dimensions of Pacific promise

IRON ROOT

It’s possible we understand the common good,

since we are human beings

blessed with intellect, & feelings.

Might we live in the old neighborhood

again?  The narrow streets of Providence

for example – haunted by ghosts

of Roger Williams & his hosts

Canonicus & Miantonomi (his friends,

working out in late-night conferences

the immemorial foundations

of good government).  Nations

& peoples, grounded in the ancient senses

of those words (Pax, Libertas, Justitia)

sustained, beyond the bite

of Mammon (greed & spite)

into a vivid substance of reality –

dream-songe of every poet ever born.

Yea, Henry Acorn King

will of foundations sing,

laid deep before the civil wars began –

of Edw. Coke, bent over Magna Carta

(constitution of our civil rights

before the king, his knights,

were born); of Williams, apple of his eye

& visionary of our liberty

who felt the fiery seed

of conscience, freed

from all coercion, was the key

                  *

that opens up a box of keys –

the iron root of human

dignity (since we are one

with goodness only as we choose

to be).  & how distinct this innocence

from those manipulations

of the Mammonites, evasions

of sadistic Minotaurs!  The silence

of compassionate stars rebukes Caesar

& all his empires, murmurs

Hobo.  His abode blurs

river-mud with gravity (cold graveyard

avatar).  All density of stone

compacted into black hole

rings your somber footstool,

Everyman – refining stokehold of the sun!

& indistinguishable from hopeless hell

until the graceful whisper

of Columbia, your dove-sister,

thunders like lilting from a light-filled well –

like those Latrobes, who journeyed down to Delta

après shaping simple mansions

for America; or Hart’s dimensions

of Pacific promise… Ocean harmonies (selah).

So Hobo’s heart lingers (below the sweep

of salty galaxies, just off

the bridge).  His brooding strophe

coos from orange shadows… azure keep.

2.15.20

articulated bagpipes

CICADA SHELL

Last night, in the final French class

Charles explained to us

that intricate forest

of thousands of skeletal pieces

under the armor of the vast organ

of Notre Dame, somehow

surviving the late inferno –

a delicate spider of sound, within

the cathedral’s gray cicada shell

of feathery stone light.

Now, in my monkish hideout

of twisted cedar, a mid-May swell

of emerald sheen beyond the doorway

stretches toward Iona

or maybe Compostela

or Jerusalem... & scrawny face of Henry

lined like wood by age & foolishness

lifts to spring brightness

one wee dram of hopefulness,

mayhap – someone’s vernal Inverness.

It is the ordinary light of day

flashing through our human

imago, her chaste design –

what we might be, beyond dismay

in the conjunction of clear consciences

set toward a restoration

of the common good.  One

amid many – octave’s consonance.

5.15.19

rattlesnakes & wild hogs

woodcut by Mary R. Gould

BLANK MIRROR

Hobo & Henry (mirror lakes of ice)

hunker down by the Miss

in apocalyptic freeze.

Global worming – ain’t nice,

offers Hobo.  Henry stands on a log

of spongy cottonwood,

to speechify.  I would

gather everyone in D.C. – slug

it out with themeny!  Hobo : Who he?

King Henny Gowanabe?

Beware Coatlicue,

m’deer!  She got that panoply

um rattlesnakes & wild hogs,

rootin’ all around –

Iagoons, Macboars... ground

Z for Camazone swamp hellhound dogs!

In the blank mirror of unconsciousness

the stone-cold powers

& the lotus-flowers

collide in a collusion...  Heartlessness,

she mutters.  Hobo sunk down.

Cheer up, old boy,

sez Hank.  My Book of J

opines beneath Cordelia’s Crown;

she shone me that Madonna del Parto

flaring like Indian mound –

high Sophie’s dancing ground

(who shall restore our humane Beneficio).

1.30.19

the public good is an intellectual thing

WHATEVER HAPPENS

                                                      i.m. Sister Pat DeMoully

Hobo, that disintegrating Henry

sank into Mississippi

bottomland.  Big Muddy.

Like Lucius with his wayward donkey

rescued (finally) by Isis-Psyche.

The mule wanders Badlands.

Civic twilight (all hands

off deck).  Some refusenik-refugee.

Henry recalls the Brown & Sharpe

machinery complex

where young Rex

mingled with VISTA volunteers, harp

tuned to Dionysian thunder drum.

Green genius JFK

chanted (head all bloody)

Camelot concept.  Whole sum

of common good (an intellectual thing)

for young collegians,

braving their joy-dance

from campus triangle to iron ring;

the commonwealth is worth defending

whatever happens to me

(beam, solidarity).

Like Sister Pat in Jonestown, bending

from Minneapolis to Mississippi’s

veritable excess poverty.

To be there, every day...

a live-oak Galahad, touching the keys.

1.22.19

serene Cosmopolis

CHASTE VISION

Imagination of the common good

gleams in the mind’s eye –

a gift from on high

to children of the neighborhood.

I remember Ellen Ryan, from Bridgeport

out of Holy Cross,

smoking under the asbestos

of the Henry Sharpe complex (fort)

off 95 – splitting Providence

just as in Bridgeport,

where her father (Mort,

the cop) & mother (Mary, since

deceased) instilled their sober sense

of ultimate innocence –

outwitting insolence

by grace (elusive fauna of experience).

Sheepish cabal of VISTA volunteers!

Bussed into Washington

to lobby Congressman

Boro Dolpawa (he’s “all ears”).

Chaste vision of the commonweal.

My strength in weakness

is perfected (witness,

black lamb rust-red wool).

Beyond transparent vanishings

serene Cosmopolis...

bright realm of kindness

radiating equilibrium (eternal things).

11.15.18

all glory, laud & honor

PUDGY PALM

The homeless Mandelshtams – Nadezhda,

Osip – shelter in the Hermitage

beneath a Rembrandt image.

Theotokos with Child – da, da –

the yellow-black goldfinch, perched

upon his pudgy palm.

Invisible museum

in the mind.  Like Hagia Sophia (arched

Argo of a million eyes) whorled

in one prow... her kelson

Love’s bright apparition –

equilibrium of peaceful world.

All glory, laud & honor...

the sensus comunis

of common good is

at your service (humble, poor) –

Franciscan mule of stubborn heart

whose fast is doing

(in twilight fast fading) –

out to the glimmer-rim of art

back to the ember-glowing hearth.

The honor of the civitas

so shaped by selflessness

into a form of equity – in truth

& mirth, transparency... your wings

in flight, O Tyche-Liberty –

humble Columbia (Black Sea

to Golden Gate) Nadezhda brings.

4.30.18

the ordinary Union

KNIT WOOL

                 Eternity, O Eternity! That is our business.

                                                       – Roger Williams

She watches crows play in the sky

above her balcony.

Her dregs of memory

transmute to gaiety, give death the lie.

Cautantowwit was Raven-Lord

of Narragansetts.  Old

Canonicus told

Roger how dead souls were borne toward

Mexico, far off southwest...

Rog quilled it down.

That chief of great renown

was kind to him.  Knit wool is best

around head, limbs & heart

when winter ice descends.

I’m dreaming, friends.

One campfire (circling) is all my art.

The Red Wing river-clay is heavy,

as my mother knows.

O the harsh blows

that fall like thunder (Romeo, Julie)...

The body’s weight is catenary

Golden Gate (so

Jasper shows).  Blow,

Manitou... bring back the glory

of the ordinary Union.  It shall be

– when we return to Thee,

from sea to shining sea –

uncommon good (benevolent Eternity).

11.29.17

hope is the anchor of the soul

DRY THICKET

The salty bread & wine of commonweal

is not a partisan domain;

it came before Abel & Cain,

magnanimous magma of the real.

Like these green palm-prints in a ring

my daughter planted on a square

of Grace’s linen, whirling there

like burning wings of seraphim (wheeling,

wheeling)... the Power of the universe

flames through a hearth-fire

(undermining empire

with compassionate adhesiveness).

I watched this morning as a lone

bald eagle, gliding quickly

in great catenary

arcs (like Guillem de Gellone

or Joachim, the hermit of Fiore)

mimed curvature of bridge

along that autumn ridge

like a daguerrotype from Civil War –

the process signifying Liberty

teeters twin wings

an unknown soldier brings

to bear (O turtledove of solidarity).

The downward angle of the bird

that signifies nekuia

& kenosis (ah,

bright wings!) so anchoring the word

                    *

she flies – & radiates upward (selah)

that Shekinah you heard

wailing in Ramah (sword

rotating every way)... hey ey

yo, Ma!  Your motherland the Earth

is calling you, Hobo.

Only primordial blue

clay, replicating Ocean birth

can shape the high ship of the whole.

Those human ribs, breathing

from Galilee to Sing-Sing

slip the galley through a needle –

bear Arcturus to the North Pole

via waltz of galaxies –

salve memories

of lost sailors, & reconcile them all.

Hope is the anchor of the soul.

Light seed, planted in soil

of churnagogue, still

twirling on your milky way... scroll

out your almond gospel alms,

Melchizedek... your ray

through aquiline papyrus

lens, through Gilead pine-balms.

The clay awaits your bread & wine.

The heart yearns for it,

through dry thicket

retina of Man – your sappy pine.

10.26.17

it's not the actual statue

COTTONWOOD FLUFF

The poem curls out of the soil

of speech, an idiom

of natural freedom –

not the symbolic Rose (Étoile

du Nord) but the actual rambling

pink thorn-petals

pendulous stained glass

welds to parallactic lightning

(baptism of liquid fire).  These two,

the symbol & the thing

itself, twirl interlacing

through the June weather – like Hobo

& actual Providence, the scrappy

burg Rog Williams named.

Free habitation, framed

by metaphysical hope; happy

locution for Rhodos-location.  Only

an Ocean state of mind,

maybe – where you might find

your inner JFK, sailing toward Galilee;

only a craggy Catholic Oak

whose simple fortitude

cools tempers rude, &

opened ears when Blackstone spoke –

lifting his anima naturaliter christiana

to chant that common law

inheres in English & Ojibwa –

sponge of manna-Minnehaha

                *

drifting like green Columbia

or cottonwood fluff –

adhesive, light enough

for grave thread-whispers (ahh...

I understand).  Radiant Naiad

à New York, lifting her torch

for Liberté... hopscotch

of bare feet round hummingbird

maze-vat... such were smoke signals

for a wide corn-dance –

pregnant sum-trance

of orbic humankind, out of deep wells

(perennial realtà).  It’s not the actual

statue, the actual state

but what they indicate

(A-frame of Lincoln-log) – rational

celebrations of Memorial Days...

Thanksgivings (4th

of July an afterthought

of fireflies)... myriad ways

a Union of republican consent

gathers (in common sense,

civility) at the tense

apex of divine intent –

buffalo tepee of Providence,

Manitou table

of justice; peaceable

kingdom, benevolent, immense.

6.7.17

hobo takes upward path

ITASCA SPRINGS

This deep translucent honeycomb,

this palimpsest of green

beside the bronze serpent

of midmost river, mother-stream.

Hobo must climb from his log-bed

of lassitude & diffidence.

He sees the circumference

of his enormous creaking sad

forsaken solitary double

ferris wheel – his rusted

rose or Island Road,

a lonely spark of conscience-trouble

(ancient Roger Williams port

for Puritan & exiled

Quaker, reconciled

by Narragansett welcome-heart).

He must un-knot his mumbling

& speak to the res publica.

Tender Mnemosyne

leans like a wispy cedar, trembling

against the scorpion-twister

of learned viciousness

& bland unconsciousness –

conceited treason like a blister-

burn, compound of avarice

& vanity – unreason

squawking each lesson

through megaphones of fraudulence

                  *

– corpse-flowers of corruption

breeding in rotten logs

of oligarchy – hogs

& coyotes preying on the children

of the designated sacrifice

(the under-underclass

under the overpass,

who pay for our convenience – twice).

The Minotaur of twisted love

contorts against grace,

O Hamlet Falcon-Ace –

his den of hate-mark drove the dove

out of her rightful nesting-place.

Her forum of good will –

Columbian windowsill

of human fellowship (Dante’s

& Aristotle’s animale

compagnevole) – sheds

reflective limestone beds

of ever-new Itasca springs (ey

yo) out of unfathomable depths

of Manitou-benevolence

(Ghost who in silence

walks beside you, sweet Princeps).

Ophelia, Horatio, Francesco,

Juliet... heart-Jonahs

surfacing from Okeanos –

anchored fresco-arc astride Frisco.

5.4.17

the family woodpecker

STEEP RAVINE

Quiet today along the river.

In the steep ravine, only

the Morse drum-talky

of the family Woodpecker

interrogates the oaks with hollow

query.  Where are you,

worm?  Job’s blue.

Ice-packed for the long, Nile-slow

Egyptian winter, thick with Pharaoh-

dolour, pyramidical –

ridiculous cyclical

suffering, encased in snow.

It’s not his fault, & he will tell you so.

O, if these canyons were

only in a book!  We’re

leaving – desiccated, delicate.  Don’t go.

The poet has her humors – she’s

devoted to them, wholly.

Lear’s wise Fool, she’ll

follow Boaz carrying the heaves

out loud, in sheaves.  The polis, too,

be uncobbled knowledge.  What

vaguely familial knot

of rivals, bickering horseshoe

favors for grubs, is this?

Not Man-Eat-Too-Much

or Minotaur – no, such

rapacity’s reserved for the abyss

                *

of Pole Star Netherworld (Étoile

du Nord).  Little Crow

stood there, y’know –

with the Red Wing clan, in a potted bowl

of leers.  Stood with the scapegoat

as a prophet should – charisma

whirling in the twister-eye

(magenta bronze, the serpent-calumet).

Who sees him sky-hole in this mess?

Light imperturbable

as Mississippi burble

through a transparent lamb-lattice –

the holeness of that holy garment

parti-colored Joseph wore,

shellacquered semaphore

way under limestone sediment

of painful jealousies & wounded hate.

Her singular vocation,

musing on desolation

til scarred earth-pangs abate –

bored by a dream of early days.

Canoe of Camelot,

Lake-Lady’s thunder-knot...

the old bare dance, woodpecker maze

of placid Oak-Gal Day – a writ of spring

(St. Vitus 1913

Paris Corn Maiden)

that joins Creation to Thanksgiving.

3.9.17

for the Samaritans of Skala Sikaminias

ROOSTERS CROW

                                       for the rescuers

A gray light shines through the normal world

a silver-scale dawnlight

like the sea-sound in the right

chord on an oud, like a sail unfurled

on a cedar mast, standing simply free

on a fishing boat, out of Skala

Sikaminias, on Lesbos.  Ah,

sighs the wind, for the drowned refugee –

Oh, keens the seaman, for the ghost

of his son (a scarecrow

helped to shore).  Hard row

now, for Samaritans – for the host

village, gasping by the sea, in the normal

world, in the feathered light

of the mourning dove, so quiet

here (in the soughing wind, in the tall

cedars, in the shy bird’s nest, in the forest

dusk, in the soft

dawnlight, in the gray gull’s loft,

in the normal world).  Plain salt is best.

On a concrete floor, someone traced a star

like an octagon, in a Sapphic

ode – under harsh traffic,

under raving codes, like a graven bar

on a looping ply.  In a rosy key

sailors skim toward home –

from a morning comb,

roosters crow for Lesbos (merrily).

8.18.16

*for more information on sources of this poem, see today's New York Times article

Gemstone of Paradise

NEVA-LAND

The poem is for lonely you

amidships (I-&-Thou

nailed coign to prow) –

& for that grubby neighbor too

next door (George or Georgina

with the garden hoe).

A solitary lamp-glow

lingers in the old cantina –

in William Blackstone’s study (man

who went to live with...)

– uphill, on the forest path

to Middy Wewe’s blithe fountain.

George Washington spins in his grave

to see how we behave

without a mind to save

us from ourselves.  Thee must be brave,

& true, & kind, & dedicated

to the perfect good –

that global neighborhood

that shines, wid’ green & delicate

kiwi-glow, beneath the rind

of blind & brutal night.

A callow grail-knight

stumbled on it once, near Samarkand –

spry Wolfram rings the tale – &

like an unknown soldier

leapt – O soulman Prospero! –

from here to Skye (in Neva-land).

5.20.16

In the deep grain

BIG SHOES

In the deep grain, American

wood flows like river

darkness, Indian-giver

is your claim   start again

with a gamble, shepherd   desert

is your friend   when you

become a   sheep (who-

who, keens   Cyclops-owl).  My yurt

is yours, pilgrim   enunciates

Canonicus (to the dauntless

youth).  His confidence

in the common good   illustrates

the Second Table   of stone

outlines   everyone

understands   Turkmen

& Catholic   Quakers, even –

that the Good   is transparent

& rooted   a charity

branch   shading   the nitty-

gritty (hungry teeth)   your Parent-

Spirit, who is Heir Apparent

&   (apparently)

Ancient of Mondays

also   her name is Clement

or Clementine   she wears big shoes

she drowned   in the river

it was my mistake   her

name   is Jessie (almond   of the Jews)

5.17.16

MLK in memory

Time only grows on you.  48 years ago this April, a gray, rainy Saturday, my dear friend Tom Fleming & I joined a long memorial/protest walk for Martin Luther King, pacing slowly through Minneapolis.  I remember circling Lake Calhoun (Calhoun...) - everyone in a somber mood, but walking & talking together - a public ceremony, an opportunity to meet others, neighbors, fellow citizens.  

20 years later, Tom would be gone, a victim of the AIDS epidemic.  But we were there that day.

Have been reading Iris Murdoch's little book of philosophy, The Sovereignty of Good.  Of course, MLK was a sort of sovereign of goodness.  A great witness to Murdoch's fundamental idea - that the Good is a substantial, unified-if-various Something : a spiritual entity known deep within ordinary people of all backgrounds.  A shared thing, a public thing, a common good, a universal benchmark - the one goal of human striving (out of our own weakness, wrongness & disgrace).  The thing we hope for, a something hopeful.  This is one dimension - a philosophical aspect, you might say - of the spiritual testament & legacy of Martin Luther King.  A hopeful call for justice, & shared happiness : the equal dignity of all human being, under the wings of infinite blessing & grace.

PEASANT DANCE

                                    i.m.MLK

Only an unpretentious oil

beside the door, my mother

painted, 50 years

ago.  Backyard.  Spring soul

of morning, golden-green – the glow

dappled with jet-black

flock of starlings, yakking &

feeding there (framed by two

young oaks, & the backs of houses).

Bring your gift, starling,

to the altar of everything –

Ocean River, inexaustible goodness.

O parallactic mercy of

these diamond facets!  Water-

falls of liberty – your

moral law, Dove-

cote!  Who moves through Memphis stone

like mild summer breeze

or shady swing-trapeze,

to milky matrix of the human

sun.  Love’s stern ethos is

a camouflage – justice

for joy – ray, source...

O King of Arthur St., she sees

you!  One glance of moist radiance

out of the Black Sea book

of Always... there, look!

Her garden summons (Peasant Dance).

1.18.16 

Backyard, Arthur St., early 1960s (by Mary Gould)

Here is a cluster of Index labels under the subject : history (label : subject/history).

I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)


There are many others...

... not that the professionalization of community activism was all bad. Mostly it was a process of learning what worked, what was practical. Trial & error. & the problems still remain to be solved, for the most part, along with new problems.

One of the virtues of 70s activism was that it recognized - from the beginning, as one of its basic principles - the difference between words & deeds, between ideology and the actual amelioration of conditions. Sometimes I think the word-warriors of the 90s have forgotten what that's about.

This notion of the common good as an equilibrium or balance of competing forces (Jubilee !), constantly pushed & shaped toward fairness and social justice, has the potential to transcend some of the partisan political wars. This is where writers come in : to make such a notion (the common good as an actual equilibrium) more interesting - as something less susceptible, in the public mind, to polemic & sloganeering. The common good is not owned by left or right, by unions or business, by poor or rich, by workers or intelligentsia. Community is a goal, rather than a self-evident given.

Josh with some more interesting thoughts on "post-postmodern pastoral", etc.

Interesting that he starts the genealogy with Pound. You could think of epic, long-poem, and pastoral (the goal of epic?) as sharing a certain space. Pound thought of his long-poem as a "tale of the tribe" (see Michael Bernstein book on this).

When I started exploring this area for myself, back in the early 80s, I was still working as a VISTA volunteer for various community/activist groups in Providence. I had managed a food coop & community gardens, & a CETA project with high school kids, to build a "community solar greenhouse"*. I was finishing a M.A. in community organizing at Beacon College in Boston. This work influenced my literary outlook, too. The notion of a long poem for me had to do with forms of poetry which were able to connect with historical movements & narratives, and with a kind of ideal, at least, of "public speech".

So for me the notion of pastoral had (& still has) a populist-political cast. Just part of the general awareness or desire for a "sustainable" common life, in harmony with the world (with people & nature in general). The relationship between social justice, the common good, and a healthy integration with nature.

In the days of VISTA we had a sense that the right thing for young people to do, before they plunged into the private sector in one way or another, was to work in the public sector - to monitor and rein in private interests on behalf of the common good. We were young & naive enough to imagine we had a pretty clear & reasonable notion of what that common good was, and that there was a kind of heroic grassroots/everyday struggle going on, against business interests & corrupt pols, that grassroots people could get involved with.

Why this was the right thing to do was precisely because the common good, since it is so vast, amorphous, and future-oriented, really has few advocates - unlike the narrow & short-term interests of the private sector. And this amorphous ideal quality was akin to the interests of the poor, who also had few advocates. And young people, because of their relative freedom from narrow obligations, were in a position to be those advocates. There's something beautiful about this notion, almost romantic. During the course of the 80s and 90s, political advocacy expanded, sharpened, and professionalized to a great degree. Lines were drawn more sharply, and soft-romantic idealism was curtailed.

This is how I see (very vaguely, anyway), the process happening over the last few decades. But I think underlying the rather naive and perhaps arrogant worldview of those times (mid to late 70s), there is a kernel of truth, an unresolved goal. How so? Well, politics, social policy, social justice are basically about figuring out how to live together. And there is always going to be a necessary balancing-out, an equilibrium, between particular special/private interests (both economic & political), on the one hand, and government policy regarding the welfare of the whole (the common good), on the other.

If one recognizes that political participation means engaging with the project of fostering that equilibrium - and if one accepts the notion of a kind of social-historical poetry (epic/long-poem/pastoral) - one might see how in different ways these two activities intersect. Because an "achievable" or sustainable pastoral world is obviously a project of social justice, in the most general and inclusive sense (ie., all the multifarious ways people engage in beneficial social activity). So pastoral poetry would necessarily have a political aspect.

Language - and poetry - of course, cannot be channeled or directed from the outside, not by any political strategy, philosophy, or 5-yr plan. The force of language - lyric, dramatic, narrative, didactic, satirical, comic - manifests in autonomous and unpredictable fashion. Setting aside any purely aesthetic argument, poetic language is a manifestation of the freedom of the human spirit. The project of epic/long-poem, however - akin to similar efforts in other modes of literature - is to represent "social wholes" or shared realities; they are narratives which reach for wide public recognition and assent/dissent.

[*in the 2nd collage in Stubborn Grew, there's a little photo of me standing next to that greenhouse. The CETA project which built it was probably one of the more unusual in the history of federal programs. A 6-sided solar greenhouse, about 40 ft long and 20 ft tall, designed so its 6 points would touch the side of a "vesica", the geometrical figure formed by the intersection of two circles; length dimensions were drawn from British author John Michell's various books on ancient "sacred geometry". Constructed by Brown student volunteers & CETA high school kids from Fox Point. One of the Brown students, Mark Van Noppen, went on to become a leading builder of urban rehab housing in Providence.]

I appreciate Jonathan's engagement with my blog & the problems raised. In the process he illuminates the gaping chasm between general principles & present realities. That gap leaves me, too, feeling powerless & even foolish.

But why is it that politically-correct musings on the beauties of anarchist principles is looked upon as a noble thing, a sign of earnest idealism and moral enlightenment - while on the other hand, musing on the moral underpinnings of our own democracy is considered hopelessly a) deluded or b) immoral (complicit)?

There is conflict or contradiction nestled in the heart of every "partial good" : its very goodness can become a form of idolatry. Thus patriotic devotion leads to immoral actions on behalf of my nation. (Not to mention hypocritical allegiance to a supposed principled cause, motivated by purely selfish interest.) So people are understandably suspicious of the uncritical vaunting of our own political system and our own culture. However, I believe that, just as often, habits of criticism and suspicion obscure the real values at work, and distort history. Anyone who praises our own system of government is likely to be branded as someone who has "made peace with the regime", or been co-opted, or is invested in the establishment, etc. etc. But I think it should be pointed out that there are ideologies at work in the culturally-cool gestures of the self-righteous rebel.

God, it's been a long Friday.

Joe writes:

"Henry, if what you say is true, it is an even more cynical view of the administration than the one I've been advancing. It is the lie calculated & perfected. If it is true I expect to wake up tomorrow morning & discover that I have become a large insect."

Well, it's probably not true. (& for your sake, I hope not, Gregor.) Our exchanges are impelling me to look more closely at the neo-Straussians et al. There must be a worldview for American politics & foreign policy which is not so elitist & reactionary (in the sense of reacting against threats to dominance).

Have been reading Sir Thos. Browne, Religio Medici. Certainly not a political thinker. An amateur religious philosopher & essayist who meditates on the meanings of mortality, faith, salvation. Curious paradox comes to mind, reading him : there is no path to the betterment of world conditions without unworldliness.

How so? I guess it must be a medieval outlook - which differentiates it from the classicist worldliness of the powermongers. What is this medieval outlook? Awareness of human fallibility & mortality. Life in this world an illusory stage-play. Only relief is the paradoxical gift of eternal life through the project of soul-salvation. (This is a meaningless absurdity to many, and I hesitate even to post it here. You have to see it, recognize it in the fabric of reality, inwardly, to believe it.)

So the common good is balanced on a vanishing point : a Lenten awareness of our limitations on earth and our hope in eternity. The stereotypifying (Renaissance) critique of this medieval perspective is that unworldliness leads to fatalism & disinterest in world improvement. But there's another aspect to it : the same awareness leads individuals to moderate their pride, fear, vanity, ambitions and passions to a transcendent, charitable end.

So, enough sermonizing for today. Browne is a lovable writer, inimitable stylist. Makes me ready to read Donne's essays & Geo. Herbert. Boy do I sound like Ol Possum today. Maybe it's spring rain outside. Providence is full of flowering trees.