John's Dura Mater Blog

Quite for no reason, I'm here for the Season and high as a kite. Living in error with Maud at Cape Ferrat , which anyway couldn't be right. Everyone's here and frightfully gay, nobody cares what others might say. Seems really much queerer than Rome at it's height; and yesterday night - I went to a marvellous party, with Oona and Nadia and Nell. It was out in fresh air and when we went there, we went as we were, which was Hell. Poor Grace started singing at midnight , and didn't stop singing till four. We knew the excitement was bound to begin when Laura got blind on Dubonnet and gin and scratched her veneer with a Cartier pin: I couldn't have liked it more. I went to a marvellous party, I must say the fun was intense. We all had to do what the people we knew would be doing a hundred years hence. Dear Cecil arrived wearing armour, some shells and a black feather boa. Poor Millicent wore a surrealist comb made of bits of mosaic from St. Peter's in Rome , Bu

"According to Freud, we crave strong leaders whose simple dictrines will account for our sufferings, identify our enemies, focus our energies and give us, more enduring than wine or even love, a sense of being whole." From "Freud and the Fundamentalist Urge" by Mark Edmundson New York Times Magazine , pp 15-18. April 30, 2006

"For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." Psalms 30:5

"...How do you do nothing?" asked Pooh, after he wondered for a long time. "Well, it's when people call out at you just as you're going off to do it, 'What are you going to do Christopher Robin?' and you say, 'Oh nothing,' and then you go and do it." "Oh, I see," said Pooh. "This is a nothing sort of thing we're doing now," said Christopher Robin. Oh, I see," said Pooh again. "It just means going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering." An excerpt from The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff

A photograph by John K. McGuirk Click to enlarge

۞ Never put you hand on a man, except in dance ۞ Whispering and giggling at the same time have no place in good society ۞ Don't think you can be rude to anyone , and escape ۞ Whispering is always rude ۞ Don't hang on anyone for sport ۞ Never stand or walk with your chest held in, and your hips forward in imitation of reverse letter "s". - From House of the Blue Danube by Malcolm McLaren and the Bootzilla Orchestra

I've gotten through 'Hey Lady! Aren't you "who's it?" WOW! What a looker you were.' or better yet, 'Oh, sorry, I thought you were "who's it." What ever happened to her?' From Follies by Stephen Sondheim