Momentary Language

Nasty, brutish, and interminable

I'm seldom a fan of David Brooks, but this column is outstanding.

It's painful to see Hillary Clinton not only using the worst, most cynical strategies of the Bush Administration's spin machine, but also making a virtue of it, claiming that her ability to stoop so low means that she is the candidate best able to take on McCain in November.

Nothing remains of Clinton's strategy to paint herself as more experienced than Obama; all that remains is the claim that Hillary is the better intimidator. As Brooks points out, this means that, "if elected, she’ll have the power to take the Hobbesian struggle she perceives, and turn it into remorseless reality."

Little comfort for those who, like me, are already finding the Democratic nominating process, in a variation on the Hobbesean theme, to be nasty, brutish, and interminable.

Turnabout being fair play and all ...

In his column in today's NY Times, Adam Nagourney notes that a number of Clinton campaign operatives counted on Barack Obama's campaign blunders to underscore the often-heard Clinton argument that Hillary's greater experience qualifies her better as a leader:

The confidence of Mrs. Clinton and her advisers last fall was based on their belief that Mr. Obama’s inexperience as a candidate would lead him to make mistakes on the campaign trail, and that the image of Mr. Obama’s making mistakes as a candidate would reinforce her central argument that he did not have experience to be president.

Of course, the events of the last month -- including the well-publicized string of 11 victories on the part of Obama to none on the part of Clinton -- would suggest not only that Obama has yet to make significant mistakes as a candidate, but also that Clinton has made massive blunders of her own. Here again Nagourney:

Political analysts and journalists, in judging a candidacy gone bad, invariably focus on a campaign’s bad moves and wrong turns, with a dash of the requisite infighting among powerful staff aides and complaints by contributors. And the Clinton campaign, after starting off smoothly and with such self-assurance, provided a wealth of that: Wasted money, bad strategic calls on what states to contest, a message that failed to grasp how the mood of Democrats had changed and the questionable deployment of a certain former president.

Though Nagourney fails to take the obvious next step, wouldn't the natural move be to accept the Clinton camp's own premise that one's success or failure as a candidate is an indicator of one's readiness to govern -- and thus to conclude that it is Clinton, and not Obama, who has demonstrated inexperience, poor judgment, and a lack of readiness?

How can anyone in the media, given the preponderance of evidence of serious mismanagement, still even mention Hillary's continued claims to greater experience with a straight face?

Next!

I have always been puzzled by the nostalgia among Democrats for the Clinton years, a nostalgia that I have only been able to explain away as a result of the fact that the Bush years were so utterly disastrous that any presidency in recent memory -- even the Nixon presidency -- takes on the rosy tinge of the good ol' days.

(Keep in mind, though, that had Clinton homme not been such a moral disaster, Al Gore would not have had to run away from Bill, and thus could have won the 2000 election even more decisively than he in fact did ... so decisively that not even the Supremes would have been able to tilt the election for W. In effect, then, we have the Clintons to thank for eight years of Bush.)

In her op-ed "Last Year's Role Model" in this Sunday's Times, Lorrie Moore cuts through the tinge of nostalgia to say precisely this, blasting through the cant to reveal the bankruptcy of Hillary Clinton's credentials for the presidency:

though we are in the midst of an awful presidency, we should not be taken in by the rosy haze that gets cast over the Clinton White House; they were not years of great accomplishment. Baghdad was strafed and embargoed; Waco was gassed and burned; in all these events, children (Mrs. Clinton’s key policy focus) were appallingly killed.

While polar ice caps began to melt, Al Gore was left to do who-knows-what, only to regale us later in cineplexes with the consequences of those melting caps, rendering us panicked in our powerlessness. Nafta was signed and the World Trade Organization was created, national health care went nowhere, and by the second term’s close, the administration’s hope of getting things done had been hijacked by Kenneth Starr and the party dress he had confiscated from someone named Monica Lewinsky.

...

Mrs. Clinton’s scripted air of expectation might make one welcome any zeitgeisty parvenu. Her “35 years of experience” puzzle in their math. Like Rudolph Giuliani, who wants to keep voters safe from terrorism though his own mayoral bunker was beneath the World Trade Center, Mrs. Clinton wants kudos for the disaster of her failed national health plan. She counts heavily her eight years in the White House. Well, then, she’s already been there! Good for her. Next?

The answer? Like Moore, I think it's Obama, whose "sturdiness is equal to Mrs. Clinton’s, his plans as precise and humane. But unlike her, he is original and of the moment. He embodies, at the deepest levels, the bringing together of separate worlds. The sexes have always lived together, but the races have not. His candidacy is minted profoundly in that expropriated word 'change.'"

Crack epidemic at Tate Modern

I find the image of Doris Salcedo's new installation, "Shibboleth," to be very arresting -- although the artist's statement concerning the work, as so often, is utterly useless. (Both the image and a quote from the artist are in today's NY Times article.)

My favorite quote from the Times article, though, and one that I will leave you, dear reader, to use as fodder for as many double entendres as your heart desires, is the following:

“The exhibit is all about the crack,” said Peter Girard, 38, an American tourist. “It’s a really big crack. What are you looking at if you’re not looking at the crack?”

All of which leads me to ask: is the Times Arts page just "taking the mickey" with this report?

Or, to go meta, what does it say about the current Arts scene when ambitious -- and, in my humble opinion, extremely interesting -- installations receive such superficial coverage?

Norman Mailer (1923-2007)

Norman Mailer, author of -- among other works -- "The Naked and the Dead," "The Armies of the Night," and "The Executioner's Song," died today at the age of 84. (The NY Times obit is here.)

I can't escape the feeling that I was born too late to appreciate Mailer's impact as a public figure adequately: one could make a compelling argument that, from the mid-1950's, when he was one of the co-founders of the Village Voice, until the late 1970's, when he championed the release of Jack Henry Abbott from prison, Mailer's life was at least as significant an outlet for his artistic expression as his writing, not least because his life so often found its way into his literary output during those years.

What was he thinking?

I always thought Crick was the smart one. This proves it. (Here is a link to the Times of London, to which Watson first made his remarks.)

Abandoning the rose in expectation of the day when everyone wants thorns

Der Rose kündigen für den Tag, an dem alle nach Dornen fragen

An süßduftenden Tagen, an denen Regen auf allen Bänken sitzt
und ein Rentner über die Rohheit der Jugend erzürnt
-denn der Regen ist jung und tritt die Bänke mit Wasserfüßen-,
an schweren, dunstigen, ebendiesen Tagen
ist der Garten ein Revier der Zierde,
der Schnecken und Würmer,
der Zähne der Löwen,
der Größe der Rosen,
der Majestät und des Grüns.
Ich sitze und gehe manchmal,
es ist ein Tanzschritt eher als ein Wegbereiter,
ich komme nicht an, ja ich verlaufe mich sogar.
Ich trete auf die Zehen meines Baumes.
Mein zarter Schuh versucht ein Muster, versucht etwas bleibendes zu zeichnen,
der Regen wird kommen und wird vergessen machen.
Ich werde mich wegspülen, ich werde unter der Straße gluckern, ich werde mich
wenden, an Ecken an die Oberfläche sprudeln,
ich werde Wände hinauf und hinabsteigen.
Meine Hände spielen im Haar der Farne
und ertasten das Zarte und Gegangene.
Ich denke bei mir, wie leicht und sonderbar die Flächen sind, auf denen wir wandern
und gar nicht leben.
Der Rose lecke ich den Hals, den schlanken und ihre breite Stola lässt mich im
Schatten weilen.
Der Dorn, der kleine Sarazene, ist voller Eifersucht. Sein Schwert ist alt und meine
Lust sehr jung. Die bunte Dame gewährt, dass ich ein Blatt von ihrer Brust ablöse,
ein Blütensegel, ein bauschiges Tüchlein, das ich mir um Lippen und Fingerkuppen
lege, um, wie ein Schwärmer, dummer Junge, kleiner Muck vor ihr zu lagern und wie
einer, der nur Rosenworte reden darf.
Meine Dame hat ihr Herz auf meine Zunge gelegt mit dem einen Kuss.
An Tagen, wie ebendiesen. In Nächten wie jenen,
entsage ich dem Duft und schicke mich, um sie zu betrügen,
an die Hände und Münder anderer Sträucher.
Ich beiße in die Tomate, ich feiere die Röte der Völle.
Hin und her schwingt mein Verdacht,
der Garten raunt. Ich bin entdeckt,
enttarnt als Larve, die ein Blatt zerreißt.
Die Ameise kommt, um nach mir zu sehen.
Die treue Amme trägt mich hinab.
Manchmal bin ich ein Haus, das verlassen wurde von einer Schnecke.
Ich liege als stille Erinnerung am Rand und Halme wachsen in mich hinein
und Vögel hallen wider.
Meine Mauern, die gewunden und wund, zittern wie einsturzgefährdet.
Kein Denken an die fröhlichen Feste.
Sie fragen nach Dornen, die Undankbaren.
Für ebendiesen Tag, sage ich, habe ich der Rose gekündigt.

© Nora-Eugenie Gomringer, 2003

Abandoning the rose in expectation of the day when everyone wants thorns

On sweetsmelling days, when rain sits on all the park benches
and a retiree rages about the youth these days
-- for the rain is young and kicks the benches with watery feet --,
on heavy, humid, days just like these
the garden is a haunt of adornment,
of snails and worms,
of the dandies of lions,
of the extent of roses,
of majesty and of green.
I sit and go sometimes,
it is a hop-and-a-skip rather than the start of a long march,
I don't arrive, yes I even get lost.
I step on the toes of my tree.
My delicate shoe attempts a pattern, attempts to draw something lasting,
that the rain will come and cause to be forgotten.
I'll wash myself away, I'll glug under the street, I'll
turn, bubble up at corners to the surface,
I'll travel up and down walls.
My hands play in the hair of the ferns
and discover the tender and departed.
I think of myself, how light and strange the surfaces are on which we wander
and don't even live.
I lick the throat of the rose, thin, and its wide stole allows me
to dwell in the shade.
The thorn, the tiny Saracen, is full of envy. Its sword is old and my
lust so young. The gaudy lady allows me to remove a leaf from her breast,
a flower-sail, a fluffy sheet that I place at my lips and fingertips,
so that, like an admirer, dumb youth, little peasant, I might lay siege to her like
someone who is allowed only to speak rose-words.
My lady placed her heart on my tongue with that one kiss.
On days just like these. In other nights
I forsake the scent and send myself, in order to cheat on her,
to the hands and mouths of other shrubs.
I bite into the tomato, I celebrate the redness of fullness.
My suspicion waxes and wanes
that the garden is murmuring. I have been discovered,
revealed as a larva tearing at a leaf.
The ant comes to examine me.
The faithful wet-nurse puts me to bed.
Sometimes I am a shell abandoned by a snail.
I lie at the edges like a silent reminder and grass grows inside me
as birds echo.
My walls, chambered and raw, tremble as if in danger of collapsing.
No thought for the happy celebrations.
They want thorns now, the thankless ones.
For just such a day as this, I say, I abandoned the rose.

[Translation mine]

"Listen, like a shadow ..."

Écoute, comme une ombre
s’avancerait, la mer, l’inlassable
vol des vagues qui claquent
contre la terre, écoute

ce monde devenu monde, à force
de résonner parmi les ans. Ton enfance
est cette matière fossile, un vœu
du temps qui brûle à mesure.

Écoute, et l’oiseau fuira encore
brisant tes châteaux sur le sable

de cette côte de l’Atlantique
où tu vis s’en aller l’aube
et revenir par tant de marées.

© Hélène Dorion
From: Ravir: les lieux (Paris: Éditions de La Différence, 2005)

Listen, like a shadow
would approach, the sea, the tireless
flight of the waves that slap
onto the shore, listen

this world become world, by
echoing through the years. Your childhood
is the raw material, a wish
of time which burns measure by measure.

Listen, and the bird will still flee
scattering your castles on the sand

on this Atlantic coast
where you see how the morning twilight departs
and returns with so many tides.

[Translation mine]

Corona

Aus der Hand frißt der Herbst mir sein Blatt: wir sind Freunde.
Wir schälen die Zeit aus den Nüssen und lehren sie gehn:
die Zeit kehrt zurück in die Schale.

Im Spiegel ist Sonntag,
im Traum wird geschlafen,
der Mund redet wahr.

Mein Aug steigt hinab zum Geschlecht der Geliebten:
wir sehen uns an,
wir sagen uns Dunkles,
wir lieben einander wie Mohn und Gedächtnis,
wir schlafen wie Wein in den Muscheln,
wie das Meer im Blutstrahl des Mondes.

Wir stehen umschlungen im Fenster, sie sehen uns zu von der
Straße:
es ist Zeit, daß man weiß!
Es ist Zeit, daß der Stein sich zu blühen bequemt,
daß der Unrast ein Herz schlägt.
Es ist Zeit, daß es Zeit wird.

Es ist Zeit.

© 1952 Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt München

Paul Celan
From: Mohn und Gedächtnis (Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1952)

Corona

Fall eats its leaf from my hand: we are friends.
We crack time open from the shells of nuts and teach it to walk:
Time returns to the shells.

In the mirror it is Sunday,
In dreams we are sleeping,
Mouths speak truth.

My eye descends to the sex of my lover:
We look at each other,
We speak of dark things,
We love each other like poppy and memory,
We sleep like wine in the mussels,
Like the sea in the bloodstream of the moon.

We stand at the window, wrapped in each other, they look up to us from the street:
It is time that they know!
It is time that the stone brings itself to bloom,
That a heart beats for unrest.
It is time for it to be time.

It is time.

[Translation mine}

George Bush: Amateur Ethicist

Another case of amateur philosophy in the news -- one so egregious, it has roused me from my summer-induced slumbers. As reported by the NY Times, George Bush issued a veto of a bill calling for federal support of embryonic stem cell research with the words, "Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical."

That's odd. I thought it was the law of the land in much of this country -- and law that George Bush himself embraces -- that homicide is justified if committed to defend the lives of others or of oneself. (In fact, a law signed by Bush's own brother in Florida removes the duty to retreat, allowing people simply to gun others down if perceived to be a threat.)

Indeed, Bush would also certainly consider homicide justifiable if committed to prevent against other serious crimes ... like rape, armed robbery, or, say, making a big deal out of one's intent to produce weapons of mass destruction.

Heck, Bush even supports the death penalty! Unless he believes in backwards causation, that's not even a case of destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life.