Hu Jintao, tear down this, um, wall.

Today's Financial Times reported (p.6) on the existence of a "15,000 foot 'invisible wall' between Hong Kong and China, which aircraft are required to fly over by Chinese authorities." So, you cannot just fly into Hong Kong (1 country, 2 systems!) but must go up and around. The report goes on to note that "climbing up and down the wall costs airlines 100,000 tonnes in unnecessary fuel burn every year." The Chinese regime is far more bizarre than the West wants to admit (esp. the lady who's probably going to lose to Sarkozy in the French elections.) She [Segolene Royal] adores the Chinese justice system. (In today's NY Sun, Daniel Johnson argues that Sarkozy will be better for France's Anglo-American relations.) So, it's nothing new that the PRC is way-out there, but at least FT will report on such things. (In 2005 FT reported on mock-Tudor villages, you know, replicas of English country hamlets, being built and gobbled up by China's new urban elite. I'm not knocking that per se, just commending FT's good scoops.) So, back to the ol' "invisible wall" (I'm suddenly reminded of Clark Gable trying to divide his and Claudette Colbert's motel room in It Happened One Night) - a curious development for a state that does not see its borders as fixed, no?


The "invisible wall" around Hong Kong brings to mind that other wall, the one that's falling down to the north and supposedly cannot be seen from outer space. That wall was built to keep out the nomads, the rulers of the smooth space of the steppe, who were always menacing the ever so neatly striated Middle Kingdom. Smooth space, whether steppe or ocean, has always troubled the Chinese state. China's early 15th century ocean-adventures were short lived and quickly shut down just on the verge of success. Thus, the ocean around it, by the early 19th century, had become dominated by British trade. Hong Kong was the shining symbol of British maritime power in the Pacific. Is today's "invisible wall", a little slap at Hong Kong, (a little reminder of HK's (current!) colonial status) a vestige of the Chinese state's anxiety over Britain's 19th century striation of the smooth ocean and its own inability to do so? (I wonder if there's an air wall around Macau.)

A Theory of the Negroponte Switch-a-Roo

WHAT IF: John Negroponte, with 37 years of State Department experience, was nominated to the #2 spot at State this week in order to have a quick and easy replacement for the current secretary, when she is "Gerald Forded" into the Vice Presidency? Rumors of Rice becoming VP have been around since at least early '05, but now with Negroponte in position to succeed her, this looks "less unfeasible", as Bertie Wooster might say.

If this way-out scenario happens and Rice becomes VP, the GOP may wish to pull off an even more fantastical coup and perhaps Bush, using a bogus excuse, will also resign, thus robbing Hilary Clinton of the chance to be the first woman president and robbing Barack Obama of the chance to be the first black president. Also, if this were to happen soon, it would steal attention and thunder from the Democratic Congress.

Dada @ MoMA...The late Dada of Romare Bearden?

I recently saw the Dada show at the Museum of Modern Art. I was intrigued by the similarities of much of the "Dada" collage and photomontage to the work of Romare Bearden. Of course I'd been aware that Dadaists created photomontage and collage, forms at which Bearden became a (perhaps the) master. I did not know the similarities between him and them were so striking or were spread out across so many pieces. I am almost tempted to call Bearden a "late Dadaist". "But such titles don't mean anything!" Of course they don't, but this an interesting thought excercise. Besides, there are some interesting shared philosophical points (e.g., distrust of psychoanalysis).

Certainly there are important differences. Hannah Hoch is the Dada collagist whose work Bearden's early collage (late 60's) most closely (and strikingly) resembles in its arrangement of images and typical color schemes. Hoch was using collage to critique the government of the Weimar Republic (and capitalism in general). (How quaint critique of Weimar seems. ...Surely they did not realize how 'good' a deal it was at the time.) Bearden, on the other hand, was using collage to create a kalleidescope of African American life (street scenes in Harlem, rituals of life in the south, etc.). (Bearden's photomontage, though not expressly political, had more political import than his collage.)

And yet...despite the different political arrangements that Bearden and the Dadaists lived under, despite their (professed) anti-art stance which does not at all jive with Bearden's views, a direct influence is discernable.

George Grosz was included in the MoMA show. I had not ever thought of him as a Dadaist before. He was indeed associated with the movement for a time. (I certainly did not associate Grosz with Dada [and the cliche of its touting of nonsense] because of what he was later known to stand for: a more serious idea of political critique through fine art.) Anyhow, Grosz later came to America in the 1930's. Young Bearden, who had recently been an editorial cartoonist for the Baltimore Afro-American, was to study with him at the Art Students League. Two of Grosz's pieces included in the show look like they could've been definite influences on Bearden: Panorama and Victim of Society/Remember Uncle August, the Unhappy Inventor.

A quick final note: Bearden's only sculpture, Mauritius(1969) would not look completely out of place in the Dada show.

Newsday Spins for Spitzer - Welcome to the Year 1712

An archetypical war of interests which has replayed throughout modernity is and has been raging violently more than usual in the past few years in New York State.

Eliot Spitzer, real estate man, Attorney General, and almost inevitable Governor of the State of New York is, like something out of Highlander, leading the fight in the centuries old battle: It is the clash between landed wealth and liquid wealth.

Sure, Wall St. barons these days own lots of land. Sure, real estate companies are tied to markets. But at the end of the day, a representative of wealth that comes from actual land or "real estate" has been making a name for himself crusading against those that buy/sell/trade pieces of various entities or currencies. Maybe he will make markets more efficient and stop abuse. (In the process, he'll kill New York City's restaurants by ending the expense account.) Perhaps not. At any rate, I'm more concerned about the hundred million new parking spaces being created on Long Island than Dick Grasso's hundred million dollar pay package! (Real Estate interests should be able to make money too, but Grasso is not destroying the environment.)

Digression: In a round about way, we've come back to Britain, circa 1712, when the landed (Tory) interest opposed to financial (Whig) interest. The Whig interest, curiously enough was war-profiteering due to what many saw as an uneccesary war (The War of Spanish Succession). Today, the real estate interest in represented by the "liberal" Spitzer and his enemies, the financial interest, tend to be more conservative. Eventually, the new money needed prestige and titles and since estates weren't the medieval cash cows they once were, the old money needed, well, money - so they all intermarried and lived happily ever after drinking tea and playing croquet.

Now, as for the title of this post, back to I'm sorry I cannot resist Snoozeday. Page A21, July 21, 2006: "Spitzer Pulls in Money on LI". The summary reads "He raises almost $1M from businesses, individuals with ties to the home turf of opponent Suozzi".

This makes it sound like no-executive-experience-having Spitzer is somehow gaining popularity on Long Island while poor Tom Suozzi, the man who only rescued Nassau County from the jaws of oblivion, fails to the wayside. Newsday has a table in the middle of the page which lists 6 out of the ten names it names, all of whom gave between $22, 500 - $63,000 are in real estate. It does not mention that Spitzer is in real estate! If the money did not come from croneydom (or is it croniedom?) then it at least came from a common interest - and interest in glass office parks. A donor by the name of Gherardi is quoted as saying he believes Spitzer would be good for the building industry. Newsday, please can the far fetched sensationalism. Spitzer good for the parking lot industry? Never happen.

The last sentence of the propaganda piece says that "Roger Tilles, a member of the state Board of Regents from Great Neck, gave Spitzer $6,500".

"A member of the state Board of Regents"? Of course I don't doubt that fact, but it might have been more fair to note that Roger Tilles is the biggest real estate developer since William Penn.

Invading Iraq: A Move From the Cuban Missle Playbook?

Nevermind oil or Israel. If the United States were in Iraq solely for one or both of those reasons, perhaps gas would cost 50 cents a gallon and Israel wouldn't feel the need to flatten Lebanon at the moment. (I.e., the U.S. would've done a more careful job in Iraq-re-set-up, and by a long chain of events, Hamas would not have won the election last year. Yes, they are connected due to Shiia emboldenization, etc.) As for WMD... well, whatever. (What more can be said?)

What if the United States-in-Iraq situation from 2003-present is a botched attempt to replay the succesful ending of the Cuban Missle Crisis?

In the Cuban Missle Crisis, the Soviet Union put missles in Cuba because the U.S. had missles in Turkey. Tit-for-tat, and so forth. The Soviet Union, after the brinksmanship rigamarole of the crisis (the hotline messages, the blockcade, and so on) agreed to pull their missles from Cuba. The U.S. quietly agreed to pull its missles out of Turkey, but six months down the road, and because the missles were "obsolete", not because of a trade-off. But it was, of course, a trade-off.

Now, Osama bin Laden wants the U.S. to pull its troops out of Saudi Arabia. That is supposedly his main gripe and reason for jihad, or at least it is his main propaganda point. The U.S., eager to avoid another attack, might have been open to the idea of withdrawal, but only under face saving conditions. But first, it could not very well do so with Saddam Hussein in power. The troops were on the Arabian peninsula in the first place to protect Kuwait (and Saudi Arabia) from Saddam. Hypothetically, someone may have thought, somewhere from 9/01-3/03, that if Saddam could be removed, and a stable democratic government could be put in place in Iraq, then the U.S. could withdraw from Saudi Arabia.

Had it worked out right, this would have been a way of meeting bin Laden's demand to get the infidels away from the holy sites that did not look weak or done out of intimidation. Perhaps the U.S. would not have withdrawn completely from the middle east, but rather reduced troops and relocated them from Saudi Arabia to a friendly Iraq (to appease the Saudi royals and Kuwaities by staying in the neighborhood). I wonder if this would have come to pass (planned from the get go or not) had the post-invasion period not gone disasterously wrong.

A Minute on Turgenev (or is it Turgenieff?)

Yesterday afternoon I was flipping through Hemingway's Selected Letters looking for the letter where he parodies the French revolution. I couldn't find it and gave up. But I did come across a letter to Archibald MacLeish where Hemingway praises Turgenev and his story "The Rattle of the Wheels" from The Sportsman's Sketches.

This extraordinary book of short stories, narrated by a hunting nobleman who goes across Russia with his trusty servant, Ermolai, looking for sport and game and observing the land and the locals, deserves its long-held place among the classics. Aside from stunning evocations of the countryside and the psychological realism expected of 1852, it is also a masterpiece of the master/servant adventure. It's like a naturalistic interlude between Don Quixote/Sancho Panza and Bertie Wooster/Jeeves. I read it some time ago but did not recall the story Hemingway wrote about...probably because I did not read the whole thing! This story is one for all time...

I proceeded to look for it in my edition (Everyman's Library, 1992), which is translated as The Sportsman's Notebook. In here "The Rattle of the Wheels" is translated as "The Knocking". Immediately I thought that sounds too campy and/or too much like Poe but when I actually read the story I found "the knocking" to be a perfect and truly haunting phrase, more abstact and at the same time more evocative than "the rattle of the wheels".

Plot: The nobleman/narrator is on a hunting vacation deep in the middle of nowhere. He hires a local farmer to drive him in his "well-sprung carriage" to the nearest town, at night, to get more shot for the next day's hunt. For a variety of reasons, the nobleman/narrator does not let his faithful but ultimately unreliable servant go in his stead. The wealthy local farmer he hires to drive him seems like something of a simpleton (at first) but ultimately a good enough fellow. They drive on a good road under the moonlight across beautiful wetlands and meadows. The scene is implicitly and explicitly described on bordering on the enchanted.

Then they hear the knocking!, a the slamming of metal in the distance which breaks the spell.

I will not elaborate on the plot further except to say that it is all handled perfectly. It is truly terrifying high drama, deflated with a dash of humor at just the right time to be realistic and to release the tension of the atmosphere. The story ends up having quite fascinating epistemological themes but the question of reading and interpretation is ultimately the main point. It also has class themes worth giving a whirl around the mind (the mystique of the aristocracy / the naivete of the aristocracy / the trustworthiness of servants, etc etc).

I'm still running the reel of the story through my mind the next day. It's probably the best story in a collection of very fine ones and one of the most thrilling I ever read. "The knocking" chasing the heroes in the moonlight turned out to be bandits but it can represent any doom seen (or heard) approaching and narrowly missed, literal or metaphorical. The fright of its approach and relief of its passing are rendered in just the right key. Today I tip my hat to the master, however his name is spelled.

The Digital Clock and the Welfare Bill

Though invented in 1956, it took time for the digital clock to be become a ubiquitous piece of home and office furnishing and thus it took time for it to change the way time was conceived. Time, as Thomas Mann has the character Hans Castorp note in his 1924 novel The Magic Mountain, is measured by space: the way space is broken up on a clock, watch (or sundial) tell the viewer what time it is. When time was measured by space, it was more controllable and perhaps less menacing. Perhaps, it was even considered a little arbitrary (with all the physical labor - the winding of watches) and therefore needed not to be invested with undue power.

The digital clock, perhaps, is to blame for some of the current attitudes toward time and for the Welfare Bill of 1996. When time is separated from space and becomes nothing but ominous red numbers on an alarm clock or black numbers menacingly glaring out of a dashboard, it has become a metaphor of sorts. At first the spaces were collapsed. Now, time is no longer earthbound. On the newest cell phones, the time on the phone is kept accurate by a satellite. (Or so I've heard. My ancient Samsung phone dates from 2004.)

With time no longer controlled by say, a railroad conductor with a pocket watch, it has become something to worship. Time, for the most part, (and especially in those most important clocks: alarm and cell phone) has entered the microscopic regions of electronics and also flies through the darkness of outer space. Time, to a certain extent, has become a ghost; something terrible and invisible.

Therefore, since the advent of the digital clock, a neo-Puritanical time-worship has taken over. Recreation is regarded with more and more suspicion by the get-ahead classes. Work weeks have gotten longer for white collar employees. Productively trying to stay ahead of the
time-ghost is the order of the day. (Why the middling classes were the first to intuit something had changed, I cannot explain.) From a certain point of view this is not necessarily a bad thing. There had to be some sort of correlation between the old three martini lunch and the lethargic movement of capital in the mid-twentieth century. Now that there is a quick lunch or no lunch, money moves faster and more of it is made (sometimes).

But I think there may have been a "moralistic" outcome to the digitization of time: the Welfare Bill of 1996, which overhauled the welfare system. Certainly welfare was imperfect and corrupt, but the heavy rumbling over it in the early 1990s had to come from somewhere else. It was imperfect and corrupt in the 1970s also. Maybe it came from a new fear of time and a tendency to regard those who did not use it productively with suspicion. The Welfare Bill led to the resignations of high-level Department of Health and Human Services functionaries Peter Edelman, Mary Jo Bane and Wendell Primus (see The Washington Post, 9/17/96). They quit because they believed that the bill was going to be hard on the poor. They quit because they believed their liberal convictions were being compromised. But perhaps they also quit becaused they sensed something else afoot. Who knows, I am idly speculating.

I am certainly not advocating laziness, welfare, wasting time, or three martini lunches. I am simply pointing out that the contemporary obsession with productivity might just becoming from a silly place, from a microchip that makes people forget that those blockish numbers are "metaphor" for a clock with hands which is a "metaphor" for a sundial which is a "metaphor" for the movement of the earth around the sun.

The writers of the 1930s tune "Five O'Clock Whistle" (Gannon, Myron, and Irwin) might have figured this out as regards the old factory whistle. The last verse is as follows:

"You ought to hear what my mommy said / When papa came home and sneaked into bed /And told her he worked till half past two / Cause the five o'clock whistle never blew."

Ha!

(The difference between a digital clock and a factory whistle is that most people did not own several factory whistles. The same goes for the church bell. And besides, everyone knew there was a physical bell-ringer, probably watching a sundial, then ringing the bell.)

As for "Five O'Clock Whistle", I prefer the Don Redman arrangement for Count Basie and His Orchestra, recorded November 19, 1940.