Yesterday we were talking about the homes of our leaders and what they come to symbolize.



White House Wedding or the End of Civilzation?  Your call.

I have friends who don't believe the US will actually be going to the polls in November; they foresee some "incident" [something like, to use an analogy, the burning of the Reichstag] that will necessitate the declaration of martial law and the suspension of elections as the current regime claims total control.  Of course, I also have friends who believe in the End Times, the transmigration of souls, the resurrection of the dead and the forgiveness of sins.  I only mention this particular dire prediction [of the final collapse of American democracy] because a) after nearly 8 years we're so close anyway, and b) I want to be able to say 'I told you so' in case it really does happen.

Of course, I am just as anxious as the next person to end this Sophie's Choice of a primary; as you recall, Meryl had an awful time making up her mind ["Don't make me choose.  I can't choose."].  The Boy or the Girl?  Stay with the psychotic husband or sleep with the nice Southern Boy next door?  The Lady or the Tramp, the Lady or the Tiger, the Agony or the Ecstasy, the Sorrow or the Pity?  

Prophesying the future, however, is a lot like stealing.  In fact, most story-telling is theft.  You appropriate an image from the past and substitute names and places.  You take a fable and make it "Modern Day."  You borrow a myth and forget to give it back; suddenly King Lear is three farmer's daughters and "A Thousand Acres."  And Ulysses becomes nothing less than the story of an Irishman wanting to get laid.  Or the journey of a young man in search of his father.  Which is in itself a reversal, a tipping on its head of something somebody else came up with, the tale of a hero trying to get home to his wife and son.  Like looking the wrong way through a telescope.

Visconti knew it takes more than a flair for drag or sleeping with your mother to make you a fascist.  He was borrowing one kind of shock and repulsion to dramatize another.  He was stealing your reaction to one kind of decadence in order to convey another version, even more offensive.  He wasn't trying to crack down on prostitution; he was out for vengence, he wanted to destroy an enemy and so he set up surveillance of the guy's bank accounts until he got lucky.  Sort of like the old days when anyone in Arkansas got a couple hundred bucks just by saying they had a story on Bill.  

"You get what you're looking for," my mother used to say, and not like it was a good thing either.  She was always quoting either the Bible or Shakespeare.  Stealing words of wisdom.  Sometimes even stealing your thunder.

It's all been said before.  It's all new wine in old vessels, which I think of every time some guy at the gym fills a plastic water bottle at the drinking fountain.  Taking his time doing it too.  Stealing precious moments from my work out. 

But then it's all, in one way or another about theft, isn't it?  Time, I mean.  It's all about Stolen Kisses.