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Daniel Morris We Were Like Eleanor and Franklin We loved each other’s understanding of the relationship between merits, markets, and the Second Gilded Age. We were swans. Don’t ask which color. Swans in the sense of flightless singers. We respected the limits of each other’s understanding of tolerance as a requisite of power. We had been married for years; so many, in fact, the soft round hills began to sag before we arrived at our summer cottage in Poughkeepsie. The problem: we relished such different parts of the natural world. She chased waterfowl. Like Franklin, I liked live oak for hide and seek with gals who misreported deeds for the sake of the common good. I pointed fingers at other offenders without saying what a positivist like Eleanor believed did not exist. When speaking on public matters, I gave voice to Doxa; she Episteme. When I referenced redemption, I was not, unlike Eleanor, thinking of history in the Benjaminian sense. Rather, I was reflecting on how much a handcuffed heart (symbolic) can hurt and go on beating while an embraced leg (not symbolic) can merely harm. I remained as unsure about the material redemption of the body in Christ as was Eleanor about Mao’s 3 Mountains. I was breathless…she was calm. There was no such thing as paradox for us. Like Eleanor and Franklin, once we saw the hills as breasts, but then as indoctrination. Ah, Magoo as if Franz Kline’s fusain “Study for High Street” slashed through rumbling blue -- Magoo’s mystic missive as opening credits roll never was designed for kismet skid off the screen like a fluke losing footing or myopic death drive of Magoo’s Sunday outing but rather grace of girder’s grave construction of another incessant skyscraper as Rutgers ’28 Triskelion cliquey tycoon bearskin beside yakking bulldog McBarker a hunch of hoary nose behind the wheel of primordial automobile hood accordion behind rumble seat of the obsolete jalopy the apparition of bridge becoming airy avenue as comfy puff of animated wheels discover atmosphere of bevel to be benevolence |
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