Nine over 10

What is the religion
of the Italians?

They are Roman Cath-
olics.

What do the Roman
Catholics worship?

Idols and a piece
of bread.

Would not God be
very angry if He
knew that the It-
alians worshipped
idols and a piece
of bread?

God is very angry.

Recalling that on this date, in

2010, I started writing red mug

blue linen on the pretext of be-

ing under development, I'm heart-

ened to notice that although the

blog has appeared over 10 years,

it is still only nine years old.

I don't know why, but I feel this

is a sign that there's still time

for it. Meanwhile, the dialogue

borrowed above, from a Christmas

Cracker anthology by John Julius

Norwich, can stand for two impres-

sions I've never tried to subdue:

that I'm lucky in what I admire -

worship being a condition which

has discredited itself too much

for emulation, in this land in

which I write - and that what I

do is no more than superfluously

disadvantageous in God's eyes.

But this is to address only one

of the senses. As in the famil-

iar Summer towel, drying on the

rack at such length, one or an-

other of the unblinking senses

may question the freshness of

the thing. This consideration

is akin to fretting the opinion

of God, when He is an audience

I haven't pretended to address.

Flippant as this defense may be,

it deflects a hovering smell in

the air of public comment today,

of an antagonistic struggle for

the soul of the nation. We hear

a gruesome trumpet on all sides,

from Falwell's Liberty Univer-

sity, to Joseph Biden's latest

postures for the Presidency, to 

Pulitzer columnists flogging

us to do the right thing. It's

a hideous abuse of any concept

of liberty, by the foulest

simplifications and reductions

of political importuning, this

grab at the autonomous soul, to

the telling neglect of bread.

Something strikes me as malfunc-

tional in addressing each other,

to remonstrate as if grievances

endow anyone with divine judgment.

Now we are challenged to make mer-

cy popular, and who will grow it?

A student rejects this cant with

grateful resort to invigorating

refreshment in the assets of the

senses. Here I take delight in a

picture I acquired with the trade

of a bottle of Champagne, from an

artist of clarity and strength. I

think of the senses in development,

and admire the company of being.

iv   Valéry Lorenzo

John Julius Norwich

More Christmas Crackers

  being ten commonplace

  selections, 1980 - 1989

Viking, 1990©

Mindfulness? Wellness? Seamanship?

Playing fair.

Valéry Lorenzo

Voilier

2013

Flight

   I don't think we know anyone who

   did not recognize his immediate

   and complete withdrawal of proof

   of a national self-interest in a

   safer Middle East as the gesture

   of a tormented mentality's decom-

   position under pressures of expo-

   sure. An unforgettably transpar-

   ent imitation of escape, less a

   displacement than a scavenging.

And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.

T.S. Eliot

Four Quartets

  East Coker, iii

1943

op. cit.

Valéry Lorenzo

Peregrine 

Suppose it were Friday cxlvi: Hey, ho, halcyon days

There's nothing like a Cease and
Desist demand from a blackmailing
goon to cue Martha & The Vandellas
for a lively dance in Grub Street. 
We are going to remember January
5th, as the day the bawling new
government in America coiled up
in bed with a cheeseburger, hol-
lering for the secret sauce of
censorship. The one trouble is,
that jar has a child-proof cap,
we call the First Amendment.

The ultimate delight in the new
book will be found in its mis-
takes; the more, the merrier.
This is, after all, the gang
whose bodice-ripping script of
the Protocols of Zion is broad-
cast daily for the government's
levée; and it would be obscene
to subject that panting body to
fastidious inspection. Soon to
come, will be smokescreen in-
nuendo of financing from some
hostile power, like Manhattan.

Against any gathering impression
of facetiousness in these revels,
Liebling's Jollity Building is 
giving no odds. But a good cigar ..


















Valéry Lorenzo
untitled toast
2016©

An artichoke, alone

There is something pleasantly sensual

and mindful about eating an artichoke

all alone, dunking each leaf in a tart,

buttery sauce and scraping off that

little bit of flesh, then getting to 

the bottom and carefully removing the

prickly thistles to the heart .. I re-

member always asking for an artichoke

when I knew I would be home alone and

could relish each bite.

Judith Jones was lost to us last year

and I didn't make note of it because

I almost couldn't believe it. She ac-

counted for many wonderful meals for

countless people, as an editor and al-

so as a writer, and for one pure treas-

ure of companionship, ironically titled,

The Pleasures of Cooking for One. If we

hear talk of food porn, it's because of

dining for pleasure, instead of with it.

Then I remembered the photographer,

Valéry Lorenzo, and for proving one

could show that gorgeous difference.

Who is dining alone, and is so fed?

Judith Jones

The Pleasures of

  Cooking for One

Alfred A. Knopf, 2013©

Valéry Lorenzo

Roquefort

2014©

  

Clusters ii: A space is open

  A friend of mine went
  down from Park Slope,
  for the furor in Phil-
  adelphia, and sent me
  this memento. 

  There is a ledge open
  for keepsakes between
  Sense and Sensibility
  and The Portrait of a
  Lady.

  I think this will do.
  Lest I forget, there
  is a civil candidate.
  Bring us to November.

Sandrine Kern
Coquelicot
2010

Valéry Lorenzo
The Pop Music Series
2015

I will have my Summer back

  

  I go into companion-
  ship through univer-
  sal eyes, remaining
  open to particulars.

  One is Virgil's pas-
  torals, one is Eng-
  lish Hours of Henry
  James. One is this
  photographer.

Valéry Lorenzo
Castille
2015

Party

rmbl opened 7.29 
very tentatively -
there remain now 
the possibilities

            Is blindness, then, the gift you give before

            The rest? - forgiveness, say, so hard to find

            In what's at hand, the common day which seems

            At last the light that yields such heat, such beams.

 
                   

     

J.D. McClatchy

The Rest of the Way

  Poems

  An Old Song Ended

  [fragment]

Alfred A. Knopf, 1992©

op. cit.

Valéry Lorenzo

Isabelle Pariente-Butterlin

  aux bords des mondes

Plane sensibility

  I think of Ozu

  and of Valéry 

  Lorenzo, such

  elegant and

  penetrating

  masters of the

  plane in visu-

  al craftsman-

  ship, as I re-

  turn to this

  still from a

  student movie,

  a coming of age

  project within

  a coming of age

  project. I know

  little of the

  narrative but I

  know this is an

  eloquent eye,

  in this probing 

  application of

  several senses to

  the plane as flux,

  a fluid partition,

  as they simply are.

Mees Peijnenburg

  director

Graduation Project

Netherlands Film Academy

Cowboys janken ook

Stephan Polman

  cinematography

Ko Zandvliet

Jonas Smulders

2013

Hunting life

Another day he spots what he
supposes to be a wood pigeon
but 'the possibility of its
being an immature male Pere-
grine flashed across my mind'.

'Presumably,' 'possibility':
wish fulfillment is at work
here: the beginnings of a 
longing for the peregrine so
keen that it caused - in the
blurry distance of his far-
sight - dove to morph into
falcon, pigeon to pass into
peregrine. From the start,
the predatory nature of the
falcons, their decisive speed,
their awesome vision and their
subtle killings all thrilled
him. He was enraptured ..























Robert Macfarlane
Landmarks
  5 : Hunting Life
Hamish Hamilton, 2015©

Valéry Lorenzo
Les augures

Lukas Hoffmann