Memory

Yom Kippur is a holiday of remembrance. Yizkor the first service is often attended by mourners—though by definition everyone is a mourner. "Kaddish," the prayer for the dead is a poem by Allen Ginsberg. The greatest work about memory A La Recherche du Temps Perdu was written by someone  whose mother was Jewish. Nabokov’s Speak, Memory is the title of his autobiography.  Judaism is not alone. The Tibetan Book of the Dead influenced Gaspar Noe’s Into the Void in which the central consciousness is a dead soul. Dead Souls is the Gogol masterpiece. Then there is the architecture of death the necropolis and the practice of the mortician. Charon takes his passengers on their final voyage across the Lethe—the river of forgetfulness.

read "Enjambment of Fallen Men" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Tenacity

Tenacity is a labile quality. It’s invaluable if you're competing in a tournament, but it can easily turn you into a pariah. Social capital is a requirement for exercising what the Japanese call Bunraku or  non-quitting spirit. If you are not a desired commodity then you are a pest if you don’t skiddaddle. However like everything there is a graduated cylinder which tells you whether your glass is half full. A stranger who has something to offer may find their perseverance rewarded. Then there is lust, the lingua franca of all social intercourse. Sexual attraction exerts an almost gravitational pull as does charisma. Willfulness is required, but not in the perverse doses that can result in ostracism. 

read "Enjambment of Fallen Men" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Anarchy

 

WB Yeats

Anarchism has replaced democracy, but it’s more mental condition than political philosophy, Bovine spongiform encephalopathy is the human form of mad cow. "Unitary Executive Theory" is a prime tenet of Federalism. The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Presidential Immunity. Why? The roots ultimately derive from the notions of monarchy and dynasticism—that Enlightenment philosophers such as Locke, Hume and Hobbes discountenanced. Hobbes in particular held that human appetite needs to be checked. The violation of the notion of "the emoluments clause" by the current administration is a just one example of unchecked balances.

read "Enjambment of Fallen Men" by Francis Levy in The East Hampton Star

The Future

Burj Khalifa

The Porn Hub Tower is the tallest skyscraper in the world. Instead of a DUI, you get DEIs for diversity equity and inclusion. BTW it’s He or Her. No They or loitering! That’s the lady’s room, Bud. Which brings up the question of poets. They weren’t welcome in Plato’s Republic. Wallace Strvens was an insurance salesman. Flaubert counseled you should be “regular and orderly in your life so you may be violent and original in your work.” Writers of doggerel like Ogden Nash would get in under the wire. The banning and burning of books will adversely affect air quality in Red States. You won't have to bother to register to vote or vote--a definite lifestyle improvement. You won’t have to recycle, clean up after your dog or pay for abortions. The weak will no longer inherit the earth. With no inheritance tax, the rich will inherit everything.

read "Enjambment of Fallen Men" in The East Hampton Star

Ritual

Are you ritualistic? Is the routine of your varying activities a prayer? Do you feel as if you are the agent of a supernal force? Does it smack of compulsion to the extent that you can’t stop for fear of consequence?  It was work when every day was a newbie on which you had to lay your imprint. You live the life of a priest or nun without having taken your vows. There is no alter or sacrifice yet it’s as if you were under the aegis of something outside yourself. Do people try to get you to stop? To free yourself, to liberate yourself to become a free agent? Are they jealous because you have a calling? Is being footloose and having to constantly redefine yourself its own form of slavery. Yes you're weary of another day of the same but contemplate a life totally lacking in intention. The universe is cosmically indifferent and you're no more than a pea. Will you create the illusion of order or simply leave your part to fate?

read "Enjambment of Fallen Men" in The East Hampton Star

Dread

Dreadnought

Dread is a specific form of fear. Futurity is the common denominator, but dread is more philosophic, more encompassing than day nervousness. Kierkegaard deals with comparable emotions in The Concept of Anxiety. You might say fear is site specific while its counterpart ultimately pertains to the shadow death casts upon the finitude of existence. Fear is assuaged  by contingency but anodynes for dread are little more than bandaids.

read "Enjambment of Fallen Men" by Francis Levy in The East Hampton Star

Love Story

You strike a vein of gold, literally or metaphorically. Then blood flows out through the arteries, veins carry blood to the heart and arteries out. One speaks of major arteries from a thoroughfare. Curiously veins are never mentioned with respect to traffic though two other words are: viscosity and insisspation. "Es tut mir leid" means "I’m sorry" in German. Usually it’s too late. Remember the line from Love Story, "Love means never having to say you're sorry." You wish you never left or could resume life in a parallel universe either one minute before or after that fender bender or it’s one of those days when you wish there were gridlock statins.

read "Enjambment of Fallen Men" by Francis Levy in The East Hampton Star