The Grimace of Machiavelli

Machiavelli's most famous work, Il Principe, brought him a reputation of an immoral cynic [sic]

The Italians. If my life in Philadelphia amounts to an abject deconstruction of perennial, thwarted aspiration, I am under little illusion about what it would amount to on the peninsula if I managed to land and assemble for transport in Tuscany. Cramped store outlets barely large enough for a 5 foot 7 inch male of perhaps 175 lbs to stand behind a small counter, equally compact flats in which to wedge persecuted Arabic foreigners, juxtaposed around the scenic beauty of Lake Como, a plethora of earthquake collapses in Naples. One thing native Italians share with my enthusiastic to fade away contingent of Turks is an overweening penchant for flowery allusions embedded in death threats which are basically meaningless, an emaciated breath of history from the tombs of the Medici. Is Beppe Grillo a little Mussolini with saccharine smiles for Rai’s studio lightning? I yowled at a copywriter who dropped me because I enjoy Matteo Salvini’s pugnacity, and it is into this subterfuge of less precise detail that lurking in on Tassoni’s prep school immaturity triggers an irascible desire to hoist myself on my own petard, but lurk I do, nonetheless. Then I emailed him once again, approximately the third time since I tracked his career accolades. I mentioned Brandon’s name, the Negro assailant who nearly took my life. “It would have been better had he killed me,” I wrote, nearly petulant with despair, still accusing.

Why weren’t you there to protect me? This was the embedded outcry to my interpersonal Rocky who rejected me when I was 19. Now who’s being prep school, the dowager asks wryly, so easy to believe you still love the one who got away? John Tassoni was, indeed, my Rocky Balboa, and my mild bout of digital hysteria elicited his solicitude, the little monkey on his back, the nascent savant who can’t get over a punk from Chester who was kind to her, bear hugged her, made her realize that masculinity needn’t be toxic. Imprinted for life, no matter whose husband I slept with, but sitting here, with the mock up board of our lives on social media, you take stock in the realization of unhappiness with a player. Had I been successful in seducing him, chaffing or not, the interpersonal would have wound up where I left the serial novel of Alicia and Peter Florrick, keeping up appearances as a matter of showboat necessity on the hollow knell of the attraction which brought them together.

This episode, the one where the flawed values of a moderate political couple defeat the NSA, would have been courageous on the part of everyone, including Ridley Scott, to leave it conclude right there after the departure of Charles. Alicia was far too ruthless with Peter. You may adjudicate that assessment for yourself.

I’m dropping The Passage, as edgy as it purports to be, and scrolled through Tucci in Fortitude as a British DCI, to my delighted surprise. Somehow, even with the edginess of an Arctic locale, British thrillers are grounded in domestic tensions which are anti-climatic. On the American scene, they are instances of grand theater. Another citizen from my homeland with its tertiary angles has joined my ranks, and like John, a doctorate. I’m mollified. For the time being.

Segnatto Esatto

Who are you and what makes you so important?-- Twitter user frog contessa, whom I answered tersely

I have to confess, despite the fact that social media is increasingly passe, even for me, the nativity of plebeians like the above contessa still has the capacity to throw one's ego off the mount. I am important simply because I tweet back to Speaker Ryan?
 

Three years ago, we began a great journey to set our nation on a better path. Now, my season of service is coming to a close. Tune in live soon for my Farewell Address as Speaker of the House: https://t.co/RrNzrxPmYU

— Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) December 19, 2018

As a disabled, disenfranchised American, I am entitled to my ambivalent sympathies for the 54th Speaker of the House. He wasn't always mercilessly excoriated in the press by those of Canadian Jewish ancestry, like David Frum, but when the deputy prime minister of Italy ferrets out and follows your account, it is best to run your research fast and furiously and pay appropriate homage to the man in his native tongue. I knew Matteo was right wing, like Beppe, who isn't as right wing as English media would have the five star movement in the homeland appear, but when it comes to the political power Salvini holds, the spastic dowager dropped the ball, and aspirates:

 

"Se uccide i cristiani è nostro fratello". Queste le parole di odio del 20enne somalo arrestato per terrorismo internazionale. E voleva mettere "bombe in tutte le Chiese d'Italia". GALERA ed ESPULSIONE, via dal nostro Paese questa gente. VIA! https://t.co/8hCp35z8WV

— Matteo Salvini (@matteosalvinimi) December 18, 2018

Augh!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A stiletto through the heart! 

Matteo, questa donna rotta vuole morire e baciare i ciottoli a Roma per favore! I cannot very well excoriate the man for follow and drop behavior which I'd otherwise normally deplore. When I calm down and renew my grammar studies with vigor I will *speak* to him, but yes, the Deputy Prime Minister of my homeland, the blood of Roma in my veins, followed me, for three days! Who isn't the Empress of Italy under these transcendent hues of a cathedral's stained glass?

Brothers and Sisters

Hanno continuato inventandosi una mia contrapposizione con Beppe Grillo che è inesistente ed è quanto di più lontano dalla verità ci possa essere .-- David Casaleggio

Yes, it would be delightful to get out of my own head once in awhile, take a cessation from electronic gadgets, the grid, satellite signals, shed my contorted muscular skeletal distress for a lithe ability to jog in spandex with a breeze toning down my furious theorizing, driven by my own sense of disembodiment with all I've lost since my great personal rupture -- difficult for me to remember the exact date, but near to Thanksgiving 1999. I cannot really call my actions a legitimate suicide attempt, rolling in to the kitchen, grabbing a flimsy supermart steak knife, breaking down in inane laughter, florid tears. I should have been tougher, thus I tell myself, and I did fight for some semblance of recovery, but as I've detailed many times, so many hands were extended, mostly in impotence, much like Yabberz and Niume, more contemporaneously. AccessLife breaking apart was my most unfortunate circumstance. I liked them, wanted to take Linda's advice, work for them full time, in the burgeoning dynamic of digital birth pangs, and I am trapped in Presby, in addition, the epicenter of so many applied scars. People have suggested I write the fucking novel about life under Presby's management, but I'd doubt it sell. Who'd want to read a life of terror and then the duress of guardian threats always surrounding me because I defy minorities in learned hatred and paranoia? I follow Beppe patiently, in attesa di vedere, but can he govern? The government in Roma can be likened to City Council, or more analogous yet to American public housing "authorities"-- most of you perhaps think I'm lucky to have so many protections against eviction despite an invalid's squalor. "I can smell," Luca Zingaretti rebukes his sidekick, during the Montalbano paint by numbers nod towards the wasted space of spastic servitude of ableism. Our odors create new victims, as Dubus wrote in one of his tactful essays about life in wheelchairs and turbulent colons. I presume, if my life in Philadelphia became a game of The Man in The Iron Mask, with my naivete  coasting me through until I realized the enormity of my lack of expanse, my shackles, that life in Tuscany would have been more banded still, life on a balcony, watching the remnants of the mafia settle their scores. This post was supposed to be a critique of Sanders and his radical left pipe dreams. He is not responsible for Hodgkinson's actions, though I will also assert Trump brazenly opened this door during the general campaign. What if a supporter had put a bead on Hillary? I voted for him anyway, and maybe even because he incited and we winked at it-- but Sanders is responsible for a militant, dangerous conviction. He is not a classical Marxist, but just take a look at Venezuela across the isthmus. Is this the chaos we're bringing to civilized society for the next ten, fifteen years?
Sadly, I am not strong enough: I am never going to quite "get better" from opening up to my former Jewish supervisor Linda, apparently handling her newer frailties with a healthier and still self confident humor. Face to face, what we did to each other in virtual space would never have happened, but I cannot reinvent myself, and getting fucked over by disability activist collusion creates the same impetus for dissidents who used to be heralded in the anti-Soviet era. We've lost so many definitions, but cripple isn't one of them, no matter we we say.

Fondouche

[The Jesuit]. who would not have blinked an eyelid at hearing the confession, say, of an incestuous intrigue, found himself flustered by this innocent, but vast expanse of naked flesh.-- Di Lampedusa, Il Gattopardo, p 59

In some ways, I disdain Niume's platform in corresponding proportion to my admiration for Beppe's patience, and growing power. To give you full disclosure, I did not discover the Italian comedian independently of American media. Television gave me the leonine shock white of his hair, and a Wapo contributor gave me the blog url. My personality would soften into a small, tantalizing, glow if Beppe would sneak across the pond with il Alpini, invade the district, send Trump packing for a much needed endoscopy, and then, like an old woman regaining her youth, I'd be a complaisant mistress. Mussolini revisited. You may think I'm joking, but guess again. Am I being fair to Niume? No. They understood the context on my Kokesh piece and allowed it to stand, but if Yabberz made me miserable, even if I allowed myself too much involvement-- looking for companions-- to the point I had to burn my account, then Niume leaves me disinterested; can and will stay out of the way most of the time. My sampling says they will not allow hard asses to take chances, well, they haven't met me, though I think I nettled the administrators a wee little in my frank assessment that penny RPM rates are not worth slaving. They wrote a post on their blog clarifying the matter.
Why rock the apple cart? Testing the waters. Ready and waiting in the wings to assassinate my enemies like any demagogue too clever for Terms of Service, as if I know anything about maintaining websites, the coding involved. My heart goes out to General Flynn. Much as the dowager learned, a lifetime of loyalty ends up as a hernia with a sword through your spine. Majority rule is merciless to outliers.

Cessation's Daughter

Maudlin aspects have tendencies toward exaggeration, and skimmers may wonder if I am jerking their chain about my health. Bladder cancer is unlikely, but my reality is I am headed for a systems break if I cannot change my environment and find some way back to an ascendant arc. Regardless of what is treatable, and what is the accretion of age, I need something else, and I know I do not have much biological time left before my flesh increments more salaries, except mine. These hours are my favorite hours to work, and I might as well be in a vegetative state.

I have not mentioned the elephant that usually trails in the wake of an individual of such intensity and impulse, but this too is a conceit, the self indulgent depressed narcissism of disability and suffering, which I have done my best to resist while not shying from its many avenues of manufacture, but I could just cave, and go back to the regiment of institutionalization, and if I did I'd probably attempt to goad the paraprofessionals into physically abusing me, to shorten the duration. In more droll and immediate fashion, grabbing a bite, and off to sleep.

If I am fortunate enough not to stroke out in the process, I am focusing on three relocation areas to investigate:

1) Going home. Beppe makes me dread what a reality check of landing on Tuscan soil would amount to, but dying on Italian soil is my last remaing desire, and as soon as I can manage the weather I am scheduling a consulate visit, perhaps with the Toshiba in tow for a real time post.

2) Going to Massillon, having researched so much of Ohio for a political fantasy now passe.

3) Texas, but that would be a huge paradigm shift.

Nabokov Émigré

"If he is capable of love we have to assume he is also capable of hate."
--Sam Robards, A.I.



I finished The Luzhin Defense today and instantly reset it to read again, because so many things are inextricably entwined here, and there is a kind of shared identity between a cripple who cannot reject what the state imposes on her without incurring more serious constraints and Luzhin's rather vacuous problems with identity due to loss of his homeland. The title character is just shy of being an idiot savant, just shy of mental retardation, almost the antithesis of Humbert. Nabokov's diegesis strategies please me more than those of Joyce, despite the structuralist strains of the Russian who is nowhere and everywhere, European, dislocated, and an incisive critic of the Eisenhower Era. I am mad at myself for banking myself at Ulysses, all the same, as I am rereading Homer in blank verse and three other texts for every allusion I am highlighting and tracking, but if I want to play as an independent scholar with one or two bylines, then I need some familiarity with the grandmaster and his nonchalance on accessibility.

I should be sympathetic to it, given how much I hate those who cannot think outside the box, and I am, but gimmicks are gimmicks, whether the year is 1904, or 2004. Mitchell's book could not exist without derivatives, like Calvino, but his genius is more dynamic than that of the poverty driven gentility of Joyce. Mitchell wants me to work, but also expects that I will enter the narrative. Joyce seems to thrive on dissonance and obscurity and I curse his grave, comparisons to Sterne be damned. My sympathy for Irish pathos is lacking, precisely because it was all for nothing, and history is also written by those with the best propagada tools. Everyone knows what the IRA was, but most of you would draw a blank on those Italian anarchists targeted before the modern unification of the Italian Pennisula