Play It as It Lays: A Life in Pictures

So long as machines puzzle—and men can be,

So long lives that; which that makes sense to me.

—"The Fourth Bridge, or, AI" (2021)*

Her name's not really “Diana Lynn.”

Born Dolores Eartha Loehr on July 5, 1926,

Paramount sensibly rechristened her.

Seen first in immortal Billy Wilder’s

The Major and the Minor—it's fluff—

by me, and then as "Emmy Kockenlocker"

In Preston Sturges’ Miracle of Morgan’s Creek—comic genius—

She gets to be female lead in Bedtime for Bonzo. Finally, in 1971, before filming of Didion's Play It as It Lays starts,

She has a stroke, hangs up her hat, and dies.

I seek here but to memorialize

this heavenly creature

Who passed before my eyes,

and then was by me seen no more.

These few reports of her life in pictures

Make about as much sense in poetry

as my own being in cockamamie history.

It’s far too late at night, I fear.

*https://www.newenglishreview.org/articles/small-things-remind-me-i-am-mad-and-the-fourth-bridge-or-ai/

A Pleiocene Posy

Earth in the Zanclean Age of the Pleiocene Epoch, five million years ago (Wikipedia)

“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.”—

Oscar Wilde,The Importance of Being Earnest

"It is more fortunate [mακάριόν] to give than to receive"—Acts of the Apostles 20:35

Oscar couldn't foresee a future

When men like women might become

For want of more lucky nurture,

Extras in the maternal sum.

He was wrong, too, to anticipate

A parental tragedy lying in wait

For all women in inheritance.

That switch, let's face it, makes no sense!

He, with those coruscating sallies

Made naughty cracks at fools' expense.

Grave idiots, seeking recompense,

Nabbed him by the short and curlies.

Spectators shouldn't tease a snake

That rises up to spit its venom.

Idiots are always on the make.

Their law looks out for Number One.

Scientists sequence DNA

From ancient sedimentary samples.*

What archaic dirt has to say

Sheds fresh light on new examples.

We humans need to comprehend

That what drives us round the bend

Serves socially to elucidate

Women's tragedy, and man's fate.

The secret path of where we’ve been

Leads to a private Pleiocene,

And shows us, surely, where we’re bound

If we don't heal our mother’s wound.

Envoi

If you do or if you don't,

If you will or if you won't,

That's the eventual shape of things—

The dirge the Anthropocene sings.

Notes

*On extracting mitochondrial DNA from dirt, see, e.g., https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/hunt-for-the-oldest-dna/

The term "Pleiocene" derives from the Greek πλεῖον (pleion, “more”) and καινός (kainos, “new, recent”), but it was 300 to 500 million years ago—the last time the world got much, much hotter.

Our word "idiot" comes from the Greek noun ἰδιώτης (idiōtēs), meaning originally a selfish individual who contributed nothing to the public needs of the polis.

The Golden Soup

AI, Clowder’s Golden Soup coffeehouse, London, ca. 1702

And spoil till time and tides go bump,

The shrimpy life of E*** M***,

The putrid cod of Milord T****.

—Praise-God Barebone, Reply to the Impertinent and Frivolous Answer of E.M. to the Discourse of P.D. (1677).

"What devil language is that? Is it double Dutch coiled against the sun?”

John Davis, Travels . . . in the United States of America (1803)

Said Gulliver* to Godfrey William,*

By happenstance they chanced to meet

at Clowder’s Coffeehouse, Bow Street,

Covent Garden, called by some

La soupe d’Or—the Golden Soup,

each petting a cat amid the clutter,

they spoke a French and Latin mutter,

for Leibniz knew scant English,

and Gulliver little versed in Double Dutch:

“Fontenelle† avers ‘in Old times all

People were born Poets. . . . [T]hey

had no sooner drank a little freely,

but they made Verses; they had no

sooner cast their eyes on a Handsom [sic]

Woman, but they were all Poesy,

and their very common discours

fell naturally into Feet and Rhime:

. . . But now [alack!] this Poetick

Genius has deserted mankind.’

How comes it then, Sir, that you write only prose?”

“Fontanelle's a rake-hell, Heaven knows,”

Godfrey William replied. “I hear tell

that encountering the delectable Minette‡ when ninety, he audaciously observed:

‘Ah! Mademoiselle,

si je n’avais que quatre-vingts ans !’††

He's a unique specimen, though, of freedom of the will—it does exist, you know,

but you must want it—and few do;

Newton himself’s a Fifth Monarchy Man

For all his mathematical and optic works,

And looks to Christ’s Second Coming

Much as old Praise-God Barebone did."‡‡

"Ma foi!" said Gulliver. "You've got that gossip wrong! The fair Minette herself this day

will not be born for twenty year!

Perhaps you're thinking of her sainted dam?"

"Beg pardon!" GW exclaimed. "Damn

my eyes, if so!! But Popular Mechanics will one day prove that time's an illusion—and Einstein badly mixes things up, methinks, by calling luck a scam!"***

* Jonathan Swift (1667–1745).

† Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), co-discoverer with Isaac Newton of the infinitesimal calculus (on this meeting, see Petrus Tornarius, Imaginary Conversations).

‡ Bernard Le Bouyer de Fontenelle (1657–1757), https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Le_Bovier_de_Fontenelle

** "Minette" = Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, Madame Helvétius (1722–1800).

†† “Oh, Madame, if I were but eighty again!”

‡‡ Praise-God Barebone (1598–1679); https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praise-God_Barebone

***https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a61021621/is-time-just-an-illusion/

Thursday, January 30, 2025