Friday, October 6, 2017

Suppose it were Friday cxli: Remember refuge?




The climes, here and there, whenever things
got rough, and one could burrow into a nice-
ly loomed blanket, or build a fortress, back
of the mulch pile behind the garden, where
the dog may come and go, and ask what's up.

Now we understand, the problem with put-
ting away childish things is architectural,
which is to say, budgetary. But who cannot
recall well enough, the 18th Century's re-
sorts of fancy, without asking what became
of them? Tristram Shandy. Tom Jones. Some
lexicographic flight to the Hebrides, or a
rake in his progress. Friday's release of
liberty feels more and more these days like
Graham Greene's dilemma upon the advice of
his solicitor, to evade a libel suit from
Shirley Temple, launching himself upon the
lawless roads of anticlerical Mexico - the
alternative to losing one battle, by gain-
ing unexpected triumph in another. On such
a day, now and then tiresomely framed by
a rogue sociopath, enabled by gruesomely
concerted monks of media, to immerse us
ever deeper into the marginalia of failed
states, who will begrudge a fellow his day
of release to a benign casino, a landfall

Or are we to hear instead, that the author
of all our news, is not the author of all
our news? That would surely be pure evil.












Thomas Rowlandson
A view on the coast
  of Sussex 
1785
Metropolitan Museum
  of New York

Graham Greene

The Lawless Roads
1939

The Power and
  the Glory
1940














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