July 2026

July 31-August 2, 2026: 10,000 years or so of civilization, and such grace as western man may or may not have is nothing compared to what the Bushman had or perhaps even now has, there being about 100,000 of the San people left, a small per centage of whom still live as their ancestors did – as “hunter-gatherers”. (Noted as late as the 1950s: the orderliness of their lives, the absence of chaos in them apart from nature’s chances as with rainfall and drought, no cruelties, no animal – killed for food – made to suffer more than it had to, this before the government reserves kicked in…) Despite an in-house imputation that I am going soft in the head, the above is something, or so it seems to me, worth remarking on, Trump or no Trump with lizard gaze, the world his shabby reflecting pool. Cheap fixes. Big rake-offs. Myriad houses of cards. And, old, old story, the Bushman came to discover booze.

I suppose we may say that our Faustian bargain with “reason” was that western man would exchange some of his grace for a dental plan. Who am I to argue with medicine and air-conditioning? Who likes ill health, discomfort, pain? Moreover, I am a city-slicker, would not last five minutes in the “bush”, let alone know a medicinal herb from a blade of grass, a hartebeest from a wildebeest. Came to discover spirits not the spirit of the Eland or of a trickster. Which is to say, every tribe forced out of its centre of gravity… Which is to say I used to drive them around in my cab – the Gitxsan down from the north of BC, the Shishalh and a host of others, the Kwakiutl, Haida members, say, between beer parlour and liquor store, and sometimes to the movies, many of whom thought me otherwise useless as a human being.

And though I did not complete university (no regrets), and though there is, even so, a Herr Professor in me whom I am constantly beating down – who wants a know-it-all at the Sunday picnic? – I know there are people who can read a street like a Bushman used to read the sand, if you are looking for complementary action. And there are some who can read a poll and some who can extract from a tea leaf what the future is, even as Drake defies anyone to define what “moral” is, just in case there is or is not a future in that scrounger of a word.

There is a Jeremiah lurking about as well in my person, and if I did not beat that creature down five times a day, I would be stupefying passersby 24/7 at this or that street corner with hectoring and preachments, and without the least thought in my head as to what “moral” might shortchange. At the moment, my “intellects” are up against it, asked to consider if I am swallowing “noble savage” claptrap as was promulgated by Burroughs, the Tarzan creator. Why not Rousseau? Self-interest is the only god, the only driver of human behaviour, so the lecture goes from any number of quarters legit or not in any academic sense, and as such it is somehow neither here nor there on the moral scale. That it is merely a fact of life as ubiquitous as a bug, a rock, a westerly, as sparrows chittering at a feeder, as the contempt on Pam Bondi’s face for members of the press. Why accord it negative values? Because Trump has stripped self-interest of its romance? Viva, Meine Damen und Herren, "Self-Interest", the longest running Broadway musical in the history of evolution…

It is not reason that troubles me but a too narrow scope of it. Laurens van der Post had this to say in his 1958 publication “The Lost World of the Kalahari” (that desert which is the last refuge of the San or the Bushmen): However unlikely and superstitious it may sound in civilized surroundings, there on a far island in the unpredictable swamp, as the wheel of the day’s light, spokes flashing with the angle of the turn, went over the hump of blue to roll down towards the night, I was not inclined to be critical. Besides, I have always had a profound respect for aboriginal superstition not as formulations of literal truth, but as a way of keeping the human spirit obedient to aspects of reality that are beyond rational articulation. Van der Post was overseeing an expedition into the Kalahari. A black man in his employ was just confessing to being a “healer”. They were in a crisis situation hundreds of miles from nowhere, lives at stake, and the “employee”, in his way, was helping the “master” to keep his eye on the ball lest lives be lost, and the “master” was not unappreciative. That there is more meaning to “meaning” than one might otherwise reckon. Perhaps it has always been the business of poetry to tell us as much.

Though I have no business casting judgements on African history, particularly the history of its south, there was a time not so long ago as all that (or so I read in van der Post’s book) when there was a shoot-to-kill policy with respect to the Bushmen, a “bird-free” year-long open season year after year, as it has been with the Palestinians for the last while. And, if I understand van der Post correctly, as the bullets whizzed all about them, the Bushmen would fall to the ground laughing hysterically even as they would soon enough bleed out. Laughter in the face of evil… what does it sound like? A questioning at the edges of the chortling? What’s with you people that you must slaughter and still get no satisfaction? &c. Strikes me as a reasonable question to ask.

And so van der Post wrote of the sad African hills, and someone chided him for “projecting” onto them his own melancholy. And van der Post, bridling, said no, that those hills were sad on their own volition, considering all that they had witnessed. That the first white colonists, inadvertently or not, triggered a chain reaction of extermination on the part of all the tribes, white on black and white on yellow, and black on white and black on black and black on the yellow Bushman, and inevitably the yellow Bushman back on all the tribes involved, and it lasted for centuries. That the people van der Post loved (his own people) who were “loving” amongst themselves, wholeheartedly engaged in bird-free shoot-arounds. Reason had this to say: the San were not human, therefore, have at it, fire at will. And how many times have you heard this in an age? Ghosts. To the extent that there are any, they are the products of one sort of injustice or another.

And in Edith Wharton’s “The Custom of the Country”, self-interest has all the limelight (and all the loge seats) from which there is no escaping. At least, so far and while sober…

Postscript I: On this day in 1941, instructed to do so by Hitler, Hermann Göring ordered one Reinhard Heydrich (SS general and Himmler’s number-two man) to submit a general plan for a “total solution” to the Jewish question. To cite an on-line source: “The order shifted the regime's official stance away from forced emigration or localized evacuations toward a continent-wide, systematic framework for mass annihilation.” Are not things but a hop, skip and a jump away from such reality, given current “immigration” practices to the south of here? Carpenter may have views, and if not, see below.

Postscript II: Lunar has had his mentations: … …. ‘I've been trying to gather my thoughts together on The Odyssey. Was there ever a film more widely discussed? I don't know if this will make sense, but the film cost 250 million dollars to make. I think films of epics ought to be made with as little money as possible for the simple reason spectacle sabotages imagination. My model for this is Pasolini's Medea with the brilliant choice of Maria Callas in the title-role. It can't have cost more than a few tens of thousands of dollars to make, and it is by far the greater artistic accomplishment. That is one thought: the other is that no film of the Odyssey will convince me that does not have Odysseus carrying a single oar inland to a place whose inhabitants knowing nothing of the sea mistake it for a winnowing fan. This, for me, is one of the most mysterious passages in all literature. A couple of years ago J bought a single wooden oar at a car boot sale in Wales. It is the very oar Odysseus carried. So there.’ … …. Alright then. We are set straight and so, we may safely continue: … …. ‘Yesterday, in London alone, there were 61 grass fires. And there is absolutely no rain forecast although there was one report to the effect there wouldn't be any significant rainfall until October! This is catastrophic. There is a major fire in the east of the country and another in Scotland. Also we have been plagued by flies. I suspect the gods are showing their displeasure at Nolan's Odyssey because, as N said, Odysseus seems not to believe in them. Did I tell you Magnolia wrote to say how much he liked the film. Again, I can’t think of any movie in recent times that has so divided its audience. Apparently, the Cyclops was played by a Canadian actor when I thought it was AI-generated.’ … …. A stab at a brewski jest? How about this for a bit of last-but-not-least: … ….’ Fauci. [And] remember the famous doctors trial in 1950s Moscow?’ … …. Ah yes, they were just now on the tip of my tongue, but do go on: … …. ‘It was a show trial of Jewish doctors ostensibly out to kill Kremlin leaders, a complete lie, of course. What is happening in America now may not be an exact parallel, but it is still nothing less than a show trial.’ … …. Live a day semi-conscious and one may learn.

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you see a warrior class gathering at the mall for displays of warrior-like prowess while avoiding eye contact: … …. ‘Pre-prandial prayer seems to be a theme among "primitives." I recall reading in Black Elk Speaks that his father taught him its importance as a child. Today's primitives, Christians, still do it. The most common theme that runs through all humanity, though, is self-interest (which includes pre-prandial prayer; it just might get you into heaven). Concerning the elderly, the Chinese always cared for their own, no matter how sick and feeble they might be. After all, the younger caregivers will be old, sick and feeble someday, so their thinking is both humane and self-interested. In the US the young do as your Stone Agers did; we send the old off somewhere so they can be devoured by hyenas. But we don't have to watch. Self-interest is what blows up Marxism-Leninism. On paper it's a perfectly rational theory of social organization. Its pragmatic downfall is that self-interest can't be quashed — ultimately, everyone is out for himself. I've been down so many Damascus roads they've converged into a multilane highway, one much like the other. A massive, inscrutable, unintelligible Montaignean muddle.’ … …. Furthermore, and with more thoughts gathered: … …. ‘Self-interest just "is." It's neither good nor bad, merely a primal human element. I've never encountered disagreement with this fundamental aspect of humanity. Historiography is littered with it. (With agreement?) You're slapping a negative spin on the term, which is fine if that's how you see it. It's unusual, even borderline bizarre, but nothing wrong with that either. You're welcome to it. As for "moral" slobbery, neither you nor anyone else can define the adjective, so again, you've lost me. And I've no doubt that van der Post's observations are quite valid. Similar tribes have been studied; one, in the Amazon, had no word for war. They lived quite nicely until civilization discovered them. In general, though, the old E. Burroughs concept of the "noble savage" was utterly delusional, ahistorical bullshit. … …. As for genocide and massacres, I suppose if there's a positive way to look at the phenomena, it is this: For centuries the world thought nothing about them; it was just the way of the world. Today, they persist, but the world condemns them. The next step in human evolution, then, will be that the world acts to stop them. Step 4 will be that they no longer occur. By then I will have long been dust. Still ...’ … …. Human evolution? Would we be talking brain shape?

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘I pass.’

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. ‘I pass too. Indeed. And as per Herodotus: to know a lot and have no control over anything – can make a person squirrelly, crazy and wild. Of course, a certain T person knows nothing and still has no control over anything, though he can make his lawyers jump through rolling donuts. Yikes. My locution is getting less Brit-like. Been hanging out too much with youse hombres. Hot and rainy tomorrow. The peach harvest isn’t far off.”

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. ‘Cupcakes in the oven, French horn inert. Executive decision however: I won’t go to see “The Odyssey”. It’s not the politics surrounding the flick. It’s my aversion to hype. And there you have it. Some Polish cousins of mine flash me high-fives. Others not so much. What I did see without having to leave my living room was “The Motorcycle Diaries” (2004). Another movie seen 20 years after the fact. And I was charmed, even as I was mindful of the attempt to canonize Guevara in as sweet a light as would be credible. Maybe it was something I needed. The charming away of the high-octane corrosive stench now pervading the world and breaking relationships, long-standing intimacies like they were twigs. Or else I’ve got to load up my cupcakes with cardamom and my French horn with feel-good riffs.’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘I was lying in the bath, eyes closed, mind in drift. What turned up was You-Know-Who as a false suitor (The Odyssey) stealing the world. Penelope was doing her bit to subvert the attempt. Telemachus as well. And Athene with her pans in the fire. I did not willfully, consciously seek out these thoughts. I swear on a stack of Balzacs. They rose up like some displaced sea creatures unevolved for the surface. Even so, when I opened my eyes, the thoughts were gone. Next came a dread of turning on the TV and the as always reflexive sweep of the news, the remorseless chryons, news presenters exhibiting gravitas. I suppose there’s something moral in this somewhere. So I went to the bookstore. Bought a book on “Roman Hellenism” and the early Christians. As I am a sucker for this sort of thing. My endless quest for early Christians who liked a joke. Later “The Blue Angel”, a viewing of. The poor Herr Professor. Got quite done in by Lola or by his own proclivities or by both in this rendering of it taking two to tango so as to unleash poetic justice, demonstrating thereby the truth of various cliches from which justice derives justice. Then baseball. My favorite team has been ham-handed, playing poorly, but they won. Got smug.’

July 27-28, 2026: The last sentence of Benvenuto Cellini’s autobiography (which he wrote himself, at some point mid-point in the 16th century) is as follows: I allowed several days to elapse, until I thought their tears were dried, and then I betook myself to Pisa. These words conclude 400 and some pages of self-dramatization on the author’s part and yet, I found them reassuring. Or as an Italian cop procedural cum sappy melodrama with supernatural elements (along with repeated occurrences of the 2nd movement of Beethoven’s 7th) has it: the end does not exist. Something always happens next.

So what of fame? Failure? Artistic success? Christopher Middleton, poet, translator, critic (1926-2015), a Brit who lived a long while in Texas, and with a belt buckle become legend, had this to say:

“But what? throw up one’s hands, gnaw one’s bowels, become hypochondrically sad? There has to be a resistant, persistent ‘sweetness’ in the depths of a writer’s soul, his one chance: not the sweetness that enables him to adjust to hardship, but the sweetness that’s spontaneous as birdsong: it’s a balm, given by the Muses: they instruct us to know, not “better” than others, thus not in the controlling, dictatorial fashion common to insecure souls, but to know anyway, that what one has done has in it what was of worth to one, & that’s the utmost; it’s also, that sweetness, a resilience. It enables one, that’s to say, to resist all forms & forces that pound one down into neutrality or one-dimensionality. One bounces back, for the sake of the bounce. And the neutralizations are shoved back to where they belong - ambiguity prevails, the enigmas & riddles of the irreducible creative spirit. It wakes up under the most pissed-on, shat-around, dog-haunted lamp-posts at 3 a.m., & starts to sing with the mockingbirds.”

And so, the ayes have it, and I, for one, will consider the above questions of fame, failure, artistic success, if not answered, at least muttered about. Moreover, it occurs to me: all these years and I have yet to read Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo”. I have not read every word Wharton (Edith) published. I once gave Fielding (Henry) a shot. I had best get cracking.

Postscript I: It is International Milk Chocolate Day, but I do not know that Carpenter does milk chocolate as a food source. It is also an Anniversary of the Fall of Fascism Day (in San Marino) but then I do not know that Carpenter knows that San Marino is the world’s oldest republic, and if not the tiniest nation-state of the 195 states still in existence, it is within folk music range of such a claim.

Postscript II: Lunar is big on folk music, hence: … …. ‘I am reading a short account on Witold Gombrowicz in Argentina, surely in the whole of literature the most ornery son of a bitch of all time. Worry not, you come a close second. You may know the story. He sailed as journalist on a brand-new passenger ship from Poland to Argentina and no sooner does it arrive than comes news of Germany's invasion of Poland. The captain of the ship together with its crew and passengers is ordered back to Poland. As the ship was about to depart, Gombrowicz runs down the gangplank and settles in Buenos Aires for the next 23 years, for the first few years living hand to mouth. So was this cowardice or common sense? A relative unknown, he delivered a speech called "Why I Hate Poetry" which was attended by the Argentine literati who were outraged - one old poet threw his cane at him - and as he had hardly a good word to say for anyone, dissed Borges and all the other writers there, he made himself a complete pariah in his adopted country. I think his greatest work is his Diary in which he runs amok. It's unlike anything else in literature. The thing about him is that he was cosmically horrible. Some years ago, in Montreal, I met an elderly Pole who sailed on that same ship and knew Gombrowicz. I tired to get him to do a recording with me, but he refused in an ornery Gombrowiczian manner.’ … …. And then, apropos of nothing perhaps not all that important but that yet might have a bearing on our collective compass headings: … …. ‘This is the single biggest change to literature: there is virtually no sense of "looking up" to anyone. You and I had our models, did we not, a sense of who came before.’ … …. Hubris? Slam-dunk mentality? Fear, on the part of the young, that they are insufficient to the task? Choose one and a toy duck drops down from the ceiling. Alright then, so as to pursue a different tack or that: … …. ‘I doubt our new PM will be any better than the old PM, the same fear of contradicting Trump, the same mealymouthedness, the only difference perhaps being that Burnham is already looking like the local grocer amid multinationals. What a plunge this country has taken, so proud once.’ … …. And regarding a subject that has been front and centre of late: … …. ‘I think the film is rather more than JB would suggest but what that "more" is makes it Nolan's Odyssey rather than Homer's. I think we are being asked to believe Odysseus is suffering from PTSD, which in Homer's eyes would be quite unrecognisable. And Circe, Circe's got "issues". And, unless I'm mistaken, Calypso wears a wonder bra.’

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you are getting the feeling that we are drowning in executive orders and cans of grey paint (you know, for touchings-up around the capital) and peace deals such as seem to be the product of an ecological system gone out of whack and as make for an explosion in the cane toad population: … …. ‘I just learned from linguist and NYT columnist John McWhorter that Caesar was pronounced “KIGH-sar.” He explains: In Latin, H was “ha,” and K as “ka” came after it. People reciting the alphabet would say “ha, ka, el ….” But Latin didn’t really need the K, because C did its job.’ … …. Well, this is certainly a hell of a thing to say.

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘Not much to offer you. Watched a couple of memorable films. “Ida”, by some chap with a long Polish name. Black and white, quiet, tactile, dare I say profound. I won’t high-five too much but highly recommend it. The other was “La Chimera”. Much looser style, Italian, often funny, the ending quietly exalting. Keeping an eye on Percival for signs of pressure sores and arthritis, and a little something called quidding which, with respect to goats, is the inability to properly chew. I think I’m suffering from a form of it, try as I might to avoid the news cycle and all things Trump. Quite cool for a summer’s day on the island. So how are you getting on with Wharton (Edith)? No reflection on her work which I have every reason to believe was (and remains) stellar, but I would hate to have my work considered “immersive”. What? It’s capable of bathing or of providing a bath? Jacuzzi Belle-lettres?’ … …. I have to say that you got me there, partner.

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. ‘In light of what Middleton (Christopher) had to say about self-doubt and literature: “Let us go singing as far as we go: the road will be less tedious.” As it was from Virgil. Don’t know what I think of the Cellini statue “Perseus with the Head of Medusa”. No, I’m not even going to try. Looking at it gives me a touch of the creeps. “The Odyssey” however, the movie? I loved it, although it had a slightly modern message about the collapse of morals leading to social disintegration. I thought the lead casting was excellent as Matt Damon is no Daniel Day-Lewis, but a strong enough leading man to hold the movie together while the other actors do their bit and shine. Not sure about Kendaya as Athena, but Pattinson was a splendidly dislikeable villain. Charlize Theron can feed me lotus blossom as long as she likes. That was a nice way to refer to the land of the Lotus eaters. Some ruthless cuts were made, for example missing out the "No Man" dialogue with Polyphemus. I didn't miss Nausicaa and her maidens. I did think the cattle of the sun looked as though they'd been borrowed from Jeremy Clarkson's farm and some of the audience will no doubt think the ending is borrowed from Lord of the Rings "I have passed the test. I will now go to the west” – (thank you Cate Blanchett) not, as I hope, from Dante's Magnetic mountain episode in the Inferno which makes Odysseus's final voyage tragic not consoling.’ … …. Not sure I understand the import of the last sentence here, but many thanks, just the same….

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. ‘Cupcakes in the oven, French horn taking a breather. And no, I still haven’t been to see “The Odyssey” though it seems you are in receipt of encomiums from trusted sources on the matter. A couple of Polish cousins of mine tell me it has its moments. I am also told we are reading, writing, thinking less as a species. But if this is the case, what about all those social media scribbles? Do they count as sentience? Can a blonde bimbo pass herself off as Proustian? Might a pimply white supremacist come it like Lampedusa? Just thought I’d ask. Not that you’re always thinking my questions are rhetorical and so, are self-answering in a self-evidentiary sort of way.’ … …. Oh dear. Am I guilty as charged?

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘One might think all I do is sit in front of screens. Yes, it’s true, but no, I’ve been known to exercise and do other stuff. I did watch “Revolutionary Road” however, movie from ages ago. (2008.) Very good film but great? How thin is the margin between very good and great? Richard Yates was overlooked as an author. Even as an author’s author. When everyone and their Auntie Jane has a podcast, you can expect standards to crater and marriages to fail. Well, first of September is the anticipatory date of the reopening of my favourite café still undergoing renovation. Protracted surgical procedure spanning months. Someone was telling me of an elegant cup of coffee they once had in Budapest, under a glass dome, but they couldn’t remember the name of the establishment… (We were seated at a counter in a “chez” on one of Montreal’s high streets.) The Budapest venue’s name occurred to me in a flash though I’ve never been there in this lifetime (not so far as I know, at any rate). But eccolo: the Parisi Passage Café (or something like that). What explains how I’d know the name in a trice and yet have never sugared my spoon there? What’s with the circuitry in my brain as when we speak and dream in languages about which we wouldn’t even have a clue in our waking hours? Have I dreamed in hexameters? I’ll have to bribe some switchboard operator in my noggin for the answer to that little riddle.’ … …. I have to say that I had the pleasure of the place in Budapest myself, and I wasn’t there for nuts and seeds and dried fruits. Was in the company of a Hungarian ex-pat (back in his motherland for dental work), and as a ten-year-old he’d seen street-fighting, had fired on the occupying Russians with a rifle, assault type unspecified. As for your hexameters, sir, we can hardly wait.

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.’