forgetting the Orlando massacre

Last night, about 1,000 people gathered here in Northampton outside City Hall as a means of expressing their grief and anger at the mass shooting in a gay bar in Orlando, Fla., that began at 2 a.m. Sunday and left 49 people dead. [Police Department photo]

Northampton is largely known as a gay-friendly destination, so the sympathy is understandable in those terms. But the sympathy, for the moment, is not limited to those who share the sexual leanings of those killed and injured in Orlando. There have been gatherings across the country in preparation for forgetting about the whole thing ... again.

Slaughter is slaughter and people are people. Not perfect people or imperfect people, just people. People come first on any humane yardstick. Agendas, of whatever sort, come later. You don't need to be homosexual or heterosexual to know that.

I have to say that I am somehow embarrassed by my fatigue. I am just plain tired of the arrogance that attends on one group or philosophy dictating to another. Whether my neighbor fucks doorknobs or is bound and determined to revise his or her sex ... well, as long as the direction is not palpably harmful ... so the fuck what?! And to those who suggest any of this is against god's will, I wonder if they ever stop to consider that imposing their version of god's will might equally be apostasy in the eyes of someone worshiping another god. Righteousness and outrage ... I have to admit it tires me out.

Please yell at someone else.

age and idiocy, age and genius

You'd think...
You'd think...
You'd think...

I mean, wouldn't you think that at the age of 80 or greater there would be a certain smoothness based on decades of experience ... of trial and error ... of just-plain ground-down ... of seeing and having seen? Sure, it may be a presumptuous presumption, but still ... wouldn't you think?

An 80-year-old man killed an 81-year-old man in a cemetery, then led police on a car chase before officers fatally shot him, Rhode Island authorities have said.
John Cloud of Kingston, Massachusetts, and Edward Acquisto of Tiverton arranged to meet on Monday evening in a Tiverton cemetery, where Acquisto was known to go to read his Bible, Tiverton Police Chief Tom Blakey said at a news conference.

I suppose that trying to correlate age and understanding is miles too simplistic for the human animal, but still there is some teenaged desire to have a simple understanding of a complex world.

The only conclusion I can draw is that idiocy, like genius, knows no age.

Vanessa Redgrave

There is all sorts of news today and I skim across it like a sandpiper speeding down the beach ... zip, pause, zip, pause. There is the slaughter in Orlando, the Siamese twins of obesity and malnutrition, the pairing of the potential British exit from the European Union and the daunting, undimmed catastrophe of Middle Eastern migration... and so much more. Somewhere, someone is killing someone else, but you knew that and so did I.

And then, without forcing anything, I come up against a person of substance, a person with sand, a quirky and unrepentant person and it's like falling into chocolate mousse ... or like a dog wiggling all over because it's so glad to see you. Is it because she's old and I'm old? I don't think so. I think it's the brass and how it twinkles, even if the article is a bit rumpled.

Actress Vanessa Redgrave. Even at the distance imposed by the written word, I get a sense of glee. The world is not entirely a hopeless wreck. Somewhere, there is someone like Redgrave to pin your ears back even if she is doing nothing more than being herself ... a person of sand and substance, a person who can bring the heat and stand the heat, a ... the only word I can think of is mensch.

I read the article from end to end, despite all of its written rumples. Here was something I wanted to know without really knowing what it was I wanted to know. Like a woodstove in winter, it was toasty and reassuring ... at least you're not going to freeze to death right now.

She reminds me of the observation, "Just because you are indispensable to the universe does not mean the universe needs your help." She is Vanessa Redgrave -- that's all. And the universe is better for her.

"The Empty Brain"

Passed along in email was this article ... which I found riveting, even if I'm not sure I understood it all. The good news is it's written in English. The bad news is that I'm not smart enough, even if I positively loved it.

.................................The Empty Brain..........................

Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer 

By Robert Epstein in Aeon 

A couple of excerpts:

-- ....there is no reason to believe that any two of us are changed the same way by the same experience.

-- We are organisms, not computers. Get over it. Let’s get on with the business of trying to understand ourselves, but without being encumbered by unnecessary intellectual baggage. The IP metaphor has had a half-century run, producing few, if any, insights along the way. The time has come to hit the DELETE key.

trust

The Zen Buddhist teacher Rinzai (died 866, birth date unknown) once admonished his listeners approximately: "Your whole problem is that you do not trust yourselves enough."

Now there's a statement to fuck up a wet dream: On the one hand, those seeking a bit of peace and respite and understanding come pretty quickly to the realization that their whole problem is that they trust themselves too much and, as a result, run into an unending number of brick walls -- proof positive that trusting yourself is far from trust-worthy. On the other hand, here is a guy who reputedly has a handle on things encouraging students to do the very thing that dropped them in the quicksand in the first place.

Well, knock me down and color me floundering!

None of this might matter much if it weren't for the fact that trust -- assuming you can wrest it away from the TED talkers and other caring mealy-mouths -- and the desire for it are so insistent and so overarching. It's almost as if there were something woven in the DNA ... birth, death and in between, trust.

At the shallow end of the pool, there is the political arena of the 2016 presidential race. Trust Hillary. Trust Bernie. Trust Donald. But where the waters are deeper and more subtle, trust friends, trust spouses, trust platoon sergeants, and, yes, even trust enemies. Cynics who may count themselves as worldly beings trust their skepticisms. Optimists trust in a bright today and brighter tomorrow.

On the one hand, it's all pretty airy-fairy. On the other, it's bed-rock stuff: Trust and the demand for it. You can hear the demand in the smile-raising prayer, "May I become the person my dog thinks I am." What is it that dogs know and human beings seek?

Trust is, among other things, a place to rest, a place in which to feel assured, a place to be safe. It's bright and clean and lacks the doubt that can infuse the daily grind. It's a place which fends off surprises -- the friend who does something utterly inimical or the enemy who does something undeniably loving and kind.

Deeper and deeper the waters run until distrust and trust run into each other, infuse each other, find sourcing in each other. The longing to settle the matter -- whatever the matter may be -- once and for all natters and nags an is always just out of reach. God, what I wouldn't give for a little peace. Is there no resting place this side of the grave?

Rinzai hit the nail on the head. The matter comes down to trusting yourself AND the fact that trusting yourself is a fool's errand without first settling the matter of who, precisely, this self is. It's not a Buddhist thing; it's not a philosophical thing; it's not profound or shallow ... it's just what needs to be done if the demand for a trusted and trusting place is to be actualized.

No one likes the bathroom mirror, but in the end, what else is there?

hot dog news

Heavyweight boxing champ Muhammad Ali was feted and buried last Friday, in the same week when former secretary of state Hilliary Clinton became the first woman to be a presidential candidate for a major American political party. And around here, Senator Elizabeth Warren, a darling of left-leaners like me, is going to hold a meeting today around the corner and up the street.

Somehow there is little or no time to sip and savor the events of the time. Everything is like a hot-dog eating contest on Coney Island -- just shove another one in and swallow it in a mad dash for some gold medal that will mark a vast collection of untasted happenings. To slow down and savor is to risk being overrun by the hoard that likewise collects endless input.

The price of everything and the value of nothing.

The first thought into my head about Warren's visit: There will be a traffic jam on Conz Street where the veterans hall venue is located. Remember that if you run any errands. And after that, the thought that Warren's visit will praise Hillary in an already liberal environment and (now the important part) try to convince die-hard Bernie Sanders followers to release their death grip on Sanders' liberal agenda and vote for Hillary ... no sense in giving sociopath Republican Donald Trump any leeway. Hillary will win the presidency and if she doesn't know enough to thank Donald Trump, she'll be a bigger fool than I think she is. What she may do for the down-ticket candidates -- those seeking to dethrone state and federal Republican incumbents -- remains to be seen.

Another hot dog ... and another ... and another. All with little or no sense of flavor or satisfaction or surcease.

tiptoe, tiptoe, tiptoe ... pounce!

Tiptoe, tiptoe, tiptoe ... pounce!

I wonder to what extent the activities of this life are -- directly or indirectly -- an attempt to somehow capture and tame life -- to net it like some rabbit and stuff it in a gunny sack, to encapsulate it, stuff it in a back pocket, and claim it as being under control ... and then walking on, at last content.

I think this is probably pretty common, not that it matters much.

But to the extent that the observation is correct and perhaps compels the seeker, I think there is an all-too-obvious fly in the ointment -- so obvious that overlooking it takes an act of will the seeker is willing to expend.

In order to lay the snares of philosophy or religion or just plain mental masticating in an effort to tame the beast called life, you have first to be alive. Sneak up on things all you like. No matter how swift or wily or well-versed anyone might be as s/he laid the traps for life, still life would have beaten the seeker to the punch and the entire exercise amounts to claiming to see when seeing is what anyone already does.

Just because it sounds idiotic -- and perhaps is -- is no reason to scoff at the heart-felt searches for the 'meaning of life' or whatever anyone wants to call it. After all, people have to do something and idiocy is a perfectly acceptable pastime, I'd say.

Still, it's a bit peculiar, sort of like your loveably dotty aunt searching for the glasses on the bridge of her nose.

"legal name fraud"

Scores of posters have appeared around the UK warning of "legal name fraud". What does this mean and who is paying for the adverts?

This story has all the earmarks of one deserving the expostulation, "WTF???" Is it serious? Is it silly? Is it sane? Is it nuts? Does it have a meaning? Or lack one?

Don't expect an comprehensible explanation in the story.

WTF?

the wealth of nations

It has been a difficult summer for India.

Drought and a searing heat wave have affected an astonishing 330 million people across the country.
But this summer also marks the 150th anniversary of a far more terrible and catastrophic climatic event: the Orissa famine of 1866.
Hardly anyone today knows about this famine. It elicits little mention in even the densest tomes on Indian history.
There will be few, if any, solemn commemorations. Yet the Orissa famine killed over a million people in eastern India.

So cultured, so educated, so refined, so self-anointing -- what fulcrum of wealth does not arrogate wondrous descriptions to its realms? Yet which has the steel to count the cost? The latter-day televised raiment of "Downton Abbey" is woven on a loom well hidden behind carriages and salad forks. The Brits in India are hardly an exception. Rather, I suspect, they are the rule.

To conquor is easy. To rule takes grit.

Is it possible that a nation without shame can be called a cultural beacon?

if Charles Koch thinks things suck....

Charles Koch

The Russian attempts to subdue Afghanistan lasted the better part of a decade (1979-1989). Eventually, they picked up their toys and went home, not least because of U.S. support for the Afghan "rebels." The U.S. among others applauded the retreat of the godless communist horde.

The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2002 (after confecting a link between the 'terrorist' attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the somehow naughty Afghans) and still hasn't figured out a way to get out ... 14 years later. Will someone please tell me how the Russians should be dubbed the "dummies" in this scenario? Trying to subdue Afghanistan, for whatever purpose, has proven impossible over and over and over again. You don't need an Ivy League education to point this out.

But apparently an Ivy League degree is not enough to convince the policy-wonks and politicians in Washington. It is politically easier to sow fear -- let's have a war -- than to sow solutions ... and still people send their kids to 'elite' schools.

AP reported yesterday, "the White House has approved plans to expand the military's authority to conduct airstrikes against the Taliban when necessary, as the violence in Afghanistan escalates..." Translation: Inject new energy/troops/American blood into a flagging cause. If you can't sow peace, double down on war. It scares the shit out of people and a scared-shitless electorate is good for political longevity.

But wait.

Politics as usual may have taken a hit yesterday when Charles Koch, one of two "Koch Brothers" whom liberals love to lambaste for funding right-wing causes, announced that he was putting his money behind an "end the divide campaign." Koch's action accentuates the utter disarray of a Republican establishment that has painted itself into a pusillanimous and mean-spirited corner: If you ain't white and male and well-heeled, you ain't Republican. Koch said he was sick of the ad-hominem tenor of the political battleground and hoped there might be some issues both sides could discuss.

If Koch is doing this, things have got to be really bad. 

"The Legend of Thunder Butt"

If McKechnie were alive, he would understand. Instantly and without further ado, he would understand and dive into the excitement and wonder. The two of us might sit in some cafe in Paris or Berlin, the almost-summer sun warm, the beer cool and the women's breasts so admirable after a winter of warming camouflage and now on display ... he'd get it with a single, out-of-no-where mention...

"They don't know much," he might say. "They're still trying to make sense of the paintings and petroglyphs."

"Imagine that! Thousands of years earlier than the thousands of years old that earlier discoveries uncovered. And all of if just a couple of feet under the Creole/Lakota/Navajo dwellings. I wonder if the later tribes were aware...."

"They didn't find any bones."

"Yes, but the bones are implied in the tales told."

"Imagine that ... some kid out hunting and trips into a hole and a civilization is brought back to life."

"I hear Zinderman is coming from Zurich."

"There is evidence that they sang songs and danced."

"But who the hell were they? They don't yet fit or connect. Maybe they were a one-off."

"No culture is a one-off."

"It's only been six months. They need time to study and evaluate."

"Yeah, but I read they already are shaping a story and calling the whole thing "the Legend of Thunder Butt."

"I wonder if that is supposed to be humorous -- some kind of frustration at the questions unanswered -- or if it relates to some reality."

"Apparently, there really was an entity or chief or leader or something. The glyph is there, but how to translate it is not yet sure. And no, it's not just some trumpeting asshole."

"Neighbors are not entirely happy that their pigs have been walled off from their accustomed spaces ... all in the name of civilization and study."

"Thousands and thousands of years ... imagine that! Is it more or less important than the Large Hadron Collider."

"The collider looks to the future. The legend looks to the past. Is there a difference? Either way it is ignorance that provides the spice."

"Let's let Zinderman figure it out."

Of course the conversation with McKechnie would be far less limited and starched than what is above. These were times when everything was on the table and it didn't matter what was imaginary and what was real. They were times of slip-sliding without apology. Bill would know that silly was OK and serious was OK and everything was on the table. Proof was not the point because proof would limit the ramble. Bill would know.

But Bill is dead.

And in his place, as if by compensation, across the street this morning, a ground hog wanders contented on my neighbor's lawn. S/he seems at home and unafraid. Nibbling at grass tips here and there. No one is up yet, but s/he is up.

I wonder if s/he is working on the Legend of Thunder Butt.

I doubt it, but when have my doubts ever proved much?

Desmond Tutu's daughter

The daughter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mpho, says part of her was "stripped away" when she had to relinquish the Anglican priesthood over her same-sex marriage.....
Reverend Canon Mpho Tutu van Furth followed her father into a life in the Anglican church, but when she decided to marry the woman she loved, she had to leave.

What a wonderful thing: Four kids between them from previous marriages; one an atheist, the other religious; one pink, one brown; one lives in Amsterdam, the other in Cape Town ... if a high school student made the details of this story up, s/he could pretty much expect to get an F for non-credible story-telling.

Sometimes it's hard not to want to take formatted religion by the scruff of its starchy neck and shake it rudely: "Get a fucking life, will you?!"

Verazano ... we know it's wrong, but....

In this July 19, 2009 file photo, the Australian naval frigate HMAS Sydney passes under North America's longest suspension bridge.

Despite a new petition drive to make it right — the bridge is named for 16th-century Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano (two Z's) — the state authority that controls the span has stubbornly held to the one Z position it's taken for years: We know it's wrong, but we're not changing it.
Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials say it would simply be too expensive to change all the signs, brochures, maps and websites. Changing the name of New York's Triborough Bridge to the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge in 2008, for example, reportedly cost the state $4 million.

We know it's wrong but we're not changing it.

How many governmental and personal aspects of life does that cover?

Buddhist foolishness

Two or three hundred years after the Buddha died, a group of monks got together and swept up the orally transmitted memory of his words and "Buddhism" was off to the races. It was sort of like Christianity, I guess -- a gaping hole between the sayer and what was actually said. Jesus or Buddha may have said what was later alleged, but the time lapse called the accuracy into question for all save the most devoutly idiotic.

Idiocy is not a deal-breaker in spiritual life. Everyone molds and shapes and lies. The question that really matters is, does the confection pan out in reality, in practice, in action. If it does, fine. If it doesn't, fine. No need to slather on the holy writ or 'incontrovertible truth' ... the point is, does it work?

So, two or three hundred years after the source of the alleged data died, a format appeared. Some committed themselves to finding out if that format was/were true. Others just lolled in their beliefs.

One of the go-to books in Buddhism (very popular) is "The Dhammapada," a collection of the alleged teachings of Gautama. And in the P. Lal translation are the approximate words, "If you find no equal/ Or better in life/ Go alone:/ Loneliness is preferable to the company of fools."

With two brain cells to rub together, the first question into anyone's mind when reading such words is, "What fool would be foolish enough to judge another a 'fool?'" The question encourages what sometimes is camouflaged as "compassion:" Go easy on your brethren on the path; everyone goes over bumps and makes mistakes in this life; to see one is to be one. It sounds good, but I have never learned to be very good at it. If someone is a nitwit, I am willing to be branded a nitwit as a means of earning the right to call someone else a nitwit. It's a failing, I suppose, but it's a little late now for this leopard to change his spots.

I guess what brought this to mind was the presidential race here in the United States. Everyone wants to be well thought of even when they clearly lack the substance on which a good opinion might be based. What evidence is there that one candidate or another is working on behalf of the electorate whose vote s/he seeks? How much of what is being said is said simply as a statement the candidate hopes the electorate will not check? How much of it is self-serving twaddle?

In an age of yuppie conformists, it is hard to find a (wo)man with sand, with substance. Rarely do these feather merchants get called out. Why? Because it takes too much energy for too little payback. And yet once in a while, in one venue or another, the conformist and his foundation is called out. Take, for example, this snippet from the 2007 movie, "Charlie Wilson's War."  



It gets so tiring to deal with people who think they've got it right because others agree with them. No need for experience or perspiration -- the rules are the rules and "we" abide by them while others surrender themselves to the twisting confusion of actually finding out.

I would like to think I was a more kindly soul, but the fact is that after all these 'Buddhist' years, I am not. I can only swallow so much of correct and approved beliefs before I resort to a sometimes enraged loneliness. Those who can't don't bother me. Those who won't and yet insist on being highly regarded in a world of conforming tapioca turn me into a candidate for a charge of Murder One.

Loneliness is no joke. I get it. But my patience only extends so far. And then ... and then ... "will you please stop fucking around?!!!!"

Naturally, I am not a fool....

He said, foolishly but without regret.

no one knows his name

Who is he and why was his body found where it was? Six months and a lot of detail on, the British cops still don't know. In the morgue, they've given him a name: "Neil." And there was strychnine in his system. He was found on the moors in a very decorous position, this man of 65-75.

"Height 6ft 1in, white, slim build, receding grey hair, blue eyes, large nose which might have been broken"... and he appears to have traveled 200 miles to the spot that would be his last resting place.

No one has come forward to make a coherent tale of it all.

And the incoherence is beguiling.

Hillary Clinton makes 'history'

Meanwhile, actress Meryl Streep did an impromptu send-up of Donald Trump.

It's historic and, like all history, somehow it has already been consigned to the rear-view mirror: Hillary Clinton, wife of former president Bill Clinton and former secretary of state, is now officially the Democratic candidate in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. She is the first woman ever to have attained that status. She is also likely to win the election itself, given the frothy, self-centered vitriol of her opponent, real estate salesman Donald Trump.

Clinton has all the magnetism and snap of celery stalks inadvertently left out on the kitchen cutting board for three days. She bores and annoys almost as many people as she excites. If only someone had remembered to put her in some political fridge. But she is a woman and a woman candidate for president and the likely next president of the United States. Women of a certain age and capacity to remember may rejoice, but younger women ... well, of course there would be a woman president.

Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator from Vermont whose supporters and detractors alike seem incapable of looking up the word "socialist," is licking his wounds today in the wake of a shellacking in California's primary vote. Sanders has wowed the crowds. Now he has lost in his bid to be the Democratic candidate. How will he speak to his ardent fan base? It doesn't much matter. Hillary won.

john oliver on medical debt

how do you spell "home?"

I suppose there are all sorts of way to spell "home." Home is where things rest easy, where there is relief, where constructs are set aside and where, were the world to evaporate, still it would be a good place to be.

Home as the place that succeeded any given work day has always begun with the act of taking my shoes off. It's not because I am some ersatz Japanese person. It is just my preferred way to exist: Barefoot. Barefoot says it all, being both the introduction and the crescendo of some small symphony. It is inclusive without being restrictive.

No doubt others measure their ahhh's differently. I wonder, for example, how a (wo)man without shoes finds a similar, home-y relief.

black and white newspaper

Like a reverse-version of a Rorschach test, the local newspaper arrived this morning in black-and-white.  And, like the Rorsschach that brings the onlooker up short with the insertion of color, it was something of a jolt, not seeing color photographs. It was hard to remember the time when black-and-white was all there was, and more, that there was something fishy afoot when color photography (not always very good) was first added. There was a note on today's page 1 saying there had been production difficulties.

How grey and gloomy the paper appeared. How dull-dull-dull. And yet what a shift of mind, from a time when the worded content was king and the photos were just ride-alongs. Now my mind, like so many others perhaps, is drawn to and ensorcelled by the colors and the words ... well, the words have lost their regal status.

And the stories as written are more polite little je-ne-sais-quoi's and less the hard-hitting, fact-pacted hammers of information. "One picture worth ten thousand words," the Chinese used to say. But which 10,000 and what they say seems to have fallen into disarray. The 24-hour news cycle has meant that news becomes more and more the old joke about repeating "banana" over and over again. What reason (or funding) is there for digging deep into the essence of a banana when you have pretty pictures to divert the eye and mind?

Oh well ... just some old-fart grousing.

storks in India

Greater adjutant storks perch as waste pickers collect usable items from a dump on the outskirts of Guwahati, the biggest city in Assam, northeast India/ Guardian

Victorian death custom

Two girls pose with their dead mother, while a Victorian father mourns his baby. The woman on the right's cheeks have been tinted while her deceased toddler remains pale 

 

Photographs of loved-ones taken after they died may seem morbid to modern sensibilities. But in Victorian England, they became a way of commemorating the dead and blunting the sharpness of grief.

In images that are both unsettling and strangely poignant, families pose with the dead, infants appear asleep, and consumptive young ladies elegantly recline, the disease not only taking their life but increasing their beauty.
Victorian life was suffused with death. Epidemics such as diphtheria, typhus and cholera scarred the country, and from 1861 the bereaved Queen made mourning fashionable.

Swiss consider/reject a guaranteed income

Switzerland will become the first country in the world to hold a nationwide referendum on the introduction of a basic income on Sunday.

The proposal, if passed, would give every adult legally resident in Switzerland an unconditional income of 2,500 Swiss francs (£1,755; $2,554) a month, whether they work or not.
Supporters point to the fact that 21st-Century work is increasingly automated, with more and more traditional jobs, in factories, retail and even in finance and accounting, being done by machines. And they do not need salaries.

PS. 

Swiss voters have overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to introduce a guaranteed basic income for all.

Final results from Sunday's referendum showed that nearly 77% opposed the plan, with only 23% backing it.
The proposal had called for adults to be paid an unconditional monthly income, whether they worked or not.

"The Lobster" movie

Yesterday, having been encouraged by a comment on a Buddhist bulletin board, I watched a movie called "The Lobster." Not that the movie concerns Buddhism -- it just sounded like imaginative fun.

And, having watched it, I returned to the bulletin board with...

I found it carefully crafted...
But I dislike artful creations about which the first and perhaps most heart-felt words out of an onlooker's mouth might be, "I can explain that."

More broadly than just this movie, I really don't like art works whose "explanation" is the best anyone can bestow. Isn't art first and foremost about falling in love? And when was the last time anyone came up with a credible explanation of love?

"The Lobster" was as cuddly as "Ulysses" or some see-the-symbolism existential puzzler. If I want that, I can buy a box of Legos.

But then, of course, taste is just taste.

Muhammad Ali dies

Muhammad Ali, a man of conviction who was willing to suffer the arrows of that conviction, died yesterday at the age of 74. Though he may have been the greatest heavyweight boxer of all times, his actions (and the big mouth to go with it) made it clear he was nobody's pet nigger. An honorable man.

Ali died near Phoenix, Ariz., after being hospitalized earlier in the week with respiratory problems. He had also suffered from Parkinson's for 20 or more years.

Born Cassius Clay, Ali converted first to Islam and then to Sufism and, in 1967, refused to be conscripted into the U.S. military. He cited his religious beliefs and was stripped for four years of his heavy-weight-champion status before a Supreme Court ruling upheld his conscientious-objector claims. Outside the ring he stood boldly for blacks.

He was a man of substance despite the substance heaped upon him.

What an athlete.

What a man.

searching for magic

It is not, I suspect, the artistes seules who set out in search of the magic. While the artistic bent may raise the profile of the effort to touch down in peace and wonder, still I think there is probably a snippet of DNA common to all, from pigeon-handlers to garbage collectors, that compels the travels and travails ... all in the search for a settlement that brooks no doubt. Artists may get the press, but the less self-absorbed do equal work, snuffling as for truffles for that which will still the endless tick-tock that marks the search ... stills the pendulum, imposes a relaxation, and, quietly, smiles.

But I think of the artists today. Setting off quite consciously sometimes in search of the essence. Further and further their music or colors or words take them ... nearer and nearer, please God, to that unknown which is nonetheless posited. Blood, sweat and tears in search of magic.

I think of the artists and their great mistake, as it occurs to me today. Their art weaves the net they cast and cast and cast anew, and each time come up close, perhaps, but never for long. The flaw is imagining -- secretly and not so secretly -- that by casting an artful net, however delicate or delicious, the magic might be caught and tamed and ... mine. How many intricate artists weave how many intricate nets and are intricately praised by onlookers who instinctively recognize the hunt and imagine from that that artists have somehow come closer than they. The artists reap praises ... and remain distraught.

The nut problem lies in the fear that accompanies the search -- the set-up that stipulates: "If I cannot control the magic, how could it possibly be mine? How could it possibly be true?" The premise is that the magic must be clasped and held tight and expounded. As a result, the artful artifices go on and on and on -- cast after fruitless cast. It is frightening to imagine that the magic might work without the artist's efforts. God is fine, thank you very much, without a single note of praise or theological wangling. Magic works and needs no translation. Translations burden the scene. The fear that there might not be magic if the artist didn't assert it is an awful fear. It needs to be overcome.

So ...

In the search for God, leave God out of it. In the search for magic, set magic aside. Yes, it may not be easy and writing "Ulysses" may seem like an answer. The complexity of abstract art may seem to advance the cause. The dissonance of what might be sweet music wrestles with the universe, perhaps. But the fence needs to be leapt over and left behind.

How I wish Ummon had found less artful words that are, for all that, on target:

When you can't say it, it's present.
When you don't say it, it's missing.

bullshit science

If I haven't posted this already, let me make up for the oversight. If I have posted already, let me (or John Oliver) re-emphasize its scientific value:

enthusiasm mistaken for excellence

... just something to keep in mind, I think.

military training

Circumstances gathered up my younger son this morning and whisked him away to two weeks of National Guard training in New Jersey. A comrade picked him up shortly before 5 a.m. and off he went. My contribution was four eggs over easy. He gathered his camouflaged gear, took it out to the car and was gone.

Somehow it made me remember the feeling when hitchhiking across the country -- standing on some straight-away in Wyoming or Nevada or Colorado or some place and seeing a tractor-trailer approach. The truck was visible, going 60, 70, 80 miles per hour or whatever. I never expected them to stop: It took some doing to get up to cruising speed and stopping for a hitchhiker was a move in the wrong direction. Generally, I just waited for the tractor-trailers to pass. Big and bulky and powerful and visible and, in the close-up-and-personal, surrounded by an invisible bubble of air. The trucks pushed the air in the front, disturbed the air to its sides and, once past, left a wake of emptiness. Whoosh ... gone ... silent ... no movement ... nothing left.

Circumstances gathered up my son this morning and I feel left in some silent wake. It does not occur to me to think that I too have been gathered up by circumstances: I am too busy with a small sense of loss and of missing my son. Perhaps one day I will become an adult, but today is not that day.

accomplishment and abomination

Strange to think that imaginative creation can live so closely -- cheek by jowl in present time -- with cruelty masquerading as kindness.

The world's longest and deepest rail tunnel has officially opened in Switzerland, after almost two decades of construction work.

The 57km (35-mile) twin-bore Gotthard base tunnel will provide a high-speed rail link under the Swiss Alps between northern and southern Europe.
Switzerland says it will revolutionise European freight transport.
Goods currently carried on the route by a million lorries a year will go by train instead.

Meanwhile in Pakistan:

A Pakistani woman who was set on fire for refusing a marriage proposal has died of her injuries.

Maria Sadaqat, a schoolteacher in her early 20s, was attacked in her home by a group of men on Sunday and died in hospital in Islamabad on Wednesday.
Her family say she had turned down a marriage proposal from the son of the owner of a school she had taught at.
Campaigners say attacks against women who refuse marriage proposals are common in Pakistan...
Punjab province, where the attack on Miss Sadaqat happened, passed a landmark law criminalising all forms of violence against women.
However, more than 30 religious groups, including all the mainstream Islamic political parties, threatened to launch protests if the law was not repealed.
Religious groups have equated women's rights campaigns with promotion of obscenity.

Everywhere there are good people with good intentions who commit both wondrous and unspeakable acts.

American ISIS 'candidate'

Talk about "a day late and a dollar short..."

Washington (CNN)Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol and Donald Trump on Tuesday [May 31] traded fresh blows after the conservative commentator had suggested that an "impressive" independent conservative presidential candidate is forthcoming.

French

Kristol, whom I can't help but think of as a card-carrying member of the American version of the so-called Islamic State (American exceptionalism or bust!), has apparently settled on a lawyer with little or no national name recognition, David French.  "French is a writer for another conservative publication, National Review, and a constitutional lawyer. He's also an Iraq war veteran and a Bronze Star recipient."

As trial balloons go, Kristol's is strikingly flaccid. Trump has pretty obviously wrapped up the 'Republican' nomination and the poor old neo-conservatives seem to feel left out and deserving of a credulity they didn't see fit to woo earlier in the presidential process. A dark horse now is a dark horse indeed. All that's left are the crumbs of egotism... scrambling for attention like a pope overtaken by pedophile priests.

Trump, who as far as I can figure out, has precisely zero track record when it comes to public service, has got all the focus, whatever the reasons. For a 'serious' contender to step forward now is too little and too late and thus smacks of something other than a serious political effort. All I can think of is that it feels lousy to have your agenda blithely ignored: "Lookit me! Lookit me!" And it's not clear at all whether French's relative obscurity is a plus from the point of view of a standard bearer who actually wants his own flag saluted.

PS. Here is a gossipy tale of Donald Trump's similarities with the fuck-'em-all Roman emperor, Caligula.