HALF PAST

“I arrived in London at six in the morning, and reported to the Reserve Battaliion, already in course of formation.  In the afternoon, I went to say good-bye to many friends, who, as it happened, were never to return to England.  Two or three of the most confident I heard instructing their servants to pack their evening clothes, since they would need them in a week or two in Berlin . . . . Later I called on my Grandmother Londesborough, now grown a very old lady.  She was, as I have explained earlier, a great-niece of Wellington’s, and perhaps some lingering anti-Napoleonic tradition inspired her parting remark to me, 'It’s not the Germans but the French I’m frightened of.’” 

Note: Sad, disturbing.  Weirdly exciting.  Like Jacques-Louis David's Death of Marat (first above) and Cecil Beaton's enervating photographic portrait of Osbert Sitwell (second above). (Below I've inserted the image-personification of France, Marianne, in her Brigitte Bardot incarnation, which is neither sad, disturbing, nor weirdly exciting, but as Eddie Cochran might have put it, Something Else.)


Lifting last night, temporarily, our family moratorium on television news, I saw a pretty, deeply unintelligent woman named Tamara Holder solemnly opine that since it was the case that the Watergate scandal occurred in the early1970s and we now live and breathe in A.D. 2013, the possibility of similar bad behavior no longer existed because This Is A New Era.  She had a nice smile and actually seemed sincere and to believe this. It reminded me a little, not a lot (because I honestly think she was simply stupid, rather than venal), of Jay Carney's pronouncement last week that further Benghazi inquiry was irrelevant because September 11, 2012 was so long ago. (One commentator said Carney spoke of last autumn as if it was temporally identical to the Punic Wars period.  Another compared him unfavorably to the memorable Baghdad Bob.)


Like Osbert’s, my own eyes rose unbelievably high in my head.  Finally managing to lower them a little, I fixed and focused on a bright point beyond mountains, horizon and the evil tetrahedron I saw in the movie Oblivion on Sunday.


Andy is now doing exceedingly well in his new K-9 cart, the important news event in his and our world. Advancing along with him, but never as quickly, smartly or cheerfully, we hope to move less jerkily through life, to lighten the tone.



Trying to embrace my own life changes:  Where/how will all of this come out?  The various movie "coming attractions" I've seen lately (there have been a lot of them) populate and crowd each evening's dreams.  I would like very much to end up in some extraordinary  bedroom overlooking the Mexican Pacific, a sunny infinity pool in close proximity, rather than as CGI-roadkill.  (By the way, we've reinstated the tv news moratoriun.  One night was enough.)


Dave Davies, risen from the fallen, plays in Bethlehem in a few weeks.  Jane and I have good seats and a reservation at what seems  to be a fine old hotel erected during in that once-dynamic city during a prouder, less insipid era.  I have never visited Bethlehem before; either of them.


Dave's new record has the nice title, "I Will Be Me."


Jane often, upbeat, says "You do you."  (Aleister Crowley was long-winded, downbeat and desperate in comparison.) 


Leonard Cohen said:  

"So long, Marianne, 

it's time that we began

To laugh and cry 

and cry and laugh about it all again."  

I've never been too sure about Leonard Cohen, actually. 


But I love Brigitte Bardot.

John Cale: Half Past France (Link)

Text:  Osbert Sitwell, Great Morning (1949)  

We Don't Want To Lose You (But We Think You Ought To Go) (Link)

Ornicopia 7: One Swallow Does Not Make A Spring

Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Socrates, 1787, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

977.  Did Socrates ever speak of birds?  The last words of the Greek philosopher (470? – 399 B.C.) referred to a bird:  “I owe a cock to Aesculapius;  do not forget to pay it.”

Asclepius (child of Apollo and Coronis) and his daughter Hygiea.  Marble relief from Therme, Greece, end of 5th century B.C.  Istanbul Archeological Museums.  "I swear by Apollo the Physician and by Asclepius and by Hygieia and Panacea and by all the gods .  . ."

978.  What effect did Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher and scientist, have on the study of ornithology?   Aristotle (384-382 B.C.) described the food territories of eagles and ravens about 350 B.C.  He studied the anatomy of birds, their eggs, and many of their habits.  It is not surprising that his bird studies as well as those in other phases of natural history were full of errors and unfounded theories.  Nevertheless, for centuries his words were regarded as truth and they continued to influence the western world for more than 2,000 years.  Aristotle believed that masses of birds hibernated in winter and this superstition became so deeply rooted in folklore and literature that it was hotly debated as late as the time of Linnaeus, Buffon and Gilbert White.  William Bartram (1739-1823) was the first distinguished writer to express strongly in literature the absurdity of this notion, and he backed up his opinion with personal observation.  

  

Raphael, Detail from The School of Athens (Plato and Aristotle), 1510-11, Apostolic Palace, Vatican, Rome 

        In spite of his shortcomings, Aristotle contributed much to the study of birds. He detected, among other things, the red palpitating speck in an egg incubated for 36 hours and recognized it without the aid of a magnifying lens as the beginning of a living embryo.  

Candled egg revealing incubating embryo 

        Today his remark, “One swallow does not make a spring” from his Nichomachean Ethics is frequently quoted, as it has been throughout the centuries since he wrote it, though in popular usage summer frequently replaces spring.

 


Barn Swallow in Westchester County, New York, Spring 2011

Text excerpted from:  1001 Questions Answered About Birds by Allan D. Cruickshank and Helen G. Cruickshank (Toronto, General Publishing Company, 1958).