the bell tower

At the end of Vertigo

When Jimmy Stewart is dragging
That sultry temptress up the stairs
I couldn’t help but feel bad for her
Even though he was the one betrayed

By love, I was remarking.

With the movie ending

Too abruptly in a reach for irony
The dog was sleeping at my feet
And you were snoring lightly in the nook
Where the whole time I thought
You were humouring my opinions.

It was a perfect empire and I

Wouldn’t disturb it so I sat there lest
I wake the dog and you in a dark room.

Wherein I thought that
This was us in fifty years
But in an old folks’ home
And with another dog if
The staff would allow it.

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      post card – circus horse (max pechstein)

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nobody seems to care / what does this mean?  readreadread…
Where is the world’s outrage?  We need to act now.

go democracy!

Sniff…

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If you watched F9/11, why not watch this too?  The editorials in the NYTimes and the WashPost have offered that one quality of yesterday’s convention speech was an unwillingness to actually hold a position - any stand with a risk.  I think a good number of Americans will be shocked by what’s presented (released by Ed Gillespie or not) in this in-his-words video.  The “nuance argument” suffers some… and even back in the primaries, every moderate Democrat knew Dean was creating a long-term problem for the DNC.

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Nader’s point in running is that while he prefers one lesser evil over the other, both parties are pretty much the same beast.  Right now, Kerry’s position pretty much sounds like: I may not do things differently, I’ll just do them better.  Given the same information, would he have gone to war?  He’s yet to answer that one.  And really, watch this video.
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Here’s a question:  Given no Pearl Harbor… and no attack against the United States, would it yet have been right for us to get involved militarily in Europe (carpet bombs and all)?  Auschwitz and Buchenwald notwithstanding?  What about WWI?  Or the Korean War?

R. Kagan marks what I’m getting at… click

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Recently, why was Kosovo right and Iraq wrong?  Or Milosevic evil and Saddam tolerable?  The suffering was far worse under the latter. 

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What if McCain and Lieberman ran together in 2008?  Two men who aren’t afraid to go against the party line.

? Matt11:28

this horizon

Our conversation was moving
With continental drift as I
Labored to find a way to
Make her laugh or at least
Talk of something light
Like something warm
Or a feeling that floats.

And she said that hate
Came by way of the Los Angeles Port
Snaking into the harbour under
The cover of a thick green haze - 
A miasma, chilly and moist
Kissing every crate from a distance.

And I said that the world
Was drinking coffee and that
The cup is lukeharm in all these hands
Where our eyes are lost in the swirl
Of a melting cream moving in
A way that’s bland and occasionally,
Campy and snarky.

And she continued with the crates
That swayed to CB radio and lonely
Trucker banter or arguments with
AM chatter in a place where
Passing headlights toil as a backbone
Brooking the drone of rubber
Chasing pavement like man.

And for a moment, I understood
Because while it fails to tickle
And isn’t meant to warm you
There’s a place for it in everyone
As the shaded side of love -
A lesson in globalization.

—



mexico city olympics, 1968 (Life Magazine)

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Goals are like spouses–make a bad choice, and you could spend years wondering when the fun starts. 
- Scott Douglas of Runner’s World

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Right now, I’m loving running like crazy.  If hitting the trail is akin to marriage, I’m past the seven year itch and it’s a second honeymoon all over again.  Just me and road!  It’s like a drug… even in the sometimes +100 heat. 

Things are busy and I can’t believe how much happens in just a year.  Think of all those things you can never imagine and then, imagine yourself there in the thick of most of it… with a lot more coming your way.  Maybe life boils down to a man, his dog, and his goals.  And everything else is icing (really, really nice icing).

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reasonable people disagreeing!
are we loathe to cheer?  (or cheer?)

remember bremer’s speech?
b.ehrenreich over dowd (yes,yes,yes)
wilson is in hot water (hmm)

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Right or Left: If you’re politically-inclined…
yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes

Yes. (This is why I throw my shoes when watching the news.)

Let’s join the Anti- Hysteria Party. 

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WaPost re: AIDS
This year the United States will spend $2.4 billion on the pandemic, nearly twice as much as all other donor governments combined…

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So Nice:



play the c chord*

*the 2/2 CD is unbelievable.  “all done wrong”

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What the…

“Berger and his lawyer said Monday night he knowingly removed the handwritten notes by placing them in his jacket, pants and socks, and also inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio.”

HIS SOCKS?!? 

                                            Socks or not… this is just weird.

Here’s more from the Washington Post:

“A government official with knowledge of the probe said Berger removed from archives files all five or six drafts of a critique of the government’s response to the millennium terrorism threat, which he said was classified “codeword,” the government’s highest level of document security.”

ALL five or six drafts.  That’s unsettling.  Outrage and conspiracy theories need to be bipartisan things.  Can you imagine the frenzy (rising to a feverish media scream) had it been Condoleeza Rice (National Security Advisors are food: Berger, Rice… whoever wins needs to keep this trend… say, Foccacia) or Giuliani or anyone from the “other side” involved in the hearings?

It would just be nice if the sword hit everyone on the head the same.

Matt11:28

white bears

In a bright room

Of bright white coats

We sit in scientific meditation

Watching the passing

Of clipboards and the

Voice of authority telling us

To think of anything but
White bears. 

Of course,

Amidst a penguin bevy of

Ambitions’ froth and surfing

Or the drumming of pens ticking,

And splashes of dinner cooking,
The fur and colour

Are all I see

In the greedy forced
Forgotten hands
Of memory.

—



the colossus (goya)

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Matt11:28

tenant memory

These walls feel black

And untouched during

The middle of the night

Past one when
I tiptoe through the hallway.

Thinking only of the morrow

When I’ll wake early to see

Written chances and tests,

I open the bathroom door

To see Eileen, my old landlady

Squatting.

Both yelping, I stand groggy as

She sits frozen in that half second

Which feels like ten minutes,

And I’m disturbed by a senior citizen’s

Skin and aged vulnerability.

In Peter, it says a day is like a thousand years

Depending on the actor in question:

Yelling sorry, closing the door
I run to my room laughing

At absurdity and sadness

Because apostles are right

By definition.

—



Keith III, 1981 (Chuck Close)

—

I love my dad but lately, I’ve wondered if we’re drifting.  Well, coast to coast, we live far away from each other.  But I realize a part of it is me – this weird ambition, a drive to go it alone.     But he’s always been nothing but love and pure support and I know he understands the need to have space, explore and live adventurously.  I’ll share a message he left for me back in college.  It was to-the-point and short and I remember how he said he loved me.  Friends were there when the message played and I remember feeling proud and unashamed to have a father who was frank and unsappy with his affections.  From the perspective of a son, the man is exceptionally kind (and he gave me a lot of facial hair).

Earlier, before heading home, I was filling out some paperwork – signing on the dotted line, etc. – and I noticed something that left me laughing quietly.  I looked at the loop of my letters and realized I was looking at his penmanship.  It was uncanny. 

And disheartening too because I could never read his medical script.  Well, no one’s perfect but I’d like to be a dad like him.  In our family, the narrative is always that my brother takes after dad and I take after mom but through the years, I realize it doesn’t break down so simply. 

He’s got big hopes for his sons.  It’s been a blazing fast year but we’re pushing hard and taking risks in our own ways/places.

—

Pray for my brother, he left for Myanmar a few days ago.

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Watch Against Impatience: Buckley’s solid.  (love his point about cotton ears and conventions)  Read “Aweigh” in the latest Atlantic.  Regardless of political affiliation, that sort of disposition is a rare these days.

Fits well with N. Kristof’s 30Jun NYT column.  And with D. Brooks standard tone.

And flies in the face M. Dowd and Krugman… who hate everything (and won’t yield an inch) on the other side.  Remember how badly the Republicans wanted Clinton to fail in Kosovo w/ Milosevic (and the work is far from done even now)?  Now, it’s the Democrats and Bush and Iraq w/ Saddam.  The parallels are amazing.  Of course, if you read old editorials/headlines on post-WWII… it’s eye-opening.  Likewise for Post-Hiroshima Japan.  “Doomed to failure” sans 24-hour news coverage and much more access to gov’t/military affairs (for all the talk, access is at unprecedented levels of openness).  If we knew all the lies FDR and Truman told… We talk about Kennedy, Wilson, Lincoln and others with a tone that evokes an inarguable, assumed goodness & leadership.  But we forget how divided the country was even in their day.

Politics and Religion… surprised me.

The Political Show… wrapped up nicely. 

And I’m currently reading PJ O’Rourke’s Parliament of Wh*res… there’s a punchy, self-effacing (often) realist for you!

Woodrow Wilson, that geyser of American messianism, called Hamilton ‘a very great man, but not a great American.’ However, that is true only if political realism is un-American. (said WILL!)

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Relaxing:


make like paper

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Might Surprise: Study on Media Bias (brow-raising)

Matt11:28