Fin

The Ghost of Xmas Yet to Come (John Leech)

Very few people contemplate the notion of what it means to no longer to be. For all its simplicity, it's fundamentally inconceivable to entertain the notion of non-existence. Heidegger said that you can't live an authentic existence unless you're aware of death. It's one thing to admit that there will be a day when there's no calendar, no night, no day, no worrying about the fate of everyone in your orbit. It will no longer matter what you think about outcomes, that you toss and turn about as long as you have consciousness. There are cases of individuals who flatline and live to tell it, but a touch of death,  whether it's the heart stopping beating or the respiratory system intermittently collapsing, is a far cry from the eternity of death. You may have experienced forgetting, for a moment, that someone is dead. Oh what would she think? Only to realize she or he is no more. Perhaps you can't stop  yourself from thinking you yourself will get one last chance to call collect.

The World Is Not Enough

"To Be Is To Be Perceived," esse est percipi, the quote from Bishop Berkeley acts as the epigram for Samuel Beckett's only movie, Film (1965), starring Buster Keaton. Tomorrow Never Dies (l997), The World Is Not Enough (1999) and Die Another Day (2002) are the titles of some Pierce Brosnans. But contemplate Buster Keaton as one in the series of James Bond incarnations. To Be Is To Be Perceived fits right in with The World Is Not Enough (and is also reminiscent of the first proposition of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, "the world is everything that is the case") but there are some differences. The World Is Not Enough begins with Pierce Brosnan fencing off with a Swiss banker at an office in Bilbao, Spain. The Guggenheim is visible right out the window in the first scene. Three guns are turned on him, but he manages to vanquish his assailants only in time to see a red laser dot scanning his body. It's a gun pointed at him by a beauty in a speedboat. Brosnan grabs a specially equipped Jet Ski, all in the service of returning a cache of pounds sterling to its rightful owner. Of course the money's been dusted with explosive. Compare that with Keaton encountering his image in a mirror. You may not be able to take your eyes off him, though he's plainly unable to take his eyes off himself, for fear his solipsistic world will disappear. How do you like them apples?

Emoluments

Senator Dan Sullivan and Trump

The emoluments clauses of the constitution are under attack is an understatement. The context is one in which almost all the protections inherent in legislative government have either been ignored or diminished. What about the separation of the executive and the judiciary. Todd Blanche recently described himself as Trump's lawyer. What's even more upsetting however is the willingness of the administration (under the Unitary Executive Theory) to openly defy courts. This has been demonstrated in numerous immigration cases as only one example. The ideologizing of The Supreme Court is perhaps the most disconcerting of all the abrogations, with Justices Alito and Thomas providing a rubber stamp on nearly every Trump filing. Notions like due process and a bill of rights, central to the democratic ideal are laid by the wayside on an almost daily basis. The Iran War, the Cuba embargo, the Venezuela coup, even the  renaming of the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario, humorous sallies with a barely concealed threat, all make one fearful of how a possible Democratic victory in the midterms will  be treated. The DOJ has already filed a preemptive suit in Alaska perpetrating the. bizarre idea that the election results will only be bona fide if the Republican, Dan Sullivan, wins.

Grantchester!!!!!!!!!!

 Grantchester is the best thing you will ever seen on TV.  It may be the best piece of art you'll ever encounter, comparable to say "The Night Watch" or Jackson Pollock's Autumn Rhythm Number #2 (the centerpiece of the current Krasner/Pollock show at the Met). Who the fuck is writing these scripts? Based on the James Runcie mystery novels, they are, indeed, Dickensian in quality. Like Great Expectations and David Copperfield, they're tear jerkers. But so what? As someone once said about brainwashing, sometimes your brain needs to be washed. Al Weaver is the gay student priest, James Norton, Sidney Chambers, the jazz loving Vicar and Robson Green, Geordie, the local gendarme.  In one episode, there's a new high-up in the church, an African intellectual,  who's taken the place of a disgraced pederast. He's all for tending to the gay, as if they were the wretched of the earth, but the clergy must be powers of example. It's a shocking scene, not particularly due to content. Nothing new, but simply the lines and how it's played out. It's hard to believe that it wasn't until l967 that homosexuality was decriminalized in England, but there's lots more, including a powerful scene where Amanda's (Morven Christie's) borish husband unexpectedly shows sentimentality and contrition--a mea culpa that further complicates Sidney's already guilt ridden existence. Then of course there's the matter of the church's sanctions about a priest marrying a divorced woman and Georgie's s affair. Just when you think all the strands have been neatly tied up in a homogenized misery, you're caught off guard. You may feel drained, say in the way you felt after experiencing Olivier playing James Tyrone in Long Day's Journey. What comes next. What happens next? Back in the day the chapters would appear in All Year Round, Dickens' weekly literary journal.

Basis Points

Sahara ultramarathon

There are very few basis points to describe that portion of the demographic which is about to change their habits at 80.  If you have always been a free diver who makes his catches with a knife, you're not suddenly going to enroll at in the aqualung class at the Y.  On the other hand, if you were an ultramarathoner at 40, you're more likely to sign up for the equivalent competition in a rocker or hammock. Picasso and Pacino are the kinds of males who are sexually active late in life. Who knows what's really the truth, since there are few focus groups which render such demographics. Anomalies are themselves  statistically significant, depending on which way you look at them. No matter what, accommodation, in fact, does not come easily.

Read "The Great Bonac Footrace of '83" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Counting

Buddha preaching first sermon from Sarnath 

Counting breaths are one way to get to sleep. You can also use sheep. How many days until Election Day, at this crucial moment. At the same time, are you someone who wants to get everything over with--even the good things? How long has it been since you have not wanted something to end? The Endless Summer (1966) is the famous surfing movie. The reverse of waiting for progression is getting lost in the present. The latter, being in the now, is Zen. "Do" means path in Eastern philosophy. Essentially it's a path into the self, rather than a form of displacement in space/time.

Perseverance Rover

 

Perseverance Rover

Eternal life is a Malthusian problem Where to put everyone? Of course, the invention of a magic elixir will undoubtedly be accompanied by the kind of vehicles that can negotiate cracks in time. Kepler planets 1200 light years from earth will no longer be out of the reach for the average space traveler, The title of Alfred Bester's classic, The Stars My Destination says it all.  On October 11th, NASA's Perseverance Rover set a record by traversing 28.1 miles through the Martian Jezero Crater. Puny stuff when you look at dark matter and dark energy, on which some space cowboys are likely to hitch a ride. But will immortality bring back the dead? It would pose another real estate issue, if it weren't for the fact there are billions of galaxies. Getting to the Hamptons on 4th of July weekend takes forever, but who cares when you have all the time in the world?

Narcissusmissus

Dobie Gray

Have you ever been with an extremely intelligent enjoyable person who is talking affably and informatively, but then, in the middle of the conversation, have the startling realization that they have been conversing  all evening, while managing to keep the conversation only to themselves. It demonstrates that if you're kindly, intelligent about love (even if it only is of oneself),  you can get away with anything. Did Queen Victoria talk only about herself or Madame de Maintenon? On the male side, Trump as everyone knows puts his name on everything. In the guise of discussing the world order (and how the Ukrainians are responsible for high diesel prices) his conversation is only about him.  Maybe it was his parents fault. Maybe they didn't send him to the Queens branch of Toastmasters when he was a kid. Remember "I'm In With the In Crowd?" When you run into a guy or a gal who only talks about themselves, you can console yourself with Dobie Gray's l965 hit.

Read "The Great Bonac Footrace of '83" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

To Serve Man

You comment "the service is good."  You may not necessarily enjoy the food. It's the atmosphere that draws you. Of course the famous Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man" illustrates what can happen when you put too much importance on service. The manifesto turns out to be a cook book. So watch out. However, going for the food alone, is tantamount to loving someone for their money. The relationship is bound to burn out. Imagine a meteor disintegrating in the atmosphere or the huge blast of radiance that emanates from a supernova  before turning it turns into a black hole. Cosmology may seem a bridge too far if you simply are talking about Emily Post. After all, service is actually a form of gardening in which perennials, the old favorites, vie with annuals, the new kids on the block, when you're trying to build a clientele.

The Dead

James Joyce (photo: Man Ray)

As life proceeds along its merry course, with the reminder of finitude manifesting every morning as the sun rises, you may find yourself retrenching, digging your heels in more adamantly. If only you can get away with it for one more month, week or day. You're playing   three card monte with yourself, ultimately, as the deck is going to be stacked against you, when Time is the dealer. Still, you persist since it's all you know how to do. Eyes blinded by cataracts, you proceed into the lake effect snow. "The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, on the Bog of Allen and, further westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves." --The Dead

Breakfast at the Palazzo Sangiorgio

Breakfast is served in the courtyard of the hotel. An Italian woman in a white shift talks on her phone, as she brings her plate of food from the breakfast buffet to the table. She's classically attractive and used to sashaying through existence, impervious to the world around her--or perhaps not. Perhaps this is a fantasy indulged by an impertinent observer. You never know what's in another human being's peripheral vision. The breakfast service is almost over and the tables are being cleared. Construction workers are loudly firing back at each other, the words echoing through a nearby site. Now as the alcove is finally cleared two American couples continue to talk about Sy Newhouse, Condé Nast and American publishing during the '80s.

The Crying Game

Animals recuse themselves as they prepare for death. You may reach down looking for the furry top of your dog's head which has always been such a source of comfort only to find yourself reaching and reaching until you open your eyes and realize your pet wants to be alone. It's that way with some old people. Rather than closing ranks to create their own supportive little community, they often find themselves in an isolation that's exacerbated by diminishing numbers of their cohort. With less to choose from, you often end up choosing less.

Delta One

Delta One JFK (photo: FLevy)

Some people prefer the journey. Go to an airport lounge, especially the bar. There's a self-satisfied look on  the faces of passengers en route and one that is likely to leave, once the reality of the lives awaiting them smacks them right in the face. This applies even to so called "happy people." The in between is filled with possibility while the end is just what was expected. The end of most journeys brings travelers home, a place of familiarity that's also filled with its own angst and the subliminal, that ebb and flow, hi and low tide, of life and change. How long will this last? When will it be over? How can anything be enjoyable when it will one day be over?

Read "The Great Bonac Footrace of '83" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Community

George Simmel

Small town life occasions familiarity. The sociologist George Simmel wrote about the difference between the life of the city  and that of the smaller world in The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903). Curiously it resembles the difference between the macro and micro worlds of quantum physics. The title of the Ferdinand Tonnies tome is Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, Community and Society (1887), The city offers freedom at the price of anonymity. The small town provides familiarity and the sense of being acknowledged. The downside is claustrophobia.

Blocked Calls

Do you suffer from the problem that few people are interested in what you're interested in anymore, in other words the problem that you might have the appropriate syntax but lack a referent that can be picked up by many people’s devices? You know how calls get blocked?

Grantchester

James Norton as Sidney Chambers

 If you're part of the demographic of the population that streams series, perhaps you've seen Grantchester. For lovers of Broadchurch, The Bridge and the miraculous Prime Suspect, here is a series with truly great writing, shall we say writing of a trans or inter medial quality. Take a recent episode. The Romeo and Juliet of this story are the Anglican Vicar, Sidney Chambers (James Norton) who is the lead character, and his great love Amanda Hopkins (Morven Christie). They are childhood sweethearts. Then there was a traumatic (for him) stint on the battlefield and her then choice of money over love, a choice she will always regret. Finally, 9 months pregnant, she leaves her boorish and sadistic husband, giving birth in the parish. That's just for starters, in one episode. The priest one should mention collaborates with the local constable Geordie Keating (Robson Green) as a detective team. The series is based on a collection of short stories, The Grantchester Mysteries by James Runcie. Spoiler Alert: in this selfsame episode they ferret out a stripper who's a con artist. This particular character brings to mind Madeleine/Judy (Kim Novak) in Vertigo, in the wily transformation of her physiognomy and entire being. Amidst all of this the pastor has a second in command a gay student priest Leonard Finch (Al Weaver) who gets in trouble for treating the Christmas pageant as a Brechtian epic. Weaver's performance is noteworthy and even profound in several places, as he struggles with his identity, and love itself. One of the most hilarious bits is his attempt to teach Verfremdungeffekt to a group of children. But that isn't all, amidst all this,  the self-same character manages to confront the local prelate, their superior, whose corruption lies in protecting a serial child molester. This is powerful stuff by any standards, with great writing and acting both.

Against Interpretation

photo: Lynn Gilbert

You may take Against Interpretation, the title of Susan Sontag's famous volume of essays more seriously after visiting the Krasner Pollock exhibition at The Met. In short Sontag was redefining art (at least a certain kind art). The artwork is not a representation of reality, but a reality in an of itself. In other words in the case of "Autumn Rhythm:30, 1950," it's not the abstraction of a seasonal day, but rather paint on canvas that's the theme. One reason why much abstraction is two-dimensional lies in its relinquishing of perspective and volume. "A new form will always seem more or less an absence of form at all, since it is unconsciously judged by reference to consecrated forms" said Robbe-Grillet. On the other hand not all of abstraction is necessarily aleatory or ineffable. In fact most 50s abstraction whether de Kooning, Klein or Rothko hardly conforms to  the Lautreamont's famous definition of surrealism being "as beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table." In his essay, The American Action Painters (1952), Harold Rosenberg famously described the work of Pollock and others abstractionists as creating "an area in which to act," "an event."  McLuhan said it even more succinctly  "the medium is the message (1964)."

Past Continuous

"Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, November 1950)

The Night Watch (1642)

Jackson Pollock's "Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, November 1950 and "Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist)" are shown back to back in the current "Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous" show at the Met. There has already been a great deal written about the way in which the show foregrounds Krasner and gives her her due (Holland Carter's "A Knockout Show Resets the Record with Krasner and Pollock" (NYT,  9/29/26 is noteworthy). There are naturally many discussions to be had. Pollock for instance is likely part of your psychohistory and sensory vocabulary. Do you remember the first time you saw "Autumn Rhythm: Number 30" at the Met? Perhaps by now you may comment to your partner, "I get it, but don't ask me to explain why." Sure you can bring in The New Yorker's Harold Rosenberg with his iconic musings on abstract expressionism, or even lower yourself to exhuming the tyrannically brilliant Clement Greenberg, but why? Why must you explain yourself? Is this a trial? Are you still arguing for the defense? Perhaps you find yourself making an almost inane remark about being drawn to the edges? Abstract art begets a lot of commentary to the extent of the need to justify its very existence. Or is the painting just like "The Night Watch," something so great, so emblazoned on the unconscious that it defies, well one is not sure what it defies. But here's a notion. Abstractionism is realism. Conversely realism is abstract, the latter being a construct which is a product of the language cortex. "Autumn Rhythm Number 30" is in this manner of thinking or rather viewing, closer to the bone. Pollock's dancing a la the famous Hans Namuth movie produces sentences of mind speak with their own subjects, verbs and objects. Phenomenologists say a painting, being an object, has no agency. "Number 30" and" Number 1" are exceptions.

Breaking Away

 

One usually associates breaking up with adolescence. Disillusion follows a romanticized perfection. Actually one sign of a certain degree of maturity is being able to tolerate the gray zone. Fifty Shades was a play on the wrong word. Imagine Fifty Shakes of Gray rather than Grey. Later in life and particularly in old age human beings become cranky. That’s not a term in the lexicon of most gerontologists, but there's literally no other word for it. Most people with their secret pipe dreams are jerks. Who wants to spend another evening with the so-called friend who only talks about their self? It can be a problem since everybody is increasingly in their own world. On this last point about which there are no age limits, one wonders if it isn’t the Russians. Have they put something in the water which makes people jammer on?

Read "The Great Bonac Footrace of '83" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Sy

Sy Simms 

DJT wants to change AI to SI. But let's say you inhabit the cyberspace equivalent of the LHC operated by CERN. Is an SI just another SSN or possibly SSRI in the crowd? SI used to be a common Jewish name only is was spelled Sy. You had, for instance, Sy Simms aka Seymour Merinsky, the clothier. For the sake of argument let's say SI looked like George Reeves, the first Superman. You could suggest Nietzsche who, like our current Secretary of War, had an obsession with the Ubermensch. Super intelligences think of everything. That's why one can't help mentioning Kryptonite.

Cruezfeldt-Jakob

Spongiform Change (DRdoubleB)

Something is eating at you. Is it comparable to a dog suffering from worms? Or the human equivalent of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, Cruezfeldt-Jakob. The hatred, resentment falls into the kind of sinkholes that have plagued the Russian City of Breznicki, the home of the oligarch and potash king Dimitry Ryvolovlev, whose daughter Ekaterina, an equestrian, paid the once record-breaking sum of $80 million for a penthouse at 80 Central Park West. Perhaps a better way to describe the feeling of falling itself was the case of the Jeff Bush, 37 of Seffner, Florida who woke up to find his bed falling in 2013. Hopefully you will be spared such a horrible end and end up returning to a state of free-floating anxiety and unending annoyance with life.