Politics Sunday comes on a Saturday.

“Thelonious Monk”
cell phone drawing by m ball

  Politics Sunday comes on a Saturday. 

 The phone rings — early. This time* interrupting the Newcastle-Chelsea match. “Nils
Sundstrøm,” the screen says. “Meaning,” I think, “I should let this go.”
     “Who is it?” Uncle Albert asks from the couch.
     “Your friend, Nils,” I say. “Tell him I said ‘hi,’” Uncle Albert says. So, I answer.

“Uncle Albert says ‘hi,’” I say.
     “Hi back,” Nils says. And I say to Uncle Albert, “Nils says ‘hi’ back.
     “Tell me what happens,” I add and go into the kitchen. “Just a minute,” I say to Nils,” and I sit down.
     “Okay,” I say.
     “You didn’t tell me your friend Hamlin Moody was Jackass Jones.”
     “No.”
     “And he really played golf with Trump.”
     “Maybe,” I say. “Sort of.” I’m both wondering where this is going and not liking it already.
     “Axel told me. So, I called him.”
     “Jackass?” I say, louder than I’d intended.
     “Or Moody,” Nils says. “But he refused my interview.”

 “Interview?” I ask.
     “I was going to put something in Go Around Back. Remember: we talked about that.”
     “I remember. We sort of talked about it.”
     “He wouldn’t do an interview, but he did talk to me ‘off the record.’”
     I wait.
     “Do you want to hear about it?”
     “Not now,” I think, but I say, “Sure,” then think, “Why did I say that?”

“I said to him,” Nils said, “‘I hear you refused to concede a putt.’ And he said something about ‘’fraid so’ but it didn’t matter. ‘To the president,’ I said. ‘Of the United States,’ I said. And he said again that it didn’t matter because he’d picked up anyway. He’d just said, ‘This good?’ — the president — and he’d picked up before Jackass/Hamlin could say ‘no’ though he said ‘no’ anyway.

     “‘He just picked up?’ I said. ‘He didn’t say anything?’ He’d misspoke, Hamlin said. He’d raked the ball toward him and knocked it to one of his ‘whatevers,’ and he had picked it up. ‘No, he didn’t say anything, the president, just blew a raspberry.’ ‘And he told you you were done,’ I said. No, another guy did that. One guy picks up the ball; another gives you the bad news. And still another takes your clubs off the cart and tells you he’s called ahead: they’re sending someone to pick you up and take you back to the clubhouse.

     “‘And then what?’ I said. But there was no ‘then what.’ ‘I got picked up. The girl took me to my car and helped me put my clubs in the trunk.’ He paused. ‘She said she didn’t want a tip,’ he said.”

 “That’s the story?” I said to Nils.
     “Pretty much,” he said. “I asked him if he’d heard anything more or seen anything on Twitter. He said he didn’t follow the president on Twitter. ‘Why don’t you Google it?’ he said. ‘Let me know if you find out anything.’
     “So, I did. And one thing led to another. There was a tweet that was shortly after deleted.

10.20.20

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* For last time, click here.

We get letters.

 We get letters . . .* 

This one, an email actually (for who gets letters these days?), comes from Pompeijo, Kristovia. Nemet** writes:

We read what you and your heavenly friend write about Thomas Hardy because he is very important in Kristovia. This is because of he influenced Lazar Todor, our national novelist, who translated Hardy though there have been many translations since then, most recent by Zayna’s father and mother. Did you know her father was engineer? because Todor’s father was also engineer, and Todor was architect like Hardy before he began to write.

Only English translation, I think, of szaahtlari tdayantdirin [Stop the Clocks] is a very bad one. It is much abridged, and wrong parts left out. The translator did not understand the story which is not about how time tick-tocks forward but how the chimes ring the wrong hour. But maybe a new one will be made soon. I hope.

Todor’s favorite Hardy novel – it is the favorite of this country – is Tess D’Urbervilles. So, I am – we are – waiting eagerly for what you and your angel-friend will have to say about that.

I am sending my greetings to you, as Zayna does, too. She helps me with my English but not so much, she says, I don’t sound like me.

Your friend, Nemet

I attach a picture of my mother’s copy of szaahtlari tdayantdirin because you like pictures in your blog, I know.

11.18.20

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* See here, the first thirty seconds.
** Our Kristovia adventure – mine and Roz’s – begins here. We meet Nemet and Zayna, here; and we attend his photography exhibit, here.

Francis Relish

  Francis Relish
 (Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge, pt. 2)

 Correspondence with the dead continues.*

 Dear Trudy,

I am writing to ask for an indefinite extension on the assignment, “inhibitions.” If it cannot be granted, I’ll have to cry off altogether. In the meantime, I recommend the OnlineEtymology Dictionary.
     Did you find a copy of The Mayor of Casterbridge? I expect to finish it today.
     I think that’s all. I trust you’re doing better than I am, who continue in a downward spiral. Which may have something to do with Hardy.

Gloomily, Ted

Dear Ted,

I do not like The Mayor of Casterbridge as well as I liked The Return of the Native, at least not this time through. I know it (The Mayor) is supposed to be the better novel, but except for Henchard, the characters are so circumscribed (and circumspect), I have no time for them, no feeling for them – except “Blah!”). I’m sorry for Lucetta; as long as she is on the make, I am rooting for her. But when she curls up and dies – rather than climbing out on a balcony and mooning the skimmity-riders – I lose interest. But I’m already losing interest as soon as she marries the cliché on-the-make Scottish stick-in-the-mud Farfrae. Of the remaining characters, only Jopp is truly interesting. Farfrae is, I repeat myself with different words, a jackass, a prig. Newson is just a jackass. Elizabeth-Jane is just a prig. Susan is a shadow.

Mayors of Casterbridge
Francis Relish (1955-1962)**

     Michael Henchard is a monster, but what a sad monster, also, by the end what a predictable monster. (Like Caliban.) Bless Abel Whittle for sitting by him when he dies. I don’t think I could have done that.
     That’s not much to say about a story with so many twists and turns, runnings forward and doublings back – and with such an elaborate and sticky sense of place – but it’s all I have right now.
     What did you think? You can tell me or not. Frankly, I’m ready to move right on to Tess.

What do you think? Trudy

 

P. S. Leslie Becket (no relation to the grim Irishman but the merry Englishman that was at Chlidonia with us, “Bucket” – did you really call him that? – he was on your floor in Mytilus, wasn’t he? And he was killed in Kristovia, bicycle accident: how the hell did he get there?) Leslie (not Les) loves Hardy because, he says, he is never afraid of the next coincidence. Crane may be right about fiction Leslie says: The writer shouldn’t be allowed more than one coincidence. But life is not like that: our histories don’t run in a straight line from that one coincidence at the left end of the chart to their end at the right end of the chart. Now, like in the novel(!), they do run ahead, and now they come running back, having forgotten the stick we threw for them. Now they drop anchor; now they are anchor, lying on the floor of the sea. Now they are flies buzzing around garbage, alive and dead in a moon, and now they are Whitman’s spider launching “filament, filament, filament . . . Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly, spreading them.” And they will intertwine, by chance. We know each other a year in a lifetime, then we die and we know each other forever. So, Bucket says. But he isn’t falling in love with me. Don’t think that. Nobody is fall in with me. Nobody is falling in love with anybody, right?

 Dear Trudy,

Let’s move on then. I have nothing of interest to say about The Mayor of Casterbridge. I tried to like Farfrae because I thought Hardy did. I tried to admire Elizabeth-Jane for the same reason – I thought Hardy did. Increasingly, I lost sympathy with both as (it seemed to me) he grew tired of them. He brings in Lucetta because he is becoming bored with them. And, you said something like this: Lucetta becomes boring, too, after she marries Farfrae.) He revives Jopp because he is bored with them all, maybe even Henchard.
     What is this about Bucket isn’t falling in love with you? Are you falling in love with him? Why are you telling me? I had assumed your last statement to be universally true, “Nobody is falling in love with anybody.” Jesus says that nobody is marrying anybody, at any rate (Matthew 20:34f.).
     A short answer to “inhibitions” is attached. There won’t be a longer one. Nothing like a book!

I am trying, Ted

 11.13.20

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* This correspondence with Trudy Monae began with The Return of the Native, starting here.
§ “Yes, he was a sad – a spartan - philosopher.” – Lucilius
** “Mayors of Casterbridge” is a series of phone drawings by m ball.