Having A Coke With You

is even more fun than going top San Sebastian, Irun, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluoresent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I'm with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasently definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o'clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the "Polish Rider" occasionally and anyway it's in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the "Nude Descending a Staircase" or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michaelangleo that used to wow me

and what good does all the research of the impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn't pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

- Frank O'Hara

Hamilton's answer to the democratic peace proposition, that most cherished stricture of american political science:

'But notwithstanding the concurring testimony of experience...there are still to be found visionary or designing men, who stand ready to advocate the paradox of perpetual peace between the States, though dismembered and alienated from each other. The genius of republics (say they) is pacific; the spirit of commerce has a tendency to soften the manners of men, and to extinguish those inflammable humors which have so often kindled into wars. Commercial republics, like ours, will never be disposed to waste themselves in ruinous contentions with each other. They will be governed by mutual interest, and will cultivate a spirit of mutual amity and concord.

'Is it not (we may ask these projectors in politics) the true interest of all nations to cultivate the same benevolent and philosophic spirit? If this be their true interest, have they in fact pursued it? Has it not, on the contrary, invariably been found that momentary passions, and immediate interests, have a more active and imperious control over human conduct than general or remote considerations of policy, utility, or justice? Have republics in practice been less addicted to war than monarchies? Are not the former administered by men as well as the latter? Are there not aversions, predilections, rivalships, and desires of unjust acquisitions that affect nations as well as kings? Are there not popular assemblies frequently subject to the impulses of rage, resentment, jealousy, avarice, and of other irregular and violent propensities? Is it not well known that their determinations are often governed by a few individuals in whom they place confidence, and are, of course, liable to be tinctured by the passions and views of those individuals? Has commerce hitherto done any thing more than change the objects of war? Is it not the love of wealth as domineering and enterprising a passion as that of power or glory? Have there not been as many wars founded upon commercial motives since that has become the prevailing system of nations, as were before occasioned by the cupidity of territory or dominion? Has not the spirit of commerce, in many instances, administered new incentives to the appetite, both for the one and for the other? Let experience, the least fallible guide of human opinions, be appealed to for an answer to these inquiries.'

(Federalist Paper No. 6)

and then i'm reading merleau-ponty on montaigne:

[Montaigne] saw that he was not required to choose between himself and things. The self is not serious; it does not like to be tied down. But is there anything as certain, resolute, disdainful, contemplative, solemn, and serious as an ass? It is unconditional freedom which makes us capable of absolute attachment. Montaigne says of himself: I have been so sparing in promises that I think I have kept more than I have promised or owed. He sought and maybe found the secret of being simultaneously ironic and solemn, faithful and free.

from 'Reading Montaigne', in Signs.

so it appears that there will be war.

I badly want not to betray. yeah ok even before I wrote that I knew how stupid it sounded. it has, however, the rather dubious merit of being honest.

'There is something more than food, humor, a turn of phrase, a gesture of the hands: there is something more.'
(Adrienne Rich, of course.)

the Boston Symphony Orchestra playing Mozart and Mahler at Carnegie Hall tonight. I can't tell Mahler from Mozart (well okay maybe Mahler from Mozart) -- I always fall asleep when listening to classical music for any extended period of time -- I think I go just so I can go back home with the music echoing just outside of memory and the fleeting impression of beauty. Indie rock concert at Irving Plaza last weekend (Interpol -- remember the name) -- but that's a different kind of music, that's something to truly lose yourself in, not to the music so much as to the rush of sound and smoke and alcohol -- though I find that losing oneself is harder and harder to do. And strangely perhaps easier to do it to classical music, because it requires you to engage with it on more levels. And La Boheme the weekend before, and the ballet after that -- Balanchine to Gershwin, all light and sparkling and charming -- and then a terse modern black-and-white piece by Peter Martin, all edges and tension and elegance -- and then a wonderful tribute to Fred Astaire. I never thought I'd like the ballet, but like the Mahler tonight, one leaves with one's mind still full of light, and that seems something to be -- thankful for?

'Music arrives, searching for us. What hope or memory without it. Whatever we may think. After so many words.' (from Adrienne Rich's 'A Long Conversation').

Something I found from A. S. Byatt's The Whispering Woman. The fourth book in the Frederica Potter series. Frederica waiting for her lover and thinking about their relationship and how it would end and thinking that there comes a moment like this in all relationships, when one starts wondering about the end. But this only comes later; for the first few weeks, months, years, all she thought about when she thought of him were his hands and eyes and lips and their bodies moving together. 'People like us, who think too much, are always so grateful, so glad, at least at first, to be overcome by thoughts of lips and eyes and hands.'

Lu Xun, one of the most intelligent and most original of the May 4th intellectuals in China, joined the Chinese branch of the League of Left-Wing Writers in 1930 (the League was part of or affiliated with or at least sympathetic to the Chinese Communist Party; not sure) but hated it and left because he said the Soviet idea of a perfect poem went like this:

Oh, steam whistle!
Oh, Lenin!

From Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China, (1990; 1999 edition; damned if I remember the page number.) Spence says that Lu Xun refused to join the CCP and until his death in 1936 told the young Chinese writers to maintain a sense of Chinese culture, of social problems/conditions, and of the ridiculous.

Hannah Arendt in a casual footnote: 'The common prejudice that love is as common as ‘romance’ may be due to the fact that we all learned about it first through poetry. But the poets fool us; they are the only ones to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mistake it for a universal one.’ (The Human Condition, p. 242)

I miss talking to you, you know? *rueful* After all that. That's what they say in stories, isn't it, that it's the little things that matter, in the end. Things like: we baked pie for thanksgiving! (Thanksgiving, what a wonderful name for a holiday. Someone told me that in Chinese it's gan en jie. There were about 10 of us at the dinner table and maybe 2 Americans and at the beginning of the meal the host (a Yugoslav herself) said, shall we say something? give thanks? and we all looked at each other.) Or: they've wrapped the trees in fairylights and if I stand up now I can see them outside the window, all golden and enchanted. Or: when asked what he thought about Freud, Max Beerbohm replied, 'A tense and peculiar family, the Oedipuses, were they not?' Or: I have egg and sweetcorn pudding leftovers. I think you'd like it; you like sweetcorn don't you? I have half a tray of it in my room still. Or: I miss talking to you, you know?

G. K. Chesterton said of Max Beerbohm that 'he does not indulge in the base idolatry of believing in himself.'

from Epstein, 'The Beerbohm Cult', The Weekly Standard, 11/11/2002. Which of course I found in that incomparable website, Arts and Letters Daily.

good fuck.

The White House didn't want a new independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11 attacks, so they did the next best thing: insisted on a bipartisan commission; only bipartisan groups could be allowed to use subpoenas and at least 6 of the 10 members would have to approve the subpoena; and Bush just named Kissinger as the chairman. '[Ari] Fleischer said that the changes would ensure the inquiry's usefulness.'

'Bush names Kissinger to head Sept 11 commission,' NYT, 27 Nov 2002

and reading beyond the front page of the New York Times for the first time in a while now:

In Jenin on Friday, a military operation to arrest a Palestinian militant erupted into a fierce gun battle in which Israeli soldiers shot dead an 11-year-old Palestinian boy and a senior United Nations worker.

The death of the aid worker, a Briton, has caused considerable friction between Israel and the United Nations...

'West Bank Explosion Kills 2 'Most Wanted' '



Israel is asking the Bush administration for $4 billion in military aid and $8-10 billion in loan guarantees (helps Israel borrow at lower interest rates; the NYT tells us that there is no cost to the US if Israel repays its loans, and Israel has never defaulted on a loan). It is not known how much the administration will provide/ask from Congress yet.

A 26-month conflict with the Palestinians has strained Israel's defense budget, while the violence has sharply reduced foreign investment and tourism.

Israel is the largest recipient of United States loans and grants, amounting to $2.9 billion this fiscal year.

The State Department said last week it would ask Congress for $2.16 billion in military aid for Israel for fiscal year 2004, which begins next September. That is an increase of $120 million from a request for $2.04 billion for this year.

'Israel asks the U.S. for an increase of $4 billion in military aid'

one day all the leaves fell and it was winter. they've wrapped fairylights around the trees along college walk, and sometimes at night they turn them on and walking down the path is like walking through a million electric fireflies, and sometimes the lights stay off but the little glass bulbs reflect the lamplight from the path and it's as though the trees were frosted with silvery sparkles.

i don't get it.

After five hours of debate in the House of Commons, a motion by Mr. Blair's government in favor of United Nations Resolution 1441 [on Iraq] was approved without a vote when the legislators called out their approval with a shout of "Aye."

Shortly before, an amendment requiring parliamentary approval for any use of British troops — and urging a new Security Council mandate for military action to enforce Resolution 1441 — was defeated by a vote of 452 to 85.

The supporters of the amendment, proposed by the opposition Liberal Democrats, included 32 members of Mr. Blair's Labor Party.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the Commons that it would be "utterly irresponsible" to offer legislators a vote to pre-approve military action if it would put lives of British forces at risk.

'U.N. Monitor Says Iraqis Are Denying Having Arms Cache', NYT 26 Nov 2002

am discovering that i *can't* wing a 30-page essay on constructivist international relations theory in three hours. or five. or a night. or, probably, any length of time.

ok you know what? i give up. i give up trying not to be socially dysfunctional and i give up trying not to sound too unsingaporean. it's not even about speaking singlish, it's about speaking singaporean. i give up trying to make small talk about rice-cookers. i give up trying not to be the kind of person with whom almost-strangers feel compelled to talk about the jewish lobby in america instead of people with ang mo kio faces. (don't ask.) i give up trying not to be the kind of person for whom the same almost-strangers feel compelled to suddenly switch to speaking in grammatically-correct english. was that even grammatically correct? i shall be vaguely asianized with the americans and vaguely westernized with the singaporeans and generally strange. sit in a corner and drink gin and gibber poems to myself. i'm working on the gin.

(unfair? -- of course. it was fun. really nice people. really cool people. really good food. didn't really talk about rice-cookers. that much. and only in the context of chicken rice. talked to this girl, she was great. left before the drinking started but that's cos i had -- have -- an essay to write and i hadn't -- still haven't -- figured out the title. but walked home with these two girls, one of whom stayed in my hall. -- ah but she wasn't singaporean she was chinese-american and said 'dude' a lot and the other was singaporean but had an american accent so strong you could bomb afghanistan with it. -- bad taste? whatever.)

Prayer

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hears, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade I piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer --
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

- Carol Ann Duffy

i've forgotten my tempest.

You taught me language; and my profit on't
Is, I know how to curse.

continental political thought class on monday -- that is to say, a class on french and german leftist thought in the 1950s/60s -- and the tutor explaining that a lot of people on left in south america looked to gramsci for inspiration partly because he's a classic and everyone who's read any marxist/leftist theory knows him and partly cos he provides a non-marxist alternative for the left -- and the tutor said that this wasn't just a speculation; when he said people turned to gramsci, he's seeing names and faces in his mind, in argentina (where he's from), in uruguay, in chile. -- i can't imagine what it'd be like to have been part of the left movements in latin america -- to be now sitting in a classroom in new york teaching gramsci seeing the faces of those who believed in it --

on wednesday i went for the meeting in support of the divestment campaign at columbia and there were several professors who spoke up -- it's a faculty initiative -- and said i'm jew i hold dual citizenship in the state of israel and i protest the occupation. there's a group of jewish women -- women in black -- who hold a vigil every week for those who have died in the second intifada, palestinian and jew alike. someone talked of how her father was very very sick in ramallah and it was impossible to get medicines and morphine patches; they had to ask israeli friends to help them get supplies in tel aviv. i should do more reading and put up a coherent argument in protest of the occupation; this isn't an argument but --

on Karl Rove speaking at a political forum on the American presidency at the University of Utah (and saying, among other things, that America was tilting towards the Republicans):

In the question-and-answer session, a woman politely asked Mr. Rove if the administration was concerned over the possibility that 200,000 innocent Iraqis might die in an American-led invasion.

Mr. Rove responded, "I'm more concerned about the 3,000 who died on 9/11."

NYT, 'Rove Declares Nation is Tilting to Republicans'