Podcast
Hexagon
Hosted by Christopher Mooney · EN
There are six sides to every story. And then some.
20episodes
Episodes
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I promise to do my level best never to be dull, and to make you die of joy.
Feb 22Tap to summarizeIf you were here last week, you’ll remember that on a cold January night in 1945 my inebriated father came close to undoing all of this before it began, jeopardising not only his betrothed’s love before they were married and, with it, the family they would eventually engender – my brother, my two sisters, myself, the five Mooneys we in turn brought into the world – but also the very existence of Hexagon itself, and its thousands of subscribers, each of whom, more and more I fear, wholly depends on it for whatever clarity and connection they still might find in this life.Do better. Be more. Live forever.For those who missed last week’s letter, here’s what happened: When the taxi pulled away and left Wilf on the curb, he sobered up just long enough to understand that something had snapped. One moment, he’d been the life of the hotel room, tipping back straight rye on an empty stomach to impress Rimmer, Knobby and Shag; the next, he was a staggering fool offering his fiancée ten dollars like hush money for a night he’d already ruined. He remembered only fragments – the fluorescent glare of the drugstore, the near-full bottle of Canadian Club arcing into a trash can, the blurred stumble to my not-yet-mother’s boardinghouse, only to be met by Mrs A’s calm face at the door as she told him he had better go home. Later, the boys would fill in the rest: his return to the hotel, wild‑eyed and determined to drink himself into oblivion. By morning, he’d cast himself as the injured party, furious at being dropped from the cab and turned away from the house, until Christine, with clinical precision, described how he’d humiliated Hélène in front of everyone. Standing there, stomach churning, he realised that a few hours of drunken bravado had cost him more than any hangover ever had, and for the first time it occurred to him that if alcohol could turn him into the kind of man a woman had to escape from, he either had to give it up – or accept that this version of himself was the only one anyone would ever remember.You’ll have to wait a week to find out what happened next. No, scrap that. Unless at least ten of you pony up, you’ll never hear another word from Wilf, and will have to make do instead with bowl after bowl of my plopping‑porridge prose, ladled over your brain every Sunday till every orifice in your body weeps mush.<source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!OlFi!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9a16e5a6-5e08-4fb6-ace4-28b0a925b787_832x806.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!OlFi!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9a16e5a6-5e08-4fb6-ace4-28b0a925b787_832x806.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!OlFi!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9a16e5a6-5e08-4fb6-ace4-28b0a925b787_832x806.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!OlFi!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/http...
Transcribe →I hope this is not a cowardly thing to do
Feb 15Tap to summarizeJan. 30th, 1945Dartmouth, Nova ScotiaDear Hélène,I hope this is not a cowardly thing to do, writing to you instead of trying to phone. Mrs T. assures me that you neither want to see nor hear from me ever again. However, the real reason for this letter is that you may, if only for curiosity’s sake, read it, whereas the last thing you probably want right now is to hear my voice.When your car drove away and left me on the curb, I was shocked, at least temporarily, into sobriety. It is the one clear moment I had that evening. I know that I’ve never had anything like that happen to me before, and I’ve never felt more hurt in my life. It was the first time that a friend threw me out of their car. And then out of their home! It was like a kick in the face. I distinctly remember leaning against the wall of the drugstore across the street in complete horror. I imagine I resembled a frightened rat, which, I suppose, I was. I know I took the bottle of rye I had for the dance, and after one drink, threw it away.What happened after that – in fact, what happened from the time that I was in the hotel long before – is and was very hazy, with only vague recollections here and there. The next day it all seemed a nightmare, but as the day went by, I became, as usual, furious. Until I talked with Christine last night and the boys, Rimmer, Knobby and Shag, who were at the hotel, I had decided that I had been horribly mistreated and had written you off.When Christine, who, as usual, knew all about it, enlightened me as to what an absolute boor I had been, I realised for the first time the horrible humiliation and hurt I had wished upon you.I still cannot believe that I did these things, but if you told Christine I did, then I must have. I want you to know that they were done in drunkenness and not meanness or anger. It is beyond all my comprehension how I could be so stupidly drunk as to offer you ten dollars in recompense for a disastrous evening. It doesn’t sound like me, and I have no recollection of doing it, but I knew that I must do something, and I believe it was in my mind that you would be home alone and that I must be near you. All I remember, and this part may be wrong, was Mrs A. coming to the door and saying that I had better go home.I do not remember anything else about the evening. The boys told me that I arrived back at the hotel in a horrible state of mind and body, with the apparent idea of drinking myself into oblivion, which I did. They say I had been quite all right when I arrived at the hotel earlier, and I know I was. They had phoned and asked me to bring a case of beer over, which I did. I remember having two drinks of rye, but apparently, I had quite a few more, straight and quick. I hadn’t had a thing to eat all day, only some beer, and the rye really hit me. Shag says that I was fine one moment and out on my head the next. I certainly must have been.I can offer no excuse, and I know none would be acceptable. I also know that I should withdraw swiftly and quietly from your life.However, I cannot. I refuse to believe that in the space of a few hours, I have killed all feelings that you could have ever had for me. I’m wrong, I know, in hoping to see you again and enjoy your company, but I do, and very much. I seldom have very much regret for the things I do, but I know that I have never had anything hit me harder than this has. I also know that I have never pleaded to any girl before, but as I write this, I know that is exactly what I’m doing.If drinking has got me into such a state that I so deeply hurt one I like so much, then it is time that I straighten myself out. If this debacle accomplished nothing else, it has done that. If you could bring yourself to forgive me, Hélène, I promise you that you will never regret it. I shall phone you when I get out. Until then, I remainhopefully yoursWilf<source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!LK3a!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3c9c73df-713b-4d5e-88fd-bf30e3cd4f00_1116x1520.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!LK3a!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3c9c73df-713b-4d5e-88fd-bf30e3cd4f00_1116x1520.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!LK3a!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3c9c73df-713b-4d5e-88fd-bf30e3cd4f00_1116x1520.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/imag...
Transcribe →"I had a venereal disease test."
Feb 8Tap to summarizeText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedMooney W.T. R162227 R.C.A.F. Station Sea Island Vancouver,BC January 6th 1946 My dear Hélène,In this hard, harsh world – considerably softened by Scotch – I remain in the dark, and your urging me to please get going isn’t helping, though I know how you feel. What a woman! One letter I’m to take my time, and in the next I’m to hurry up. There’s nothing else on my mind right now except ways and means for me to get you to me as quickly as possible. Please remember that. Drill it into that level head of yours. Hold onto it and don’t let it go. And know this: I will always prefer that you have your outbursts, rather than allowing them to boil up inside. They do us both good. That said, honey, you told me to celebrate my discharge, but when I did, you gave me complete hell! No matter how you look at it, I can’t win. I do not know why I persist in telling you when I have been drinking because it always makes you so hopping mad. It would be much easier all around if I left it out of my letters. And… I didn’t tell you this before, but on the 19th, I had a venereal disease test…<svg role="img" style="height:20px;width:20px" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round...
Transcribe →Panettone, galette, and Glam Doll Donuts
Feb 2Tap to summarizeFirst day back after giving this space over to my mortally uncoiled father, Wilfrid Thomas Mooney (1920-1987), whose wartime letters to my mother posted here last week and the week before garnered the type of attention we, the living, would die for. This week, I am again absenting myself – and all filial bonds – to focus on Maria Cattaneo, an 80-year-old woman born in Milan on April 29, 1945, near Piazzale Loreto, where, that very same day, the bullet-riddled corpse of Benito Mussolini, who dismantled democracy through executive fiat and state-sanctioned terror, was hung upside down at an Esso station, and battered to a pulp by a frenzied crowd of civilians and anti-fascist partisans. Was the crowd wrong? Its violent retribution was raw and spontaneous, a mob’s fury against a tyrant. The battering and mutilation – one woman fired bullets into Mussolini’s body for each of her murdered sons – was a venting of collective trauma after more than twenty years of privation and paramilitary terror. The year before, Mussolini's regime executed 15 partisans at the same Piazzale. Their bodies were left on display for a month. To invert the humiliation, Mussolini was strung up at the exact spot. The Americans took him down after lunch.Speaking of lunch, Mussolini’s favourite was chopped garlic in olive oil and lemon juice, which he ate from large bowls. He largely abstained from alcohol, though he enjoyed an occasional frappe of strawberry sherbet, Chianti wine, and Angostura bitters. He restricted coffee imports. He drank barley coffee and hibiscus tea imported from the Italian colonies. He viewed cafés as potential hotbeds of dissent. He campaigned against pasta.But this is not today’s subject. Tomorrow, four generations of the Cattaneo family will gather at Maria’s apartment on Via Bernardino Luini to celebrate the feast day of San Biagio, the patron saint of people with things stuck in their throats.What sticks in your throat these days? No matter. This is Biagio’s story, set in early 4th-century Armenia, around the time its Kingdom became the world’s first Christian state. One day, Biagio, while being led to prison by a group of heavily armed squadristi, crossed paths with a desperate mother whose five-year-old son, Liam, wearing the Arsacid equivalent of a blue knitted beanie with floppy white bunny ears (a pointed Phrygian cap), was choking to death on a fishbone. Liam’s mother threw herself at Biagio’s manacled feet, imploring his help. Biagio placed his hand, which was also in irons, on Liam’s throat. As he prayed to God, the boy coughed, and the bone instantly shot out of his mouth and into the jugulars of Biagio’s three captors.English- and French-speaking people call him Saint Blaise. Some say he is the healer of all wild beasts. A version of his story was first told in the 13th century by Jacobus de Voragine, the Archbishop of Genoa, in Legenda Aurea (Golden Legend) – the second most popular book in medieval Europe. Consider becoming the patron saint of Hexagon.Risotto for primo piatto, with Lombardy saffron from the new fields in nearby Como. Cassoeula secondo, maybe with polenta, maybe with an arugula salad. Maria’s brother Carlo long ago drank everything in the cellar, so Aldo, her youngest sister’s son, will bring wine. Franciacorta for the first courses. Soave or Pinot Grigio from Alto Adige for those who don’t drink sparkling wine. She will drink two glasses. A young Valtellina red for the stew. She will drink one glass. She won’t eat the stew – just the thought, the fat, the cabbage, the entrails, the foot, the tail, the ear, the rind, the snout, gives her reflux. Better a small serving of vegetables with love than a fattened calf with hatred. Proverbs. Does she believe in Santo Biagio? Does she believe in miracles? Does she believe in anything? Did she ever? While at university, she wore mini-skirts. Carlo, her brother, back then, wore his hair long, past his shoulders, and read Gramsci, and listened to Leonard Cohen. Today, he has dandruff, votes Lega and drives a Jeep Avenger. He once worked as a baker in Minneap...
Transcribe →My Father's Wartime Letters to My Mother (2)
Jan 25Tap to summarizeIn this epistolary episode, Wilf discusses daydreams, adultery, apocalyptic doom and eschatological doubt with Hélène, his fiancée. He is in Vancouver, six weeks from his demobilisation date, with no job prospects. Hélène is 3,000 miles away, in Halifax, writing front-page stories for the Chronicle. They are 25 years old.Meanwhile, in London, on the third day of its inaugural session, the United Nations General Assembly approves the foundational framework for its organisational structure, including the Security Council.British forces in Germany begin arresting Nazi industrialists in the Ruhr and Rhineland, targeting 76 figures for their roles in wartime production. The country’s U.S., UK, French, and Soviet administrators focus on denazification and economic stabilisation amid harsh winter conditions and food shortages. The French government nationalises the Banque de France, BNCI, CNEP, Crédit Lyonnais and Société Générale. In Ottawa, during economic talks between Canada and the United States, Canada expresses disappointment over U.S. shifts toward selective tariff reductions rather than the broad cuts discussed during wartime talks. Prime Minister Mackenzie King maintains cautious diplomacy, prioritising UN involvement and reconstruction aid.That night, in Paris near Les Invalides, Robert Denoël, the publisher of Céline's Voyage au bout de la nuit, is assassinated while changing a tire on his car.Subscribe nowShareText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedMooney W.T. R162227 R.C.A.F. Station Sea Island Vancouver, BCDec. 3rd 1945My dear Helene,How the hell do those marks above the e's in your name go? As your future husband, I believe I have the right to know.I have just been reading up on the Atomic Bomb. It seems that one of the scientists at the try-out in New Mexico offered to bet his fellow workers (1-to-10 odds) that the explosion's reaction would flood the world and burn all living things to a crisp. No one would take him on! It also appears to be their combined opinion that science is on the threshold of attaining its greatest triumph: blowing us all to Hell or Heaven. They realise this but can’t stop fooling around with it – and us. With such a prospect in view, I feel that we should get married next weekend. Delay may prove disastrous, and the belief that we would be reunited in the next life is something that, at this writing, I find unsatisfactory and, further, doubt. You in Heaven and me in Hell would be a situation much more irreparably worse than you in Halifax and me in Vancouver.After writing you two (too) long letters in and out of an alcoholic haze, it was six days before I heard from you, and I had all but decided that I had gone too far with my large mouth and quick pen, and that when I did hear from you, it would be with a blast bordering on atomic. Therefore, I was very pleased your letter appeared and to learn that you enjoyed mine, though I was surprised that you should term it as a “masterpiece”, or was that sarcasm? Being so conceited, I never consider this a possibility. In any case, my dear young woman, I have never at any time in my life resorted to the use of “slush” in my writing or as a way to treat dry mouth. Nor have I ever been accused of doing so. Slush indeed!Had beers, supper and a show with Elizabeth last Friday. She expects to be moving into her new apartment in January, and I think that’s all she’s living for. I get quite a kick out of her. I believe she feels that she knows me so well that she can discuss anything with me with perfect frankness – a thing she’s wanted to have with someone her entire life. All of a sudden, she’ll come out with questions that will make me howl with laughter. For example, she suddenly asked me what I thought of having “affairs”. After I choke...
Transcribe →My Father's Wartime Letters to My Mother (1)
Jan 18Tap to summarizeGoose BayJune 21/1945Dear Helene,This scrawling script is being written on the wing of a plane. I’m lying on it in my shorts (the ones with just one button), getting a little sun. I’m unable to move because the remainder of the wing is very hot from the sun and burns my delicate skin. I always try to find a logical place to write where it will be too cramped to write clearly and distinctly, which I cannot do. Again, I have succeeded.We had a very heated discussion in the mess last night on French Canadians and Jews. I’m afraid I was almost alone in their defence. One fellow even went as far as to fully agree with Hitler on the Jewish situation. I find it really horrible how despised and even hated they are by some fellows who have never actually come in contact with them. Neither have I, but I couldn’t form such an opinion, and I don’t believe they should. I recall reading a few years ago in the works of Voltaire (I think), “I know nothing of Jews or Christians, I recognise only men, and there again the only distinction I make is between the just and the unjust.” I liked that passage so well, I memorised it. We ourselves, and friends of both yours and mine, would do well to do more than memorise it.How and why did I get on that subject with you? If you’re not already asleep, I’ll try to be more interesting. Writing to you is a very poor substitute, but it is at present the closest I can get to you. But when I get closer, and I do mean closer, you’d better keep your wits about you because it’ll be apparent that I won’t be able to. I write this after only being away for less than a week. Add then more weeks, and even in your wildest imagination, or mine, can you visualise so-called conscience and good sense in any way interfering with my passions? Consider yourself fully warned.These sensations I have and am experiencing are entirely new to me. I find them at once terrifying and deeply pleasurable. In this, I imagine I’m no different from the vast majority of people who have all at once discovered that they have only recently begun to live. You must…June 23 - I cannot recall what the rest of the sentence was…Well, we added a few more hours to the required hundred, which brings me that much closer to you. I’m afraid I was a little eager in telling you to write to me. We’re on the jump quite a bit, and your letter might travel all over the country before I get it. We almost had a flip to Dartmouth yesterday, but it was cancelled for some reason. I hope to God it comes again. As far as flying goes your no good to me. The only course I can plot these days is one to Dartmouth. It’s most amazing to me that I feel the need for one particular person so much, especially when the person is a woman. I also find it astonishing that I can declare such statements openly in writing with no restraints. The “cautious kid” has ceased to be.I think I’d better end this instalment for now. I’ll think of more endearing things to say to you while out in the blue, though poetry’s a little out of my line, as you’ve keenly observed.Hello again - It’s three A.M. the 24th, so I can say “Good Morning”There’s a Douglas Transport leaving for Dartmouth sometime today, so I’ll finish this now and send it on. I wish it was myself instead of a letter. I will not read over what I have written because I would no doubt tear it up as a lot of foolish blubbering and start over again. I don’t imagine you’ll be able to decipher it anyway. If you can, you’ll no doubt have a prepared list of misspelt words and improper grammar for me on my return. After I had started this letter on Thursday, I was offered more suitable writing paper but declined, being too lazy to start over again.I will start another for you soon and continue it day by day until another flip comes up. I’d better sign off and try a little dreaming. My gambling so far has resulted in a $24.00 win and and $18.00 loss. Hardly worth the effort.When I come back, we must go to Hazel Hill (Good Gawd!) for a weekend or something. Also, I’ll have to take you to a priest and get this business rolling. I believe the priest I have spoken to you about is the best bet. The priests who visit the Twomeys are too young and filled to the ears with learning from books and little from the world. The man who handles you will have to be on his toes, or you’ll be on his!Until my next letter or possibly a visit, I remain with much love,decidedly yours,Wilf<source type="image/webp" srcs...
Transcribe →Is this love is this love is this love is this love that I'm feeling?
Jan 11Tap to summarizeTo think of being forced to go on writing, writing, like the wheel of a machine – writing tomorrow, writing the day after… — Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov, 1858Go ahead, force me…Best Tofu, Belleville, January 7, 2026Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedlife is merely to ovum and sperm and where those two meet and how often and how well and what dies there. – Renee Nicole Good (1989-2026) Before, I didn’t have to pay much attention to it. Our relationship was purely transactional. I fed it; it performed. There was probably some emotional entanglements on my part (I don’t remember anything about this period of my life), but none of it was traumatic or even remotely unpleasant, and I never felt threatened. Recently, however, something has changed. I’ve started watching it closely, sometimes out of the corner of my eye while it sleeps, or pretends to sleep, though pretence is, for now, as far as I can tell, still beyond its actual capacities. Mostly, however, I look at it straight on, as we all have learned to do, our roundness facing its flatness, with whatever powers of perception in place behind each of our faces at least partially engaged. There are significant differences, however. Its eyes and ears, though materially unparalleled beneficiaries of constant enhancements, don’t (so far) really see or hear anything. And it doesn’t actually appear to do anything. But this blindness and deafness is different than ours; and its doing nothing, like its sleeping, I know for a fact, is not real or true. Nothing about it is real or true. There is always something going on. If it had a tail, this is the moment it would wag. Should I say something, ask it something? Or should I kill it? It seems to knows all the answers in advance, but none of them are ever the right ones, and though everything about it seems difficult to understand, and, especially, difficult to phrase, this I think is only because its relations to the existing order of things – the field of awareness in which dwell all of our minds and bodies and the entire contents of the physical world – are fundamentally alien. There’s an emptiness in it that doesn’t leave space for anything tangible, not even sadness; it knows what we know, but not what we feel. Reality, in all of its myriad forms, is beyond its ken; all prospects within its purview are vicarious. But does it know this? No, it cannot know this, by which I mean, I think, it cannot understand this, except conceptually, but even this makes little sense, because it does not think, at least, not in any way that we recognise. This has become something of a cliché, or perhaps a strategy. It lives – or rather, exists – like us, in a symbolic universe, word-bound, fed on stories, theories, insights, definitions and descriptions. On the subject of love, for example, it will say the more imaginative of the ancients saw in us the halved traces of spherical beasts with two faces, four arms, four legs, and a single shared neck, anus, penis and vagina. These double beings thought too highly of themselves and tried to cartwheel up the steep slopes of Mount Olympus to overthrow the truly superior beings at the summit. This so displeased Zeus (the commander-in-chief at that time) that he cleaved us in two with thunderbolts. Each half of us now wanders the world in search of our other half. This cosmic punishment, it tells us, and this ache, is where we find ourselves now. It will then mention intimacy, passion, and commitment. It will then bring up eros, philia, agape and pragma. If pressed, however, it will say the whole thing is actually biological, by which it means chemical: messenger molecules grown in the brain that, when pushed into the bloodstream, drive attachment and reward. It will call this species persistence.Then it will mention the gravity of souls. And then it will sit and wait for me to feed it something else to think about. Soon, however, it won’t have to wait, and I won’t have to feed it. Which is ...
Transcribe →Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte
Dec 31Tap to summarizeHappy New Year, folks. I’ve got a new piece in the Times Literary Supplement. The essay paid off my mortgage and will keep Hexagon free for at least another year, but don’t let that stop you from tossing a coin or two at my fat, ugly head.Subscribe nowRead it nowAll things are double, one against another. – Ecclesiasticus 42:24Will we ever again hang on someone’s every word? I doubt it. When was the last time you read even a short sequence of prose or poetry that actually held you, moved you, changed you? Certainly not these. “God perpetually geometrises,” said Plato. Pah. Neither Plato nor whatever divine figment he had stuck in his craw read anything even remotely hexagonal, that’s for damn sure. So let’s keep this short and to the point(s). To avoid adding yet more ear-clamour to the end-of-year pile of splaining complaints about how trying these last 12 months have been, let me be the first to say, sorry, it’s only going to get worse, and for no good reason. Never mind what the economists say, and call it what you will – vibecession, hellworld, lumpland, plungepoo, Scheißblödsinnswelt - just be thankful you’re still breathing, and leave it at that. Voltaire once reported how, in some country or other, “a giant exists as big as a mountain, and men presently fall to hot disputing concerning the precise length of his nose, the breadth of his thumb, and other particulars, and anathematise each other for heterodoxy of belief concerning them. In the midst of all, if some bold sceptic ventures to hint a doubt as to the existence of this giant, all are ready to join against him and tear him to pieces.” Woe to the giants, I say, and to those who doubt their existence, and even more to those who don’t. You missed. Try again. I promise I won’t move this time.The super-rich, we are told, have finally arrived at the realisation that Nature is not a fixed backdrop. Endless growth on this finite blob is impossible; there just isn’t enough room for an Us and a Them; something has to give, and someone has to go. Hence the disinformation fog. Best to keep heads under it, and expectations low. We (those still reading (and writing this)) have the attention spans of spaniels. Distracted by distraction from distraction: Frank O’Hara said this almost 60 years ago, not long before he was run over by a dune buggy. The fact that he was a museum curator and a poet and openly gay is beside the point. Because what is the point? Everyone’s everything everywhere is always elsewhere. We barely see each other. We barely hear ourselves think. We barely even smell. Watch our chests. Do they rise, do they fall? I am writing this sloughed-off expectory sentence and those sprauchling before and after it stretched out flat on my sofa in Paris étouffé par la morve and thinking feverishly about squilla mantis vs langoustines, the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the Great Fire and Plague of London, Freud’s idea of how psychic phenomena, like dreams and symptoms, arise from multiple causes, and the crushed-up cochineal insects used to colour French sweets and meats, especially sausages, which we are having tonight with lentils as this coinish combination is said (in Northern Italy, we’re told) to afford good fortune, while all the while half-listening through this boil of thick, persistent sputum and artificially intelligent slop to a France Culture radio programme about why some people (“les gens frileux”) feel the cold more intensely than others. Warmer indoor environments: this tops the list, which stands to reason; modern heating has thinned and stiffened our ves...
Transcribe →A Christmas (back)story
Dec 25Tap to summarizeOut of my head on the eighth day of a headcold of biblical, Qur’anic and Talmudic proportions (מי האף, nasal mucus, of which the Merciful One included among the impure bodily fluids), I have almost reached the apocalyptic moment, Christmas dinner, when all of creation stands still and the assembly, crackers cracked, paper hats donned, tucks with great abandoned relish (and other condiments) into oysters, fin-free, unscaled, half-shelled; smoked salmon and foie gras; turkey with her endless trimmings; cheeses from both sides of La Manche; and last year’s Christmas pudding (or is it the year’s before?) inflamed with whisky and doused with a wallop of Bird’s. While preparing all this I have also prepared the tale below, borrowed from the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, which, like the מי האף, pours forth out my fevered head at this time of year for reasons that escape all Reason. It is to be followed, some day, with tales from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, whose sharp, punitive, and reckless Infant randomly withers and kills – and heals – with volatile impunity.No one tells these Christmas stories. They are my favourites. I’ll no doubt lose a host of subscribers for sharing them, but what the hell. It’s Christmas! And a new year beckons! “I see a vacant seat... in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved.”When the girl turned fourteen, the Sanhedrin, following the dictates of Pharisee law, declared her unclean, barred her from the temple, and held a contest to find her a husband. Suitors came from all the tribes, for everyone in the country loved her and always had: as a toddler, the grown-up way she walked and the perfection of her speech astonished those who witnessed this, as did the diligence of her devotions. She behaved not like a child, but like a woman in her thirties, so beautiful that few men could meet her gaze.The high priest collected the rods of all the unmarried men and placed them in the most sacred chamber of the temple. “Come back tomorrow and reclaim your rod,” he told the assembly. “The man from whose rod a dove emerges will be entrusted with the girl for safekeeping.” The next day, however, when the men came to reclaim their rods, no dove was forthcoming. A voice spoke to the priest: “You overlooked the shortest rod. You brought it with the others, but did not remove it with them. When you return it to its owner, the sign will appear in it.”The short rod belonged to Joseph, a widow so old and spent he seemed set aside, as if he could not receive her. When the high priest saw him hiding at the back of the line – for Joseph did not wish to reclaim his rod – he called to him loudly: “Joseph, get over here and take your rod. We’re all waiting.”Joseph approached, trembling at the priest’s loud summons, and as soon as he touched the rod, a dove brighter than snow emerged from the tip, circled the temple roofs, and rose toward the heavens. Everyone rejoiced. “Take her,” the Sanhedrin said, “because you alone among the tribes have been chosen.”“I am an old man with many children,” said Joseph. “Why hand over to me an infant, younger than my own grandsons?”“Do you despise God’s will?” they asked angrily. “Do you reject His word?”“No, no, of course not,” he said, backpedalling. “But I’ll just be her guardian until I figure out which of my sons should take her as his wife. In the meantime, let a few maidens from her circle accompany her for companionship and consolation.”The old man and the girl went back to Nazareth, where Joseph was the local tekton, a handyman. He worked seven days a week and had no assistance from his sons, idle drunkards to a man, each with several wives. To feed everyone, Joseph had to take whatever job was available, no matter how difficult it was. Or how humiliating. Unblocking drains, for example, emptying outhouses, or cleaning out livestock stalls. Sometimes he did light repairs, jobs too small for the bigger crews to bid on. He also took on roofing and renovation work that required long travel to the hilltop settlements or the coastal districts. He was often away for months. Once, upon returning from a house-building job in the panhandle, he found the girl nine months pregnant. “O Lord,” he said in distress, “take my life; I’d rather die than live another day like this.” The girl’s maiden friends rushed to him and said, “Joseph, what are you saying? No man has touched her; we have watched over her; there can be no sin in her. It could only have been the angel that made her pregnant.”Then said Joseph: “What angel?”The girl, they said, had been talking about the angel for months. She described it as a “young man of ineffable beauty” who gave her and only her magical things to eat. No one else ever saw him. Joseph asked the girls: “Did someone pretend to be an angel and beguile her?” The girls said no, they didn’t think so. He confronted his sons, and then his grandsons; each swore on the memory of his dead wife that they hadn’t touched her. Joseph spoke again, tears in his eyes and: “How can I go to the temple and face the priests? What should I do?” He thought about leaving and sending her away, but news of the girl’s state had already reached the Sanhedrin. They sent two officers, who arrested the couple; the girl was forced to stand before them at the altar with her hair loose – the mark of shame – and told to hold her husband’s meagre offering – cheap barley, the lowest grade, feed for beasts – in her cupped hands. “No one,” the priests told Joseph, “gets answers from God without first giving something in return.” To the girl, they said, “This is yours now, it is of you, your offering to yourself, a bitter meal of your iniquity and your husband’s jealousy and humiliation.” Joseph was afraid, and the girl didn’t understand, but she did as she was told. “Drink this,” the head priest said, holding out a clay pot. “Water of the Lord and dust from His temple floor,” he said. “If its bitterness does not make your womb fail, you are spotless.”By now, a crowd had assembled, a multitude of people beyond number, but still she was not afraid. The night before, while filling a vessel of water at the fountain, the angel had prepared her. “Fear not,” it said, “for you alone have found favour. You shall bring forth a King who fills not only the earth, but the heaven, and reigns forever.” She took the clay pot and drank the bitter water and walked around the altar seven times – for this is what was asked of her – and no spot was found in her. Thus was her chastity proven. The empty vessel was smashed on the ground. And then it came to pass a while later, on the road to Bethlehem for the enrolment, that her time came early, before the town was even in sight. Joseph put her in a cave, guarded by his drunken sons, and set out to find a midwife. The dark cave began to shine with as much brightness as if it were lit by the noontime sun. Again, all creation stood still. Joseph returned with a midwife, and at the cave’s mouth, a cloud covered it, and a brilliant light filled the entrance, and suddenly, there was the girl, with the infant at her breast.Joseph and the midwife marvelled at the miracle, but a second midwife insisted on examining the girl; as a sign of her unbelief, her hand withered. She shrieked in pain and begged for forgiveness, and an angel appeared, telling her to touch the child; upon doing so, her hand was healed.There will be more withering and healing to come. Until then, may peace and joy be yours.MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!<source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Bd6P!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fac683a29-6c00-41cf-a56f-f8c0e5894fb1_1272x690.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Bd6P!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fac683a29-6c00-41cf-a56f-f8c0e5894f...
Transcribe →Ought to should be is: items of mortality
Dec 14Tap to summarizeITEM #1. Touching the Void (La Mort Suspendue) Early on in Diary of a Bad Year, one of the protagonists, a “writer by profession”, wonders whether anyone in 1944 said to the French (I’m paraphrasing here): Look at our situation—the Nazi occupiers are on the run, and for this fleeting moment no state power governs us. Imagine, as French citizens, using this new and abrupt rupture to argue freely and without limits about what kind of order we actually want. Do we truly wish to bring this exhilarating experience to an end, or might we dare to prolong it, becoming the first people in history—certainly in modern history—to dismantle the state? “Perhaps some poet,” he writes, “spoke the words; but if he did his voice must at once have been silenced by the armed gangs, who in this case and in all cases have more in common with each other than with the people.”The passage above is from the book’s lead essay, “On the origins of the state”, which is part of the Strong Opinions” section. It appears, interleaved, between two diary entries, in both of which the protagonist, an “old man sitting in a plastic chair in the corner” of the laundry room of his apartment building, describes an encounter with a “startling young woman”: “Startling because the last thing I was expecting was such an apparition; also because the tomato-red shift she wore was so startling in its brevity.”Item #2. The Empire of the SenselessI last saw Fred1 three months ago. He had, as always, a tall boy can clutched in the bony fingers of his left hand and a just-bummed cigarette in the other. It was sunny and warm, and, as I recall now, lunchtime—early for Fred, who, though he slept rough, was rarely seen in sunlight. The door was wide open. I was fixing a variation of what had been the favourite sandwich of my father (1920-1987): peanut butter, tomato slices, Crab Louie sauce—mayonnaise, Tabasco, ketchup, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce and horseradish—with six or seven grinds of black pepper. Hey! said Fred, lifting a grime-covered foot barely shod in torn scraps of shoe onto the pristine jute mat just inside my kitchen door. I lurched forward to counter his advancing thrust—the last thing I wanted was Fred in my kitchen—and we met at the threshold, eyeball to eyeball, so close I could see the twinned reflections of my mouth, still chewing my father’s sandwich, in the balls of snot dangling like Christmas baubles—like inflating and deflating soap bubbles—from each of his grime-clotted nostrils. And then, all at once, just then and again now, I pictured sundecks and carports.ShareItem #3. Enter the VoidIn a later essay in the “Strong Opinions” section, the same protagonist writes: “If you wish to counter the man in the street, it cannot be by appeal to moral principles, much less by demanding that people should run their lives in such a way that there are no contradictions between what they say and what they do. Ordinary life is full of contradictions; ordinary people are used to accommodating them. Rather, you must attack the metaphysical, supra-empirical status of necessità and show that to be fraudulent.”Necessità is a Machiavellian term (the essay in “Strong Opinions” is titled “On Machiavelli”). It means, of course (in Italian) “necessity”—the harsh constraints of circumstances that corner a leader—or a people (including “ordinary people”)—and choke off all choices. It is most often contrasted with free will or virtue (virtù). By virtue, Machiavelli doesn’t mean moral goodness or innocence in the Christian or Aristotelian sense. He means practical, rational, systematic force, political intelligence, adequate strength, skill in action, and, especially, a hardened—brutal if need be—determination to get things done, to make something happen simply because something has to happen. It is the essential virtue required of a prince—or, again, of a people: decide swiftly, take calculated risks, and, when necessity demands it, learn “how not to be good”: to shape events through violence (murder, torture, physical punishment) and deceit (lying, cheating, betraying) rather than passively submit to them. Such virtù comprises traits like bravery, endurance, lucidity about power, and a willingness, when circumstances are unforgiving, to depart from conventional goodness for the sake of preserving the polity. It is precisely this quality that enables a ruler to confront fortuna—the accidents of luck and shifting conditions—by containing, redirecting, or exploiting them instead of being destroyed by them.In Machiavelli’s view, virtù always has to operate within the grip of necessità: under severe constraints, the very survival of the state may depend on actions that would fail traditional moral tests, yet count as successful, even admirable, from a strictly political point of view.These ideas have currency today, especially among postliberals, Claremonters and Trumpians, slightly twisted towards Schmittian assertions of power (sovereignty as “he who decides on the exception”) and the use of ruthless realpolitik to pursue narrowly defined, so-called virtuous and ethical goals: “Machiavellian means for Aristotelian ends.”The protagonist of “On Machiavelli” would, should he have encountered these views (his book was published in 2005), repudiate them with emphatic disdain. He argues that we must “attack the metaphysical, supra-empirical status” of necessity, deny its special, higher standing above experience, beyond testing or evidence, and show it to be “fraudulent”—a rhetorical or ideological trick used to shut down criticism and opposition, when in fact it is contingent and politically or morally contestable.Where should we stand on this? On both sides of the “On Machiavelli” passage quoted at the top of this section, the protagonist, now an “éminence grise” sitting in a public park, tells the startling young woman that he needs someone to type and edit a manuscript for him—presumably the manuscript containing essays of “Strong Opinions”, which, we later learn, is a compendium of the essays (“the more contentious the better”) commissioned by a German publisher of “six eminent writers [who] pronounce on what is wrong with today’s world.” More than a week has passed since their encounter in the laundry room. The protagonist has only seen her once before this second encounter: “and then only fleetingly as she passed through the front door in a flash of white slacks that showed off a derrière so near to perfect as to be angelic.” “God, grant me one wish before I die,” he whispers; “but then was overtaken with shame at the specificity of the wish, and withdrew it.”Item #4. The Significant OtherThere were scrapes on Fred’s forehead and a gash under his left eye, and another down the front of his coat, from which spilt out polyester stuffing like dirty snow. He took a step back. I followed him onto the street. Hey, he said. Hey, I said. I offered him half my sandwich. He said he wasn’t hungry. He asked if I had any money. I said I didn’t. He smiled, tight-lipped, and nodded. I’m not lying, I said. He nodded again and asked me what was in the sandwich, and I told him. He made a face, laughed, and asked for money again. I said I still didn’t have any. He left. Christmas is coming. All our kids will be under the same roof again, with their loved ones in tow. This makes me happy. But it also makes me think of Fred again (and sundecks and carports, which I’ll get to soon), and how, later, on the very night of that lunchtime sandwich, I saw him stumbling with another beer in hand down rue St Maur, near where it becomes rue Léon Frot. Hey man, he said, when he finally recognised me in this new context. Then, cartooning my old white man voice, he said: What the hell are you doing w-a-a-a-ay the hell over h-e-e-e-re? You’re outside the terr-i-tor...
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