Updated: Jan 8
"No one travelling on a business trip would be missed if he failed to arrive."
—Thorstein Veblen
Caught in toils of artificial
Stupidity, cupidity
Seems the clear explanation. Well,
Don't think that lightly is the case!
The spider's caught in its own web.
In the dumb ebb of usury,
Tycoons, fallen prey to history,
Will pay the piper’s vengeful fee.
Wednesday, January 7, 2026
I reckon it must be a million nows
Since that Sunday on Upper Montague
Street in 1963 when
We three, snug in our new nest,
Breakfasted on bagels, avidly
Read The Observer and The Sunday Times,
And thought . . . What did we then think?
I forget, of course, vividly though that now
Now returns to me in its forlorn nowish way
Like a dog lost on a holiday a thousand miles away
That turns up again one day, with a sheepish smile,
Having somehow made its way back,
Against
All the odds, that proudly says, “I'm not like other dogs!
How could you lose me when the time is now?
I am distinct, exist, I’m me. No matter what you do,
I'll always love you anyhow!”
Infinity's not a number—"always" is eternity.
Enduring is a now.
"Wherever anything lives, there is, open somewhere, a register in which time is being inscribed."—Henri Bergson
Sunday, January 4, 2026
Ludwig Hohlwein, Nachtigall vor Vollmond (1910)
"A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude"—Shelley
So much in love with easeful life,
Enough's a country free of strife,
But must be taken "warts and all."
Circumstances might pass for good—
We, doubtless of the five percent,
Want little but a friendly mood,
A sturdy bed and processed food.
I wonder where the others went
Who've now all vanished from the Earth?
Volatilized in Nature's berth!
The nightingale is the national bird
of Ukraine
Volatiliser
Disparaître soudainement, sans laisser de trace.—Dictionary of the French Academy. "Mes amis se sont volatilisées dans la nature."
Thursday, January 1, 2026
"Le secret confié se volatilise et disparaît dans le vent des années qui passent."—Charles Flor O'Squarr (1830–90), Les fantômes, étude cruelle.
