Nam Gloriam

Officers and common solders gloried in single combat, taking heads and despoiling their enemies.--For the Glory of Rome, caption snippet, Ross Cowan

The Walking Dead reminds us how easy we actually have it in our modern cities: filtrated water, processed food increasingly depleted into mono-staples like corn, potatoes, but nonetheless plentiful, relative ease of travel where we kill ourselves off in macro-evolutionary fashion through vehicular homicide, but most progressives are astute enough not to call for bans on automobiles, only keeping an eye out for regulating Uber. Within the substructure of its serial wanderers punctuated by periodic post-apocalyptic community integration, Britannia's David Morrissey gives a decent approximation of a mendacious and intense tyrant as the governor, whose climatic moment culminated in the termination of Michael Rooker's character arc. He brings the same set of skills to Aulus Plautius under Claudian rule of the Empire, which, if we wish to quibble with Amazon, relies a little too much on the modern style of situation comedy for its interludes of domestic levity. In Ben Hur, Roman rule juxtaposed against the zealousness of faith is actually a code for the rise of the United States as it was viewed under Eisenhower: federated civilian supremacy imposing egalitarianism on all its subjects at the point of a bayonet-- the bayonet being the mightiest legion in the world. The English, being the irritable Victorians that they are, chime in with not so fast. The legionnaires could be out-maneuvered through the indigenous manipulation of the Druids. The writers take this manifest future superiority of Anglican globalism too seriously. The Roman Empire, under Augustan lineage and beyond, wasn't the first super power of its kind out of happenstance. When Morrissey bellows to his troops beset with the rainy weather of the British Isles, "We are Roman!" It is this to which civilization owns its homage, stirring the fervor in my own Roman blood, what articulated itself when I struggled with the door while none of the students came to my aid, and a naive little spastic set eyes on a Tassoni in army fatigues and heavy black boots, Sylvester Stalllone gloves on his hands, me and my doomed, precocious, invalid heart. I undoubtedly fell for the man instantly, merely to be otherwise signed and sealed and delivered when he wrapped his arms around me in the dormitory hallway. Though reconnected to me due to an overenthusiastic care giver, this same man, perhaps wisely, did not respond to my tentative thank you on Messenger, and do those wounds of my first true desire still have that much of a hold, more properly suffered in silence? If it matters that much, remove his account? You may laugh, and deride it. Intelligent the dowager may be, adept, mature for 56, may be adjudicated on the merits of whatsoever was wrong with being his friend? He was innocent of anything but living his life choice in 2002 when I tracked him down; he is innocent now, while I ride this metaphysical plane of passionate restoration, for the glory that was Rome. We are beholden to it in a fundamental diachronic tie much more so than Xi's presidency can be transliterated back to the formation of the Middle Kingdom, or the implied contract between the US and its lone true satellite in the East, modern Israel. This is why I had to reluctantly vacillate about removal of Hallel from my feed. I do not believe in the legitimacy of Resolution 181, and wrestle the Zionist imperative which authenticates Israel as a divine right.
What is glory in the modern world? How do we take its measure? Would my life had been different had love been reciprocated, truly?

Decline and Fall

"Christianity is a sickness."-- my paraprofessional

That I am actually reading Gibbon in tandem with Niall Ferguson's now familiar analogy and rhythm is a coincidence, and that he does touch on healthcare as a staggering edifice of a troubled welfare system is certainly not attributable to me. I worry more, in fact, that pitching to Vanity Fair is a nearly insurmountable task for a non-staffer, as opposed to the bon professor's ready access. I'd have to send a resume to Comnsate Publications, last time I researched the issue. I have to work my way back in on a smaller scale. My bowel is hurting, the adult diapers, as I knew they would years ago, are destroying my buttock epidermis, and I'm having tremors. I was warned about all of this, only now collapsing at 56 plus a testament to thick Italian skulls, well back into the past, and I cannot delude myself that I'm redeemable as a woman with cerebral palsy who refused to apply to Harvard on the fear of social stigma. I'm dying, and I'm dying of nothing but the poverty of technical medical disaster, and I die unrepentant, unable to tweet a compliment to Pat Toomey without getting inexplicably attacked by this account. I did not have to respond to Memes, and it was undoubtedly worth my while not to do so, but I am in pain, and Memes, like a social media jackass, tells me I am privileged because I contacted Pat Toomey about illegal collusion at Philadelphia's farcical disability center. I have no idea what Memes wants from me, and consider his, or her, conduct, no more than harassment. I am not special to Toomey, or his staff, I just agree with him after facing a lifetime of antipodal destruction under Philadelphia Housing authority auspices, and stand by my tweet, which I shall not embed, that Toomey is righteous. Others are free to make their own decisions. I only repent the precipitous decline in my health because single payer option rationing is its proximate cause, and I do not blame the GOP. I worried, briefly, that I'd really destroy my mental welfare by developing a bond with the male paraprofessional on whom I now depend, but then I realize he says uneducated and outlandish conspiratorial sentiments, and it will not happen, hopefully. I have heard such stories of racial remorse conscientiousness before, and I cannot. Because I still harbor that unpleasant internal condensation. He and I "friended" each other, so this evening, I will not push the envelope any further, nonetheless, we're both single, lonely, and if he is going to nurse me for an indefinite period, men are men, women are women, and I need be cautious, or find him better economic security, and return to antagonistic tensions with predominately minority women. This has no correlation to my defense of Niall Ferguson against Pankaj Mishra's charges of neo-imperialism, not at first glance, but throughout history, state welfare systems erode the vibrancy of civilization. I crushed myself with high expectations. Gibbon, as you may or may not know, worked in episodic poverty, and suffered from scoliosis, but he was an important transitional historian, a bridge between hagiography of the Enlightenment, and evidence based means testing and aggregate data of the modern discipline which Niall engages with astute methodology, and his critics miss his main points about authority, central state systems, and the evolution of modern economy and financial innovation. I would not deign to call Niall righteous. It is not the right descriptive for an accessible scholar and analyst, but he's a realist who recognizes boundary markers, concedes progressive victories against differences oppressed by social caste, and his critics are simply off base. He taught me about the evolution of money in a manner I was never challenged to consider, and if that isn't a scholar doing his job, pray tell, what is?

Qualis artifex pereo

"You have the wrong Secretary." Senator John Kerry's immortal words to the spastic_dowager before he added more plumage to his stature.


Ambulatory individuals often find me humorous when I am intensely serious: "Dr. Creeley you taught someone who was a great influence on me!" I drove up to his table as if I were an ankle monitor ready to latch onto him, and to my great surprise, he burst out into a full throated  laugh that made me love him instantly. I did not tell him his poem about killing crows determined the miserable course of my life, and I am starting to weep because Robert is dead, and even if I wanted to run to Jerry, to beg him not to die before me, to beg him to forgive me, to cry and cry on the shoulder of this habituated post modernist Shakespearean of whom I expected a more debonair career end, what good would it do? I am not quite ready to compare Hilter to Joan d'Arc, but the corrosion of poverty, the ignorance and ugliness of the human animal when compared to the beauty of other species we kill near indiscriminately due to lack of equitable distribution of resources and our inability to come up with pragmatic solutions, the fact that a good man never loved me, even if no binary partnership makes for completion, I have been up since noon yesterday, in the post-solstice of December, and I am exhausted, in the recurring motif of over-extension, too dark for anyone not to believe I need a leash, losing my track of acerbic tone, what is it I expect from posting like this? Later.

The later.

Sickness is the hatred of repentance... The poem is "The Crow" and it is in a smaller post-Vietnam collection of Creeley's work, less massive than the tome I purchased when he came to Philadelphia to wank our literary cunts. Robert is not my favorite poet, and on the whole the Beats are more vapor than substance, but "The Crow" is one of my favorite poems reflecting the exhaustion of the 20th century, much like De Niro's failed attempt at wit with the First Couple reflects the exhaustion of Western Imperialism finally giving way before Orientalism. It seems to have been settled with at least some veracity, that Barack is a typical progressive centrist, and I am not suggesting otherwise, but his mother seems to have been infected with John Lennon's bong paraphernalia, and piques my interest more than her disappointing golden child. In my initial post on this topic, near the close of my monetized account, I punned De Niro and Nero, and only upon revision realized this was more intuitive than the lazy carelessness of sarcasm.

Jerry cannot absolve in me what I cannot forgive in myself. I lost my bid to succeed as an American, case closed, the unforgiven in the mistakes of impulse. Pallid, my dour mother's bitter mouth inscribed on my expression like a destructive Artemis, sixty pounds too much of a belly in a stout frame, I am not apologizing to you or anyone else anymore for not reigning it in according to propriety, but, being tired, and Christmas stressed nine months of posts ahead, I shall refine this analysis as luxury allows, three cigarettes closer to cancer. I don't care.