Bed No. 29 (Sandy)

Dear Sandy,
° I commend to the Secretary of War and to Alexander himself Guy de Maupassant’s little warstrategy Bed No. 29 (Le Lit 29). The lovely Irma, luxurious favourite of the handsome and dickeous Captain Epivent, singlehandedly defeats the Prussians after the general vamoosement of the French battalions.
° For she purposely and singlemindedly undertakes the valourous mission of infecting every last Prussian officer with syphilis!
° "You ((Captain Epivent)) . . . with your cross of honor! I deserve more merit than you, do you understand, more than you, for I have killed more Prussians than you!"
° Annie, get your gun!

§

° Lovely dinner Wednesday, lovely wine, house resplendent. Good to see Julja and Kenton again. Sorry about your cold.

§

° Friday morning I awoke with a slight sensation of having swallowed a trot line.
° Friday noon I sensed a slight tumescence in the left tonsil.
° Christmas Eve I spent in silence--well, I yammered and yammered as if there were no tomorrow, for I could see I was fixing to lose my voice.
° Christmas Day, I drag myself from my bed of pain, play desultory bundleball with the Cat, set out the Bavarian ornaments in the Lalique, garnish the chandelier, vacuum--for the Cat too was sneezing, and I wondered a little if we weren’t both suffering from dustbunny dustmititis--, pause for 2.33 tablespoons of French Roast coffee with Maria cookies (the scum displayed the sacrum signum Tau), establish a blogsite for our friend the poet, make 30odd posts therein, eat honeyed toast and romano omelette, take siesta, de Maupassant myself for an hour, break open some gift chai (green tortoise, very soothing), then set about my day’s work of observing the progress of the Guadalupe candle.
° Hope Coz lit his in time.

§§§§§

° Count your blessings.
° For if I hadn’t taken your cold and thus aroused my immune system, I’d surely have taken Nathan’s flu Thursday.
° And if I’d died of it, your tax burden would’ve gone up by 1/300,000,000th next year.
° For our rulers are every bit as high maintenance as a prepox Irma parading her ermines through the capitol boulevard.

° Noel, Giac.

Notes from a Muted Trumpet 

Trade Fair (Lad)

Dear Lad,
° "Retarded"?! (I use this word only in free selfadmission of its applicability to me, to our leaders on high, to our slaves and vassals, to our--no, Cats and Wolves actually are smart enough for the world in which they dwell, Mosquitoes also.)
° Say, rather: daffy, daft, loony, pointless aimless feckless, selfdefeating. Then take a deep breath, click on Thesaurus, and have a fresh go at it.
° How many families, burdened by the necessity of every single member’s giving Befana gifts to every other member--cousins, aunts, uncles, blood, water, grass, every conceivable kinship--how many families have, in selfdefense against the Spirit of the Season, adopted the elementaryschool dodge of drawing names?
° You drew your Uncle Gonzago, he, by fatal chance, drew yours.
° Good going, Lad, you’ve struck it rich!

° Here is the How.
° You make out a personal check to Uncle Gonzago for, say, $10,255,666.39. Place same in a festive scarlet envelope, with vintage reindeer poliostamp as seal.
° He makes out a personal check to Nephew Lad for, say, $10,255,666.39. He places same in a festive green envelope, with vintage whitebread Santa tbstamp to seal.
° Come Twelfth Night Morn, you both open your presents.
° Che sorpresa! You’re a DutchUncle bazillionaire!
° You ring up Unc to see if there has been, by some mysterious mishap, an error. But you find that Uncle Gonzago, Speedy Gonzago as it were, has already set out for the Bank.
° Desirous of thanking him in person, or for some other reason, you set out for the aforesaid Bank at full gallop.
° You arrive just as Uncle Gonzago is approaching the teller’s window, you dash to the open window just next.
° At the exact same moment, you deposit your fortunes into your own checking accounts.

° And here is where Age goes after Beauty, young FaceBoy.
° For no sooner has the printer issued your deposit confirmation than you write a check made out to Cash and withdraw the entire amount, while poor Uncle Gonzago, elderly and orderly, is still updating his check register.

° "Retarded!" my hind foot.

§

° Now in case this advice does not work out exactly the way I intended--in the back of my mind there are shadowy images of "settlement periods," "felony fraud," and "Jailhouse Blues"--and in case "check kiting," that favourite sport of some of the richest bankers I know, is not entirely--o just forget the whole thing!

° Anyway, I see your point: you purchase a Home Depot giftcard for $25, Uncle Gonzago purchases a Blockbuster giftcard for $25, you exchange for Christmas and--
° --and where’s the gift?
° Isn’t it a wash?
° And what of the risk that you’ll overgift? If he only shells out for a $10 giftcard, how screwed are you!?
° So, since nobody never gives nobody nothing in expectation of receiving nothing in return--"How about dinner and a movie, my treat, then sex and coffee afterwards, your treat? Deal?"--where’s the gift ever?
° For even parents’ gifts to their wee ones serve to buy love and dependency, or at least to reinforce their inborn consumerism for the good of the economy, or at the very least to appease the shrill whining that otherwise embarrasses Mom at every checkout counter from Hallowe’en to New Year’s . . . .

§§§§§

° So it would be no surprise to you that I didn’t get you so much as a sooty coal for your stocking this year.
° Nor Niece, nor Sandy, nor Coz, nor Piers, nor even my self.

° And yet, I did. I couldn’t help myself. And yes, in exchange, each of you must dote on--no, all I ask is that y’all live up to your own coffee scums all the livelong year.
° After all, it is more pleasant to love than to be loved.

° For Niece, Stiletto, by Caroline Cox. For Niece has just had a shoe design of hers accepted for mass production by her employer. Well done, Niece.

° For Sandy, a Fair Trade limesilkbrocadeandscarletvelvet Hindu bottle cozy, for Sandy is an accomplished oenophile. Just decorates a table all by itself, the cozy.

° For Coz, Damned--An Illustrated History of the Devil, by Robert Muchembled. Vasari’s fireupthewazoo engraving (after Dante, or Chris Marlowe), is worth the price of admission. For Coz, the firebreather, may as well see how artistically the Western World has libelled the poor Archangel all these centuries. When, as readers of Piers trinitatis iii well know, Lucifer, through the efficient housecleaning initiated by la Guadalupe, Emperatriz de las Américas and Dei Genetrix, while God was off breeding the Giant Vegetarian Cats, has been restored to Heaven, and to his original splendour, indeed he and his roomy Michael have finally made honest archangels of each other, in Heaven, not in Massachusetts.

° For Piers, a Fair Trade baby Weeping Camel. (Well, it’s an Incan llama, actually a vicuna, but who can tell at that age?) For it was seeing that film, and writing to him thereof, that finally, I don’t know quite how, made me understand that Piers is all grown up now, a free agent, incapable of being babied. O Rats! I even learnt that I could be wrong, and he right, and that I didn’t mind one bit.

° For you, my mellow Lad--well you know what it was, the female customers at Ten Thousand Villages were all oohing and ahhing. If it’s too girly for you and for your oolong, just knock out a couple of partitions, line with cotton batting, and eccolo! a perfect little bunk bed for the chinchilla.
° Hai capito?
° For my real gift to you, and to myself, was the pleasure of mentioning to the volunteer staff at Villages that I’d first been introduced to the concept of Fair Trade by my Lad and friend, who was, as you indeed were, responsible for converting Corner Coffee to Fair Trade coffee.
° Well done, mellow and heartwarm Lad.

° Affectionately, Giac.

P. S. And for me? An $8 Fair Trade Indian "Joy--Calm" incense sampler. For I never outgrew the sunredolent orange, the clove King Leo candystick, the "brasilnuts" and handful of pecans that stuffed my stocking . . . .

Doing the Maths (Coz)

Dear Cousin Juggler,
° I had scarcely sipped my first coffee when NPR announced that NBC and CBS had rejected, as too "out there," the United Church of Christ’s advert inviting samesexers, darkskinned folks, and speakinginspanishtonguers to come to church.
° My Goodness! said I to myself. 30,000,000 hispanics (give or take), 30,000,000 african(ancestried)americans (give or take), 30,000,000 samesexers, and at least 60,000,000 mixedsexers (just ask Dr. Kinsey). That’s a grand total of 15,000,000 Americans, not even counting the countless sexually promiscuous single differentsexers.
° The calculator upped it to a bodacious 150,000,000 Americans.
150,000,000 Americans who, knowing when they’re not wanted, won’t ever again flip the channel to NBC or CBS. Devastating to the ratings, just devastating.

° And bimeby I realised those same 150,000,000 Americans would be transferring their memberships from the Catholick, Baptist, Methodist, Anglican, Pharisee, and Unmentionable Churches that discriminate against them, to the United Church of Christ, which invites them (or tries to, if the public airwaves would only let ’em).
° And that would mean two things.
° One, Piers and Dr. Worklich and Murray Duggles and Tex Tyler won’t have a tenor or alto left in their choirs come Sunday.
° And two, that the UCC will overnight become the Church whose ass Politicos will be most eager to kiss.

° 150,000,000 communicants! Versus 10% of the 50,000,000 who voted against The Pink Menace. (Abortion I leave out of the question, I am male and I can have nothing whatever to say on the subject.)
° 150,000,000 versus 5,000,000.
° You do the maths.

° Your Cousin Fool, Giac.

§§§§§-§
Subtraction (Coz)

Dear Cousin Juggler,
° I forgot to mention, that not two hours later, as I drove to Pope, I was listening to AMOUR-1000, the call-in. The topic was "What would you do if you walked in on your husband with another man, or your wife with another woman?" "Why, join the Church of Christ and be one big happy family," I piped up.
° But I was a minority.
° Although all the men would forgive their women, it turned out that all the women would leave their men as soon as they themselves got out of jail.
° For every manjack of the ladies intended to castrate by means of buckshot or Bowie knife. The panel of experts, two of them black preachers, tittered manfully in agreement.
° So I may’ve been a little premature in adding those 30,000,000 darkskinned folk to the UCC rolls.

° 120,000,000, then.

° Your Cousin Fool, Giac.

§§§§-§§
Defection (Coz)

Dear Cousin Juggler,
° And then came noontide.
° I’d just finished my swim, had showered and dressed, and in comes Chaz. How’s the wife, how’re the babes, sez I. Excited over Christmas, asks I. Staying home or going to Grandma’s, enquires I.
° Excellent, most excellent, yea verily, both.
° And then if he doesn’t just whip it out and salute the flag. I representing the flag. It’s mighty kind of you to say so, sez I, for I’m always glad for folks to be glad to see me. I’m just fixing to proselytise for the C of C when--
° --when a couple of Primer type geekoids from work come through the double doors and Chaz, scantily speedoed, is at once all footbally and soccerpappy and Idon’tknowwhatally. Fully deflated, like a pricked balloon.
° Say hello to Mrs. Chaz, sez I in parting. He glares at me as if I’ve outed him on NBC or CBS.

° So, 60,000,000, for the mixedsexers’ll never get their wives’ permission for decircumcision, and maybe not even their boyfriends’.

° Your cousin Fool, Giac.

§§-§
Deduction (Coz)

Dear Cousin Juggler,
° After a light dinner of latkes and sour cream came Alexander. Was ever a film so savaged by reviewers? Samesexers blamed poor Oliver Stone for not making Colin and Jared play the classic videogame, Tops & Bottoms. Differentsexers savaged the film for showing a samesex mouthtomouth in Pakistan, in a Room at the End of the Known World. Nobody gave credit to the most precisely portrayed bloodletting in the history of cinema. Must say, didn’t make hacking and stabbing (aka War) look all that much fun.
° The music, at least, did suck hardcore, the worst I’ve heard since Spiderman. (Harry Potter had the friskiest newwritten score since Eric Korngold. Closer had the hardestassed torchsongs joined to the hardestassed Mozart ever recorded. While poor Alexander just got synthetic moanings and groanings.)
° But my point was, that the audience, such as it was, was entirely old geezer differentsexer exArmy couples. Not a hip samesexer in the lot.
° Even though Alexander presents without flinching or exaggerating the only known period in Western history during which mixedsexers, if not indeed samesexers, had a fighting chance for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For, in actual fact, it is entirely plausible that Alexander and Hephaistion, devout Academicians (for Socrates was nearly as inimical to the goddess Venus as was Moyses himself), never actually got past first base, or at most past second, with one another. Platonic Love--it’s not just a cliché, it’s a whole neurosis of its own.

° So, 30,000,000. Samesexers as limp as a wrungout speedo.

° Your Cousin Fool, Giac.

§
Difference (Coz)

Dear Longsuffering Cousin Juggler,
° And that very evening, no sooner had I drank tea and pandafied the Cat, than Terry Gross was interviewing two guys whose updated documentary on the Religious Right is just fixing to screen. On Cable not network, it goes without saying. HBO, to tell the honest truth.
° The 50yearlong preamble of redbaiting. Yet I had forgotten that it was the School Prayer issue, back in 1972 (!), that really started the wheels rolling. Abortion was but a lateterm asskick.
° And GastheFags only became a conscious religious strategy in 1992 (!), when it had become clear that Communism was as dead as America’s own Democratic-Socialist Party is today. 30,000,000 poor limp samesexers have to bear all the animus that formerly a couple of billion ironhard Communists shared among themselves. There’s gonna have to be some right smart butching up, seems to me . . . .

° Yet, I always look on the bright side.
° There’s still the 30,000,000 left.
° There’s still that shocking headline from Overton’s Hispanic giornale, "Un Infierno Para Los Gays La Reelecion de Bush." For the Mexicans have been watching Oprah, they’ve learnt that no one is free if all aren’t free.
° And just as the Mexicans make all our beds, cook all our meals, build all our roads, load all our garbage, harvest all our food, chew it and digest it for us, then brush our teeth for minty fresh breath, do all the little chores we lilyfaced Gringos are now too pansyassed to do for ourselves, so it is that the Mexicans will have to resurrect singlehandedly the ideal of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness in this country.
° For it would be entirely beneath native samesexers, mixedsexers, darkskinned folk, and single differentsexers to lift so much as a frail little finger.

° Your cousin Fool, Giac.

P. S. Don’t omit from your Mind and Intention l’Immacolata (oggi) and la Guadalupe (I’ll get the candles and water, you get the masa, gentle Coz?), la Vergine Madre di Dio ci protegga. Sono sicuro che nessun dio ci aiuterà.

Eating Chico (Lad)

Dear Lad,
° "Will I die if I eat it?"
° How my heart went out to you as I presented you with the torso of Chico L. Muerto, over whose left pec each of us in turn had placed the right hand--you, Coz, Piers, I (forming the Intention); Chico, so intuitively and ritely sacrificed by Coz last Sunday--I wish you could’ve seen his Skellington chasuble and Death’s Head mitre. My heart went out to you, I wanted to shelter you under my wings and dry your tears.
° "Well of course you’ll die!" I replied.
° For indeed, so you shall. As shall Piers, as shall Coz, as will I.
° Not because we ate Chico, our misstep was being born.

§

° Do you remember how I dreaded rereading Madame Bovary? I always thought it perhaps the most perfect novel ever written (only the operatic reappearance of the eyedangling, fleshrotted beggar whistling Dixie at the exact moment of Emma’s death mars the spare, unsentimentalistic Realism). But when I first read it, when I was a little younger than you, it provoked a nearpanick depression. Not that I was quite sensible of Emma’s manic-depressive disorder, and didn’t know, till recently, of Flaubert’s.
° But I felt every degree of Emma’s entrapment, The Nightmare on Elm Street-ness of her punishment.
° And yet, that wasn’t what I really dreaded.
° For Emma doesn’t just die, immediately after singing ten verses of "O terra, addio." For fifty pages she dies. In such dispassionate, scientifically observed detail--replete with discolourings, oozings, tics, temperature change, rattle--that one might as well be reading the last chapter of a Hospice Caregivers’ Manual.
° For at your age I was deeply afeared of Death Most Holy.

§

° Julja still is. Deeply afeared of Death Most Holy.
° You are.
° Piers is professionally sceptical--he thinks I didn’t read his mind as he fumbled in placing his hand on Chico’s panettone heart, "You act like you’ve never done this before," I accused him.
° And Coz is a gypsy, so Death is one of the family, Mlle Cousine Tarot.
° America is terrified of Death Most Holy. Jeb Bush and the Florida Legislature outlawed her:

Ventilationem sempiternam dona eis, Domine,
et Nox perpetua noceat eis . . . .

° And 9.11! The whole country just bepissed itself, was still dribbling on Election Day, as if those 3000 were somehow deader than we all shall be, than all others up to now have been.

§

° Although since my visit to the Shrine in Chico Mexico I have had no fear of Death Most Holy, it doesn’t mean I’m all that crazy about the dying itself. Such a lack of rehearsal, such a lack of control. Such an opportunity to mortify oneself with a Dialogues of the Carmelites sort of "Dio mio, Dio mio, perchè m’hai abbandonato?!"
° And that is why each of us should prepare a witty little exit joke, like Oscar Wilde’s about the wallpaper. Or something mystocryptic, like Rosebud.
° My tombstone, if I weren’t having myself sprinkled on the Pet Sematary out back, would read, "It doesn’t hurt, Paety." A macabre jest, stolen from Young Pliny ((Litterae, Liber III:xvi)), Sandy gets it.

§

° No, eating Chico--and he was surprisingly tasty, a triumph of the Sri Lankan Mexican Pasticceria--will not buy off Death. Death Most Holy is not a cheap floozy like some deities I could mention.
° Chico honours Death Most Holy. And perhaps, if so it please her, she will be gentle.
° Perhaps not.

§§§§§

° No matter. For not a one of you thought to wonder, not even Coz, what Intention I was forming as I held my right hand above each of yours in turn. Innocent innocent little lads as y’all are. Trusting, mighty trusting.
° Yes, of course, I explained why you received the crossed arms, why Coz received the extra leg, why I ate the notorious right leg, and why Piers got the head and brain--and no, it wasn’t just so the firstborn could have the raisins, while you two younger had to make do with--.
° Innocent innocent lads, tutti e tre.

° For what eating Chico has done, under my silent Intention hovering over each of y’all’s right hands, is to open a conduit from one to the other. Coz’s righteous and wrathful indignation--what a human rights lawyer he’d make; your Buddhalike silent teaching, unsuspected, unresented by the student; Piers’s astonishing organisational skills, his ability to plot a course and negotiate it (he’s just back from singing Vespers and Benediction at one of the most prestigious Churches in the Western hemisphere). My--uh, my--uh, my--well I’m wizard with feral She Cats, the Chapel Black is finally accepting stroking, didn’t even bite me last time.
° As you think of this and that--and right now, under the influence of the quadruple occultation, you are thinking of this and that--you have available to you, if you passively notice it, whatever you need from Coz or from Piers or--if you’re thinking of going to Las Vegas and replacing Roy--from me.
° The same for Coz.
° The same for Piers--for the stars will change, and another year he will be drawing current, not supplying only.

° Admire your brothers.
° Honour Death Most Holy.
° Sink your psychic teeth into Chico’s warm palpitating flesh . . . .

° Carnivorously, Giac.

P. S. Wish I’d read Victor Hugo’s tract against capital punishment before Hallowe’en, such a list of gruesome French misexecutions . . . the woman of Dijon whose neck the blade did not quite sever, so the executioner’s servants had to grab her legs and pull. Plunk!

Il est doux d'espérer (Julja)

Dear Julja,
° "A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles."--Thomas Jefferson, alla Signora Streisand Dot Com.
° "Tomorrow is another day."--Scarlett O’Hara
° "Il est doux d’espérer."--Carmen, and we know how that turned out!

° "Witches" my hind foot! Jefferson, the only truly civilised President I suppose America ever had, didn’t even believe in God, much less goddesses.
° Anyhow, my prediction of the New American Order is based solidly on Science. Or anyway on stock market patterning. (The usual disclaimer, the fact that a system worked in the past is no guarantee--well then how do all the brokerage firms keep selling such a system?)
° And here ‘tis, my disclaimed guaranteed prediction of the future. John Edwards replaces John Schneider in the bigscreen adaptation of Dukes of Hazzard. George W. Bush hands off to Jeb Bush. In 2016 Jeb Bush hands off to Jenna Bush. In 2024 Jenna hands off to one of Bush père’s grandchildren, the ones he categorised as "the little brown ones."
° Yes.
° He did.
° And on 2 novembre mmxxxii, the next youngest, having changed parties on a Truth or Dare challenge, will restore the Democratic Party to headlined power.

° You can bank on it. (Disclaimer, ecc.)

° Howcome?
° Here’s the pattern, so plain a discarded donkey can descry it.
° In 1932 FDR, in response to an economic disaster that nearly shattered the United States of America, brainbirthed the Democratic-Social(ist) Party; it was flashytoothed, bighaired Jack Kennedy who warpdrove the D-S P into technicolour; it was the homely hopeless fecklessness of St. James Carter ("We have met the enemy, and it is y’all, the American people.") that drove the Party to autodestruct. A grand Kondratieff cycle of almost 50 years of oneParty rule culminating in a Banana Republic hyperinflation that shook Wall Street to its roots . . . .
° In 1980 Ronald Reagan brainbirthed the Republican-Liberty Party, it will be Jeb Bush and his 99% R-L P Congress that will shoot the Party into 3D, and in case I’m wrong about Jenna and the grandkids, it will be the Herbert Hooverlike nattering nabobishness of an illegally cloned lovechild of Ann C------ and Robert N---- that enters the selfdestruct code in 2032. A grand cycle of 50odd years of oneParty rule culminating in the meltingdown of the Statue of Liberty--to make pennies to pay the backtaxes--on the grounds that she is a pagan French goddess . . . .

° How do I know that the Democratic-Socialist Party is dead? (("Democrat" Congressmen uniformly espousing the Republican Platform is one clue. Zell Miller is the postDaschle rule, not the exception.))
° I know it because NPR’s senior pundit, in a Weekend Edition postelection interview, predicted sheepishly that the Democratic Party will study this election, learn its lessons, emerge stronger than ever. Ms. Streisand is sheepishly hoping the same thing.
° "Il est doux d’espérer," Carmen.
° "Resistance is futile," Big Bad Borg.

° Besides, on election morn, in the bottom of my coffee cup there was a decapitated body and, nearby, a disembodied donkey’s head.
° "Witches" my hind foot!
° Res ipsa loquitur.

° Brayingly, Giac.

Dead Light in Mondo Bloggo (Coz)

Dear Coz,
° So much dead electronlight in Mondo Bloggo, so many blogs whose last post was a largefont allcaps of "VOTE KERRY". Then seven days of nothing but pure white light, like the finale of a Soviet revisionist Swan Lake. Blazing white grief.
° Not me, I’ve just been too busy casually dropping Citizen B-----’s bon mot into every conversation I’ve had. "Well the funniest thing I heard election night was on Radio Quebecois: some French wit said that the reason Americans liked Kerry was they wanted to be like him, and the reason they liked Bush was that they were like him." Never failed to drop jaws and elicit gasps, for it gored both sides and the middle about equally.
° Kerryans supposed they were being accused of social climbing, while Bushites supposed they were being accused of imbecility and redneckery.
° Evviva Cittadino Francesco!

§

" Here are two lists:

A. Presidents since FDR in the Andy Jackson mould:

Truman (a haberdasher with an explosive temper)
Eisenhower (General, but not so very)
Johnson (he lifted his beagles by their ears)
Nixon (too macho to accept rhinoplasty)
Ford (couldn’t go up a flight of stairs without a pratfall)
Carter (hopelessly holy)
Reagan (a bluecollar Hollywood star)
Clinton (born on the wrong side of the tracks)
Bush fils (Judy Garlandlike addictive personality, with a Truman temper)

B. Presidents since FDR in the George Washington mould:

Bush père (a genuine patrician, his one term a thankoffering to Ronald Reagan)

To which group would John Heinz Kerry have belonged?
° O, so that was it.

§

° How many times did you hear folks say, "Bush is the kind of guy I’d like to drink a beer with"?
° How many times did you hear folks say, "Kerry is the kind of guy I’d like to sip dry sherry and eat fish eggs with"?
° How many times do you still hear folks say, "Clinton is the kind of guy I’d like to smoke a cigar with"? Oops, off subject, perdonami.

§

° If not Kerry, then who of the possible Dems was potentially an A. List Andy Jackson?
° Well, Al Sharpton. But for some inexplicable reason . . . .
° Dismiss outofhand the one who shamelessly outed his own metrosexuality, the one who was a girly girl, the one who was a dork, the one who was a pisher, the one . . . .

° And that leaves John.
° John Edwards. John Bob Edwards. Born in a log cabin, burnt the midnight oil, took his squirrelgun and blew a $25,000,000 hole through Big Tobacco. Tough, mighty tough.
° Smooth, mighty smooth.
° John Bo (not Luke) Duke Edwards, all he had to do was buff up, put on a pair of tight faded Levis, mount a fireengine red NASCAR, and America was his’n.
° Too late now. For I have been granted a vision of the next headline proclaiming "Dems Retake Government." Date: 2/11/--but this post is overlong already. Another time.

° Your cousin, Giac.

Boyish George and John Gaunt (Lad, Coz, Julja)

While I was profiling prospective voters I was repeatedly astonished to find how many Southern folks (not to mention Ari ((Ariagoesdown blog)), miao!) support 70-80% of Kerry’s positions, 45-55% of Bush’s, yet were all eagerbeaver to vote for Bush.
How could this be?
Let us examine a typical case . . . .

There sits the Widow Lang, in her cabbagerose papered front parlour, a freezedried Cat tom, the one she never got over, on the mantelpiece next to a faded daguerreotype of her greatgreatgrandparents back home amidst the cottonfields. On the rosewood, marbletopped sidetable, a yellowing, dogeared copy of Grit, dated 9.11.
Suddenly a sound of frantic hoofbeats ruptures the hermetic stillness of the room. A dismount, footsteps on the mossybrick walk. Barely time for a peep through the lace curtains . . . .
It’s Boyish George, come a’courting, in horsesweatsoaked boots, torn and snagged jeans tight across the butt, even tighter across his--well anyhow. String tie, a Marlboro spittleglued to his lower lip. The Widow’s heart goes a’thumpity thump. And look at his betrothal present! A knittingbag made Old Testamentstyle of the sewntogether foreskins of tens of thousands of Iraqi "thems," and inside, the goggleeyed head of Osama bin--no, it’s Saddam’s head. Well what’s the difference, ‘tis the thought that counts.
Widow all a’twitter. 9.11 come knocking no more on my door.

But then, the deep, powerful, tigerlike purr of a stretch Jaguar.
Why, it’s John Gaunt, also come a’courting.
John Gaunt, so tall, and so thin, and his French tie so chicly glistening, and his Armani suit so floppy you can’t see a nip or a bun to save your soul. And what’s he brought as betrothal gift?
Why it’s a, it’s a--it can’t be, thinks Widow Lang.
But it is. It’s a nosegay of Parma violets, pansies that is to say, flown in fresh from some Left Bank hothouse.
What a quandary, no time to think. (Except Widow Lang does think of that swarthy Rafe the Naderite, whose idea of courtship was to let out the air from her SUV’s tires, for a Hallowe’en prank; and of poor wispy Little David Cobbler, who emailed her a dollaroff coupon for a Thanksgiving tofurkey.)
Boyish George or John Gaunt?
Horsesweat and manly mangore and tarandnicotine and tightassed denim on the one hand.
On the other, a dozen lavender pansies.
Yet what if the nosegay conceals a threecarat diamond solitaire?
Yet what if it doesn’t?
What’s a gal to do?--Giac

Divination 101 (Coz)

Dear Coz,

Without preamble:

22 ottobre--I find on the front porch a Black Cat, just run over, her left arm broken through and dangling;
25 ottobre--in bottom of coffee cup, a man having assumed the position;
26 ottobre--in bottom of coffee cup, headless and armless female torso;
26 ottobre--tea bag ruptured, on rim of cup, the Grim;
27 ottobre--on walk to stables, the Grim, eyes glaring like hot coals in the Sun, appears in 100plus pounds of ravening blackness on the edge of the maize field; that evening, Blood on the Moon;
29 ottobre--in bottom of cup, tombstone with a Bird engraved thereon; on rim of cup, a Cat, its kidneys being devoured by a Dog, its head by something more monstrous than the Grim itself;
30 ottobre--nightmare of the Tyrannosaurus Rex poking its nose in through the window under which I’m hiding;
31 ottobre--a Skull in the bottom of my cup, Sandy identified it without prompting, it was smoking a cigar.

My question to you, my clairvoyant Cousin, is this: do you see a pattern here?

§

O Lordy, it’s just a Three Stooges blowout, "Moe, I’m haunted!"

Happy Hallowe’en!

Allegro Ognisanti!

Buenos Dias de los Muertos! (Whose bright idea was it to hold elections on the Day of the Dead?)

§§§§§

What me, worry?

For I have me an orange and aniseseed flavoured chico muerto from the Sri Lankan Mexican Patisserie, gobble gobble gobble . . . .

Your Cousin, Giac.

Naming the Names (Piers)

Dear Little Pup,
° Today, at last, you are old enough to vote, to drink a martini, to be drafted and sent to rot in Viet Nam. At least you are if I’ve properly understood the nonlinearity of time in What the %?! Do We Know?! starring Marlee Matlin and Buffy’s most weaselly principal.
° Yes, another birthday, what will the new year bring?
° Well I have been telling you for three months at least and do not hesitate to do so again.
° Piers is in the ascendant, no stopping you.
° How do I know what I know? Because, unlike Gualtiero the Psychic, who parried my dull witticism with "I’m a psychic, not a mindreader," I, Giac, can foretell the future.
° I shall prove it.
° Next week the Pisces horoscope will read: "Fortune smiles upon you; if you know where to look, you can find a premasticated chaw of tobacco."
° Next week Libra will read: "You will get a surprise phone call from your greatuncle’s lawyer informing you that you have just inherited controlling interest in Microsoft."
° The following week Pisces will be: "Fortune frowns upon you, the Surgeon General has determined that sucking on used chaws of tobacco is hazardous to one’s health and, moreover, stains the teeth."
° While Libra, and Virgo, and Capricorn, and Taurus--just Love and Money and Acclaim and crisp curly frenchfries raining down from Heaven.
° For every astrologer, even Brezsny, gets tired toward the bottom of the list.

§

Each of us has a name given by God and given by our parents.
Each of us has a name given by our sins and by our longing.
Each of us has a name given by our enemies and by our love.
Each of us has a name given by our celebrations and by our work.
Each of us has a name given by the sea and by the stars.
--Zelda Mishkovsky--

° To which Brezsny adds, "Your homework for the coming week, Libra, is to figure out all ten names . . . . your sense of self is ready to bloom."
° Well, Little Pup, I know very well that you are presently engaged in the struggle to convince your choristers that when Duruflé writes A he means A and not A- nor, improbably, A+. Just because a Requiem is for the Dead doesn’t mean nobody’s listening.
° So I shall help you with your homework.

Iddio ti regalò il nome "Orfeo."
I tuoi genitori ti regalarono il nome "Capace."
I tuoi peccati, che, secondo me, non esisteranno, ti nominò "F-----o."
Il tuo desiderio ti chiama "Calvin H. Rutter."
I tuoi nemici t’hanno chiamato, nel mio sentire, "Junior."
Iddia Venere abitualmente ti chiama "Montecchino."
Alle celebrazioni sei "Maestro."
Il tuo lavoro, secondo Vittoria, ti conosce come "Signor J----."
Il mare (nel quale nuotano i Pesci) . . . . ?
Gli astri ti acclamano "Il Violinista," cioè di nuovo, "Orfeo," perchè sei tu attorno a cui noi tutti ci congreghiamo, noi Lupi (io, Nathan, Cugino Zingaro, Bastien, Richmond, il Tush Hog), loro Pecora (chi sarà, sarà).

For, as you must have seen at once, I misinterpreted the figure on the rim of the cup, I blame Coz for not reading my mind and correcting me.
° And so, happy birthday, Little Pup.
° Vote, imbibe, dodge.

§§§§§

° Poor Father Ferret, poor Bishop Weasel, Wo sollen sie fliehen hin?
° Apologise, demandeth the Anglican Council of Binitarian Bishops (for they all deny the effective existence of the Holy Spirit), for elevating Bishop Robinson, resign your bishopricks and priesthoods and pensions (or at least "your official positions"), then sign a bloodoath supporting the 3000yearold JudaeoChristianIslamick genocide against the Venusian people.
° Poor Father Ferret, poor Bishop Weasel, wo sollen sie fliehen hin?

° Slavering all over my long sharp teeth, I am

° Your Giac.

P.S. You understand, of course, the good fortune that the Black Cat dwelling under Romaine Chapel promises to one and all? Ask Coz. And yet there are those who wish her ill. Not Vittoria, one of the littlest of these thy charges. She actually got the gorgeous feral Shecat into her van, where Kitty scratched the daylights out of her arm and bit her on the face. Vittoria loves Kitty just the same. The threat to Kitty’s wellbeing, and to the Good Fortune of Assumption, is from the overthirties. Isn’t that always the way!

Sour Milk (Sandy)

Dear Sandy,

° I reckon you already know how to clabber milk. No, I don't refer to your famous childhood singing voice, but to your mother's home economics lore.

° I shall remind you just the same.

° Place into a measuring cup:

1.33 Tablespoons (white, so as not to discolour the batter) vinegar

or

1.5 T lemon juice

or

.25 Cup (4 T) grapefruit juice

or

.75 Cup (12 T) orange juice,

then fill the cup with as much sweet milk as needed to produce the quantity of sour milk required for the recipe. Mix well.--Successful Baking for Flavor and Texture, 1936, Arm & Hammer, Cow Brand.

° Or else, next time your refrigerator begins to run constantly and, notwithstanding, the ice and frozen foods thaw, hope for the best for three or four days, then eccolo! real homemade natural sour milk.

§

° Of course the reason you will want to sour some milk is to bake my greatgrandmother Mammie H-----'s Sour Milk Gingerbread, which you have decided to feature at the b & b.

° Here is the 1890's recipe:

Combine

.25 Cup Larkin Cooking Oil

1 heaping Cup sugar

1 egg.

Beat very light, add

.5 Cup molasses.

Sift together

1.75 Cups flour

2 teaspoons ginger

1 teaspoon cinnamon

.5 teaspoon salt

.5 teaspoon soda.

Add dry ingredients to egg mixture alternately with

.5 Cup sour milk.

Mix, turn into oiled and floured pan, bake 40 minutes at 350°.

° Delicious.

§

° Delicious.

° Yet Aunt O--- updated and enriched the recipe about 1950. (For you can google Larkin Cooking Oil all you want and never come up with so much as a cracked collector's bottle, the rancid contents all leaked out.)

Combine

.5 Cup (Mazola) corn oil

1 heaping Cup white sugar

2 freerange eggs.

Beat very light, add

.5 Cup molasses.

Sift together

2 Cups plain flour

2 "kind of" heaped teaspoons ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

.5 teaspoon salt

.5 level teaspoon soda.

Add dry ingredients to egg mixture alternately with

.5 Big Cup buttermilk.

Mix, then pour into oiled and floured pan. Bake at 350° for up to 40 minutes, depending on oven.

"It is very delicious, better kept 2 or 3 days--but good fresh." So said Aunt O---.

§

° Very delicious.

° No doubt.

° Dunno.

° For I butter and flour the 9x13 pan (remember to roll the rather liquid batter up the sides, for the bread rises right smart), and I "kind of" heap the cinnamon too. And I use low cholesterol eggs from vegetarian chickens, poor little fowl, never to know the joy of chasing a grasshopper across the front yard and pecking it, the hopper, into crackly crispy little bits.

° Nor does my 350° oven take more than 30 to 35 minutes to bake.

° I do use regulation measuring cup and spoons, a practise to which neither Aunt O--- nor my mother ever stooped.

§

° So, plus butterfat on the pan, minus butterfat because the sourmilk used to be whole milk, plus cholesterol because of the second egg, minus cholesterol because of the vegan chickens . . . .

° So what, 'cause I top the whole thing, while still warm from the oven, with the following buttermilk icing:

Melt

1 stick butter.

Add

1 Cup sugar

.5 Cup buttermilk

.5 teaspoon soda

1 Tablespoon honey (or corn syrup or molasses)

.5 teaspoon vanilla

.25 Cup shaved crystallised ginger root (optional, to taste).

Bring to a hard boil. When you feel like it's ready (when it has begun to brown and to smell irresistible), remove from heat, beat till foam disappears, pour over gingerbread.

This gingerbread will keep, covered, under refrigeration, for a good two weeks without appreciable staleness.

° Very delicious, I tried it on Nathan.

§

° Very delicious.

° Although, as you remark, it turns out differently each time one makes it. Longer baking yields a dry bread that contrasts better with the topping. Shorter baking seems to emphasise the ginger. Overboiling the topping, past the moment of greatest fragrance, makes a chewier topping (a plus) with less butterscotch flavour (a minus). Honey makes a contrast, molasses a complement. Corn syrup adds yet more vanilla.

° Nathan agrees with you, he'd like even more ginger flavour. Just heap it to heart's content, says I.

° Or buy a fresh bottle.

° Nudge it this way or that, suit yourself.

§§§§§

° Look at the parsimony of the ingredients in the 1890 version. One egg. Sourmilk used not as trendy frippery, but because springrefrigerated milk was forever souring back then. And the ginger helped conceal whatever skankiness the baking soda was unable to neutralise.

° Look at the prosperity of 1950. Two huge brownshelled eggs. More oil, more flour, more ginger, more more more. And buttermilk, marketed on purpose, could be bought at the grocery store. Sorghum (real) molasses was still boiled down locally, so Aunt O--- had no need to rejigger the recipe for storeboughten dark brown sugar.

° Look at the effeminate and pansyassed--o wait, that's our generation. Too lazy to rewarm the gingerbread in the oven and serve with melted butter, too cowardly to heap cold gingerbread with heartclogging freshly whipped cream (and I'm the last human in the western world who still uses a Julia Child whip, no electricity for me! And that aerosol junk, like Burma Shave!). So my added topping prebutters the gingerbread, cholesterol out of sight, cholesterol out of mind.

° Mammie H----- and Aunt O--- are just guffawing in their graves.

° Confectionately, Giac.

Horse Whispering (Coz)

Dear Coz,

° I was toddling down the lane the other evening on the way to nowhere when I found that the drastically shortened day (pace Jean Giono) was aiming the full force of the setting Sun into my eyes. So, unmanlike, I turned and went the other way.

° Was this a Susyn Reeve (like) leading?

° We shall see.

° Due East, under the trestle where the warmth radiating from the southfacing concrete pier was very pleasant, out past the dried and unharvested maize fields, over the creek--and there on the sandbar, aka the regional recycling center, there was a whole hotel lobby of sofas, so inviting, with the mosquitoes and all; and a man making a bonfire of--no, in fact he was unmaking one, he was rescuing useable lumber from somebody else's refuse. Well, past the creek, and I was just trying to espy the solitary roadside plant of bearsfoot, to see if it was still in bloom and maybe I'd collect a seed or two, when there he was.

° Mr. Ed.

° No, but it was a highblooded, butchmaned chestnut stallion grazing placidly on the verge of the highway. Not a heavily travelled highway, but still--in a collision he was sure to be bruised.

° Giac to the ready.

° I detoured to the farmhouse and knocked. No answer. No lights. No chattering tv.

° I hallooed to the barn half a mile away. No answer.

° Well, there was an answer, half a pack of foxhounds came running as if I were the Purina Chow Boy.

° So, consequently, Giac retreating to the ready.

° I recrossed the highway, waved smilingly at a passing car--they were outlanders, and thought it all very picturesque--and drew nigh to Signor Cavallo. I mean to say, I stopped as soon as he lifted his head from the grass and glared at me, about 15 feet away, I reckon.

° "Shouldn't you go back to your field," I asked without a question mark, like some Witch from Dune. ((Scene 130 in link)) (Star Wars borrowed the conceit, don't know the ursource, one of the Oz books most likely.)

° The Horse shook his head, snuffled, then crossed the highway into the front yard of the farmhouse, where he commenced to crop the recently mown lawn.

° I followed to the steep bank above the yard. I looked at him. Have I got to do it all, I said to myself.

° Well of course.

° So down I scuffled, drat that bad knee. Same drawing nigh, till again he stopped browsing, lifted his head, glared at me.

° "I bet you remember where you got out," I said urgingly, for I myself couldn't see a single gate ajar, indeed I didn't even know which pasture he'd come from.

° Shake, snuffle; then he trotted, then galloped past the house, past the machinery shed, and jumped over a hurdle in the fence I hadn't even spotted. And lo, he was back where he belonged, and grazing and glaring at me all at the same time.

° I resumed my walk, five minutes deducted.

§

° Well it was a miracle, wasn't it?

° It was a miracle, because when I innocently recounted the story to Nathan, he was impressed, he wanted to study coffee scum right then and there.

° All Giac's tarotiness, attested by the Strayed Horse, Il Cavallo Traviato, just add him to your own antique deck.

§§§§§

° Well you, goatherd as you sometime were, are just chortling.

° For you know I left out of the story the one detail that kills the Magick.

° For, of course, each time after I spoke to The Horse, I took one meaningful step forward. And that was the entire trick, the entire whispering, the entire miracle of Man-Horse sympathy.

° I knew it would work, I knew what he wanted and what he did not want.

° Yet you'd be surprised how many folks who've never set foot in a town bigger than Kosciusko never learn the trick, they can't even whisper a nursing calf back to its mother.

° Your cousin, Giac.

Bastien and the Cowgoddess (Piers)

Dear Piers,

° It's just no use your peering around the column after the Sequence, in hopes of espying Bastien. Wasn't there, isn't there, won't be there, all your fault.

° For your ruse failed as it deserved to fail: it failed when Lucy tried it on Ricky, it failed when Don Porter tried it on Ann Sothern, it failed when Charlie Farrell applied it to Gale Storm, it failed--well when a trick fails even in '50's Hollywood, it has no chance at all in real life.

° It failed, your ruse, by succeeding. For, a couple of Sundays ago, when you stealthily set forward by 45 minutes not only Bastien's Patek Philippe, but also every freestanding timepiece in the flat clear down to the VCR, you did manage to trick him into arriving at Mass before the Introit.

° And what was the inevitable consequence of your cleverness?

° Why, the poor lad heard an entire homily, that's what.

° And once one has heard one of those clear through, no amount of Lucille Ball (sy) henna trickery will induce a bright unbleached blond to suffer another.

§

° What a homily! Good joke beginning, and not the one about the cat barking either. This time it was a cow barking. The OT was from Deuteronomy--what is that thing still doing in the Lectionary? Hasn't Moyses's childhood grudge against Hathor gone on long enough?-- I reckoned the theme was to be an admonition against worshipping golden calves. Don't know where I'd find one to worship, if so inclined. So that was that.

° Bimeby, as I gazed about listlessly, I was conscious that, in threequarter rear view, so that one cheekbone shows, Bastien is your spitting image. Even his crown is on the right, surely not a naturalborn lefty?

° And then for a while I examined folks' clothes. That awkward season, too early for the good wool, too late--well, there was one sixteenyearold in midanklelength cargo pants and a blue and pink and yellow Hawaiian coconutpalmandsurfboard print shirt, that was entertaining.

° And then for a while I drifted alongside Proust and Mozart. Dove sono? Dove, indeed. There's where the gentle and kindly woman who was dying of cancer all last year isn't sitting this year. There, down front, survives the nonagenarian exmodel, still very spiffy in this seasonally drab crowd. There, on the right, isn't the nervous youth who used to come for--well why did he come? Every few minutes he used to turn and peep at the entry, but no one ever came to join him, no one ever spoke to him, that I saw, even at the Peace. Pretty much just sat and peeped and started at creaks in the floorboards, poor little tyke. Gone for good, frightened or despaired.

° Rafe, emigrated to your aisle this year. Rafe, religiously scrupulous not to acknowledge, by any community action, the liturgy that interrupts the Pachelbel he's come to hear.

° Tevye, two yards and all seven planets from Rafe. Tevye and Miklos, puzzling out the slow Cheshire Cat (tish) dissolving of the sweetvoiced Cantor, was it the January Pansy Festival? Was it--?

° Near at hand, an exCouncil member, as immaculately groomed as the exmodel, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. tanned and handsome, drawing the lines on the children's ConnectaPicture--no, it was a crossword puzzle, ripped out of the morning paper.

° So many and so clever ways of coping with the long aimless verbal drift toward the Offertory. Puzzles, blind stares, abandonments of religion for good and all, gentle Sister Death herself, so many ways of coping.

° Yet Bastien, blond and stalwart, listened doggedly to it all.

§

° So he didn't jump halfway out of his seat, as I did, when the homily ended.

° With a bombshell.

° "Choose Life!" Out of the blue, just like that, "Choose Life!"

° I started just as the nervous little pansyflower used to, if only a greybeard medico cleared his throat behind him.

° "Choose Life!"?

° You mean to say the thing wasn't an attack on the Cowgoddess all along?

° You mean to say I was so lost in Mozartian space that I didn't register foetuses, bloody broken tornfleshed little foetuses, with fotos to illustrate?

° Good thing I wasn't solving a crossword puzzle, might've lost the preacher's thread altogether.

§§§§§

° But just because your stale clockstopping ruse won't work, it doesn't mean I can't tell you what will work. That's what I do best, spread contentment and resolve difficultnesses.

° Just program Blondello's cell phone to play Sanctus Bell at maximum volume. And slip the device under his pillow all unawares.

° Then, just before you cue up the Sanctus--that was a very amazing intonation of the Preface Sunday, Clergy been watching Weeping Camel, have they?--dial Bastien's number.

° I know his family's been lapsed since the loony Wesley brothers, well, since loony King Hank himself, but it's in the blood, like Pavlov's dogs. Dingalingaling . . . dingalingaling . . .dingalingaling--he'll fall off the bed smack dab onto his knees, the pain'll rouse him, the accurate clock'll shock him, he'll be showered and dressed and coming in the door just in time for the Dan Locklair Rubrics (V), Blues Bin Bloody Mary Brunch immediately following.

° Buon consiglio omnibus hominibus bonae voluntatis in questi giorni . . . .

° I hereby solemnly swear that I am up to no good, woof woof, Giac.

° P.S. Altar Guild? I know I not speak the English so good--the hours of revision these letters take, just to try to pass for--! But you can't honestly have imagined--!

In Festo S. Francisci

Alleluia, Alleluia.

Franciscus pauper et humilis,

coelum dives ingreditur,

hymnis coelestibus honoratur.

Alleluia.

How Not to French Kiss (Lad)

Dear Lad,

° O goody goody! said I to myself when the gospel was intoned, for it was the one that bids us all be wily as coyotes and crooked as snakes. How Daddy used to guffaw at its fundamentalistic preaching to the Choir.

° And the homily began promisingly enough, with a humorous anecdote. Profligate Youth cheats on final exam, Professor observes the scamping, Professor rejects the proffered finished exam, Professor promises an F, Profligate Youth draws himself to his full 6.5feet and says, "Do you know who my Daddy is?", Professor say he don't care who he be, Profligate Youth (in a Christlike brainstorm) shuffles Blue Book indistinguishably into the large stack of uncontested exams and dashes out of the lecture hall lickety split.

° Tee hee! One can see where this is going, shrewd shrewd Profligate Youth, all headed for twisty sainthood.

° But no! At this point the anecdote goes horribly horribly wrong: Profligate Youth has a recurring nightmare that God the Father is staring disappointedly at him--o Lordy, I just know that happened--so he repents, is given the penance of repeating the course, and the absolution of not being expelled. "And from that point on, Profligate Youth changed his ways and followed the Path of Righteousness."

° And from that point on--because, of course, if Profligate Youth was a weaselly little sneakthief when young, he just learnt to hide it better, most likely at Enron or in Congress or in the Council of Bishops, when older; and the reason he had those dreams, and "repented," as Cousin Gypsy could tell you, was that he subconsciously realised that he might be traced through someone's knowledge of who his prominent father was, he'd stepped right into it. But, I say, from that point on my attention wandered, for I saw there was no Aristotelian probability in this homily.

° Leopard change his spots my foot!

° Didn't set about counting the panes in the stained glass windows, I know the sum by heart.

° And I could still taste your espresso from an hour before--you recall it had two identical hearts side by side in the bottom of the cup--and I recollected one of your earthsign groundings: for the moment I told you, sei mesi fa, of the Clerick's seconding Baron Scarpione's injunction against pansyflower communicants' behaving in a way that they two construed as "out there," you retorted--well, what else was there to say?

° So I suddenly saw the problem stated simply: "What behaviour is 'out there'?" Why not use this liturgical downtime wilily by observing, Colette fashion, the mixedsex couples? For they, at least, must surely be "in there."

° Well, there were only three couples in the entire basilica canoodling during the preachment. In fact there were only three mixedsex couples under the age of thirty. And it does appear that at Assumption couples, mixedsex samesex or bothsex, over the age of thirty observe a tabu against touching one another.

° For sure none of them do. Touch.

° But, I say, three twentysomething mixedsex couples. What's more, none of the men was dressed appropriately, and only one of the women (a floral print sleeveless sheath, nicely toned to her fairly natural blonde hair), so these couples perfectly display the prerogatives of secondclass membership at Assumption.

° For sure samesex and bothsex couples could not aspire to firstclass. God's curse must lie equally upon the barren and the illtailored.

° These then are the observed customs of secondclass affection, tacitly acknowledged as "in there" by Baron and Clergy alike:

1. The taller may rest an arm on the shorter's naked shoulder.

2. The shorter may stroke the face of the taller during a lull in the dramatic flow of the sermon.

3. And the taller may place a hand on the hand of the shorter and both hands may rest in the crotch area of the taller.

I'm telling you what I saw with my own eyes. Bastien would've seen it too and attested, but couple No. 3 were in the pew directly behind his blond head. I had to stretch my spine to full length just to view them catercorner.

° In short, we now know exactly what secondclass communicant samesex and bothsex couples may, with Clerick's and Baron Scarpione's permission, do during the sermon at Assumption, I scarcely like to think of the Passing of the Peace.

° What is "out there," then, must necessarily include:

1. -- -- -- -- --

°--well, I reckon there's to be no tongue, 'sall I can figure . . . .

§§§§§

° Course the catch is there aren't any twentysomething samesex or bothsex couples at Assumption, too busy worshipping the goddess Venus, I expect.

° And pocky, pustulant, putrefying posttwenty flesh in any imaginable conjugation--eeeuuu!

° Affectionately (but in an "in there" sort of way), Giac.

New York Harbour (Julja)

Dear Julja,

° I blame Sandy.

° "Has Julja gone out to the Island?"

° "No, she's 'resting' at her country place."

° As bad as that, I thought to myself. For in Southrunese "resting" is a euphemism for "at Death's door," "lying in after an abortionvacation up North," or "still swollen and bruised from the face lift." As you require no plastic surgery--if you ever hear that I'm resting, you'll know that the next time you lay eyes on me my own eyes will be a quarter inch higher up my newly Dietriched forehead--and, being French, have better sense than to require an abortion, I naturally supposed your horse had wallowed upon you and the doctors given you up for lost. Or else killed you outright through voodoo medication. (As the Mexican Medicine Man says, "I can cure you for $300, or they can kill you for $3000.")

° But I forgot that Sandy's language has been debased by her lengthy sojourn amongst the Yankees, so apparently when she said you were "resting," she simply meant, "riposa."

° Well more Fool me.

§

° Ah, the Island, the Sea, the Channel, the Swans(!) No wonder you regret every moment spent inland, who wouldn't? I myself clickandzoom longingly Roman's fotos: Panama, washed in two oceans, and the great Canal to boot.

° Albeit we've been so hurricanedrenched hereabouts that we're almost no longer landlocked.

° Just what the global warmers predicted, first we get warmer and wetter, then hotter and drier, finally the forests die off, and abracadabra! Dune, Desert Planet.

° Don't tell Bush, it only annoys.

§

° I've encountered a hedging plant for your consideration, the Southern wax myrtle, evergreen cousin to the more familiarly aromatic myrica pennsylvanica. Small plants remind me of oleander or pomegranate. Large ones look like stunted live oaks. A plant for ripieno effects on a fairly large scale, an undergrowth for mature willow oaks.

° And yes, I like most of all this myrtle's confirmation of my invincible ignorance. 25 years of broadleaf evergreen specialisation, and here's one slipped my nets.

§§§§§

° Hurry back, however, before frost, the brugmansia and the hybrid gingers are prouding, their clean, alcoholic scents cutting the rich spicy fatness of the tuberosey butterfly hedychiums.

° At least hurry back before the blue October skies are quite done.

° I have an expedition planned.

° An eatingexpedition (though you are welcome to antique to your heart's content).

° I have six or seven pasticcierie on my list, each not to be missed. Parisian "mama-rangues," chocolate meringues spiked with toffee. Real cannoli and sfogliatelli confected by a real Italian. Ghanaian peanut butter soup. The tres leches cake at the Sri Lankan Mexican bakery. I pass on the amaretto carrot cake, but Key Lime pie is always fun. The Judgement of Paris enacted by you and by me on the rival chocolate bombes: the organic one, the French one, the goldleafed Chinese one.

° Then we'll stop in at the Macelleria Spagnuola, stare at the blooddripping pig's heads with their innocuous and intelligent eyes just a'staring back, and after a brief Princess Diana moment, it's off to lunch at the newly restored Senz'Amore Café.

° End World Hunger Now! chant I.

° And that afternoon, there'll be the beignets at--o well . . . .

° For, as the scattered saplings of volunteer avocado trees here at Meloncord will show, foods, or rather, sapours have become quite my avocation. Tuscan bread slathered with olive oil, creamed with fresh garlick, lightly toasted, then romanoed. Avocado smushed with pepperandsalt, oil, balsamic vinegar. Merckens yucatan buttons with Bodumbrewed Frenchroast coffee, 2.33 tablespoons to the 6oz. cup. Panna cotta enveloping toasted pecans; my great grandmother's gingerbread, topped with sourmilk toffee.

° Papaya spears, Turkish apricots, dried pie cherries, sugared crystallised ginger root, green tea.

° My own polentalike cornbread, soggy with butter and sorghum.

° For protein, chunky ground peanuts.

° For high feast days, artificial chikken.

° For guests, eatingexpeditions to Overton.

° No, haven't gained an ounce, the secret's in eating as much as you want of the things that you want as often as you want.

° Or if that's not it, must be a tapeworm from all those catkisses.

° Before dark, dank November, Giac.