Jeremayakovka

Now And Zen Cohen

I have abdicated the throne
both the temporal and the spiritual
-- Leonard Cohen, Book of Longing

[NB#1: To be updated.  --JMK; NB#2: Welcome, readers referred by online muses, Fausta's Blog and Atlas Shrugs; NB#3: NB#1 still in effect.]

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Yesterday I read the bestselling collection of latter-day Leonard Cohen poetry and drawings, Book of Longing. Read it start-to-finish and in silence, the way it's intended, I sense. (For one thing, the bulk of it was written inside a Zen monastery.) A daintier presenter will give readers leave to "pick and choose" through this 229-page volume, but Jeremayakovka does not advise that.

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Leonard's longing is longer than any of the Book of Longing's 100-something individual compositions and 40-something drawings. The little works smolder in the ear and/or eye, bolder than quips or limericks but shy of odes or elegies. Taken individually (in short-footed, almost sing-song cadence, generally) their form contradicts the pretended gravity of Leonard's notoriously heat- (and wet-) seeking flesh. Consequently, some of the Book of Longing's freshest moments are stringent admissions of his own, often priapic, aporias. Out of context they would rate just as an old man's dirty dunceries. Here they ring in deadpan, almost comic relief:

still looking / at the girls / but there are / no girls / none at all / there is only / (this'll kill ya) / inner peace / & harmony (p. 207)

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Leonard of course is neither gone nor forgotten, but either state can turn inert, neither guarantees a just appreciation. For "appreciation" without estimation is either flattery or else might render one vulnerable to flattery. One thing Leonard reminds by the Book of Longing is that he's always longed for order. Not an angelic order (his order being baser than angelic), but one closer to that of Rilke who elegized Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel / Ordnungen? Who, if I cried out, would hear me out of the orders of the angels?. Still, the Canadian Jew is not as transcendent as his German predecessor. Leonard's verses (as Rilke's) do not scream so much as murmur, murmuring of the heart while filtering through feminine flesh mostly. This order is, as it must be, of Leonard's own devising. The trick (and this is every artist's acid bath) is that it also be a calling, and that the calling, if it doesn't do the devising, then revises it.

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Whatever Crooner Leonard's proven power, Poet Cohen writes at times in the baffled habit of the ex-monk that he is. The habit fits too close for confidence, not just for comfort. Wrestling not with an angel, the ex-monk eats the embarrassment of having fallen out of that order. His witness still is to a kind of beauty. It's just that the witness is sometimes lowly and at most just short of holy. Or holy only inadvertently (see p. 207, above):

taxes / children / lost pussy / war / constipation // the living poet / in his harness / of beauty // offers the day / back to g-d (p. 175);

Anyone who says / I'm not a Jew / is not a Jew / I'm very sorry / but this decision / is final "Not a Jew" (p. 158)

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--Hypocrite Leonard,--mon semblable,--mon frère!
--Mon vieux,--mon pauvre,--mon debonaire!
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the road is too long / the sky is too vast / the wandering heart / is homeless at last (p. 215)
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(p. 167)

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For you, Gentle Reader. Verses I jotted, and worked, since opening the Book of Longing:
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Fanfare

My genius is an anchor
Grappling above the waves.
Hauled 'weigh by steaming Rancor
The calm seabed it craves.

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This Birthmark On My Skin

Thinking about my father
Gets in the way of thinking
About the men I admire.
Which is how he thinks
About his father.

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California Hotel No. 1

Having me put out of mind
Once inscribed I on your heart,
     Your inmost rind
     Is where they'll find
Your torrents bloodying my mark.
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California Hotel No. 2

Come! Nibble at my rotted heart.
Speed your tongue along wormworn trails.
Pay no heed when the thing falls apart.
     Feed then, Liebe. Bitte,
     Feed on the frittered entrails.

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Tenderloin Hotel No. 1

You know it is no casting chore
     to lick you by the bushel.
Just nod a knee to bid me more
     or sigh my first initial.
How tyrant Time tricks every whore.
     Dare you defy the benevolent official?
Go, then! Anoint your imperious store
     whose lounging supple diadem
     wrings reign o'er brittle thistle.
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Barack Obama Can Kiss My Black Assassin

*Update (04/24)*: The video (now removed) was shot as a close-up of a very young black boy who for 8 minutes demanded the assassination of President Bush and boasted that he would do it. He also urged the election of Barack Obama.

Here's what happens when niggaz always be callin' niggaz "niggaz":
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Ain't that right, nigga? (Found here.)

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Sen. Obama famously said, The anger is real. It is powerful, and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

The Senator scores points for calling attention to American racism, but loses points for euphemisms that call for "understanding its roots." Seething resentments like the ones on brazen display (above) are squarely the result of the deliberate, demagogic and/or psychotic cultural warfare that stamps our "post-Civil Rights" era. Those guilty of waging this cultural warfare run the social, economic, and racial gamut from from the underclass to the governing class, and every skin color. It's not "a black thang," so exceptionally race-conscious people wouldn't understand....

By any reasonable application of federal statute that child is a criminal. According to 18 USC Sec. 871:

....Whoever knowingly and willfully deposits for conveyance in the mail or for a delivery from any post office or by any letter carrier any letter, paper, writing, print, missive, or document containing any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States, the President-elect, the Vice President or other officer next in the order of succession to the office of President of the United States, or the Vice President-elect, or knowingly and willfully otherwise makes any such threat against the President, President-elect, Vice President or other officer next in the order of succession to the office of President, or Vice President-elect, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

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What kind of people call black people "nigger" most often? Black people, that's who. What kind of people maim, cripple, rape, and murder black people most often -- in America and in Africa? Black people, that's who. According to a 2007 Department of Justice report, for example, Among single victim-single offender homicides, about 93 percent of black victims were murdered by black offenders.  About 77 percent of black homicide victims were killed with a firearm. What U.S. president saw American governmental aid to Africa triple under his watch? George W. Bush, that's who.

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"Buffalo soldiers" (below) are worth more than "buffalo niggers" like that wannabee assassin (above) any day. Come on, people! Shall we overcome that?

100,000

Yesterday saw the 100,000th site hit.
Many thanks! Keep 'em coming.

Happier Days

Here there is a simple rule: Everyone must dress properly -- informally, but no jeans or disheveled hair, etc. That helps a lot. They also sit properly on their chairs and don't fidget. That is absolutely necessary in a mass enterprise.

- Hannah Arendt, in a letter dated March 16, 1955
describing her classroom requirements while teaching at UC Berkeley
(from Within Four Walls)
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Happy Birthday, Whittaker Chambers

** Update (04/10) ** New site! WhittakerChambers.org

For all the tricks Fate played on you -- you who labored so hard to take leave of trickery --  it's no surprise you were born on April Fool's Day.

Last year's commemorative post, "True Whit."

One Lifetime Feminist Writer To Another

I will honor and "hear" you even if -- especially if -- we disagree on particular subjects. You believe that Barack Obama can somehow save our country. You are moved by his oratory and character. I am bowed beneath the weight of tribal sorrows and fear for our country and our world no matter who becomes the next American President.

Read the rest of Phyllis Chesler's open letter to Alice Walker (where you can follow the links to Alice's original letter).

Contemplation

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Totalitarian tyranny is built not on the virtues of totalitarians
but on the vices of liberals.
-- Albert Camus

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(The drawing I did in the early 90s; the quote is from Camus at Combat: Writing 1944-1947, "Why Spain?" (p. 301), reviewed by Erika Dreifus.)

It Takes One To Know One

Who's a monster?
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Well, well. The true face of Obama foreign policy brain trust shows itself.

First thought: If only all partisan liberals took responsibility for their attitudes and actions in a like manner.

Second thought: It's more damage control than responsibility, however. She's a well-heeled intellectual, ideas are her currency. She doesn't need to be officially on board to still influence Obama's foreign policy or his other advisers.

Last year Men's Vogue fawned over the (well-stiletto-heeled) "Genocide Chick" (click for pic).

The Machine Beat The Mantra

What a night. She did what she had to do. So did McCain. It's so far from over.

The day after, now, "independents are the mother's milk of politics."

"He Was A Good And Decent Man"

Rick Perlstein on why William F. Buckley, Jr. was his role model.

"A Tribute to the Master" from the Center for Visions and Values at Grove City College.

Between friends: Charlie Rose hosts Buckley who reminisces about Joe McCarthy, Whittaker Chambers, Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan .... It's impossible to defend McCarthy and it's super-impossible to defend his critics .... weighs in on Bush: He has not entirely succeeded in declaiming his own mission.... He has not successfully mobilized public sentiment on this issue [Iraq]. On conservatism: There isn't at this point a solid challenge posed by [i.e., to] conservatism.

William F. Buckley, Jr. vs. Gore Vidal: "It Is Really Unprofitable To Talk About Camelot, Since We Don't Live In Camelot, But In The Good Old U. S. A."

The late William F. Buckley, Jr. weighs in on the 1968 presidential election, along with Gore Vidal.

Buckley: [The next president of the United States] shouldn't be too naive. For instance, when the president of the Soviet Union informs him that the Communists desire world peace, the next president would ideally tell him to cut the horse feathers. He shouldn't crave the idolatry of world opinion. For instance, when criticized by the United Nations for taking a position he feels he needs to take in the best interests of his country, he should feel free quite ostentatiously to turn off the national earphone.
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Note Vidal, with calumnious alarm -- expectorated drippings whence waft a whiff of the nauseous mal de vivre Jean-Paul Sartre cooked up -- referring to the American Empire and to the race war, intoning that the 37th president of the United States could very well be the last president. Picture yourself in the 1960s. Militantly touting its cult of "social change," the Left has taken to the streets, it conspires and boasts of revolution, its most ruthless individuals (a Communist and a Palestinian) assassinate, first, a president, then a major presidential candidate -- and that "malevolent fantasist" Vidal suggests that fascism  is just around the corner. ("Malevolent fantasist," a phrase borrowed from Roger Kimball's farewell to Buckley.)

It may have been. Yet let us recall, Gentle Reader, that whatever be the hard, sometimes bitter (and, yes, sometimes bloody) costs of preserving the political order, upheavals threatening that order come typically from the Left, sometimes with popular approval. During the Roman Republic's shaky final decades Caesar decided early on that the Populares, not the Optimates, party would best translate his indecipherable genius into real power. In a later era Bonaparte and Hitler each enjoyed, for dreadful seasons, enormous popularity when they provided order where the institutions that had guaranteed order had collapsed. Truly there is more to be said on the subject -- yet Vidal, for his seemingly moderate erudition and insight, agitates more than penetrates the subject. His final phrases identify a generalized, troubled sentiment (a queasiness, if not a nausea) but they do not indicate an issuance from that sentiment. "Law and Order" is strong medicine, mind you, strong for good reason and to good ends.
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In this second video Vidal (below), an American blue-blood just as much as Buckley, tosses out more dour, veiled threats, perceiving himself no doubt as some kind of tribune, some kind of messenger: Very soon the poor, black and white in alliance with the young, are going to challenge the old order, and if Nixon does not respond with intelligence and with compassion, then there will be such revolution in these United States as has never been before.... Not all of the police and national guards combined will be able to withstand the eruption of those without hope or means of redress save through violence.

 

Nader '08: Obama Not Left Enough

The left has its complaints, too, against Barack Obama. in this clip (comparatively) late-entry candidate Nader accuses him of "self-censuring" and "protective imitation."

Count on leftists like Amy Goodman and Ralph Nader -- two of the cootiest "old coots" around -- to tug and even claw at Obama as he continues to vie for the presidency.