The Reality

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general’s head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman’s tea cup.
But don’t worry, I’m not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and–somehow–the wine.

When I see a bankster shilling on the teevee for his crime boss overlords’ right to break laws, I think about Robert Penn Warren’s image of the clammy, sad little fetus that cowers inside industrialists:

It was like the second when you come home late at night and see the yellow envelope of the telegram sticking out from under your door and you lean to pick it up, but don’t open it yet, not for a second. While you stand there in the hall, with the envelope in your hand, you feel there’s an eye on you, a great big eye looking straight at you and dark and through walls and houses and through your coat and vest and hide and sees you huddled up way inside, in the dark which is you, inside yourself, like a clammy, sad little foetus you carry around inside yourself. The eye knows what’s in the envelope, and it is watching you to see you when you open it and know, too. But the clammy little foetus which is you way down in the dark which is you too lifts up its sad little face and its eyes are blind, and it shivers cold inside you for it doesn’t want to know what is in that envelope. It wants to lie in the dark and not know, and be warm in its not-knowing. The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can’t know. He can’t know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can’t know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he got or because of the knowledge which he hasn’t got and which if he had it, would save him. There’s the cold in your stomach, but you open the envelope, you have to open the envelope, for the end of man is to know.

I imagine the voice behind that sad little face muttering: “I don’t wanna know. I don’t wanna know. I don’t wanna know.”

ps. Thank you Robert Penn Warren, for writing “All the King’s Men.”

The ‘Do It For The Fat Lady’ scene from Franny & Zooey by J.D. Salinger

-
“I’ll tell you a terrible secret — Are you listening to me? There isn’t anyone out there who isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady. That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy. And all his goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn’t anyone anywhere that isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady. Don’t you know that? Don’t you know that goddam secret yet?”

-

“You raved and you bitched when you came home about the stupidity of audiences. The goddam ‘unskilled laughter’ coming from the fifth row. And that’s right, that’s right — God knows it’s depressing. I’m not saying it isn’t. But that’s none of your business, really. That’s none of your business, Franny. An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.”

-

“Seymour’d told me to shine my shoes just as I was going out the door with Waker. I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn’t going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I said they couldn’t see them anyway, where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady.

“I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but he had a very Seymour look on his face, and so I did it. He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I ever went on the air again — all the years you and I were on the program together, if you remember. I don’t think I missed more than just a couple of times. This terribly clear, clear picture of the Fat Lady formed in my mind. I had her sitting on this porch all day, swatting flies, with her radio going full-blast from morning till night. I figured the heat was terrible, and she probably had cancer, and — I don’t know. Anyway, it seemed goddam clear why Seymour wanted me to shine my shoes when I went on the air. It made sense.”

“I don’t care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, it can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I’ll tell you a terrible secret — Are you listening to me? There isn’t anyone out there who isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady. That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy. And all his goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn’t anyone anywhere that isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady. Don’t you know that? Don’t you know that goddam secret yet? And don’t you know — listen to me, now — don’t you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It’s Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.”

For joy, apparently, it was all Franny could do to hold the phone, even with both hands. For a fullish half minute or so, there were no other words, no further speech. Then: “I can’t talk any more, buddy.”  The sound of a phone being replaced in its catch followed.

Franny took in her breath slightly but continued to hold the phone to her ear. A dial tone, of course, followed the formal break in the connection. She appeared to find it extraordinarily beautiful to listen to, rather as if it were the best possible substitute for the primordial silence itself. But she seemed to know, too, when to stop listening to it, as if all of what little or much wisdom there is in the world were suddenly hers. When she had replaced the phone, she seemed to know just what to do next, too. She cleared away the smoking things, then drew back the cotton bedspread from the bed she had been sitting on, took off her slippers, and got into the bed. For some minutes, before she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, she just lay quiet, smiling at the ceiling.

I used to watch this show on PBS with my big brother in the early 80s.

Tim Sheridan is obsessed with Doctor Who on itsasickness.com.

this is something i keep wanting to quote:

Soulless Cultural Wasteland ‘On The Grow’ In Southern California Desert

Los Angeles to Be Hellish Megalopolis by 1950

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – The soulless cultural wasteland in the California desert, considered one of the bleakest and most God-forsaken stretches of uninhabitable scorched earth in the nation is “on the grow,” West Coast sources say, as the burgeoning city of Los Angeles continues its cancerous expansion.

Originally a tiny villa called Los Diablos, a coastal settlement of no distinction save for its capacity of heartlessness, the boomtown is now bigger than ever. Despite its lack of any life-sustaining natural resources, the city, which has no reason to exist at all has all the earmarks of a spectacular soulless cultural wasteland on the rise.

Tourist-Friendly Dystopia

Thanks to its policy of draining every conceivable water source from within hundreds of miles via massive network of pipes, as well as the Chamber of Commerce’s approval of a name-change to the more tourist-friendly “Los Angeles,” the up-and-coming wasteland shows every sign of ballooning into a full-scale dystopia.

Although recently a mid-sized, primarily agricultural settlement, trends indicate that the city is on its way to becoming a sprawling nightmarish megalopolis within the next few decades. Complete with desperate poverty, rampant crime, and a callous indifference to the spirits it has crushed, this business-minded realm of demons is hoped, by as early as 1950 to be the leading soulless cultural wasteland in the world.

Thriving Arts Haven

Staggering in its economic disparity, the planned wasteland will be an affront to human dignity, not only in the shallow excesses of its bloated overlords, but in the anarchic savagery of its desperate underclass. Yet, it is in the area of the arts that Los Angeles hopes to truly make its mark.

“Our town’s lowest-common-denominator cultural output has the potential, one day, to be second to none in insipid banality,” Wasteland Development Director Randolph Moloch said. “We hope to suck up the souls of promising artists like a great, black vortex, spitting out only the most lifeless, commerce-produced cultural products possible.”

“We have high ambitions for the lows to which our community will sink,” Moloch said. “We don’t just want to be an overpopulated crucible of dehumanizing corruption, materialism, and race hatred; we want to be known the world over the a place where ideas come to die.”

A Faustian Bargain

Perhaps the words of the late civil engineer William Mulholland, who was responsible for the construction of the aqueducts that feed Los Angeles as blood feeds and vampire’s undead corpse, best articulate the civic spirit of Los Angeles. IN a speech before the city’s Chamber of Commerce in 1930, the “Father of the Wasteland” said, “We’re willing to do whatever it takes, including entering pacts with Satan himself, to achieve our hellish dreams. We have stolen an entire river from an ancient ecosystem hundreds of miles away, destroying the lives of all who lived there. WE built a criminally unstable dam whole collapse killed more people than the San Francisco earthquake. That takes guts. No, it takes more than guts – it takes sheer, unrelenting hatred of all that is good and decent.”

Something about Alberto Gonzalez and James Comey made me think of this scene from A Man for All Seasons. Who would Sir Thomas More be?

ALICE – He is! Arrest him!

MARGARET – Father, that man’s bad.

MORE – There is no law against that.

ROPER – There is! God’s law!

MORE – Then God can arrest him.

ROPER – Sophistication upon sophistication!

MORE – No, sheer simplicity. The law, Roper, the law. I know what’s legal not what’s right. And I’ll stick to what’s legal.

ROPER – Then you set man’s law above God’s!

MORE – No, far below; but let me draw your attention to a fact-I’m not God. The currents and eddies of right and wrong, which you find such plain sailing, I can’t navigate. I’m no voyager. But in the thickets of the law, oh, there I’m a forester. I doubt if there’s a man alive who could follow me there, thank God . . .
(He says this last to himself)

ALICE – (Exasperated, pointing after RICH) While you talk, he’s gone!

MORE – And go he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the law!

ROPER – So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!

MORE – Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

ROPER – I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

MORE – (Roused and excited) Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you-where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast-man’s laws, not God’s-and if you cut them down-and you’re just the man to do it-d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? (Quietly) Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.

ROPER – I have long suspected this; this is the golden calf; the law’s your god.

MORE – (Wearily) Oh, Roper, you’re a fool, God’s my god . . . . (Rather bitterly) But I find him rather too subtle . . . I don’t know where he is nor what he wants.

ROPER – My god wants service, to the end and unremitting; nothing else!

MORE – (Dryly) Are you sure that’s God? He sounds like Mo­loch. But indeed it may be God- And whoever hunts for me, Roper, God or Devil, will find me hiding in the thickets of the law! And I’ll hide my daughter with me! Not hoist her up the mainmast of your seagoing principles! They put about too nimbly!