Two young he-man businessmen are engaged at their all American sport. The one is in the suit. He is the one that needs to be impressed. The other one is doing his best. He is letting his belly be scratched. Discussion: ...rich man... four billion each ... and the ironic thing is, says the big man, they can not spend four billion in a lifetime. You would have to have a horrendous cocaine habit to go through that much, says the other one. The Suit is impressed by this local. An over the counter social club, his subordinate says. I’m impressed, the overlord repeats. His underling is beaming. An opening at the other end of the bar becomes available and I move away, as far as I can get. I wonder if there are such things as a she-woman business woman? Yes there are, but I want to meet up with them even less especially in here. The he-man businessman in the suit bumps my elbow on his way out and doesn’t even acknowledge my existence. I would have smashed him in the mouth, had I been a real man. Lee reminds me for the umpteenth time that he has a cracked vertebra. He is a regular here and I’m only an irregular regular here - the familiar stranger here.
[Anthropologists] don’t study villages – they study in villages –Clifford Geertz
Step stop
Slip slop
Know glow
Gnaw grow
Wish fish
Hiss miss
Snake Shake
Worm wiggle
And on the other side of me someone is rambling on about being assaulted by a guy outside wearing a serape. He says, he as a friend in New York who had always told him “at least in Vietnam you knew what you were up against, but over here… well anyway it could always have been worse." “After it gets so bad, it no longer bad at all," I hear myself saying. He grabbed me by the right wrist. Then he forgets what he was saying and tries to interject a few comments into someone else’s conversation. And the man with the sun burnt face listens to the crazy lady who is drinking wine and ranting right next to him. He is trying to make some sense of what she is talking about, but mostly he is just nodding his head. She Talks, talks, talks with lots associated (but uncoordinated) hand motions. He is being very stoic about it all. He acts like a social worker but I know for a fact that he is really a deep-sea diver. His attentiveness to her ranting is appreciated. It saves us from being the focus of her attention. Then Lee and a guy with a big white mustache and another guy at the end of the bar near the door get into a shouting match. The guy near the door is wearing a serape. And the crazy lady has almost finished off her bottle of wine but still has a half pint of beer. Lee is mumbling again. The guy with the mustache checks his watch. I go back to drinking my beer. I had wound up with five half pints somehow, all in a row, somehow. A row of half pints right here in front of me neatly arranged along the bar. Right there.
Every writer, in trying to convey his or her experience transmutes it into something impersonal and (as soon as it is interpreted by others) untrue to its living source – J G Merquior – From Prague to Paris, 1986 p113
Scientific explanations differ in accounting for complex events of uncertain origin from religious and commonsense interpretations by excluding rather than conjuring up agent based accounts.
Socialist political representation has run parallel to liberal and constitutional representation in the history of modernity and finally failed in a similar way – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri – Multitude: war and democracy in the age of empire, 2004 p249
Adult on demand
Child by default
I was sick and tired of the other man’s curtains, his chairs, his rug, his sofa, all the things that would not let me forget our duplicity – Machado De Assis – Epitaph of a Small Winner, 1952 p128
Americans still support increased spending on education and veterans. They support decreased spending in general but not for any specific programs except for global poverty assistance. Overall support for spending on health care, environmental protection, agriculture, military defence and unemployment has eroded significantly during the past year (Pew Research).
Money does not pass politically, form one hand to the other. It does not turn itself into cards and wine. It is turned into ‘force’, and its quantity determines the intensity of its working influence – Oswald Spangler – The Decline of the West, 1965 p394
The woman had been married since
She had been twenty
She had never experienced
Being alone
Before
And now she was a widow
She was getting on well
She said
He asked her, wasn’t
Your husband
A fly fisherman?
And did she still have
His gear?
She suspected that
She did
And she made arrangements
For him
To come by
Aesthetic enjoyment is made up of this multiplicity of excitement and moments of respite, of expectations disappointed or fulfilled beyond anticipation – Levi-Strauss – The Raw and the Cooked
The term ‘sodomy’ was coined in the 13th Century as a legal classification for specific sins of Catholic priests
There was nothing Bohemian about sexual intrigue in a cold climate – Amanda Vickery – Behind closed doors: at home in Georgian England, 2009 p80
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