From “Spiritus Monday Morning,” Bern’s line:
Lion’s hearts, keeping time since time began — most often in a march, occasionally in contemplative counterpoint — have been his drummers in all he has done.
Microsoft CoPilot’s no-nonsense replacement:
Lion's hearts, beating in a steady march or sometimes contemplative rhythms, have guided his actions throughout history.
“Psychopaths lie, cheat, and steal. They’re not just antisocial, they’re foolishly so (they will commit thefts, forgery, adultery, fraud, and other deeds for astonishingly small stakes and under much greater risks of being discovered than will the ordinary scoundrel.) While they are often smart, they have a sort of “rudderless intelligence” in that they respond to situations as they arise but cannot formulate any coherent, sustainable long-term plan. They are masters of the empty gesture, and have a glib facility with language, stripping words of the glue that normally connects them to feeling and morality. Finally, they lack remorse and shame for the harm and hurt that trail behind them. One way or another, almost everything that can be said about psychopaths can be said about tricksters.”
First person plural is quaint and affected but lots of fun to write in, and we think you should try it. The Editorial We releases you, or us, from the burdens of our, or my, personality. Somehow we’re suddenly more engaged with the world, we’re not so different from the next guy, we forget our gripes and hurt vanities, and we become Everyman, to whom it might never even occur to write a memoir.
The next time you re-read St Aubyn’s Some Hope — we won’t provide excerpts, or give you page numbers or point to where the scenes occur, because it would spoil your delight of discovery. But the next time you read St Aubyn’s Some Hope, pay attention to the mention of swans, and later, of gulls.
Spoiler below:[Then keep both in mind as you proceed with Patrick Melrose toward the finish.]
A great one to memorize and declaim every year on the first day of November:
No sun, no moon!
No morn, no noon.
No dawn, no dusk,
No proper time of day.
No warmth, no cheerfulness,
No healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member.
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves,
No birds!
November!
We’re reading a collection of E.B. White’s New Yorker pieces covering half a century. In one of them he makes passing reference to “little men up the airy mountains, down the rushy glen,” which we recall from a poem read to us in grade school. We search online for the phrase: it is fromThe Fairy Folk by William Allingham. At random we pick a UK Yahoo link to read the rest of the poem:
Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And grey ****’s feather!
We don’t recall anything in the poem remotely prurient. Could the word be tit, the bird? But it’s the wrong number of letters. Plus, a tit is yellow and blue, and whatever this is, it’s grey.
We search for other versions of the poem. Oddly, the next three sites we find with the poem turn out not to refer to a grey anything at all. In them, the line reads “white owl’s feather.” Finally, a fifth version, on a Duquesne University site, clears things up: the line reads “grey cock’s feather."
There’s a reason, silly or not, that multiple versions of the poem exist, and we’ll probably never know the story. All we know is a Yahoo algorithm had its way with Allingham’s poem and directly contrary to its own best intentions, by censoring a rooster, brought to the reader’s mind a breast and after that a penis.
This strikes us as exactly the sort of thing E.B. White would trouble to comment on.
For Free, you may have My Notion
For an ‘APP’ that scours
the Web for Manifesting Trends
To establish Those that Overlap:
To whit [sic],
News
of Beer Yoga
Appearing Contemporaneously with
Yoga with Goats,
Would Yield & Suggest a New Trend
being, Beer with Goats.
From which the Worldly Mind
May take Inspiration and Open a Tavern
Whereby we Drink in a Goatyard,
Aye, with Goats.
The APP may be called INSPIRATION.
Or if that is claimed, GRACE.
We No Doubt Will have Success
Peddling this to This Day’s
Agent, & Publisher, & O
Just Everybody
[ Do we hear a note of cynicism, Mrs. Goblington?
We send you our affection. Courage! ]
OVERCOME MOST HEADACHES
From “Rabbit Remembered.”
“That was so nice,” Annabelle continues on her track, “when she is willing, but he doesn’t sleep with her and makes her a hamburger instead.” Nelson has never heard her voice like this, free-associating and childishly trusting. Maybe this evening isn’t such a failure as it felt. He has the persistent sensation that there is one more person in the car than the four of them.
Microsoft CoPilot AI’s elaboration.
Annabelle's voice fills the car, a melodic thread weaving through the air, “That was so nice,” she continues on her track, “when she is willing, but he doesn’t sleep with her and makes her a hamburger instead.” Her words hang in the air, an unexpected blend of whimsy and profundity.
Nelson, seated beside her, is taken aback. He has never heard her speak like this, so carefree and unrestrained, her thoughts spilling out in a stream of consciousness that feels both childlike and deeply sincere. The evening, which had seemed on the verge of collapse, now carries a strange, almost magical undercurrent. Nelson glances around the car. He cannot shake the persistent sensation that there is one more person in the car than the four of them. It's as if some unseen entity has joined their little group, drawn in by Annabelle's candor and the unexpected warmth that has taken root among them. Nelson feels a shiver run down his spine, not of fear, but of recognition, as though he is on the cusp of understanding something important.