shucks

A delicacy is the shadow of violence.

to swallow

Buying can be an act of power over those who cannot buy, quite apart from the thing bought.  For some purchases and some purchasers, the value of acquisition is in the act itself.  It isn't the oyster, it is the vanquishing of the bivalve being slid down one's throat.

basic

Laziness and indecision will get you nowhere.  Man is made to work and choose.

midnight, after

There's a lot of joy to a great Broadway show, and After Midnight absolutely is.  (It's also unrevivable, since it is entirely about the quality of this performance of of old song and dance numbers.  It is an old-fashioned revue, not a plotted story.)

But behind the joy, is a challenge and motivation to any professional New Yorker, including me.  These dancers and singers and (holy cow!) that band, are superbly talented, prepared, and working hard on stage.  This is a city for folks like that - not just the lucky, but the lucky who are talented and prepared and hard working each day.  They bring it.

I know it already, and even fulfill it to some degree, but these performers remind me: this city demands the best of you - whatever show you're in, what ever numbers you're on stage for, you have to bring it.

The question is not whether I or you can do what they do.  You and I cannot blow Gabriel's horn.  But can I - can you - do something to that degree?  For my part, I want the answer to be yes; I do want to deserve to be here, for the quality of my lawyering and living.

glories

Singing, swinging, big city jazz on the cusp of being a national style.  Harlem culture, 8½ months pregnant, ready to move the Cotton Club down to midtown.  Bigger bands, crisper beats, feathers, pearls, and an ecstatic alto cry somewhere between a moan and a croon and shout and a sob and a dictator's peroration.  Spats over patent leather taps.

squares

There is no such thing as mass democracy.  Either the mass is more than a mass, or the democracy is less than a democracy.

makes the whole banana kin

The bulldozer trundles down 31st Street, past the dirty piles of snow and the old Dodge van delivering fish to the corner market. The rusty spots on the bulldozer's yellow paint job makes it look like a strangely transformed, overripe banana, snorting soot.

It stops ahead of me, diesel engine idling noisily.  The operator opens the bulldozer's cab and leans down to speak to a commuter, with his messenger bag and red parka. As I pass, I see the operator learning down further, straining to hear, and hear the commuter shouting up directions to Steinway Street. Even bulldozers get lost. 

after Pascal

No, no.  He's not smarmy.  He's simply the sort of guy who smiles a toothy smile that ingratiates and and promises accommodation to those in whom he sees the prospect of later advantage.  The sort who wears an old, sleeveless fleece vest over a crisply tailored dress shirt, with monogrammed cuff links. 

I feel the recent memory of lotion in his handshake.  A few minutes later, seated, I catch the faint whiff of his lotion's perfume in my own palm.

I begin to speak, and with open smirk, the banker licks his teeth, although they are clean.

the flaming chicken

An old St. John's story of mine has turned fifteen.  (In story form, that is.  The events were from a couple of years before that.)  The story will make no sense if you did not go to St. John's, but those familiar with The Game may recognize that I was playing it in the writing of this story.


A late warm evening and dark already since the time had changed, and Tuesday, so people took their time drifting out of Randall.  Leah Pitanken had her boom box on the quad, playing Sinatra.  No tutors, and everyone danced.  Nan Dunn stayed late in the Campbell switchboard; Gillen was off.  She was fat, and not happy.  I rocked in the switchboard rocking chair, listening to some scandalous something from Nan that I've forgotten; and a prospective student sunk into the old sofa against the wall, taking it all in.

The door was open to the quad.  The brown change dispenser made itself felt whenever people needed laundry quarters.  A brown earthenware dining hall mug of tea warmed my hand.  And it was beautiful out.

That was my freshman year, and the seniors were unattainable.  They were St. John's.  Not the smart workhards of the Juniors, like Tim Pomerole, Seth Millikan, or Matt Braithwaite, but the real thing: 80s men, and worldly.  They remembered good pranks.  Tutor musicals.  And puke-drunk hallucination filled Realities.  Scary cool.  Christopher Anderson cool.  Carl Grunert scary.  Kevin Golladay suave.  Jeremiah James serene.  Mark Whipple and his posse, waitin' in hiz zone: Dan Stromberg, Marshall Kass, and that other guy.  Ian Nyberg's bow tie; Dimitri Fedotov's accent.

And Aaron Morris, who had 417 Pinkney, and a job in the dining hall.  Stole Mariott champagne, stole Mariott sterno (the jellied petroleum in a tin can that burns slow under a casserole), stole whatever.  Rabid Republican, late head of the Political Forum, porn fiend of the Gadfly.  (I took the Political Forum, Nelson took the Gadfly. In months, the cool was dead, and long live the self-righteous geeks.  Soon the Gadfly would lose the profanity laced overheards, and start printing investigative articles on College finance.  The Delegate Council would stop meeting in the evening (in ties) and start putting out Polity Court surveys. Soon, Cool was really dead.)

But I get ahead of myself.  That was second semester.  This was first.  Cool lived, and it was swinging in the quad.
 
So, even if you weren't looking toward Pinkney, you heard it.  Or you heard people seeing it.  And we all crowded in.  Lewis's 4th floor window was open, screen off ($50 fine), and everyone stared and pointed and covered their mouth.  JFK had been shot, and he was a flaming chicken, flapping on the ground.  Blue flame.  Sterno flame.  Like a ball of fire off target, it came whooshing out the window and hit the dead Pinkney tree out front, bounced through like Plinko, and there it was and there we were and look at that and here comes Capn Adams and some friend went up and asked him Why Did You Throw The Chicken Out The Window? and he said Because It Was On Fire.  Scary cool.  The chicken was the dud phoenix of the Seniors and Scary cool.  Not really burnt and not coming back.  In its place, us and our bad LSD trip and endless Political Forum fliers.  Scary cool is dead, long live Stupid, long live Serious.  And psychotron was coming.  They cut down the dead Flaming Chicken Tree.  They were going to anyway.

Brasil

Advantage-seeking lies can be very strong.  It can take five truths to move one motivated lie, and unquestioned lies have lain as the firm foundations of many a great structure.

more Søren

Some cannot ride in the back seat without getting carsick.  Some cannot stand the sight of blood.  And some of us get nauseous at the sight of our own words, spilled on the page or screen.

Søren

Those who put the cart before sometimes want for a horse.

Schedule A

An unexpected pleasure of Hamilton's Report on Public Credit, prepared in 1790 for the new Congress, is to see how little changed is the structure of practical extended writing.  Short tables embedded in the text, long tables appended as Schedule A, Schedule B and so forth.  There are bullet points and a short summary at the beginning - an executive summary - with a plea for a few key action items in the back.  Probably an ambitious, able Assyrian treasury official organized his reports similarly.

tough negotiations

The feeling of being dishonest is not durable.  The habit of dishonesty brings the dishonest person into a new form of belief, and once believing, the habitual lies feel true.

makes the whole world kin

I slip on the gritty ice of the sidewalk and block the fall with my open palm.  No damage, but my palm is scratched, dirty and burns with stinging pain.

And it snaps me back to infancy, this burning of a scratched palm that caught a tumble.  Every toddler knows the sensation. 

I usually feel distant from my own infant self; adult strangers leading similar lives seem closer.  It is the memory of sensations that convinces me that he: was I.

the best stuff

I move my office across the hall, where I'll be a little closer to my team and slightly better treated by the building's heating and air conditioning.  A colleague changed firms and her office freed up.  New paint, carpet cleaned, and I spend the day putting my books on the shelves, hooking my computer back up, resorting my files.  It's about done.

I worked for years on the American Airlines bankruptcy and they gave me a lovely model airplane a few weeks ago: a Boeing 777-300 with a wingspan of almost three feet.  I've been waiting to hang it in my new office, on clear plastic line, above the bookshelf.

Finishing touches.  I cut and loop the line, test the balance of the model airplane against the loops, then climb up on the side table to remove a ceiling tile so I can fix the string to hang the plane.

I shift the tile, and a Snapple bottle drops out and hits the top of bookshelf - bap!  It had been resting on the ceiling tile.  It is half drunk, closed tight, lemon tea cloudy and clotted.  I throw it away, and feel the impulse to wash my hands.

How long had that been there?  And who left it?  Some electrician, probably.

seeds and oats

I pass a disturbed beggar woman warming herself on the grate, and my passing agitates her.  She comes to her feet and follows me: "There you go, there you go, the Jew, the Jew!  Seeds and oats!  Seeds and oats!"  I outpace her and her cries fade. 

At least, that's what I heard in the moment.  A few minutes later, in my office, I think back and wonder if she wasn't crying out "Say the oaths!  Say the oaths!"  Or "Squeeze his throat!" or who can tell?