Why not?
Temptations to provocation arise everywhere nowadays. Not merely in the public forum but around the dinner table and in the gatherings of extended family. Opinions sprout with pugnacious energy.
memory
Boyhood
That magic zone of love without possession, of work as game and game as life itself, the heart unprotected, the imagination unbound, was an incipiency, a hint or sketch of what another kind of human life might be.
Oxtail
Slabs of oxtail jelly, Penny’s fresh-baked bread, chicken-liver paté, a side of lightly sautéed, sliced brussel-sprouts, a nice domestic gewürztraminer. I make a mental note to have pickled beets the next time we do this.
Klemperer’s Flute
The tinkling business and romantic ninnies all well and good, but the paydirt for me, without doubt, the teased-out erotic history of Sarastro and the Queen of the Night and the strange evocation of Masonic brotherhood as the highest form of Enlightenment.
Hawkeye
A suitable public mien, for a man of any age, consists of purpose and mild distraction. What my father taught us as a question of prudence on the mean streets of New York, is also good manners.
Widdershins
The gantry above the vehicle ramp advertises the short route to New Jersey. A dubious claim—leaving aside the question of why one would want to go to New Jersey—but it stirs a memory of an epic bike ride.