The End of the Affair With Man or God?

“People can love without seeing each other, can’t they, They love You all their lives without seeing You...” This line from Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair creates an extraordinary double entendre, with man and God, faith and passion interposed. The author proposes a kind of free love, intermingling  the carnal and the divine. Remember Bergman’s Passion of Anna?  In German “leidenschaft,” or “passion” contains the root word for “suffering.” The transverbation of Saint Teresa similarly creates the spiritual chimera both human and divine of Bernini's famed "Ecstasy."  The “affair” of the novel's title refers to the relationship between Sarah, the wife of a civil servant, Henry Miles and Maurice, a writer, but what is it? Is the affair, a brief almost elicit fling with God or is it simply the more literal meaning of the word a sexual relationship between two people in which one is being unfaithful to someone else? Caveat Emptor: Grief is one the emotions the novel elicits.

Read "Rome Journal: "Saint Teresa, on Ecstasy" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to "Cry Baby" by Garnet Mimms

Are Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Part of the New Hollywood 10?

Joseph Welch (counsel for the U.S.Army) and Joseph McCarthy 

Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Donald Trump could be the new Hollywood 10 testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee and Joseph McCarthy after the FCC to take away the license of Fox News for supporting the Russians. Strange bedfellows? How about McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover earning the support of liberal Democrats like Chuck Schumer, Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi and Bernie Sanders for their attempts to stop the spread of Communism? Well at least Russian expansionism. Wasn’t that the whole purpose to the John Birch society and Slim Pickens (Maj. ‘King Kong’) the B-52 pilot in Dr. Strangelove using the mushroom cloud--the same one Putin and Lavrov are now threatening--to stop the “Ruskies.” Are dictators like Franco and fascist supporters like Marshall Petain trembling in their graves as they see one of their own, Marine Le Pen, supporting a Red and even getting loans from him to finance her campaigns?

Read "A-Z Quotes" from Francis Levy

and listen to "Reason to Believe" by Tim Hardin

Washington Crossing the Delaware

Washington Crossing the Delaware (Larry Rivers, l953)

Were there pickpockets, liars and rapists accompanying George Washington when he crossed the Delaware? The point is that collective actions like VE Day tend to result in idealization, but when everyone goes home, especially after a war, the shit hits the fan. Remember The Great Santini, the movie made from the Pat Conroy novel starring Robert Duvall as the Marine F-4 Phantom flyers who has trouble adjusting to family life. Kiev is a big city whose population was 2.8 million before the conflict with Russia. Are all its inhabitants heroes like Zelensky? Max Weber famously dichotomized between sect and church, the former like early Christianity being characterized by selfless fervor and the latter by institutionalization, what he termed "the routinization of charisma." It’s wonderful to see the unity of Ukrainians against the evil invader, but is it being a sourpuss to point out that human beings are characterized by their humanity—which includes a certain degree of selfishness and weakness of the flesh. Does a realistic attitude about the human condition make it impossible to hope?

Read "Trumpeters" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to "Donna" by Richie Valens

Drawing a Line in the Sand

How easy it is to become trapped by one’s threats. Obama notoriously declared a red line in Syria, then he never made good on it with reprisals. Once you're discovered to be posturing, your future protests carry no weight. But what happens if both parties in a conflict live up to their promises?You see the results all the time in microcosm with couples shouting at each other and opposing groups resorting to violence. January 6 was an example of angry people making good on their threats. No one dreamt that the Retrumplicans protesting the election would invade congress and physically try to overturn the results of an election. It was a power of example to all those who have seemingly far-flung dreams of violence. Putin shoots off at ICBM, threatening nuclear attack as NATO continues to arm Ukraine. “We will bury you” were Khrushchev’s famous words at the UN. Assessing the validity of a threat also means apprising the probability that one side or another will step down, lowering the stakes. It’s all like some kind of geopolitical poker game with the ante constantly being raised until one or another party or in this case country folds. If Putin pulls out of Eastern Ukraine before Victory Day on May 9, is he actually losing if he spares lives of soldiers on both sides?  The Russian president has boxed him himself into a corner in which the obvious answer is yes.

Read "The Art of War" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to "Springtime For Hitler" (The Producers) 

A Murder in Forest Hills

Orsolya Gaal (Facebook)

Consider these facts in the case of the Forest Hills housewife and mother whose body was found stuffed in her son’s duffel bag, not far from her house. She had been at Lincoln Center with friends the night of her murder. Afterwards she had gone to a bar where, she lingered for 45 minutes over a drink—as she often did (how many upper middle-class housewives drink alone at a bar on a regular basis). She had two sons 17 and 13. The younger one  was in the house at the time of the murder. The l7 year old, a gifted musician, was in Portland Oregon with his father--perhaps visiting a college like Reed? A note about the couple's handyman on the refrigerator led to the killer with whom she’d been having an affair for 18 months. She had been stabbed 58 times in what was deemed to be a crime of passion. Kitty Genovese was famously stabbed on a Kew Gardens street in l964, but that case famous for the indifference of her neighbors only compares in its victim, a woman, its locale, Queens and its weapon, a knife. Another femme fatale, Mary Jo Kopechne also comes to mind, though her case has nothing at all in common with this one. The handyman, David Bonola's disheveled hair and ponytail gave him the appearance of a crazed Marat on his way to arraignment on the night of April 21.The woman, Orsolya Gaal, whose exotic name itself elicits speculation (she significantly hadn't adopted the name of her husband, Howard Klein) was, from her photo, preternaturally beautiful. Some women with exceptional beauty become sexualized due to the high degree of stimulation their appearance has always created. Was the husband totally impervious to his wife’s dalliances? Adultery, especially of an endemic kind, often provokes cries of indignation and expressions of fury from a dejected spouse. Yet how complicit is the partner? How much do they know or not know, at least subliminally? How convenient is it to have their "loved one" cheating on them? To what degree is it a matter of ignorance or simply not wanting to face what they know or what would be clearly obvious, were they not unable or unwilling to face the truth.

Read "The Findings" by Francis Levy, Evergreen Review

and watch the animation of Erotomania

Equation With Two Unknowns

linear function graph (Jim. belk)

A quid pro quo with the universe is a spiritual black hole. That's what Faust discovered. The idea that one can willfully stop the cosmos from yawning by yelling leads to a sore throat. It’s when the notion of the “reward” or remuneration for effort starts to run through one’s mind that alarms should go off. Just making efforts does not guarantee compensation. In fact, it demeans the effort whether it's the love of a parent or child or simply a thing. It's as if the equation were reversed. Reward is not necessarily directly proportional to effort albeit reward does require effort (usually). It’s a common mistake since sometimes huge outpourings are like a drug that comes in the wake of long periods of emptiness or isolation (such as a pandemic). In addition, answered prayers can be fatal for those poor souls who can never get enough.

read "Answered Prayers" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to "How Can We Hang On To a Dream"by Tim Hardin

Magnum Force

Force is the court of last resort. It also creates its own rabbit holes. Putin famously responds only to force. Sanctions are for the most part symbolic, but if it’s apparent that NATO planes will actually engage, he steps back. The schoolyard bully beats everyone up in his path to conquest. What's left once he's claimed his turf is a tarmac emptied of opponents. Russia would no longer be threatened by NATO, if the countries surrounding it were returned to the Russian Federation or U.S.S.R. If the l00,000 Russian troops had been assembled along the Donbas border at the beginning of the conflict had been met with an equal number of NATO troops, the Russians wouldn't have been able to advance. Pawn meets pawn. But what are the two alternatives in chess which is the most profound metaphor for power? Stale or checkmate! In one, no one wins. In the other the victor stands alone. Is power an aphrodisiac, as Kissinger once said? And for whom?

read "Iraqistan" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to "Love Train" by the O'Jays