"I am QTBIPOC and an immigrant, he is cis-white-straight/ish citizen, a decade older than me and didn’t even know what queer or BIPOC meant before meeting me...."

"The question is: How do I know I am not only doing this 'under the influence' of love?..."

A nutty question to a WaPo advice columnist, in "I planned to always be a queer, single cat-mom aunt. Then I met him. How does she know she’s not changing her life plan 'under the influence of love'?"

If love is the wrong reason, what is the right reason?

"Ms. Gilbert is not a provocateur in the style of Banksy, and she is not making a political statement. Her work, filled with shining suns, wizards and dragons..."

"... is warm and incorporates inclusive sayings like 'Be seen' and 'I love all of you.' The message is perhaps muddled by the price tag. Reserving all of a subway station’s walls and other surfaces, a package advertisers sometimes call 'station domination,' can cost more than $250,000 per month, said Seneca Mudd, a managing partner at Brand Bravery, a marketing firm helping to coordinate Ms. Gilbert’s plan. He declined to give the total cost of the ad-space purchase, but said that it was over $1 million, including station rentals and marketing expenses...."

From "The Mystery Artist Filling Subway Ad Space With Whimsy/Sue Sarah Gilbert, a Rockefeller descendant in Seattle, raised $1 million to place her drawings in New York City stations" (NYT)(gift link, so you can see the charming artwork).

From the comments over there: "I see this story a lot differently than the journalist. A woman from a family of billionaires uses her financial connections to fund a vanity project so full of itself that it includes QR codes for people to send photos of themselves enjoying it. The art itself is simple and juvenile, like something a grade schooler would draw. This is the type of art a parent would put on a fridge, but because Ms. Gilbert has friends with deep pockets it’s being put up for months in the New York subway."

"Arthur Miller described the voluptuous yet fragile woman he wed as 'a poet on a street corner trying to recite to a crowd pulling at her clothes.'"

"When Miller left out his journal open to a page saying that she had embarrassed him in front of his intellectual peers and Marilyn read it, she wrote, 'I guess I have always been deeply terrified to really be someone’s wife since I know from life one cannot love another, ever, really.' Like everyone else, Miller was mesmerized by his wife’s power of enchantment. 'Glamour is a bird that for dark and largely unknowable reasons decides to light on this branch rather than another,' he once wrote...."

From Maureen Dowd's new column, "Norma Jeane’s Still Got It!" (NYT).

You know what's embarrassing? 1. Writing down that your wife is embarrassing — can't you just remember it and squirm silently in your dark and unknowable mind? — and leaving your journal open to the page where she'll see it, 2. Writing "Glamour is a bird that for dark and largely unknowable reasons decides to light on this branch rather than another." Birds don't have dark reasons.

IN THE COMMENTS: Bob Boyd provides this:

"A friggin' bird will swoop down from a bough and peck your eyes out as you lie helpless and half frozen in the snow without ever having felt sorry for you." 

— Thought to be an early, rough draft of 'Self-Pity' scribbled in the margin of A Field Guide to the Dark Thoughts of North American Birds found in D.H. Lawrence's library after his death.

BY THE WAY: When I was writing this post, I wanted an illustration and asked Grok to give me an image of "a bird that for dark and largely unknowable reasons decides to light on this branch." I didn't say Arthur Miller wrote those words.

Grok gave me an image that was too dull to use, but it also added this ridiculous caption: "A solitary bird, wings half-folded in that decisive instant of landing, perches on a gnarled, ancient branch silhouetted against a brooding twilight sky. The air feels heavy with unspoken intent—shadows pool beneath the feathers like secrets, and the bird’s eye catches a glint of something ancient and unknowable. Dark pines loom in the distance, mist curls low, and the branch itself seems to have been waiting for this exact, inscrutable visitor."

So I was all: "Yeah it's purple prose isn't it? I got it from Arthur Miller."

"[Eric] Stewart came up with the idea for the song after his wife, to whom he had been married for eight years at that point, asked him why he did not say 'I love you' more often to her."

"Stewart said, 'I had this crazy idea in my mind that repeating those words would somehow degrade the meaning, so I told her, "Well, if I say every day 'I love you, darling, I love you, blah, blah, blah,' it's not gonna mean anything eventually." That statement led me to try to figure out another way of saying it, and the result was that I chose to say "I'm not in love with you," while subtly giving all the reasons throughout the song why I could never let go of this relationship.'"

From the Wikipedia article, "I'm Not in Love."

Researched this morning because the song Meade chose for his sunrise video got me thinking about lyrics that say the opposite of the meaning the singer conveys:

"I just love to love. If I cut somebody’s hair, they’re feeling good. They’re loving it. If I give somebody some braids or a toupee..."

"... they are loving it. So I thought, that’s a good way to spread love. I’ve been cutting hair for a few years. It’s hard work."

Said "Jaden Carter, 17, reading the Bible in Takoma Park, Maryland, on the campus of Montgomery College," quoted in "'What are you reading?' I asked. Here’s what six strangers told me. Even in the cold, book readers were out in force around town — on trains, waiting for the Metro, at the gym and walking down the street" (WaPo)(gift link).

"The most new York couple is: very sweet man that everyone loves with a wife way out of his league that he’s obsessed with."

That's the top rated comment on this TikTok about Rama Duwaji, the wife of Zohran Mamdani:

Gavin Newsom miffed that right-wing tough guy Joe Rogan won't have him on his show.

Here's Joe Rogan, a 02:11:01, in a recent podcast:

Do you like people? I love people. I could never be a hermit. I love people. I love hanging out. Like I love having fun. I love meeting people that are fun. I love it. The only way that happens is if people make people. You have to make cool people. Yeah. Make cool people that other people wanna hang out with....

Joe's podcast is great because he's a cool person hanging out with cool people and he lets us sit in on that love and coolness. How does anyone get on Joe's show? I think it's by making him feel that you are a cool person who loves having fun that he could love having fun with.

Meanwhile, here's Gavin Newsom bitching about not getting an invitation onto Joe's show and revealing that he has no idea what makes Joe Joe:

Love your enemy/hate your enemy — What did Trump really say at the Charlie Kirk memorial?

I see the headline in the NYT, framing Trump's statement in the conventional anti-Trump manner: "'I Hate My Opponent': Trump’s Remarks at Kirk Memorial Distill His Politics/President Trump has been fueled by grievance and animosity over the course of his political and public life."

Is Trump a hater? I'm not going to sift through everything he's done "over the course of his political and public life," but I will read the transcript of his speech — which I listened to live — and zero in on the part about hating his adversaries, which is getting attention from his adversaries, as I presume he knew it would:

"It’s time to not just try to love one another, because we know the difference between trying and doing. It’s time to do."

Said Jesse Colin Young, in 2018.

Quoted in "Jesse Colin Young, Singer Who Urged Us to ‘Get Together,’ Dies at 83/As the leader of the Youngbloods, he sang one of the enduring anthems of the peace-and-love era. He went on to have a prolific career as a solo artist" (NYT).

ADDED: Here’s a Youngbloods single that I owned and played many times back in the 1960s: “Grizzly Bear.”

AND: 

"At former president Jimmy Carter’s funeral... Melania Trump... opted... for... an extra-wide, pilgrim-esque collar printed with images of a Renaissance sculpture of a kissing couple...."

"Melania doesn’t usually bake big ideas into her fashion choices...  The one time Melania tried to send a message with her outfit — you know, when she wore that 'I Really Don’t Care, Do U?' jacket to visit a migrant children’s shelter — it backfired. In her 2024 memoir, she wrote that her jacket’s message was intended as a kiss-off to the media, not the migrant children.... Was this funeral ensemble a not-so-subtle statement about the importance of love and unity in a divided nation? Given her stilted body language as her husband giggled with Barack Obama, probably not. (No one gives off an air of 'I’d rather be anywhere else' like Melania.)..."

From "What’s Up With Melania’s Collar?" (New York Magazine).

What does it mean? Obviously, it's an expression of a desire for love. But NY Magazine doesn't want to give her that — not to credit her with desiring love for the world and certainly not to fulfill any desire she might have to receive love. She will get no love from New York Magazine, where she will always be seen as icy, even if she is wearing a photograph of kissing lovers around her neck. 

"For the unacquainted, Mr. Trump’s gyrations are a far cry from the complexities of the moonwalk, the Macarena or the Electric Slide."

"Both simple and strangely hypnotic, Mr. Trump’s wiggle incorporates the kind of stiff swivel often employed by arrhythmic wedding guests or awkward, one-too-many conventioneers."

Writes Jesse McKinley, in "Trump’s Signature Dance Move Finds Its Way to the Sports World/Jon Jones punctuated his U.F.C. win with the president-elect’s shimmy, and numerous N.F.L. players followed suit on Sunday" (NYT).

It says there that McKinley is "a Styles reporter who covered the criminal trial of Donald J. Trump earlier this year, from opening statements to guilty verdicts."

McKinley has written a lot of other things too. Why focus on Trump's criminal trial? Maybe subtle humor: Not long ago it seemed that New York authorities had found a way to put Trump in prison, and now we're just wondering if it's okay for football players to dance the Trump dance.

McKinley also wrote, recently:

"It was incredibly different and it was incredibly painful and hurtful, this division of Americans that he has embraced of normal people and everyone else."

"I am a normal person. Queer people are normal Americans. I, I mean, I don't, whatever, I don't, I don't divide the world between normal and abnormal people. I don't think that helps anyone. And in a lot of ways, I think I lead a much more average life than he does. I am not a millionaire. I lead a private existence. And, and specifically the term 'normal' really scared me because he has set up a war between 'normal' people and those who are trying to attack them. You know, I, I'd shared some pretty personal stuff with him about my experience as a trans kid, because I know what it's like to sit and cry as a kid and think I have to fix myself. There's no way that I can be this person and be loved and have a job and be accepted and be okay. And that is a devastating experience. And I was so hopeful that it would be easier for future generations...."

Says Sophia Nelson, in the new episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "She Used to Be Friends With JD Vance."

She's speaking to the podcast host, Michael Barbaro, who had just said, based on Nelson's text exchange with Vance, "You say to him... 'The political voice you have become, seems so, so far from the man I got to know in law school,' and JD Vance replies to you, 'I will always love you, but I really do think the left's cultural progressivism is making it harder for normal people to live their lives.'"

Here's the background article, by Stephanie Saul: "JD Vance, an Unlikely Friendship and Why It Ended/His political views differed from a transgender classmate’s, but they forged a bond that lasted a decade — until Mr. Vance seemed to pivot, politically and personally" (NYT)(free access link).

I avoided that article because it seemed like a politically motivated betrayal of a private, personal relationship. I almost avoided the podcast.

Trump's convention speech had 2 phases, both brilliant, but very different.

In the first phase, Trump describes the assassination attempt from his perspective and for what he asserts is the last time:

So many people have asked me what happened. “Tell us what happened, please.” And therefore, I will tell you exactly what happened, and you’ll never hear it from me a second time, because it’s actually too painful to tell. It was a warm, beautiful day in the early evening....

This fills 20 minutes and segues into an unrushed tribute to the man who died and the 2 other men who were injured. There's an iconic stage prop, Corey Comperatore represented in the form of his empty helmet and jacket. Trump kisses Comperatore's head and pats him on the shoulder then returns to the lectern to lead a silent prayer. Again unrushed (but not overlong). We see different members of the audience in different attitudes of prayer. (Jared Kushner, eyes wide open, looked straight ahead.) 

The first phase continued with the uplifting abstract material that Trump had promised to deliver. I've copied this section in full:

"We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness."

Wrote Donald Trump, in Biblical prose, this morning, on Truth Social.

Thank you to everyone for your thoughts and prayers yesterday, as it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.... Our love goes out to the other victims and their families. We pray for the recovery of those who were wounded, and hold in our hearts the memory of the citizen who was so horribly killed. In this moment, it is more important than ever that we stand United, and show our True Character as Americans, remaining Strong and Determined, and not allowing Evil to Win. I truly love our Country, and love you all, and look forward to speaking to our Great Nation this week from Wisconsin.

ADDED: What's great here, rhetorically, is the combination of love and fighting. No one can forget his fist pumping and repetition of "Fight! Fight! Fight!" less than 2 minutes after he "felt the bullet ripping through the skin." But as his antagonists call for shared love — and an abandonment of fighting — he brings the love into his fight message, merging love and fighting. Notice that he isn't calling us to fight against any human being — indeed, he calls all Americans to fight on his side.  The enemy is "Wickedness" and "Evil."

"For progressives, waiting to have children has also become a kind of ethical imperative."

"Gender equality and female empowerment demand that women’s self-advancement not be sacrificed on the altar of motherhood.... Unreserved enthusiasm for having children can come across as essentially reactionary.... Yet it wasn’t that long ago that Republicans and Democrats fought over who could rightfully claim to be the party of 'family values.'... After [Bill] Clinton was impeached in the wake of his own family-values hypocrisy and George W. Bush was elected with the help of energized evangelical voters, family-friendly rhetoric became anathema to liberals — perceived as phony, intrusive and toxic...."

From "The Success Narratives of Liberal Life Leave Little Room for Having Children" (NYT).

The essay — by Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman, authors of  “What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice” — has to end with hope for progressives. They're given this admonition:

[P]rogressives must not let partisan loyalties stop them from thinking about the ways in which having children does or does not express their values, and what shape they really want their lives to take. Children are too important to allow them to fall victim to the culture wars.

How do you read that and not jump back to that line I put in boldface above: "Gender equality and female empowerment demand that women’s self-advancement not be sacrificed on the altar of motherhood." Of course, children are extremely important, but — watch out — it will be too late if you release one into your life and it doesn't "express [your] values" or fit the "shape [you] really want [your life] to take." You will have "sacrificed" your "self-advancement... on the altar of motherhood."

How do you get out of that bind without drinking the “phony, intrusive,” right-wing toxin? I thought of the answer: You fall in love....

I rushed to search the essay for the word "love." It's not there. Maybe it's "essentially reactionary."

But my neighbor sucks.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Tommy Siegel (@tommysiegel)

"But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven."

Said Jesus Christ, quoted in Matthew 5:44-45.

Recalled on reading Trump's Truth Social Easter message:

"I did everything by the book the whole time. They changed the rules, and I should be grandfathered in. I shouldn’t have to abide by them."

Said Tony Cavallaro, quoted in "Authorities Seize Alligator Being Held Illegally in Home Near Buffalo/The alligator, Albert Edward, had been with his owner for 34 years" (NYT).

He was 11 feet long, 750 pounds heavy and 34 years old, and until this week, he lived in a pool house attached to his owner’s home in Hamburg, N.Y., about 13 miles south of Buffalo.

The [New York State Department of Environmental Conservation] said that Albert’s owner, Tony Cavallaro, had a license for the alligator, but it expired in 2021. In an interview, Mr. Cavallaro, 64, said that while visitors to his home did sometimes take pictures with Albert, they never swam with him or rode him. Instead, they would briefly get in the water for a quick photo with the animal, often when he was sleeping, Mr. Cavallaro said.

Cavallaro bought Albert as a newborn and believes "the poor thing loves me."

I'm interested in the law here, the always enticing notion that the law doesn't apply to you. Cavallaro also seems to believe that the law of nature — the dangerousness of alligators — does not apply to Albert.

But what's missing from this article is any mention of the comic strip that was once central to our culture: Pogo. There's an alligator named Albert, and you don't cite Pogo?

ADDED: The Wikipedia article linked above describes Albert Alligator as "An exuberant, dimwitted, irascible, and egotistical alligator."

"The way I experience love seems to be very different from the so-called neurotypical experience."

"My experience of love seems less emotional. If I had to explain what love feels like to me, I would say symbiotic. So, a relationship that’s beneficial to both people involved. Not transactional, not possessive, not ego-driven. Mutual homeostasis. It’s not that I’m unable to access emotions or empathy. It’s that my experience of those emotions is different...."

Says Patric Gagne, author of the memoir "Sociopath," in the interview "What It’s Like to Be a Sociopath" (NYT)(free access link).

"Limerence is a state of overwhelming and unexpected longing for emotional reciprocation from another human, known as a limerent object..."

"... who is often perceived as perfect but unavailable.... The LO is most often a friend, colleague, or stranger met in passing... 'It’s often not romantic or sexual in nature. It is very much about wanting to feel loved and cared for.'... We begin to mistake anxiety for excitement and excitement for joy.... One strategy... to de-idolize their LO is listing reasons the LO is not perfect... [or the] ways in which the LO and the patient are not compatible. Name it to tame it: You can deliberately interrupt the habit by calling it out — 'Hello, limerence' — and paying attention (for example, through journaling) to what it feels like when you’re in that state of longing.... You should also believe you deserve more...."

From "Is It a Crush or Have You Fallen Into Limerence? How an intense longing for a romantic connection can lead to a serious addiction" (NYT).

The article says the word "limerance" was coined by the psychologist Dorothy Tennov, and the OED finds her first use of it in print in 1977. 

That first quote denies any etymology: "I first used the term ‘amorance’ then changed it back to ‘limerence’... It has no roots whatsoever. It looks nice. It works well in French. Take it from me it has no etymology whatsoever."

So if you were seeing a connection to "sublime" or "limn," just forget about it. If you can't forget it, make a list of things that are rootless, nice looking, and well functioning in French.