PLAYING POSSUM

One of the earliest entries posted here concerned our backyard opossum Eduardo (Link), who used to visit us most nights in Tuxedo Park, partaking of the food we would place on the back terrace for the feral cats whom we could not persuade to join us indoors.  Light-shy but confident of his place in the world and his right to be fed, Eduardo was a beloved semi-companion. 

When we moved full-time to Pennsylvania seven years ago, we mostly lost contact with Eduardo.  A friend continued to leave food for the animals in Tuxedo Park, but we were here in Berwyn, beginning our long era of semi-confusion. 

Two days ago, the Saturday before Easter, we decided to have a drink on our back terrace before preparing dinner.  It was warm-chilly and we wanted to see the sky turn purple from the top of Signal Hill.  Caroline was getting deep into Chinese Astrology by Paul Carus and I was reading The Ivan Moffat File when I felt a presence.

On the flat below the terrace, beyond and through the iron rail I saw Edouardo walking very slowly, deliberately and confidently across the property in the direction of the covered-over swimming pool, which has now become a tadpole farm, birdbath and animal reservoir. Now an adult and much larger, he has retained his highly intelligent face and serious, committed countenance.  If you placed a pair of spectacles on him, he would look exactly like a children’s story-book character. 

Caroline is usually the one pointing out these marvels to me and  I often fail to appreciate them, tending to be annoyed by the interruptions and annoying in my inconsiderate, incurious responses.  This time I was the one breaking into her thoughts, but she understood the imperative and the miracle.

A few minutes later, sated and quenched, Eduardo walked seriously past again on his way to wherever it is he calls home on our land.  I don’t know when he rejoined our family or whether  he ever left us.  As I said, we’ve been semi-confused.

George Jones: Playing Possum (Link)

Dedicated to Tom Clark, the first person outside our family who appreciated Edouardo.

BRACKETS

I reconnected with Kasimir Malevich’s beautiful and haunting 1933-34 painting entitled The Running Man or Peasant Between A Cross And A Sword while researching the text and history of Tom Clark’s Beyond The Pale entry (Link). 


Dating from the very end of the great Suprematist artist’s career, The Running Man is interpreted as an indictment of the Holdomor, the 1932-33 Soviet Russian-perpetrated “Terror Famine”in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which killed many millions.  This Stalinist scar across the 20^th century is justifiably recognized and annually commemorated by post-USSR independent Ukraine, among other countries, as a political, class-cleaning, genocide.


I couldn’t help contrasting Malevich’s brackets (hieratic figures and shapes; color borders; arrested time and motion) with yesterday’s annual nauseating public relations distraction force-feeding the idle (because jobless) American public the crucial news of the U.S. president’s NCAA “March Madness” basketball predictions. (“My pick: Michigan State. Bring it home for me. It's been a while since I've won my pool.")  Good golly Miss Molly.  Where does he find the time?
 

I love when Ian Hunter asks at the end of Mott The Hoople’s All The Young Dudes:  "How are you feeling?” and then answers his own question, "I bet you're feeling really sick.”


Cheer up (dude).  It’s Spring.

THE MIDGET STOOD ON TIPTOE, TELEPHONING

Voices battled with other voices, landslides of laughter and the juke-box that never stopped.  People carried glasses above their heads as they made their way through the dancers.  In one corner the midget stood on tiptoe, telephoning.

 

Excerpt from: Gavin Lambert, “Nukuhiva,” first chapter in “The Slide Area,” New York, The Viking Press, 1959.

Note:  I learned about Gavin Lambert’s “The Slide Area” from Tom Clark’s Beyond The Pale blog.  It’s extraordinary and the first book I’ve felt compelled to read compulsively by candlelight (that’s the way it is 2/6/14 A.D. in Chester County, Pennsylvania) for a long, long time.  More soon, in daylight I trust.

Artwork:  Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.  Upper:  At The Moulin Rouge (1892-95); Lower:  Dancing At The Moulin Rouge (1897).