Not so very long ago
there was a little game
played for fun
between and within villages,
 neighbourhoods
and towns in England,
originally with a pig's bladder
that was kicked by opposing teams
attempting to get it through goalposts
at either end of a fairly-level field.
Sometimes these were marked by 
a pile of clothes or old fence-posts.

This is what it has become.

As with everything it gets involved with,

the USA not so much accepted
the unAmerican football World Cup
(and a minor sport in North America)

as imposed itself upon it.

And indeed, Mr Belloc,

about the actual personality
or - say- night time behaviour
of the failed but famed Saviour
we know only his frugality. 

*Hilaire Belloc wrote a famous quatrain:

              How odd
              of God
              to choose
              the Jews.

Pelican doctors.

Pillicock sat on pillicock hill,

weeping in Shakespeare's time,

dribbling still.

from today's Guardian.

We live in an age of spectacle.

It surpasses substance. 

It vaults reason.
No outrage goes unapplauded. 

No bigotry  goes unblessed. 

Are we not entertained?

She might have been wrong.

“No collapse,
just a gradual shrinking/ of the present.” 

OKSANA MAKSYMCHUK

On The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.

Drinking
wine (for the tonguesome taste)
in solitude
can induce
philosophical thinking.

The danger
of knowing yourself
to be (apparently) very different
from other human beings
is to think yourself thereby superior.

A Dionysian-Khayyámian Thought:

On the Easyjet
of Existence
language
is excess baggage.

A robber fly in Cost Rica

and a hat in Vienna in 1910.

photo by Ronen Tivoney

The Fraudyssey.

I wouldn't dream of watching
a crude Christopher Nolan film.
Two lines of a review sum it up.

Homer’s Calypso is a great part. 
Nolan’s is some woman who runs a beach bar 
and is thinking of pivoting to psychotherapy. 

I guess it's the most recent equivalent of
The Robe or Quo Vadis, both of which
I saw in ill-spent youth.

Interesting distinctiion

Dirty Linen (with overtones of shit)

washed at home in France and not at the public wash-place
or pond = keeping problems and quarrels  and perhaps scandals within the family :
« laver son linge sale en famille »

washed in public in Britain and not in the private laundry-room or wash-house = letting everyone know your family quarrels and problems and perhaps shameful things : « to wash one;'s dirty linen in public »

The meaning of dreams.

What to make of the dream in which
the dreamer discovers
a little bird living in his anus ?

The meanings of dreams (as of life)
this book suggests, may lie in 
the very absence of meaning.

Harmless pornography

has entered a new dimension
with micro-cameras
that women can insert
deep into their vaginas
(or men into their recta ?)
to photograph the mechanics
of fucking. Quite fascinating
and educational. 

However:
one man or woman's exciting bit of letch
is another one's excellent reason to retch.

"No man knows a rapist,"

wrote a female victim in The Guardian yesterday...

apart from penis-buddies in the same
drug-rape ring or squad

and the young guys forcibly buggered
by their uncle or their dad... 

FALSE CURRENCY ?

And what will it be worth
in 50 years ?

Gold-plated, of course.

The triviality of 'news media' (snob's view)

In the midst of almost world-wide war :

Sudan, Ukraine, Palestine, Mali, Iran,

Burkina Faso, Burma...

the BBC's chief headline and 5 minute report

this morning was England's deserved defeat

by Argentina in the infantile football world cup.

The Guardian, one of the world's top newspapers

is filled with fashion, lifestyle, silly menus, sport,

gossip, pop music and video-games reviews 

and has very little news.

J-P Sartre :

'When you accept despair,
you can stop expecting the world
to be co-operative,
and get on with life.'

Beware the fridge-aware bear !

 

Monsieur Degas finishes

a painting

buttoning his fly.

 

Splendid self-expression.

 

Faint praise.

Just as I admire Switzerland
for having a robust democracy
and rotating presidency (a bit like the EU)

and Ireland for its constitutional embargo
on joining any military pact
(such as NATO which still includes a dictatorship)
- though not for its National Day, hijacked
and of course vulgarised by the USA -

and Scotland for its independence
like Catalonia's within a federation
and its very quiet National Day,

so I admire England for not having
a public-holiday National Day, 

though Shakespeare's Birthday
has been attractively suggested.  

Do National Days promote social cohesion
or simply provide excuses
for political expressions of nationalism -
and in the case of France's 14th of July
celebrate a very bad model of failed revolution
soon turned into dictatorship ?

On the Blue Bus with Siegfried Sassoon in Rilkean Mood.

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend
The end
The door
to the not-beyond
nor behind
nor above nor below
but the Friend everlasting
evermore
ever-fasting
Minotaur.

Mind the Door.

[EPITOME

A representative or perfect example of a class or type.

A brief summary, as of a book or article; an abstract.

A work in which the contents of a former work are reduced within a smaller space by curtailment and condensation; a brief summary; an abridgement.]

A nice neologism:

to be MURDOCHED

means to be “editorially attacked when one’s ideas or deeds do not accord with the media proprietor’s programs or publications”.

Not many people know that the Malign Media Mogul Murdoch
was once a Marxist.

Good old Socialist Realism

with Dog.

The Smugglers, 1930.

The Man in the Iron Mask

was once second only to The Count of Monte Cristo
is my list of favourite books.  So I am a fan of
Lord Binface, who could actually win - and deserve -
a seat in the British Parliament.

Today I also learned (from the BBC)
that many communities in India
choose their leaders by lot, 
including the entire population in the raffle.
If chosen, one can always refuse,
as happened in ancient Athens.
Apparently, it works very well,
not least because it avoids the anti-democratic
excrescence of political parties, and is
very inexpensive.  

It has been wandering around Paris for years,

Statue of Alfred Dreyfus
by 
Louis Mitelberg, political cartoonist and Jewish Pole.

read more >

Sigur Rós.

FluguFrelsarinn.

I am the fly-saviour.
I am the disappointment
that liberates hope.

Surprise, surprise !

 

Tombeau du docteur Marx.

Dear Karl,
let us curse
the bourgeoisie
(of which we are a raging part)
who with greed and ire
have set half of the world on fire.

After nearly a thousand years

the 'Bayeux Tapestry',
embroidered in southern England
(on linen, not cotton, hemp or jute)
has crossed the twinkling Channel
(in a heat-wave) 
to be displayed ironically
in the British Museum
of Global Loot.

When I was in Bayeux, I went photographing
'marginal' sculptures on nearby churches
while my mother tired herself enjoyably
with the embroidery.

I am much more interested in The Turin Horse
than in the Turin Shroud.

I have a large-format book showing, in detail,
the complete anglo-saxon-norman art-object,
which I could and can study
at my leisure, without the awfulness
(suppressed madness) of a crowd.

TODAY'S OTHER NEWS: The Collapse of Decency.

Under the current 'Heat Dome' I descend
to breakfast in my pyjamas, which I have
never (in good health) done before.
Worse, half-way through my croissant,
I disrobe completely, casting my flimsy 
garments to the floor.
Armageddon must be nigh.

There are, basically, two

kinds of on-the-hoof photography:

catching the moment (action);

and seeing a composition.

The first is reportage,

the second can be great art.

Butisme* - More on the USA.

Do people - does anyone - actually
pursue happiness ? Or do they pursue goals
which they think will make them happy ?
Or is happiness just a half-expected side-product ?

*Butisme is my French coinage from but
meaning goal, hence goalism (not Gaullism).

Today: temperatures rising here to 40°C,
and expected to last another 10 days.

Wildfire in southern France.

A corner of my balcony,
taken this morning.

English humour

enhances its grim politics.

Meanwhile in France
the future looks really grim.

 

The same awfulness everywhere

except (so far) Albania. 

Ibiza used to be a beautiful
tranquil island, relatively unoppressed
by Franco. Now it is a mispronounced
hell-hole oppressed by tourism,
the world wide web, airB'n'b, and
drunken teenagers..

see Gerald Durrell's early account of Corfu
before the lagoon of flamingoes
was turned by greed into an airport;

and Voices of the Old Sea by Norman Lewis.

The Albanian coast from Corfu in 1992

see my own connection with Albania >

A tasty birthday card.

Cyanea capillata

by Aleksandr Semenov

Yours slurpily, Wofl.

Celebrated painters

(especially females praised for the wrong reasons)
are often pretty bad.
This is one of the better ones by Vigée le Brun,
who commanded huge prices :
Portrait of her daughter

(All her subjects have big soft-porn Tretchikoff eyes.)

Here is one by current pin-up,
Frida Kahlo.

And here is a self-portrait by a truly great painter,
Gwen John :

Then there is the brilliant, exuberant Alice Neel :

The 250th Anniversary.

Money
Mississippi
Till

The painter is quite good

at hair, if not much else.
(Eyes are easy.)
She looks resigned,
perhaps a bit queasy.

Angela Merkel by Jérémie Queyras.

Now for
one of my complicated
self-portrait compositions,
part in-camera reversal,
part digital.

Pisa and the Prince of Aquitaine : Pause for Thought.

 Paul Valéry, famous French poet,
wrote that a bad poem
is one which [leaning ?]
falls into meaning.

Glorious Romanesque.

At first, I fancied that this represented
St Veronica with a towel, giving Jesus a shower.

But apparently it is St. Juliana pulling a defeated demon by his hair.

Note the fine column-swallower bottom left. 

Siones, Burgos, Spain.
photo by Pepe Barthelemy.

Each of us

is mere scaffolding
around an empty space.

 

Despite Luther,

the best way to tax the rich
is through crypto-indulgences.

If

you are a physical coward
it is in your own best interest
(as I have learned, but only now can tell)
to be a mental, moral and intellectual
coward as well.

Two Grotesques

from a 1940s 'B' movie
to celebrate 250 years
of American Imperialist tackiness.

 

All revolutions are corrupted :

the French Revolution within 3 years;
the Russian Revolution within 6 years;
and the American Revolution this year.

Spiritual.

Romantic love of any kind

has been for me a waste of time,

but I enjoy the highest form

of 'Platonic' Love - not for a dog

or a passionate mystic

or a tropical bug,

but for a beautiful, undying,

endlessly interesting

old Balouchi rug.

Mon meilleur ami
il est un tapis
né 1960, si beau,
si tactile, et lui
Balouchistani.
Qu'il enrichit 

la fin de ma vie.

Fake Marriages : the real story.

Ah, in the good old days,
they were called mariages blancs,
arranged between gay men (such as the poet Auden)
and Jewish or other endangered women,
or between my Canadian-dancer friend Dennis
to Sally Potter, the film-maker, both queer.

I, as an Irish/EU citizen, was queer-peer-pressured
into marrying a Polish woman who turned out
to be a deeply unpleasant,
ambitious, grasping, homophobic Catholic -
only a few years before Poland joined the EU.
She paid only for my bargain Belfast-London
airline fare - four times (for Home Office
interviews) so I had free trips from my rural isolation.

I would have much preferred
an Angolan woman, an Albanian or Iraqi Kurd.

File on 4 Investigates

BBC's File on 4 Investigates how Immigration Enforcement officers are tackling sham marriages. Claire Jones follows Home Office officials as they apprehend people entering into, and organising fake marriages in order to circumvent the UK’s immigration laws. She discovers details of criminal gangs charging people up to £30,000 for a partner and 'marriage pack', a set of photos and documents designed to create a convincing back story of the fake relationship. After File on 4 Investigates asked the Home Office why more statistics are not available on suspected fake marriages, they have now committed to regularly publishing these numbers 'in due course'.

Domenico Scandella: In the Beginning

 “all was chaos, that is, earth, air, water, and fire were mixed   together;  and out of that bulk a mass formed – just as   cheese is made out of milk – and worms appeared in it, and   these were the angels”. 

- Carlo Ginzburg

Militarism and Christianity.

Nuclear Deterrence
is like the Immaculate Conception.

But Ireland will never join NATO.

 

Thar's Hydrogen

 in them thar mountains.

Puzzle.

'Racking your brain' –
for how it is racked
think Champagne.

I recommend Krug brut
which I used to steal
from a wine-supermarket.

Esprit de l'Escalier.

Our lives would be and have been
completely different
in core or in kind
by the addition or subtraction
of presence of mind.

(I have further been hampered
by the permanent brake
of being "slow on the uptake".)