Month: October 2023

Image author unknown.

Iggy was glad to be home. It wasn’t that Frank’s house, ok let’s be real, his mansion, was a bad place to be. What wasn’t to like to about it? He had his own room (there were plenty to choose from) with his own bathroom, recently fitted to provide for his needs, along with a heated indoor pool, cinema room, library – my god the library! He could quite easily move in there and not come back out for at least a decade. And that was just the library. Frank’s internet connection alone made his ball sack tighten.

And that was part of the problem. It was too good there. Gretchen. He had never met a woman like her. Iggy was bisexual and preferred men. Men his own age. But Gretchen was special. He knew better than to lust after her. Any fool could see she had it bad for Frank.

That was part of the problem too. He had it bad for Frank. Iggy had definite father issues and he knew it. Frank ticked off all the boxes. Dark hair. Masculine. Fit. Fiercely intelligent and ferociously sensitive. His eyes were so dense they exerted gravitational influence.

There was more than one occasion he had to excuse himself to frenetically masturbate in the renovated bathroom.

He was quite certain Gretchen knew. There was more than one occasion he had wheeled himself out of his room as Gretchen slid past. She almost always had a knowing gleam in her eyes. But then he was pretty sure that was her default expression and so he allowed that it might just be him projecting sexual guilt.

He liked his place. It was modest and he was sentimental. It held all the little keepsakes he had collected over his 28 years. All the gifts from past boyfriends. And girlfriends. His tracheotomy tube from when he was in the hospital. He had insisted on it when they finally disconnected him from the ventilator.

He didn’t think about the night he became a paraplegic very often anymore. The dreams where he could still run stopped by the time he was 15. He was very comfortable with being seen as the guy in the wheelchair who was good at math. It also happened to be true.

And now. Now. He didn’t want to think about that most of all.

What they had done. Rose. She was the most amazing thing of all.

She was going to change everything. It would take a long time but he was quite sure of that.

And Frank thought, given what they had done, that restoring Iggy’s shattered spinal cord should be, well…, for lack of a better phrase – child’s play. He really didn’t want to think about that. To be honest, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be able to walk again.

And he didn’t know how to tell either Gretchen or Frank that fact. They wouldn’t understand. He wasn’t sure he did.

The doctors said it was a “spontaneous epidural hematoma” that gave way due to a pubescent growth spurt. A faulty blood vessel just big enough and in just the right spot so that when it burst, painlessly, the pressure of the resultant fluid killed his ability to walk, use of most of his right hand (unfortunate that, he had to learn to be a lefty), control over certain abdominal muscles, and his ability to control when he pissed and shit.

He was 13 when it happened. It broke his parents apart. His father wanted an athlete. He ended up hanging himself when Ignatius was 15. His mother died of a heart attack when he was a senior in college.

Iggy liked being alone. He liked being with Frank and Gretchen even more. He was deeply afraid of becoming too attached and even more afraid that it was already too late. Who was he kidding, it was too late. He was in. If for no other reason than Rose.

He made himself a bowl of oatmeal with cinnamon and raisins as he listened to some 70’s mellow rock. Frank had him hooked. He was an ambient and dubstep fan but he had to admit that they made great fucking music in the 70’s.

He just got out of the bath when the phone rang.

It was Gretchen.

Fuck me, Iggy thought with a sigh. He should have known better.

It wasn’t good that she asked him to bring his hand controls for a car. Not good at all.

Something was going to happen.

Something bad.

She wasn’t sleeping when he came in, although she let him think so. Her feet were up and her eyes were closed, so she didn’t blame him for thinking so – but you can’t really fall asleep with a baby in your arms. Not unless you’re exhausted. She was tired but not that tired. It had been a very intense last six months. This did not concern her. She was used to intense.

She knew he would shower and after he had crept past the nursery she placed her feet on the ground and Rose in her bassinet. He would be full of his own intense energy – one she had always been attracted to ever since they met.

They met in university. Both of them were unconventional students. She had spent her years immediately following high school taking care of her mother. By the time her mother had passed and she decided to go back to school, she had already had a number of bad jobs and boyfriends.

She remembered when she first saw him. He was reading a very large book with very small print in the library late at night. The complete works of Shakespeare. She was there searching for an art history book. As soon as she saw him she could tell he was one of those readers that completely lost themselves in whatever the tome of the day happened to be. He had a habit of idly dragging his thumb along a jawline so sharp she feared he may cut himself.

As a test, she decided to glide past in the way she knew men liked.

Not even the hint of a glance.

This vexed her in a way she didn’t notice at the time.

All these years later, he still vexed her. She knew he was upstairs showering. She wondered what he looked like with his face upturned to the deluge. She smiled at herself. All in good time.

For now, Rose needed attending. She collected the few items they thought important and placed them in the webbing of the car carrier. Her mother had always told her she was gifted. And she had taught her daughter well. So when she felt the twinge of apprehension that presaged the need to consult, she made sure Rose was still sleeping soundly and she went back into the nursery.

Inside one of the closets she had set up a secondary reading space. Prepared according to not just the way her mother had taught her, but in ways that were unique to her and her understanding.

After he had ignored her in the library, she found her art history book. And then took it to the chair right next to him and sat down. She plonked a book the equal of his inches from him and smiled sweetly when he looked up at her – still not quite back from The Rose theater.

It wasn’t like her to be so bold. She should have taken the hint.

She remembered he said something witty but could never remember what. That and he used the word adroit correctly in a sentence. He introduced himself. She thought the last name sounded familiar but decided not to mention it. She would find out later this went a long way towards the friendship they developed after that night.

He went on to study subjects as varied as he was curious, which was more than any other man she had met. She got her dual major in philosophy and art history – and then went overseas and got a Ph.D. in Western Esotericism.

When she got back with her degree she wasn’t surprised at all when she got an email from him offering her a job. He didn’t even ask her what she had been doing in all the years since they had parted ways.

Just asked her if she needed a job.

She immediately agreed and not just because she was unemployed. Somehow she knew François would be a part of her life. Knew it in the way she had known things since she was a child. Knew it in the way her mother had known things since she was a child.

So when apprehension twinged, she listened. She opened the closet in the nursery. She did the quick rite and always called gratitude to mind, even in the face of apprehension. Inside was one of the many tarot decks she had made personally, the rose deck, and pulled according to intuition. Cards leapt from the deck.

Her apprehension deepened but she knew it unwise to probe further, so she collected the cards and placed them back in their place.

By then François was back downstairs. She met him in the kitchen. His skin glowed.

She placed Rose in her carrier and walked him out to the SUV. She put Rose in the passenger seat and kissed her gently. She wasn’t worried about Rose at all. The universe had plans for this one. Big plans.

She was worried about François.

She walked him over to the driver side. She took his arm and gently turned him. She stepped close. He smelled like soap. She slipped her arms up under his and up his back, she placed her head on his chest and breathed him deep. His arms encircled and enfolded. Their hips touched.

She felt the stars move. He lingered for a second too long and then broke contact. He grinned his lopsided grin and got into the SUV and then he drove away.

Gretchen needed more than a few seconds to compose herself, as she could not quite trust her knees.

Then she went back inside and called an uber driver with the ability to accommodate a wheelchair to go get Iggy. He wasn’t going to be happy about having to come right back.

But she was going to need him.

Something was going to happen.

Something bad.

Insider views, Imposter Syndrome, and the Great LARP

By johnswentworth – 6 minute read – 25^th September2023

Epistemic status: model which I find sometimes useful, and which emphasizes some true things about many parts of the world which common alternative models overlook. Probably not correct in full generality.

Consider Yoshua Bengio, one of the people who won a Turing Award for deep learning research. Looking at his work, he clearly “knows what he’s doing”. He doesn’t know what the answers will be in advance, but he has some models of what the key questions are, what the key barriers are, and at least some hand-wavy pseudo-models of how things work.

For instance, Bengio et al’s “Unitary Evolution Recurrent Neural Networks”. This is the sort of thing which one naturally ends up investigating, when thinking about how to better avoid gradient explosion/death in e.g. recurrent nets, while using fewer parameters. And it’s not the sort of thing which one easily stumbles across by trying random ideas for nets without some reason to focus on gradient explosion/death (or related instability problems) in particular. The work implies a model of key questions/barriers; it isn’t just shooting in the dark.

So this is the sort of guy who can look at a proposal, and say “yeah, that might be valuable” vs “that’s not really asking the right question” vs “that would be valuable if it worked, but it will have to somehow deal with <known barrier>”.

Contrast that to the median person in ML these days, who… installed some libraries, loaded some weights, maybe fine-tuned a bit, and generally fiddled with a black box. They don’t just lack understanding of what’s going on in the black box (nobody knows that), they lack any deep model at all of why things work sometimes but not other times. When trying to evaluate a proposal, they may have some shallow patterns to match against (like “make it bigger”), but mostly they expect any project is roughly-similarly-valuable in expectation modulo its budget; their model of their own field is implicitly “throw lots of random stuff at the wall and see what sticks”. Such a person “doesn’t know what they’re doing”, in the way that Yoshua Bengio knows what he’s doing.

(Aside: note that I’m not saying that all of Yoshua’s models are correct. I’m saying that he has any mental models of depth greater than one, while the median person in ML basically doesn’t. Even a wrong general model allows one to try things systematically, update models as one goes, and think about how updates should generalize. Someone without a model has a hard time building any generalizable knowledge at all. It’s the difference between someone walking around in a dark room bumping into things and roughly remembering the spots they bumped things but repeatedly bumping into the same wall in different spots because they haven’t realized there’s a wall there, vs someone walking around in a dark room bumping into things, feeling the shapes of the things, and going “hmm feels like a wall going that way, I should strategize to not run into that same wall repeatedly” (even if they are sometimes wrong about where walls are).)

General Model

Model: “impostor syndrome” is actually correct, in most cases. People correctly realize that they basically don’t know what they’re doing (in the way that e.g. Bengio knows what he’s doing). They feel like they’re just LARPing their supposed expertise, because they are just LARPing their supposed expertise.

… and under this model it can still be true that the typical person who feels like an impostor is not actually unskilled/clueless compared to the median person in their field. It’s just that (on this model) the median person in most fields is really quite clueless, in the relevant sense. Impostor syndrome is arguably better than the most common alternative, which is to just not realize one’s own degree of cluelessness.

… it also can still be true that, in at least some fields, most progress is made by people who “don’t know what they’re doing”. For example: my grandfather was a real estate agent most of his life, and did reasonably well for himself. At one point in his later years, business was slow, we were chatting about it, and I asked “Well, what’s your competitive advantage? Why do people come to you rather than some other real estate agent?”. And he… was kinda shocked by the question. Like, he’d never thought about that, at all. He thought back, and realized that mostly he’d been involved in town events and politics and the like, and met lots of people through that, which brought in a lot of business… but as he grew older he largely withdrew from such activity. No surprise that business was slow.

Point is, if feedback loops are in place, people can and do make plenty of valuable contributions “by accident”, just stumbling on stuff that works. My grandfather stumbled on a successful business model by accident, the feedback loop of business success made it clear that it worked, but he had no idea what was going on and so didn’t understand why business was slow later on.

In any given field, the relative contributions of people who do and don’t know what’s going on will depend on (1) how hard it is to build some initial general models of what’s going on, (2) the abundance of “low-hanging fruit”, and (3) the quality of feedback loops, so people can tell when someone’s random stumbling has actually found something useful. In a field which has good feedback loops and lots of low-hanging fruit, but not good readily-available general mental models, it can happen that a giant mass of people shooting in the dark are responsible, in aggregate, for most progress. On the other hand, in the absence of good feedback loops OR the absence of low-hanging fruit, that becomes much less likely. And on an individual basis, even in a field with good feedback loops and low-hanging fruit, people who basically know what they’re doing will probably have a higher hit rate and be able to generalize their work a lot further.

“Nobody knows what they’re doing!”

Standard response to the model above: “nobody knows what they’re doing!”. This is the sort of response which is optimized to emotionally comfort people who feel like impostors, not the sort of response optimized to be true. Just because nobody has perfect models doesn’t mean that there aren’t qualitative differences in the degree to which people know what they’re doing.

The real problem of impostor syndrome

The real problem of impostor syndrome is the part where people are supposed to pretend they know what they’re doing.

Ideally, people would just be transparent that they don’t really know what they’re doing, and then explicitly allocate effort toward better understanding what they’re doing (insofar as that’s a worthwhile investment in their particular field). In other words, build inside-view general models of what works and why (beyond just “people try stuff and sometimes it sticks”), and when one is still in the early stages of building those models just say that one is still in the early stages of building those models.

Instead, the “default” in today’s world is that someone obtains an Official Degree which does not involve actually learning relevant models, but then they’re expected to have some models, so the incentive for most people is to “keep up appearances” – i.e. act like they know what they’re doing. Keeping up appearances is unfortunately a strong strategy – generalized Gell-Mann amnesia is a thing, only the people who do know what they’re doing in this particular field will be able to tell that you don’t know what you’re doing (and people who do know what they’re doing are often a small minority).

The biggest cost of this giant civilizational LARP is that people aren’t given much space to actually go build models, learn to the point that they know what they’re doing, etc.

So what to do about it?

From the perspective of someone who feels like an impostor, the main takeaway of this model is: view yourself as learning. Your main job is to learn. That doesn’t necessarily mean studying in a classroom or from textbooks; often it means just performing the day-to-day work of your field, but paying attention to what does and doesn’t work, and digging into the details to understand what’s going on when something unusual happens. If e.g. an experiment fails mysteriously, don’t just shrug and try something else, get a firehose of information, ask lots of questions, and debug until you know exactly what went wrong. Notice the patterns, keep an eye out for barriers which you keep running into.

And on the other side of the equation, have some big goals and plan backward from them. Notice what barriers generalize to multiple goals, and what barriers don’t.  Sit down from time to time to check which of your work is actually building toward which of your goals.

Put all that together, give it a few years, and you’ll probably end up with some models of your own.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nt8PmADqKMaZLZGTC/inside-views-impostor-syndrome-and-the-great-larp?ref=thebrowser.com

He forced himself to do the speed limit back to the mansion. It was difficult, even though there really was nothing to worry over – Gretchen was a capable assistant, a natural blonde, she had taken to dying it what she called “witchy red” in the bold assertion that it suited her. As usual, she was right.

It was a forty five minute drive out to Iggy’s place – he was a good kid, bright, enthusiastic, always there with that little piece of information he was too busy or distracted to remember. He didn’t mind taking him home, the wheelchair was a manual and easily stowed in the back of the SUV. After a month of not being there, Iggy looked relieved when he had finally waved his goodbye and the SUV nosed back into the night.

So that meant it was another forty five back. He figured he should be back by 11, take a quick shower, collect what he needed, and then on to the last business of the evening. He found himself both dreading and anticipating.

He distracted himself with satellite radio – 70’s on 7 was his favorite. Mystic traveler by Dave Mason was the first song when he dialed it up. He smiled.

Traffic was unusually light and he drove with only one eye and hand on the wheel. He wanted to go over all the steps, make sure there wasn’t something he hadn’t thought of. Something catastrophic. He was an unusually good planner, gifted both analytically and intuitively. He used the latter to whip the former into shape over a lifetime of extraordinary ambition and equally extraordinary failure.

Until he succeeded. He still sometimes couldn’t believe it. It was so fantastically unlikely as to beggar the imagination. Yet.

He had spent a great deal of the family money. This made him uncomfortable as he had other obligations and responsibilities besides his extraordinary ambition. Iggy. Gretchen. Rose.

Still, what he had learned in the process, when carefully spaced out and hidden behind the relevant corporate shells, ought to refill the coffers quite nicely.

Quite nicely indeed.

Before he knew it the forty five had dwindled to mere seconds and he parked the SUV by the front entrance rather than back into the garage.

Both Gretchen and Rose were asleep in the nursery. Her feet were up and her hair was down around Rose, held with all the delicacy of the flower. He crept past the nursery and took the steps three at a time upstairs. A scalding shower followed by an icy finish. His skin glowed when he stepped out.

He dressed in the appropriate clothes. Jeans. T-shirt. Sneakers. Ran fingers through still thick hair and winked at the fool in the mirror. He took a deep breath and went downstairs.

Gretchen must have heard him showering, despite the distance and his best efforts to the contrary. Witchy red indeed. The woman knew things. It was hard for him to decide who he needed more, her or Iggy. He decided it was a stupid thing to dwell on.

She knew the plan. Of course she did. Half of it was her idea. He probably ought to start calling them both colleagues rather than assistants. He resolved to do so at once.

Rose was in the bassinet. She smiled at him and gurgled. He kissed her on top of her head. This was the real reason he named her Rose, the fragrance of her cranium was as beautiful as the rest of her. And he had made sure of that.

Gretchen hugged him after she got Rose into the infant car carrier. He was amazed at how good it felt. He didn’t like to think about such things – it was often both a discomfort and a distraction. But he had to admit, she was…special.

He had picked the location well in advance, of course. He always did his research.

Traffic was still light. He arrived a few houses away, next to a large elm tree. He got out. He got Rose out. He walked to the door. He kissed her once more on her fragrant head. He left her. He walked back to the SUV and got in. He drove slowly until he got in front of the door.

And then he laid on the horn for 11 seconds. Lights came on. As the door started to open, he drove away. He smiled as he did so.

She couldn’t be attached to him you see. She deserved a life of her own, one in which she could bloom into exactly what she was meant to be. What he had created. Names were as much a blessing as a curse. They can bring money. Fame. Infamy. He would watch. From a distance. He would guide, from afar, with love and gentle humor. And when it was time, she could have her name, if she chose.

He timed it perfectly, the mom never noticed the vanity plate of the SUV.

FRANK

Children’s Dreams: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936-1940 (Philemon Foundation Series)

Professor Jung:

Yes, we have to conclude that there is an inner constellation that did not change over the years.

When a dream recurs so frequently, I usually refrain from searching for the specific motives.

Moreover, I quite generally take the view that a neurosis is not of traumatic origin, that is, that it can’t be traced back to a singular frightening experience; I try to understand it in the context of its present meaning.

For what lives and takes effect today is also recreated today, again and again.

I also relate frequently recurring dreams to what is currently going on, therefore, and to what is recreated over and over again, and not to something that lies many years back.

So this dream, too, refers to an inner constellation, which has not changed over the years.

We already know from the previous dream that there exists a certain splitting in the dreamer, that is, that consciousness and the unconscious are split off from each other.

We further saw that the unconscious and consciousness even attract each other, as expressed in the threat that the snake poses to the dreamer.

This dream goes a step further than the mere threat; the danger becomes manifest: the dreamer falls into the water, in which she is, so to speak, completely swallowed by the monster of the unconscious.

We have to take into account a peculiar detail, the fact that she falls down in an upright position.

This is very unusual, because usually one falls sideways one way or the other.

When someone, as in this case, falls down with the hands on the body and with the feet first, this expresses a certain stiffness, as if one were enclosed by something.

The feeling of suffocation the dreamer experiences when sinking also points to this tight enclosure.

It is as if she were pulled into the mouth of a monster and swallowed.

Myths express the sucking and suffocating aspect of water by populating it with monsters, dragons, or other water creatures.

Many primitive heroic myths also tell the story that the hero is devoured by the dragon, complete with his ship.

In the monster’s belly he is pressed to such an extent that, so as not to be crushed, he pushes the remains of the ship against the walls of the stomach.

The experience of being pressed is a very important motif.

In our dream it also finds expression in the feeling of suffocating.

To what does this refer? From where do we have such a direct experience?

Participant: From birth.

I was a boy.

At an age well before any awareness of the passions and dreams of a man, and yet I would dream of a woman. A particular woman. She was mine. She was not maternal, nor a sister, nor a friend, but I loved her. I did not understand love. I did not seek it. But it was strong. It distracted me when I was awake, and the discomfort it gave me sometimes caused me to wish it away. It has never left me.

She had a pale face set against soft dark hair. Her voice sparkled like water, and echoed in my mind long after she spoke. In her presence I felt the warmth of her love.

Only once have I seen hands as delicate as hers.

Although I try not to, I know I still seek her.

When we first meet we will hardly touch. That will be later, very much later.

We have plenty of time and will wait for the moment.

I will hold your hand and feel the warmth of your presence.

That is all I crave, for the moment.

To me you are a woman in a painting or photograph by a friend. I visited her often, and she would speak of you. She would explain you to me – the way that close friends do when giving their descriptions of those they love. My fascination with you, in that picture, has not left me.

I remember well my feelings when I knew I would meet you. I knew that I would blush and betray my dreams.

We met. A brief exchange was all there was between us. You sat on the floor by the fire. I sat on a chair in the corner opposite you.

I had a clear view of you. I tried not to stare. I was dazzled by you. You are beautiful.

But I cannot remember you.

I can only remember the picture.

When will I see you again?

In the mirror?

A storefront window?

Behind the wheel of a car?

I will be dressed in clothes that betray me.

As they always do.
(With Gratitude to Michelle Lovric – Love letter writer extraordinaire)

LOVE AFTER LOVE
by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Sancho’s Wave

Stepping through sunset

from a Mexican beach in May

Philomen hoists aloft

a surfboard like a spear

coffee parchment skin

scrawled on by age

shoe glue feet bare

cobblestone sure as a wave tipping

carving past

outstretched tourists

dog shit, fire catchers,

waifs chasing pesos

eyes fixed on where he lives

squint spray earned

switching ‘twixt horizon and shore

at dawn he eats

eggs and chorizo

rushes to meet the break of himself

not on the balance of the board

nor the crush of his failure but

the exhalation of sweet pneumata

while Faust and Mephistopheles

engaged with flying a kite ignore

Gretchen, who greets Philomen in the night

the door remains open

unaware it is doubt that keeps it so

even if she knows why.

A flower simply is

A flower is a lovesome thing

whether tight in a bud

or with petals most faded

the fragrance lasts longer

than the thorn and thistle

stagnant water at the base

in a clear glass vase

only wanting for a

gentle hand

to pour the brackish

down the drain

go – collect the rainwater

that gathers from your

downspout

choose a new pot

one you threw yourself into

on the potters’ wheel

for clay is most happy

in the good potter’s hands

and the rose with a thorn

is the one most worth

plucking.

How It Strikes a Contemporary

I only knew one poet in my life:

And this, or something like it, was his way.

You saw go up and down Vallodolid,

A man of mark, to know next time you saw.

His very serviceable suit of black

Was courtly once and conscientious still,

And many might have worn it, though none did:

The cloak, somewhat shone and showed the threads,

Had purpose, and the ruff, significance.

He walked and tapped the pavement with his cane,

Scenting the world, looking it full in face,

An old dog, bald and blindish, as his heels.

They turned up, now, the alley by the church,

That leads nowhither; now, they breathed themselves

On the main promenade just at the wrong time:

You’d come upon his scrutinising hat,

Making a peaked shade blacker than itself

Against the single window spared some house

Intact yet with its mouldered Moorish work –

Or else surprise the ferrel of his stick,

Trying the mortar’s temper ‘tween the chinks

Or some new shop a-building, French and fine.

He stood and watched the cobbler at his trade,

The man who slices lemons into drink,

The coffee-roaster’s brazier, and the boys

That volunteer to help him turn its winch.

He glanced o’er books on stalls with half an eye,

And fly-leaf ballads on the vendor’s string,

And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall.

He took such cognisance of men and things,

If any beat a horse, you felt he saw:

If any cursed a woman, he took note;

Yet stared at nobody – you stared at him,

And found, less to your pleasure than surprise,

He seemed to know you and expect as much.

So, next time that a neighbor’s tongue was loosed,

It marked the shameful and notorious fact,

We had among us, not so much a spy,

As a recording chief-inquisitor,

The town’s true master if the town but knew!

We merely kept a governor for form,

While this man walked about and took account

Of all thought, said and acted, then went home,

And wrote it fully to our Lord the King

Who has an itch to know things, he knows why,

And reads them in his bedroom of a night.

Oh, you might smile! There wanted not a touch,

A tang of. . . well, it was not wholly ease

As back into your mind the man’s look came

Stricken in years a little – such a brow

His eyes had to live under! – clear as flint

On either side the formidable nose

Curved, cut and coloured like an eagle’s claw.

Had he to do with A.’s surprising fate?
When altogether old B. disappeared

And young C got his mistress – wasn’t our friend,

His letter to the King, that did it all?
What paid the bloodless man for so much pains?

Our Lord the King has favourites manifold.

And shifts his ministry some once a month;

Our city gets new governors at whiles –

But never a word or sign, that I could hear,

Notified to this man about the streets

The King’s approval of those letters conned

The last thing duly at the dead of night.

Did the man love his office? Frowned our Lord,

Exhorting when none heard – ‘Beseech me not!

Too far above my people – beneath me!

I set the watch – how should the people know?

Forget them, keep me all the more in mind!’

Was some such understanding ‘twixt the two?

I found no truth in one report at least –

That if you tracked him to his home, down lanes

Beyond the Jewry, and as clean to pace,

You found he ate his supper in a room

Blazing with lights, four Titians on the wall,

And twenty naked girls to change his plate!

Poor man, he lived another kind of life

In that new stuccoed third house by the bridge,

Fresh-painted, rather smart otherwise!

The whole street might o’erlook him as he sat,

Leg crossing leg, one foot on the dog’s back,

Playing a decent cribbage with his maid

(Jacyinth, you’re sure her name was) o’er the cheese

And fruit, three red halves of starved winter-pears,

Or treat of radishes in April. Nine,

Ten, struck the church clock, straight to bed went he

My father, like the man of sense he was,

Would point him out to me a dozen times;

‘St-‘St’ he’d whisper, ‘the Corregidor!’

I had been used to think that personage

Was one with lacquered breeches, lustrous belt,

And feathers like a forest in his hat,

Who blew a trumpet and proclaimed the news,

Announced the bull-fights, gave each church in turn,

And memorised the miracle in vogue!

He had a great observance from us boys;

We were in error; that was not the man.

I’d like now, yet had haply been afraid,

To have just looked, when this man came to die,

And seen who lined the clean gay garret-sides

And stood about the neat low truckle-bed,

With the heavenly manner of relieving guard,

Here had been, mark, the general-in-chief,

Thro’ a whole campaign of the world’s life and death,

In his old coat and up to knees in mud,

Smoked like a herring, dining on a crust –

And, now the day was won, relieved at once!

No further show or need for that old coat,

You are sure, for one thing! Bless us, all the while

How sprucely we are dressed out, you and I!

A second, and the angels alter that.

Well, I could never write a verse – could you?

Let’s to the Prado and make the most of time.

ROBERT BROWNING

What do you call a guy who hangs out with a bunch of musicians?
The drummer. (The reader is invited to infer the rimshot.)