.i“ * ^ / . . . . . ` `~

Eva took something off her top and then took something off her bottom. She took one more thing off her top and off her bottom. She took one thing off each of her feet and put one thing on that covered much of her central portion, without putting anything else on her feet. She moved to a new area and now her arms, which had been at her sides, reached out in front of her then pulled back. And her feet which had been beneath her head were at a level with her head. And her arms which had been silent when they swung at her sides now made loud sounds as she reached with them forward, and so also her legs which had been silent when they were beneath her head made noise now that they were at the same level. An old man hearing the sounds looked up, his face was frozen, then he looked down again and thought something. His hand was moving in front of him and he was thinking something and what he was thinking had to do with how his hand moved then he stopped moving his hand and looked at where it had been and what it had traced. “The old man thought something then was still,” it had traced. “Roger coughed.”

Finikin: Excessively dainty or fastidious.

Hard to tell at the level of the street but seemed like excellent attendance of the No Kings rally in D.C. today (The one on Penn and third). Event organizers say 200 k, which is believable. Mood was much more chill than at your average Stadium rock concert. Best sign I saw: “QUICK QUESTION FOR YOU: WTF?”

This is a question I haven’t thought of before or thought of in this way: “No country did more for Chinese prosperity than America. So why has no country done more to undermine America than China?”

Question, could Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction incorporate the mindset of Ulysses or Ulysses incorporate the mindset of Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction? Meaning by “mindset” the relationship of the writer to his writing.

Answer is no because they are essentially the same mindset but writing a different level of abstraction (Stevens being the more abstract.) Stevens could not be a character in Ulysses, thinking Notes, any more than the vocabulary of Notes could mingle with that of Ulysses.

ha aggiunto un cuoricino a un’immagine = added a little heart to an image

asphalt armies overwhelming the curbs, they are climbing the trench, the asphalts with their manhole shields, with their gas-line pipecover helms, with their yellow center lines of spears and no parking sign posts charging up the lots, totally overtaking the lots, such a victory for the asphalts, for the sun ! Romping around all over the clear asphalt pit in total victory is the light — the light, the pebbles, the gravel.

If a sentence of writing were equal to a moment in time:
a brick condo of the kind we just exited.

If a sentence were equal to a moment:
that is a concrete drainage gully tunnel, or culvert

This second concerns a bellowing bodily function.
This moment tracks a squirrel tail’s travails and tacs — then tacs.

This moment is like a bubble out of a thick sulphurous mud,
A “thought” or thinking about “perception qua hand.”

The curtain of seeing we stand behind: putting the idea in through
Its fabric, we find it now seen or heard.

Interesting (though I can’t read the article): Beijing believes it has found US’s Achilles’ heel: Trump’s fixation on the market.

Collop: slice of meat; roll or fold of flesh; a small piece, portion or slice.

Adam Schiff delineates Trump admin abuses so far but doesn’t mention ICE’s mask wearing or unlawful detentions, or the open corruption. “If this is where we are after 9 months, where will we be after 4 years? Not in a Democracy.”

Can the waxen ball be unwound or reversed so as to reveal a written-on waxen tablet? Can a day become a written account of a day?

“I remember this place,” my dad had said that time I took him on a field trip from his memory care facility back to his own house of three decades. “Oh, this place!” he had said in a child-like voice of wonderment. And that’s what I say to myself these days in a voice I pretend is the dog’s — “I remember this place” — whenever he rediscovers one of his old sniffing haunts.

God and Mammon was the theme of the homily last Sunday, the former customer reported. We all want to make money but we have to put God first, he said, which was a phrase that stuck with me the next day. We have to put what is first first, I thought, for when we don’t, the things that are last (social media to give an instance) will predominate.

Now I’m doing a 2+ minute plank at Fletcher’s Cove, and as the pain of it increases so does my awareness of this small patch of earth my body enframes. I see a tiny black ant, a couple even tinier red things moving… the curling green and blond grass blades below grow finer and more involved as the pain does. Meanwhile, small bees have alit in my shadow and are weaving their flight around my spread limbs.

It is more the imagined pain, inspired by the presence of bees, than the real pain, inspired by maintaining the stress position, that causes me to break out of that stance after 2 minutes, but it is interesting to reflect on how those forces, the real and imagined, can at times join together to make one relent.

More on the risks of private credit.

Word “meander” comes from river Meander (Greek: Μαίανδρος), which is very windy in places. Strabo (1st c. BC/AD):  ‘its course is so exceedingly winding that everything winding is called meandering.”

(Ancient Greek comic poet Menander‘s name is a combination of μένος and ἀνήρ and has nothing to do with this.)

What happens with private credit is a story that really needs watching. Sounds very like 2008.

I liked this video too, NYT. President defying Judiciary, President defying independence of the States, for no reason anyone can discern.

Derek Thompson: Whoever wins the next few elections will face the same arithmetic. The U.S. cannot grow through native-born fertility alone. As immigration collapses, the US population will stagnate and even shrink. Urban economics will buckle. Fields will go unharvested. Homes will go unbuilt. Sick Americans will go untreated. Life-saving medicines will go undiscovered. Many voters hated the era of record immigration. They might hate the era of record deportations even more.

Roger coughed, said something to himself, and cleaned up a spill. He thought of something he had thought of before. He noticed, while he walked to wring out the sponge that he had used to clean the spill, that there were other spills and irregularities that needed to be dealt with; and having wrung out the sponge he made those areas he had noticed orderly and regular, while thinking this thought he had had before.

Roger said something to himself, articulating a thought, and he thought the thought must be a pleasant one since he liked to have it and since he would resist being without it, although there were times, he considered, too, when the thought he believed to be pleasant would suggest another thought he believed to be not, and at those times he would not resist being without it. He might even start humming.

Roger wrung out the sponge, hummed, coughed and thought of something. Then he said something to himself and started moving away from the sponge, which was moist and mainly clean now but not entirely clean yet. He went farther and farther from the motionless sponge, sometimes quickly, sometimes haltingly, but never at a uniform rate. Roger didn’t tend to grumble and he didn’t grumble now. He didn’t say anything or think anything but continued to move away from the sponge until he began to get near the cart. When he got near to the cart, about a stone’s throw away, he began to move more and more slowly. He didn’t grumble. He thought briefly of the thing he had thought before and he thought also of a thing he had thought about it, which made him grumble then he coughed and opened the door.

He saw the cart and exchanged words with a person who stood by the cart. Some of these words were perfunctory and yet most involved the cart, which now Roger, coughing heavily, pushed away from the person who’d been standing beside it. The person said something. Roger replied to the person with something uttered and speedily started pushing the cart to a location where he found materials.

He thought of one thing while pushing the cart down to the location, and of another thing pushing the cart, which was now laden with some materials, back up to the original location; and of the same thing he had been thinking when he pushed the cart down a second time as he had when he pushed it back up the first time; then of something entirely different when he pushed the cart back up a second time. It was only after he had pushed the cart down for the fifth time that he thought again of what he had thought when he pushed the cart down for the first time.

Now he was coughing heavily and staring at a still and empty cart. Now he was moving farther and farther, sometimes in a vehicle, from the motionless cart.

Mark Lee Greenblatt: The first red flag is apparent enough: Mr. Homan and the White House gave inconsistent responses to the allegations. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters that Mr. Homan never took the money — a flat, categorical denial. Mr. Homan has said only that he did nothing wrong and nothing illegal. Notice the difference.

[i.e., Homan himself hasn’t denied taking the money, but the Whitehouse has denied that he has.]

Not that it matters, but my guess as to what the President means here: he’s reducing the markups by these amounts. So if the markup is 1000%, he’s taking 100% or 500 % out of that.