May, 2025

May 10, 2025: I am not up just now for grand literary pronouncements, but I can handle some idle reflections, if I may. Accordingly, I suppose the language in Wiliam Makepeace Thackeray’s The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon is a masculine language. “Going to road” and all that, even if you are not likely to come across the grunts and squeals of ultimate fighters whaling on each other in the ring, at least not so far. And it is probably safe to say that a young man gearing up for being about in the world is not likely to mark any time discussing Hamlet. Especially if he is Irish, and, in the course of a duel, has killed an Englishman. Certain parties will not look kindly on this. … …. but no lad of sixteen is very sad who has liberty for the first time, and twenty guineas in his pocket, and I rode away, thinking, I confess, not so much of the kind mother left alone, and of the home behind me, as of tomorrow, and all the wonders it would bring. … ….

Whereas with Proust (in his treatment of the young Marcel), though the language proceeds from one epiphany to the next at seemingly the speed of light, despite all the digressions, the stop and start pace, it is still a passive language, even as it treats with, say, the competing self-interests that are the young Marcel’s and Albertine’s, he with his endeavour to hold Albertine hostage to his confusions, and she to her clandestine affairs with girls. On the other hand, however one might characterize the Proust-Moncrieff cinderblocks of prose, the prose is straightforward enough even when dealing with nebulous “interiorities”, nearly as straightforward as the language with which Thackeray portrays his duellists, one of whom is somewhat apprehensive, even vaticinal. … …. At [the count of] ‘three’, both our pistols went off. I heard something whiz by me, and my antagonist giving such a most horrible moan, staggered backwards and fell.

And for no apparent reason (other than to appease my pedantic nature), I asked myself: which Cato was it who committed suicide – there in Utica, and it – the suicide – was fallout from the hostilities between Caesarist and Pompeian factions, both touting they had the best interests of the Roman republic at heart, though J Caesar was viewed by the nobility as a budding tyrant. Well then, it was Cato the Younger who did it to himself, perhaps out of shame at being continually outplayed: J Caesar had a way of prevailing. There it is: I was, in fact (as I do every odd year or so) watching the HBO series “Rome”, its most memorable scene perhaps: the dying Caesar decorously drawing his toga over his bloodied body, the knives still out. It is for me an idle meditation on the immense change J Caesar brought to Rome, a meditation in light of the fact of Trump. Not that I would compare the one man to the other. The one was no stranger to the battlefield, and had, besides, an excellent grasp of the Latin language. The other has been described as a clown with a shambolic grip on some sort of pidgin English that seems, nonetheless, to light the restive fires of his base. The one wrote a history, even if that history was self-serving. The other has a media company as would tell a history of America, and yet, it would have no history in it, not even a smidgen, everything all Doris Day hunky-dory, nary a trace of the sulfurous reek of so much that stinks to high heaven in the American annals, just ask a West Point librarian. (In Trump, all the evils find their celebratory black masses, their empowerments.) If J Caesar, J for Julius, had his Rubicon, Trump has his, what, his redeye flight to El Salvador, the transport plane stuffed with unduly processed illegals? Years ago, I figured (with a little help from Tacitus) that America was going Caesarist, not necessarily fascist. That the state Augustus Caesar inherited from J Caesar was a mixed bag: republican façade, autocratic top-down decision-making. Just as now the American state is a hybrid concoction: putative democracy with increasingly fascist elements subordinating institutions to their “we’ve got the knives out for habeas corpus” pep rallies. One bewailed the death of the Roman republic as per Horace the poet, for instance, but welcomed the stability after decades of civil conflict. There at least was that. One bewails the death of the American republic and the catastrophes it invites, and will continue to invite, hypnotic gestures waggling at every farce yet to come. That being said, I yield the floor to Daffy Duck: ‘Of course, you know, this means war!’

Postscript I: Carpenter And is it really Lost Sock Memorial Day?

Postscript II: Lunar says it right out:… …. ‘Yes, I could have broken the Vatican bank had I laid a bet. I reckon this is as much a political decision as it was with Pope John Paul II, but whether the former [can] bring down the American empire as did the latter the Russian one remains to be seen. What is important is that Leo XIV has already attacked Trump and Vance and also, he will be a foil to the right-wing Catholics in America. Interesting times ahead.’ … …. Alright, so the man leaves off on a rather lame note, and we are left hanging, but really there is more, much more: … …. ‘Singing aside, the new production of Die Walkure had the stupidities one has come to expect. When will they finally realise that having Wotan in a business suit and Fricka arriving on stage in a Mercedes-Benz are clichés? Still, it was well sung and the final act - a real test - was deeply moving and the conducting was great. I’d said: “If I see a swastika I'm out of there.” … …. On the tube going there I saw a young woman, possibly Indian, possibly mixed race, who is my candidate for the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. … …. I mean … …. supernatural beauty, and it was all I could do not to avert my eyes. I nudged B— and yes, she had to agree. That is very funny about Too Tall Poet and the trannies. Publishing: JB phoned me this morning with respect to the treatment he has had at the hands of [a certain press] and what appears to be its new regime. You would think that if you were already published by a press, you would not have to go through the indignity of going through a submissions window, but this is what has happened by and large. It is all so disgusting. Yes, Mastroianni must have had fun making that movie.’ … …. Divorce, Italian Style, not Scream 2. … …. ‘So, then, the next target is the National Endowment for the Arts, which is about as Cromwellian as things can get. The impact on the performing arts, music in particular, the likes of Michael Hersch, will be nothing less than devastating. I had no idea that it was Lyndon, as in LBJ, who brought the NEA into existence and he wasn't all that interested in culture. Those old Shades are all beginning to be substantial figures. Theatre is going to be another casualty.’ … …. Perhaps, not Lyndon so much as Lady Bird… ????

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you actually know what communism is, and without removing your hands from the wheel, can count on one hand the bona fide commies you have broken bread with: … …. ‘I've lost interest in everything, including politics, which I didn't know was possible.’ … …. A grandly, swaggering pronouncement, say what? Meds to sort out? Anyway, corruption is one thing, but the prices one has to pay nowadays just to get a piece of the action, I mean, good golly Miss Molly, Daddy Warbucks does not even come close to the scale, and to all those Little Orphan Annies at their power lunches…

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘So I’m reading what appears to be a digressionary chapter in Solzhenitsyn’s August, 1914, The Red Wheel. He’s on about generals and their general incompetence. Egos. Hairy peacocks. The mucking things up so badly that what can go wrong will go wrong – absolutely. The failure to learn from previous debacles. A quote which helps carry the point: Not just a few individuals but a whole crowd of them saw the army as a comfortable, highly polished, and luxuriously carpeted stairway on which awards, great or small, were distributed at every step... .... Remind you, Sibum, of something? Certain presumptions of worth as apply to … Not trying to set you off. Solzhenitsyn seems to know how an army group HQ works, right down to the tricolour flags (pinned to the maps) such as represent various corps wandering about in a wasteland with little effect on the enemy (in this instance Germans), and as I’m reading I’m thinking what it is a novelist requires so as to be a successful novelist in the literary, not bestseller sense. He or she needs a complete mastery of all human endeavour, from cattle rustling to knitting shawls. Then I said to myself: “That leaves me out as a writer of high level fictions. What would I do with the ladies’ washroom at the Metropolitan?” Research, research! The two most important schools for a writer are “life” and “books”, especially histories. And on this island, as you know, I have my very own Recycling Depot where books come to die and I retrieve some. Percival says “hi”. He loves histories. He chews them up, you know. A most cultivated goat.’

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. ‘In these parts (picture a triangle on its side, top vertex being Prague, the other two Krakow and Budapest and you’ll have the Teddy Bear’s Picnic in which I’m a resident). The meteorological report? Sun and cloud, average temp (18), and a reason to attend a military parade in the capital of a predator nation starts with “R” and ends with grief. Otherwise, because I’m a dull boy, these days, I’m pulling a sneaky one: classic Sibum, from that poem Max Thrax, and let you eat turnips for a change:

I suppose, one morning at the start of spring,
I’ll awake, and yet again, it’ll seem
A mystery unexplained: old trees, new leafed,
Sailing now in a breeze.
Science tells the story well
As one thing leads to the next in maples….
Present moment shy of six,
And in a claw-foot tub I lie half-sunk.
Outside, a white-out sky (March in May),
The muted caws of muted crows,
The fleetingly falling snow, and
What an old body that I have.

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla:… …. ‘No cupcakes, this week. I’m in the country. Staying with a cousin. Jakub owns a restaurant in the middle of a field. Can see Germans and Russians and thunderheads coming from miles away. Golabki and barszcz (borscht to you) in my nostrils already, and in for the long haul… I don’t notice that there’s been any change in our lives as immense as you’d have it, and besides, who’s going to mess with a lady who plays the French horn? (It can shrivel the testicles of an ultimate warrior at 100 paces.) Look, I don’t make light of history, but people adapt. This is news both good and bad, depending on how much truth is buried in the adaptation process. When I left the city a few hours ago, the temperature had dropped, and it was pissing. But I liked being with a busload of strangers, going somewhere in the rain-gloom, eating up the miles, cornfields forever. Jakub picked me up at the Couche-Tard, and the first thing he said to me in no uncertain English somewhat accented was “fuck Trump”. He then launched into a spiel about Korean TV, and what did I think of the new pope? “Nothing yet,” I said, then ventured an opinion on TV melodramas, how they’re bedeviled by pop song tragic emotions. Jakub scowled. He hates being reminded of the fact that, culturally, he's a parvenu. A blackbird. A lone cyclist. Signs of spring. Will be back to my cupcakes next week. Oh, and a ceasefire looking for a dance partner… a sign of … “it’s none of our business, but then we panic.” I’m sure there’s a school of diplomacy that teaches future ambassadors in the methodology, but then, perhaps, its library, too, has been culled, divested of everything but “I sing the body electric”, and we sure as hell aren’t talking Leonard Cohen.’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘Tell your Lunar guy that…never mind… there’s no telling that guy anything, from the sounds of it. But, hokey doodle, Jethro? The soldier’s wife was a man? Movie rights? Anyway, I’m in Seattle. Half-assed pilgrimage. The Pike’s Market. Athenian Café. Where, years ago I argued poetry with a lady poet, and she beat me on points and with her gusto for life, as it used to get said, if one was making a movie about Zorba the Greek or Michelangelo. If one was writing up small “d” democracy. Place where everyone went, and I mean everyone. And it’s still happening. Fish vendors. Fruit stalls. Goods new and used. Hideaway nooks and crannies. Wide open vistas, or the harbour views. Where else would you have me? Thimphu City? My knees can’t take Lonely Planet anymore. Actually, I’m here to lecture. What was I supposed to lecture on? W S Graham, Scots poet. Now, if you go and look up a list of whoever has been a Scottish poet, you’ll get a list as long as … well, I don’t know about that, but it’s long. A whole lot long.’

May 3, 2025: When I first heard Dr Zhivago (David Lean’s 1965 film-saga) ridiculed for being politically fatuous, I was unnerved. I was dismayed. What else was I “not getting”? I suppose the whole “poet thing” that runs through the film front to back gets even more precious as time makes it way to some denouement or other, but surely, there are poets out there whose limpid eyes do moisten at the drop of a hat at every news cycle, and rhymes spring up like mushrooms after a summer storm, like demented cicadas in season….

In any case, a number of scenes from the film stay with me. (The reasons are various, but they usually boil down to this: cinematic pith. As when a picture or screen shot lays off the proverbial ten thousand words as those words, however well-chosen, are now unemployable, because redundant.)

Anyway, the boxcar scene, one no doubt reeking with soiled straw and Lysol... A political prisoner bound for a labour camp characterizes the passengers, the “comrades” surrounding him in the car as “lackeys”. As “lickspittle”. As, oh my God, “bureaucrats”. He is, as deemed by them, insufficiently of the right stuff. The insults, in themselves, were nothing new to me my first time through the film, but the levels of scorn as mouthed by Klaus Kinski (he played the part of the prisoner – that anarchist, sociopath, intellectual… serendipitous casting…) certainly impressed me on that first go round in my post-adolescence. Oh, I wonder why, just now, “lackey” and “lickspittle” have remerged in my consciousness as if cameos for a new reality show called, a la the TV host M Smerconish, Trump 2.0? I was, innocently enough, catching CNN for late morning headlines when the feed was switched to a live cabinet meeting in the You-Know-Where Office, and various Secretaries of This and That, and other functionaries, were extolling the Wizard, the Great Proficient, in a cringeworthy manner. (Consider that the word “cringe” is fast losing its mojo through no fault of its own, overwork the culprit. Nonetheless, “cringe” was firing on all cylinders, and I damn near lost my breakfast.)

I was sent a piece that David Brooks the conservative pundit had written for The Atlantic. I was duty-bound to read it and so, I did just that – I perused. I will say that, ever since the Bush-Cheney years, I have come to blows with Mr Brooks. His stance on the Iraq War did little to win me over, not even with his “aw shucks acts of humility,” his standard comportment on the Friday evening news hour, PBS. But in the broad strokes I found myself agreeing with what he had to say this time around. His point that the current occupiers of all three branches of the government have nothing to do with any “conservative movement”, but are in it for the cheese, rang a few bells. That as for power sought for and power gained and power to be kept at any cost – this is what it means to do the hokey pokey and shake it all about. (Or chalk me up as yet another instance of political fatuity, along with Mr Brooks and some octogenarian hippies…) Later that afternoon, and it was Election Day in Canada, and I had voted first thing as if it had been the second most important deed I have done in my adult life, or third or fourth, and I remarked to myself thusly: ‘While Cabaret (1972), following upon the live cabinet meeting referred to above, is not the greatest movie ever made with extreme politics as its backdrop, it’s not the worst. But because I have election jitters, I could wish for a less ominous echo from the past such as would insinuate itself into this present moment of threat so as to cause a guy to doubt the integrity of his brain functions’.

Now, as for jenny-jessamines, are they birds? Are they flowers? Young women who try the patience of young men? You have got me. I came across it in Thackeray’s The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon (1844). Its occurrence was preceded by the cameo appearances of Boswell and Johnson and a setting about to hit upon suitable rhymes for Aristotle. (I myself have rhymed the philosopher with the most obvious contender – bottle, so I am not sorry to say. I did it with vehemence.) The memoirist had a brief and perhaps liquor-laced spat with Johnson as to the value of knowing Greek and Latin and else, and not knowing one’s horses. I did learn that a “pillion” has something to do, as secondary seating, with horses and motorbikes; that “arrums”, in Barry Lyndon’s world, probably had nothing to do with humanoids in ours, but could refer to flowering plants that, in themselves, may invoke some aspects of human sexuality. You win some, you lose some. Otherwise, you muddle onward.

But no matter. My jitters were not allayed, the day getting on for twilight. And in my latest gander at Proust’s The Past Recaptured, I could only take from the pages in question that there is no consolation, no comfort to be had in any pose struck against those who would render life even more of a boondoggle than it already is, especially after observing the antics of those who would acquire some comfort and consolation, and the endeavour, objectively speaking, is not going well, not even in yoga class. One fails to realize that one is, willy-nilly, a relic in a new world that sprang up around one before one had a chance to blink or wipe away the effects of the siesta. Dragon’s teeth, indeed. Or as when the leaves first appear seemingly overnight, catching one off-guard yet again, and the world is simultaneously recognizable and awfully strange.

Postscript I: Carpenter And is it really International Truffles Day?

Postscript II: Lunar: … …. Noteworthy admission. For the man said: ‘Okay, agreed: this is big. I am speaking of the blocking of public funds to PBS and NPR. This may be the worst yet in terms of what it implies. Fascism? Did you say something? And here [Britland], the local as opposed to the general election, the sudden rise of the Reform Party, the disgusting Nigel Farage, Trump acolyte. What in the hell is happening? Who are these people voting [in the likes of those pikers]? If they are feeling desperate, how does their desperation compare to that of what is happening in the bigger world, Gaza, the Israeli meddling with the Druze in Syria (which is potentially extremely serious) etc. … …. [No], I can't get over this sudden rise of the Reform Party. It is populist not fascist but not without fascistic elements to it, immigration etc, but as opposed to the bloated view (certain) Americans have of themselves what we have here is the opposite, a Little Englander view of things, a yearning for what never was, a narrowness of vision. … …. I think what we are seeing now is a consequence of so much else in the history's past. America did not lose its virginity; it never had it to begin with. Now, for my next trick (book) I am being drawn back to the soul objects idea. We went [to] a wonderful exhibition yesterday on, wait for it, traditional Japanese joinery. There was an accompanying film which began with a tool kit and in which the tools were said to be invested with soul, the soul of the previous owner, and which informs the Japanese carpenter more than learning the trade itself. My, that's my cuppa tea. Did you know that Japan is the only country in the world where the plane is not pushed away from but towards one's own body? You didn't know that, did you? Me neither. What is it about the Japanese that they have this innate sense of aesthetic? The very tools themselves were beautiful.’ … …. Now, is that not sweet on Lunar’s part? But in America, there is a lot of “aesthetic”, say, in the batter’s box, how one strikes a pose and brandishes the bat….

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you hear a red, red robin singing its death song, rogue deep impact on the way as features the mug of any number of Trumpian Rasputins, you pick one, say, Loomer, say Miller, say Rubio, old buddy, or Musk the Impaler. No, scratch that, Musk or He Who Dismembers with Chainsaw. Sure, let us play a round of “name that tune”: So lately, been wondering/Who will be there to take my place?/When I'm gone, you'll need love/To light the shadows on your face. Anyway, Mr Drake: … ….’If other centrists and center-rightists were as open-minded and vulnerable to reality as M is, we never would have suffered this [and here I’m quoting Pasquino the Talking Statue in Rome, the origin of pasquinades], this fascist dick Donald Trump.’ … …. There it is then: tirade-in-a-blanket, thought-crime as active service, voice as detonator.

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘There was a knock on my door late in the evening. Percival bleated out a warning from his pen. Opening the door, I beheld a nutter. He had all the hair of a Noah, ark-builder. He wished to know: how had I voted? With my nose in the air, said I. Now piss off. And yes, if you were wondering at all about where I am with respect to this pressing matter, Solzhenitsyn hasn’t the caliber of Proust, true enough, but when it comes to a round in the pub, I’d rather drink with him than with a very high level gossip columnist. Remember “Rome” the series? JCaesar sends Mark Antony to the senate as tribune, the fact of which will insult not a few senators? I’ve taken to watching it again, and I was thinking Vance at the Vatican, or Musk, if you will, set loose amongst free range Congressionals. What was that longish poem you wrote about Tiberius that no one will ever read, Germanicus’ funeral procession making its way from Brundisium to Rome and the forbidding sight of the emperor there weighing the political implications, not to mention the people in the streets indulging in the sport of insulting him with audible graffiti? And the days were always seen by the light of sunsets, peaceful on the surface, seething with poisons underneath. See what you’ve gone and done? Got me being political in mind, and I don’t much care for it.’ … …. A thousand pardons, my friend. I would not inflict the dog’s breath of “political” on my worst enemies. Rather, there is a fatal flaw in my make-up: when I look up at a night sky of stars whose light is ancient, I know I am peering into the past.

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. ‘I’ve nothing to say. What did you expect? The Gettysburg Address? The Roman poet Martial is a man after my heart, not in any predatory way, but as a soul-cousin, if you will, as when he wrote, and here it is via translation, Peter Whigam’s: They smell of Corycian saffron, of a/girl’s tooth biting a fresh apple,/of first bunches of white grapes and sheep-cropped/grass and myrtle leaves and chafed amber./They’re in the herb harvest. They’re in the flame/golden with myrrh. Earth smells of them/In summer after rain and jewellery/reeking of expensive heads./Your kisses, my cold jewel, smell thus. How would/they smell if love had warmed their giving? … …. If you say so, man. But was not Martial cattier than this offering seems to be?

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. ‘You betchum, Red Ryder, I'll speak of myself in the third person. Hence: she decided not to stay up for the election results. The French horn, however, held its breath, anxiously eyeing a nocturno, and the prospect of a minority government. She knows that cupcakes are problematical for one’s health, but she will bake them anyway, eat a few, and distribute the rest among those NDPers who sacrificed their bodies in the interests of national unity.’ … …. Well, we here take the woman at her word, she always a force to be reckoned with.

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. “I read that same Brooks piece in The Atlantic that you had occasion to mention. In consequence of which I asked myself an obvious question: where am I politically? Haven’t addressed this concern to myself in years. Been resting on my laurels, maybe. And before I could answer, a little voice sounded off: ‘Beware political self-consciousness. It gives one the illusion of an accurate compass heading. One is, for instance, SSE of a liberal consensus as to what identity politics is good for, seeing as we’ve put the workers out with the dog, and are about to do so with civil rights. Or, if you must, define “people”. As per Gladiator the flick, one doesn’t have to be “of the people” to be “for the people”. I can fool around like this for a long time, and without trips to the toilet, but there’s a principle or two or three, the messing with raises alarms. Due process. Equality under the law. Separation of church and state. The designated hitter rule.’