nano-second. Squeaky voice and dimples aside, she did a lot of heavy lifting when it came to putting across the agonies and the occasional ecstasy of getting by in the American Dream. Would she now? And yes, whence all this? The other night, I saw her in a film that was not Born Yesterday. Too bad. As it would have afforded me the opportunity to state that a wealthy junkyard dog (played by Broderick Crawford) was a prince of a man compared to Current Officeholder, and uneducated Billie Dawn (as played by Judy Holliday) was a philosopher queen compared to, say, Current Press Secretary and other League of Their Own luminaries.

Postscript I: You may or may not choose to honour International Criminal Justice Day, but I, for one, would not blame you if, in doing so, you felt a little uneasy about it, Gaza disappeared save as a petri dish for further rapine and Stone Age holocaust, aim for the genitals. Otherwise, Carpenter:

Postscript II: Lunar: … …. ‘B took [a] friend instead of me to [the] concert last night, said the Enescu “Octet for Strings” was utterly breath-taking. Yes, Enescu, right up there with my favourite modern [s] (can it be over one hundred years old and still [rate as] modern?) Well, all that is truly great is.’ …. …. Gears grinding, new topic: … …. ‘We are going to have to talk about this. I think Sorrentino joins the company of Antonioni, another idiot who made the occasional good film almost by accident. This new [or rather fairly new] one – Parthenope, is so spectacularly vacuous it could not have been made by anyone of even the most minimal intelligence. This has even cast doubts on La Grande Bellezza. It is nothing more than [successive] tableaux of empty "beautiful" people finding themselves thrust up against deteriorating old age, which is about as profound as it gets with Sorrentino, which now makes me question [ ] Bellezza [even more]. I think it may have other elements which made that film work, a topnotch actor and superb cinematography otherwise ... Youth the next film, same theme, is another stinker. And the next two films after that. I still don't understand why it is I will sit through the whole of a film I know to be bad from the first minute.’ … …. And neither do I, and I will even do it again, and twenty times over at that, from the first minute on, though at the 47th, I might check for bats in the belfry and Trump’s polling. Let it be noted that some critics have found Parthenope persuasive, kind of Proustian perhaps?

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you see a Golden Age wandering about tearing its hair out: … …. ‘Endless streams of crap on the internet, but Okura's "Dialogue of the Poor and Destitute," often cited as the finest poem in all Japanese literature, is "unavailable online." I'll have to shell out $20 for a copy of the anthology "Ten Thousand Leaves," just released. Maybe this is all a publisher's plot…. …. [As for “morality”], it's morality itself shifting from culture to culture that makes the very word meaningless. But I do believe that evil is universal, unchanging, nonrelativistic — and a lot of exceedingly moral people in this country love it. Be thankful you're a reborn Canadian.’ … …. Whoa, wait a minute. And it is not as if we up here are an uncontacted tribe… …. ‘At any rate, sure, "love" is relative as well. For instance I don't believe "tough love" is love. "Those" people do, many of them. Otherwise, I don't go as far as Wittgenstein did about all words and their meanings.’ … …. If I may interject, I do not go anywhere with Wittgenstein, not without an armed escort. … …. ‘I'd be fine with morality if I knew what it is but the damn thing keeps changing on us. The Romans had morals, 16th c. Protestants and Catholics had morals, hell even the Nazis had morals. Kant thought he had it figured out with the categorical imperative and yet it was full of holes, nor does the Golden Rule hold up under scrutiny. You see my problem.’ … …. Yes, well, but even as I see your wager and raise it, I do not quite see it, seeing as the one thing the ancients lived by was: do not piss off the gods, and the one thing that was sure to offend the gods was human hubris, the avoidance of which almost brings us up to “moral scratch”. But I will let you have the last word. … …. ‘Damn right I’ll have it. Haven’t heard such twaddle since Daffy Duck rhymed it with Aristotle or… but of course the duck did no such thing, it was just that he lispitht. So run it by me again? You dislike “moralistic”, but a moral man might, on occasion, ring in the new year with a beer chaser? Some fella name of Apollonius is credited with the invention of the astrolabe, 2nd century B.C., dioptra everything, though Hypatia, no doubt, refined the applications in her day.’ … ….

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. “Percival has gotten full of himself and yet, he’s disconsolate: was only a runner-up in the island’s beauty contest for goats or capra aegagrus hircusae or some such. Headbutted one of the jury here, a woman who thinks she’s got a direct line to Raven though she hails from New Jersey and her bourgeoise edges shine like highway reflectors. As for Solzhenitsyn, are we maintaining the pretense that I’m reading the man and living to tell the tale? Alright then, I’ll be the Great Pretender as served up by the Platters. Percival sends his regards. Well, here’s some skinny: that there were people hereabouts five thousand years ago. They caught fish in the Salish Sea. There’s more. The Piraha, sub-group of the Mura tribe (Brazilian Amazon) don’t bother with past and future tenses in their language, with the colour blue (or any other colour), with numeration, with gods of any kind (ditto for heavens and hells), though an animal may be inhabited by “spirits”, and so, at least as far back as fifteen years ago – and they’d already fended off missionaries and government agents for some time – they lived in a kind of Eden where a simpler language went hand in hand with happiness. Or else it was that happiness obviated the need for the subjunctive. They could’ve cared less for Chomsky. No need to cultivate land; the river always provided. Hell, they didn’t even sleep; they just catnapped throughout their days and nights. Did they dream? Dogs dream. Goats, as they snooze, have rapid eye movement. One wonders.’ … ….

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. ‘If Gibbon is still whispering Odovacar or Odoacer in your ear late at night, or words to that effect, and if you’re wondering what an American Byzantium would look like, and with what geography (Ottawa?), here’s a bit for you, or maybe two. From Chapter 12 The Barbarian Invasions of the Roman Empire Volume 2 by Thomas Hodgkin, [and] I recommend [all the volumes]. As long as Gibbon’s work, not such a great stylist, although the concluding sentence of volume 2 seems prescient, hence the bit as follows: "The old weary round will recommence, democracy leading to anarchy, and anarchy to despotism, and the national workshops of some future Gracchus will build the palaces in which British or American despots, as incapable to rule as Arcadius or Honorius, will guide mighty empires to ruin, amidst the acclamations of flatterers as eloquent and as hollow as the courtly Claudian." I’ll leave you to plumb the squalid depths. Trump unbound? Shan’t touch that one with a barge pole the size of an elongated prize-worthy zucchini. I have a sudden hankering for plum brandy and a rhyme for entrecôte. Any sudden ideas?’ … ….

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. ‘So, what’s new? I’ve got cupcakes in the oven, the French horn in a snit. Wants to try on some Satie or else. I haven’t the inclination just now. Called off my trip to Poland for the express purpose of hanging about there and buying art. Feel like I’ve crossed some inner Rubicon in light of the fact that the world becomes less workable by the day, the heart of it some retro valentine with great gashes in the tissue. I may soon be playing my tunes on a blade of grass.’

Postscript VIIL Trail Mix: … …. ‘Don’t know what to tell you. The sky is all gray slate. Could mean rain or even a nasty little storm as might affect my journey home. Just now an old woman walks in here (my local) Her belly very large and rounded, as if she were, in her dotage, pregnant (with diabolical spawn?), her lipstick very thick and bright. My heart goes out to her as there’s knowledge in her eyes of her doom. But she’s going to have a few simple pleasures still: an ice cream, say, on a muggy day, a flirtation with Flirtation itself. She might’ve just walked out of a page of Proust, certainly not a page pf Esquire. One thing I can never get a European to understand: baseball is the only game that’s got Schopenhauer and other clown princes built into its structure (unless the powers-that-be at last succeed in trashing the game, imposing time restrictions on timelessness). Now is Mark Twain actually funny? You see with what I have to deal, just sitting innocently over a cup of coffee. No, speaking of time and uncontacted tribes, I don’t think I could live outside of time and space with a bow and arrow and lots of whistling, however much a manic-depressive that makes me.’ … ….

July 12, 2025: It has been announced yet again: the official death of satire. This time around, it drowned in its own upchuck. What brought this on? Netanyahu, that is what brought on the heaves. The man would offer Trump’s name for the Nobel Peace Prize. He opened his mouth; all sorts of winged things flew out. Satire gave up the ghost right there. (It is said that the president who likes his flyovers and miitary parades does not like war; could do bad things to people.) A coroner’s report is pending, but it is pretty clear: disbelief to the point of all-life-is-meaningless-vertigo followed by paroxysms of some sort or other.

And yes, Gibbon (as in Edward all decline and fall, the very same) – the way Gibbon, in the dead of night, CD audio), goes on about Didius Julianus, and one could be forgiven for thinking on the Current Regime. The Praetorian Guard had put the empire on the auction block and Julianus bought the throne at so many sesterces per soldier. For the moment, Trump has no Praetorian Guard to pay off, but he is getting there. The first Caesars were venal enough, sure, but then the price of acquiring office was steep. Eventually some Caesars got into the game just for the perks (money), forget governance. And that day is nigh on our horizon. It is probably 50-50 whether or no there is a “client list” as per Epstein, but the odds are even that White House staff members daily compile a list of those they can feed to Trump’s need to humiliate some sod or lass before his power nap. Stuffing the Minotaur, say what? But you know this. We, here, know this. Podcast after podcast states and restates it, some with voices that are too enamoured of their own cleverness and the cute ways with which one might fool around with language so as to score high-fives. Incoming: Ivy League trash talk at two o’clock. Byzantium, and there were ways in which a single afternoon could pass for the eternal, hot sun, long shadows, and Greek chatter the everlasting standbys, the baker arguing with the candlestick maker as to the essence of God. I am beginning to see the current administration and the people it would govern (fleece) in such a light.

Postscript I: … …. And it is that time again – Lasagna Awareness Month, get out your bibs, and when squared away, tuck into some Carpenter

Postscript II: Lunar has had a change of heart. Something or other to the effect that the f-word ending with ism really does have some application to what gives to the south of here, but that otherwise he is waving weakly and will not be gracing us with his presence at this juncture, he having had a lovely tea with somebody all the same, all the horrors (Gaza among them) temporarily on hold, and whether the midges are thick this year in riverside Hammersmith, he will not tell me, he possibly Starmered, or still feeling the effects of the Brexit Effect. But wait a minute. Something is coming through: … …. ‘I've just signed a petition for the Nobel Peace Prize to be awarded to Francesca Albanese which in so many ways strikes me as a shrewd choice. It will drive the Orange Beast up the wall were she to get it. What else? I was lucky to have missed the opera, Handel's “Semele”, the gods in business suits and plenty about sexual exploitation, just what Handel intended. We are now swearing off most productions as we are sick to death of being preached to by philistines. Hot, hot [… ….]’ … …. Same old Lunar…

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you have a bout of buyer’s remorse coming on. The political equivalent of OxyContin, as per Frank Gallagher of Shameless, would be this: you are passed out in the snow and then you come to in Mexico: … …. ‘A key reason I'm looking forward to winging my way out there is to escape the oppressive madness of this country for 3 weeks. If things work out maybe I'll become an "illegal alien." (How is it, precisely, that a human being can be "illegal"?)’ … …. Just off the top of our heads: a Certain Entity, in violation of everything written and unwritten and getting away with it, in this way renders himself more “legit” than anything else legal, and from this vantage point, is able to get fulsome about “illegals”. And every night, a mushroom cloud of a post, and who knows what the man has for breakfast? What body parts go down well with orange juice?

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘There’s been a beauty pageant for goats here on the island. A man garbed up like Pan officiated. Percival was a runner-up. He says hello, by the way. The Americans have a way of turning every tragedy into an episode from Dr Phil. Been wanting to say that for a long time. Having said it, I can also say that I cracked my Solzhenitsyn open again (August, 1914, The Red Wheel), and it’s pretty much where I left off: two officers exchanging notes, caught up in a maelstrom of military incompetence some of which may or may not carry over into the revolution on either side of the equation. Will that do you for now? Do you know what else I’ve been dying to say? Sufferin’ succotash. Feels good. Beats any doctoral thesis on languidge-is-power anytime.’ … …. We are so advised…

Postscript V: Rutilius … …. ‘If you’re going to mess about with Byzantium and eternity, you’re going to have to mess about with this, as follows (though we be anything but golden birds, you and I, and if we’re sailing to Byzantium, we’re doing so on some interstate to hell. From Michael Psellus, 11th century, I believe):

Do not place the mighty measures of the land into your mind,
Nor measure the measure of the sun by joining measuring-rods together;
It is borne by the eternal counsel of the father, not for your sake.
Let the rush of the moon alone; it always runs by the work of necessity,
The starry procession has not been brought forth for your sake.
The flat wing of birds in the open air is never true,
Nor the entrails and cuts of sacrifices. All these are playthings,
Supports of commercial fraud. Flee these things,
If you wish to throw open the sacred paradise of piety,
Where virtue, wisdom and good order are gathered together.

Top of the marnin’ to you, though in your time zone it’s the dead of night, an existential whizz in the offing…’

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … ‘Cupcakes in the oven, French horn shined up, but you’ve otherwise got me, got me fair and square. I had Peru on the mind, some recent archaeological finds, and you go and occlude me with that Yeats poem (“Sailing to Byzantium”) with which I had to contend in university, me a young woman who had to somehow feel something for an old geezer looking to escape his mortality by turning himself into a piece of art, and I felt nothing. Why the hell should I have? But over time, that passed.) Besides, I like men, even old geezers in leaky boats, just don’t want to have to live with such. I suspect that the likes of you and me (and we're, as it were, straight) will have no political representation, ever. Come to think of it, maybe that’s a good thing. Alienation doesn’t make the buses run on time, especially when it’s minus 25 out. Paradise was situated in southern Iraq, you know. Thereabouts the first metropolis came to be. Those city-slicker Sumerians – they were pessimists. This speaks to their intelligence. The high life (city life) by all means, but don’t expect it to last. &c. As they say, just saying. I can hear your foot tapping.’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘Look, I don’t know if comparisons can be drawn between young master “Lip” Gallagher (of Shameless fame) and young Barry Lyndon, William Makepeace Thackeray’s hero or un-hero in his The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon sometimes called The Luck of Barry Lyndon. They’re both, as young males, determined to make their way in the world on their own terms. They both scam when it suits them. They both distrust authority and despise pretentious gits who haven’t earned their perks. They both fall in love and sour on love. If current trends hold, they’ll wind up treating women badly. They’re headed for a lifetime each of full-blown cynicism. Still, the one is an only child, and the other is the second eldest of an extensive sibling-unit fathered by a deadbeat booze dad who, on rare occasions, has unsuspected depths. The one gets about in a TV series, the other in a Victorian era novel. At any rate, yes, “Sailing to Byzantium”. Thrilling to read it again after all these years. One asks: “Where did this come from, the poem, I mean?” Man, nothing could be more ill-suited for this time of ours and its sensibilities all pseudo-Versailles. A meteor landed in Lac Brome last night. For a moment there, I thought it might’ve been an old poet friend of mine, but he’s yet to have his apotheosis. I’m sitting under a basket of hanging flowers. Warm wind breezing over my local. Maybe I’ll lobby to bring the word “eternity” back from its exile, now that it’s paid for its old literary sins and then some.’ … ….

July 5, 2025: The humongous, splendiferous bill that Congress just passed, and we are talking here the American Congress, which is august, or getting on for a kind of antiquity (as when we have in mind the Roman senate and its centuries of deliberations), is surely a creature of intent. No? You mean a leprechaun just dreamed it up on a foggy-bottom night, and some of this and some of that was slapped together, and Caesar does not even know what is in the legislative hegemon, and Cicero has given up trying to remind him? You want point? You-Know-Who is the point, every iota of point. I doubt the Romans had a word for silverback, but I expect they had a word or two for full spectrum dominance (dominatum) as got along just fine with sandals and pilums, never mind cruise missiles and a shabby grasp of civics.

Otherwise, it is all rather nauseating, the gloating on the airwaves, the spectacle of men and women chest-thumping however sincerely or insincerely, the mummery, at times, exquisite, seeing as, come the mid-terms there will be blood, if the mid-terms are allowed to proceed, and if a plague of locusts does not gum up the voting machines. Besides, despite the displeasure the bill will incur, the Repubs will fix it so that the Dems catch the onus, wily animals be those Repubs even bigger on cigars than Bill Clinton. As for courage, why bring up the matter of courage? Who but for a very few persons as have been exposed to historical studies of any kind, cares deeply enough about sober-minded, slow and steady, indeed, downright boring governance, that is, if we would refer to both the House and the Senate (throw in a little judiciary and the minder of the Executive WC). Or else we would not be at this pass at which the only argument to consider is whether a dead republic should be buried with honours or chucked in a ditch. I, for one, have heard out those who say they are tired of doom and gloom, and, as bad as things are, they are not yet that bad, but even so, the logic of it all winks at only one horizon. It is not a horizon to be had on any compass, but it is there, and though there is no room to be talking of soul when talking of politics, soul is what is left, is one’s consolation prize, when the cowardice has batted around, and then it turns out the game did not count for anything anyway, the what-to-dos long ago decided, either by intent or misadventure.

I do not “do” writing-about-politics per se, being mostly literary-minded, hardly a political thinker. (Curtain call here for the PM Carpenters et al, most of whom do the thinking part of politics well, sometimes brilliantly). I do have a hazy memory, however, of a harangue I once made when I was foolish enough to indulge and had yet to learn not to encourage the bastards (politicians). Cue up a high school general assembly, and there I am, young nipper, at the podium, 1960 whatever, JFK not yet shot down. I am on about what it would feel like – the end of democracy and of something or other sacred, and God only knows what I have been smoking, and God only knows what I think I know and who I am endeavouring to impress. Perhaps I never got it all out of my system, “politics” that is, on that particular afternoon. It feels wretched, by the way, on so many levels, having been witness to the damn thing, the “constitution thing” as well as the “we hold these truths to be self-evident” thing dying over the course of the last 60-70 years. Barring a Social War or two, I just might take up smoking again, speaking of smoke, or start seeing transcendent value in the screen performances of Doris Day. Did your average Marlboro Man deem her “hot”? Your average Trumpian Mind? But the latter would not know transcendence if it was rammed up its you-know-what, and of “mind”, dog drool has the better part of sentience.

Postscript I: … …. The day the Roman republic died is most often given as March 15, 44 B.C. Which was the day Julius Caesar was shivved to death by a bunch of Roman senators who fancied themselves as guarantors of the health of the republic and their patrician privileges. I take it back as far as Sulla, the aftermath of the Social Wars, as some Edward Gibbon audiobook has on occasion whispered in my ear late at night, only I cannot be sure I heard correctly. But otherwise, Carpenter; … …

Postscript IL Lunar: … …. ‘Starmer is taking a major hit here and I wonder if he'll survive. You can bet your little booties Trump and Vance are playing the Farage card behind the scenes just as they won the election for the right-wing in Poland.’ … …. But I don’t wear booties…. …. Shush. Let the man have his say… …. Alright then, saying on: … …. ‘[Wales.] It is incredibly beautiful here, the forest walks, hills and streams. The immediate neighbour is a wildlife documentary filmmaker who because he has been freelance all his working life, working with the likes of David Attenborough, is now in line for the major BBC cutbacks. Youngsters clutching cameras come cheap these days and are increasingly expendable which I suppose you can apply to the whole bloody spectrum of things worthwhile. I'd say the biggest blow to have ever hit this country in terms of its people's complexion is when it went streamlined whereas the English had always been at their best as talented muddlers…..’ … ….

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you see any loose alligators around come for birthrights: … …. ‘Here, file this in your Received Department: Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestickest. 1690… It was the name of colonial America's first newspaper, published once, 25 September 1690, shut down four days later by offended colonial authorities. [But mid-terms yes or no?] There will be [mid-terms]. It'll be held in what's called "competitive authoritarianism," a system in which the majority party allows the minority party to lose just enough elections to remain a minority. [And a little concurrence for you]: Anyone who still believes things are bad but not that bad is a fool. … ….. I tend to imagine that we'll crawl out of this sewer in the next decade, but imagination ain't a reliable prospectus. … …. [As for the upcoming summit meeting between us], we tend to see life and history as indistinguishable and that covers a lot. Maybe we could argue about Roth, whom I love and I believe you're rather indifferent about? I'd never given thought to the similarity between him and Richard Hofstadter, my most admired historian. I just read this in an essay by historian Michael Kazin: "Hofstadter and his fellow academics were seeking to accomplish in their field what Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan, Philip Roth and Susan Sontag were accomplishing in theirs: to unsettle verities about the powerful that most Americans took for granted." No wonder, then, my admiration of Roth. I think Kazin overdid it by group[ing] him with Ginsberg-Dylan, but I take his point. So put 'em up, Mac.’ … …. You mean dukes? Good golly, Miss Molly, why I never….

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘As you may’ve surmised, I’ve been neglecting Solzhenitsyn. My bad. But I might be interested as to why your buddy Drake thinks that “Dusty” was Proust’s favourite novelist? (Dusty = Dostoyevsky.) I mean Dostoyevsky would have a man act on his beliefs, right? Proust’s coteries? Who among them has a moral vision? The aging Marcel maybe, just maybe. But try and do as little “acting” as possible, save for when it comes to gratifying your needs as time elsewise eats away your body. Who brings less pain into the world? Dusty’s Prince Myshkin? Proust’s Baron de Charlus? Cervantes’ Quixote? No one on this island fits the bill. But if a goat can shrug, Percival just shrugged. I don’t think he’d vote Republican. Nah. Would you?’

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. ‘A couple of Gibbon-isms selected at random and thought by a certain party here to bear a little on what fills your screens over there: Unless public liberty is protected by intrepid and vigilant guardians, the authority of so formidable a magistrate will soon degenerate into despotism. Natch. Whereas: The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful… …. Which has the sound of a semi-healthy constitutional republic, those intrepid needn’t necessarily apply, check for the next submissions window. The weather here (Central Europe) has been, how shall we say, warmish.’

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. ‘Cupcakes in the oven, French horn at the ready. It’ll have to get by on its own for a while as I’m planning a trip to Poland to buy art because whenever I go to Poland, I buy art. There’s culture in my background. My parents had no wall space: there was so much culture on their walls. Is it worth the while speaking about dead republics. Republics die; people still do their thing. Which is, you know, live, live and steal a few moments of happy time here and there. You’d gainsay me, sir? Does Ludwig’s “Moonlight Sonata” play any lighter (that moody first movement) in democratic airs, or is the allegretto any less frisky for a fascist Geist or have any less the feel of someone on a beer run? We won’t talk about Franco and the Romeros. I’ve read 100 Years of Solitude 738 times. It’s a boast, to be sure, but there’s truth in it. You can keep your Roth.’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘Funny you’d mention Doris Day. I was flipping through the channels the other night, came across something called Caprice, gave it a few minutes of my life. Doris Day involved in some intrigue – industrial espionage so I had it. Misadventures and the operetta of this-is-sex-but-it-isn’t-really. Lots of sunny smiles. Sensible shoes for getting into tight scrapes. And I thought: someone should novelize the woman. What did she really think of things, if she thought at all? And the rumour is she did do so. She had thoughts, they say. Took a dim view of Hollywood, for starters. Might’ve had more to say than Taylor Swift.’