Embarrassment

"An Embarrassing Proposal" by Antoine Watteau

Are you the kind of person who has always had their hand up waving for attention? Did it start in grammar school, when you got kicked out of class after calling out an answer? Did you do it because you felt you weren't being called on fast enough or potentially at all? Has such behavior become a humiliating practice that makes human existence itself a source of embarrassment for you? You can stop crying out for attention, but nothing is going to change. Once a pickle no longer a cucumber. Society has your number. People realize full well that you're shutting up because you're enraged.

read "Chicago" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Hatshepsut

Queen Hatshepsut

This is a horror movie, one of those old 30s British affairs, where the Oxbridge archeologists upset the spirit of of some dignitary like Hatshepsut. If you haven't visited her tomb at the Met, here's the details. Hatshepsut c 1505 BC was the sixth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, ruling first as regent, then as queen regnant from c.1479 BC c. 1458 BC and the Great Royal Wife of Pharaoh Thutmose II. She's not the kind of person whose sleep you want to disturb. You think this is it. In honor of Lindsay Graham, Russia will finally be sanctioned. Cornyn and Tillis will stick to their guns and refuse go along with an agreement about President's fund that's not worth the paper it's written on. Even fanatics like Laura Loomer and Jean Pirro will stand up. But there is no slaying the monster, whose fingers crawl like bugs out of their crypt, just as you're convinced you've buried them forever. 

read "Chicago" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

What is to Be Done?

There are two basic lessons to be learned from history--beyond the fact that Hegel's "world historical figure" is a value free notion. Avoid nice guys and those who threaten to "get things done." Chamberlain made the mistake of thinking Hitler was a nice guy when he promised the Sudetenland was Germany's last grab. Most recently Pete Hegseth and Trump both have threatened to bomb Iran into oblivion."A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again," Trump recently declared. Hamlet is always held up as an example of what happens when you think too much. Trump, one might say, is the opposite of Hamlet. In the name of bringing industry back home, he exercises tariffs for which the consumer pays the price.

read "Chicago" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Anxiety

Senator John N. Kennedy

John N. not F Kennedy is the Republican senator from Louisiana. You may not like his politics, but his iterations can be amusing such as his description of Trump in regard to the president's insistence that vandals were responsible the failures of the reflecting pool. "He exists loudly, and he grows anxious when he has an unexpressed thought." Iterations about states of existence are an art form in and of themselves. You might call them existential memes. It's an ability that crosses the aisle and is an odd value neutral touch of light. A Republican with a name like John Kennedy is, btw,  subliminally bipartisan. Is it not?

read "Chicago" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

The Fly

You will say this has been said before. Why do you insist on dwelling on the depressing fact that one day you are not going to wake up? Not to beat a dead horse, you will no longer be perceiving the world. Can you get arms around that or the fact that your dying has no more significance than that of the death of one of the ants in the pile you step on creeping out of the cracks in pavement or the irritating fly you wreak vengeance on with your swatter!

Read "Chicago" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

TOE

 

photo: StoneIsland 24

TOE is the acronym for "time of the essence." If anyone ever asks where you got it, just answer "podiatrist." You might send a foot fetishist, someone who likes to "shrimp" or suck toes to a psychoanalyst. Remember Freud's "Rat Man" who was fixated on his anus? But if you really want to get under the surface, it's probably better to look at the metatarsal, which lies at the very heart of the human sole.

read "Chicago" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Kissing

"The Kiss" by Gustav Klimt (1907-8)

Do you remember the first person you ever made out with, the way your lips found those of your lover and seemed to freely search out a cavity of the body that's even more intimate than the genitals? You were in love, but because you hadn't learned to fuck, you soon grew bored and even tired of the other's mouth. After all saliva is not particularly known to be an aphrodisiac. Spittle was all that was left from your moment of passion. Only later in life when you learned that romance was nature's way of facilitating the shoals of desire, did the magic of kissing then return, as something once passed over and taken for granted in the rush for consummation. 

read "Chicago" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star