Explanation:  Today's blog disturbs even me... so I decided to begin with the first picture I got this morning.  It's one of many seed clusters hanging from a tree near the Plaza de Panama where I went this morning for a lecture on the subject of Orientalism in art and culture. I found the other pictures of pictures at the San Diego Museum of Art. Some of those seem to fit my theme and my mood today.

IMAGINED HISTORIES AND GEOGRAPHIES

The problem for some Americans and especially for too many American politicians is that their imagined histories and geographies often don’t correspond to the realities of the populations and places they represent. When they speak on the Senate or House of Representative floors, politicians who experience disconnect between the real and their imagined America sound very much like the “Hollow Men” in T.S. Eliot’s poem by that name.   

This week the House of Representatives with its Republican majority cut billions of dollars from the food stamp program, ignoring the reality that 47 million Americans live in poverty. The 210 votes of Democrats weren’t enough to counter the 214 votes of Republicans determined to end the food stamp program which was designed to address the plight of the poorest American citizens who are living without adequate food.  What in the world are those who voted against the program thinking?  It is clear that they are not thinking about the reality of hunger in America.  Do they not know about the hungry children in their own districts?  Do they know... and knowing not care?  What does it say about them... and about us as a nation?

I am guessing they have replaced reality with imagined images of the people they represent as if they were all living in the kinds of surroundings to which politicians go on their fund-raising forays in their districts. They have forgotten the disturbing vulgarity of poverty and replaced it with an imagined landscape that looks like the pretty parks and monuments they are invited to dedicate. 

The obscenity of a pervasive hatred of government that characterizes the Tea Party, especially Tea Party Representatives whose employment is paid for by government, is palpable and should not be excused.  Excusing this obscenity happens either because of gross ignorance of the reality of poverty and the damage it does especially to children or a knowing immoral disregard for those who simply cannot take care of themselves.  Love of country, not the imagined nation but the real one, isn’t demonstrated by a carefully placed flag lapel pin but by real programs that meet real needs of real people.  

You’ll find T.S. Eliot’s poem following the pictures in today’s BLOG.  It is my hope and my firm belief that the the final four lines of the poem need not be a picture of the American democracy.

"Lion Devorant un Lapin" by Eugene Delacroix

"A Village Scene" by Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot

"Theseus Slaying the Minotaur" by Antoine-Louis Barye 

The Hollow Men

Mistah Kurtz-he dead

            A penny for the Old Guy

                       I

    We are the hollow men

    We are the stuffed men

    Leaning together

    Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

    Our dried voices, when

    We whisper together

    Are quiet and meaningless

    As wind in dry grass

    Or rats' feet over broken glass

    In our dry cellar

    

    Shape without form, shade without colour,

    Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

    

    Those who have crossed

    With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom

    Remember us-if at all-not as lost

    Violent souls, but only

    As the hollow men

    The stuffed men.

    

                              II

    Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

    In death's dream kingdom

    These do not appear:

    There, the eyes are

    Sunlight on a broken column

    There, is a tree swinging

    And voices are

    In the wind's singing

    More distant and more solemn

    Than a fading star.

    

    Let me be no nearer

    In death's dream kingdom

    Let me also wear

    Such deliberate disguises

    Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves

    In a field

    Behaving as the wind behaves

    No nearer-

    

    Not that final meeting

    In the twilight kingdom

    

                   III

    This is the dead land

    This is cactus land

    Here the stone images

    Are raised, here they receive

    The supplication of a dead man's hand

    Under the twinkle of a fading star.

    

    Is it like this

    In death's other kingdom

    Waking alone

    At the hour when we are

    Trembling with tenderness

    Lips that would kiss

    Form prayers to broken stone.

    

                     IV

    The eyes are not here

    There are no eyes here

    In this valley of dying stars

    In this hollow valley

    This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

    

    In this last of meeting places

    We grope together

    And avoid speech

    Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

    

    Sightless, unless

    The eyes reappear

    As the perpetual star

    Multifoliate rose

    Of death's twilight kingdom

    The hope only

    Of empty men.

    

                           V

    Here we go round the prickly pear

    Prickly pear prickly pear

    Here we go round the prickly pear

    At five o'clock in the morning.

    

    Between the idea

    And the reality

    Between the motion

    And the act

    Falls the Shadow

                                   For Thine is the Kingdom

    

    Between the conception

    And the creation

    Between the emotion

    And the response

    Falls the Shadow

                                   Life is very long

    

    Between the desire

    And the spasm

    Between the potency

    And the existence

    Between the essence

    And the descent

    Falls the Shadow

                                   For Thine is the Kingdom

    

    For Thine is

    Life is

    For Thine is the

    

    This is the way the world ends

    This is the way the world ends

    This is the way the world ends

    Not with a bang but a whimper.