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“We are building artistically designed steel slats, so that you can easily see through it,” the president wrote. “It will be beautiful and, at the same time, give our Country the security that our citizens deserve.” – NYT And here I was, thinking that we’d elected Boris Badonoff president, when all along Trump was hiding his Christo soul! The border wall as an art project – this has to be Melania’s input. Our jetsetting racists strike again, a blow to remind us that we Americans are good at something - call it slapstick, call it kitsch, call it homebrewed fascism. Whatever! And since the Trump administration is shitting as hard as it can on our national parks and wilderness areas, isn’t it nice that they want to build a great wall tourist attraction that can compete with China as a sort of compensation? Steel slats, to represent the great and beautiful jail industry, which might be the last one that American elites will keep at home, rather than seeking abroad for cheape

I threw into the noble fire With human hands made of that pyre That void socketed dead man beneath,   That past, and worshipped within me the fire. Flame, I do what you breath. – Free translation of the first stanza of “Brazier” I live some three blocks from the Rue Franc-Bourgeois, which is where Apollinaire locates the boutique that is at the center of his story, “The Shadow Departs”. Going by the Google Map, I can reach Rue Saint-Merri – which features in Apollinaire’s Marais heavy poem,  The Musician of Saint Merri  – in ten minutes. In fact, just this morning, returning with my son from a visit to the doctor, we walked past Eglise Saint Merri – a church I never notice, since its massiveness seems to fade into the neighborhood – and went down Rue de Saint Merri. The route was an accident, just a matter of turning here and there to reach our street, but I was happy when I saw the name on the street plaque, as I was writing about Apollinaire as I was waiting in the doc