King of Hearts (Foto, Coz)

Foto: Body Language--Basilica San Sebastiano, dettaglio
Caro Cugino Gitano,
° Leggero and I have flirted with the appearance of disagreement.
° He has entirely abandoned human language, that is, as a device that could possibly convey the truth. Instead he focuses on body language: eye contact, armcrossing, hairstroking, angle of body presentation, and the like.
° While I, as you know, have abandoned both words and actions in favour of coffee grounds. (I speak generically. Recently I felt adrift, too much gardening in 99° prehurricane weather I shouldn’t wonder; so I consulted the tarocchi: L’innamorato nel presente, La Temperanza nell’avvenire, La Ruota della Fortuna come consiglio. Res ipsa loquitur.)

§

° Have you seen the early Hitchcock silent The Ring? God bless Megalomane's dvddrive, I have.
° A gitana, in a reallife vardo, peeps out the window--just as I would--and sees Mabel accepting an armbangle and the longest deepest precode kiss you ever did see from a man who is not the man she is fixing to marry.
° Later Mabel, joined by the man she is fixing to marry, asks the Gipsy to tell her fortune: a few petty cards topped by the King of Diamonds and the King of Hearts.
° “O, that must mean you’ll win the boxing match and we’ll be married,” she gurgles to her fiancé.
° The gitana gazes at the cards, she gazes at Mabel’s hand hiding the bangle on her right upper arm from the sight of her affidanzato, she recollects the kiss--
° --and she shuts her mouth behind a sardonic smile.
° God bless the old gipsywoman.

° Walking like a bangled Egyptian, Giac.

It's Not the Size, It's How-- (Foto, Lad)

Foto: Devil Down Below--Basilica San Sebastiano, dettaglio

Dear Lad,
° Yes, big old pusslegutted Katrina snapped two trees that had been half demolished in a windstorm the Summer before. She littered the gardens with so much deadwood, there weren’t enough marshmallows and weenies at BiLo to roast thereon. And she squawled like a banshee.
° But that skiiiiitcchh! and thudddd! a few minutes ago?
° It was delicate little Rita, dislodging a 30pound chimney pot, which sledded down the roof, skipped the gutter, and landed a full 14feet from the house.
° Which was a good thing, ‘cause the kitchen roof mightn’t’ve held.

§§§§§

° How many more weeks does hurricane season last?

° Noted for my gentle touch, Giac.

Pin a Medal on the Privates (Foto, Lad)

Foto: Avenging Angel--Basilica San Sebastiano, dettaglio

Dear Lad,

° (So sluggish is our country's legal system, that this post is once again current.)
° I heard on public radio this weekend that Torturegate has pushed even rising gas and ice cream prices out of the minds of the American public.

° For “Torture” makes an arresting headline.
° Yet I thought of the first evidentiary foto I saw, of Private Madonna Sikkem teaching a blackfurred male Iraqi to heel, leash firmly around his neck. (For didn’t we all grow up on that video, of a nude Madonna lapping milk from a saucer?) And my first thought on seeing that foto was, naturally, “That’s what’s come of Clinton’s Don’tAskDon’tTell weaselling, our poor boys and girls in khaki aren’t allowed to watch Queer Eye.” For surely Private Sikkem would’ve known then to wax every last inch of that male’s furry back, tweeze his eyebrows, and peroxide peroxide peroxide. The tan was okay as was.
° But since it was the weekend, religious thoughts entered my head. And I had to say, as I did say to a couple of very large females at Corner Coffee, “Court martial!? They oughta pin the Medal of Honour on that dame. After all, for three thousand years JudaeoChristianIslamists have been stripping women of every last natural right and kennelling them as faithful, serviceable shedogs. So Private Madonna Sikkem’s just engaged the Golden Rule, email the Pope, proclaim her Beata!”
° The two very large females chortled.
° And I got back up off my all fours.

° Seldom the underdog, Giac.

P.S. Situational ethics, Liberation theology--such quaint concepts. And yet it's glorious to slaughter civilians, for the greater good, and inglorious to give an institutionally Established abuser a dose of his own medicine. Such times as we do live in . . . .

Και (Foto, Julja)

Foto: Platytera ton Ouranon--S. Maria ad Martyres, icona iscritta da San Luca

Dear Julja,
° Pointless, and in these savage days dangerous, to mention Voltaire’s cavils against Judaeochristianislamist foundationalism. The Age of Reason, that is, the Age of Intuitive Observation, has lost its first flush of vigour.
° Yet suppose Earth were explored by little Green Men. Wouldn’t their anthropologists at once deduce (mistakenly, I hasten to add, as Voltaire so wisely would‘ve added) from the teachings and institutional structures of Judaeochristianislamism that it was a system devised by males for the benefit of males? If “devised” does not imply overmuch carefulness.

° So what a pleasure to enter the Temple of the Theotokos during the recent Family Festival in Overton. In the apse, the Mother of God shelters her tenyearold God in her arms. To the right an altar to the Sebastianlike, bound Christ. To the left an altar to the Sleeping, undying Mother of God.
° Parity.
° A sense that God had his eyes open when he founded Judaeochristianislamism.

§§§§§

° In the missal, the original Greek version, universally adopted, of the Nicene Creed.
° The infamous

filioque,

endless bone of contention with the endlessly contentious Bishop of Rome.
° The nevermentioned

εκ του Πνευματου αγιου και Μαριας παρθενου,

((incarnate)) by ((the agency of)) the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary.
° Not the barbaric Latin filioqueism

de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine,

((incarnate)) by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, id est, the action of One upon the Other.
° And so the West consciously--or illiterately--chose to reinstitute the ancient heresy, that

La donna non è gente.

° Ever uncertain whether to prefer Greek or French, Giac.

ΠΛΑΤΥΤΕΡΑ ΤΩΝ ΟΥΡΑΝΩΝ (Foto, Piers)

Foto: Il Duomo dei Duomi--Pantheon

Dear Piers,
° Like Boccaccio’s Parisian Jew Abraam, I went questing for the true religion last Saturday.
° At the Haemorrhoid Festival admission was $25, there was a single booth where one threw balls at a largish disk with no other payoff than general laughter at seeing the afflicted homelessperson dunked by one’s skill in cholerawater, and the food tent featured warmedover bits of boiled sheeps’ lung in drammach.
° At the Uncle Thom Festival admission was a fierce asspaddling, but there were EveryKissIsaDollar booths manned by altarboys, some of them as old as eleven or twelve, still zitless, and for sustenance a sort of goulash of gnocchi, Uncle Benjamin’s oatmeal, and one’s choice of Polish sausage or Adolfwurst.
° At the Klingon Festival there was so much blood gushing across the highway from the hundreds of thousands of doves and kids being murdered to celebrate the invention of sharpened steel, the driveway was too slippery to ascend.
° At the Big Brother Festival there were luscious latkes in sourcream. But admission required a visit to the Dickclipping Clinick.
° At the Family Festival there were saganaki, spanakopita, tiropita, dolmades, gyros, mousaka, feta and ripeolive pizza, freshfried New Orleans loukoumades, amygdalota, baklava, diples, flogeres, folitses, kataiffi, koulourakia, kourambiethes, melomakarona, saragli, tsoureki, all washed down with ouzo or retsina or sweetspiced coffee. There were dancers, throbbing music, olive skin, and a crested chicken (head like a basilisk, feet like a hippie poodle’s) to pet.
° Sweet.

§§§§§

° But, providentially, on the way to Leggero‘s, I passed and looked in on the Oz Festival. The Ozzies donned tight nylon shortlets, rolled around in the mud and beat each other blackandblue with a football, then stripped to paleazzure speedoes, rolled up the fabric to bare their asses, and rowed out to the middle of the Millennium Park Lake, where they gave mouthtomouth to each other, then plunged into the duckexcrementrich water and raced to shore.
° It wasn’t as attractive as it sounds, but for $2 I got to pet a kangaroo, for $10 I could’ve sat in its lap and slipped my finger inside its pouch.
° Oz!

° Back in Paris and still unclipped, Giac.

Undicinove (Foto, Leggero)

Foto: Bittersweet Couch--Le Catacombe di San Sebastiano, cubiculum

Caro mio Leggero,
° It was just like sinking into a cloud.
° But without falling through, plummeting a couple of miles, and going bloodyguts splat on the baked earth below.
° 80sqft of bittersweet orange suede, ellshaped.
° A sofa so selfpossessed, it could furnish an entire 750sqft Poeroom (“The Philosophy of Furniture”).
° A colour so allpossessing, it could warm up that same room if stonegrey from floor to ceiling.
° Just heaven.

§§§§§

° Though for sure, after I stood up I checked my suit to see if the colour had rubbed off on it.
° Though for sure, the application of sultry Southern sweat to the suede would be bound to transfer the dye.
° Though for sure, wolfhounds’ toenails and mainecoons’ claws couldn’t fail to pierce the tender leather.
° Though for sure, one spilled cup of tea, not to mention less genteel beverages, would mark its territory forever.
° Just hell to live with.

§

° So perhaps it was a matter of design that it was selling for eleven-nine. Undicimilanovecento, non undicicentonove.
° With sales tax that would come to an even, predictive, 13.

° Gasping, but not from stickershock, Giac.

Mixed Messages? (Foto, Coz)

Foto: Le catacombe di Santa Priscilla, Ancora e Croce, Pisces

Dear Coz,
° The other day I was puttering up (so as not to waste $2.50 gas, that was a couple of days before it was $3.00 gas) McLin Hill, and even so I began to overtake an RV towing a diminutive SUV.
° The back of the RV had been painted Celestial Blue, and in the centre was a white Dove, ascending, emitting rays of glory.
° I was entranced. The Goddess of Desire sends a sign.
° And even if it was only the Holy Spirit (predicting the hurricane), I was entranced: Meg Tilly, Agnes of God, parthenogenesis . . . .
° And even if it was only the Dove of Peace, what planet could have more need of her?
° Entranced and ebullient.

§§§§§

° On the wheel cover of the petite SUV’s spare tyre was the rest of the message: a Tasmanian Devil shouting:

BACKOFF!

° Ah, so it was the Dove of Peace . . . .

° Your affectionate Cousin, Giac.

Quando Rotolavano i Tempi Buoni (Foto, Julja))

Dear Julja.

° From what plague has New Orleans not suffered at some time or other?

° Typhus, typhoid, yellow fever, cholera, malaria, the French Disease . . . .

° Petrochemicals, radioactive wastes, human wastes, Arkansas chicken wastes, all courtesy of Ol' Man River . . . .

° Tourists, outlanders, furriners, stranieri, barbari, Conans . . . .

° But till yet she has never suffered a greater indignity than being sold into stripmaller slavery in 1803 by a particularly feckless French Gummint. For glass beads and a blanket, near enough.

° Miao in tutte le lingue, Giac.

P. S. If I were savvy I'd upload a file of "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?" ca. 1955. Louis Armstrong sings the first verses to a quietly appreciative French audience. Then the combo does an exceedingly lengthy vamp. Bimeby a female voice resumes the verses. Five seconds later, the auditorium explodes with cheers and applause. For nobody knew Billie Holiday had been waiting backstage. Many, perhaps, didn't know she was still alive.

° Well, I'm not savvy. But I could still beg my savvy Cousin Gipsy to do it for me. Only, I can't seem to find the recording in the dark depths of my closet.