XCII
Pacification, mon amour.
In 13 B.C., Augustus ordered his stepsons, Tiberius and Drusus, to launch a series of campaigns aimed at “conquering” Germania, specifically the area between the Rhine and Elbe rivers, that today form parts of Switzerland, Austria and German Bavaria. Being Roman, they did a lot of infrastructure-building: roads, canals, forts, market towns, the whole complex of imperial colonization tactics (including establishment of a cult of Augustus at present-day Cologne), backed up with, and often front-ended by Legionary force. By 9 B.C., the pacification of Germania appeared complete and the Romans organized the region into a province, one that would ultimately contribute wealth to the imperial center via taxation.
As part of the Romanization process the chiefs and nobles of scores of tribes were taken to Rome to learn imperial ways and be groomed for citizenship. Some of these became officers in Rome’s army, commanding regiments of native auxiliaries.
Among these candidates for civilization were members of the Cherusci, a tribe inhabiting the region between the Lippe and Weser rivers. One young Cheruscan prince, given the name Arminius, became well versed in Latin and was eventually made a citizen. He served with Cheruscan auxiliaries under the command of Tiberius in settling revolts among several other tribes in less pacified regions. It was in eastern Europe that Arminius learned the finer points of the Roman style of waging war. A contemporary Roman officer and later historian, Marcus Velleius Paterculus, described him as “brave in action and alert in mind, possessing an intelligence quite beyond the ordinary barbarian,” and further that Arminius “showed in his face and in his eyes, the fire of his mind.” [Shen]
It may, then, have come as something of a surprise to the Romans when, in 9 A.D., seemingly out of the blue, Arminius led a rebellion and surprise attack in Teutoberg Forest that annihilated three Roman legions and prompted the provincial governor to kill himself rather than fall captive. Proving, yet again, and, as though it were necessary to test this a thousand times, the home truth that you can take the boy out of the forest, but you can’t always take the forest out of the boy.
And how you read that shen, that “fire of the mind,” has everything to do with what you may expect from the person whose face you are seeing and whose spirit you are correctly decoding. Or not.
I have freely adapted the above from Kenneth P. Czech, “Rome’s German Nightmare.” Quarterly Journal of Military History. Vol. 5, No. 1, Autumn, 1992.
Li is yi carried on by other means
Make my monkey a rhesus
This little phone of mine
I’m gonna let it shine…
Tourists.
The what authority?
Bob’s your uncle, Maisie’s your aunt, and I-don’t-know’s on third.
May the road rise up, Dmitri
Huh!?
He flashes a badge. “I’m from the Wealth Department – here to check your affluence.”
Sometimes your initials, E.D. seem to stand for Existential Dread. But with your almost-never-used first name John leading the charge, you could imagine a TWA (three-letter acronym) signifying Join Every Dot, or any number of things.
The truthfulness of the nude inheres in the visibility-invisibility of her spirals, the conjunctive dynamic of matter as form and animating energy – of Aphrodite, ever arising, ever descending.
Irascible me, erasable you
Oh what is the engine of your intention?
Or vice versa?
Cosher Bailey had an engine,
It was always wanting mending,
And according to her power
She could do four miles an hour…
Did you ever see, did you ever see,
Did you ever see such a funny thing before?
[“Cosher Bailey’s Engine,” The Shuttle and Cage: Industrial Folk Ballads. Ewan MacColl, ed. London: Workers’ Music Association, 1954. p. 17]
The runniness of the lone-distance longer
Or words to that effect
Quisicality
My cantaloupe does not equal your pomegranate
And ever the trains shall meet
Hic sunt kishkas
Ah, the rise and the fall of one’s contemporaries. In this case, the drug meprobamate, born, like you, or, more accurately, synthesized in May, 1950 by Bernard John Ludwig and Frank Milan Berger at Carter Products Wallace Laboratories, a subsidiary of Carter Products, bought the license and named it Miltown after the borough of Milltown in New Jersey, though it was eventually also known under the brand names Equanil and Meprospan. Sez Wikipedia: “Launched in 1955, it rapidly became the first blockbuster psychotropic drug in American history, becoming popular in Hollywood and gaining notoriety for its seemingly miraculous effects.
“A December 1955 study of 101 patients at the Mississippi State Hospital in Whitfield, Mississippi, found meprobamate useful in the alleviation of “mental symptoms.” Three percent of the patients made a complete recovery, 29% were greatly improved, and 50% were somewhat better. Eighteen percent realized little change. Self-destructive patients became cooperative and calmer, and experienced a resumption of logical thinking. In 50% of the cases relaxation brought about more favorable sleep habits. Hydrotherapy and all types of shock treatment were halted.
“Meprobamate was found to help in the treatment of alcoholics by 1956. By 1957, over 36 million prescriptions had been filled for meprobamate in the US alone, a billion pills had been manufactured, and it accounted for fully a third of all prescriptions written. Berger, clinical director of Wallace Laboratories, described it as a relaxant of the central nervous system, whereas other tranquilizers suppressed it. A University of Michigan study found that meprobamate affected driving skills. Though patients reported being able to relax more easily, meprobamate did not completely alleviate their tense feelings. The disclosures came at a special scientific meeting at the Barbizon Plaza Hotel in New York City, at which Aldous Huxley addressed an evening session. He predicted the development of many chemicals ‘capable of changing the quality of human consciousness,’ in the next few years.”
But no sweet ride lasts forever. And in April 1965, after a lawsuits over monopolization of the “mild tranquilizer” market and other challenges “meprobamate was removed from the list of tranquilizers when experts ruled that the drug was a sedative instead. The U.S. Pharmacopoeia published the ruling. At the same time the Medical Letter disclosed that meprobamate could be addictive at dosage levels not much above recommended. In December 1967, meprobamate was placed under abuse control amendments to the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. Records on production and distribution were required to be kept. Limits were placed on prescription duration and refills…
“Production continued throughout the 1960s, but by 1970 it was listed as a controlled substance after it was discovered to cause physical and psychological dependence.
“On January 19, 2012, the European Medicines Agency recommended suspension throughout the European of all medicines containing meprobamate, ‘due to serious side effects seen with the medicine.’ The Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) concluded that ‘the benefits of meprobamate do not outweigh its risks.’”
Now just when your mother started taking meprobamate is a mystery. If you had to guess, you’d say it was after her marriage fell apart in the early ‘60s. But she took it regularly until a week before she died since no drugs besides pain palliatives were allowed in hospice care. On the infrequent occasions she referred to it, she always used the name meprobamate. So why, tonight, did “Miltown” pop into your head?
In addition to human mad folk, Haloperidol is also used on many different kinds of animals. It appears to be particularly successful when given to birds, e.g., a parrot that will otherwise continuously pluck its feathers out.
Glory, glory Haldol-luja
Waiting for Lofty. Waiting for Hefty. There’s Warpy, waiting for Wefty.
Dressed to the nines – waiting for mufti.
East and West, aside from the fundamental fact of being at once both arbitrary and relative, are configured very much like the Chinese radical of the number eight, ba, with all the shi, dynamic tension animating the separate, inseparable strokes.
And in Arabic expression, the numeral loops back on itself, signifying both eight and infinity. According to Jullien, the sign or indice is “the point where the visible and invisible compenetrate each other instead of splitting into overlapping planes.” […Nude, p. 109]
Still, the West took the pull between polarities, felt everywhere and in a thousand ways, and dealt with using a variety of integrative stratagems, and let it rip. Think Lincoln splitting “rails.” Einstein splitting atoms. Vesalius. And the membrane, even skin, separating the classical nude from the anatomical rendering.
And then, the West-not-West:
- In Lithuania, you can‘t instantly spot a fool, but you can always see when a person’s “face is unharmed by intellect” (intelekto nesužalotu veidu).
- A Lithuanian never changes his mind. His “fantasy comes off” (atšoko fantazija).
- Lithuanians don’t date two partners at a time. They “act on two fronts” (varyti dviem frontais).
[From “The 26 Funniest Expressions in Lithuania and How to Use Them” http://matadornetwork.com/notebook/26-funniest-expressions-lithuania-use, via, and with thanks to, Dovilė Kirvelaitytė]
Love in a time of reckless qi
