"For truth proves
thievish for a prize so dear."
(Sonnet XLVIII)
My Dear Maxine,
To preface my few and meagre thoughts on the
new Shakespeare film,
Titus, I'll share my dreadful inspiration:
Scene: The ramparts of a
battlemented castle...Night...The fog bites shrewdly...
From the mist emerges a ghostly figure,
dark and gloomy with presence...
Ghost: "Nooo-nan...I
am your spiritual father...do not run from me in fright...Though my height
be taken, I bear you news..."
Me: "What in the world!"
Ghost: "Too many "have so strutted
and bellow'd, that I thought some of nature's journeymen had made men,
and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably"..."
Me: "Why it's Will Shakespeare,
gracing me with a visit from Heaven!"
Ghost: "Aye, despite the envious
greening o'er my life and times--by those having projected one's own poetes
maudits onto my nobly sturdy frame-- that sweet pillow of respite is
from whence I came-- " [he holds a hand, palm forth, in hushing me]
--"Now, no questions, I must impart my message and leave... The
play, Nooo-nan, the play's the thing by which you'll catch these ring-a-dingies!
having
denied,
discredited, diss-troyed!
that Wooden 'O' already o'evfraught
with the world's woes...No more squeaking fustilarians boying my greatness,
Nooo-nan...You
must vow..."
Me: "I will do my best, gentle
Master; I vow..."
[At those words the Ghost gathers height
and bows, his right hand extending gracefully. A smile briefly breaks as
his eyes fill beneath a brow furrowed with the flash of an "Ah!"]
Ghost: [whispering, backing
away]: "Tlemosyne...Nooo-nan... tlemosyne..."
[the deeply booming tympanis of "Titus"
(the movie) beat out a war cadence...]
As I regain my senses, my head spins with
matter now discharged upon me...yes, pomp and pageantry...speactacle...Fear
and Terror...perhaps even salted with Pity...(Yes, that's the ticket)...the
pomp and pageantry of our National Game...bloodsparting!
Well, enough of that phanticizing!, I
think, coming back to my senses...lambent with the murmer of a spring stream,
for some reason, on this verdant green morning...
I find my place at the gulag table, sip my
pharmaceutical and sterilization chemical-laden coffee, and read the local
paper...(Ah reality!)
Ooo, here's an item about Sharon Stone, of
whom I'm a bit fond! Let's see...what!, Anne Heche is owning up to their
"lesbian love story" looking like an "Aryan Nation Production"
Scene: an ill-lit stage puffing blackened
mists from holes in a roughened earth. A short, dowdy woman circumambulates
counter-clockwise, generous posterior first, left hand waving like a fish
fin behind her:
Woman: [actually Subtle the Alchemist,
cross-whatever'd]: "Pre-post-ur-ous, Pre-post-ur-ous,
Pre-post-ur-ous, "
[pauses, rubs her chin thoughtfully]
"Hmmn, doen't seem to be working...I wonder
what my mish-take is? Yes, mind over matter, I don't mind and you don't
matter... Let's see, try again. O great Hecate, alley-cat of night, conjure
me up as an alchemist named Subtle!"
[voice sounding umistakably like Will
Shakespeare booms forth from the Heavens:]
"No!... No! and more No!"
Now here we go again. I've been trying
to make legal compalint and warn people about how "dangerous probability
of success" these ignorant lesbian hillbillies (self-described "Lesbian
Klan" of the FBI) are ever since they managed to get me evicted from ole
Molly Baird the Ark-ee-saw truck-driver's place on 28th St. in downtown
Oakland (MLK cross). The "just cause"? That ole bugaboo, "interracial
dating"
But Unk-aj Jed, I thought's we's gets ta
exterminate him for being a "right-wing scion" How's we gonna do's
it if he's done dated black women?
Very simple, Jethro (ole Jackie Reston the
narc-shark "star witness"--and yeah, I mean just like that other
clown in Los Angeles embarrassing the hooie outta the DEA for being
a proven liar and all-around lowlife given millions of dollars to lie on
the witness stand--at one-time known as "Hosie the Knock-knee'd Hangdog
Outta Hell" Canseco). Three words: deny, discredit, diss-troy!
Now, don't nobody try and say that I [tom]
didn't warn you about what a whopping fishie-witchie mishtake you be making...
An itme before I forget--a gem found while
finding "background material" for my "Mr. Big" to use in my original
play, The Bitter Gall of Heaven... Especially given how topical
it's become, suddenly, with that prison riot at Pelican Bay between the
African-American and Latino "group-ego camps" pitted one ignorant fool
against another chump falling for the bait--i.e., the Machievellianly
"clever" guards whispering Rumours! about the target4ed inmatge
being a---tympani drum rolls of Titus, please, chorus shrieking:
child molestor!...He's a child
molestor! [sounds vaguely familiar...]
--"For instance, we are told that the English
theatre is immoral, because it is preoccupied with the husband, the wife
and the lover. It is, perhaps, too exclusively preoccupied with that
subject, and it is certain it has not shed any new light upon it for a
considerable time, but a subject that inspired Homer and half thegreat
literature of the world will, one doubts not, be a necessity to our National
Theatre as well..."
(W.B. Yeats, "An Irish National Theatre')
--A line from "Dr." Faustus about the rationalization
of corruption; "sin by custom grow...into nature"
--Factor in the underpinnings of Kyd's "Spanish
Tragedy" of revenge: these thoroughly "corrupted" secret machinations of
the state having done "a big zero" for a man seeking "redress of
the law," the protagonist, Heironimo, why (Suh-prize, suh-prize, suh-prize,
Unk-ah Jed of all the different "hues" that an Earl Scheib paint job can
afford...) he, like Titus, is driven to "vengeance"...
--Finally a wee bit from No One Left to
Lie To, by Christopher Hitchens (Verso, New Left Books, 1999):
"Hannah Arendt once wrote that the
great success of Stalinism among the intelectuals could be attributed to
one annihilating tactic. Stalinism replaced all debate about the
merit of an argument or position, or even a person, with an inquiry about
motive. I can attest, in a minor key, to the effect of this tactic in smaller
matteers...The truth or otherwise of what I said was not disputed so much
as ignored. When the finger points at themoon, as the Chinese say,
the idiot looks at the finger!" (p. 112)
Now, with all of the foregoing inmind ( and I do, by the way), please
consider the following as "Subject(s) for Discussion" in your Vietnam Vet
writing workshops, if you could be so kind:
| Date: |
Thu, 24 Feb 2000 15:56:38 -0800
(PST) |
| From: |
Tom Noonan <fenian47ronin@yahoo.com>
| Block
address |
| Subject: |
"...where ocean sends forth only
cool breeze." |
| To: |
k. <******@*****.com> |
| CC: |
Imbas Forasnai <forasnai@yahoo.com> |
|
|
| Dear
K.,
Wonderful
talking with you; I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to take the liberty
of sending you my meditations on the theme of "honour" and *Titus*...
The
Subject line is from the 4th Book of *The Odyssey, where that "shape-shifting"
Ocean divinity, Proteus, is telling a stranded--i.e., "in the doldrums"--Meneleaus
of "Elysian Plain and the world's end," beyond not only the cares and worries
of humans but too the scope and reach of Nature in her more terrifying
storms and fits.
Though
I'm too astute to bother myself with the "politcal sphere of influence"
*these days*, I counld not help but notice a columnist I like, Ms. Maureen
Dowd (NY Times), describing Sen. John McCain as a "decent guy" today:
"It
is a campaign straight out of Capra.
"A
decent guy takes on the System, and the brutes who run the System move
in to destroy the upstart. They paint the populisst hero as crazy or deceitful.
After a bout of self-pity, when he hates the whole rotten show, he rallies
with some sentimental hooey about American ideals and routs the ruling-class
bullies.
"'Why,
your type's as old as history,' John Doe tells his tormentors. "If you
can't lay your dirty fingers on a decent idea and twist and squeeze it
and stuff it into your own pockets, you slap it down. Like dogs, if you
can't eat something, you bury it!'
"Of
course, like John McCain, the Capra heroes battling Big Money could often
get a little insufferable. They could be sanctimonious and overemotional
and flaky. The idea of virtue triumphing over greed was always a celluloid
dream. But it seems even more far-fetched now, in a society where greed
is a virtue."
The
flap over his "choice of words" has relevance, too. His explanation of
how his captors tormented him as "the enemy" and were the *first* to fail
to see "his own" humanity fell on too many deaf or "willfully ignorant"
ears. Now I'm not a fan of "hate-mongering," and I have several anecdotes
about my *long-standing* distaste for "harmful words." But as we discussed
last night, for my *genteel* manners I've often been either disregarded
or even outright *disrespected*...(As if "civility" and "respect for another's
thought or opinion" were the province of some notion of a "white ruling
elite" needing to be "torn down by any means necessary").
At
the same time, in my own way, I've been forced to become a "warrior-in-exile"
in the mode of a Shakespearean "hero/protagonist" of such matter. As I've
perhaps not explained properly to you, the choice in the matter truly was
not "mine own." About a decade ago, my life was irretrievably cahnged by
"circumstances and events wholly beyond my control," i.e., what Shakespeare
often depicts as "creaking machinations of State/Empire." Perhaps my fondness--or
even understanding--for the Bard since can be traced to that kind of terrifying
fascination that comes from realizing, My God, the man's got everything
exactly picture perfect...
In
any event, I will "make a stab" at explaining what I mean a wee more; I
seem to be reaching those "Elysian Fields" where understanding has redeemed
grief, I feel as if I can finally "write of these matters" as "proper to
Drama"...
The
irony, of course, is that I can understand *exactamundo* how Sen. McCain
feels: without any possibilty of "denial of accountability," through my
wonderful attorney, Mr. Patrick Hallinan, I can prove how some of the most
ignorant "trailer park trash" in our country's History have held me "hostage"
in what I've termed a "paper-walled gulag" of isolation; the principal
perpetrators have not been of the "recognizable villianry," but instead
these kind of "dowdy, ditzy bureaucrats" out of what Sen. McCain has termed
"The Death Star" (after *Star Wars*), i.e., Washington's "Beltway Insiders."
Complicating
the matter beyond *any* "rational discussion" has been the allegedly "lesbian"
sexual preference of these *fustilarians*, as Shakespeare depicted these
"busy body troublemakers." And yes, even that "observation" gets me retaliated
against for federal "color of law" machinations for "being an elitist with
all the wrong thoughts or opinions."
No,
detailing how the "laws of the land" have been construed in these matters
as expressing *forbidding* such "punishments" does not help in the least.
We are dealing with that old bugaboo, *Ignorance*, and when one points
out the weaknesses in a "sincerely believing fascist/bigot," why one only
gets an "enraged inferiority complex" acted out on one as "thanks."
Even
more of a mistake, as I've painfully discovered, is to make the "proper
complaints to the proper forum" as an American citizen seeking "redress
of grievances." One could argue that our Constitutional Founders considered
that principle perhaps the most important of all matters debated, as every
single one of whom fled "cruel and unusual punishments" in England because
of that horrifyingly "efficient" legal body called "The Star Chamber,"
an ill-conceived yet "wickedly great" attempt to *dictate* "matters of
ecclesiastical thought or opinion." One could buttress the argument with
caselaw citings from such landmark Supreme Court decisions as Marbury
v. Madison:
[from
my legal pleadings I've filed on mine own behalf]:
--Alexander
Hamilton, during the Constitutional Convention debates on the “Guarantee
Clause,” shrewdly observed that this “guarantee...would be as much levelled
against the usurpations of rulers, as against the ferments and outrages
of faction and sedition in the community.” The Federalist, No. 21, at 132
(A. Hamilton) (J. Cooke ed. 1961). As Deborah Jones Merritt, in The
Guarantee Clause and State Autonomy: Federalism For a Third Century, Columbia
Law Review (1988) Vol. 88:1, 1, at 31, notes: “Read broadly, this [quoted]
statement could include federal officials among the ‘rulers’ who might
usurp state power.”( Id, fn. 168)
"The
United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican
Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion;
and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature
cannot be convened) against domestic Violence. . . . " U.S. CONST. art
IV, @ 4.
“[We]
are dealing with the commission of a series of illegal acts by agents of
the
Government. Justice would certainly not countenance a court straining
the
language
of a statute in order to deny the victim of such illegality at least
some
measure of compensation. [ Cruikshank v. United States 431 F. Supp.
at 1361, cited in Birnbaum v. U.S. (1977).436 F. Supp. 967, *975;
198 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 487]
Amendment
XIV
Section
1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to
the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the
state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law
which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the
United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty,
or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within
its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. (emp.add)
Section
5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation,
the
provisions of this article.
With
regards to the phrase “Due Process of Law,” just about every first-year
law student, at some point , will cite Marbury v. Madison 5 U.S.
(1 Cranch) 137 (1803). Indeed, Chief Justice Marshall’s carefully
chosen words have, still, that ring of truth—the search for which was foremost
in the minds of our legal system’s Framers:
“The
government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government
of laws and not of men. It will certainly cease to deserve this high
appellation if the laws furnish no remedy for the violation of a vested
legal right.” (Ibid, at 163).
Marshall
stated that he was saying nothing that the common lawyer did not know from
his Blackstone, i.e., “The REMEDIAL part of the law is so necessary
a consequence of the former two [declaratory and directory] that laws must
be very vague and imperfect without it. For in vain would rights
be declared, in vain directed to be observed, if there were no method of
recovering and asserting those rights, when wrongfully withheld or invaded
. This is what we mean properly when we speak of the protection of the
law.” Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765, fasc. ed. U. of Chicago
Press, 1979) 1:55-56. (Ibid, at 163).
Justice
Harlan, concurring in Bivens v. U.S., 403 U.S. 388, 401, n. 3 (1971), noted
that the Framers—after Blackstone—“link[ed] ‘rights’ and ‘remedies’ in
a 1:1 correlation.”
The
matter assumed paramount importance due to the abusive practices that King
George III visited upon these Framers as colonists, circa 1763-65.
Whereas governmental transgressions had been regarded as common law “trespasses,”
the use by the British Crown of “general warrants,” writs of assistance
and even bills of attainder (declaring one to be “dead at law,” i.e., without
“hope,” ever, of any “remedy”) against hundreds of colonial persons—e.g.,
the now infamous case of John Wilkes, who had his books and papers seized
on the “general” grounds of “seditious libel,” sparked great debates on
the subject in the Constitutional Conventions:
“If
any of the federal officers should be guilty of the greatest oppressions,
or behave with the most insolent and wanton brutality to a man’s wife or
daughter, where is this man to get relief? [George Mason, to whom Marshall
responded:] “Were a law made to authorize such great insults on the people
of this country…it would be void.” The Virginia Ratifying Convention, J.
Elliot, ed., The Debates in the Several State Constitutions on the Adoption
of the Federal Constitution (2nd ed., 1936) 3:524
[excerpt
from Amended Federal Complaint; U.S. Dep’t of Justice Asst. Att. Gen Andrew
M. Scoble and Civil Rights Division, Merrily Friedlander, Chief, Coordination
and Review Section, P.O. Box 66560, Washington, D.C. 20035-6560 ]:
[end excerpting]
And
yet, due to what can only be seen as "willful and deliberate" obstruction
of Justice by the Death Star "Beltway Insiders," the honchos with the "authority"
at the FBI and U.S. Dept. of Justice to "do something" about felonious
crimes against my being and personage, I continue to be "taught a lesson"
for allegedly being "arrogant" or "pompous," i.e., being "fed up" and "disgusted"
with how the "puppies of Empire" grow fat and sleek as "lapdogs of privilege,"
while the "real men of the world," as myself, get "the Titus Treatment":
Without
spoiling the movies for you, I'll give you my relevant pick of highlights:
Act 1, Sc. 1, the Roman war hero Titus, afield at war tor ten wearying
years, is returning, his legions all caked with blue-gray mud, the war
chariots creaking in grim funeral procession. His brother Marcus argues
his case to be crowned Emporer: "For many good and great deserts to Rome:/A
nobler man, a braver warrior,/Lives not this day within our city walls:"
Yet
Titus begs off:"Rome, I have been thy soldier for forty years...Give me
a staf of honour for mine age,/But not a sceptor to control the world:/Upright
he held it, lords, that held it late..."
Here
we have The Conflict (or even Conceit, if you get what I mean) that I so
love in Shakespeare--an authentically honourable man undone by "little
boy wannabe" treachery and forced into courses of action ultimately tragic...(wait
until you see the "Emporer Saturnius," an arrogant little prig with effeminate
affectations, ridiculous "outifts" and makeup and lipstick drag under a
greasy "rube" hairdo)...
I'll
hold comment on "Aaron the Moor" for now, other than to offer my humble
opinion that Shakespeare put himslef in the persona of his "Moor" characters
as a "creative catharsis/healing" of his own "mis-Fortuna's"
By
the way, Penguin claims that Shakespeare may have gottten the tale of Titus
from an historical pamphlet describing an Achaen (as in Greeks who stormed
Troy) general in Greece who came to the Empire's rescue and was exiled
for his great and noble deeds out of pretyy much the extant plot's twists
and turns...And hsi devotion to "duty" in declinging the Emporer's power
was absolutely historically accurate as what a Roman Consul--before the
debauched corruption of [the 12] Caesarean decline--would have done (as
well as the killing of one's own son if deemed to be in "treason") |
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