September 2026

September 9-10, 2026: A book entitled “The Bookseller of Florence” (Ross King, Bond Street Books, 2021) tells me that, in the early years of the 15th century (in Florence) 7 out of every 10 adults could read and write. I do not know how this stacks up against contemporary American per centages, but I am sensing somehow that literacy as such in a certain nation-state has not improved on the above numbers all that much, should we understand literacy as the ability to absorb a text without getting shifty-eyed and to think for oneself. In light of which, from James Sutherland-Smith, a few lines of recently-penned verse:

Order made from disaster or more disorder,
the result of fifty random jottings
after watching the successive fall
of apricot and apple blossom
as the philosopher desires
that the strangeness of his moth-like mind
and the strangeness of the cuckoo world
to be reconciled in a single thought. … ….

I do not know if, embedded in the poesy, is a scary proposition or the best we can expect from a world that has our paw prints all over it. In any case, "The Ornamented Zither: Fifty Variations on a Poem by Li ShanYin".

And I do not reckon that in Maximilian’s day, that poor soul as was the emperor of Mexico for a while (until a firing squad took him out) that there was such a notion as government, diplomacy, war, politics in general by clown car, as there were no cars in the mid-1860s. But there were such heights of intellect and far-sightedness as could mop palace floors with the self-application of a Three Stooges-like forehead or two. It could be said that Maximilian – a man caught between his Hapsburgian, imperial trappings and a genuine desire to do some good for Somebody Somewhere, and the somebody and somewhere, in this instance, was Mexico, gave it his all, did his best (apart from one unforgiveable draconian decree as might have rendered his execution justified). Just that at every turn the man was thwarted by Everybody Everywhere, as well as by his own inner contradictions. Everything that could go wrong did. And the worst offender against “doing some good” was the church. All the while the European powers were angling their hands at their own immediate interests. Washington, a civil war under its belt, could not abide a foreign power having its way in its “zone”, and true enough, Maximilian was no Lincolnesque “republican”, probably no Johnsonian (Andrew) one either, and Maximilian’s greatest enemy – Juarez, resolute in his republican bent – was as politically cold-blooded as they come, no romantic he, he who ultimately decided how Maximilian was to be disposed of. (Shades of Titus Andronicus?) Maximilian’s wife, highly ambitious and capable woman, also wished to do good, and not just in some performative sense, only her relentless aims went a long way towards getting her husband killed as well as triggering her madness. What has this to do with our age of clown cars? Everything and absolutely nothing. Tragedy, then farce, covers things up to a point, but we are in want of new language to get us to a true reckoning as to our “condition”. What? A return to “humanist values”? That this will put a stop to the pit we have been digging for ourselves? Could do so. Could be it depends somewhat on the quality of mind that is driving the “humanism”. Brings to mind Lucius in no need of meme-makers at the end of “Titus Andronicus”: Thanks, gentle Romans: may I govern so, To heal Rome's harms, and wipe away her woe! On the other hand, AI will do us all in by decade’s end, and we will have been outflanked. So quoted CNN. Whereupon I shrugged, turned the TV off. I have no idea, really, as to AI’s lethality or capacity for boon. At some point tragedy and farce no longer have a stake in any matter, and then it is all warped fabric and spontaneous combustion.

Postscript I: It being National Teddy Bear Day, I will let you divine the extent to which Carpenter can get cuddly. Or not.

Postscript II: Lunar outtakes: … …. ‘[For one thing], Israel is going to take revenge on the UK although it will be mostly via the USA. … …. Excellent news that Labour has just accused settlers of ethnic cleansing and is applying sanctions although Huckabee says the US will punish the UK for this. Huckabee also calls Ed Miliband, the foreign secretary, who made the announcement, an anti-Semite. Stupid fucker seems not to realise Miliband is Jewish.’ … …. I know. These sorts of gaffes always astound me. … …. ‘Do you read Heather Cox Richardson's blog? She paints a mightily surreal picture of Trump in the small hours typing endless crap onto his Truth Social. He is seriously deranged, maybe even deranged [enough] to start a third world war.’ … …. Yes, I follow HCR fairly religiously. One way to pick up an American history degree on the cheap. Speaking of which, you were going to say: … …. ‘I picked up a CD in the charity shop yesterday, Sofia Gubaidulina's "Sonnengesang" a translation of St Francis's Hymn to the Sun. When these Russians get mystical there's no beating them, Schnittke another example, genuine as opposed to instant mysticism, the flakey stuff that you hear in the mouths of un thinking people. It is why I come close to violence when I hear the word "iconic" which is used for everything now. [ ] You know, of course, Manet's extraordinary painting of the execution of Maximillian?’ … …. Now that you mention it, I will reacquaint myself with the work. I did see it in London once upon a time in the Old West. … .... ‘The bad do as you like and get anyway with it, while the good try to be good and are lambasted over mere trifles. I guess I'm trying to say I'd be in prison a hundred times over.’ … …. Goes without saying, you high plains drifter. … …. ‘So the idiot has given the signal to Argentina or, rather, his moronic buddy Javier Milei, to have another stab at the Falklands, again out of sheer spite. I've got an awful feeling much worse is yet to come, whether it will [be] Putin striking British bases while Trump watches or ... or ... or what? Well, you know my motto: "One can never be petty enough" but nowhere is it as true as in the case of you know you. Tearing down the sculpture in front of the Kennedy Centre may be the beginning of his tearing down the whole place. And Hegseth with his vicious take on fat Canadian girls, just how low can one go? A snake stands head and shoulders above the likes of him. We went to the local theatre last night, a bloody awful play preceded by loud techno "music", the ugliest sound ever devised, which makes rap sound like Mozart. And it had virtually nothing to do with the play unless its spiritlessness was intentional.’ … …. I would say amen, bro, could I say it in the key of D minor on the back of a dirge….

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you think the moon looks funny, cringing perhaps because someone wants to own it, mooning it all the while: … ….’I've been tempted to ram pickup trucks with Trump bumper stickers and—important safety tip—empty gun racks. [Otherwise]: caustic incredulity. That pretty much defines every honest piece ever written about the jerk. It's also my attitude toward most "health professionals" I've seen in the Seattle area, which seems to attract the bottom 20% of med school grads. In ignoring the national security ramifications of strengthening Russia and weakening NATO, Trump is sabotaging the US for his own sake—future business deals with Putin. That's the only explanation that lends any coherence to such an idiotic policy. It endangers the US but benefits Trump, and Trump is all Trump has ever cared about.’ … …. Well, as for the latter sentiment, its words are highly matter-of-fact, laconic on Drake’s part, about as prosaic as prosaic gets. Even so, the man cannot abide Shakespeare in modern settings. Though the motorcycles and tanks and Fascist-era architecture in the movie “Titus” do suggest power projection to a “t”, seeing as the movie and the play on which it is based is all about mud-wrestling and sunset clauses of a shaky sort….

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘Watched The Return last night. Ralph Fiennes and Juliet Binoche, about Odysseus upon his return to Ithaca. Lots of sweat. Liked it. Haven’t seen the big blockbuster The Odyssey yet. You? Though read a rather scathing review in the LRB. Ah, but I do enjoy a scathing review. Though this one was such a scorcher that I began to feel bad for the director. Percival says hi. He felt bad for the director too. I have thought that I had a novel on the go. I’ve been thinking it for a decade now. Yesterday, damn near torched it out of some pyromaniacal frenzy. Trumpian snit? Have I contracted the contagion? Is no island safe anymore? Could you venture an opinion on this matter?’ … …. Afraid I cannot help you there. There is no known serum for Trump in swing mode – to employ baseball lingo. Self-imposed quarantine? Have yet to see the Big Enchilada as per Odysseus, and have no plans to do so. Will content myself with The Inspector Brunetti Mysteries (TV series), or that which has a certain melancholy in it, perhaps because one has always to wear hip waders in Venice where the series is set, and then it is a German language series, the vocables of which sometime startle, in a Schopenhauerian way, amidst the silent slosh of the canals.

Postscript V: Rutilius (in a light-hearted mental frame, and one no less droll for that): … …. ‘Ah, so you're up and have eaten breakfast, if I've got the time difference right. I wish it would rain: a 40% chance next Thursday and 19% the following Tuesday if the forecast is right. This is a tragedy for a beer-drinking country. Fico's survival (our Prime Minister) depends on Kushner and Witzler (Pretzler, nay, Witkoff then) successfully selling Ukraine down the river, if the drought has left any [river]. There seems to be heavy traffic on the web about Europe's inability to hold out too long against Russia. Personally I think, if it came to it, the citizen army of Finland would occupy Saint Petersburg in two weeks and be welcomed. Then there'd be nuclear warfare or a golden age of incredibly good education and furniture design.’ … …. ##***!!

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. ‘Got cupcakes in the oven. Got Polish cousins worrying at me 24/7. Putin, you know. Got a French horn that feels “dis-respected”. That’s the trouble with the male. Touchy. I tried to watch a new sci-fi release, every second of which (with respect to what I saw of it) was the equivalent of someone picking the lint out of their bellybutton, of having their head dragged through a keyhole of post-post-post-post modernist string theory not a string section, it was so self-referential. If by self-referential we mean a mind that can’t get over itself. Perhaps a worse problem than Foucault’s inner fascist. And that’s all I’ve got, if by “got” we mean the amount of tariff on ferrules. (See pencil parts.) Anyway, Carlota. That was the Spanish name of Maximilian’s wife who was otherwise known as Charlotte to the Belgians, and, somewhat high-strung, she went bonkers. Does one self-seclude? Just asking.’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘Still no favourite café where I might ensconce myself and occupy space in a meditative way, albeit with the smell of grilled hamburger and semi-homemade chicken soup in my nostrils. Although there are workmen scurrying about the site, shoring it up, re-installing the electrics and the plumbing, the bad paintings to come, those that don’t know whether they are impressionist or expressionist or post-Hockney but are, at any rate, Tate-worthy. I took a break from Roman Hellenism. Wrote stanzas about being an old fart. Strangely, they didn’t comfort. I did come across the following with respect to Carlyle (Thomas): “Nothing is more remarkable in Carlyle than the way in which he simply stopped thinking.” Does the contagion of Trump careen back through time? Carlyle himself once upon a time: “How true, that there is nothing dead in this Universe; that what we call dead is only changed, its forces working in inverse order.” And so forth and so on. “Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it in God’s name! [ ] For the night cometh, wherein no man can work.” Incipient fascist that he may have been, evidently, the man hadn’t heard of Truth Social posts. Or else he’d been speaking, you know, just a tad metaphorically.’

ADVISORY: “Blue Neptune”, a collection of poems by Norm Sibum is listed on Amazon.

FOUND AGAIN: “Secretum”, Charlotte Melançon, Des Antipodes, 2013; “Petit Carnet”, Charlotte Melançon, Des Antipodes, 2013; “Montreal Before Spring”, Robert Melançon, translated by Donald McGrath, Biblioasis, 2015