Since Obama's inauguration, I have put myself in the middle of a blog project to make a haptic each day (for the first 100) with commentary on I experience as going on in the country, as well as within my consciousness and response to events. So, indeed, somewhat as the custom of this list, I am making a daily series of 'snaps'. You are welcome to see the first 14 - as of this day - at my blog site.
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
However, I offer this little Gothic one (without the haptic which, I suspect, Bunel would have been more than 'happy' to film:
Two authors on C-Span
TV were giving account of what happened across America when Lincoln was
assassinated. Incredible recriminations went against those who praised
the man, Booth, who committed the act. Those who said, “Thank God,
somebody got the son-of-a-bitch.” Etc. There were many public
humiliations of those with shootings, beatings, drownings, and
banishings.
Then there was the spectacle. At one point
there were three false mummies of the assassinated Booth traveling from
town to town. It was a business. Then there was the train that for
three weeks carried Lincoln’s body from town to town before arriving in
Springfield for his burial. The body - lying in state from place to
place - turned black, began to shrink, and stank. Make-up artists
changed his color for appearances, while his body was surrounded by
huge floral arrangements. The security detail shielded the dead
President from people with scissors. They wanted locks from his beard,
or pieces of cloth from his suit.
The man who for four years fought and
brought the country back together was dead. It is said the country’s
soul was riven again asunder. A terrible inner-chaos to be fought
against with rage against those who would bring the country down once
more.
There
are those who see or want to imagine President Barrack Obama as the
redemption of President Abraham Lincoln. That Obama is the ultimate
incorporation of the American emancipation of race - not just
African-Americans, but anyone of color, anyone traditionally,
by law or otherwise, absent the right of political, social and personal power.
There are big wheels turning here - within
and without - both dark and light. Apparitions of a language scribble
themselves into the light, suspend themselves, brave and charged, then
disappear into what aspires to be a fertile darkness.
As witness and citizen in a much shadowed
country, we each wait to see what emerges with solid force and in a
working, believable shape.
At the same time one might still wonder
why the current major focus on Lincoln? Is something or someone or many
among us being warned? Or signaled?
Stephen Vincenthttp://stephenvincent.net/blog/
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