Friday poem

Days Inn from Linda Smukler's Home In Three Days. Don't Wash.

It was astonishing to walk into room 233 at the Days Inn / the door open for us / to turn on the lights and to close the curtains / to see you first locked into that tan recliner as I sat on the (slightly darker) tan carpet / my back up against the coarse blue bedspread / to smell disinfectant and to drink bitter tea / to feel the minutes of our short afternoon slip away into nervousness and the prints on the off-white walls / then how you lay down on the bed / and I lay next to you / to kiss / no to talk / to get comfortable with each other again / we heard raised voices from somewhere / from the side or overhead / we couldn't figure out where / perhaps a meeting or ten TVs / screaming children or a gathering of boys to watch the football game / these were all possibilities as gradually the voices got so loud I called the front desk to complain / the desk clerk said the voices were coming from below something religious for sure / evangelists or a revival meeting / I told the clerk that I would call her back if we needed to move / then you asked me to turn off the hard lights and I did and lay back down next to you and then on top of you and I finally forgave myself for letting you wait at the train station / I remember you turned me over and how delirious I became at your touch and at a certain point I was overwhelmed with the desire to enter you and all the while beneath us they called on the Lord / they called for salvation / the desk called and out of breath I answered and said we were fine and did not want to move and it was true / the room had become as if lighted by candles and we lay on a sacred bier accompanied by hosannas and hallelujahs / and the chalice of your scent the icon of your face / the idols of your breasts in black lace / the staff of your finger in my ass and my cock in your cunt / our coming joined from below by shouts and applause and the exalted blessings of the possessed

Morning thoughts on bailouts and abuse

If the Fed and the government allows Lehman to fail, it might be better for al of us - having a market correction now rather than keep delaying the inevitable is definitely not good for the nations interests at large. Plus the usual argument 'they were too big to fail' put forward by the Fed in the case of Bear, Fannie and Freddie seems more rancid than ever - especially with many other distressed banks in the line after Lehman... (read WaMu, Wachovia etc…)

An interesting line from today's Wall Street Journal (WSJ): "To avoid reckless lending in the future, failure has to be an option.". Never thought I will see this day when ultimate free market cheerleaders like the WSJ opines on an investment bank's failure.

The other thought I was having was that it is time for Obama to act and act decisively. Especially in light of the shameful 'kindergarden sex-education' advert which was clearly a complete bag of lies. If Mr. Obama does not act now, come out forcefully and tell the nation that what is at play is pure partisan politics which erases the lines between the truth and untruth and the public needs to start questioning adverts like these, we as a nation would be the losers. He needs to tell us that as a responsible parent of two young girls he took the right steps in sponsoring legislation that will protect young children from predators and for the McPalin team to distort this record is simply dishonest and dishonorable. In addition, he will need to demand a public apology from the McCain for distorting his vote on protecting young children from sexual predators. If he does not do this soon enough and forcefully enough, he will lose the election.

From here: “I have a 6-year-old daughter and a 3-year-old daughter, and one of the things my wife and I talked to our daughter about is the possibility of somebody touching them inappropriately, and what that might mean,” Mr. Obama said in 2004. “And that was included specifically in the law, so that kindergarteners are able to exercise some possible protection against abuse, because I have family members as well as friends who suffered abuse at that age.”

Signs - of the times we live in

Three singular, independent bits of news on health (and hubris), economy (and chicanery) and sex (in public lives) makes one reflect...

- My wife and I take our children to the pediatrician for their vaccinations - whether out of feelings of common good (childhood vaccinations are supposed to prevent societal outbreaks of measles, mumps, smallpox among others) or individual well being (to keep our children healthy and immune to any of the above dire sounding diseases).
News reports suggest a growing tribe of American parents who refuse to vaccinate their children pointing to dubious studies and claims that vaccination has no proven advantages for children in the modern world and reports that link vaccinations with neurological disorders. Twenty states, including California, Ohio and Texas, allow a personal exemption - that is parents can opt out of vaccinating their children. A statement by the mother of a six year old in San Diego summed up the collective hubris succinctly: “I refuse to sacrifice my children for the greater good” while she also agrees that “I cannot deny that my child can put someone else at risk”. More here.

- I still have not got over the bailout of our nations fifth largest investment bank (Bear Sterns) orchestrated by another Wall Street bank backed by a only too eager Fed with the ostensible reason that this single action was done for the greater economic good (while it was revealed a couple of days back that the whole thing started off as a whisper campaign which fed on the news that Bear was illiquid). Today’s editorial in the Times puts it perfectly.
Compared to the cold shoulder given to struggling homeowners, the cash and attention lavished by the government on the nation’s financial titans provides telling insight into the priorities of the Bush administration. It’s not simply a matter of fairness, though. If the objective is to encourage prudent banking and keep Wall Street’s wizards from periodically driving financial markets over the cliff, it is imperative to devise a remuneration system for bankers that put more of their skin in the game. More here.

- We live in oversexed times - take a look of the governorships of New York and New Jersey and you will know what I am referring to... While the brouhaha over Spitzer is reaching the back pages of most newspapers, reports of McGreevey threesomes and Paterson's past affairs keep the prurience on the front pages on a daily basis. An op-ed piece in today's Times has given us some alphabet soup to fortify our slicing and dissection of the psychological underpinnings of carnal needs, casual flings and cavalier lays with the air of an expert:

1. In the parlance of American couples recovering from adultery, “D-Day” is the day you discover your spouse has been cheating on you. And as with the birth of Jesus, time is reset from there.
2. X.O.W. is the “ex-other woman"
3. O.N.S. is a “one-night stand”
4. N.P.D. is the often diagnosed “narcissistic personality disorder”
5. A “cake man” is a husband who wants to have his wife and his mistress, too.
6. ‘Pinching the cat in the dark’ is a phrase employed by the Dutch when they find out that their partners have been shoring up their extra curricular activities in the libido department.

Article here.

Judy Fox at PPOW

Queen: "Looking-glass, looking-glass, on the wall,
Who in this land is the fairest of all?"

Mirror: "Thou art fairer than all who are here, lady queen.
But more beautiful still is Snow White, as I ween."

An interesting twist on an all too familiar fairy tale from Grimm is presented at the PPOW gallery by artist Judy Fox titled 'Snow White and the Seven Sins’. I was over there yesterday and was frankly taken in by feelings of a visceral kind that seemed to evoke sexuality, lust and admiration. The artist seems to envelope the onlooker with fertile sexual imagination developed out of casting sculptures in terra cotta and cassein.

The take on the original tale is clear, Snow White lies in state after being poisoned by her queen-mother and is waiting to be revived by the archetypal princely kiss. She is surrounded by the seven dwarfs each one of whom seem to embody one of the original sins. On the snow white sculpture, the detail and the forms evoked were of flesh and the curves did not leave much to ones imagination.

I liked the dwarfs better, developed out of a cunning juxtaposition of the male and female sexual anatomy. Apart from the wide eyed curious stares of people looking to discern where in the sculpture the male appendage ends and the female’s begin, the dwarfs embodied the ease and grace with which Judy Fox has managed to integrate the sexual forms into a seamless whole that leaves one intrigued. On the whole, I liked the show a lot, not just for the vibrant colors on the pottery, but also for the imagery real and imagined that it conveyed.

Judy Fox, 'Snow White', 2007, terra cotta and casein, 8.5" x 58" x 25"

Judy Fox, 'Lust', 2007, terra cotta and casein, 8" x 26" x 15"

Judy Fox, 'Gluttony', 2007, terra cotta and casein, 12" x 25" x 12"

Judy Fox, 'Anger', 2007, terra cotta and casein, 25" x 15" x 11"