Jair Bolsonaro

Jair Bolsonaro

Strong men only get power by virtue of those they rule. One can admire charisma but it’s nothing more than satanic public relations. The push back by the MAGA base over Jeffrey Epstein flies in the face of the notion of the invulnerability, a truly "unified executive." Is a leader really so powerful they could walk down Fifth Avenue shooting willy-nilly at whoever gets in their way. The horrifying  shootings at 345 Park are a night mare of executive privilege. Ezra Klein recently pointed out how the notion of the deep state can easily be used by either side. If you deny a coverup, you become the problem. BTW is it possible that Q is an invention of the Trumpocracy? The current situation bears comparison to the Middle or Dark Ages where the fires of inquisition are fueled by a plague. Those who criticize a tyrant are under the same delusion as the support base. Those who worship idols ultimately remove them from their pedestals.

read "Luggage Tags" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Free Fall

apple tree under which Newton sat in 1666

Have you ever had one of those dreams where you are free falling. It’s not the one where you are caught with your pants down. No secret is being revealed. Rather you have taken a chance, leaping from the high dive, now out of control. However, from a Newtonian point of view, you are only accelerating at 32.2 feet per second squared. Of course the terror lies in the unknown, in what happens between the diving board and the water. The Cyclone at Coney Island peaks slowly but its descent which is obviously faster always seems as if it were taking forever. When will this stop? When you wake up, is the answer. But is it the dream that breaks the fall or the fall that cuts short the dream?

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

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Apres Coup

Do you often find your self lost in thought. You may even be facing someone who gives you a queer or bemused look. “Have you been listening to me!” If you say you have been listening when you’re not, then you run the risk of being caught in lie.You hope you’re with one if those people who are so self-centered they will assume that you hang on their every word. The nod in your direction is just their way of pretending to be interested in what you think. Human beings produce kinetic energy. Particles react without fracturing their integrity. In most cases the collisions are fly-by-night affairs which don’t create either anything of substance or any new substance. Entropy is  the second law thermodynamics. Then there is the psychoanalytic concept of "apres coup," which is a delayed reaction to a traumatic event. Don’t try to justify anything. It’s a waste of time--and energy.

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

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Zen and the Art of Archery

Words actually don’t fly up, as Claudius avers. See Eugen Herrigal’s Zen and the Art of Archery (1948). Words and arrows both have minds of their own. It’s not the object but the act. So picture yourself at a tony social interaction in East Hampton. You place great store in what people say and think but it is not the goal of impressing, ignoring or having one’s being bathed in validation that ultimately describes what goes on in any particular moment. People are outcome oriented and suffer from what are called "limited objectives" in certain spiritual quarters. Whether you’re about to attack, praise or simply find yourself in the line of fire, the significance resides in the fact that you're perfecting the art of oratory or self-defense.

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

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Truth and Reconciliation

"The Creation of Adam" by Michelangelo

Without being dismissive of a great human project, don’t all human beings merit their own Truth and Reconciliation Commissions? You have harmed others as well as yourself. Then there's the ICC. Your case won’t even come "Before the Law." "Before the law sits a gatekeeper..." begins the famed Kafka story. In fact, rather than setting a precedent, you will be forgotten with the rest of suffering humanity. Michelangelo canonized Adam's hand reaching up to God. Still day after day you pace back and forth waiting for a verdict. Are you good or bad? How will you be remembered? Your legacy, your message to posterity. The paradox is that history which is created in the present, leaves no clue as to either its final disposition or the fate of its adherents.

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

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

The Wide Sargasso Sea

Life both for the earliest superheroes and your average Joe or Josepha is a set of obstacles. Homer puts Odysseus up against the sirens and Polyphemus. Then when he returns home, he’s only recognized by his dog, Argos. This last, facing the cosmic indifference of his universe, is the most difficult. What is the deal with Penelope anyway? Jean Rhys Wide Saragasso Sea is usually thought of as a prequel to Jane Eyre but the title is bewitching. Imagine living in a changeless liquid suspension with an absence of circumstance. Such timelessness is usually not the province of the storyteller or even a civilian. What to day or do in the absence of pain and suffering. How to negotiate utopia amidst dysphoria?

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

and read "The Waste Land" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Naked Came the Stranger

You may be familiar with the genre of Autofiction, which navigates the channel between reality and imagination. Sex With Strangers may be the title of the work you're contemplating. One of the virtues of not leading the promiscuous existence of the libertine is to contemplate the wonders and possibilities of finding yourself totally undressed with a stranger. However, nudity and nakedness also have other levels. In the heat of passion, it's easy to forget that one is revealing as well as staring into the face of lust--which is a mirror. The realization that one is naked with a stranger is one of the most sublime experiences of human life and one whose savor is directly proportionate to its exceptionality.

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

and read "The Waste Land" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Trump's Trolley Problem

Philippa Foot

Trump plays the news cycle. One reason he's not going to send Jake Tapper to CECOT is, he needs him. He sets off a firestorm on one issue only to divert attention with something even more provocative. MAGAworld is a totally transactional universe. So game theory comes into play. Philippa Foot’s “Trolley Problem” is a literal description of a day in the life of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. A train is coming right at the terrified woman of early cinematic montage. If it’s diverted six other track workers die. Do you let life take its course? Or do you feel ethically bound to save the one at the expense of the many? The Retrumplican train solves the whole problem by killing two birds with one stone. 

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

and read "The Waste Land" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Ancien Regime

The Storming of the Basille (July 14, 1789)

Tourists are attracted to Rome because of the ruins. The past can be inviting if kept at arms length. Visitors team around Hadrian’s Tomb like flies to shit. However there are different pasts. Yesterday does not produce an effusion of tourists with old fashioned Leicas dangling from their necks. Yesterday is more the province of therapy than travel. Where are the monuments to intra-psychic development? Perhaps they are the property of imagination and memories--left with one’s confessor whether priest or analyst. Everyone possesses an ancient civilization which is sometimes only a nightmare away.

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

and read "The Waste Land" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Urgency

You know how you urge someone on with all they could or should accomplish or overcome? You cheer them on as if you had money on a horse. The problem is most people give up in the face of adversity. Turns out you're doing it for your own benefit for the feeling of agency and poise. However, the recipient of such largesse may find themselves lost in the shuffle and even belittled by the positive energy. Drowning can even occur when one is too willing to brave the waves. Not everyone can do it. In fact many people can’t. If mountain climbing were so easy, there’d wouldn’t be room for all the climbers on the slopes (which btw is actually what occurs on Everest where the long lines have become one of the most perilous parts of the ascent).

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

Road (of life) Rage

Surely you have exploded at some innocent person who gets in the way of your anger. Relief is followed by remorse. Unfortunately, If you’d kept it inside, your complaint would still be rolling around in your head. Now it’s deposited. “Curb Your Dog?” The problem is retribution. Powerless inept creatures at the bottom of the food chain are the stuff of psychotic assassination. Have you ever given the finger to a driver honking at you to speed up your crossing of an intersection? He can’t do anything. He’s not going to leave his car. Wrong! He’s had a few and feels like one of Tom Wolfe’s “masters of the universe.” Even if he employs his MMA on you in word only, it still hurts.

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

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Zukunft der Erinnerung

Zukunft der Erinnerung, "future of remembrance" is the title of a recent book reviewed in the TLS. The compound word Vergangenheitsbewaltigung,"the burden of the past" actually sounds like road directions, “Ausfahrt” or “exit “ a word you are likely to see on highways in Germany or Austria is onomatopoeic. Contrary to Merleau-Ponty words themselves which, by definition, lack the consciousness of their own being, are reeking with intention. Memory and the past are loaded issues anywhere but their significance is underscored by the rise of Germany’s Alternative fur Democracy (AfD), the movement embraced by JD Vance. As in the old Western Union Telegrams STOP! “Say no more, nudge, nudge “ to quote Monty Python.

Second Coming

 

The Last Judgement by Michelangelo

Tolstoy was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church because of his last novel Resurrection—essentially the final letter to the world from an author who walked out of his estate and died alone in the Arapovo station. Fitzgerald prophetically said there were no third acts in American life but reincarnation is one of the first things children learn about in Sunday school. Second Coming or just the old male refractory period? The urban legend is that the angel comes down and taps the little indentation below the nose and above the upper lip, to make you forget who you were. But no supernal force can lock or unlock the future. though; the writing is simply Living in the wreckage of one’s future is a slogan that’s often invoked about the pitfalls of projection. Then there’s the phoenix.

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

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Ghostbusters

Have you ever felt there was unfinished business and wished you could cross eternity and get that one last word in with the dead? There's something unfair in being cut off by the end of someone else's life. It's like being stopped in mid-sentence. Late developers face this predicament. Say you had a successful parent. Once they're dead you may start to succeed, but it's too late. Isn't there supposed to be a party line with the afterlife? Isn't that what seances purport to do? You call up the apparition or shadow spirit of whomever at the seance, but instead of asking them how their afterlife is going, you go on about yourself. You've got a captive audience. They're not going anywhere, like that that editor or agent who told you they were on the way to meeting, even as they open the rest room door.  Poltergeists ("Geist" in German is "spirit") are harmless is one of the first things Ghostbusters learn.

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

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Tristan

Passion in German is Leidenschaft or "love in death." Romanticism thrives on invisibility. That which doesn’t exist holds the upper hand to the extent that it has yet to be. Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet all partake of a love predicated on and amplified by impossibility. Gold is a reality, but paper which is prone  to inflation is the poetic currency. “The eternal feminine lures to perfection” says Goethe (Faust). Or to a stereophonic reality? The present is not the lingua franca of aspiration. Only when love has yet to be (or faces erasure through death) does it achieve its agony in ecstasies.

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

and read "Punk" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Bull in MN

There are relatively peaceful animals, one would suppose, but every living thing including minnows, which are preyed on by larger fish needs to eat--and not every living thing is content to live on grass. Which brings to mind the old joke about the bull. A guy dies and get reincarnated. He’s telling a friend about his great new life. He get up he eats he shits, he fucks. What he omits mentioning, significantly, is consciousness. The friend is incredulous and jealous until his old buddy informs him he’s come back as a bull in Minnesota. Which would you rather be, a nervous Manhattan health freak or contented stud? Mastication is also a desire peculiar to mammalian species. In any case, the bull is going to end up on top in all categories. It's not something that requires much thought.

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

and read "Punk" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Naphta

Davos

Democracy is, when you think about it, a rather esoteric concept. Majority rules and every vote counts are easy enough ideas to swallow—unless of course you are a believer in the divine right of kings or dictatorship of the proletariat. The American system of government emanates from Roman law. But "checks and balances," for instance, are plainly not working. Jurisprudence can defy the will of populace. But what will the future hold? The Catholic Church and the Communist party have something in common according Naphta, one of Thomas Mann’s characters in The Magic Mountain. The enlightenment view of it individual freedom leads to greed and chaos. But what happens when a religious or even secular state establishes a set of dictums. Plato’s Republic is probably the earliest example of this. Then there is Samuel Butler's Erewhon, an emordnilap which almost reads “nowhere.” In the absence of a Second Coming or Hegelian dialectic, one is left with a recipe created by Locke, Hume and Hobbes, an alternating toxic and intoxicating cocktail.

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

and read "Punk" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Wanda Landowska

Wanda Landowska

How many times are required to remove the terror of riding the cyclone? You can tolerate a certain amount of fear with practice! But the pulse is always going to quicken as your opponent approaches you in a boxing ring. That is one of the reasons for the jab. The jab is also what you need to set up an attack. In rhetoric, prolepsis, the anticipation of a question before it’s asked, is an accommodation to the fear created by uncertainty, particularly when you’re facing a canny opponent like the late Gore Vidal. William F. Buckley, the author of God and Man at Yale might have profited from a little defensive work before his famous showdown with his famously erudite opponent. Playing harpsichord, as Buckley did, undoubtedly helped shore up the blows. BTW, no one mentions Wanda Landowska anymore. Getting back to Coney Island and other places that make you feel your stomach coming up on you, remember the Steeplechase? Everybody has one in their lives. More likely it's a person who takes you on a ride.

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

and read "Punk" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Income Inequality and Racism

The current big beautiful bill will increase income inequality which is the subject of Thomas Piketty’s Income in the 21st Century. Racism is economic. You need a underclass of service workers. What better insurance than to permanently demote whole sectors of society as is the case with The Untouchables in India. Make no mistake, the latest Trump windfall will bankrupt the poor and disenfranchised even more than they already are. Which is great if you’re a trillionaire and need to hire the “help.” Zohran Mamdani’s political program which offers free transportation and protection from rent increases, threatens to disenfranchise poverty—a political goal which is necessary, unless you wish to maintain the status quo and have a not so smoothly running society of haves and have-nots.

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

and read "Punk" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Free Love

The emotional equation is simple. Quantum entanglement is not a position in The Kama Sutra since human beings are not sub atomic particles. Thus whether you’re talking of emotional or even just physical intimacy you give to Peter to take from Paul. Stretching oneself thin never results in good performance in work and the same applies to love. But what about freedom? Your philosophy Horatio reeks of destructive Victorian morality. It’s true! One would think that love would be tantamount to freedom since it involves choice. The paradox is that it’s not.

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

and read "Punk" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Is There Interest on Borrowed Time?

Is there an interest charge on borrowed time? And what about reparations for sufferers and fines for perpetrators? If you look at the political world as Wild Kingdom, predator and prey are simply just a step down on the food chain from governance. In fact many viewers find entertainment value in the sight of a hyena dining in the innards of peaceful baby giraffe as the defeated animals legs flail in an involuntary last attempt to escape. The gladiatorial battles of Rome, bull and matador and finally MMA are just one degree separation, with the purse rewarded to a killer. What then is the shock in seeing pure animal behavior in The White House where the notion of an emoluments clause is laughed at and lying is de rigueur? Spencer, social Darwinism, the weak caving to the strong in the unending survival of the fittest—these describe the constitution of our new “body.”

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

also read "God Bless Pig Latin America" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Gitanes

 

Have you ever thought, I want to go to a tanning salon and smoke Gitanes before I die? Notably smoking was the subject of Italo Svevo’s Confessions of Zeno. The protagonist who is the first analysand in literature is trying to stop smoking. He’s also an anti-hero whose comedic aspirations are reminiscent of Don Quixote. Anyone who has ever attempted to rid themselves of addictive behavior will recognize the Sisyphean nature of the task. The question which then comes up is this: will Zeno fall off the wagon? Say he goes on to live a preternaturally long life, will he simply say, one day, towards the end, say to himself, why not? Perhaps he concludes he really enjoyed the life of the reprobate. His heros are Bukowski, Henry Miller, Rimbaud and literally anyone who steps over the line. Timothy Leary had a point. Yes it’s nice to be “there” for others who need you in lieu of running after “ecstasy.” But are you really happy? Do you want to have a heart attack in the middle of an AA meeting or smoking and sipping espresso in the back row of The Thalia watching  the revival of Godard’s Les Carabiniers, c 1963?

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

also read "God Bless Pig Latin America" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Facesitting

All across the country, people are sitting on each other's faces. No matter Democrat or Republican, the phenomenon is as American as cherry pie. In order to insure that more people will sit on each other's faces, Facesitting has become as mandatory as some vaccines used to be. Medicaid coverage will be revoked for couples and threesomes who refuse to comply (Lysol wipes are recommended for facesitters, though not for baby sitters by the CDC--ed.) Are facesetting and its country cousin, rimming, what fellatio used to be before it became so common, it was not even regarded as sex by some adherents? People with differing political points of views frequently point out they would like to sit on their opponent's face, in order to smother their words. The fact of the opposition having their face sat on might be a source of pleasure seems not to bother them.  After all, you can always say whatever you have to say after getting "queened," which is one of the words used for the practice in urban legend. Discussing this subject can be like opening up a can of worms, but worms themselves will not be the result.

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

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn