Kebabs

Lindy West on Ricky Gervais:  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/28/opinion/ricky-gervais-transgender-netflix.html

John Nichols on Gen John Kelly: https://www.thenation.com/article/john-kelly-enabler-in-chief/  (If anything he doesn't go far enough.)

John Ganz and Steven Klein on Jordan Peterson: https://thebaffler.com/latest/peterson-ganz-klein

*********
Bonus word of the day: epicaricacy

Hummingbirds

There are certain manifestations that are rarely seen, or that somehow seem new no matter how many times they're encountered.  They flit across the consciousness like flying jewels, seizing the attention, suspending the internal narration and allowing pure momentary experience to kick in.  I call them Hummingbirds because-- as with their namesake-- beauty, wonder and maybe a small amount of terror are phenomena they invoke.  As expected, many are animals.  Some are seen only in recorded images, or in captivity-- a seahorse, an octopus, a giraffe-- but others are around you, lying in the margins of where you live.  An owl or fox, butterflies, bats, grasshoppers, a toad, trout.  People can be hummingbirds, too.  Carrie Brownstein strikes me as one; Richard Pryor is another.  Or inanimate objects, like a metal spinning top, a bead of condensation on a water glass, or an accordion.  Very often they're places, and sometimes the verbs carried out there.   It's this type of hummingbird I'm thinking of today.  

The setting is a  lightly traveled road between points on a map, on a day of late summer when leaves are just starting to turn.   A new building, cheaply made for some commercial purpose, like some kind of professional office or agency,  sits backed to a leafy thicket,  unoccupied.  It's early morning after a night of rain.  Speckles of yellow leaves plaster the cheap asphalt of the parking lot.  Beyond the lot, the landscape drops abruptly to the banks of a brook.  The verb of the moment is "decaying," something this new building is already doing, and at the moment doing exclusively.

A small city, on the banks of a river, mid-October.  A trellis crosses the river as does the highway.  This is where you can find ironworks, thrift shops, body shops, no-name gas stations, laundromats, liquor stores,  pawn shops.  In some cities, these sit in older parts of town that the department of public works neglects. The once grand infrastructure crumbles enough to give the scene an air of antiquity, where you can feel awareness of driving through eternal space with time as a passenger.  I crave these ruins sometimes, go out of my way to route myself through them.

Most of the time I can sleepwalk through life as though on automatic pilot.  Hours can pass before it occurs to me to wonder how I have managed to avoid being squashed by a bus as I stepped robotically off a curb somewhere in the part of the day that is blurred behind me.  What is it that forces my awareness of my surroundings deep into the background for most of my waking life?  Animal behaviorists attribute what they call 'habituation to one's environment' to survival.  It enables us to ignore the volumes of benign sensory input available for our receptors to process, leaving us open to perceiving threats and signs of danger as they occur.  The real question, then is by what grace do I sometimes get to lie, half-asleep on a couch beside an open window on a rainy late spring afternoon, feeling every caress of a curtain-billowing breeze through an open window on my skin, aware of every gentle rumble of thunder as I savor the earth-flavored air filling my lungs?

Driving backroads of a state we'd never visited one afternoon last spring, we crossed railroad tracks beside a grain elevator,  passed a drive in theater, auto-junkyards, orchards.  It was getting late and GPS indicated the highway back to the motel was in front of us.  Having passed through a forest of palmetto, oak and cedar draped with Spanish moss, the road suddenly became sketchy, and we came upon a junction.  We were instructed to turn right and the road looked promising at first, but about a mile down, the asphalt yielded to dirt and in short order, the dirt to two ruts.   The landscape thinned out again to orchards, and then hilly pasture.  Every thousand feet or so, we were forced to either side of a massive puddle.  Just ahead around a bend we could see what looked to be a cow or two milling with no sign of a fence.  

We made it to the highway eventually, and once again resumed cruising speed. My mind went back to stolen moments before GPS, before I was licensed, that rare time or two of driving the family car through fields and woods, to get the feel of the steering wheel on an imaginary road.  The quintessential Hummingbird 

Modern Living

Somehow the sight of Sarah Huckabee Sanders conducting a news conference reminds me of an anxiety I find myself having rather acutely in meetings from time to time – namely that I’m going to lose control of my bowels and either belch or fart or even wet myself or shit my pants publicly.  And actually there’s a related fear that it won’t be due to lack of control but rather to a sudden and momentary loss of concern about social norms such as refraining from evacuation or relief of bowels and indigestion in public.  Like the part of me that farts says “fuck it” while the part of me that is mortified and ashamed of myself can do nothing but watch it happen.  Which is related to another fear I have when I’m on the phone at work that I’m going to forget who I’m talking to and say “I love you” to the person on the other end when we hang up.  You get these too, don’t cha?   I mean, DoNtChA!? 

Mit günstlichem herzen

Mit günstlichem herzen by Oswalt von Wolkenstein  (1376?-1445) performed by Ensemble Leones

„Mit günstlichem herzen      Fuga/secundus (nach günstlichem)
wunsch ich dir
ain vil güt jar
zu disem neu,
und was auff erd
dein herz begeret.
amen, mein hort,
zwar das ist recht.
gedenck an mich,
geselle mein!“

Ib
„Dein schallen und scherzen
liebet mir,
das nim ich zwar;
dir lon mein treu.
der wunsch, lieb, werd
an uns gemeret.
danck hab das wort,
ich bin dein knecht.
neur freut es dich,
zwar das sol sein.“

IIa
„Mich freuet, traut weib,
dein rotter mund,
ich dein allain
mit stetikait.
dein züchtlich er
mich tiefflich senet.
des pin ich fro
unzweifel gar.
das hör ich gern,
zart, liebe Grett.“

IIb
„Dein manlicher leib
mich hat erzunt,
dasselb ich main,
ich dir berait.
dein tugent mer
höchlich mich zenet.
dem ist also,
ich sag dir war.
nach deim begern,
Os, wie es get.“

IIIa
Vergiss mein, schatz, nicht
durch all dein güt!
wer ist mein hail,
wer tröstet mich?
des wol mich ward
der grossen freuden.
du wendst mir we,
du wendst mir pein,
du wendst mir laid
und ungemach.“

IIIb
Dein schärpflich gesicht
mein herz durch plüt.
neur ich an mail,
frau, das tün ich.
zwar unverkart
sol ich dich geuden.
ouch du vil me,
lieb, das sol sein.
zart frau gemait,
dem kom ich nach.“

~~~~~

Kl. 71: Mit günstlichem herzen
I. [He:] “Out of heartfelt affection
I am wishing you
an especially good
New Year
and whatever, here on earth,
your heart might desire.
Amen, my treasure,
this is really perfect.
Think of me,
my companion!”

II. [She:] “Your singing and pleasantries
please me;
I enjoy being with you,
my loyalty will be your reward!
May this wish, my beloved,
come true for us both!
Thank you for your words,
I am your servant.
If it pleases you so much,
then it should happen, indeed.”

III. [He:] “Your red lips, beloved lady,
delight me much.
I am yours truly,
filled with constancy.
Your well-mannered honor
awakens deep love in me.
This makes me
truly happy.
I am very pleased to hear this,
beautiful, lovely Gret.”

IV. [She:] “Your manliness
has inflamed me.
I feel like you,
I am ready for you!
Your ocean of your virtues
makes me feel attracted to you.
It is exactly
as I am telling you.
Whatever your desire might be,
Os[wald], may it come true.”

V. [He:] “Do not forget me, darling,
in the name of your honorable mind!
Who is my savior,
who strengthens me?
What a joy, truly,
is all this for me:
You free me from pains,
you free me from torture,
you free me from suffering
and from my sorrow.”

VI. [She:] “The image of your deeply impressive face
is flowering in my heart.
Who is my savior?”
[He:] “This can be only me.
mistress, without fail.
I will praise you loudly
without getting sidetracked.
And you even more,
beloved, this is right.
Beautiful, graceful mistress,
I am striving for it.

~~~~~~~~~~

The dazzling interplay of rhymes of the original fugue is lost in translation in the English rendering, so is necessarily presented as a linear poem.

Non sequitur note to self: Look into Carlo Gesualdo.