May 2026

May 4-5, 2026: Old news by now, though it was centre-cut a few days back when the question arose: am I dreaming? Dreaming an episode vis-à-vis Congress… Wherein a king, Brit monarch at that, lectures (mildly, even good-naturedly) the members of that body on the matter of a few nuts and bolts. Yes, as pertains to a cog or two in a political mechanism. Or what is minimally required for a democracy to function as it goes through a rough patch, a nightmare, in fact… And for his troubles, he rates a standing ovation. It is bipartisan two-hand clapping, and in unison, fancy that. Perhaps the ruckus startled him. As if all those men and women were desperately in need of a venting moment, and they let off a bit of pent-up consternation, of, how shall we say, repressed rage? No doubt, stranger things have happened, much stranger, not the least of which was the re-election of the, how shall we say, lizard brain for HOS or Head-of-State, guest-friendship relations up for a reboot. Lizard brain with disposable lizard tail and somewhat convex lizard eyes (cannot nail the sucker, impeachment proof) … And so forth and so on… Even so, that royalty should ever so slyly admonish what would be the leader of the free world not-so-free-as-we-speak-and-it-is-getting-more-parlous-by-the-minute, is that not a hoot?

I have in mind the word themis, one I came across in a little book. The book is entitled The World of Odysseus, M I Finley, 1954. The sense of that word lies with “the right thing to do” or with “what is not done – ever”. With what is customary. With “tradition”, and there is a word as had a bad rep in the 60s, with some justification… But the violation of unwritten law as opposed to what is on the books – it is at times the more unforgiveable crime… How many “unwritten laws” of the last ten years have been routinely and gleefully trashed? I am not going to do it here, but ask yourself, for a grand for instance: how many court orders has the regime ignored since 2016? And that is just for starters. And how many jellybeans are in that jar?

Whatever “themis” was, it was discussed in the local assemblies of Homer’s Greeks. From Finley’s opus: The world of Odysseus had a highly developed sense of what is fitting and proper. In the world of the U.S. of A., whatever might constitute a bunch of “themis” has been quashed, abandoned, bulldozed over, hardly missed. Though the stony island of Ithaca was nowhere near being democratic in practice, everything tilting in the direction of lords lording it over peasants and slaves, things were discussed by one and all; most everyone figured in the discussions and so, this or that lord who had executive decisions to make at least knew what was thumbtacked to the community’s bulletin board, what was on everyone’s mind from the top rungs to the bottom tiers of the collective oikos, or economic unit beyond that of the immediate family and its household “issues”. Let me catch my breath.

Perhaps the millennia that separate us from those Greeks are not such a barrier as all that when it comes to a glimpse of their moment at one of history’s mustering points (the Bronze Age). In light of which, what the “people” wanted from their bards was not so dissimilar from what TV audiences desire of their HBO binge-watches, i.e. action, one might say action-narratives, what happens to whom and who does what about this or that, even if no one lives happily ever after, never mind exegeses of what it means to be human. (Proust, for all his nattering about jealousy and what the passing of time does to body, mind, and soul, wrote up characters to whom things did their worst, to whom sh-t, or life as a general principle, happened.) In any case, it is not to say that your average action-thriller has more to offer than the poetry in which Achilles drags Hector’s corpse around Troy’s walls (after he has hitched it to his chariot) and how that spectacle came to pass. And as for what it means to be human, the tragedians that succeeded Homer – Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides (not to mention a great many lost authors and their lost works), from whom do you think the likes of a Proust lifted a nugget or two of insight? Nobody-Is-Interested-in-Sweetness-and-Light Hedda Hopper? In summation: Conversely, there was no weakness, no unheroic trait, but one, and that was cowardice and the consequent failure to pursue heroic goals. What were we saying about Congress?

And, inane question, one worthy of a juvenile, but an adult of mature age? And yet here goes nothing. Does the universe have edges beyond which is some kind of nothingness? As if that nothingness were an amniotic fluid of sorts nestling a perverse appetite for cosmic paradox. And why should any of it – a universe of energy and matter and nothingness exist at all? The mind wants a reason or reasons as it is so constituted that reason is its raison d’etre and yet, so often reason is an impediment to knowing a thing. Why should there be any reason for anything, for should x=y, top that z, then q has to be taken seriously? (Seems that, tail-end of my seventh decade, and I find myself sifting through the same questions I had on hand when I was a pre-teener.) Homer had all that in mind too, in his way, although his responses, if any, were posited in the melee called human affairs having to do with a warrior class. Was Odysseus a thug or a man of principles as he went about slaughtering the false suitors stalking Penelope, those sackers of his stores? (The storeroom, not the hearth, was the centre of every household.) And if you do “A”, “B” is likely to follow. So, do you want “B” to follow? Well, you do not piss off the gods, for starters. That was morality for a Homer man, guest-friendship relations that world’s underpinning, its cutting edge of enlightened behaviour. A thousand years later, with Plutarch, and we arrive at what is needed to “improve” one’s character: mastery over one’s appetites and emotions. Even so, a somewhat stuffy Plutarch does not seem to have been that much of a finger-wagger, of “you’re going to rot in hell for your un-Christian attitudes” kind of censure, as when the Bird of Paradise flies up your nose, but there are consequences just the same, have a care. And here, another two thousand years later, and we seem to be shadow-boxing one another and ourselves in a world where it seems like anything flies, even shit-filled balloons, let alone the heaviest and least aerodynamic egoisms.

Postscript I: On this day in 738 of the “common era”, Maya ruler 18 Rabbit of Copán is captured and beheaded by his former vassal Cauac Sky, ruler of the nearby city of Quiriguá. How could I resist that mouthful, not to mention that Carpenter, in a past life, might have witnessed it, sporting feathers as he did? He is certainly witnessing stuff now, and he is not clutching pearls. Read this time-traveller should you have need of a rather lustful union between insightfulness and acerbity.

Postscript II: More Lunar Anomalies or: … …. ‘[King] Charles was put in an awful position of course and ought not to have gone. It was really forced on him by Starmer who is so bloody obsequious that it is embarrassing to observe.’ … …. And then, after a decent interval of time, this: … …. ‘I have only just realised King Charlie did rather better than anticipated with his speech to congress, the fact that Vance refused to applaud him. That is a kind of victory. I suppose that means Vance understood what was being said. And the little creep comes over here to lecture Europe!’ … …. I know. I know. And I thought I had a bad case of Herr Professor. As for Pompeii: Under the Clouds, what say you? … …. ‘Hmmmm, it was the film I was most looking forward to and ... and ... I was disappointed. Yes, the trailer was most promising, but it was a great opportunity missed, nothing, for example, about the philosophical implications of living with the thing that might one day kill you. So many people have profound things to say about Vesuvius but there were [these] silly phone calls to the police department abouts tremors etc. I'm not saying it was bad, but it was not half the film it could have been. … …. A certain I-country doing unto Lebanon what it’s still doing to Gaza and the West Bank where shoot-to-kill civilians now has official sanction – there’s that too. So, a number of British Jews have escaped into the “relative peace” of Israel at which I don't know whether to laugh or cry. [ ] And of course the [ ] Starmer wants to ban pro-Palestine marches as supposedly being vehicles of hate. [Hate?] I hate what this world has become, the genies that have been released from the bottle.’ … …. Roger that. I can hear bubbles sparkle and hiccups fly and the can you kick around rattling something fierce.

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you see food assistance being dumped in the street amidst the cannon fodder staring down NICE hoods and phalanxes of anti-vaxxers: … …. ‘Trump has absolutely cratered; the last Pew poll has his net disapproval at +30. Even Rasmussen and RMG — a couple of GOP whores — have him at +13 and +15. And his numbers get worse (i.e., better) every week. I've not read Finley but bless his heart he comes cheap, 6 bucks, unlike so many other works on ancient lit. (And I still say the Iliad is superior to Odysseus.’) … …. ??? You mean The Odyssey. … …. ‘[And] Maga knows it (by way of the bad polls, not ancient literature), but won’t admit it. Everyone else knows it and is telling pollsters precisely that. [You see], we're already scathed. It'll get worse and, I suspect, [and the worseness will] hang [around] for a long time. But the sooner we correct course, the shorter the duration of pain. All I really know is that what the Trumpists want most is for us to declare defeat; to say, well that's it, we're doomed, it's all over. Thank you, no. Ain't doin' that.’ … …. Yes, I think we get where you are coming from. When I wrote you to say: Texas town, churchy, exceedingly kinky, corruptions new and old, hypocrisies as stale as OT accounts of evil kings, as fresh as yesterday in the life of the regime, and if this depiction (by TV series writing) is even halfways accurate, America as paradise is thoroughly noxious, the sunset a swamp, night a bottomless bog, you said: ‘You could have stopped at "Texas town”. I would’ve gotten from whence you’re coming from.’

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘We’ve been fascinated by all things Odysseus for a long, long time, how he stacks up in this world of threadbare Christian virtue and transactional thuggery, Polyphemuses comprising every legislative body, Percival and I being islanders a la Ithaca, the Recycling Depot the centre of our “oikos”. Then again, I prefer to downplay the fascination, literary fetishes anathema to me. We’ve received an e-mail from one of your buddies in which he suggests that things are so bad, there can be no saying how bad they are. We’ll have to accord that some thought. Maa. Yesterday, the sight of a movie crew assembling at the ferry dock gave me a chest full of melancholy and other misgivings. Yes, we’re listed as local luminaries – as in a “man and his goat”, but we don’t flash. Maa. The side of me that’s Odysseus, sacker of cities and all-around trickster – it’s on high alert as I consider the likelihood of yet another one-word awful title as will flag the latest pile of movie trash to be released into the world. Maa. Not to get me wrong: I love movies. Will watch almost anything, even mindless farce. But feel-good pottage all mean girl and bad boy dialogue – it unnerves one. It points to a great sucking sound at the centre of the universe swallowing every iota of sentience…. Thank you, even so, for presenting me as having been sane. (Previous post.) Dubious claim, however.’

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. ‘Taking a pass this go-round. Recovering from my cure at the spa. It was an out-of-body moment, me seeing myself in towel and flip-flops, the weight of western civ on my shoulders, some part of my brain a shrine to Schopenhauer, even if I’ve long since forgotten what he stood for, unless it be that humankind is mostly a fool’s errand, but suffer the little children anyway. You know there was a variant of a certain story-line as floated about in the ancient Greek world. It went like this: one of Odysseus’s sailors (under the influence of Circe’s spell) would rather not have been turned back into a man. He liked being a pig. Ah, pigglety wigglety igglety what’s up, doc? I think I’ll grow carrots in my garden. I sense a downturn in the air….’

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. Yet another movie shoot in this building. Weary of it. (Landlord, ass and wannabe arts patron, gets shekels for the vacant suite.) But I aren’t weary of cupcakes and my French horn. Of course, you realize the horn is schtick on my part. Can’t play it worth beans though I’ll have it bleat away at times, in warm weather, say, in the park down the street. Gets me high-fives and looks of concern. Wonder what this latest cinematic venture is to be called. Something as grotesque as “The Man with the Smallest Penis in Existence and the Electron Microscope Technician Who Loved Him.” Actual title. Polish cousin brought it to my attention.’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘Seems to me we ought to be getting serious. Too much badinage in our badinage.’