Der Spiegel outlines how fragile America's success has become

Der Spiegel's 6 point article pretty much covers the issue that is US.

• Part 1: Is the American Dream Over?
• Part 2: The Ownership Fetish
• Part 3: America's 'Perfect Storm'
• Part 4: The New American Nightmare
• Part 5: A Brighter Future?
• Part 6: The Danger of Currency Warfare

Yep. That's our boy Bush.

The Guardian, The Independent of London, The Telegraph and the rest of the English press are having a field day, offering "FULL COVERAGE OF MEMOIR" daily, basically going berserk over Bush's new book. The articles and analysis offer little assistance into our presidential phenomenon, but the comments section, priceless.
Won't even try and isolate the best bon mot but the absolute acrimony, the sheer animosity and utter annoyance, the fanatically antagonistic behavior of the oft literate, cerebral and physically funny british git whisking their own 'memoir' is worth a glance. 

Apparently our boy can really reminisce, so full of sunny insouciance, or so he would have us think and yet both he and Blair appear so baffled by the world's opinion of them. Does Bush have any regrets? No, not really. He's so effortless, in both endeavor and review. Like people that need to exercise complete control his laugh sounds utterly manufactured but provides a unique signature.
"Heheheh, they thought I couldn't read a book, let alone write one"...of course he didn't write the book, but that's irrelevant, Memoir, for today's political figure, who is in fact today's celebrity, is all about rehabilitation. It's about getting on the couch and conquering their inner conflict, the fight within, a battle that must be one over their true nature. Their beliefs and emotional investment are so severe in their situational morality there's scant room for anything other than their own world view.  

Democrat, Republican, Libertarian

A new take on political ideology as an evolutionary psychologist proposes a new framework for understanding the root causes of our political beliefs
"The implication — presumably unintentional, but still stinging to some — is that conservatives are somehow emotionally impaired, and vaguely inferior to the more open-minded people on the left.
Is there a way of explaining these differences that doesn’t suggest one side or the other is wrong or aberrant? Perhaps so. Jacob Vigil, an evolutionary psychologist based at the University of New Mexico, has come up with a fresh framework that links political orientation with the way we seek to fulfill our most fundamental human needs.

“A lot of the literature is morally loaded,” he says. “It’s easy for people to gravitate to language that fits into their predisposition. [In my framework] nobody’s right or wrong. It’s just that we’re using different behavioral strategies, all of which exist for a reason.”
His thesis, in a nutshell: Conservatives, being more oriented toward dominance, tend to acquire a larger group of friends and associates than liberals. They are more sensitive to potential threats because there are more people in their orbit, and thus the danger of their being hurt by a duplicitous person is greater. Liberals, being more inward-oriented, have smaller, tighter social groups and thus feel less threatened, which in turn allows them to be more open to unfamiliar experiences.

Klimt, Schiele and the fearless Ms. Frida Kahlo

Vienna means music and history to many, but to me, I hear only whispers of Klimt and Schiele, Klimt and Schiele. These two masters moved me so deeply the first time, Vienna always sounds like Klimt and Schiele...
Gustav Klimt, the teacher, the senior, puts me in a trance, wrapping his goddesses in symbolic divinity, decorative costume, celebrating everything that is nurturing and compassionate and powerful about women.
While Schiele shocks with nudity, Klimt calms the viewer down with clothes made of silver and gold, metal so soft, almost a balm, a loving maternal figure, offering secrets into our universe.  Amazing how one can do that with paint and placement...Klimt proves it can be done, so beautifully, naturally.
And then there's Egon Schiele, he and his women, both stripped down to expose bones, their fragile ribs, bare and vulnerable, a  delicate elegance. Schiele, a protege of Klimt, a shocking boy wonder who's presence could not be denied yet recognition received late in their artistic roulette.  There is this wall in the Albertina Museum, with 5 Schiele's, all small, sensual perfection, lined up quietly underneath a very grand chandelier... this wall put me under its spell over a dozen years ago, though its Klimt that makes me sit for long spaces of time, falling into 20 ft high scenes of tranquility depicting women so uniquely with death lurking, often, as it does in life....The Kiss is the most famous but by no means my favorite, so sweet to be kissed like that and to be able to paint a kiss that feels like that... The Albertina introduced a section of Klimt with Freudian text, maybe to emphasize the dream like elements, elaborate the earthly fantasy and intense sense of contentment. Klimt lives so well in Vienna, like seeing Degas @ Musée d'Orsay, Klimt and Schiele thrive in Vienna, the present married forever to its past, quiet, refined, civilized yet explosive in its own self-contained way.  Austria...
And what a perfect time to be here, Vienna boasts a fantastic exhibit of Picasso at his most political, Michelangelo at his most natural, strolling around all those sketches, having grown up with copies drawn by artistic siblings in our home in Seattle, reminding me of times long ago when life was simple, death hadn't arrived to take away a brother, my beloved mother, there was enough love to go around, when it was just the 7 of us, a middle class clan, a benign tribe, loving parents, 5 pretty easy going kids who smiled easily in their photos because they felt like it, so long ago, when America was like that, when my America was like that...
Allora, must come back to the present, to Vienna, to the piece di resistance, Signora Frida Kahlo.
This woman kinda blows my mind; all passion and sadness, fears and desires painted in primary colors mostly, again, symbolic, expressive.  Those challenging eyes and brow, that beautiful hairline, tutoring herself to embrace her own innate talent, becoming a master among few. I was surprised by how moved I became, overwhelmed by her ability to project multiple cultures, industry after simplicity, moving from Mexico to N. America.
Those photographs of Frida, so fierce, unrelenting, insisting she be exactly who she could be, master of her own world, wanting her men to stay and not stray, so much wanting in that women, I'm grateful Frida wanted so much, she moved me as much as Klimt and Schiele, maybe even more... 

Sunday in the Park with Joyce Carol Oates

Colette found a flautist, no easy feat, then she found a place to picnic

Godot arrives,  Colette experienced much joy.
Finished another Joyce Carol Oates masterpiece, nibbled, sipped, relaxed.

Joyce Carol Oates; Blonde, Black Girl White Girl.

Dawn Powell wrote all the time, Joyce Carol Oates writes even more, in fact, she must be the most prolific writer of today.  So abusive, so violent, she lacerates, she whips with her words, you feel yourself falling off a cliff, it's terrifying at times.  You'd think she'd gift you with a reprieve, but she won't.  So don't prey for that parachute, that rope will never appear, it will not end well, why? Because Joyce Carol Oates is a truth teller, that's why.  

Her milieu is dark, I know dark but violence is foreign to me. Abuse, torture porn, I'm not normally drawn to this world, but when she creates a period of time, a slice of drama, I'm fascinated and find myself willing to go anywhere she's willing to take me, knowing it will all end in tears.
Such is the stunning effect of this writer.  When you're reading Black Girl White Girl you might assume it's all about the relationship between two young women, one white, one black who happen to be room mates in an exclusive liberal arts college, if only because she writes about that relationship in the most devastating way, but its not.  It's really about a white girl and her relationship with her radical Dad. Her Dad and his extreme left-wing activism, his attitudes about money, class, politics, the deceptive left-right paradigm that began to unfold in America circa 1970.  Oates gets to highlight reverse racism, hypocrisy and liberal guilt in post-Vietnam America as only she can do.....
God she's brilliant, so brutal and honest. Her high literature style collides with informal, staccato, internal thought.  In this book, it feels reminiscent of falling back into the blissed out, bonkered, wonderful, horrible life that was Marilyn Monroe in Blonde.  I've blogged before but I'll blog it again, any women that wants to read about their own sex, their own fear, control, love, knowledge or lack thereof regarding their own sex, read Blonde, I dare you. That book is fierce. 

Silvia Plath + Ted Hughes = emotional spectrum.

To suggest it was an explosive marriage seems to defeat the exercise of reviewing the "Last Letter." Two souls, both brilliant, poetic, on a collision course with life and death.  Aren't we all.
Reminds me of reading "The Bell Jar,"  when she says, "sometimes simply being a women is an act of courage."  Like many women reading this book young, it sits and simmers, awaiting its day. 
I suppose this is why Godot never arrives... and yet, contrary to literary myth, Godot arrived. Here he is, on our table, post luncheon. 

Here's to Persephone rising and dispelling conventional wisdom...