December 2025

December 27-28, 2025: I believe I heard it right: Gaza is a “project”. This news was mouthed by his excellency Marco Rubio, erstwhile Secretary of State for the erstwhile U.S. of A. with respect to an erstwhile war on an erstwhile populace by an erstwhile occupying force, investment-to-profit-ratio a long-term undertaking whose aim is to dispatch every Palestinian in the place to Kingdom Come, to be followed by the reconstitution of the real estate, as what, a riviera of casinos, AI data centres, rental properties for kazillionaires, presidential library? What did the hood ornament of American diplomacy call it? Operation Project Sunrise? Or make a desert and call it win-win? As per Tacitus remarking on the provenance of Roman peace? Surely, you get the idea. But ah, we have his gauge, Rubio, the Count Ciano of our day. He is the one man of group-grope Oval Office photo ops, the one warrior in the president’s cabinet of warriors-on-the-grin who can be relied upon to look askance as the pronunciamentos fly thick and fast. Poor guy.

But have I heard this right? One million Russian dead on account of Putin’s arc of justice casting its shadow over a good bit of the world – his adventure in Ukraine? If an accurate tabulation, does this not constitute genocide of a kind, albeit a self-inflicted one on the part of a once upon a time FSB director who is his own Rasputin now, who is Ivan the Terrible come out of the teleporter not entirely sorted out? So many questions. So few answers.

And among words not commonly come across in our reading, we have (of late) this item, or “compassionating”: the condition of being in active sympathy with someone in their misfortune, of being “supportive” in the face of someone’s pain. Trust me, you will not need to apply such a word to the likes of a Stephen Miller (a behind-the-curtains consiglieri to You-Know-Who), if only because the shoe will never fit.

Now, how about “superincumbent”? That which lies on something else. And why not? Lies upon lies as are Trump’s that go “inarching” upon our anxious minds to achieve a graft. (Rather punny, say what, that convergence of two distinctly different connotations – transplantation, illicit dealings – on a single word, polysemous to you.) The products of which are possibly the stuff (fruit, perhaps) such as “costermongers” vend from their handcarts, or is it presidential pardons that are the bill of fare on the street? Is this your contention? Your Homonym of the Day? But how is a stooge one of those? I would hear about corruption in my times spent in Italy, old women at the back of the bus trash-talking Berlusconi, for example. Even so, shady business was the basic principle by which business got done, no big deal, smiles all around. But perhaps there is corruption and then there is corruption. That when it eats into the actual governance of a state and affects its functions, and it goes hard against not only the state but the populace as well, well then, what is Trump’s go-to epithet as characterizes what lies beyond his weekend hideaway? Right then, s—t-holes. Transactional as a self-perpetuating loop that only benefits those in on the game, or as gets said, in the loop… Fruit loops as special advisers…

Ah, we are not completing our sentences, but we are two days out of Christmas, an hour or three of which included a viewing of Cinema Paradiso. Here is a film (2002) not necessarily up there with the greatest films, but a film that still has something to say for the nature of passion, work, love, ambition, and especially “community” as something to value but not infantilize. Got teary.

Postscript I: On this day in history (1831), don’t know much about biology, HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin departed England for a survey of South America, a voyage Darwin said charted his “whole career". Carpenter, however, was not a passenger on that ship, as he was not yet born, so then not yet of two minds as to whether to mount a sermon on how inconsequential humankind is to the workings of the universe, or to resist the temptation to hold forth on such a quandary. Humility, not arrogance, is perhaps called for when dealing with things on a cosmic scale. But whatever a certain president is by way of character, his grandiosity (such as the man hourly imposes on us) is anything but cosmic, he of the serial posts, of the filthy lucre that shivers on its approach to his coffers, and gold as has never come off so cheapened. 25, 50 years from now, and he will have been boiled down to his right and proper 15 minutes of infamy. All hail.

Postscript II: Lunar: … …. ‘[ ], some of Penderecki, especially the young Penderecki, is hard going, but his later violin and cello concertos are things of great beauty. The musical establishment at the time considered him a turncoat after his forsaking modernism but I see it rather as a musical resolution. [Now] I am unhappy with P’s Hitchens-esque cackle at religious faith, but what can I do that does not render me a hypocrite? I said something to A, however, that just about froze her in her tracks, she too being an avowed atheist: “When I come to Wales,” I told her. “I see God everywhere.” … …. What? Only in Wales? … …. ‘And this: we’ve been friends for quite a while now, which means we shall together be the greatest resistance to all we most deplore.’ … …. Not to be all au contraire about it, but I am superstitious with respect to such claims. Trust, loyalty, and prime insults – these are the staples of most friendships that stand the test of time, but are they the most essential ingredients of resistance to a nightmare not quite a tyranny but getting there? The enemy of my enemy of my enemy is my friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend come back around to prime amity? Not questioning the friendship here, just ornery stubbornness. … …. E.g: ‘Here is something you don’t know: Noah’s Ark docked not at Mount Ararat but at a secret location in the Isle of Lewis. (Outer Hebrides, home to some crime novels.) Here is something else you don’t know: contrary to popular opinion owls blink but the blink takes place within the space of 300 milliseconds which gives one not enough time to reach for one’s stopwatch. [And you talk about space expanding faster than the speed of light.] Who measures these things? They must be a very special people. [As for] your [recently deceased] sisters], but of course you feel something except that something is not what convention dictates. … …. I’ve been teary of late. … …. [And] my little cousin H, who lived not far from where I lived – she died, aged eleven or twelve, of a brain tumour and although I had been to her funeral and although she was the bright light in the family it was only yesterday, when speaking about her to B, that I burst into tears for the first time. What took me so long? Well, it is to do with getting older and peering deeper than one wishes to into the account books of one’s life.’ … …. And hey, look, it would seem we are not made of sterner stuff, after all.

P.S to Postscript II: Lunar unleashed, the words just in: … …. ‘Well, eff you, I got there first. Miss Anthrope. Miss Bardot was certainly one and I have always had a sneaking regard for misanthropes as long as they are genuine misanthropes. I fell about when I read that Bardot’s son sued her when she said she would sooner have given birth to a puppy. I’ll never forget the opening scene of Contempt where she invites Jack Palance to explore the various parts of her naked body. [ ] As for *****, America is suffering from collective cowardice, [enough said]. Oh, and The Sickest Joke of the Year Award goes to Netanyahu for being the first to declare his recognition of the state of Somaliland. At least Miss Anthrope got on her back and wiggled her toes in the air. Vale, Brigitte.’

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if an apparition appears before you, and it is a scumbag accorded the presidential thumbs down. Should he or she ask for mercy or work up a gob of spit?: … …. ‘I agree, much worse to come [on the political front]. Which is good. Increasing numbers have already had enough, much more of this devastation will crank up those numbers and something will have to give. Republicans, and especially Trump, always overreach. [But to turn up the coin’s other side], it's doubtful that Trumpism will vanish [wholesale] any more than the Birchers ever [achieved] sanity. But whatever [remains of it], our "allies" would be even crazier to accept overnight that the U.S. is back in the fold permanently. … …. [The kicker]: I had a moment. It did seem for a few moments that Mr T, though he's unaware of it, is beginning to [smell like???] toast. The notion comes and goes.’… …. What? No valediction for Bardot? Was she really misanthropic or just Parisian?

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘New digs, new problems. The septic tank wants dealing with, a foul smell emanating from the toilet. Even Percival can’t handle it, and he’s a frickin’ goat. So you found some Camilleri for your eyes to scan. (Writer of detective fiction – the Inspector Montalbano series, Sicilian.) Well, enjoy. In translation, the sentences work at warp speed. They hoover the reader up. You’ll be done before you know it, and then you’ll wonder if you read the book or dreamed it. “Maa” from the aforementioned goat. It's to say, don’t trouble your head about things you can’t wrap your mind around, or what happens to all that space as it divests itself of itself? God reaches for his watch, checks it, returns it to his pocket, clucks his tongue at the fact that either the train is 20 minutes in ritardo or His timepiece is out of whack. But he’s only going through the motions as he’s already irrelevant to his own godliness, as was the case mere seconds after The Great Event, and then the hangover that was called Genesis and then, post-creation, what was designated as “life”. Any deeper with this I’m loath to go, as I haven’t the intellectual chops or interest.’

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. ‘How’s this for a pretty quote? (Well, you and one of your other postscripting fiends were on about Solzhenitsyn for a while. I decided to give the man an extra look. Perhaps I see in his cast of mind a Polybius, perhaps not. In any case, here’s the quote: “Violence cannot conceal itself behind anything except lies, and lies have nothing to maintain them save violence". How about them croutons? Things have always been somewhat crazy in this part of the world (eastern Europe), provincialism and enlightened intellect perpetually having a go at one another, as in Idaho? But lately…. Or else, I’ve gotten brittle in my oldster-ism. Or else my equanimity is too dependent, thus far, on my ability to stay one step ahead of the sense that it’s all coming unglued, and all the sestinas in the world can’t put Humpty-Dumpty back on track again.’

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. ‘Cupcakes in the oven, French horn shushed. It had a yen to try on a Renaissance lute piece. I remonstrated. French horn caved. Right about then a text arrived, a Polish cousin on about space expanding, the speed of light unable to keep pace. Which means – means what? Polish cousin: “How much more “existential” can it get?” So then it appears that, eventually, the universe as we have some inkling of will disappear on us. No scientist or even cosmologist of the day will ever suspect that there was a Big Bang as there’ll be no light to measure, no money trail by which to follow the money. So much for “Hey Jude”. For peonies. For adorable puppies. As for Hitler, I hadn’t known he spent so much time in Wolf’s Lair, the surrounding area home turf for some of my cousins. East Prussia, you know. Junkersville. Big and swirly moustachios. So how are you getting on with Vanity Fair? (The novel, not the rag.) You haven’t made much mention of it.’ … …. Thank you for asking, but there is not much to say at this point. Some fairly muscular digressing. The hinting-about that a too large portion of humankind is weak-minded. Most of which portion mean no harm. Then again…

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘So you’re starting in on Vanity Fair (the novel, not the rag). When I read the thing a few years back, I made a few notes, to wit: vainquer. The word means winner. A certain entity as has us all wrapped around a syndrome would be bullishly “vainquer”. And I think I’m regretting that I’ve never paid any attention to clothes, none to mine, none to the wardrobes of others, and just as the smell of the fallen leaves (autumn) “gets to me” and the passages of time bring to one an almost crippling recognition of missed opportunities and loss, so Thackeray’s going on so about clothes in Vanity Fair brings on the same. Echoes of distant voices. Cashmere and “diddle-diddle-darling”. “The fellow with the white coat…” “The best hat and spencer money could buy...” And the exploding narratives as are a woman’s fashion-choice of her every day … ??? I wrote all that down for some reason and no longer remember why.’

December 15-18, 2025: We watched “Navajo Joe”, a macaroni western par excellence. Said the Comptroller of the Universe: ‘This is so awful it’s almost good.’ Burt Reynolds, the movie’s star, just manages to keep a straight face throughout, gamely portraying a Navajo man bent on revenge for the killing of his “woman”. The bad guys with all their bandolero accoutrements – they could have passed for White House staff, their leader bent on upping his scalp count. Just before we immersed ourselves in another retrospective on how the west was a thousand times made respectable through all the standard chicaneries, money the chief arbiter of who lives and who dies, we had caught (cable TV-ing) the tail-end of the “The Ox-bow Incident”. In which segment Henry Fonda reads a letter aloud in a saloon. The letter was written by one of the three innocent men unjustly hanged for cattle rustling. The unfortunate addresses his wife, and in passing makes mention of what struck me as the “soul of the law” defiled by a rush to judgement and other shortfalls of the so-called human spirit. Again, should I wish for yet another analog (or even a riposte) to the Current Regime and all its Whatevers, I could offer up this little scene, the whisky bottle a kind of counter for a post-execution séance carried out with solemnity. “Alright, so we hanged you guys by mistake. Sorry. Geez.”

Immediately below I throw up at seeming random a passage that struck me sideways, or as a flat rock skimmed off the surface of a pond:

It was seen then as it has so often been seen since in the history of the world, that if once the interests of the military profession are allowed to become a paramount consideration in politics, it soon ceases to be an efficient instrument even for its own purpose of scientific manslaughter. —From Italy and Her Invaders Volume I: The Visigothic Invasion, Thomas Hodgkin, 1879 or thereabouts.

I read the above and at first assumed that I understood its sense, that the words speak to civilian clowns mucking about with the military as opposed to civilian oversight of generals mucking about with the military… I had thought it just a touch tongue in cheek: Hodgkin apparently had a bit of the peaceable Quaker in him. But perhaps I did not at all get the drift. The quote does have to do with the “Barracks Emperors” and the chaos that followed upon the death of Marcus Aurelius, the legions, for their own reasons mostly pecuniary, making and unmaking emperors as if changing suits of clothes, and one can perhaps see various Praetorians of our time getting ideas in their decorated, star-heavy heads in light of the Hesgethian hood ornament in their midst…. At any rate, I have had the word “mendacity” slopping about in my brain for weeks now whenever my thoughts turn to the Current Regime (which some would argue is not really a regime after all, but is, in fact, a government from whose rafters democracy “hangs by a thread”). I have finished with “The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon” (originally called “The Luck of Barry Lyndon” as written by one William Makepeace Thackeray first published serially in a magazine, 1840-something, and then in book form, 1856), and if ever one wanted a picaresque view of mendacity and scumbaggery amongst the rich, shades of the Epstein Files (aside from the sex trafficking) part of the package, this is at least a partial enchilada, social climbing, wealth entitlement the garnishes.

Postscript I: On this day in history (1773), don’t know much about biology, men dressed up as Mohawks tossed tea, as belonged to the British East India Company, into the Boston Harbor, and war got closer. Jane Austen was born on this day as well – in 1775, and Carpenter, coming along much later, would either get his upgrade, soaking up pride and prejudice, or he would stick to the whimsies of a Ray Bradbury or the romances of Louis L’Amour.

Postscript II: In which Lunar sets me straight: … …. ‘Brace yourself for a shock: the two biggest heroes in Lebanon are Trump and Israel whose incursions to wipe out Hezbollah have been welcomed by the populace. Stunning but true. Lebanon may be in for the best of times.’ … …. Indeed, what I did not know, am probably too far out of any loop to know. But continuing in a Lunarian vein: … …. ‘Hezbollah has had a strangle hold on Lebanon akin to Hamas on Palestine. Only hell comes of their presence. Does it let Israel off the hook? Absolutely not.’ … …. Well then, a tricky little moral universe this, is it not, if moral it is, as it is also all smash and grab even in its remotest molecules, octopi playing marine biologists for suckers: … …. ‘Netanyahu is a disgusting pig, blaming the Australia PM for his support of Palestine which in turn led, so he claims, to yesterday’s massacre. You can always read the quality of a mind capable of such obscene utterances.’ … …. Which it is – what, what quality? Any iota of leverage in a confidence ploy, so let us draw the curtains on has been a collective freak-out? … …. ‘Do you realise that if Trump were successful, he could bring about the end of the BBC? Clearly the best response to his 10-billion-dollar threat is to do nothing. It worries me, though, that the BBC seems determined to take him on. Every time the man opens his mouth he lies, whereas, bad though it is, the BBC presented a lie to say what every thinking person knows to be truth i.e. Trump was behind the riots.’ … …. And one considers never thinking again with the aim of producing a thought, especially a thought registered as an audible. “Orange 47, hup hup…” (Calling out the presidential number, eh, for the next end run?) Or one will just utter an “amen” and pay an apparatchik in crypto to get election fraud off one’s lawn.

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, and if you see a cackling president riding an autopen witch-like into that good night, please honk. In addition to which, if you come across a horde of people anywhere in the Champaign-Urbana vicinity tearing at their hair roots, having undergone an Oval Office address, having withstood free-ranging braggadocio at high velocity, best give a wide berth. As it turns out, Drake has nothing to say for this go round of a post, nothing of a political, much less a spiritual nature, as he cannot remember when he last read Proust, though he has in him some Cherokee.

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘In my new digs on this benighted island, its population contracting (the numbers triple in the summertime)... Meanwhile, just heading into the last twenty pages of Ms Shelley's tome. While long-winded and turgid, it is, mercifully, only 195 pages long. (The prefaces and appendices run to 138!) Barry Lyndon, as I recall, rocks by contrast. It was also, in my view, a vastly superior film than Senor del Toro's Frankenstein, but then I am an inveterate Kubrick fan and have watched his Barry Lyndon four or five times. Now, when I was a lad, I wanted to play pro basketball. Never mind that I was short stuff and still am. Then like clockwork, and one was beset: jealousy, genuine despair, self-delusion the besetters, and here we have what tips off the general populace (here or on the mainland) that a writer is onboard. Now I talk to a fresh lot of trees. Percival has not yet taken to his soliloquies, as in “Maa”. Maybe he will when he gets accustomed to his new surroundings. Only another couple of weeks and the days will begin getting longer! Will you allow me this Hallmark greeting card effusion? Alright, so you won’t. Are you forgetting that I have some Nahuatl in my bones?’

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. ‘I see that the Visigoths have got to you…. On a separate topic, perhaps this explains to a certain extent the psychology of MAGA, or perhaps not: “If a man is ambitious for power, he can have no better supporters than the poor: They are not worried about their own possessions, since they have none.” And they are not worried about their brains, since they have scarcely any. And we might follow it up with: “In truth, prosperity tries the souls of even the wise; how then should men of depraved character [ ] make a moderate use of victory?” Speaking of You-Know-Who, not Richelieu or Bismarck or even the Marshall Plan… And the source of these little assertions? Sallust, Roman partisan of Julius Caesar. He wrote history tinged with philosophy, and while that doesn’t pass muster in Current Academe, what with the “tinge factor”, what say we could use a little philosophy now. Just a smidgen, say what. A dollop. Says I, who hasn’t a lick of Cherokee in me, though I wouldn’t turn it down.’

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. ‘Cupcakes in the oven, French horn muzzled. Hey, I watched the same flick (“Navajo Joe”), a humdinger, what with the scalp-taking and the incising of symbolic claims of ownership on human brows. When I say I watched it, I mean I drifted in and out of the proceedings, as I was responding to a text message from one of my Polish cousins, he not at all fine with the latest presidential assault on a dead person or persons who, in their pronunciamentos, had no fond regard for You-Know-Who and You-Know-What, and it’s all the long end of a very filthy stick, what issues forth from that things-happen orifice. Sorry, but I’m all out of intellectual breakthroughs, Venus sliding into Scorpio with her skirts up.’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘Those last Proust pages you were on about in your previous post – I’m regarding them just now (as I sit here in a café delusional in mind) as a last gasp link to a sentient world that was, even so, inflamed with pettiness and cruelty and a lack of classy acts, not class as in the sense of “class”, but class in the sense of dignified comportment and grace under duress. Otherwise, who am I kidding? I, too, thrill to a cheap thrill. I’d say more, say about a spate of mobile phone intrusions this past hour – like a red tide infiltrating the water supply, but to what end? No one cares. Civilization’s demise? Bring it on. I might add that the last time I felt truly secured was in my grandmother’s kitchen, the smell of kale on the stove and rising bread. It’s where she hung out while avoiding my grandfather’s sour temper, he parked in front of the TV watching Popeye cartoons. Proust had no hold on the likes of him in whose immigrant view Hitler was misunderstood. I hied myself out of New Jersey, washed up in Montreal – in those days when magic buses and white rabbits ruled the streets.’

December 7-9, 2025: I had but six pages to go, and my wander through Proust’s seven volume opus Á la recherche du temps perdu would come to the end of the road after the better part of two years. Even so, it sneaked up on me yesterday – the finale, a rather quiet one, at that. And yet, it was packing a caution. Should I the reader develop any sentimentalist notions about life-as-a-journey I would be asking for trouble. All the while Marcel-Getting-Old had been coming to a point in his life when he could say he was unafraid of death, just that he might die before he finished his “work”. This was something to fear. The book he figured he was meant to write was now everything, his life’s centre of gravity, perhaps his life’s only meaning, even if it was but another book in a sea of them. Throughout the opus one gets the benefit of Proust’s wicked sense of humour, and often enough in unlikely places (Marcel-at-any-age both Proust’s proxy and straight man in the sense of a foil), but in the tapering-off paragraphs of the seventh, end-of-the-line offering, Proust is all business.

Well, I believe no one when they say they are not afraid to die and the world no longer have the bonanza of a true believer’s personality and talent. But in the manner of our own vernacular, Proust simply states what is so bleeding obvious, or that “what is” is what is, dying included, and things fall apart and fame, as Rilke re-stated the matter, is a misunderstanding. Still, it is one of the great acts of prose, those final pages, constituting neither bang nor whimper. They declare things, but there is no hectoring. That cluster of brittle paperback pulp makes plain that you, the reader, are going to die, so pass the crisps. That your great love was not your great love so much as the smoke and mirrors of your own ego, and then Time. Time, time, time. Makes you weary, worried, possibly wise. Time as exposes; time as conceals. Time as promises; time as betrays. Time as ridicules. Time as puts one before a jury, and sometimes one gets off scot-free, if you have got the money. Time as says you did love and were loved after all, and man, how you messed with love and how it messed with you. Time. Cannot live with it, cannot, you know, live without the thing….

Here and there I had tried (unconsciously) to have sections of the opus on my own terms (as when the egotism of the young Marcel on occasion irked), but as the home stretch was closing me out or I it, it was Proust’s way or the highway. Even more frightening than the infamous madeleine that kicks things off at the beginning in Swann’s Way (whereby smell or taste or sound triggers swathes of childhood memories some welcome, some not), is the iron tinkle of a garden gate bell that brings on (in the concluding sentences) an even more rich memory-cache all the while the bell itself is a death knell, annunciation not of a life starting out but of a death settling in. And I will stop here lest a purple patch of words hijack my better judgement.

Otherwise, they have come out with a new national security agenda. Talk about popping out of the closet like clowns on springs from the darkest, dankest part of said closet. Whereby the world shall exist only as an American cash cow, period, no other efficacy, boing-boing-boing, need apply. Europe is degenerate and depraved, and the wetbacks to the south of the nation-state south of here are but fodder for propaganda videos, bits of boats and human flesh blown about. Well, Europe has problems, no question, but to be left for Putin’s dinner scraps? In any case, as we know, Trump and his minions despise one another, and if western literature begins with two guys fighting over a girl, it may well terminate in collective circle-jerk disgust, or as one hatred circling another and pecking at eyes.

Postscript I: On this day in history (2000), don’t know much about biology, SCOTUS put a stop to the election recount in Florida (Bush vs Gore), and Carpenter, shading his eyes, perhaps had a premonition of the future, and he decided to check his temperature.

Postscript II: Lunar getting terser all the time: … …. ‘This fresh wave of expressed hatred for Europe is of course part of the bigger deal Trump is striking with Putin. He will turn a blind eye to all these incursions into European territory.’ … …. But like a man who hears the echo of his voice tailing off and yet, can but state what is right before his nose, Lunar gathers up his skirts and soldiers on: … …. ‘Hesgeth is another creep in the Trumpian works. And what is that rubbish that is being spouted about Putin? Was there ever a US president who has been “played” more?’ … …. Warbling now, the aria full-blown: … …. ‘So, how much nastier can things get? This has got to be the ultimate, describing people as garbage. It is, basically, a licence to kill. And what in the fuck is a young punk property developer doing in Moscow discussing another country’s fate? The whole of Europe is being compromised to such a degree that Putin can say he is ready to fight and the Americans don’t even look askance.’ … …. And then, fending off an attack of the vapours: … …. ‘At five in the morning I read an article of Trump’s vision for Europe which interestingly coincides with Putin’s right down to the language used. I think this document may prove to be the most significant to come out of Washington, a doctrine which basically says what is Trump’s is Trump’s and what is Putin’s is Putin’s. The Great Betrayal. In some way we are paying the price for kissing Trump’s arse. I also read a report about how in Poland they are already preparing for trench warfare.’ … …. Curtain call. Low sweeping bow.

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you see a spot of Utopian Idealism staggering about like an Edvard Munch painting having an allergic reaction to an Oval Office utterance: … …. ‘These idiots keep coming up with mammoth absurdities…’ … …. And then on to a more general topic: … …. ‘If you’re watching it, “Bored of the Rings” must be watchable.’ … …. Well, not necessarily. But Drake is not yet ready to call it a day: … …. ‘Remember when we talked about the cessation of the Cold War and its blown symmetries, how it’d put a fearsome wobble in the spinning of the earth around its axis, and the spin spin crazier and then some? Oh, you don’t. Well, bite me. But here we are, and Putin gets his, and Trump his cut, and Xi comes on like Gandalf the Grey looking to utilize his magic stick, and the Gulf states chip in to help reconfigure the Monopoly board. No? Not an assessment in miniature? And I haven’t even had my morning coffee.’

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘Moving. My 96-year-old now ex-neighbour drove me and my belongings over in his pick-up. Then we went back for Percival who maa’d all the way to his new residence, not at all impressed by the mode of transport. Anyway, new digs. A-frame kind of thing on stilts, with lawn rolling away and giving out onto a view of the bay facing east, though I’ll have to hike if I want a stroll on the beach for a soul-healing whiff of driftwood. We’ll see about Solzhenitsyn. I’m sure his ghost perked up at the announcement of the new and revised Monroe Doctrine as emanated from some lackey’s bowels at a wee hour of a working day and is meant to put the cherry on someone’s swagger. Normally, I don’t go all “political”, but man, this is creep-some. Oh and, that ancient Buick I had in which I made the trek from here to the Florida Keys and back some years ago – I gave it away. Gifted it to a retired couple from Oklahoma who needed a retiree’s hobby. They aim to drink martinis and restore the thing which I’d had sitting on blocks. They’re not bad people. It just that they don’t give a damn about things except peculiar things to give a damn about, like personal comfort while living in retrospect, and the epicurean whiteness of their smiling teeth. In any case, the book I wrote about that cross-country peregrination has still to see the light of day.’

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. ‘Homing in on the last few variations of The Ornamented Lute poems and tidying up my childhood memoir, The Childhood of Louis Quatorze. Then if I've got any wits left, I might try some short stories of a weird nature. Just spent the last few days [ ] listening to a Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara. … …. The problem with the Second Viennese School is that without melody (and melody implies both key and some sort of scale) composers have to rely on orchestral colour and atomizing their music. Webern did this brilliantly. Schoenberg's serial works sound muddy to me like his early works. Berg somehow managed it using a classical romantic orchestra. Skalkottas cheated with the tone row, which is why he fell out with Schoenberg, but rules were made to be broken especially if they're arbitrary. Stravinsky and Britten, of course, managed. But I've no time for the noises produced by Boulez, Elliot Carter, Penderecki, Nono, Maderna, Gohre etcetera. However, Dallapiccola, yes and occasionally Berio.’ … …. Christ, I did not even know there was a First School, though I knew there were winter booties for dogs….

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. ‘Cupcakes in the oven, French horn quiescent…. That’s all I’ve got. I’m sure my Polish cousins are doing their nut, the one they’ve got to share between them. “What next?” one might reasonably ask even if one is not a Comptroller of the Universe. Yankee incursions across our borders? I watched “The White Countess” the other night, Merchant-Ivory film about Russian anti-Bolshie aristocrats washed up in Shanghai (1930s) and hanging about, and then the Japanese came along and put a kibosh on the festivities. Got me in the mood for calamity. And if it’s not one thing, it’s truly another.’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘What I took away from the last of the Proust pages (it’s been a long while since I read those pages) was that the rise and fall of privileged families seem to have the power of Greek myth, no matter how transient the family fortunes. And I was thinking how much Tiberius (Caesar) hated the senate, the members of which fawned over him, and how much Trump must have the same irritation with the same sort of legislative body though he’ll permit himself to luxuriate in the general arse-licking and concomitant high-fiving. It tickles him. I was thinking these things as I sat in a café and eavesdropped on two men (one middle-aged, the other a young nipper unnaturally deferential) talk about designing video games like they were lords of the universe, these jaded, world-weary tech bros. In the corner of my eyes a poinsettia boycotting Christmas. In the upper part of my line of sight a screen and NBC news flashing images of some interview or other, and already I’ve forgotten who was spinning what. You keep ragging on poor Solzhenitsyn…. I’d intended to quote from a prose-poem-like thing from his August 1914: battlefield scene from a horse’s point of view, but it was so bad... The translation? I’d be embarrassed were I a horse, and I may well be a horse’s ass. I could easily enough go and live in the country and give the world a miss, but I need the city and its distractions. They add up to something – a portrait of human destiny? Too ephemeral for a sometime poet like me to get his choppers into? Now did Carthaginian flotsam (Rome had sacked Carthage 146 B.C.) cross the Atlantic and make it to Brazil and thence up the Amazon to hang about with the Chachapoya people in Peru? Not likely, but not implausible.’